Winning as a Grail Cult

Overview

This guide offers a complete walktrough to a standard victory in Cultist Simulator, under the aspect of the Grail.

Introduction

Welcome to this walkthrough of Cultist Simulator. I will be guiding you through a Standard Grail Victory.

The guide will start by being quite precise on what to do, and will gradually give you indications on objectives and means to get to them, as since most of this game’s content is randomized, I cannot detail each step, as they change for each playthrough.

• Bullet points like this one tell you what you should do.

I strongly recommend to have a look at the Cultist Simulator Wiki[cultistsimulator.gamepedia.com] should you need all the details about one of the game’s aspects

Please note that a complete playthrough of this game requires several hours of play, heavily influcenced by your luck.

Here is the plan of the playthrough:

1. Obtain a generous amount of resources as early as possible
2. Acquire lore via the easy sources
3. Recruit at least 2 followers per Aspect
4. Dream up the Mansus
5. Prepare expeditions to acquire rare Lore, Items and Rituals
6. Win

Before we start, I’d like to give you a few tips.

• You can pause the game by pressing space. You should abuse this feature, as a lot of the game’s aspects are on a timer. Pausing will give you time to make the proper decisions.
• You can move things around, as long as they stay on the table. Once in a while, it’s a good idea to try to organise your table. Try to find a system that works for you so you don’t have to spend too much time looking for your important cards.
• To move a stack of cards, click the number of cards.
• If you click on an empty slot, the game will highlight the valid cards for this slot.
• Quite early in the game, you will get a blue rectangle on your table. The game will try to send the new cards you get to this rectangle, so place it in an uncluttered part of your table.

Let’s get to it.

Phase 1 : Unlocking Basic Verbs

Your starting screen should look like this :

The big squares are called Verbs, they are things you “do”.
The cards are called, you guessed it, cards, they are things you will use on verbs.

Our first objective is to unlock the basic Verbs, so we can start grinding the Resources (Health, Passion and Reason).

First, let’s get fired :

• Drag and drop the “Menial Employment” card on the “Work” Verb, and click start.
• Wait until the end of the timer, and you should have been fired from your job.

This nets you 2 Funds and 1 Health, and also unlocks the “Dream” Verb.

Health is a Resource, just like Reason and Passion, you can keep track of them at the bottom of your screen.

• Collect all the cards and wait for the Dream Verb to complete its timer.

This should net you 1 Contentment and 1 Passion.

Contentment will be your primary defense against Dread. Using a Dread and a Contentment on the Dream Verb will make them turn into a harmless Fleeting Memory.

You should also have unlocked the “Study” Verb.

• Let it run its timer.

Contentment has a 60s duration and vanshes if not used. A lot of cards have timers, forcing you to use them before they expire. Some cards tun into other cards when expiring.

• Let the Contentment expire as it is not needed for now.

Once the Study verb completes, you should get 9 Funds, 1 Reason, and 1 Bequest.

We’re going to ignore the bequest and start grinding health in phase 2, but before that, let me introduce you to a lot of other verbs that might happen to you.

“Tryst and Interludes” represents the possiblities of an intimate relationship. This might be a source of Contentment at this stage.

“The Wrong Kind of Attention” represents people trying to stop your cult. If you gain Notoriety, a Hunter will try to use it to create Evidence, which might eventually be enough to lock you up, which is a Game Over. However, if nothing is found, you might get a Contentment.

“Bleak Thoughts” grabs your “Dread” cards, and kills you if it manages to get 3 of them without finding any Contentment. For each Dread that this verb holds, you need to provide a Contentment to get rid of a Dread. Once the Bleak Thoughts runs out of Dread, it will vanish. It will however stay around if it has at least 1 Dread, so do your best at providing Contentment to counter it.

“A Trembling in the Air” is you getting hallucinations. It works the same way as Bleak Thoughts, except it grabs Fascination, and kills you if it gets 3 without finding either Dread or Fleeting Memories.

” Exotic Cravings”/ “Mortal Frustrations” cause different outcomes based on your Temptations, but most often, it causes Restlessness, which turns into Dread if you let it expire after 60s.

To deal with the Restlessness, you can Work with your Passion in order to paint, and use the Restlessness as Yearning.

Phase 2 : Hitting the Gym

We will now focus on getting enough Health to handle most of what the game can throw at us.

• Use your Health card on the Study Verb.

Studying a Resource provides an Advancement card, which has several uses, one of them being creating more Resources. Note that studying a Resource does not put it on cooldown, unlike Work, for instance.

At completion, you should have obtained 1 Vitality, plus your Health Back.
A new verb has been unlocked as well : Time Passes.

Time Passes will consume 1 Fund every 60s. This is the main reason why you should pause the game when making decisions. It also represents the passing of time, affecting certain events.

• Put your Health on Study again. We’re going to lose one Fund, but we can afford it.
• Remember to Pause the game before grabbing your cards.

You should now have 2 Vitality cards and 1 Health.

• Put that Health to work, and the 2 vitality cards to Study.

