📜 Strategy Guide
The Weeping Swan — Complete Walkthrough
A comprehensive day-by-day walkthrough for The Weeping Swan: Ten Days of the City's Fall. Every choice, every missable item, every death warning — across all 10 days and all 3 main ending routes. No spoiler warnings: this guide assumes you want the full picture.
🗺️ Before You Begin — The Weeping Swan Walkthrough Notes
The Weeping Swan is designed for multiple playthroughs. The first run is intended to be experienced "blind" — the game's structure rewards discovery and punishes over-preparation with diminished emotional impact. If this is your first time, consider putting the guide down after the overview section and returning when you're stuck.
That said: several choices are permanently missable and gate entire ending routes. The most important are flagged with 🔴 PERMANENT in this guide. If you're on a completion run, check those flags before every major scene.
Key Systems to Understand First
- Sanity (清醒值) — Starts at 100. Below 50%, dialogue options begin misrepresenting themselves. Below 20%, 'Beast Vision' permanently alters scenes. At 0%, you trigger Ending D. See the full Sanity guide.
- Dialogue Icons — 🔴 Red = Sanity cost. 🟡 Yellow = time cost. 🟢 Green = safe. 🔵 Blue = requires an item or trust threshold.
- Stealth — Yaoguai detect by sound. Wooden floors creak. The patrol pattern is always: ADVANCE (3 steps) → PAUSE (2 sec) → TURN. Move during the PAUSE only.
- Memory Fragments — 7 total. Required for Ending A (True Ending). Fragments #3 and #6 are gated behind specific choices. Missing either locks Ending A.
- Permanent Choices — Day 1: Wine Flask. Day 2: Scholar Wang's Family. Day 3: Share the Flask. Day 8: Little Yan Betrayal. These four choices determine which of the three main endings you can reach.
Day One — The Gates Fall
Tutorial Day: Awakening Inside the Nightmare
🌫️ Disorienting dawn. Smoke on the horizon. The sound of distant drums.
Day One is the tutorial, but The Weeping Swan treats its tutorial with unusual respect. Fang Zhiyou wakes not knowing where — or when — he is. The Scholar's Quarter of Lion Camel Kingdom surrounds him: familiar enough to be unsettling, wrong in too many details to be real Yangzhou. The day teaches the core systems: item inspection (hold to examine, tap to collect), the dialogue weight system (responses with the 🔴 icon cost Sanity, those with 🟡 cost time), and the stealth mechanic (Yaoguai respond to movement sound, not sight). There is no combat on Day 1 — only flight. The emotional core of Day 1 is the first encounter with Little Yan. She is hiding in a collapsed teahouse, paralyzed by fear. Fang must choose how to approach her. The tone you set in this first conversation — gentle or urgent — affects her fear baseline for the entire game.
🎯 Day 1 Objectives
- Escape the Scholar's Quarter before the Yaoguai patrol arrives
- Find and rescue Little Yan from the collapsed teahouse
- Secure initial supplies: water, food for 2 days, one weapon
- Locate the first Memory Fragment (Su Lianyan's silk ribbon)
🔀 Choice 1: An injured merchant blocks the alley, begging for help
Help carry him to safety (costs ~8 minutes game-time)
→ Unlocks a unique item (merchant's seal) that opens a locked room on Day 5. +5 Morale for Little Yan.
Step past with an apology
→ Save time, but the merchant's fate weighs on Fang (minor Sanity penalty). No impact on endings.
🔀 Choice 2: First meeting with Little Yan — she won't move
Speak gently, use her name (requires you noticed her name-tag nearby)
→ Little Yan Fear drops to 15 (base 30). She trusts Fang faster. Required for one memory fragment unlock.
Urgent: 'We have to leave NOW'
→ She moves immediately but Fear stays at 30. Functional but closes one narrative path.
