Endings

There are 3 Endings in Sundered, achieved by either resisting or embracing the corruption.

To Embrace is to corrupt some of your abilities using an Elder Shard. To Resist is to destroy a shard with the incinerator.

Bosses drop a full Elder Shard upon defeat. Minibosses drop an Elder Shard fragment (or Elder Fragment, if you'd like), which require three to form a full Elder Shard (so you have to defeat 3 minibosses to gain one Elder Shard). An Elder Shard fragment is hidden in each region.

There are 7 shards spread across the 3 different regions in the game. In order to get anything other than the default ending, you'll need to find them all and Embrace or Resist in full.

A Slice Of Good And Evil (The Crawling Chaos)
The default ending comes if you don't Embrace or Resist all seven Elder Shards, either by failing to find them all or by choosing any combination of use and destruction other than "all in" (e.g. destroying two shards, using four, and leaving one in Eshe's inventory). If this is the case, travelling to the Nether will pit you against Nyarlathotep, the eldritch god that the Eschaton were attempting to summon.

Defeating Nyarlathotep will allow Eshe to use a portal and escape the cursed kingdom. She returns to wandering the desert as the game ends on the sinister image of the Shining Trapezohedron lighting up once more.

Full Resist (Beacon of Hope)
For this ending, you will have to bring all seven Elder Shards to the incinerator. The incinerator's location is downwards from where you spawn in the first region. You can bring these shards separately. Each of the shards, when incinerated, will give you smaller shards as a form of currency, which you will be able to spend on the Trapezohedron tree, but --most importantly-- it will also increase the size of your Trapezohedron tree with more nodes and new abilities. Be warned; the Trapezohedron will be very disappointed with you when you sacrifice the shards.

If all seven shards are destroyed, Nyarlathotep gains an extra phase when confronted in the Nether; after its initial defeat, the Shining Trapezohedron will leave Eshe and merge with the fallen abomination in an attempt to kill her once and for all. Defeating this form will destroy Nyarlathotep and the Trapezohedron once and for all... along with the portal Eshe needs to escape.

Note: As your sword is a power given by the Trapezohedron, when Nyarlathotep fuses with the Trapezohedron you will not be able to use your sword during the fight. In exchange, ammo packs will be scattered over the room, so you have to use the cannon.

Full Embrace (One with the Void)
For this ending, you have to take every Elder Shard to the Ability Shrines and use them to corrupt your abilities (details on said abilities here) There are seven Shrines hidden in the game, and you'll need to use all of them to get the Embrace ending.

Once you've fully embraced the Trapezohedron's power, go to the Nether to find a different boss: a radiant doppelganger of Eshe herself! Upon defeat, she mutates into Humanity, a grotesque monster representing what Eshe has sacrificed in the name of power. Slaying this beast allows Eshe to finally escape the cursed kingdom... by destroying what remains of her humanity and becoming the leader of the eldritch hordes now spilling into the world beyond. annen.