Studying with Advancement cards, such as Vitality, will net you extra health. The more Resources you have, the more Advancement cards are required.

The Study Verb should give you 1 “Skill : a Stronger Physique”, and 1 Health.
The Work verb should give you 1 Fund, 1 Vitality and 1 “Health (Fatigued”). That health will recover in 60 seconds.

It is possible, while unlikely, to get an Injury instead of a Health back from Work. If you let an Injury expire, it will turn into a Decrepitude, making it impossible to heal. It is also possible to have a random Verb coming up and taking one of your Health to turn it into an Affliction, which works just like an Injury.

In order to heal an Injury or an Affliction, you need to Dream with the Injury/Affliction and either a Vitality or a Fund. At this stage of the game, it’s better to use a Vitality, as Funds are not easy to come by.

• For now, put the “Skill : a Stronger Physique” on the Work verb, and add the Health.

Working with the skill decreases your chance of injury. It will also eventually reduce the time required to complete the Work.

This should give you your Skill back, 1 Fatigued Health, 1 Vitality and 1 Fund.

• Send the two Vitalities to Study, and use the refreshed Health together with the Skill to Work.

The Work verb should give you the same cards as the previous iteration, your Skill, 1 Fatigued Health, 1 Vitality and 1 Fund.

The Study Verb should give you a “Vitality : Lesson learned” card. You will need to Study two of these, with your skill in order to get your next Health.

• Work with the Skill and the Health again.
• Wait until completion.
• Study the two Vitality together, in order to make a second “Vitality : Lesson Learned”.
• Study the “Skill : a Stronger Physique” and the two “Vitality : Lesson Learned” to unlock the next tier of skill, and an extra Health.

Your goal is to get up to 4 Health, while dealing with Injuries, Sickness, or Restlessness appropriately.
Remember that you can Study Health in order to gain a Vitality.
Note that Vitality expires after 180s, so you can’t to turn it into a Lesson Learned after that.
Lesson Learned expire after 300s and turn back to Vitality, so they’re not completely lost.

You might randomly get a “The Course of The Heart” Verb that will land you a free Vitality, when you Work or Study with Health. It’s free, so it makes progressing Health even easier.

Now, you should be at 4 Health. Is it possible to get to 5 Health, but you will need to use mystical Lore, and make a choice as to which path you want to go through.
Since we are aiming for a Grail standard victory, the Health skill choice doesn’t matter much, but if you followed this guide, you should not have any Lore yet, so we’ll do this later.

Phase 3 : Getting Smart

We will now focus on Reason.
Unlike Health, working with reason will not give you advancement cards (Erudition) so :

• Keep working with the Health Skill in order to keep producing Funds.

Working with your Health Skill provides Vitality in case you get sick, as well as 1 fund every 50 seconds which should offset your expenses of 1 Fund / 60s, even allowing you to paint once in a while to get rid of Restlessness should you need to.

• Study Reason, to get Erudition
• Merge Erudition to get “Skill : Scolarship”
• Study Reason to get even more Erudition.
• Merge Erudition to get “Erudition : A Lesson Learned”
• Upgrade “Skill : Scolarship” to get up to 4 Reason.

Do not be afraid to let a Lesson Learned decay to get a normal Erudition if you’re not making it in time. You will need to juggle with the decay timers to get this right.

You might get lucky and get an event called “A Light In the Skull” Which will provide an Erudition to progress your skill.

Finally…

Phase 4 : Getting all deep and mysterious

After grinding Health and Reason, it is time to grind Passion.

For this, you can use both Work and Study, however, Work will rarely provide you with Funds, so here is what I recommend

• Study Passion, to get Glimmering
• Merge 2 Glimmering to get “Skill : a Vivid Imagination” and a second Passion.
• Alternate Work with Passion and Health to get Glimmering and Funds.
• Merge Glimmering to get “Glimmering: A Lesson Learned”
• Upgrade “Skill : Scolarship” to get up to 4 Reason.

Almost there…

Phase 5 : Part time clerk, part time cultist

Hopefully, your table should look somewhat similar to this :

We are now going to focus on two things :

1. Obtain a stable income to keep increasing funds
2. Start a cult and get down to business

Now, you should

• Use a Reason card on the Work Verb.
• Use the Bequest and a Passion card on the Study Verb.

You should get a “Junior Position at Glover & Glover”.
This is going to be your main source of income for the entire duration of the game. The idea is to progress to a Senior position, which will provide you with 3 funds every 60 seconds by investing 1 reason.

As long as you have 2 reasons to switch between the dimmed one and the fresh one, you can keep earning that money forever with no drawback.

Your position at Glover and Glover decays in 60 seconds. When it does, you need to provide Passion to argue for your job back. If you let it decay for too long, you will get demoted, but it is fairly easy with enough Reason to get back to where you were.

Unfortunately, getting the senior position is not that easy.

• Use your Junior Position on the Work Verb
• Add a Reason Card in the Diligence slot.