📦 Items to Find — Day 1
📍 Scholar's study, top floor, leftmost drawer
💡 Critical: used in a Day 3 event with Lin Pianpian. Cannot be found later.
📍 Near the memorial tablet, collapsed teahouse
💡 Required for Ending A (True Ending).
📍 Only if you help the injured merchant
💡 Opens a locked room on Day 5 containing Memory Fragment #3.
📍 Kitchen storage, Scholar's Quarter
💡 Prevents starvation penalty on Day 2.
💡 Day 1 Survival Tips
- The wine flask in the scholar's study desk (top floor, leftmost drawer) — take it. You'll need it on Day 3.
- The Yaoguai foot-soldiers patrol in a 3-step rhythm: advance-pause-turn. Move on the pause.
- Wooden floors creak — always check floor type before moving. Stone is silent, wood is danger.
- Day 1 sets item spawn patterns for Days 2 and 3. Check EVERY room before leaving any building.
- Su Lianyan's silk ribbon is near the memorial tablet in the teahouse where you find Little Yan. Don't miss it — Memory Fragment #1.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 1
- Getting cornered in the East Market without any items triggers an unavoidable death scene.
- If you leave the Scholar's Quarter without waking Little Yan, the game locks into a bad ending path after Day 3.
Day Two — The Burning Streets
The First Great Fork: Scholar Wang's Family
🌫️ Thick smoke. Orange sky. The sound of weeping from behind closed doors.
Day Two opens on burning streets. The Yaoguai forces are no longer at the gates — they're inside the city. Day Two is significantly harder than Day One: patrols are denser, resources are scarcer, and Little Yan's fear escalates rapidly at the sight of violence. The narrative weight of Day Two centers on Scholar Wang. You find him trying to barricade his family home with furniture — his wife, his elderly mother, and three children pressed against the back wall. He looks at Fang with the particular desperation of a man who knows he cannot save his family alone. The choice you make here is the most consequential decision of Days 1-5. It permanently determines whether Ending B (Scholar Wang's Sacrifice) is available to you.
🎯 Day 2 Objectives
- Navigate the burning Willow Street district without triggering Yaoguai
- Reach Scholar Wang's house
- Make the Day 2 Major Choice (Wang's Family)
- Find Madam Qionghua's shelter — the safe house for the rest of the game
🔀 Choice 1: Scholar Wang's family cannot move fast — leading them means risk
Lead Scholar Wang's family to safety via the Canal Route
→ Slower, more dangerous path. Wang becomes a permanent ally. Ending B unlocked. Madam Qionghua's trust +20.
Tell Wang you'll send help and press forward with Little Yan alone
→ Faster. Wang's fate becomes ambiguous until Day 5. Ending B permanently locked.
🔀 Choice 2: Yaoguai patrol spotted 20 meters ahead — you have Little Yan and possibly Wang's family
Wait (hide for 10 minutes game-time)
→ Safe. Patrol moves on. No cost.
Distract with thrown object
→ Works if you have a throwable item. Saves 10 minutes. Little Yan Fear +10 if she sees the Yaoguai react.
📦 Items to Find — Day 2
📍 Under the third bridge on the Canal Route (only accessible if you take Wang's family)
💡 Prevents starvation for multiple characters through Day 4.
📍 Inside Scholar Wang's house, in his poetry collection
💡 Required for Ending A. Only accessible if you enter Wang's house.
📍 Guarded weapon shop — requires a distraction
💡 Only reliable weapon in Days 2-4. Makes several encounters survivable.
💡 Day 2 Survival Tips
- Willow Street is the most dangerous section of Day 2. There are four Yaoguai in a compressed area. Stealth is mandatory — do NOT attempt to run.
- The Canal Route (if you take Wang's family) has a hidden food cache under the third bridge. It feeds six people for one day.
- Madam Qionghua's shelter entrance is behind the dried flower shop on South Bridge Lane. The entrance is a wooden panel that looks like part of the wall.
