I have read many guides to Cultist Simulator and this writeup is my attempt to
better organize the info so that its less overwhelming to new players. I
break things up into sections so new players can focus only on immediate
concerns and limit terminology.
There was also a lot of outdated info that I have updated, and added my own
information from playing.
Mid-tier players can hopefully benefit from the Pro Tips section,
I also have guides to the Apostle Newgame+ mode and the DLC Legacies.
I compiled as much reference material as I could for easy access.
There are tons of spoilers in this guide obviously, but I will try to mark
particularly spoilery sections.
The format of the guide will be as follows:
Intro Sections: (not much spoilers)
1. New Player Important Tips
2. How Magnets work.
3. How Losing by Dread works.
4. How Losing by Fascination Works.
5. How Losing by Noteriety/Evidence works.
Normal Game Sections:
6. Early game goals and strategy.
7. Interludes:
-- stat boosting
-- timer manipulation
-- making money
-- followers capabilities.
8. Midgame goals and strategy.
9. Interlude: Summoning and Spell Rituals.
10. Exploring Dungeons
11. Pro Tips
12. Winning the game (more spoilers)
Apostle Game:
13. General NewGame+ Advice.
14. Winning Apostle Games (big spoilers)
15. Other Legacies
16. BIG REFERENCE SECTION!
NEW PLAYER IMPORTANT TIPS:
--------------------------
* If you are having a hard time, do this:
Start a new game and get killed ASAP. On PC you can SHIFT hold all your cash
so you starve. Or Work as reason/passion/health to get the fund-magnet
started. Run out of cash and die horribly.
Start New Descent as PHYSICIAN or BRIGHT YOUNG THING, either or both should
always be available when you die in a previous game.
Both have substantial advantages over the default character. I'd recommend
physician if both are available.
* Move your Verbs to the top, about 3 cards worth from the very top. Have
them start about 6 cards from the left side. This ensures that all the
special timers that spawn you can ACTUALLY SEE THEM! This will greatly
reduce the number of surprise deaths from some off-screen timer.
Move the little light blue card-rack thingee up there too (which is where
it puts new cards). This tip applies to the mobile version in particular.
* Organize your cards consistently. Personally I put rarely-used stuff top
right. All my lore bottom-left. Patrons/Dungeons far right. Tools and
treasures bottom right. You can drag the blue tray looking thing which
helps control where new cards are dumped.
* You can force-kill the game and reload from your last save point if you
suddenly find you did something really bad or are about to die with no
good recovery options. On PC version, use Task Manager. Or, on PC version
if you Browse Save area there should be several "backup" saves that you can
rename if you did get caught by autosave at a point of no return.
* If you tap the permanent timer that eats Funds every 60 seconds, look at the
very bottom right and it will tell you which season is upcoming. You dont
need to check every time, but occasionally this can give you valuable info.
This is most useful before doing specific actions that could be interrupted
and ruined by certain events.
* There are 5 types of "Stuff" that can have one or more of the Aspects.
-- LORE is your collection of magic books. The main thing you advance during
the game. Power ranges from 2 to 14. Secret Histories are "maps" to
vaults which act as dungeons to explore basically.
-- TOOLS are pretty useless for beginners during most of standard games.
-- INGREDIENTS are mostly useless.
-- FOLLOWERS are hirelings, your cultists, or summons. Very important.
-- INFLUENCE is a 60 second duration doodad that is mostly used as fuel for
your spells pretty much.
* You can click on a slot and all cards that match/will fit will glow!
* You can doubletap a card to perform its "default action". Sometimes this is
ambiguous and sometimes just plain idiotic but it can help with simple stuff
like Job actions. It saves some time and dragging.
* Keep in mind how the game is coded, with cards and slots and magnets. This
causes logical restrictions that you should be aware of. For example, trying
to read a book in another language will tell you "you don't know X language"
even when you DO have the scholorship card! Because logic is card/slot based
it does not try to "scan your cards" to figure out if you have the right
language or not. You have to manually drag the language over, then the book.
* This game rewards OCD and hates ADD people with a passion. Punishments for
not paying attention vary, but here are a few that are extremely severe to
be aware of despite adding complication for a new player. Sorry.
-When you talk to Poppy for the first time and feed Passion this starts a 5
minute timer. MOVE THIS TIMER where you can see it! After that a 1 minute
timer is spawned and if you fail to react to it... YOU LOSE THE GAME.
This of course makes ZERO logical sense that you would forget to keep
yourself from dying horribly but sometimes the rules of the game make for
undesirable interactions.
-When using the Auction House, drop it onto explore, WAIT 5 seconds for the
item to show up. Ive found this is the best way to make sure I dont lose
focus and miss something important. Missing the STUMM reel is game-over for
all practical purposes for new players and you won't even know it. If you
detect this, IMMEDIATELY force-quit and reload!
-When summoning, sometimes they rebel. Reason banishes always. Passion
lets you keep em 70% of the time in an emergency. If you do nothing, IT WILL
EAT A STAT PERMANENTLY. Or eat one of your followers. Also, if Passion
fails, the same thing happens.
The first two are 1 time events pretty much, so paying special attention to
summons is really the primary thing to do. Since SEVERAL WORK slots
actually have open slots anyways, its very easy to get used to seeing that.
In other words you can easily miss a wayward summons since there is no
special warning. There's not even an ominous noise or something.
-Ignoring AFFLICTION will also result in a semi-permanent Health loss.
HOW MAGNETS WORK:
-----------------
Some events have little magnet icons. These will pull a random card of its
desired type from the play area. If it grabs a card, it will not do anything
until its timer expires which will usually mean that it will try again to grab
another such card. They tend to keep going until they run out of stuff to
grab. Furthermore, Dread/Fascinate magnets will tick indefinitely once they
find one of what they are looking for!
It will grab something as soon as something becomes available.... it is ALWAYS
looking, not just when its timer goes off! So a magnet looking for Dread for
example will pull one as soon as one gets generated before you can do anything.
The exception to this is when it has already grabbed a card. In which case
once its timer expires, it will remove the card it has and be reactivated to
look for another one.
It cannot pull a card that is "committed" by the Start button. In other words
a painter who starts a painting will effectively "hide" anything they used in
that painting. BUT, as soon as the painting is done, the magnet (if empty
and still there) WILL immediately pull something.
It also cannot pull a card that you are "holding" by selecting it and moving
it around! This can be a game-changer by itself.
Magnets CAN pull a non-committed card even out of a card slot! For example,
you can talk to a follower and you can change the Subject during the entire
60 second timer countdown. Theres no "start" to commit. As such, a
detective can literally pull the Evidence right out of your follower's hands
when they are trying to remove it!
Many guides recommend trying to hide cards from the magnets, but this is very
hard to pull off in many cases since the magnet events tend to hang around
for a long time and will immediately pull once the hiding event concludes.
The main thing to consider is that once a magnet grabs anything, it sticks
around typically for a long time. The hide-technique only works if you can do
so before the magnet grabs something, in which case many times it goes away.
LOSING TO DREAD:
----------------
Dread is a card that decays after 3 minutes. Normally not a problem until the
Season of Shadow random event rolls around. In which case, a magnet grabs em
or contentments until it gets 3 dread or eventually gets countered by
contentments. It does NOT go away on its own once it finds a Dread.
After 3 dread, it kicks off a 60 second timer after which YOU LOSE.
The main source of Dread is your "Temptation" or "Desire" card that you get
fairly early in the game. Every time a season of ambition rolls around, you
get a Restlessness which after 60 seconds turns into a Dread that lasts for 3
minutes. Dealing with this is the key to not losing to Dread.
There are other random sources of dread. Studying certain higher level books
or completing dungeons, some explorations, and so on. These generally do not
occur often enough to be a threat by themselves. However, sometimes you wind
up with two temptation seasons and maybe a Moth countdown thingee which also
generates restlessness. Thats GG right there.
Heres how to counter:
1) A "contentment" MAY be sucked in by the dread-magnet and counter one of em.
If you are unlucky however, it might just pull in another dread instead.
In which case your contentment EXPIRES on you!
You can Dream a Dread with contentment to cancel them out which is a
good preventative since contentment lasts 60 seconds and dread 3 minutes.
Don't let a contentment decay out if you have a dread on the board.
You can also put the Contentment into a slot to keep it from expiring. See
Pro-tips section for this.
1a) Get Contentment by feeding Funds to Dream to buy opium. I have rarely had
any bad effect from this despite the dire warnings. Best method!
1b) Painting with lots of passion, having an influence as subject and giving
a coin for better paints increase chances of obtaining one or more
contentments. Not quite as fast as opium or reliable, but its good in a
non-emergency to rid yourself of a lingering magnet.
1c) Contentment found by exploring the "Streets Strange by Moonlight". Can
find other bad cards but never Dread so it won't hoze you completely.
1d) Ecdysis Club usually gives contentment, occasionally other stuff. I am
not a fan, but adding for completeness.
1e) Mansus White Door visiting Orchid could give contentment. Added for
completeness as this is unreliable at best and can add Fascinates.
2) Deal with the Dread.
2a) You can try hiding it by painting it and using it as an influence.
You can Dream it with a Fascinate which also hides it.
You can even hold the Dread in your hand to prevent it from magnet grab.
Hiding ONLY WORKS IF the magnet has not yet grabbed anything. In which
case you simply outlast a single 60 sec timer. Once the magnet has a dread
it will stick around forever until that dread is countered.
2b) You can use the Dread in a Ritual or by recruiting/upgrading a follower!
It IS a legitimate "influence" with an Aspect so just add it to the
"trappings" when you recruit someone using your Cult Banner or whatever.
This will EAT the dread! It has 2 Edge, perfect for several summons too!
3) Keep the restlessness from turning into Dread. Restlessness is easier to
get rid of. It also has lots of Aspects making it really useful for
summons and promotions.
3a) Work with Passion or Passion-skill (paint) and use restlessness as your
influence. This will EAT the restlessness. Painting itself with passion
can generate Contentment by itself too. Note that this is the ONLY
influence painting will eat. It will just stop the timer on all others.
4) Stop the restlessness. Later on you can promote your Temptation/Desire card
so that it stops spamming restlessness. This will end your Dread problem
effectively but cause other problems instead. In particular, fascinates
may start piling up.
LOSING TO FASCINATION
---------------------
In general you have to be pretty unlucky to lose to fascination since there is
no recurring source of it. You only get it through various mostly random
events.
However, the more you play, the more likely you are to obtain Fascinations and
you can actually do less about it since at a certain point, Dread will be
less likely to happen to you (which normally counters fascination).
A Season of Visions will appear and create a magnet that sucks up Fascinations.
Once three Fascinates accumulate, you have only 60 seconds until you go bonkers
and lose.
If you can hide any fascinate before the magnet gets it, it will go away after
60 seconds. This can be done by holding the card in your hand during that
duration.
However once a Fascinate is pulled in, it will stick around forever until
countered. Fortunately it is countered by two things. A dread will be pulled
in and will destroy itself and 1 fascinate. The magnet will also grab Fleeting
Memories which counters one fascninate as well. The Fleeting memories appear
as a result of other events leaving, so these two occurrances tend to get rid
of the Fascinate event fairly well.
The best cure for this issue is to NOT generate Fascination for a while.
You especially do not want Visions hanging around for a long time since
if a Dread magnet ALSO shows up this is super bad... it will steal the DREADs
and leave you unable to counter the Fascinates in that manner!