The studying of the bequest should give you the following items:
-Temptation : Power
-A Smith’s Secret
-Directions to Morland’s
-Notes on a possible collaborator

• Dream with the “Temptation : Power”
• Add 1 “Health” to the Calculation slot

This will give you the “Temptation: Sensation” reauired to pursue a Grail Victory.

• Study the directions to Morland’s

The direction to Morland’s will give you a new Verb : Explore, as well as an occult scrap.
You will use this Verb to find new locations, or visit the ones you already know.

• Study the Notes on a Possible collaborator

Phase 6 : Be a good clerk

By providing reason to your work, you should have landed a promotion.
You will now work under Mr Alden, who happens to be a pain.

At random intervals, Mr Alden will ask you to work overtime, adding 30s to your work timer, and asking you to provide 1 Reason in order to get 2 Funds.

This is still worth it, as 90s for 2 Funds is marginally better than 50s for 1 Fund should you decide to wortk with your Health skill.

There is a very low chance (2%) that Mr Alden will retire, making your work much, much easier, and much more lucrative.

Fortunately, your cultist job will eventually provide you with an opportunity to help Mr Alden retire.

As a Grail cult, you will eventually promote your Grail believers to Disciples. When you do, your grail cultist will have a 70% chance of getting rid of Mr Alden. To do get rid of him:

• Use your Grail follower with the Talk verb, and put your job as subject

Upon success, you will be able to get the Senior Position at Glover & Glover, which will, with the proper Reason, ensure 3 Funds / 60s

The senior position an Acceptance slot.

DO NOT PUT ANYTHING IN IT.

Ths would grant your a minor victory, where you settle for a desk job instead of becoming a Cultist.

It is possible to get an even higher position at Glover & Glover, but there is no need to do so, as 3 funds/60s gives you more than enough to finish the game.

Phase 6bis : Be a good cultist

In order to start your cult, you will need to do several things. I’ll touch lightly on them, refer to the proper section for a more advanced walkthrough.

1. Don’t die.
2. Explore to get all the locations
3. Explore Morland’s to get Books
4. Study the books to get Lore
5. Create a Cult.
6. Meet new acquaintances
7. Introduce acquaintances to the cult
8. Dream you way up the Mansus
9. Send your followers on Expeditions

• Explore with Health (or a Cult follower) to find new locations.

You need to discover “Oriflamme’s Auction House”, “The Ecdysis Club”, and “Streets Strange by Moonlight“

• Explore Morland’s with 1 Fund

This will provide you with random books, but drain your Funds.
We are after 3 specific books :

1. Gildersleeve’s Latin Grammar
2. The Orchid Transfigurations, Vol 1: a Feast
3. The Orchid Transfigurations, Vol 2: a Birth

Eventually, Morland’s will run out of books.

• Study the books to get Lore

Some books are in a different language. You will need to find either a tutor for said language, or a book teaching you the language.
From Morland’s, you can get Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.
Try to avoid reading “A Collection of essays” and “A collection of poetry” and stack them instead.

• Talk to an Acquaintance to start a Cult

If you Talk to an Acquaintance, it will start the Creation of the Cult. For this guide, I recommend waiting until you get Grail lore, as you need it to give the Aspect of your Cult.

• Use Lore on the Talk Verb to meet new acquaintances

For a successful Cult, the more people, the better. You might also meet Patrons, who can teach you languages, or give you comissions on Lore. They become extremely useful later on.

• Introduce acquaintances to the cult

After you successfully start your cult, using the Talk Verb with your Cult card, an acquaintance and your Cult Lore will recruit your acquaintance to your Cult. once this is done, you will be able to send them on missions, for instance, get rid of that pesky Mr Alden.

• Dream your way up the Mansus

• Send your followers on Expeditions

Expeditions are very tricky, but key to obtain high grate materials and books.

All of these steps are detailed in the “Cultist Goal” parts.

Knowledge : Locations

There are 4 basic locations. Here’s a breaking down of what they are and how they work.

First is Morland’s.
You can Explore Morland’s with Funds in order to obtain books.
After 30 Books, Morland’s closes and gives you an extra Lore.
Should you want to, you can move your cult Headquarters to the closed Morland’s.

Second is the Ecdysis Club.
You can Explore the Ecdysis with 1 Fund. Most of the time, it will give you a Contentment, making it a prime way of fighting Dread.
It also has a chance to provide you Illumination, Glimmering, or Notoriety. It has a lot of advanced uses for non standard victories.

Third is the Auction house.
It allows you to buy more books. Some of them are exclusive to the Auction House, but the majority can be obtained via Morland’s. If you miss an auction, the item is gone forever. Besides, you may have to invest more than 1 fund, making this place less interesting than Morland’s.

Fourth are the Streets Strange by Moonlight
This location decays after 120s and you have to find it again.
Exploring it might yield Glimmering, Fascination, Contentment, or a level 6 Knock Influence.
Two of these can be used to fight Dread, and exploring the streets does not cost money, and cannot yield notoriety, which makes it a safer, but less efficient way to fight Dread.