- Lin Pianpian is first encountered at the shelter. Her opening dialogue sets the tone for your relationship — be cautious but not cold.
- Day 2 has 3 death scenarios. The most common: getting separated from Little Yan near the East Gate. Never let her out of arm's reach.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 2
- Separation from Little Yan near the East Gate: a scripted scene triggers — if you're too far away, she is captured.
- Attempting to fight the Scarlet Soldier (a named Yaoguai mini-boss) on Day 2 results in instant death. Run.
- If you don't reach Madam Qionghua's shelter before nightfall (Day 2 end), a bad ending path begins.
Day Three — Memories Bleed Through
The Sanity System Activates. The Past Fights the Present.
🌫️ Candlelight and silence in the shelter. Rain outside. The smell of old ink.
Day Three is the first 'quiet' day — you are inside Madam Qionghua's shelter, and the immediate physical danger is lower. But Day Three is the most psychologically intense chapter yet, because the flashback system activates fully. For the first time, scenes from the past — Fang's memories of Su Lianyan — begin intruding into the present without warning. A conversation with Madam Qionghua might suddenly cut to a remembered afternoon at Twenty-four Bridges. A detail Little Yan mentions might trigger a full-length memory sequence. The wine flask becomes relevant here. An evening gathering around a fire, Lin Pianpian asks if anyone has anything to share. This seemingly minor moment is one of the game's most consequential quiet beats.
🎯 Day 3 Objectives
- Survive the night in Madam Qionghua's shelter
- Speak with all shelter survivors (6 named NPCs, each with one meaningful exchange)
- Experience the first three flashback sequences
- Make the wine flask choice with Lin Pianpian
- Find Memory Fragment #3 (only possible if you have the Merchant's Seal from Day 1)
🔀 Choice 1: Lin Pianpian asks if anyone has anything to share at the evening gathering
Share the wine flask with her (requires you kept it from Day 1)
→ Lin Pianpian Trust +35. Unlocks a private conversation on Day 5. Required for Ending C.
You don't have the flask, or you keep it
→ If kept: preserved for Day 7 ritual event that adds Sanity +15. Ending C locked if flask was lost.
🔀 Choice 2: Memory Fragment — a flashback of Su Lianyan's last morning. She asks: 'Do you think I made the right choice?'
Yes. Whatever you chose was right.
→ Sanity +8. Affects the tone of the True Ending monologue.
I don't know. I've never understood.
→ Triggers an extended flashback — costs 15 minutes but reveals lore about her death.
📦 Items to Find — Day 3
📍 Locked room accessible only with Merchant's Seal from Day 1
💡 Essential for Ending A. Reveals partial content of an unsent letter.
📍 Earned through conversation trust — speak to her twice on Day 3
💡 Opens the Scholar's Route for Days 6-7, avoiding the most dangerous area.
📍 Storage room off the main shelter hall
💡 Required for the Day 7 ritual. Take all three.
💡 Day 3 Survival Tips
- Speak to ALL six named NPCs before resting. Each conversation either restores Sanity or provides an item/information.
- Madam Qionghua will tell you about the 'scholar's route' on Day 3 if your trust with her is above 20. This route is critical for Days 6-7.
- The sanity system becomes visible on Day 3: a 清醒值 gauge appears in the upper corner. Manage it — don't let it drop below 50 this early.
- The flashback sequences cannot be skipped on the first playthrough. Take notes — they contain clues about ending conditions.
- Scholar Wang (if you helped him) tells you something about Su Lianyan that changes how you interpret Memory Fragment #2.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 3
- There is a Yaoguai scout that enters the shelter entrance around midnight — if you are in the entrance hall when this triggers, you die. Stay in the inner rooms.
- Sanity below 40% at Day 3 end triggers the 'Beast Vision' state early — this makes Days 4-5 significantly harder.
Day Four — The Well and the Walls
Resources tighten; the Scholar's Route opens
🌫️ Ash and rain. Fewer safe hours of daylight.