Sources of fascinate include:
1) Study items/books. Mostly the higher level ones you find in dungeons.
This is a good reason to NOT translate lots of stuff first then read it in a
row. Its too easy to pile up fascinates.
2) Dreaming with Passion (or more likely one of the Mansus gates). THIS is the
most common way to wind up with Fascination. Lantern influences decay and
turn into fascinate.
3) Ecdysis club can generate them.
You can also Dream with Dread and destroy one fascination WITHOUT killing the
Dread. Its reusable when done that way, but the Fascination Magnet will
likely make this difficult.
Thus, you want to do this BEFORE the magnet appears if you obtain a Fascinate
AND happen to have a dread handy.
If you do wind up with 2 fascinations, then you need to deal with it.
You can go to the White Door Mansus and hope to see either Restlessness or
winter Influence which both decay to dread, but that means a 2 minute wait.
A random Dream with passion is one way to get a Dread immediately, other
than happening to know a specific book or event will create dread. This would
only be done in dire emergencies since it could make a Fascination itself!
You can also talk to the Hunter if available and give them a Winter Lore which
will have unpredictable effects but give you a Dread guaranteed.
You can also deal with Fascinate similarly to Dread by using it in a
recruitment/upgrade or use it as an Influence in a ritual spell. This is the
best way to deal with it in general.
LOSING TO NOTERIETY/DETECTIVE/EVIDENCE
--------------------------------------
Understanding how this works is pretty important and can prevent you from
making the situation worse. In fact, they give you a Noteriety right off the
bat in making your cult! Its totally harmless since even if evidence is
created, it will just decay long before you need to do anymore dirty deeds.
A season of suspicion will first create a magnet, looking for any existing
hunter. If none are found, it will look for Something Bad. If if finds it
in the PC newest version it makes a hunter and eats the Bad Thing. In android
theres simply a chance to spawn a detective. The season then terminates.
If the magnet does find a hunter, it pulls it into the magnet and then makes
a new type of magnet, looking for Mystique or Noteriety via the
"Draw Attention" slot looking for "clues".
IF they find Mystique they will eat it up and keep looking. Basically it just
delays anything else from happening and keeps them from leaving.
IF they find Noteriety they will keep looking for one more cycle then stop.
They then have a CHANCE to create a Tentative Evidence when they leave. This
evidence takes 10 minutes to decay.
If no evidence is created, the noteriety will be given back to you to keep
decaying normally.
Once evidence is GENERATED, the next season of suspicion will cause the hunter
to instead look for Evidence first thing. You will see the magnet slot is
now looking for evidence (yellow background exclamation mark) instead of clue.
IF they find Tentative Evidence or a Corpse, they will then look for Noteriety.
IF they find Noteriety then they will create a Damning Evidence from the
previous tentative evidence usually. I have had them make two tentative
evidence though before. Sometimes this step fails and the tentative
evidence is given back.
IF they do NOT find Noteriety after sucking up evidence, then they CANNOT
create Damning evidence and will give back the Tenative evidence when they
leave.
IF they had created Damning evidence, they will re-trigger later.
After re-triggering, they will look for the damning evidence and if found, will
take either you or one of your cultists to trial.
At this point a Favor From Authority is the only way to stop it (70% chance).
This can be found easiest from White Door, Lodge of Sage Knight but that is
a longshot. It decays in 5 minutes so cannot really be held-onto very easily.
Note that some detectives have traits which modify the above behavior some.
An erratic hunter can generate evidence REGARDLESS of whether noteriety exists
or not. But their conversion rate is much lower so you can pile up as much
as you want and make zero difference.
TL;DR - Tentative Evidence takes a while to go away but is totally harmless as
long as you don't gain any further Noteriety.
Be aware that if the hunter is busy (being talked to for example) during a
season of suspicion, a SECOND hunter might be generated. This isn't really a
problem since the SEASONs determine the frequency of their cycle, not how many
hunter cards you have. Even though it would seem like a bad thing.
Noteriety is generated from the following:
-Attempts at Murder, Kidnapping, Robbery, driving someone crazy, etc.
-Chasing a Persistent Rumor WILL generate a Noteriety, so I'd avoid doing that.
-Completing a Dungeon/Vault will generate one, so be ready to deal with it.
-Painting with a Lore/Summon as subject matter will generate noteriety.
-Failure to remove evidence or murder,etc will also generate noteriety.
-Starting your cult generates Noteriety, but this is a 1 time event.
Dealing with the Law
--------------------
A follower with HEART Aspect can be talked to about Cult Business and they will
create a magnet after 60 seconds that sucks in a random reputation card
(mystique or noteriety) and attempt to remove it.
The first issue is that during the 60 seconds, a hunter can easily steal the
noteriety first which is really annoying. So this action must be taken ASAP
and ideally before the notoriety actually happens. In other words, you'd have
your disciple ready to suck up notoriety generated by say... completing a
vault run.
Secondly, if it fails then youve just increased the timer of the notoriety
by 60 seconds effectively.
Third, since it can grab mystique too it comboes really poorly with certain
jobs or legacies. You can paint and hide up to 4 mystiques right before the
heart triggers which can help.
Another way to remove influence is to change your headquarters. Explore your
temporary HQ and feed it the Closed Bookstore once you bought them out. This
will eat 1 fund and 1 noteriety. This is only currently available on the PC
DLC version and you can only jump "forward" to new bases which are limited.
Unfortunately you cannot remove noteriety otherwise since it is not an
Influence.
Notoriety itself isn't all that big of a problem however. In general you
simply wait it out. IF it becomes evidence you can deal with it then by either
removing the evidence or removing the hunter.
A moth summons, hireling, or believers (in that order of preference) can get
rid of evidence with a 70% chance of success at rank 5+.
You can also remove a hunter. This won't affect the evidence but WILL ensure
that the next Season of Suspicion starts from scratch. It will have to appear,
suck up something suspicious and THEN spawn a new hunter. This gives more time
to deal with the evidence, or just ignore it until it expires.
Hunter removal can be done in several ways:
-- Talk to hunter and set subject = follower to ambush them.
a) Edge generally works the best.
b) Winter also works, just on hunters.
-- Talk to follower about hunter (same as above but hunter can be pulled out
of the slot so NEVER DO THIS)
-- Talk to hunter about Lantern (drives nuts OR turns Idealistic setting them
up for the next lantern talk. Higher lore works better.)
-- Talk to hunter about Dread (drives them nuts IF they are grim)
-- Talk to hunter about Winter (drives nuts if grim. May turn them grim.
Higher lore works better).
-- Talk to hunter about an object with the POISON aspect to attempt to kill
them. There are not a whole lot of these however and there are generally
better ways except against Mystic hunters.
In general, I prefer moth to remove evidence.
The biggest problem with murder is that you will likely get a hunter that is
worse: Harder to kill, better at converting evidence, or generates evidence
with no noteriety needed! Also, since killing them creates more noteriety you
tend to get into a cycle. So, killing hunters is kind of a committment.
I use murder when I know I will keep cranking out noteriety for a while, and
use moth once I am done with dirty deeds generally speaking. However it really
mostly depends on what you have available. If I'm edge with an Assassin, Ill
use that. If I have easy Moth summons access, I use that.
EARLY GAME GOALS:
-----------------
* Figure out what type of cult you will be. You may not want to feed it the
first piece of lore you can find (i.e. lantern for normal mode and Knock/SH for
physician). However, you probably do not want to be too picky either. You
have enough funds reserve to buy about 10 books worth which will give random
lore. After that you tend to stall out due to lack of cash, and you kinda
want to go ahead and establish your cult early. Ideally you will find a
lore6 book and probably go with that.
* So basically you want to Work making money, Exploring the shop, talking to
recruits, dreaming for Secret History fragments, and Studying stats/books.
All 5 of your verbs are accomplishing something and making progress.
* Buff your stats. Using STUDY on any of your 3 stats will create a buffing
influence that lasts 3 minutes. Studying two of these buffing influences will
then increase that stat and give you an extra stat card, AND a new skill card.
Go ahead and buff Health,Reason,Passion right away in this way. You can
further buff stats as discussed later.
* Get A Job. If Physician, no need. Otherwise, you will want to start making
money. Working with health and painting are options but working at Glover
and Glover is the best option early game.
* Collect Lore. Build up your magic spellbook collection by buying out the
auction house and Morlands book store and studying everything you can.
The general goal is to get level 6 in each type of Lore. Most importantly is
your OWN lore type, followed by KNOCK or LANTERN. After you study
everything, you can start combining lore and subverting it to reach your goals
mostly just combining extra lower level lore.
************ MAKE SURE TO GET THE STUMM FILM STRIP from the Auction House!!***
Failing to do this is extremely bad. PAY ATTENTION!!!!
* Attract followers. By using Talk with any ole lore you can build up a line
of potential followers. You will want to recruit them and then promote them
to disciples when you can. Use a low level lore to avoid tying up a good one.
You need SEVEN points in your cults lore to promote someone. This means that
anyone matching your cult already has 2 points so a 6 Lore will do the trick.
You can also use various influences to cheat a bit (in the furnishings slot)
and promote them before you have an 8 Lore which is hard to get at first.
Restlessness in particular has a LOT of different aspects and makes it easier
to promote.
But the most important thing is to build up a big cult. You can promote them
later. Just keep on chatting and recruiting. You should be using TALK to
make acquaitences as soon as you get ANY lore. You can then recruit them later
once you have your cult started.
* DREAM World goodies. Dream with Passion, apply basic Knock or Lantern
lore as soon as you obtain one.
This opens up the Wood Door which you can use Passion to give you free goodies!
This is completely safe and you can get lots of Secret History 2/4 fragments.
As soon as you find a level 4 Knock/Lantern, you can promote your wood gate
and get the White gate, which gives better stuff using health. BUT introduces
risk of getting Fascinates or Lantern influence which decays to Fascinate. So
don't overdo it if you start getting fascinates piling up.
Dream that White Door with your Temptation which gives you the "stag riddle"
which we cover later.
INTERLUDES: more details on various topics.
--------------------------------------------
STAT BOOSTING:
--------------
You can further buff stats by combining two buffer influences into a Lessons
Learned greater influence that lasts 5 minutes. Studying your new SKILL from
above with 2 then 3 lessons learned will further enhance that skill. After
that, it requires 4 lessons-learned AND a piece of lore to max out that skill.
Due to the timers, it is tricky to do this just with Study alone but doable.
I recommend buffing each skill twice which is pretty easy. 3 in each stat
should give you enough latitude to do what you need to.
For example, Study Reason, Study Reason, Study Reason.
The oldest one is about to expire so combine it with the 2nd oldest.
You now have a fresh Lessons Learned and a Erudidion with 2 minutes left.
Study Reason, combine both Eruditons into another lesson learned.
You now have a fresh lesson, and one thats still got 3 minutes on it.
Combine those with the skill to boost it.
To get the advanced boosts, you either need to have multiple sources of
that booster (for example, Working with Health skill gives vitality AND you
can study health for vitality), OR use delaying/hiding tactics such as
painting with Lesson-learned as the subject to keep them from expiring.
TIMER MANIPULATION:
-------------------
This is an important skill since so much stuff decays.
As such you want to delay this as much as possible to conserve resources.
The basic rule is that ANY CARD in any slot will not increment its timer.
This includes running actions, OR just having an open window.
You will learn over time the best ways to do this, but heres some starter
uses. DONT WORRY if any of these go over your head... just come back and read
later or gloss over them.