Cultist Goal : Staying Alive

If you look at the Time Passes Verb, it will tell you which season it is currently ticking off towards.
At the end of the timer, the corresponding event happens.

• Bleak Thought / Despair

This will kill you if you let it grab 3 Dread cards and have no Contentment to offer.
The best way to fight this is to never let your Dread decay on the table.

In order to get rid of a Dread, you can either Dream it with Contentment, or with Fascination.

Where to get Contentment :
Exploring the Ecdysis Club with 1 Fund.
Exploring the Streets Strange by Moonlight
Dreaming with 1 Fund
Dreaming with 1 Health (can produce Dread too)
Working with Passion or the corresponding Soul skill.

Where to get Fascination :
Lantern influences decay to fascination
Exploring the Ecdysis Club with 1 Fund.
Exploring the Streets Strange by Moonlight
Several places in the Mansus : Painted River, Peacock’s Door, Red Church, Lodge of the Sage Knight, Malleary, Chamber of Ways

• Termbling Thoughts

This will kill you if you let it grab 3 Fascination cards and have no Dread or Fleeting Reminisence to offer.
Try not to let your Fascination decay on the table, especially if a the Time is ticking towards a Season of Visions

In order to get rid of a Fascination, you can either Dream it with Dread, or with Fleeting Reminisence

Where to get Dread:
Letting Restlessness decay
Dream with Health
Talk to a Hunter with Winter Lore
Working a Decrepitude
Letting Winter influences decay

Where to get Fleeting Reminisence:
Resolving a Bleak Thoughts timer or a Trembling Thoughts timer.
Dreaming a Dread with a Contentment
Dreaming a Fascination with a Dread

• Hunters

Hunters will try to send you to trial, where you lose the game.
When the timer hist a Season of Suspicion, Hunters start looking for Mystique, or Notoriety.
If they find Mystique, it resets their search timer.
If they find Notoriety, they will try to turn it into Evidence.
They will then look for evidence on the table.
If they found any, and managed to turn the notoriety into Evidence, they will merge the Evidence together, to create Damning Evidence.
If a hunter finds Damning evidence, they send you or one of your followers to trial.

Try to avoid generating notoriety, or remove it as soon as you can via Heart followers.
If that doesnt work, try to destroy the evidence
If that fails as well, you can try to kill the Hunter. This tends to call an even worse hunter onto the field.

Succeeding an expedition generates Notoriety.
Being good at painting generates Notoriety.
Abducting/Killing strangers generates Notoriety.
Stealing generates Notoriety.

The first thing you want to consider is to delay your Notoriety creating actions if you see a Season of Suspicions coming.

Sometimes, you might not be able to afford to wait. In that case, you can ask one of your Heart cultist to go on Cult Business, where they will try to grab one Notoriety card after 60s and attempt to destroy it. If you time your actions properly, the Notoriety can only be on the table for a few seconds, ensuring that the Hunter won’t have a chance to touch it.

If that does not work, you might end up with Evidence. Talk to a Moth cultist about the Evidence. they will attempt to destroy it. Note that failure will cause Notoriety, and might wound the cultist.

If everything failed, you might want to consider killing the Hunter. This should leave you enough time for the evidence to decay. Depending on the Hunter, you might want to use summons, Edge cultists, or Winter cultists.

Cultist Goal : Explore the Mansus

One of your jobs as a Cultist is to explore the World of Dreams known as the Mansus.

The main reason to visit the Mansus regularly is to collect Secret History (pink) Lore, as using these with the Explore Verb will give you locations to send your followers on Expeditions.

Expeditions are quite dangerous and should not be attempted without proper preparations, but are the main way to collect Books and Items of higher power.

The Mansus has 5 Ways, each one with a different requirement, and different rewards.

First Way : The Wood

In order to reach The Wood, you must Dream with 1 Passion and either a Knock (purple), Lantern (yellow), or Moth (white) Lore fragment.

Once you get the card, if you want to get there, you need to Dream with “Way : The Wood” and 1 Passion.

From there, you can either grab the card you see at the wood, or try to get something from The Well or The Temple of the Wheel.
As a Grail Cult, you try to always draw from the Well, as there is no drawback in doing so.

Second Way : The White Door

To reach the white door, you need to Dream with “The Wood” and either a Knock (purple), Lantern (yellow), or Winter(light blue) Lore fragment with aspect 4.
These shouldn’t be too hard to find, as multiple books from Morland’s will contain these.

Once you get the card, if you want to get there, you need to Dream with “Way : The White Door” and 1 Health.

From there you can draw from Lodge of the Sage Knight or The Orchard of Lights, but neither of these are of particular interest to a Grail cult, other than getting Secret History (pink) Lore.

Third Way : The Stag Door.
To get there, you need to dream with “Way : The White Door” and your Desire.

This will give you a Riddle. The riddle changes each time, but the answer is always a level 6 Lore Fragment.

Dream with the Riddle and the appropriate Lore fragment to get to the Stag Door.

