Blessings & Temples

Overview

A guide to the gods’ blessings and temples, with notes on how they work and recommendations for which ones to prioritize.

Introduction

In Six Ages, your clan relies on the gods to succeed. Their secrets are, in a sense, the technology that allows you to farm, ride, fight, and deal with neighbors.

If you don’t build shrines—especially to the gods of healing, food and war—you will be making the game far harder for yourself, and maybe even unwinnable.

The gods can grant you their blessings temporarily in exchange for a sacrifice, or permanently if you build a shrine or temple to them. The latter is more efficient in the long term.

You will start the game knowing a few divine blessings—which ones depends on the choices you make during Clan Creation. To learn other blessings, you’ll have to sacrifice to the relevant god for Mysteries.

Keep in mind that while some gods have only a single blessing (like the barley goddess Pela), others have as many as four—and several also have rituals, whose mythic details you also have to sacrifice to them to learn. It can take a long time to learn any specific blessing from Elmal!

Once you know the blessing you want, you can either sacrifice to the god to keep it active for a year, or build them a shrine to keep it up permanently.

This guide will cover shrines, sacrifices, and the blessings that each god can provide.

Sacrifices

On the Magic screen, you can sacrifice to the gods to learn their mysteries (blessings and the details of the sacred stories that form the basis of Gods War rituals), as well as to temporarily activate those blessings. Blessings activated through sacrifice will last for a year.

(You can also sacrifice to the gods in response to events; success depends on the same factors as Magic screen sacrifices.)

The gods don’t always respond to your sacrifices, whether for Mysteries or blessings. Factors that can increase your odds of success:

• Having a circle member who is skilled in Magic.
• Allocating magic to Rituals at Sacred Time! (You can devote one point of magic to Rituals by default, and another if you have a shaman, a worshipper of Relandar, and/or seven religions on the circle—for a maximum of three points.)
• Positive clan magic will help; a deficit (negative magic) will hurt your chances.
• Having a worshipper of the god on the circle, if applicable.
• Sacrificing more—ten goods is generally safe in my experience, though you might need more if other factors are against you.
• While most gods don’t care if you offer them goods or cows, Erissa dislikes animal sacrifice.
• Divine favor makes sacrificing easier, and divine disfavor makes it harder. Avoid going more than six years between Gods War rituals.

Aside from Erissa, the gods in Ride Like the Wind favor animal and trade goods sacrifices equally. But since cows reproduce themselves and goods don’t, I recommend sacrificing goods if you’ve got a choice.

(Exception: if it’s very late in the year and your total goods number is close to or below the amount you’ll spend on upkeep, you should not sacrifice goods.)

One last note on sacrifices: A blessing is either active or it isn’t. You can’t get blessings squared, so don’t sacrifice for a blessing you already have active.

(Erissa’s Healing and Curing blessings are exceptions here—in circumstances where you have a large number of wounded/sick people, you may want to sacrifice for immediate healing even if you already have the blessing active.)

Shrines, Temples, and Great Temples

If you want to enjoy a blessing permanently instead of sacrificing for it every year or so (highly impractical), you’ll need to build a shrine to that god. If you want more than one blessing from the same god, you can enlarge your shrine to a temple or even a great temple.

You can only build a shrine if you know at least one of the god’s blessings. Likewise, you can’t expand that shrine to a temple until you know at least two blessings, and you can’t build a Great Temple until you know three. (This is reasonable: it prevents you from wasting the cost of temple upkeep if you’re not actually getting the number of blessings you’re “paying” for.)

You can build a shrine to all of the gods listed in this guide, and a temple to most of them. However, you can only build a Great Temple to Elmal, your chief god.

Most gods have more blessings than their largest temple size can support. So you’ll have to make choices about what to prioritize.

Note that the annual maintenance (as opposed to building cost) of a temple is more than twice that of a shrine, and that of a great temple, more than twice that of a temple.

If you don’t have enough goods to maintain all of your temples at the end of the year, you will lose a random shrine. (Theoretically, you could also lose a shrine for lack of herds. In practice, herds large enough to sustain your clan are also large enough to maintain your temples.)

Make sure to visit the Magic screen in the last two seasons of the year. One of your advisors will always tell you how much you’re spending on your temples.

If you don’t have enough goods (less than 60 for this example clan) towards the end of the year, you need to send out a trade caravan or conduct a venture that grants goods, such as Trade or Trap for Furs.