-- TALK icon can be used with a summon to tie up ANYTHING indefinitely since
they can discuss pretty much any subject. They simply fail to respond to most
of them, making it ideal for holding influences, expiring jobs, other summons.
You can use Sulumanchu for this purpose since she will talk about any subject
just like a summons, but she is always readily available for use once you find
her.
-- TALK also can be used with your CULT card in "trappings" to hold onto an
influence if needed early game before you find Sulumanchu.
-- WORK icon can be used if a job is about to expire but you are lacking some
stat or whatever. Simply open the job and hold it open until the stat comes
off cooldown.
-- WORK icon can be used with a Ritual to delay any Influence by just dragging
it into the slot. A corpse can be preserved by using a Ingredient ritual.
-- WORK icon with painting can delay any influence by setting it as the
subject of the painting. You could delay summons but this will generate
noteriety!
-- DREAM icon isn't very useful for this purpose, only holding Dread which
you generally avoid doing.
-- STUDY can hold an influence as part of its "upgrade influence" capability.
-- EXPLORE is great for keeping summons around indefinitely.
Just remember that these techniques generally do NOT protect the cards from
Magnets! They can be pulled out of a slot if not committed via Start.
MAKING MONEY:
-------------
Money is a big problem early on as you tend to stall out. You need 1 fund
every 60 seconds just to live, with extra for dealing with Affliction as
needed. Plus you are trying to buy out the auction house and bookstore.
PAINT - Work with passion and then the Passion_upgrade_skill. Adding Passion,
any influence as a subject or paying for paint will give you better ARTIST
rewards such as mystique, glimmering, contentment. Adding Mystique or
Noteriety will add better LEWT rewards (stacks of cash). There is some other
formula at work as 4x Noteriety should in theory earn tons of cash but doesnt.
As such, don't pay for paint, always give a subject (use a person if no
influence available), and mix Passion+mystique/noteriety.
IF you use LORE/SUMMON as a subject, Noteriety will be generated!
Note: RESTLESSNESS will be eaten but all other subjects will just have their
timers held up and returned after the paint.
Painting is kind of a pain, but regular contentment is nice.
NOTE: Painting in the PC/DLC version seems nerfed and is hard to make much
cash. Android version still seems pretty viable after a few passion upgrade.
LABOR - Work with Health for 1 coin/60sec. Risk of injury. Upgraded skill
reduces to 55/50/45/40 sec, and reduces injury risk then no risk of injury
with the second upgrade. (hardened physique, +2 health).
Generates tons of vitality. Good after 1 upgrade for buffing Health. You
still might get an injury but can use all the vitality you gain to fix it
and keep trying.
CLERK - Work for 1 coin/60sec which sucks. Add Reason to get promotion to
2 coin/60sec but you have to work 30sec overtime and add reason half the time.
This also adds the "annoyance" aspect to the card. At some point you will
want to remove Mr Alden. Options include:
-- Grail Disciple. Best bet. Remove him with no noteriety.
-- 5 Edge hireling. Good. 70% success rate. Doesnt risk your dudes.
-- 5 moth hireling. Worth a shot. Supposedly 70% success rate.
-- 5 moth disciple. If you just can't find a decent hireling this works.
I would avoid using 2 aspect believers and the 3 aspect hirelings. You
likely want to do this before you have summons access.
Getting rid of Mr Alden will let always get 2 coin/60sec. You should
immediately invest a 2nd reason one-time only to get the 3 coin/60sec job
that needs 1 reason to start.
From here you can advance further by removing the younger glover. This
depends on your playstyle.
The board member earns 4 coin/50sec BUT if you get any noteriety OR ever
demoted, then the job becomes "tainted". You will see the text change.
The work timer increases to 60 seconds, the demotion timer from 100 to 90 sec
AND any further noteriety results in a high chance of getting fired. In many
cases it might be better to stick with the 3 coin job. In others, you want to
get board member and save up stacks of cash then ditch it later.
COMMISSION - Talk to Patrons and fulfill their commissions. They will give
you Spinatra. Silver ones are worth 8+ funds each! Bronze ones should be
saved for later. Iron ones can be sold for 2 funds in auction house.
ROBBERY - You can have a few followers earn cash by unsavory means. Generally
not worth it however.
SELL STUFF - Once you start doing vaults you can sell off stuff you dont need
for pretty good cash. Ditto with certain items found in the higher level
mansus gates (dream world)
EXALTED FORGE - Makes 2 fund/90s in the TALK verb. Pretty reliable 90%.
FOLLOWERS CAPABILITIES:
----------------------------------
Time to a quick aside to mention what your followers can do.
You can talk to them with the subject being your Cult and they will do
"cult business" (CB) according to their aspect.
Success depends on their level of aspect. 2/5/10 being 30%/70% and 90-100%
This matches them being Believer/Disciple or Exalted.
Some aspects also can be talked to with other subjects to directly attack a
hunter, annoyance, or evidence, or to fix broken stuff.
Failure sometimes means the follower gets WOUNDED. If you talk to them with
a coin, they will heal with a scar. The scar even makes them slightly better
at an aspect! If you do NOT heal them, they will die during the next round
of Sickness season. They die if they get 3 wounds that are the SAME, and
there are 3 types of wounds, so could live with 6 wounds technically.
Sometimes failure does not generate wounds, such as a failed robbery which only
generates noteriety. Or a failed attack on a hunter which will straight out
KILL a follower sometimes.
(See Reference section for details on who does what and how well.)
MIDGAME GOALS
-------------
After buying out the store and auction house, you will be out of ways to get
more lore! The only way to get more lore is to do Vaults/Dungeons. However
more prepwork is needed for this to do it right.
*Hopefully you will have lots of Believers. Keep recruiting until you run out
or at least have a bunch.
Keep hanger-ons unrecruited in case you need to Recruit to Eat some nasty
influence. Later you can recruit them and then Promote them as needed for
influence disposal.
You need at least 1 believer of each aspect. To make disciples, you need a
level 6 lore in your cult type plus a minor influence like restlessness,etc
that matches your cult type early on. Once you get 8 lore you can promote
trivially without needing extra stuff which also makes it easy to eat ANY
undesirable influence whether it matches your cult or not.
Note that after about 10 dudes, you will sometimes get RUMORs instead. Ignore
those and just keep trying until you get a "mistaken identify" card which
indicates you are out. If you already have noteriety, then go ahead and
follow the rumor which always brings a new dude.
*You will have several dungeon locations to explore thanks to the secret hist
fragments from the Mansus (dream world). For the most part, you should have
all 5 SH4 locations, plus multiple SH6 locations. Any more than 5 of each
tier (and you should place them according to tier), and you will want to
combine the SH lores instead. But for the most part, 5 SH4 and SH6 dungeons
should be plenty to win a normal game with. Hebe Station is of particular
interest.
*You want to solve the Stag Riddle which means find/create the right 6th level
lore and feed it to the slot after Dreaming the Riddle. You can then use that
Stag door for more advanced secret history fragments to explore. You can also
use those 60 second influences to Summon stuff with the Sunset Rites you found
from the STUMM film.
You need to get the right level6 lore to answer the riddle.
"queen not born" secret history 6.
"what must be opened" knock 6
"where mercy found" lantern 6
"what is lost" moth 6
"sacrifice sweet" grail 6
This will likely mean using STUDY to combine and subvert extra lore pieces to
the ones you actually need. Level 6 lore is not only good for the riddle but
you can fulfill any Commission you get by talking to PATRONS you find during
recruiting.
(NOTE: In PC Dancer version combining lore is more complex but not random)
Level 6 lore is also a good level for most of the summons and spells. You don't
need ALL the lore, but you definitely want 6 in your own cult, and then 6 in
important summons Lore (heart,lantern,forge,grail,winter) so you can summon
using minor influences instead of depending on Mansus ones.
* Determine your Desire. That temptation card you have is pretty annoying
but determines your win condition. Pick from Enlightnement(Lantern),
Power(forge), Sensation (Grail), with Passion,Reason,Health.
Dream the Temptation with correct lore to confirm it into a DESIRE.
WORK the Desire with Stag Gate and level 8 lore to turn into a Tier 3 desire
permanently. At this point, NO MORE RESTLESSNESS! Instead it will either
eat extra cash or exhaust Health/Passion or eat glimmer/erud periodically.
You can level up the Enlighten/Sensation only by feeding prisoners which you
DO NOT want to do until ready to win as missing a feast will reduce the level
back down. But, its well worth promoting these to 3 to stop the restlessness.
Power is much easier to advance but eating cash is about as annoying as the
constant restlessness but you are guaranteed to always be ready to go and not
have to go into "kidnap mode" to feed your desire.
INTERLUDE: Summonings & Spells
-------------------------------
Drag a ritual onto the Work slot to begin.
Summons are expendable followers which should be used for risky situations:
-- Removing annoyances or hunters
-- Getting rid of evidence.
-- Exploring dungeons.
You can also create zombies which suck. Don't bother.
Theres a few more spells possible, but lets focus on summons for now.
ALL Rites basically provide 3 slots (and a desire slot for later)
and the ASPECTS in those 3 slots will create a spell effect of some kind.
In other words, the rite itself does not matter. Whether you use Influences,
People,Tools,whatever... its the combination of aspects that make the spell.
ALL Rites have a common LORE slot. The other two slots are the only actual
difference between various rituals. Plus each ritual sacrifices one of the
items in one of the slots.
See the big reference section for this info, but basically the Sunset Rites
is guaranteed thanks to the auction house AND is the best.
-- It uses a follower which gives you lots of variety. You can even use
a summons for a lot more aspect-power.
-- Uses an Influence which gets consumed.
Other rites use Tools which are hard to come by, or do stupid things like kill
your follower or eat your lore or tool!
Mother's Mercy is another useful rite, eating an Ingredient instead of an
influence so you can have a specific summons on standby as needed without
having to find an influence.
Generally use a Knock disciple as the assistant as knock 5 is the most you ever
need for summoning.
See the REFERENCE section for the list of summons.
In some cases you can use weak Influences to summon such as Restlessness,
fleeting memories (moth), etc in combo with assistant and 6 lore.
In other cases you need to find stronger influences to use with your weaker
lore to pull off the summons.
Influences for early summons can also be found in the Mansus. Once again,
see the REFERENCE section for this info. That is intended to be the one stop
shop after you have read over this conceptual stuff.
Other Ways have influences too but you dont need to risk the higher up ones
to get summon fodder.
REMEMBER: SUMMONS will MESS YOU UP if you forget about them. They go nuts 30%
of the time and if you ignore it, you LOSE a follower or an attribute forever!
Summons are probably the most punishing thing in the game for not paying
attention since they are recurring events. You use em all game long.
You can also see that Stag->Ascent is gas and has 3 strong influences, 2 of
which can even complete the primary requirement.
i.e. Winter10/Grail6 gives super easy Maid and Raw Prophet summon.
Note you may be able to use these influences to promote to disciples or even
Ascend a discple to exalted! For example, a Winter 10 influence plus 5 tiers
from the discple and a mere 6 winter lore = Quickest Exalted ever!
Other Spells: (rarely used)
Passion -> Reason: Lots of Lantern (5/10/15), and 1 edge.
Reason -> Passion: Lots of Moth (5/10/15), and 1 edge.
Fix Decrepid - Lots of Forge(5/10/15), 1 grail.