To get to the Stag Door, dream with The Stag Door card and your Reason.

The Stag Door has a couple of interesting draws :
The Ascent of Knives can yield a level 6 Grail influence, should you need it to promote your followers
The Painted River can yield an Erudition : Lesson Learned if you are having trouble leveling up your Reason (Scolarship) skill.

Fourth Way : The Spider Door.

To get there, you need to Dream with the Stag Door and a Grail (bright red), Knock (purple) or Lantern (yellow) Fragment of level 8 or more.

In order to return there, you need to Dream with Way : The Spider Door” and a prisonner to sacrifice. Check the cult business to find out how to get prisonners.

The Spider door can yield a Grail 10 Influence.

The Peacock Door

To get there, you need to Dream with Way: The Spider Door and an Edge (green), Knock (purple) or Lantern (yellow) fragment of the 10th level.

To come back, you need to Dream with Way : The Peacock Door and a pristine mirror.
The options are

• Watchman’s Glass (Found cracked in Secret History 10 Expeditions)
• Wildering Mirror (Found cracked in Secret History 4 Expeditions)
• Frangiclave (Found in The Wreck of the Christabel, Secret History 14 Expedition). This one never breaks.

.
The cracked versions can be repaired by a Forge follower for Spintria.

Cultist Goal : Start a Cult

You can create a cult with any Lore attached to it. For this guide we will go with Grail, but if you want something else, go for it. Note that you can only promote cultist to the third tier if they have the same aspect as your cult.

Creating a cult will generate Notoriety, so you might want to wait until the eyes are off you.

• Use the Talk Verb with an acquaintance.

• Provide the Lore of your Cult. In our case, any Grail Lore.

• Provide Passion (other cults might require different resources)

• Pick an acquaintance to start the cult with.

Congratulations, you’re a Cultist Harry.

Cultist Goal : Recruit Acquaintances

Recruiting acquaintances in your cult will give you the opportunity to use them for Cult business, with results depending on the cultist’s aspect.
Refer to ther section Knowledge : Cult Business for more detailed information.

To recruit an acquaintance in your Cult :

• Use your Cult card on the Talk Verb.
• Add the acquaintance.
• Add your cult Lore.

Knowledge : Patrons

Some of the people you meet will not have the “An acquaintance” title :

They are called Patrons, and behave quite differently than your usual acquaintances.

Mme Bechet

• teaches Greek for Bronze Spintria
• provides commissions for Forge and Grail

Count Jannings

• teaches Latin for Bronze Spintria
• provides commissions for Heart and Edge.

Dr Ibn-al-Adim

• teaches Aramaic for Bronze Spintria
• provides commissions for Lantern and Secret History

Poppy Lascelles

• provides commissions for Winter and Knock after completing her initial request, a sacrifice

Sulochana Amavasya

• teaches Sanskrit for Bronze Spintria
• gives the directions to the Ecdysis Club

Commissions are Workable cards that reauire you to provide Lore about an Aspect, as well as Reason or Passion, in order to gain Spintria.

Ver Substantial commissions will give Silver Spintria, Substantial commissions will give Bronze Spintria, and basic commissions will give Iron Spintria.

These spintria can be used as a currency to learn a new language, or be used to ask a Forge follower to repair a broken tool, for instance, a mirror used to access the Peacock Door.

Cultist Goal : Promote believers

In order to promote a believer, you need to make a ceremony with at least 7 of your Cult influence.

The ceremony works just like recruiting an acquaintance :

• Use your Cult card on Talk,
• Add your follower
• Add your Grail Lore
• Add your Grail influence, if you have any

Note that the Grail Aspect of your follower counts towards the goal of 7, so a Grail believer gives you 2 Grail Aspect.

As such, these followers are easier to promote than the others. Even with a level 4 Grail Lore, if you fetch a Grail influence from either the Ecdysis Club or The Wood : The Well, which are easily accessed, you can promote your Grail believers to disciples.

In order to promote the other believers, you will have to either find stronger influences, or improve your grail lore.

You can also promote your Grail believers to Cyprians, who have 10 Grail Aspect, should you manage to hold a ceremony with 21 Grail influence.

• The Ascent of Knives can give you Grail Influence level 6
• The Spider Door can give you an Grail Influence level 10.
• The Red Church can give you an Grail Influence level 15.

Cultist Goal: Shape your Desire

In order to reach immortality, you need to strenghten your desire.

You should have obtained “Temptation : Sensation” by Dreaming about your temptation with Health.

Strengthen your Temptation to a Dedication by Dreaming your Temptation with Grail Lore

Strengthen your Dedication to an Ascension by Working your Dedication with Way : The Stag Door and Grail Lore of level 6 or higher

Your Ascension will start on the Third Mark.
When the Time changes to a Season of Desire, you will need to provide a Prisonner to level up your Ascension to the Sixth Mark.
If you are unable to provide a prisonner at the required time, the Verb will dim one of your Passion and make your Ascension go down one Mark, but never below Third Mark.