Day Four raises the survival stakes. Use Madam Qionghua's map if you earned it; otherwise expect harder patrol routing. The Day 4 well is the last reliable water source for many routes — fill containers before pushing on.
🎯 Day 4 Objectives
- Secure water from the Day 4 well
- Avoid Scarlet Soldier patrol corridors
- Progress main story beats toward the mid-game reveal
🔀 Choice 1: Limited water — share with the shelter or hoard for the party
Share rations openly
→ Trust gains with survivors; slightly faster Sanity recovery events.
Hoard for Fang and Little Yan
→ Easier personal survival checks; NPC trust penalties later.
📦 Items to Find — Day 4
📍 Follow scholar or canal route markers
💡 Ending A progression.
💡 Day 4 Survival Tips
- Mark the well on your mental map — you will not get another guaranteed refill this clean.
- If Beast Vision started on Day 3, double-check dialogue text before confirming choices.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 4
- Running through the East Market without a plan still kills.
Day Five — Fractured Streets
Mid-game dangers and optional locked rooms
🌫️ Compressed alleys; echoes of wings above.
Day Five rewards thorough earlier play: the merchant's seal route can yield critical lore here. Patrol density remains high — stealth rhythm is mandatory.
🎯 Day 5 Objectives
- Survive dense Yaoguai pockets
- Use Merchant's Seal path if available
- Keep Little Yan's fear managed before night events
🔀 Choice 1: A locked archive — you may have the key from Day 1
Enter if you have the seal
→ Access to sealed lore and fragment opportunities.
Bypass
→ Faster traversal; missable content remains locked.
📦 Items to Find — Day 5
📍 Archive and side rooms
💡 Sanity and trading.
💡 Day 5 Survival Tips
- Broken weapons make noise — discard before stealth.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 5
- Named mini-boss corridors: do not engage early.
Day Six — Twenty-four Bridges
Lin Pianpian's route deepens
🌫️ Lanterns and whispered deals.
Day Six often pairs with Lin Pianpian's trust arc. If you are aiming for Ending C, her scenes here are pivotal.
🎯 Day 6 Objectives
- Navigate Twenty-four Bridges politics
- Maintain trust thresholds for your target ending
🔀 Choice 1: Lin Pianpian asks for commitment on a dangerous errand
Go with her
→ Major trust gain; Ending C trajectory strengthened.
Refuse
→ Safer short term; may soft-lock parts of Ending C.
📦 Items to Find — Day 6
📍 Bridges district
💡 Late-game access.
💡 Day 6 Survival Tips
- Coin is scarce — buy herbs and rope before cosmetic items.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 6
- Separation sequences still punish bad positioning.
Day Seven — The Ritual Night
Wine flask, candles, and Sanity recovery
🌫️ Incense, flame, and unreliable narration.
Day Seven hosts the wine flask ritual if you preserved the flask and candles. This is one of the few strong Sanity recoveries in the late game.
🎯 Day 7 Objectives
- Prepare candles and flask if eligible
- Survive night events in the shelter or route variant
🔀 Choice 1: Perform the wine ritual (requires flask + candles)
Complete the ritual
→ Large one-time Sanity restore; unique scenes.
Skip
→ No restore; harder Days 8-10.
📦 Items to Find — Day 7
📍 Shelter / inventory check
💡 Sanity swing.
💡 Day 7 Survival Tips
- If Sanity is below 50%, prioritize recovery before Day 8 flags.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 7
- Midnight scout events — stay in inner rooms.
Day Eight — The Betrayal Fork
Little Yan — permanent consequence
🌫️ Trust shatters or holds by a thread.
Day Eight contains the Little Yan choice that gates the True Ending path. Treat every line of dialogue as loaded.