Kill Random Mortal (including yourself!) - Winter(5/10/15), 1 lantern.
Yes, kill random mortal is the worst spell ever. Don't use it.
Fix Decrepid is pretty useful but beware. It generates NOTERIETY and FASCINATE.
EXPLORING VAULTS:
-------------------
In order to get more Lore and progress, you will need to start raiding vaults.
You should be in pretty good shape to do so.
When you go into a vault there will be 1-4 obstacles, typically 2. Each one
has 2 or 3 aspects which can defeat it at 90% chance with 10 points of that
aspect, about 70% chance at 5 points worth, and 30% with 2 points.
Note that you must have the same aspect to stack. Two lantern 5 dudes make
10 points working together. A lantern5 and forge5 will NOT improve chances
since logically you'd only go with one of the 2 approaches. i.e. You can't
fight the snake AND calm the snake at the same time.
There are a few different methods to consider for exploring then.
1) You can look up a specific dungeon and determine exactly what you need to
beat it. Then ensure you have Followers that have those aspects at rank 10
when combined (i.e. two lantern rank 5 guys, etc). (or summons)
You may need to look up several that you have in order to find doable ones.
This method works pretty well although there is some risk still. Also you
may simply not have enough dudes promoted to get very far. This is a good
idea for beginners though.
2) You can Explore the town and find Hirelings which can help bolster your
forces. Especially the Entry Consultant with his 5 Knock. The forge/edge
guy is handy too. Ironically when I summon something, I use Explore to
keep its timer from expiring which is how I wind up finding hirelings in the
first place.
3) Summon some stuff and use them to explore. By summoning two of the first 4
summons (with non-overlapping aspects ideally), you have 8 points in 4
aspects. Of course it depends on what you can summon early on but summons
generally give better aspects than hirelings.
YOu can see the reference section at the end of this guide for vault specifics.
Lets say you take my advice and summon something successfully. TALK to it to
basically tie it up and keep its timer from dropping (or EXPLORE with it).
Summon the second one.
Drag Dungeon to Explore verb, send the 2 summons and 2 funds. In 60 sec, it
will show you the traps in store for you. Your 2 summons will already have
several aspects partially covered. So you simply need to add followers to
get each needed aspect to 10 or more to virtually guarantee success.
For example, with a 8 Lantern, 8 edge, 8 forge, 8 moth starter, you can use
even unpromoted 2 aspect followers to get the 10 combined points needed for
max chance of success.
Occasionally you will be unlucky and you will need aspect(s) you dont have at
all. The good news is that you have TWO chances to add dudes.
In other words, after the 60 sec you can see that an obstacle needs
something you don't have. You'd then add a follower of that aspect at that
time, and then there will be another opportunity when the obstacle is actually
encountered where you can add a second rank5 person to boost the aspect further.
If another obstacle happens to come up first you may have even more chances to
add to the party as needed.
It is possible that someone will die during a dungeon. Remember the "leader"
slot? Its really the "sucker" slot in actuality since that is who will bite it
first, followed by the assistant designated. Which leads me to pontificate...
a) Put SUMMONS/HIRELINGS as the leader. You want most expendable first.
Leader gets no magic bonus or anything.
b) Don't put your BEST summons first. Much better to lose a 6/6 voiceless dead
than be out a 12/12 Ezeem!
c) Make a note of which aspects the dead thing had that were relevant since you
may all the sudden need aspects that you had covered before their loss.
Once the dungeon is completed, you will loot it and get mostly useless tools
and ingredients, as well as some precious lore to digest. Plus, a noteriety
to deal with.
Having a HEART follower Talk about Cult business right before the dungeon is
done can be a tricky way to remove the notierety right as it gets generated.
Or you can roll it up into Painting and spam mystique everywhere.
Or have a moth summons clean up the evidence once created.
Once a dungeon is done, I'd say put your summons into another dungeon right
away and keep it rolling. Its kind of a pain to summon 2 or 3 things early on
so you don't really want to do that over again. As long as you can deal with
the noteriety you can keep going. You may occasionally use your MOTH summons
to deal with evidence if needed.
In fact, a 3rd summons (with moth) is very useful. You can just toss them in
whatever dungeon run is going as a reinforcement to stop their timers if not
needed, and use them to deal with evidence as needed. They will also add their
aspects (even if overlapping) to the dungeon run.
This is also a good time to murder hunters since you will pile up Noteriety
fairly quickly anyways. May be easier or more reliable than dealing with
evidence.
Once you run out of dungeons you will very likely have enough gas to win the
game. Sometimes you may need to stop and deal with all the Noteriety and/or
evidence. That's fine. Just restart the gravy train when ready.
Study the books, combine lore to get rank 8 in your cult for easy promotions,
rank 8 for lantern/knock for Mansus advancement, and highest you can get for
whichever DESIRE path you took (lantern,grail, or forge).
You may need to redo this section with harder dungeons to get more goodies
especially if you didnt get through all of them, or didn't have enough SH 8
rank from the Stag Door exploration.
Either read the pro tips, or skip to the "winning the game" section.
PRO TIPS:
---------
This is a collection of various tips and tricks which you may find useful. This
is best understood after you have gotten to the Explore Dungeon phase of the
game.
1) Remember that you can use common minor influences for summons or for
easier/quicker promotion to Disciples.
DREAD - Edge 2. Percussigant, Hint, Maid in Mirror
FLEETING MEMORY - Moth, SH 2 Summon Teresa (lantern 10 tho).
CONTENTMENT - Heart 2 Lantern2 Crucible, voiceless.
RESTLESS - Grail,Heart,Forge,Lantern,Moth 2 - Lots of possibilities.
FASCINATION - Moth 2. Prophet.
GLIMMERING - Moth 1. (works for Disciple promotion, NOT summon)
ERUDITION - Lantern 1 (works for Disciple promotion, NOT summon)
VITALITY - Heart 1 (works for Disciple promotion, NOT summon)
Lesson_Learned - 2 aspect. ARE usable for summons if desperate.
1.1) Use this technique to Eat Dread/Restless/Fascination so they don't cause
trouble, even if they arent needed to promote/recruit. Summon something if
you are close to the limit on Dread/Fascination just to burn it.
1.2) DO NOT use PASSION/REASON/HEALTH/AFFLICTION/etc for this purpose as you
will permanently lose that stat!
1.3) Restlessness is particularly good due to its large number of aspects.
You can use it with 8 forge/grail to summon Ezeem/Crucible for the
language boost as well as other things.
2) You may not want to promote your Desire too early. While it does cut off
restlessness this actually can make fascinates harder to deal with. Plus,
restless is very good for summon fodder, especially Ezeem and Crucible.
3) Ingredients are not always obvious and can be used.
Human Corpse - Winter 3 Grail 3. Eaten by Recruit/Promote follower.
Or eaten by Mother's Mercy rite to avoid Noteriety on decay.
Peculiar Rumor - Moth1, SH1 Kind of useless but could promote disciple.
4) Vault Peeking - When you start exploring you can then look at the window to
see the various obstacles that you will need to overcome. This gives you
TWO chances to add the right followers before having to deal with the
obstacle...one generic "add assistance" and one obstacle-specific "help".
5) Using two summons with non-overlapping aspects means you can pretty much
blindly jump into ANY dungeon and be successful. Hint/Prophet for
example brings in 8 Lantern/Moth/Edge/Grail letting you pull in others
as needed to hit 10. Upon the rare failure, you will just lose a summons
as they were the "leader".
6) Hiding noteriety with painting timer tech. The big problem with painting is
that the detective will endlessly lap up Mystiques and your noteriety timers
are frozen. If you get unlucky with timing, a completed painting noteriety
can be pulled out. To help deal with this, time your painting start until
right before the next detective magnet starts. Dont start repainting
immediately. Since detective eats mystique their magnet only works at the
start of the timer!
What this does is allow time for each noteriety timer to tick down for a</pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
while. Eventually you can clear out up to 4 noterieties while successfully
hiding them. You gain about 10 seconds per iteration since paint finishes
slightly earlier. This does commit you to painting for quite a while tho.
7) There are certain KEY vaults that you need to be aware of and take full
advantage of.
a) SH2 Mithraum is a freebie. With just a door, it is ZERO RISK and a
mere knock2 (or forge) can break it eventually. It has a winter8
tool(!), lantern 4 ingredient, and gives you a Sanctuary AND SECRET
Headquarters location in the PC/DLC version.
b) SH4 Crowkiss is another door-freebie with Moth4,Edge4,Winter4 tools.
c) SH4 Keglins Scratch has a cracked wildering mirror which is needed for
peacock gate entry. The Edge8 tool is perfect for your Knock disciple.
d) Hebe Station is awesome for quick advancement. It can be randomly found
by exploring SH4/6/8 scraps. It does have 3 obstacles but gives you FOUR
pieces of advanced lore... which can all be easily translated since they
all use Sanskrit which can be found in the beginner books, or the auction
house or one of the patrons if it got missed somehow. This will net you
Moth8,Forge8,Edge8, Heart 6. You can use restlessness to bust out King
Crucible to teach you Phygian which can definitely help you advance.
e) The Wreck of the Christabel (SH14) has the Frangiclave which lets you
reuse the peacock as much as you want! You can't control which SH14
you get but for games that require lots of exploration, it may be worth
combining up to tier14 first in the hopes of getting the Wreck
f) SH6 Key Hunter has a Fucine scholar book. You can likely complete this
before you can summon Tereas.
8) Free Summons are extremely nice, since you don't need to gather influences
to use them and they are much more reliable since you cast anytime.
The way to accomplish this is to have Followers with multiple useful
aspects, in particular your Knock disciples.
a) When you get tenative evidence, send in a KNOCK follower to try to deal
with it. They WILL fail most likely and you IMMEDIATELY heal them so
Season of sickness doesn't kill them. This will give them a SCAR, which
is EDGE, WINTER, or more Knock. Both Edge and Winter are quite useful
and allow 4 different summons with no influence needed! Try again if
you get a Knock scar. DONT try if you get a 2nd knock scar.
b) You can also give them an Edge8/Moth8/Winter8 tool when available. The
moth tool opens up the Raw Prophet as a second Moth summons possibility
so don't give BOTH edge and winter tools to your knockers. Scarring
should be doable and cover either edge or winter with any luck at all.
Additional Notes:
-- Tier 1 tools (4 aspect ones) are pretty useless since all summons
except Teresa need 2 of the minor aspects to work.
-- ONE TOOL PER CUSTOMER! You can't pile them up on 1 person.
-- ONLY send Knock disciples after evidence. Having them try to murder
will get them straight out killed! Having them Rob as a believer fails
often but doesn't seem to get them wounded ever.
-- You could give a Knock8 tool to make a summoner out of someone else
but this is a bad idea since 5 aspect isn't enough to summon much and
that tool is pretty hard to come by.
-- You can make "exalted" Edge/Winter/Knock by getting them Scarred with
their own aspect then adding the 12 aspect tool. Generally not worth
messing with, but it is a possibility. Especially if you get 2 knock
scars using the above techniques..a mere +1 tool will make em a 10
which is more useful for expeditions.
9) Don't forget you can talk to your patrons to learn a language that slipped
through the cracks due to randomness of books. Ditto with Unique summons.
When you do, just auction off any translation books you find to free up
space and get a fund back.