For more information of providing Prisonners, check the Cult Business section.

Cultist Goal : Be the very best

You might remember that we could improve Health, Reason and Passion one last time.
If you do make the right choices, it will make Studying Lore Fragments easier.
here is how to make Studying Grail Lore fragments easier :

• Health :

By Working/Studying Health and Dreaming of The Wood, drawing from The Well, you have three potential sources of Vitality. It is also possible to get vitality from the Ecdysis club, should you have the Funds for it.
Once you manage to complete your 4 Lesson Learned by Studying Vitality cards, you can improve your skill one last time by adding Grail Lore in the “Something More” slot.

• Reason :

The choice between the two Reason skills has little impact on studying high level Grail Lore, so I would recommend going for the one that will help you with Secret History(pink).

If you managed to Dream to the Stag Door and answer the Riddle, Drawing from the Stag Door : The Painted River can give you Erudition : A Lesson Learned.
Otherwise, studying “A Collection of Essays” will also give you a Lesson Learned.
If you have managed to find and keep at least 4, upgrading your skill becomes very simple.
Add Forge (orange), Knock (purple) or Lantern (yellow) to the Something More slot.

• Passion :

For this one, you want to get “Skill : An Open Soul”, by adding Grail lore to your skill increase.
The easiest way to level up this skill is by reading “A Collection of Poetry”, which gives you a Lesson Learned.

Cultist Goal : Visit the World

Expeditions will be your main source of items and books once Morland’s and the Auction House have died down.

Expeditions are tied to Secret History Lore fragments, so you want to collect these, by Dreaming to the Mansus often.

If you Explore the Secret History (pink) fragments, they will give you locations for expeditions.

There are 7 levels of expeditions, based on the Secret History fragment Aspect value, but their difficulty is not tied to their level, the rewards for completing them, however, are.

All expeditions but the last one have between 1 and 3 challenges.

In order to succeed in the expedition and gather the loot, you need to succeed at all challenges.

Each challenge can be defeated by certain aspects. When preparing an Expedition, you can pick two followers, and provide them with Funds.

After waiting for the first 30 seconds, you can click on the challenges to see which aspects can defeat it. You will also be allowed to add more followers to the Expedition, or send more Funds.

For instance, “A Hidden Door” is a challenge that can be defeated by Lantern or Knock.

Each attempt at a challenge will cost 1 Fund from the Expedition.

The chances of success depend only on your follower’s combined Aspect values in the required aspect.

It is not possible to go over 90%. For a given challenge, two Believers with 5 in the proper aspect give you the best chances to overcome the challenge.

If your followers fail to overcome the challenge, they might get wounded, or trigger a curse. A wounded follower drops out of the expedition, lowering the Aspect level of your Expedition.

You can reinforce the expedition with another follower, or provide Funds to make more attempts.

On success, you will obtain loot.

If your expedition was one of the very early ones, you will also have the opportunity to move your Cult Headquarters to that location.

As a Grail Cult, you want to visit

• Forgotten Mithraeum (Secret Histories 2) (To Move your HQ to there)
• Forman House (Secret Histories 6)
• The Vanderschaaf Collection (Secret Histories 6)
• Fermier Abbey (Secret Histories 6)
• The Kusnetsov Endowment(Secret Histories 8)
• Grunewald’s Permanent Circus (Secret Histories 8)
• Voivode’s Citadel (Secret Histories 8)
• Snow’s Keeper (Secret Histories 10)
• Raven Isle (Secret Histories 14)

These contain either books or ingredients related to the Grail Cult.

Knowledge : Cult Business

Once you have recruited an acquaintance in your Cult, they become a believer.

At this point, you can ask them to go on Cult Business :

• Use the believer, or disciple card on the Talk verb.

Each follower has a certain aspect, and their aspect will decide what kind of business they will go for.

The chance of success depends of the aspect level of the follower.
Below 5 aspect means 30% success rate.
Between 5 and 9 aspect means 70% success rate.
10 or more aspect means 90% success rate.

It is not possible to go over 90% success rate.

As a Grail Cult, your Grail followers are the only ones to reach 10 Aspect, meaning that the only action you will be able to make your cult perform with a 90% success rate is getting Prisonners. This works together with your Desires, as it consumes prisonners to advance.

Knowledge : Languages

A fair amount of the books you will find will be written in other languages. You will need to be a Scholar in these languages to decipher them.

There are two ways to learn each language.

