Overview
In which are explained the intrincacies of the Aspects, probably the most important, er, aspect of Cultist Simulator; the manner in which Cultists are promoted are explained in full; and the mechanics behind rites are explained mostly spoiler-free, through the use of rather amusing tools of obfuscation.
What is this guide for?
This guide is meant to help people who don’t quite understand how aspects work, but don’t want to read a guide that just tells them outright how to make a succesful rite.
Cultist Simulator is a complex and uncompromising game, and a big chunk of the fun comes from figuring out how the different elements of the game come together. However, if you don’t understand the underlying rules that control certain actions, you’re twice outside of the loop and has very little chance of understanding what you have to do. Rites are one great example of this problem. The game guides you very gently towards figuring out succesful combinations, but if you don’t realize what is necessary for a succesful combination, you’ll be at a loss.
This guide exists mostly to explain one simple, important fact:
The sole thing that matters when creating a ritual – the one thing that will determine which ritual you cast – is what are the aspects present in the cards you place in the slots. The precise cards and the amount of cards you place do not matter.
If you already know that – or if you already figured it out from the way I explain above – well done. This guide is not for you.
If you are still scratching your head, looking around confusedly like a John Travolta gif, keep reading.
What are Aspects?
In a more common game, Aspects might be something like Strenght, Charisma or Endurance. In Cultist Simulator, Aspects are a bit… weirder: Lantern, Forge, Edge, Winter, Heart, Grail, Moth and Knock (plus Secret Histories, but that’s rarely relevant by itself). I won’t explain what they mean; whenever you find a card with them, you can click on their little symbol to learn that. Suffice to say that they represent both an alignment with the supernatural entities of the Mansus and a kind of feeling or perspective.
You might already be aware of Aspects, and that Cultists have Aspects, from Expeditions, since they are the one thing in the game that explains their presence the most. For instance, if an Expedition contains the danger Treacherous Ground, its description will outright state that you need Lantern or Forge to succeed. If you place a cultist or hireling with those aspects in the Expedition slot, you’ll see the text change to match your odds of success.
However, notice that it’s not only cultists that have Aspects. Lore, quite naturally, have Aspects as well – they more or less represent knowledge on as Aspect. Influences, that you get from the Mansus, are also high, temporary representations of Aspect. But lots of things have Aspects. For instance, while you were struggling to get rid of Fascination, you might not have noticed that it has an Aspect:
As you can see, Dread has 2 points of the Edge aspect.
So does its more difficult to deal with cousin, Fascination:
Which has 2 Moth.
These are only a few of the things that are not supernatural in the game, but have aspects. Spintria, the currency you get from your occult patrons, also has aspects. Restlessness has a whooping three aspects, and at 3 intensity. Even your ‘stat’ cards – Health, Reason and Passion – have aspects. (However, in the few occasions they can be used in this manner they are consumed, so I don’t recommend using them.)
All right, you might be thinking, but so what? I can’t send Dread to an expedition to kill dudes, so what good is it knowing that it has Edge?
That’s when you are wrong. And unpolite. Respect me, I took time off my day to write this guide, for you. Because I love you.
Next I’ll be talking about the second most important use of Aspects: promoting your cult followers.
A practical use of Aspects: Promoting Followers
OK, you know how this guide is mostly spoiler-free? That’s why I say mostly. I’m goint to spoil the mechanics for promoting your cult believers pretty throughly in this section. I’ll do it because they’re illustrative of how Aspects work, and because the game is pretty forthcoming about how they work, even if it uses language a tad obscure. If you don’t know how to promote believers but don’t want a big spoiler, I give you three pieces of advice. First, when the game says you need “an [aspect] to the seventh intensity”, it means it needs cards that sum up 7 points in that affect. Second, whenever the ‘Start’ button for something changes from grey to white and becomes clickable, you’re done – you can start working. The third I already kind of gave you, but it bears repeating: DO NOT PUT YOUR HEATLH, PASSION OR REASON CARDS IN THE ‘TRAPPINGS’ SLOT TO PROMOTE YOUR FOLLOWERS. THEY WILL BE GONE FOREVER AND YOU WILL BE SAD.
If you are THIRSTY for more knowledge, carry on.
OK. When you first start a cult and start trying to convoke your cultists, it’s pretty common to be lost as to what you need to do. Pretty much everyone tried to put their Health in the Trapping slot, only to later say ‘hey… didn’t I have more health?’ and then die a terrible death. But what should you put in that slot?