10) You can MOVE your Headquarters in the PC/DLC version which gives several
good effects. You get a one-time noteriety removal, can Explore the new HQ
for a minor influence, and can use the Aspects of the HQ when combining
lore. Explore a suitable location and add previous HQ to do this.
Morland CLOSED store Heart 2 Library (easiest to obtain)
Cater&Hero Limited dungeon - Forge2 Pit (just to remove noteriety)
Forgotton Mithraeum dungeon - Lantern 2 SECRET, Sanctuary (very good)
COngregation of St Felix - Knock 2 Sanctuary (noteriety removal)
Opulent Townhouse - Grail 2 Library (no clue where to find)
St Agnes Hospital Knock 2 SECRET, Pit (very good)
* Library overcomes need for Erudite AND Fascinate AND risking Reason.
* Pit overcomes need for Dread for converting. Limited but having to use
dread really sucks.
* Sanctuary overcomes need for glimmering AND risking Passion.
* SECRET makes hunters have harder time making evidence. Also, when HQ used
it sometimes creates an influence-eating magnet.
Sanctuary is useful more often but Pit overcomes a larger pain in the butt
so both Mithraeum and St Agnes are kind of a toss up as far as overall
utility.
I usually start with Morlands to help convert up Lantern/Knock lore and
whatever else, then move to Mithraeum. It really depends on which types of
lore you need to convert. See reference section.
11) Ranking up Lore is a pain and takes forever. If this is needed, I
recommend pre-completing multiple Commissions. If something is needed during
the combo that you don't have, simply complete the commissions to try to get
it. You get 2 attempts at it (10s talk to complete commission). This will
also get you spinitra which is needed if you ever need to use the Peacock
Gate which is just about guaranteed. On DLC version, the requirements are
more deterministic so you know in advance what you need.
You can also Study Reason to get an erudation right before combining, then
Paint with it as subject (plus passion) which should also give glimmering
to cover all bases (and keep erudate from expiring while combine warms up)
12) If you REALLY need a summons to work (for example, using an ingredient
to summon Ezeem or whatever), SAVE the game right before the summon is
finished. Then Continue. If it fails, use Passion. if that fails, force
kill and reload. Dirty but effective.
13) Painting Masterpieces. You can generate an 8th rank tool relatively early
in the game which can occasionally be handy. To do this, you need to have
4 passion which is quite easy. You will then Paint using all 4 passion
plus a particular Lore as subject(any rank), PLUS the ingredient for that
lore (some of which can be found in really low level dungeons). This
greatly depends on which cult you are playing as to how useful this is but
can potentially be a way to easily Disciple up, if having bad luck with
lore and willing to risk an early dungeon. Some ingredients are super
easy to find, and some are awful (i.e. forge)
14) If you happen to find a GRAIL associate early in the game, it would be a
good idea to consider going with whatever cult type you can that is able
to promote them to Disciple ASAP. This lets you seduce annoyances and
become board member with little risk and no noteriety.
15) Dont forget that you can use your SUMMONS to get out the Uniques quicker.
A mere 6 grail can get you a Raw Prophet who has 8 grail. Him plus a
restlessness +Knock6 lore = Ezeem. Ditto with Caligne -> Crucible.
Related: A maid in mirror assistant plus any Knock = another maid!
16) Get in the habit of predictive-Talk. If a detective sucks up your
tenative evidence and then sucks up a noteriety, then you know what will
happen. TALK to your Moth summons or whatever and let the 60 second timer
go ahead and start WHILE the detective is still going. You know after the
Noteriety suck cycle they will stop and give either tenative evidence OR
damning evidence back. You then immediately put it into the Talk slot
and deal with it much quicker than waiting around for it.
Same with a Heart disciple. Talk to them once the last obstacle is won
in a vault and the "add reinforcement" screen comes up. That way as soon
as the vault is looted, the Heart disciple will have her Magnet up ready to
pull the Noteriety generated.
Find other similar techniques such as Talk to a Forge disciple right after
peacock gate. Soon as that goes off, move broken mirror to the almost
expired Talk and repair it. This can shave a lot of time off certain
actions.
17) To kill a hunter, you can Talk to a follower and set the hunter as the
subject. DO NOT DO THIS... unless you can predictively talk as per (16).
Instead talk to the hunter directly which will lock them in and set the
subject to your follower. This way, a suspicion won't magnet them away
to safety before they get killed!
This CAN generate a second hunter, but that does not really matter since
its the Season of Suspicion that actually generates investigations.
18) When you do the final levelup of a skill (health,reason,passion), the TYPE
of lore you use CAN MATTER. You generally get one of two different skills
depending. Usually this doesn't matter, but it can. Mostly for lore
combining in DLC version. See Reference section for full details. DANCER
MUST go with "flawless physique"!
19) Playing Keep-Away. When you grab a card to move it, it is IMMUNE TO MAGNET
while you are holding it! Timer still goes down but you can literally
hold onto whatever to hide it from any nasty magnet until it goes away or
finds something else to grab. I can't believe it took me so long to
figure this out!
20) If you want to play a particular legacy, finish your current game one way
or another. Options, Browse Save game (on PC). Or on android, its under
Android/Data/Weatherwhatever/... called save.txt. You can edit this
plain text file and replace one of the 3 legacies you'd normally get with
the desired one. i.e. 'ghoul' or 'priest' or 'dancer'. Whatever.
It sure beats trying to find a way to lose to dread or fascinate during
a new game.
WINNING THE GAME: (spoilers)
-----------------
For a normal victory you need to cough up 36 points of gas in a ritual combined
with a level 6 Desire. First, lets talk Desire.
As discussed, Power eats money and auto-levels to 6 with no problem.
ENLIGHTNMENT/SENSATION are excellent early on because they simply exhaust a
reason/health periodically in exchange for stopping restlessness. But to boost
them, you have to get prisoners which you ONLY DO when you can win.
You can put hirelings in the cupboard (temporary HQs) which is the easiest way.
Can also kidnap people or cupboard your own Pawns. This will generate tons of
noteriety no matter what. Hirelings are the best way in my opinion.
Anyways, how you win depends on which cult you are and which Desire, but heres
a general guide.
You need 3 things that add to up 36 points, AND a ritual that accepts those
slots. The freebie Sunset Ritual has a Dude,Lore,Influence which automatically
sets it up for easiest victory.
Influences can hit high levels (10,15) in exchange for their temporary nature.
Summons are used for dude slot and will be rank 12 in Forge/Grail/Lantern and
only need rank 10 lore to summon (influences can make this even easier)
Thus, 15 + 12 +10 ranked Lore = win.
Any ritual using a TOOL slot is kind of a no-go since rank 12 tools are hard
to come by, and rank 8 tools won't cut it.
An ingredient ritual is reasonable, but theres only 1 decent one which is
Mother's Mercy (ingredient, dude, lore). So if you have that ritual AND
the right ingredient rank 12, then you can win with a rank 12 Lore.
The Influences are found in the Mansus, specifically Spider->Mallory and
Peacock, Peacock->Church for forge and lantern and grail respectively.
Use the various Timer-Stop techniques to tie up your Unique summon and the
influence until ready to cast the final ritual to win. The easiest of which
is to simply "talk" to your summons about the Influence and freeze both
indefinitely.
APOSTLE VICTORY:
----------------
This is Hard Mode where you work as the new cult leader to advance the guy you
just ascended with! In this mode you will explore the game a whole lot more
and need to do the most advanced dungeons in order to do the esoteric "stuff"
your ascended Long wants you to accomplish.
In my opinion, setup for this mode is CRITICAL as it uses previous game data to
generate your starting position. Well, sort of.
1) You start with a level 12 lore of your VICTORY TYPE. (forge,grail,lantern).
This means if your cult IS aligned (and you took my advice about forge), then
you can immediately recruit people and promote to disciple. Even if you had
level 14 before, you only get 12.
If not, you have to sit around waiting for a scrap from Morlands of your guild
type just to recruit. Actually promoting someone will be a long wait. You can
see that this is a COLLOSSAL disadvantage right off the bat!
**Be aware that you can kind of get around this by using INFLUENCES of your
guild type instead of lore that you don't have, depending on your guild type.
For example, Edge can use DREAD with no lore at all to recruit people.
2) You start with your best follower from last game. This means you NEED an
exalted follower who is still alive when you win! If not, you get some random
Disciple. Another reason to use Unique summons instead of your Exalted dude
for winning the game. Thats kind of why that warning exists in-game.
Note that they won't keep any GIFT given to them from last game, or scars.
Once again this has a big impact. An exalted forge can earn 2 fund per 90s
AND get freebies, practically guaranteed although it ties up TALK.
Heart has enhanced ability to remove Noteriety AND seduce annoyance for faster
earning potential.
Edge/Winter/Grail can assist your Grover&Grover advancement and kill hunters.
Moth can assist Grover&Grover advancement as well.
Lantern/Knock are fairly useless.
3) You have to deal with an "enemy" who annoys you for most of the game. He
sends various attacks your way and grows in power during the game.
It doesn't hurt to send in spies, especially Edge/Forge to slow down his
attacks. Since you start with a high level lore, you can summon a Unique and
toss them in to spy pretty early on. More details on this later.
STARTING OUT: (spoilers)
-------------
The Enemy will show up fairly quickly, so you want to hit the ground running.
I'd Study health to boost it first, while using Reason to work at Grover and
Passion to recruit.
Then, use extra health to explore White gate while boosting reason (doing basic
work until you have 2 reason). Then boost Passion.
The Enemy will steal your money quite often so not having a good job will
really slow you down. I had a miserable time as lantern as it took forever to
get the Edge5 hireling and he failed 4 times in a row.
Keep all your Verbs active, Talking constantly to find the right believers and
promote them ASAP. Use Mansus Wood/White/Stag to find SH fragments and explore
to find vaults depending on what stats you have available.
Explore to find the auction house ASAP and focus on IT instead of bookstore so
you can get the STUMM reel so you can summon your Unique as fast as you can.
FORGE:
Fairly standard start. Periodically get Shapers Mark influence which turns to
dread if ignored similar to restless spam in normal game thru Temptation.
You can get rid of it or the dread in rituals, recruitments.
Summon Crucible to spy for you with his double Delaying aspects. Use restless
or contentment to get him out quickly if you find a Knock disciple. Otherwise
use Knock6/10 with a lantern follower. He can also help with Annoyances to
get board member job setup fairly fast.
Forge Exalted can help pay the bills right away, though you need to recruit
badly so don't overdo this. Also they are a decent spy with more "delay"
tactics which seems like the only useful kind of spy.
LANTERN:
Periodically get an item which is a TOOL instead of an influence despite fading
after 60 seconds and turning into Fascination. This is fairly
bad since you don't have the usual dread being generated to counter it.
Fortunately you can rush Peacock gate with your Lantern12 and feed it the Key
tool doodad to get rid of it easily.
You can DELAY the tool decay by trying to gift the item to your cultists or
hirelings.
Also keep in mind that Lantern exalted sucks bad and getting income will be a
problem (unless you went with another cult type of course) since you can't
deal with annoyances either. Teresa can be summoned fast with a fleeting
memories and spy for you, but you have no intrinsic way to deal with pests.
As such, TALK aggressively and sift through to find a Heart or Grail ideally
who can dispose of threats with no noteriety and no risk if they fail.
You can Explore too and hire an Edge5 and give that a shot while looking for
auction and bookstore.
Expect a slow start here unless you played a different Cult that can help with
your pest/income problems.