You also have the option of reducing a temple to a shrine, or dismantling a shrine entirely. (This is also an option if you built a shrine for a blessing that you no longer find useful.)

Even if you can pay the upkeep, you can’t have the largest possible temple to every god at once. The number of shrines and temples your clan can support is limited by your population. Eventually, you will have so many that you can’t build a new shrine or build up a shrine to a temple without demolishing another one.

There are ways to increase your worship limit, including:

• Allies who worship your pantheon. Since allies worship at one another’s temples, having allies allows you to support more shrines.
• The Worship venture will likewise allow you to support more shrines, although it is temporary.
• Several treasures exist that lower the number of worshippers needed to sustain the shrine/temple of a particular god; acquiring such a treasure may allow you to build a new shrine, even if you were previously at the limit.
• Finally, you can of course increase your population. Keep in mind that this is difficult and slow—and if your population grows too great, your clan will want to split in two.

It’s worth noting that this limit affects your ability to build new shrines, but not your ability to sustain existing ones. For example, if your clan splits, the decrease in population won’t cause you to immediately lose several temples—but if you lose them after that point, you may not be able to rebuild them.

If the god has more blessings than your temple size for them can support at a time, it’s worth keeping in mind that you can switch blessings at any time. Just tap the active blessing you no longer want, then tap the blessing you want to replace it with. This doesn’t use up a turn, by the way!

Here, the clan has a shrine to Ekarna providing her Understanding blessing, and has sacrificed for Silvertongue as well within the past year. They also know her Market blessing, although it is inactive; they could switch from Understanding to Market at any time. Finally, Trading has a gray box, meaning that the clan still has to sacrifice for Ekarna’s Mysteries in order to learn it.

If you look at the left of the image, you can see that some of this basic information is listed next to Ekarna’s name in the god list—the existence of a shrine, and the fact that the clan has sacrificed to her within the last year. Note that the “sacrifice” icon shows up whether the sacrifice was for mysteries or a blessing, and whether it succeeded or not!

For a few gods (Elmal, Nyalda, Gamari and Busenari, all solar pantheon mainstays), building a full temple (as opposed to a shrine) opens up events in which other clans will seek to conduct a ceremony at your temple. This gives you a chance to improve your relations with them.

And for gods who have rituals as well as temples, building a temple will make it easier to persuade fellow Riders to aid you in performing that god’s ritual. (“Look, we take Inilla seriously in our clan, you can trust us to perform her ritual correctly! Just look at our beautiful temple to her…”)

Blessings by Area

You can check on what blessings your clan knows and has active whenever you like. Tap the Magic rune (looks like an R) near the Lore button to see this view. (And to switch back to Concerns, tap the little text icon next to it.)

Blessings your clan knows will show up as black runes; unknown ones are gray, and active blessings are highlighted in yellow. You can tap a rune to see the description of the blessing.

They’re grouped by their area of influence—which screen of the game they have the most to do with. If you’re having trouble with a particular area of the game, try seeking blessings related to it.

Note that although no blessing is listed more than once, some are actually useful in multiple areas. For example, Dostal’s Sureshot is listed under Wealth because it helps bring in food, but it is also useful in warfare because it helps your skirmishers.

The blessings of Buseryan and Venurtera will not appear unless you can currently worship those gods.

This view also displays active spirit abilities, all of which display the Spirit rune.

(For the record, the images here don’t reflect my recommendations—this is the clan I was using to figure out what some of the blessings I don’t usually use actually do, so a lot of the active blessings aren’t actually what I’d recommend. But I thought visuals might be handy anyway.)

Blessings associated with the clan screen include those that help clan mood, health, and venture efforts, and things that specifically influence clan members, like Bless Children (increases the birth rate) and Instruction (which helps nobles’ abilities increase).

• Advice (Relandar)
• Bless Children (Nyalda)
• Cooperation (Nyalda)
• Curing (Erissa)
• Healing (Erissa)
• Hope (Erissa)
• Instruction (Relandar)
• Kumis (Gamari)
• Law (Hyalor)

There’s only one blessing that primarily influences things on the Magic screen.

• Clan Lore (Relandar)

These blessings help your explorers and other expeditions.