1. Find the proper book
2. Find the tutor, and pay them with Spintria

Greek :
Book : Kühner and Gerth (Can be found at Morland’s or at the Auction House)
Tutor : Count Jannings (Met by Talking about Lore)

Latin:
Book : Kühner and Gerth (Can be found at Morland’s or at the Auction House)
Tutor : Mme Bechet (Met by Talking about Lore)

Sanskrit :
Book : Gartside’s Sanskrit Reader (Can be found at Morland’s or at the Auction House)
Tutor : Sulochana Amavasya (Met by Talking about Lore)

Aramaic :
Book : THE MAGUS VON BRANDT’S AUTHENTIC AND UNIQUE ACCOUNT OF THE TRUE TONGUE OF THE TRUE HOLY LAND OF THE HIGHMOST (Found in Secret History 6 Expeditions)
Tutor : Dr Ibn al-Adim (Met by Talking about Lore)

Phrygian :
Book : The Velshorn Inscriptions (Found in Mausoleum of Wolves, Secret History 10 Expedition)
Tutor : Ezeem, the Second Thirstly (Summoned by performing a Rite with at least 10 Grail, 5 Knock and 2 Forge)

♥♥♥♥♥♥ :
Book :The Journal of Alessandro LaCroce (Found in Key-Hunter’s Garret, Secret History 6 Expedition)
Tutor : Teresa (Summoned by performing a Rite with at least 10 Lantern, 5 Knock and 2 Secret History)

Deep Mandaic :
Book : The August Stone (Found in Hunter’s Pits, Secret History 10 Expedition)
Tutor : King Crucible (Summoned by performing a Rite with at least 10 Forge, 5 Knock and 2 Lantern)

Vak :
Book : The Uyrus (Found in Snow’s Keeper, Secret History 10 Expedition)
No tutor, but can be grabbed straight at the Peacock Door in the Mansus

Knowledge : Rites

In some of the books you’ll read, you will find up to 10 different Rites.

Rites are cards that allow you to perform Magic Rituals.

All of them except the Rite Intercalate allow the use of 3 components, Rite Intercalate allows 5.
All of them except the Rite Intercalate sacrifice 1 component, Rite Intercalate sacrifices all 5.

For each Rite, the Desire slot only has to be filled if you are trying to win the game.

Rite of the Sea’s Feasting uses Lore , a Tool, and sacrifices an Ingredient.
The Rite of the Crow’s Quenching uses Lore, an Influence, and sacrifices an Ingredient.
Rite of the Map’s Edge uses Lore, a Tool, and sacrifices an Influence.
Rite of the Crucible Soul uses Lore, a Tool, and sacrifices a Follower or a Prisonner
Sunset Rite uses Lore, a Follower or Prisonner, and sacrifices an Influence.
Rite of the Rebel Striving uses Lore, a Follower or Prisonner, and sacrifices an Tool.
Rite of the Mother’s Mercy uses Lore, a Follower or Prisonner, and sacrifices an Ingredient.
Rite of the Beast’s Division uses Lore, an Infliuence, and sacrifices a Follower or a Prisonner.
Rite of the Watchman’s Sorrow uses a Follower or Prisonner, a Tool, and sacrifices Lore
Rite Intercalate sacrifices Lore, a Follower or Prisonner, a Tool, an Influence and an Ingredient.

Most Rituals are about summoning something or someone, some are used to restore Decrepitude to Health, or turn Passion to Reason, or vice versa.

I will only cover 4 Rituals here, the summoning of the tutors for the advanced languages (♥♥♥♥♥♥, Deep Mandaic, Phrygian), and the Final Ritual that makes you win the game. If you wish to read more, please go to the Cultist Simulator Wiki.

Summoning King Crucible, the Deep Mandaic tutor :
Work any Rite with at least 10 Forge, 5 Knock and 2 Lantern

Summoning Ezeem, the Phrygian tutor :
Work any Rite with at least 10 Grail, 5 Knock and 2 Forge

Summoning Teresa, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ tutor :
Work any Rite with at least 10 Lantern, 5 Knock and 2 Secret History

Winning the game :
Work any Rite with at least 36 Grail, and provide a maxed out Desire.

Phase 7 : The beginning of the End

By now, you should have most of the pieces to move forward in the game.

Your goal is still pretty far away, but we can start talking about it.

in order to win, you must successfully Work a Rite with at least 36 Aspect, and provide your Desire at his maximal power.

The aspect you need depends on your Desire, if you have a Desire for Sensation, then you need 36 Grail aspect.

Obtaining the different pieces to get to 36 is mostly based on luck; so it can take a while.

Lore : The highest Aspect value you can get from Lore is 14
Follower : If you are a Grail cult, the highest Aspect value you can get from a follower is 10 (Unless you gift them items)
Influence : You can get a Grail Influence from the Peacock Door with an Aspect value of 15
Tools : The tool with the highest aspect value has 12
Ingredients : The ingredient with the highest Grail Aspect has a value of 12

If you manage to get your hand on the 15 Influence, with a 12 ingredient, even a 10 Lore will be enough to secure your win.

In the following parts, I’ll cover the locations of the pieces for the end Rite.
You should pursue them more or less independently, and run your final Rite as soon as you have all the pieces.

Here are some combinations that allow a win :

Cultist Victory Piece : Lore

All Rites rely on Lore, so it makes sense to try to have the highest Grail Lore possible to try to reach the 36 required to win.

