🗺️ Walkthrough Hub: Progress Route & Boss Order

Follow the main path — Valor Mortis is a chaptered campaign, and the bosses arrive in story order. The community-verified anchors: General Lothaire early (he was the demo's first fight), High Justicar Aurelius in the later chapters (the demo's second), and The Entity at the climax. Between bosses: light lanterns, sweep Ambers on later passes, upgrade one weapon per chapter, and treat optional elites — Eternal Guardsmen especially — as skill homework the endgame will bill you for.

Ten named encounters anchor the campaign. The trophy list pins them in this rough order as the community has verified it: Lothaire and Aurelius bookend the mid-campaign (both were playable before launch), the Iron Marshall is the mid-game posture wall, the Sphinx and Slaughtermill follow, the Bride and Experiment 83 form the horror back half, and the endgame runs Orphan → Nephtis Superioris → The Entity. Unlock rates on the bosses hub double as a progress map — when your friends are stuck, their trophy list says where.

• Clear the lantern path — every checkpoint you light is a future death made cheaper.
• Grab visible Ambers; mark the sealed ones. Dedicated sweeps come after movement upgrades (the Ambers page has the method).
• Fight one optional Eternal Guardsman per chapter. The Severe-threat elites are the parry system's electives, and We Wear the Same Colors needs them all.
• Push your main weapon up one upgrade tier per boss. The Iron Marshall grades this assignment publicly.
• Bank Catalysts at every lantern; spend at boss doors. The arithmetic never changes.

Around the Iron Marshall, the game expects a complete character: a maxed melee weapon (Bladesmith), a firearm you actually fire (God's Trigger practice happens here naturally), and one transmutation you trust. If a checkmark is missing, the route is not forward — it is one loop back through the last chapter's patrols with your new tools. Twenty minutes of banking now saves hours of wall later.

After the campaign's climax, the 100% Checklist takes over: ten boss trophies you already own, the combat-school streaks, the Ambersmith sweep, the arsenal breadth, and the six hidden story achievements you mostly already have. Nothing in Valor Mortis currently requires a second full playthrough — the endgame is a cleanup season, and the checklist orders it so the last achievement falls as fast as the math allows.