Genocide Route Overview (Read Before You Start)

Genocide Route Overview explains the No Mercy path at a high level. This is the darkest route. Finish Neutral and True Pacifist first if you care about story order.

What the route demands

You must clear every region’s random encounter quota until the fight UI shows a message that nobody remains to fight, then defeat that area’s bosses without aborting the route. Miss the quota or spare a required target and the run collapses back toward Neutral.

Tone and difficulty

Areas empty out. Shops and NPCs vanish. Bosses change into much harder forms. The final stretch is a marathon of pattern reading, not a short secret ending. Save often and expect long retries.

Permanent consequence

Completing Genocide and restoring the world afterward permanently alters future True Pacifist endings. A True Reset does not fully wash that stain. Communities recommend Pacifist → optional Genocide last for that reason.

If you only wanted a “hard mode”

Hard Mode (naming the fallen human “Frisk”) is a separate early joke/challenge and is not the same as Genocide. Do not confuse the two.