There are three main ways to improve your Lore

• Get rare books and study them
• Merge two Lore fragments together to get a higher grade fragment
• Turn a fragment from a different lore into one you want

Get rare books :

Grail lore of all levels can be found in books. For instance, the level 14 Grail Lore, Devouring Mysteries, can be found in the Five Creations book.

However, that book can only be found in Secret History 14 Expeditions, making it quite hard to acquire. If you want to know where to find most of the Grail Lore from books, head to the Expeditions chapter.

Merge two fragments of the same Lore :

If you have two fragments of Grail lore of level 4, for instance, you can study them together in order to get one fragment of level 6.
In order to do this, you will have to resolve challenges.

Grail Lore usually presents 3 types of challenges :

Intuition Challenge : provide a Glimmering to overcome the challenge, or if your HQ has the Sanctuary aspect, you can provide that instead.

Paradoxical Resolution Challenge : Provide either a Passion, an Open Soul skill, or a Sanctuary.
A Passion might be permanently damaged.
If you followed this guide, you should have an Open Soul skill.

Practical Experimentation Challenge : Provide either your Health, or a prisonner.
Your Health might be permanently damaged.
You can ask either your Grail cultists or your Edge cultists to seduce/abduct a stranger as prisonner.
If you managed to raise your Grail cultists to Cyprian, they will have a 90% chance of success.

Subvert a different Lore fragment.

You can merge, for instance , a Heart and a Grail fragment of the same level to generate a Grail fragment of higher level.

Each Aspect only turns to one other aspect, except Knock (purple) and Secret History (pink).

Lantern turns into Forge
Forge turns into Edge
Edge turns into Winter
WInter turns into Heart
Heart turns into Grail
Grail turns into Moth
Moth turns into Lantern

In the case of a Grail Cult, the most interesting fragments will be the Heart fragments.

The issue with this method is that is requires you to solve the challenges of both the Heart and the Grail.

Heart has one challenge that differs from Grail, the Obsessive challenge. You can overcome it by using Passion (might be damaged), Never No Skill (which is the variant to the open soul skill) or a Library should your Headquarters have one.

Your goal is to use all of these methods to try to get the highest Grail Lore fragment, in order to use it in a Rite with 36 Grail aspect.

Cultist Victory Piece : Follower

As a Grail cult, you can exhalt a Grail Disciple to a Cyprian, allowing him to get a base Grail Aspect of 10.
To do this, you must hold a ceremony with 21 Grail power. Check the “Promote Follower” section for tips.

After this, you can gift them one tool, once, to raise their Grail attribute, by talking to them about the tool.

+1 : Whispering Amulet : Found in Orthos Woods, The Unnumbered Stones (Secret Histories 6)
+1 : Stained Gloves: Found in St Agnes Hospital, The Forsaken Reach (Secret Histories 2)
+2 : Hallowed Polos, Found in Snow’s Keeper, Tombs of the Shadowless Kings (Secret Histories 10)
+3 : Chalice Murmurous, Found in Raven Isle or Port Noon (Secret Histories 14)

You goal is to have a follower that can significantly contribute to the Final Rite.

Cultist Victory Piece : Tool

The best tool available for Grail Cults is the Chalice Murmurous.

It has an aspect value of 12.

It can be found from either Raven Isle or Port Noon (Secret History 14)

The next best tools are either

• The Red Grail painting, obtained by painting with 4 Passions, Grail Lore and a Vital Pigment
• Hallowed Polos, found in Snow’s Keeper or Tombs of the Shadowless Kings (Secret History 10)

But they only have an Aspect of 8 Grail, making them ill suited for a victory with a 3 slot Rite where you need to get 36 Grail Aspect.

They may, however, be of use if you acquired the Rite Intercalate, which allows you to use more than 3 slots.

Cultist Victory Piece : Ingredient

The best ingredient for a Grail Cult is the Writhing Caul, with a Grail Aspect of 12.

It can be found in

• Grunewald’s Permanent Circus (Secret History 8) (guaranteed)
• Foxlily Meadows (Secret History 8)
• Miah (Secret History 12)
• The Wreck of the Christabel (Secret History 14) (guaranteed)
• Port Noon (Secret History 14)

The second best Ingredient is the Amaranthine Nectar, Grail Aspect 8
which is a random drop from

• The Unnumbered Stones (Secret History 6)
• Foxlily Meadows (Secret History 8)
• Tombs of the Shadowless Kings (Secret History 10)
• Miah (Secret History 12)
• Way :The Peacock Door : The Red Church

With an Aspect of only 8,the Amaranthine Nectar is ill-suited for a victory with a standard Rite, requiring to reach 36 aspect with 3 slots. It might however be useful with the Rite Intercalate, which allows 5 slots.

Cultist Victory Piece : Influence

The best Grail Influence is An Incarnadescence, with a Grail Aspect of 15.

It can be found as a random draw from The Peacock Door : The Red Church

The second best Grail Influence is An Imperative of Appetite, with a grail Aspect of 10.

It can be found as a random draw from The Spider Door.

Final Words

Hopefully, you should have managed to get to this :

Thank you for following me so far,

Cheers

Galithil