GRAIL: You start out SICK and have to combine your disease with a periodic
"desires blood" ingredient periodically to avoid death. Since the blood is
irregular, can't be stored up, and you cannot extend your "don't die" card,
you can expect to be Afflicted... a lot! Its super annoying. As an added
bonus, you get Fascinates every time you do extend the savorous blood.
At least Grail exalted (if you chose grail) can remove annoyances and help you
get a big income very easily.
Ezeem isnt the best spy ever, but his Edge12 can at least delay some attacks
perhaps.
ENEMY: (spoiler)
------
The enemy just does annoying attacks periodically. The best bet is to IGNORE
them entirely. Every time you resist them, they "level up" and start using
more nasty attacks. So you need to either help him hurry up and hit level 10
so you can duke it out with him. OR, ignore them and let them stay weak.
If they hit Physical 10, they will attack you directly. You can use your
Matchless Physique to weaken them, then send in followers with at least 5
edge/forge/winter. They WILL DIE 100%, but have a chance to wound the enemy.
After 3 wounds they die.
Spying doesn't seem to do much. Edge/Forge supposedly delays attacks which I
think is legit. Ive seen the enemy decide not to do anything which may or may
not be due to spying.
Lantern spying only works after they hit "level 3" and doesn't help much.
The other options (intrigue,starlight) has no effect that I can see. All in
all this part of the game seems really poorly developed in my opinion. Great
idea, but bad execution.
APOSTLE HOW TO WIN INSTRUCTIONS: (spoilers)
--------------------------------
First of all, EVERYONE has to get the Rite Intercalcate which is the only 6
slot rite, needed to get enough power together and hold all the things.
Can be found here:
The Time Of Division - Fort Geryk
Book of Extinguished Heart - Wreck of Christabel
The Scar in the Sky - St Tentereto of Deep Door
Also, you will not be able to make any real progress on the mission itself so
buckle in for a long ride.
After your first dungeon cycle and you have level 8 to 10 lore, you will want
to enter "Mirror Mode" as I call it, where you will Talk to gain Commissions
and Talk to turn in Commissions, Work on Commissions, Talk to keep repairing
the Mirror you found in the SH4 dungeon (forge 5 guarantees success),
Use Peacock Gate to get SH10/SH12s and use Study to combine them.
I recommend NOT running the SH10/12s you find, instead combining them as above
to get SH14s. With luck you can find the Christobol Wreck which gives you the
Frankenglaive so you can run peacock effortlessly. Also, the 14s are going
to have the endgame stuff you need, AND the books will have the Intercalcate
and the highest level Lore. As such, the 10/12 dungeons really aren't worth
the effort. Once you have level 8+ lore, you don't actually NEED anything
higher until ready to win, so going from 8 to 12 for example doesn't buy you
much.
I will present each solution in what I consider the ideal order to do each
piece.
FORGE:
------
Use follower in rite with Shapers Guidance to turn them into a Compass. Use
someone expendable.
Use them to run Kerisham (repeatable SH4 place). Note you can Talk to
Sulumancha about ANY ole SH4 and she will give you Kerisham, on the off chance
you found Keglins Scratch early on and didn't bother with the other SH4s.
You can save this step for when you need to eat a Shaper's without using Talk.
They are now one of the 6 ingredients for the Rite. Don't let them die. :-)
Find Bitterblack Salts(SH8 Tower Revek) or Xantholic Essense or Iotic Essense
(Spider Gate -> Mallery).
Use Shapers Guidance in a ritual to progress one of the above until it turns
into Blue Gold. Note you actually need a rite like Mothers Mercy which allows
an Ingredient AND a tool. Rite Intercalcate works for all these!
Get Carcass Spark from Fort Geryk (SH14).
Use in rite with Shapers Guidance that you peridically get.
Use level 14 Mysteries of Making (forge14) lore to awaken the core.
Get rank 14 Knock Lore (Mysteries of Opening).
Talk to Sulochana about Shapers Guidance and her sister will show up.
She will sit around indefinitely.
Get An Incandescence 15 Forge from the Spider->Malleory.
Tie up incandescence in the Ritual window or Study window and talk to Mrs E
and feed her an exalted follower to get her Biting Key.
Do the Rite:
-- Incandescence level 15 forge influence
-- Biting Key (Mrs' E's help)
-- Transformed Pawn/compass.
-- Awakened Core
-- Blue Gold
-- Mysteries of Opening (Knock 14 lore)
LANTERN:
--------
Talk to Sulochana about the Dream of a Key you get periodically. She will call
her sister Frau who will sit around on standby for the ritual. Super easy.
Get Ichor Vitrius the lantern12 ingredient found in SH8 Cave of Candles.
Get Moth 10 lore.
Get Watchman's glass. Obtain from the Eye of Ikiwiki (SH10 vault) and repair
it. Thats easier than doing the SH14 dungeon.
You really need to be able to summon Maid in Mirror on-demand by getting a
knock disciple Edge-scarred or give em an edge8/12 tool. Summon a Maid and
put her in TALK indefinitely.
OR you can just use one Maid as assistant to summon another, and so on.
Summon a second Maid. Put her as the Subject of the first Maid's talk.
Summon a third maid. Put her in endless EXPLORE mode.
I recommend adding 2 Maids as SPIES too though thats probably overkill.
Remember those piles of Lesser Crossroads you made?
Go find a Lantern15 influence from the Peacock gate and use the Crossroads
with it and a "Dream of Key" periodic item to make an "Allure" that decays in
3 minutes. Note that you can feed it a Fascination to refresh it (and get rid
of the fascinate too).
As soon as you find the lantern15, summon yet another Maid.
NOW, TALK to the oldest Maid about the Allure. It will create a "Witness".
Talk to the next oldest maid which will suck in the witness and make it bigger.
KEEP SUMMONING MORE MAIDS DURING ALL THIS.
You have to do this 7 times to make a "cloud of witnesses".
The 3 "tied up maids" and 2 spy maids give you a buffer against summons fails
without needing to use Passion to potentially get followers killed by summons.
Although, the only one you likely care about at this point is your Knock
disciple.
Do the Rite:
-- Allure
-- Cloud of Witnesses
-- Moth 10
-- Watchman Glass
-- Ichor Vitrius
-- The sister, Frau. (key of days)
GRAIL:
------
Use delightful blood in auction and then you have to bid to get it back paying
6 funds in a row, after its been transformed into 7 graces.
Use the 3 elixirs on the Seven graces item you now have:
-- Leathy (Orthos Wood SH6)
-- Amaranthine Nectar (Peacock Door->Church)
-- True Blood of Januarius (Fort Geryk SH14)
It is now ready to go.
Obtain Marinette by talking to Suluchana about the Delights Blood. You need
to feed her 7 sacrifices. Hirelings can be fed but generate noteriety. You
do have 7 pawns left by sheer coincidence however which do not...
Obtain Unceasing Mysteries (Heart 14 lore)
Get Chalice Murmorous (Raven Isle SH14).
Start PAINTING with some passion to generate Mystique. Then, start partying
by talking about the Vitulation Recipe.
The party will eat Mystique that you generate.
Try NOT to do this part if a season of suspicion is coming or a detective
already present as they will eat your mystique.
After they hit tier 7, give them the Marinette that you fed earlier).
This gives you the final card you need which won't decay.
Get Incarnadescence from Peacock->Church.
Do the rite:
-- Incarnadescence
-- Party Time card
-- Chalice Murmorous
-- Unceasing Mysteries (Heart 14)
-- Savorous Blood (your forlorn blood combined with delights blood)
-- 7 Graces
CULT TYPE ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES:
-----------------------------------
There are 2 contexts to consider. The first is the normal game type and the
second is the apostle newgame+ mode. The new legacies (priest,dancer,ghoul)
sort of fall in the middle and tend to push you into a certain cult type
anyways.
In the normal game, a big focus is on how useful your cult lore is for other
purposes since you will tend to subvert and built it up first. Particularly
for either mansus advancement or summons. Also, we consider how easy you can
find influences both in the Mansus AND "lesser influences" such as
restlessness, contentment,etc which help you promote believers into Disciples
and how quick you can exalt a disciple as well as how good they are once
exalted.
In newgame+ you start with an exalted disciple so that aspect is much more
important. Note though that if your apostle victory is lined up with your cult
(grail,lantern,forge) then you have 12 lore and can easily promote right off
the bat. OTHERWISE, you are at a huge disadvantage and the promotion criteria
actually ARE very relevant.
ALL exalteds can be useful on expeditions bringing 10 aspect. Usually your
summons will have a given aspect covered but this helps. Some aspects are
more commonly needed than others on expeditions.
Keep in mind that the difference between the best and worst cult isn't really
THAT huge, so no need to stress over it.
LANTERN - Exalted follower is weak which really lowers the power of this cult.
Lantern focus does assist with mansus advancement and enlightenment
victory though. Contentment, Restlessness, Erudition ALL can help with
faster disciples and white gate can give Lantern6 very quickly for
promotions. Can get a lantern12 ingredient in SH4 dungeon which can exalt
fast (for easier dungeon exploration only basically.)
Lantern lore is used for 2 decent summons also. Finally, you
start with Lantern lore2 in normal game and Physician game. Crowkiss(SH4)
has a broken lantern4 tool available risk free which may be useful.
6/10 normal game mostly on the ease of promoting disciples, useful lore.
6/10 Apostle due to lining up of lore/cult, but lame exalted.
KNOCK - Exalted fairly useless except for expeditions since NO SUMMON HAS
knock. Knock lore super easy to combine which means faster disciples
at lore8 and you can subvert any extra lore. whitegate has knock6 too for
even faster discples. Knock10 at Stag for quicker exalted...for what that's
worth. Knock lore useful for mansus development, tho useless for summons.
5/10 normal game.
2/10 Apostle due to weak exalt.
HEART - Exalted heart great. Clears noteriety very reliably for
a careful playstyle. Actually exalting someone is quite hard though, as
heart6 influence needs Lore10 to pull off and heart10 comes from sucky
Spider gate. Heart6 influence in White gate makes easier disciples tho.
Definitely consider getting the Heart8 ingredient in SH4 dungeon to get a
faster exalt with a Heart8 lore.
3 lesser influences have heart which is good for disciples too.
Heart has only 1 summons.
7/10 normal game (slower exalt hurts them)
7/10 Apostle (exalt is very good despite lack of starting lore.)
EDGE - Exalted edge may be unneeded by the time you get him, tho good for
apostle game start. Plus it never hurts to have a guaranteed hunter kill
when needed, especially since he can take out Mystical hunters.
Stag gate has edge10 for quicker exalt with only 6 edge lore.
Only Dread has Edge aspect for faster disciples though.. no edge 6.
Edge lore is also useless (no summons, no other utility). Better lategame
since assassin can't get hurt by ANY hunter/annoyance even on rare fail.
I've found Moth summons deal with hunters much better by removing evidence
but murdering is more satisfying and consistent. Finally, edge tools are
MUCH easier to obtain than any other, with the edge8 one in a SH4 vault, tho
that is not really a cult-specific bonus. (you likely give it to a Knock)
Crowkiss gives edge4 tool risk free (SH4).
Assassin makes a good spy in Apostle game (slows enemy actions somewhat)
4/10 normal game (slow disciples hurts but crowkiss can overcome this.)
6/10 Apostle (assassin is really nice and reliable)
GRAIL - Exalted grail awesome for newgame+ and good for prisoner grabs.