• Find (Inilla)
• Fleethoof (Gamari)
• Horsebreaker (Hyalor)
• Pathfinder (Zarlen)
• Safe Travel (Zarlen)
• Tracking (Dostal)

These blessings can help your dealings with those outside your own clan.

• Hospitality (Nyalda)
• Recording (Buseryan) (not pictured)
• Understanding (Ekarna)

War blessings help your combat abilities in raids, events, and even rituals.

• Firearrow (Osara)
• Flaming Lance (Elmal)
• Morale (Elmal)
• Protection (Elmal)
• Steadfast (Elmal)

While all of these are listed together on the screen, I’m going to break them up into subcategories.

Blessings that increase the amount of food your clan produces:

• Bless Barley (Pela)
• Milk Blessing (Busenari)
• Milk Blessing (Uryarda)
• Rootle (Inilla)
• Sureshot (Dostal)

Blessings that make your herds grow faster:

• Calf Blessing (Busenari)
• Cattle Ward (Busenari)
• Colt Blessing (Gamari)
• Horsefriend (Hyalor)
• Kid Blessing (Uryarda)

Blessings that help your clan trade or produce extra trade goods:

• Crafting (Nyalda)
• Market (Ekarna)
• Porcelain (Venurtera) (not pictured)
• Silvertongue (Ekarna)
• Trading (Ekarna)

Busenari

The Cow Mother, daughter of Nyalda, makes our cattle prosper.

If you build a temple (not shrine) to Busenari, you may experience an event in which another clan asks to use it; agreeing will aid your relations with that clan.

The treasure the Clay Cow reduces the number of worshippers needed to sustain a shrine or temple to Busenari.

Increases the fertility of our cows.

If you choose the Milk Gift as your Famous Event during Clan Creation, you will start the game knowing this blessing, and on Easier difficulty you will have a shrine providing it.

This basically makes your herds grow faster. Since your herds are both a major source of food and a significant source and visible signifier of wealth, this is a very, very good thing.

While all of Busenari’s blessings are good, I usually prioritize this one above the others. If I have a shrine, this is usually what’s active; if I want something else too, I build up to a temple.

Protects our cattle herds from raids and predators.

If you’re having trouble with cattle raids making off with your hard-earned hoofed wealth, this can be useful! Especially if your herds grow faster than your armed forces. Unless that’s a problem, though, I usually prioritize Busenari’s other two blessings ahead of this one.

Increases the yield of our cows.

This one increases the amount of food your herds produce. It’s very, very useful when you’re dealing with a shortage of food. However, if your food situation is secure, I’d personally go for Calf Blessing above this—the more cows you have, the more food you have, after all.

However, if you go the opposite direction, a good trader can turn food into cows through trade!

And building up a temple so that you can have both active is definitely a reasonable course of action.

Buseryan

Watcher of the Stars, god of written lore.

Note that you can only worship Buseryan if you choose him as the god your ancestors took from Nivorah during Clan Creation.

The treasure the Gazzam Ledger decreases the number of worshippers needed to support Buseryan’s shrine.

Documents dealings with other clans, avoiding inadvertent violations of treaties and bargains.

I don’t have a lot of experience with this blessing. I believe it helps with your relations with other clans, similar to Literacy in King of Dragon Pass.

It’s worth noting that this is the only blessing that a shrine to Buseryan can keep active—his other, Divination, is sacrifice-only.

Can reveal threats or whether or not treasures still exist on your lands.

The first can warn what threat you may face—for example, if you need to worry about the Alkothi just now.

The second option tells you whether you can still find treasures on your land (i.e., if it’s worth it to keep exploring there). I think it checks for exotic goods as well as literal treasures, but I’m honestly not sure.

In my experience this blessing isn’t all that useful, but it can be fun to play with.

Note that you can’t build a shrine to supply yourself with Divination permanently: you can only sacrifice for this blessing.

Dostal

God of Hunting, and husband of Inilla.

Improves hunting yield and helps skirmishers

This is my favorite blessing from Dostal. It gives you more food and helps you win battles—what more could you ask for? I basically always try to have a shrine to Dostal with this blessing active as soon as possible.

Helps hunters and trackers locate what they search for.

If you choose to adopt hunter-gatherers in Clan Creation, you will start knowing this blessing. (The other two adoption blessings are probably more useful, though, especially in the early game.)

I believe this helps with vs Elusiveness tests, including finding treasures and such while exploring. Not useless, but Sureshot is better.