Well, it’s very simple. In order to promote a cultist, you need to put things in the slots that meet a certain intensity of your cult’s aspect. Your cult’s aspect is the aspect of the founding lore, that you put down when you created it, and that defines your cult’s name. For instance, if you put down Lantern, your cult is called The Mirror of Glory; if you put down Forge, it’s The Order Unflinching; and so on. (If you put down Secret Histories lore, you’ve founded the Order of St. Hydra, which works a bit differently. I’ll explain it at the end of the section.)
Now. In order to recruit a cultist – i.e., to turn an Aquaintance into a Believer – you need to put down anything that has your Cult’s aspect in any slot. This is why you can put things like Health, which has the Heart aspect, if it matches your cult. But… don’t do it. For recruiting an aquaintance, even a single point will do. Usually, you’ll be able to put your cult’s founding lore there and that will be enough. But you can put other things, too. If you have an Edge cult, you can put Dread there. And then the Dread will be gone! Examine cards with attention, and experiment.
The next thing you want to do is promote a Believer to a Disciple. If you place a Disciple in the slot, the game will helpfully inform that you need the cult’s aspect ‘to the seventh intensity’. That means, you need to put cards in the slots that sum up seven points of your cult’s aspect. The cultist’s own Aspect does count; so if you have an Edge cult and are trying to promote an Edge believer, you only need to find five more points. The third level lore of your cult, which is reasonably easy to have, has six points of that aspect, so it’s enough to promote them. Other followers will require either a higher-level lore, or an influence. Remember how Dread has two points of Edge? You can put lore with six points of Edge, plus one Dread, and the cultist will be promoted, AND the Dread will be gone. Restlessness is great for it: it has three different aspects, at three levels, so you can promote any believer with only a level two lore!
The next thing to do is Exalt your follower. That’s the same process through which followers are promoted, but it only works on followers whose aspect match your cult’s – that is, if you have an Edge cult, only Edge cultists can be exalted – and it requires a significantly higher influence. Again, experiment around. You can put a lot of stuff in the Trappings slot. High-level influences from dream-walking in the Mansus will happen. You can also put summons there – those help a lot.
What about the Order of St. Hydra? As I said, they are different. They’re the cult of the Secret Histories aspect, which is a kind of different, low-key aspect. Because of that, you don’t need Secret Histories lore to promote your believers (in fact, it doesn’t work). However, you can promote your believers with ANY lore. Do you have the third level of lore that matches your believer’s aspect? Plop it there – bam, you have a Disciple. You don’t have that lore? Well, do you have A Locksmith’s Secret? Explore until you find Streets Strange by moonlight, then explore with that card until you get A Subtle Fracture. That’s a six-point Knock influence. Combine it with your Locksmith’s Secret, and that’s enough to promote them, with room to spare. With the Order, you’ll have a bunch of high-aspect Disciples soon enough. There’s a downside, though, of course – since you can only Exalt disciples that match your cult’s aspect, and there are no Secret Histories disciples, you can’t have Exalted. However, it’s a very solid choice for the first time you’ve advanced to the mid-game (and many people consider this to be the best cult, period).
Now you may be wondering: hey wasn’t this a guide to Rites? Or did you just put rites in the title to get that incredibly lame pun in? Well… both can be correct.
Finally, an explanation of how Rites work
If you’ve been following this guide, now you know how Aspects work. Their influence is kept under wraps, but it’s quite simple, really. They have a number of points (their intensity). You need a certain amount of intensity to do tasks. For promoting believers, you need a single aspect to a certain intensity. Rites work mich the same way, except that all of them require at least two aspects, and most require three.
Let’s take a look at one of the game’s most useful rituals, Sunset Rite.
Cool beans. So, what are we looking at?
I’ve seen some people say: “I can’t use any rituals, because I can’t find anything to place in the Desire slot.” Well, here’s a big tip: you don’t need to place anything in the desire slot. In fact, you don’t need to place anything in any slot. The only thing that matters whether or not you have the sufficient amount of Aspects to fulfill a rite’s requirements There is a rite that only requires two aspects, and there is a summonned monster that happens to have those two aspects at the required intensity; you can therefore use any ritual with an Assistant slot, placing only that summon in in that slot, and nothing more, to cast that.