Obvious synergy with Sensation victory. Only restlessness and corpse aid in
disciple promotion assistance. Exalted takes a while as grail10 in spider
gate. No grail 6 influence either. Has 2 strong summons. Grail exalted can
Seduce annoyances WITHOUT generating noteriety which is why they are so good
in newgame+.
4/10 normal game. (slow disciples but easy to get prisoners later)
9/10 Apostle (seduce annoyance, easy prisoners = winner)
WINTER - Exalted winter fairly mediocre since a kill is not guaranteed.
Their ability to get corpses isn't typically helpful either.
Stag gate has winter10 for quick exalt and white has winter6 for quick
disciples. NO lesser influences have winter, although corpse does.
Crowkiss has Winter4 tool risk-free (SH4), but Mithraeum (SH2) has Winter8
tool risk free too which you can pick up really easy.
Winter has two solid summons.
4/10 normal
2/10 Apostle.
FORGE - Exalted forge gets cash and other stuff risk-free. Strong for
newgame+ although you generally want to use Talk for recruitment mostly.
Making decent money with TALK is useful though. Awesome with Power victory.
Easiest NewGame+ start. Forge has 2 good summons. Only Restlessness has
forge aspect however and theres no forge10 (15 in spider gate) so much slower
to actually get exalted. Theres no easy forge 8 ingredient or tool either.
2/10 normal game. (slow disciple, very slow exalt)
10/10 Apostle.
MOTH - Exalted moth unfortunately gains ZERO advantage over a moth5 disciple.
Theres no Moth6 influence. Moth10 is Spider gate which is a pain, so no easy
way to exalt anyone, not that makes much difference anyways.
However, fleeting memory, fascinate, glimmer, restless are all Moth. Also,
a moth6 lore seems to show up very early on in most games I've played which
means Disciples almost immediately comboed with the many moth aspects above.
Plus, Crowkiss has Moth4 tool risk-free (SH4).
Moth lore itself is useless.
IF you pick up Moth6 book really early, can be a strong starter. Otherwise
they are fairly bad.
1/10 normal game.
1/10 Apostle game.
SECRET HISTORY - No exalted allowed! However, SH4 lore is very easy to
find in Mansus wood gate right off the bat. This assumes you are playing
physician or normal who get Lantern2 immediately. Get 2 SH4 and combine for a
SH6 super fast. Use with Fleeting Memories for turbo-disciples. Depending
on who you find early game this can be excellent (grail for annoyance kill,
turbo-dungeon clear, etc).
Not amazing in newgame+ but can at least obtain their level 8 lore extremely
fast.. like in 1 minute via Stag gate (in theory).
7/10 normal (incredible disciple speed)
5/10 apostle (superfast lore8 but NO exalted so you get some random dude)
OTHER LEGACIES:
---------------
PHYSICIAN:
----------
Easy Mode. Solid 2 fund/60s job key for quick rampup.
+2 reason bonus effectively. Otherwise nearly identical to normal start.
Gets lantern/knock lore for free.
BRIGHT YOUNG THING:
-------------------
Also easy mode. Gets tons of starting funds for quick rampup. Use health to
find bookstore ASAP! Gets Grail lore for free. +1 free health.
DETECTIVE:
----------
You pursue an Enemy who is trying to ascend. You are trying to arrest them.
Its a neat idea, but feels very half-baked and unsatisfying.
Your job, plus suspect plus reason can make Tenative evidence.
Then Job + evidence + reason = Damning evidence plus the tenative evidence
back.
Job plus Damning evidence plus reason = arrest of suspect.
You then can use the Favor to get a minor victory. OR, they will spawn a new
person you can pursue and arrest. You can even use the same tenative evidence
to get em! Presumably you would take the promotion or start your own cult..
although I'd expect you would have less recruits available than normal... :-)
An alternative is to buff your Reason and then just crank out tons of
damning evidence, getting a nice pay boost every time. Then start your cult.
DO NOT WORK (BURN) your evidence you get at the beginning as you need it to
start a cult by STUDYing it instead with reason.
It is also possible supposedly to recruit a rival. You need them to have 0
resentment, AND have 21 points of your cult power AND include a tool as a gift
to the receipient. So, like 10 lore and a 12 power tool would work. Since
only detectives typically have "rivals", you might give it a shot.
DANCER:
-------
Not available for android yet as of this writing.
Dancer is encouraged to go Moth or Heart as they get a 4 aspect tool early on.
Dancer Change temptation is considered to be a major victory as you have do a
lot of stuff.
Dancer is pretty tough because you start with ZERO MONEY. Painting is nerfed
so it doesn't work very well.
IMMEDIATELY boost your Health, as you need 2 at all times to dance and the
first Injury will ruin you since you are broke. Then boost PASSION so you can
afford to "do extra" when dancing, AND keep a steady train of potential
recruits. After 1 reason buff, I would then keep boosting Health and Passion
and hopefully find a benefactor you can do private dances for to make cash
while you also use health to explore and find Morlands and Auction House.
You can also dance at the Euycides once you talk to Sulemanchu about your
Change temptation.
However, IF you dance using your Euycides contract and put a stat point in,
it will be PERMANENTLY CONVERTED into a "Scar". This is needed for progression
eventually but overdoing it early can really gimp you. Getting one however can
let you dance for random loot (like spinitra) which is very handy later for
mirror repair. You will want to pick either Heart(health) or Passion(moth)
and stick with that. You can also Auction off any Silver Spinitra you get for
phat cash.
Euycides dance can also EAT any nasty influence.
Keep the Gaity gig for a while as you can find various Patrons that you can
dance for and get excellent cash for. Note that you will eventually piss them
off though, hence keeping the original dancing contract to get a new patron
as needed. Just spend 30 sec and 1 passion to keep it from going away...dont
try to keep it active all the time...cooldown is too short. I believe you can
only get 2 patrons per run.
The basic idea is that you will dance at Euycides with your temptation with
X amount of Moth or Heart and you get a thingee that you can include when
you explore one of the repeatable dungeons (SH4 to start). If you win that
vault, your next hook will then promote you to the next level of your Change.
Repeat using more and more Moth/Heart and doing the next tier of vault.
There are apparently 3 endings depending on your use of Heart or Moth or combo.
You will likely want to talk to Summons to syphon off some Reason/Passion for
Health (if going Heart), or use the ritual to convert some reason to passion
if going Moth. This offsets losing 3 points of a specific stat.
When promoting Health to max, USE MOTH/HEART, NOT FORGE,etc. You need the
graceful promotion (Flawless body), not the other one.
Finally, note that there are no SH10 dance-vaults.
PRIEST:
-------
Not available on android for a while probably.
Priest is Knock-based, but can be played fine as any cult type.
They get a seemingly random cult, but you can Talk to your cult with nothing
in it and change it to a new cult type once. THIS ALSO gives you a Temptation
which is vital for getting to Stag Gate! But otherwise unused. You can
promote it to make it stop spamming restlessnesss but you might want to leave
it alone for later where restlessness is actually useful (and required).
Their job kind of sucks only making 1 fund/60s. If you feed it Lore, it will
sometimes create a Fervor which will create a random garbage follower for 3
minutes if you feed it your Cult card. OR, generate 2 random things, one of
which can be Noteriety!
So you will be putting on a business suit to actually generate cash.
The goal is to Preach with a high level lore and corresponding stat to make a
fervor. THen, preach with HEALTH, a 10th level Lore and the fervor.
You will need a restlessness (White gate if u promoted your temptation).
Then, feed it according to the chart:
Lantern= Erudition
Grail = Hunger (shift click your money and HOLD it to play keep away.)
Moth = Glimmering
Heart = Vitality
Winter = Affliction
Forge = Bronze Spintria
Edge = Injury (Preach but feed it wrong thing to make injury, then do over)
Remember to use Sulemancha or Study to tie up your Restlessness indefinitely.
You can also tie up many of the above with similar means while preaching to
obtain the fervor initially.
You need all 7 scars to win. Use in Ritual (that takes instrument) and use 22
points of Knock. (SH12 tool best bet. Or Exalted Knock + 12 lore)
Note: Since this permanently eats health you need to talk to various SUMMONS
to feed it your REASON/PASSION and turn it into Decrepit (then forge ritual to
change to Health). 2 of each will give 9 total health which is plenty.
GHOUL:
------
Medium/Ghoul is no joke... it is one of the hardest runs I've ever done, and
did not really have to be. This is a pretty deep legacy and you will be doing
the top tier vaults. No need to have top tier lore however.
To get started, feed "Shameful memory" first to get some extra hush money.
Then feed joyful memory.You become disgraced. Hurry up and explore the museum
ASAP to find painting. Meanwhile use your new Medium gig and use the profit
memory to get yet another small boost.
Ideally feed the painting a Restlessness, but anything will do so she gives
you your Study verb.
The first problem you encounter is cash flow. The medium job gives 1 fund
per 30 sec BUT consumes and requires a "memory" influence. Painting would be
great synergy but it sucks now and you'll go broke. Turns out that it does NOT
consume bad influences though, so you can re-use restlessness/dread/fascinate
indefinitely more-or-less and have a pretty good 2fund/60s job. This plus
your startup funds help kickstart the book buying.
You have this family heirloom potion and your character decides it would be a
fantastic idea to start eating dead things. ONCE YOU EAT A CORPSE, your
temptation gets promoted and you now HAVE TO EAT something dead basically every
time the Hook/Ambition Season comes up. If you do this early, you will have
a life of misery and heartache trying to deal with constant noteriety and such.
As such, you may consider waiting and basically doing all the eating at the
very end before you win. Makes life MUCH easier and just with temptation you
can still get all the "special extra loot" from the specific dungeons you need.
If you do it this way, cult doesn't matter all that much. If you try to play
as a "ghoul", then Winter cult is extremely beneficial.
You will eat 9 different things, getting 9 special memories. Paint with
passion, use any special memory, and use a corpse to prepare a special canvas.
Now you can paint with passion (2 is enough), set subject to memory and it
will transfer.
Once all 9 are done, show it to your museum painting, dream on it. Then feed it
all your stats to win... DO HEALTH LAST!
Stuff you have to eat:
-- SH2 St Felix gives special loot.
-- SH4 Crowkiss gives special loot.
-- SH4 Keglins Scratch special loot.
-- SH10 Tomb of Shadowless Kings special loot
(this is repeating so wont find it until youve discovered the other 4 SH10)
-- SH12 Laguns Tomb gives special loot.
-- SH12 Laguns Tomb ALSO GIVES HOLIEST HEMOLYMPH to eat which is not-obvious.
-- SH14 Fort Geryk gives ONLY TRUE BLOOD OF JANUARIUS to eat. No special loot.
-- King Crucible. Summon him, let him expire. Chow down.
-- Decrepitude. Yes, you have to eat yourself. Yuck.
I'd recommend combining lore to do the SH14s first. IF you get Wreck, do it
for the frankenglaive making life much easier for the rest since you still
need Geryk anyways. If you get Fort Geryk, then just give up on SH14 and stick
with mirror repair technique to get the 10s and 12s you need.
-------------------------------
REFERENCE PAGE FOR EASY LOOKUP:
-------------------------------
FOLLOWERS:
HEART No direct ability.
CB: Remove Mystique or Notoriety (failure has no real downside)
GRAIL seduces annoyances without generating noteriety!
CB: Finds prisoners without noteriety! (failure wounds and notoriety)
EDGE kills annoyances AND hunters. Does best overall job.
