Cultist Simulator - Manage your Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!

I knew that, in fact I would have lost much sooner if I wouldn’t know. :) I only lost by 2 seconds, in fact, I was dreaming some contentment already. I also know how Dread interact with Fascination.

What I didn’t know was the hourglass hint given by Thrag below, that would have allowed me to plan things better.
Also this gem I learn from the Steam forums: Restlessness turns into Dread, you are supposed to use up restlessness painting or doing whatever.
Thing is, I already had noticed some cards turning sometimes into Dread, but I wasn’t sure which cards or how, if there was a condition or what. I think this is it.

In any case I don’t want to burn myself with the game already, I will leave it for now and come back in a few months, in that time the devs should have improved some UI stuff, polished some corners, maybe include extra content, etc.

While clearly flawed, this game exerces a real fascination on me, and it just stroke me that it reminded me of what I experienced with Captain Blood in the late 80s. It may be mostly busy work of clicking, but what an evocative world. I hardly ever lose notion of time in game anymore. I just got absorbed into Cultist Simulator again, while my wife was apparently having a fight on the phone (she told me — I was totally oblivious to it).

A last comment, for now:
Perhaps the single biggest thing that hurts replayability in this game is the fact that the cult themselves… are actually all the same? They are ‘cult of x’, without the x part to matter. It can be Lantern, or Knock, or Edge or Forge, it doesn’t really matter in the game. For a game about creating a cult, it’s a pretty important oversight.

I feel as each cult should have some kind of advantage & disadvantage, or a small unique mechanic, something. Then it truly would give you reasons to replay the game several times, as RPGs does with classes. Right now each magical aspect gives you an unique ability to each follower, but it isn’t related to the cult.

Note: I haven’t reached the end game, maybe there are differences or different victory conditions at that point!

If you click on any empty slot any applicable cards in your table will animate to show you they go there. @Chris_Gwinn That saved me a ton of clicking time.

@TurinTur I am with you. Part of what I wanted to do was tell unique stories through my cults or followers, sadly there is not much in the way of emergence to enable that.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Sometimes cards glow and you can put them in the slot, but you can’t click start even though there are no other slots on the verb.

What? All specialized cults are the same? Damn, that sucks. Well, there is also the Hydra cult, which is kind of a jack of all trades that let you use any lore, but restrict minions from reaching the highest level.

There are some good tips above. It takes hours to understand what does what, in large part because of the incomprehensible inventory system.

As for me, so far the game has three phases:

Phase 1 - Bookworm: work, train skills, try to buy everything from Moorland’s and recruit as many minions as you can. Doing nothing but that should keep you safe from the cops and most mental hazards.
Phase 2 - Exploration: don’t even try expeditions without 5-6 minions/hirelings with a varied set of abilities. You should also start exploring and advancing in the dreamscape.
Phase 3 - Rites: you can start casting rites which add a whole other level of complications, and then… ???

The dreamscape works this way:

Once you dream with reason and Lantern lore (I think?) you gain access to the Woods, the first step of the deamscape. You can then either progress with the right lore or go to the other map for a random bonus (decaying aspects, glimmers, book lore, etc.). The way it work is this: put the revealed card in the circle to keep it or take one of the other two hidden cards. Might be something better, might be somthing worse.

“Aspects” are one, eh, aspect of the game that took a while to really understand:

Each aspect work kind of like an element (fire, ice, etc.) or stats in other games and are also associated with an ability in minions. Here’s roughly what they mean:

Red Grail (red cup): signifies passion, in minions, used for seduction
Edge (knife): signifies violence, in minions, used for assasination
Heart (heart): signifies will to live: in minions, used to friendship
Moth (moth): signifies confusion: in minions, used for bamboozling
Forge (hammer): signifies construction/destruction, in minions, used for demolition
Winter (white dot): signifies death, in minions, used for procuring corpses and communing with the dead
Lantern (lantern): signifies wisdom, in minions, used for augury

Two special aspects:
Secret Histories (purple book): signifies knowledge, consumed with exploration to find expeditions
Knock (key): signifies operning door, in minions, used for stealing/lockpicking

“Lore”, is the primary, permanent source of aspects, but can also be bolstered by temporary, decaying, insights or uh, glimmers?. You can combine two lores of the same level by studying to get a better one or you can combine two different ones to transmute only one of the two to a higher level.