🎯 Day 8 Objectives
- Resolve the Little Yan crisis
- Stabilize Sanity if possible before the fork
🔀 Choice 1: Little Yan is cornered — your stance defines the rest of the game
Stand with her openly (protect / reassure)
→ Keeps Ending A eligible if other conditions are met.
Betray, abandon, or exploit her position
→ True Ending route closes; other endings may still be reachable.
📦 Items to Find — Day 8
💡 Day 8 Survival Tips
- Save before this day if you are routing Ending A.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 8
- Low Sanity here amplifies misleading dialogue options.
Day Nine — Beneath the Myth
Great Peng pressure peaks
🌫️ Sky too close; wings too loud.
Day Nine pushes toward climax. Direct confrontation with the Great Peng remains lethal — positioning and items decide who survives to Day 10.
🎯 Day 9 Objectives
- Survive scripted pursuit sequences
- Advance memory-fragment revelations
🔀 Choice 1: Final approach to the confrontation zone
Take the safer hidden path (if unlocked)
→ Avoids instant-fail encounter triggers.
Rush the main avenue
→ High risk of death scene unless requirements met.
📦 Items to Find — Day 9
📍 Story-gated
💡 Ending A.
💡 Day 9 Survival Tips
- Named bosses detect sight and sound — different rules from grunts.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 9
- Great Peng direct fight before intended window = death.
Day Ten — The City's Fall
Endings resolve
🌫️ Silence after thunder.
Day Ten resolves which ending you earn based on fragments, Sanity, trust tracks, and permanent flags across prior days.
🎯 Day 10 Objectives
- Finish final chapter decisions
- Meet Sanity threshold for target ending
🔀 Choice 1: Final reflection — what Fang accepts as truth
Embrace the gathered memory evidence
→ Enables Ending A resolutions when all flags align.
Turn away from the truth
→ Routes toward alternate emotional endings depending on prior flags.
📦 Items to Find — Day 10
💡 Day 10 Survival Tips
- Above 60% Sanity helps lock Ending A variants.
💀 Death Warnings — Day 10
- Sanity at 0 at any time triggers Ending D.
🔗 Related guides
❓ Walkthrough FAQ — The Weeping Swan
How many endings does The Weeping Swan have?
There are three main story endings (A, B, and C), one bad ending (Ending D — the sanity collapse route), and one bonus chapter (Ending E) for fans of The Hungry Lamb. Beyond these, the game has 28 distinct death scenes and several 'chapter bad ends' that restart from a checkpoint. For completionists, cataloguing all death scenes is a substantial additional challenge.
Is there combat in The Weeping Swan? What kind of game is it really?
The Weeping Swan is primarily a narrative visual novel with survival-adventure mechanics layered on top. There is no traditional turn-based or action combat system. 'Combat' in this game means the choice between running, hiding, using items to create distractions, or accepting that confronting certain enemies means death. The focus is on resource management, timed dialogue choices, stealth navigation, and psychological horror through the Sanity system. Think Higurashi meets a survival horror VN.
I missed the wine flask on Day 1. Can I still get Ending C?
Unfortunately, no. The wine flask in the scholar's study on Day 1 is a permanently missable item, and it is required for the Day 3 choice that unlocks Lin Pianpian's trust path leading to Ending C. This is one of The Weeping Swan's most discussed design decisions — the game wants you to discover this on a second playthrough. Use the chapter-select feature to replay from Day 1 and make sure you check the leftmost drawer of the top-floor desk.
What is the Sanity system and why does it matter so much?
The Sanity system (清醒值) is the defining mechanic of The Weeping Swan. Fang's sanity starts at 100 and depletes through trauma, bad choices, and skipped rest. Below 50%, the game begins lying to you — dialogue options mean different things than they appear, character faces flicker, and Fang's narration becomes actively unreliable. Below 20%, 'Beast Vision' permanently alters some scenes. At 0%, you trigger Ending D (bad ending). Managing sanity isn't just about survival — it's about the quality of information you receive and which endings remain accessible.