All rite cards have the Desire slot. I can’t tell you what it’s for on a guide that advertises itself as ‘mostly spoiler-free’, so I won’t. Suffice to say that it can be safely ignored. The remaining slots are what kind of things you can use, in this rite, to achieve the necessary intensity. Sunset Rite’s slots are Invocation, Assistant and Offering. Offering has the little flame under the slot, indicating that whatever you put there is consumed. Invocation is Lore; Assistant is a being – it can be a cultist, a hireling or even, as I alluded to before, another summon. Offering are Influences – the kind that you take from the Mansus is quite useful, but stuff like Dread and Restlessness remains useful here. Sunset Rite is quite useful because its requirements are plentiful and the thing it destroys is a thing that is timed and would run out anyway. Different rite cards have different requirements; most of them have a slot for Instruments, that you can only find through Expeditions. As you progress through the game, you’ll find different rite cards and will understand what is the best for your needs.
Examples of Rites
At this point, I’d like to give an explanation of how Rites work… but I don’t want to spoil any of them. The solution to this would be to give make-belive rites and tell you how to cast them, but then there’d certainly be an idiot who’d skim through the text and then complain that my instructions didn’t work. So, in order to explain them, I’ll replace the name of Aspects with the names of Beatles.
So let’s pretend that you want to cast a spell that requires 4 John and 4 Ringo.
Let’s also say that the only rite card you have is Sunset Rite. For clarity and simplicity, I’ll create my examples based on them.
So. Sunset Rite, 4 John and 4 Ringo. Let’s say you have a John lore that gives you 4 points, and a Ringo believer, that (like all believers) has 2 points in its aspect. What do you still need? Well, you need 2 more points of Ringo, so you should plonk around the Mansus until you find some Ringo influence, and use it in the spell. Let’s say you find a low-lever, 2-point Ringo influence; that’s enough for the rite. Now, let’s say that, instead, you find a high-power, 6-point Ringo influence. Not only is that enough for the rite, you don’t even need to bring the Ringo cultist along. You can leave that spot empty, and the rite will work wonderfully!
Conversely, if you had found a 2-point Ringo lore, it wouldn’t help you at all. There’s only one spot for Lore in the Sunset Rite; if you use it for your Ringo lore, you’d need to have your John come from elsewhere. If you found some powerful John influence instead of Ringo, you could use the Ringo lore, the Ringo follower and the John influence. Remember, the source of the influences don’t matter: the only thing that matters is that the thresholds are met.
(Notice, though, that there aren’t rites in the game that require that little points. Most rites will require at least 6 points in an aspect, and might require few in others, but those always require three aspects.)
Now let’s pretend you know a powerful rite to summon a creature. This rite requires, say, 8 Paul, 4 George, and 2 Yoko. You have a Yoko follower and a low-level George lore, and luck into a high-level, 10-point Paul influence. You can now cast the spell! You summon a creature, and it has 10 Paul and 10 George aspects. This will make it quite useful for Expeditions, but you won’t be able to summon it again untl you luck into another influence, right? WRONG, SUCKER. A summon can be an assistant in a rite. Since the summon has more than enough points to meet the 8 Paul and 4 George requirements, all you need is a source of 2 Yoko to cast the rite again and summon another creature. If you have a low-level yoko lore, you don’t need to put an offering, which means that even if the rite goes belly-up and the creature is not succesfully summonned, you can try again with no penalty (other than time).
“Cool story, bro”, you might say, if you are the kind of person who says “cool story, bro”. You might then continue: “But how am I supposed to figure out how to cast these rituals?” And the answer is: experiment, experiment and experiment.
For instance, let’s say you have a high-level thing you can use in a rite. An influence, a follower, doesn’t matter. Place it in the appropriate slot and watch the text. It’ll give you a hint. For instance, let’s say you find a 10-point John influence. Drag it to the Sunset Rite’s Offering slot and its text should change to something like “There are possibilities here. If I add some Ringo, I might be able to [do cool stuff]. If I add Yoko, I might be able to [do other cool stuff].” You then add some Ringo and the text changes to “I could do something interesting if I add some Paul or George”. You add your good ol’ George cultist and the text now says “This conjunction of powers is promising. To [do this cool stuff], I’ll need a significant level of George, plus a little John and Ringo.” Ah, see? You don’t need a 10-point John influence for this rite – four points, or maybe even two will suffice. Then, you may try to add Paul instead of George, to see if your high level of John will be more useful. And if you ever run into a high-level George influence, you’ll know what to do with it.