What happens when you kill an NPC?

Steps

1. Expect a second fight. The developer’s own line is that killing someone means fighting their ghost too, so do not sheathe your weapon the moment the body drops.
2. Do not count on looting the corpse at leisure. The same narration says a body you return to later may not stay down.
3. Treat the kill as a recorded outcome rather than a mistake. Abusing or failing someone seats something darker in the Amphitheater, which is progress towards the gate rather than lost progress.
4. Know which kills cannot be undone by paying. One recorded message says that killing a child cannot be paid off, unlike ordinary crimes.
5. Expect the settlement to react. Another recorded message tells the player the village has evacuated.

What NerveLabs say happens

The clearest statement is in the Early Access date trailer’s narration, and it is worth quoting because it is unusually specific for marketing copy: every NPC can be killed, but “the dead here don’t go quietly” — kill someone and you will fight their ghost too, and if you go back for the body later, it may not stay down.

Their announcement trailer, on their own channel, frames the same system as a line of narration: here, every desire leaves a ghost. Their short feature teaser, also on their own channel, lists “kill every NPC” next to pickpocketing, lockpicking and co-op, which is the developer saying the permission is universal rather than applied to a subset of characters.

The Steam description supplies the other half. Most quests have multiple resolutions — mercy, violence, compromise, deceit — and treating someone badly puts something darker in your audience seat rather than removing the seat. So a killing is a branch the game records, not a state it refuses.

What players have actually recorded

This is the honest gap on this page. One creator deliberately killed an entire town on camera, and what his session shows is the crime side rather than the ghost side: two on-screen messages, one saying that he has killed a child and there is no paying this off, and one saying the village has evacuated. He is never shown fighting a ghost that rises from a body he made, and he never returns to a corpse.

The closest thing to a ghost on camera is a co-op party at the Amphitheater calling the two enemies that appear there ghosts, and remarking that one of them bleeds. Those two are part of a scripted scene rather than something the players killed, so they do not demonstrate the mechanic.

That leaves the trailer’s two most useful sentences — the ghost fight and the body that may not stay down — stated by the developer and reproduced by nobody. They are published here because the developer is the best possible authority on their own systems, and flagged because a marketing line is not a demonstration.

Requirements / limits

• The ghost fight and the returning body come from trailer narration. They are the developer’s words, and they are not shown in any gameplay recording read for this page.
• The trailer narration is cited from two independent transcriptions of the same audio — a press mirror of the trailer and a launch-week stream that plays it — because the developer does not host that trailer on their own video channel.
• The two crime messages come from one session on one route. No source establishes the general crime system, whether ordinary killings can be paid off, or what the fine is.
• “The village has evacuated” is one message in one town after mass murder. Nothing here says what triggers it or whether the inhabitants return.
• No source read for this page shows what a ghost looks like, how strong it is, or whether it can be avoided.
• The design statement had at least one exception before Update 7. NerveLabs list, under Fixed, that a spoiler NPC dying no longer prevents main quest completion — which means that on earlier builds that death did prevent it. The changelog withholds the name, and no recording here reaches that NPC.

Common mistakes

• Reloading after an unintended kill on the assumption that the game has locked you out. The developer’s stated design is that the outcome is recorded either way — though Update 7 fixed one unnamed NPC whose death did block main quest completion, so on a pre-Update 7 save the assumption was not always wrong.
• Assuming the ghost fight is confirmed gameplay. It is a developer claim that nobody cited here has reproduced on camera.
• Expecting to pay off any killing. One recorded message says a child’s death cannot be paid off at all.
• Reading the two enemies at the Amphitheater as ghosts you created. They appear in a scripted scene that plays for players who have not been killing.
• Treating “every NPC can be killed” as advice. It is a statement of what the game permits, and the developer says quests resolve through mercy and compromise as well.

Still unverified

• What does the ghost of a killed NPC actually look like, and how hard is it?Not verifiedStated in trailer narration. No recording read for this page shows one.
• Under what conditions does a body fail to stay down?Not verifiedThe narration says it may happen when you return later. Nothing states how often, or what rises.
• How does the crime system work for ordinary killings?Not verifiedOne message implies a child’s death is an exception to paying off. What the normal case looks like is now partly recorded: guards can be surrendered to by sheathing, and three recorded incidents end in a payment of 40, 50 or 100 gold. See /answers/surrender-to-guards-pay-fine. Whether killing specifically is priced the same way is still unrecorded.
• Does an evacuated village repopulate?Not verifiedOne player triggers the message and does not come back to check.
• Does killing an NPC remove their quests from the game?Not verifiedThe Amphitheater rule implies the outcome is recorded rather than lost, but no source follows a killed quest-giver’s quest afterwards.
• Which NPC’s death used to block the main quest?Developer changelogUpdate 7 lists, under Fixed, that a spoiler NPC dying no longer prevents main quest completion. NerveLabs withhold the name.