I read there is a small difference with the cults. You can only upgrade your followers to the max level if they are of the Aspect of your cult. And of course each cult can be slightly harder or easier to play because each one needs that aspect to do the upgrades, for example Knock cults are easier because you can get a knock 6 aspect card by exploring the city by moonlight, while Edge cults are harder because there aren’t that many cards with high Edge that are easy to get.

Hmm. I guess you choose your aspect at the beginning? I don’t remember, it’s all so vague.

I have the Red Grail right now, which is great, because it makes you want lots of Restlessness, which is grail-related.

Yeah, also, as said above, even when you know what you need to avoid a peril, it’s hard to do it because a. the function you need might be occupied already and b. even then, you might not have enough time left.

I think it is the issue a lot of people seem to be having with it. There is no emergence, just like there was none in Fallen London. The freedom of the player is on how he manages (or fail to) put together what is going on in the game’s lore, but there is no dramatic emergence to speak of.

Just found an interesting trick for dealing with the cops:

If you put an assassin minion in the Talk box then choose the inspector, the inspector card will get sucked out if an investigation event comes up and the action will fail. However, if you talk to the inspector first, then choose a minion, it’ll also work as an assassination attempt, BUT the assassination attempt will go on anyway and even make the investigation fail automatically. This will give you a chance to get the evidence/notoriety to time out. The drawback is that sometimes instead of nothing happening, a second cop will pop out, but the investigation stills fails, though. This doesn’t work with two cops on your tail, but it’s a nice trick nonetheless.

from SA forums:

"you can rehire people by talking to them with funds fuuuuuuck "

Really useful to not waste time exploring again the streets and maintaining that Edge 5 thug.

It’s hard to know what to spoiler tag in this game. This is mainly basic game mechanics/UI, but read ahead at your own risk anyway.

Hirelings are the best. After having large numbers of followers die in expeditions, even when I matched up their skills properly to the task, I use hirelings for the initial two slots in expeditions. I then add followers later if it looks safe to do so.

I send lone unfunded hirelings to scout the obstacles. I’m slowly taking notes on which obstacles are in which missions (though I don’t know if it is the same in subsequent playthroughs, it does seem the same for repeat missions).

In addition to the rehire bit, timers don’t tick down while in an action. So you can keep talking to a hireling about nothing while searching to find the complimentary hireling for that next expedition.

One last tip. Don’t rush to upgrade all your hangers on. A great way to get rid of an unwanted fascination or despair is to use it as unnecessary trappings for an initiation ritual.

Damn it, this game doesn’t do cloud saves. I had 12 whole minutes to goof off between meetings and I was planning to use it to finish my expedition to the Unnumbered Stones.

It took me a while because I am quite stupid, but after having a bunch of fun failing and failing and failing again, I can see the bother of the late game. The lore manipulation is just tedious, lengthy work.

Anyway it was a really fascinating ride while I had no idea what I was doing!

Another small tip to save others the hours of “WTF am I supposed to be doing” in the midgame.

In my first experiments with the rituals nothing would light up the start button. I had incorrectly assumed I first needed to level up my desire to do a ritual. That’s not the case. All the slots are optional.

Help. In my current game, I’m missing the “Talk” action. I’ve been running for quite a while, have quite a few bits of knowledge and have bought quite a few books, but still no ability to “Talk” to anyone.

I seem to recall from previous runs that “Talk” just shows up early in the game. Is it actually triggered by something? I’ve got a non-follower character card, but can’t seem to interact with him in any way. Is this a bug, or me just not getting the correct chain of action down?

I think you need to have started the cult to talk. The opportunity to do so is a random timed event that shows up every once in a while.

To answer.

When the “Season of ambition” comes up (the one with the fishhook like icon) check what it wants.

Also a tip for the future.

This is also the answer at a later point in the game when you will be wondering WTF you are supposed to do. Just because it auto-feeds itself something, doesn’t mean it didn’t want something else in order to advance.

Thanks @Thrag and @Woodlance. Game is back on track!