CB: Finds prisoners (adds notoriety)
WINTER kills hunters but not as well as edge. Lower risk tho.
CB: Generates corpses (noteriety)
MOTH destroy evidence. (NOTE: success capped at 70%. 10 aspect useless!)
ALSO drives annoyances crazy capped at 70% chance.
CB: Con people to steal stuff (noteriety)
FORGE: Fix broken stuff such as Mirrors for peacock. Level5 guarantees success
CB: Labwork for 2 cash and periodic stuff. (NO noteriety)
LANTERN: No direct ability.
CB: Randomly generate minor influences.
KNOCK: No direct ability.
CB: Steal money (noteriety)
Secret Histories - No direct ability.
No mortal has SH aspect. Summon does nothing. Thus no CB entry.
Further edge notes: Exalted edge NEVER fails to kill, except by Mystic or
Tenacious properties. Even if that occurs, Edge will never get wounded or die.
LORE COMBINING (DLC/PC Challenges)
----------------------------------
Knowledge - Erudation OR Library
Intuition - Glimmering OR Sanctuary
Grim - Dread OR Pit OR Silent Intensity(Reason skill)
Obsessive - REASON OR Library OR Never-No (passion skill)
Paradox - PASSION OR Sanctuary OR Open Soul (passion skill)
Illuminate- Fascinate OR Library OR Rarefied Mind (reason skill)
Practical - HEALTH OR Prisoner
* Small chance of messing up Reason,Passion,Health if used in this way.
Forge - Know Illum
Knock - Know Grim Pdox
Lantern - Know Pdox Illum
SH - Know Illum
Grail - Intuit Pdox
Heart - Intuit Obses
Moth - Intuit Obses Illum
Edge - Grim Practical
Winter - Grim Obses
Subverting Lore:
Moth -> Lantern (add moth lore first, then lantern to create Lantern+2)
Lantern -> Forge
Forge -> Edge
Edge -> Winter
WInter -> Heart
Heart -> Grail
Grail -> Moth
ANYTHING->Knock (place Knock first, then any other non-history lore)
Secret History (can only be combined with SH lore)
---------------------------
SKILLS:
Flawless Physique (use Grail,Heart,Moth). VITAL for DANCER.
Matchless Physique (Forge, Edge). 40s Labor timer. "dangerous" aspect given.
Never-No (use Heart/Moth lore) -- DLC lore combine: Obsessive
Open Soul (Grail, Knock) -- DLC combine lore: Paradox challenge
Rarified Mind (Forge,Knock,Lant) - DLC Combine: avoids need for fascinate.
Silent Intensity (Winter,Edge,SH) - DLC COmbine: avoids need for dread.
--------------------------
SUMMONS (2 knock for below)
8 Winter, 2 Edge: Zombie.
8 winter, 2 moth: zombie.
6 Heart, 2 edge: creates 8 Heart & Edge Percussigant
6 Lant, 2 edge: 8 Lantern & Edge Hint
6 forge, 2 wint: 8 forge & moth Caligne
6 grai, 2 moth: 8 grail & moth Raw prophet
4 winter,2 hart: 6 moth & winter Voiceless Dead
8 wintr, 2 edge: 10 Edge & Winter Maid in Mirror
(these need 5 knock)
10 forg, 2 lant: 12 Edge & Forge Crucible. (teach mandaic)
10 gral, 2 forg: 12 Edge & Grail Ezeem. (teach phyrgian)
10 lant, 1 SH: 12 Lantern & SH Teresa (Teach Fucine.)
NOTE: Using "Fleeting memory" with Knock 5 disciple
and 10 lantern lore to summon.
-----------------
Recruitables:
Heart: Clovette, Dorothy, Leo
Edge: Elridge, Rose, Victor
Moth: Porter, Sylvia, Ysabet
Knock: Enid, Neville
Forge: Laidlaw, Tristan, Valciane,
Grail: Renira, Saliba
Lantern: Cat Caro, Pope Clifton, Slee
Winter: Auclair, Violet
----------------------------
RITES all use a LORE slot (and a generally useless DESIRE slot)
You can see most rituals suck. I mean why require an influence (60s) and yet
consume something else instead? Makes 0 sense most of the time.
*Sunset Uses Person Eats Influence. (best)
Maps Edge Uses Tool Eats Influence. (meh. person better than tool)
*Mother's Mercy Uses Person Eats Ingredient (allows spell-on-demand)
Sea's Feast Uses Tool Eats Ingredient (right tool hard to come by)
Sea's Marriage Uses Influence Eats Ingredient (useless. needs influence)
Watchman Sorrow --- GARBAGE!!! EATS YOUR LORE!!!!
Crucible Soul Uses Tools Eats Person (prisoner disposal I guess?)
Rebel's Strive Uses Assistant Eats Tools (wait whut? eat my tool? no thx)
Beasts Division Uses Influence Eats Person (yuck!)
Rite Intercalcate - SPECIAL. Apostle victory ONLY. (maybe fringe use in DLC)
------------------
GOODIES IN MANSUS:
Wood: SH2 lore, Moth 2 Influence, Rumor
Wood->Well: SH4 lore, Grail2 Inf, vitality, rumor
Wood->Temple: SH4 lore, Knock 2, Heart 2, rumor
White: SH4 lore, Winter 6, Restless
White->Lodge SH6 lore, Knock 6, Favor from Auth, Glimmer, Erud, Fascinate
White->Orchard SH6 lore, Lant 6, Heart 6, Glimmering
Stag: SH6 lore, Forge 6, Knock 10
Stag->Knives Grail 6, Edge 10, Winter 10
Stag->River SH8 lore, Erud:Lesson, Fascination
Spider: SH8 lore, Grail 10, Favor, Heart 10
Spider->Mallor SH10 lore, Forge 15, Forge12_Ingredient, Lantern 10
Spider->Chambr SH6 lore, Winter 10, Lantern 10, Moth 10, Knock 15, Fascinate
Peacock: SH10 lore, Lantern 15, Scholar VAK, Fascinate
Peacock->Churc SH12 lore, Grail 15, Grail8_ingredient, Favor, Fascinate
Peacock->Museu SH12 lore, Winter 15, Dread.
--------------
UNUSUAL CONSUMABLES: (with example uses given right lore +knock follower)
DREAD Edge 2. Percussigant, Hint, Maid in Mirror
FLEETING MEMORY Moth, SH 2 Summon Teresa (lantern 10 tho), or raisedead
CONTENTMENT Heart 2 Lantern2 Crucible.
RESTLESS Grail,Heart,Forge,Lantern,Moth 2 - Lots of possibilities.
FASCINATION Moth 2.
GLIMMERING Moth 1. (works for Disciple promotion, NOT summon)
ERUDITION Lantern 1 (works for Disciple promotion, NOT summon)
VITALITY Heart 1 (works for Disciple promotion, NOT summon)
Lesson_Learned These have Lantern/Heart/Moth 2. ARE usable for summons.
CORPSE Winter 3, Grail 3 (ingredient not influence)
--------------------
DUNGEON/VAULT obstacles by aspect occurance (all dungeons counted)
Heart 16
Lantern 17
Edge 21
Grail 20
Moth 16
Forge 22
Knock 23
Winter 12
DUNGEONS/VAULTS By Tier. Last one is repeatable.
Hebe Station (random 4,6,8) Edge/Grail/Moth Forge/Knock Forge/Heart
* Gives you Forge8,Edge8,Heart6,Lantern8 lore, only needs Sanskrit!
St. Agnes Hospital: Heart/Lantern
Congregation: Edge/Moth
Strathcoyne's Residence: Edge/Grail/Moth
Cater & Hero Limited: Forge/Lantern
Forgotten Mithraeum: Lantern/Knock
The Forsaken Reach Forge/Lantern Edge/Grail/Moth
* Forgotten Mithraeum has Winter 8(!) tool. Lantern4 ingredient AND
its door obstacle doesn't wound or curse, so it's risk-free.
* The SH2 dungeons give you new HQ options for DLC(except Strathcoyne,Forsaken)
Keglin's: Edge/Winter Forge/Lantern
Gladwyn Lake: Edge/Knock
Gwaer: Forge/Knock Edge/Grail
Crowkiss Hill: Forge/Knock
Lockwood Fen: Forge/Lantern Edge/Grail/Moth
Kerisham: Edge/Grail/Moth Forge/Knock Heart/Winter
** Keglins has Mirror (for peacock mansus) AND Edge 8 tool (free summons)
* Gladwin has Heart8 ingredient, key for a quick(er) exalted!</pre><pre id="faqspan-3">
* Crowkiss is door-only and has Moth4,edge4,winter4 tools risk free.
Vanderschaaf Forge/Knock Heart/Winter
Fermier Abbey: Forge/Moth Edge/Moth
Orthos Wood: Forge/Moth Edge/Grail/Moth
Forman House: Edge/Winter Heart/Lantern
Key-Hunter's Garret Edge/Knock Knock/Lantern
Chateau Raveline: Lantern/Knock Heart/Lantern
Unnumbered Stones Forge/Moth Lantern/Knock Edge/Grail/Moth
* Orthos has Moth 8 tool (give to Knock disciple for ez Raw Prophet summon)
* Key Hunter's has FUCINE book which is much easier than summoning Teresa.
Voivode's Citadel: Lantern/Knock) Edge/Winter
Grunewald's Circus: Edge/Grail/Moth Lantern/Moth
Cave of Candles: Edge/Knock Forge/Winter
Kunesvov: Lantern/Knock Edge/Grail/Moth Forge/Lantern
Tower Revek: Lantern/Knock Heart/Grail
Foxlily Meadows: Edge/Grail/Moth Forge/Winter Heart/Winter
* Cave has Lantern12 Ingredient. Useful for quicker Teresa summon possibly.
* Circus has Grail12 ingredient.
* Voivode has Mothers Mercy ritual which can be handy sometimes.
Hunter's Pits: Edge/Grail/Moth) Edge/Knock Forge/Winter
Mausoleum Wolves: Edge/Winter Forge/Winter Forge/Knock
Eye Ikirmawi Forge/Winter Forge/Knock Heart/Winter
Snow's Keeper Edge/Winter Lantern/Moth Forge/Winter
Tombs Shadowles: Lantern/Knock Edge/Grail/Moth Heart/Grail Forge/Winter
* Snow has Edge12 tool.
* Eye has cracked version of Lantern12 Tool AND Knock8 tool (lesser summons)
Star-shattered Fane: Lantern/Knock Forge/Grail Heart/Winter
Messana: Edge/Grail/Moth Forge/Grail Heart/Grail
Lagun's Tomb: Heart/Lantern Forge/Grail Forge/Knock
Temple of Seven Coils: Forge/Grail Lantern/Moth Forge/Knock
Miah: Forge/Grail Heart/Grail Edge/Winter
* 7 coils has Watch-Works, ONLY guaranteed way to get a POISON for hunter kill.
Fort Geryk: Heart/Forge Edge/Winter Forge/Knock
St. Tentreto: Lantern/Knock Edge/Moth Heart/Winter
Raven Isle: Lantern/Moth) Heart/Forge Heart/Winter
Wreck Christabel: Heart/Forge Heart/Grail Edge/Knock
Port Noon Heart/Forge Moth/Grail Forge/Knock Heart/Winter
*** Wreck has Frankenglaive for repeatable Peacock with no repair.
* Fort/Wreck/Tentreto all have Rite Intercalcite.