Ekarna

Goddess of Trade, Communication, and Conciliation.

Ekarna’s shrine allows you to maintain an extra trade route, and her temple another on top of that. So if your clan prioritizes trade, having a shrine or temple to Ekarna is a very good idea!

Personally, I’d go with Market for a shrine, and add Understanding if I expanded to to a temple. But Ekarna doesn’t really have any stinkers among her blessings.

Makes our markets more profitable.

If you choose the Brass Bazaar as your Famous Event in Clan Creation, you will start knowing this blessing.

While all Ekarna’s blessings are useful, this one gives you more goods whether you send out traders or not, which is handy. (Although it will of course benefit you more if you have more trade routes, supporting a more frequent clan market.)

Improves the profit of trading missions.

As is perhaps obvious, this blessing only helps when you send out caravans to trade with your neighbors. If you don’t do that a lot, it’s not going to be worth it. If you do send out a lot of caravans, this blessing becomes a wise investment.

Helps our traders and negotiators.

Searching the debugs, this one mostly seems to help the emissaries you send to other clans, although the phrasing suggests that’s not all it does.

Helps our dealings with foreigners.

This blessing gives you a boost when you deal with any culture other than your own, human or not.

Given that over half the neighboring clans are members of different cultures—and that’s before getting into the inhuman peoples, or the residents of the human kingdoms to the south and north—this is a pretty useful blessing. It’s also not actually restricted to peaceful dealings—this will help you deal with foreigners no matter what course of action you choose.

Elmal

Bright god of war, ruler of the sky gods, and our principal deity.

Because Elmal is your most important god, he’s the only one you can build a great temple to, granting three active blessings. However, the diminishing returns of larger temple sizes means that this may not be a great idea—Elmal’s great temple is expensive to build and keep up. I usually have either a shrine or a temple to him.

Elmal is also the god with the greatest number of mysteries—two rituals and four blessings, a total of six. This means that if you want to learn anything specific from him, you’d better get started early, or pick it up in clan creation if you can.

Also, it’s worth noting that the size of the shortcall (the portion of your warriors who respond in emergencies) increases as you learn more war blessings. So learning Elmal’s many blessings can be a good idea.

If you build a temple or great temple (not shrine) to Elmal, you may experience an event in which another clan asks to use it; agreeing will aid your relations with that clan.

Doubles the effectiveness of our elite warriors.

This gives you greater effective numbers—your elite warriors (Swords) fight like five normal ones (Bows), and with this blessing that becomes ten. (If you additionally get the right benefit from Elmal’s ritual, you can raise it to twenty!) While numbers aren’t the most important element in winning battles, they can still help.

Reduces wounds in battle.

If you chose Yelm as your first god during Clan Creation, you will start with a shrine to Elmal providing this blessing.

In Six Ages, “wounded” means “injured too badly to work or fight”. Wounded people do little beyond eating and telling people not to bother them; they can’t help defend the clan and they can’t help farm either. You can use Erissa’s Healing blessing to get them on their feat again, or—especially if your clan focuses on raiding—you can use Protection. (To be honest, you might need both sometimes!)

Improves the confidence of our warriors in battle.

This helps your warriors remain firm in the face of intimidation, opening up the chance to use risky tactics. Of course, if their morale is already high (likely if you’ve been winning battles lately), they don’t especially need the help.

In other words, if you’re having trouble in battle with your warriors breaking and running from the enemy, this blessing is useful. Otherwise, don’t bother—the other options are better.

Improves our chances when defending.

If your Famous Event in Clan Creation was the Battle of Akashar, you will start knowing this blessing.

This is about what it sounds like. If you’re having trouble in combat, it’s a good idea to swear off raiding for the time being and get Steadfast active so that you’ll have a better chance of winning when the fight comes to you. And raid-heavy clan will experience a lot of raids in retaliation, so this blessing is useful to them too…

Erissa

Pacifistic goddess of Health and Healing.

I recommend building a shrine to Erissa early in the game, and switching between Curing and Healing depending on whether you have more sick or injured clan members. While you can expand the shrine to a temple, regularly switching blessings generally works pretty well.

You can check the number of sick and injured people in your clan on the Clan screen, or on Erissa’s sacrifice screen. Additionally, “Many Injured” or “Many Sick” concerns may pop up if enough people are injured/ill to seriously impact the clan as a whole.

Erissa is unusual among the gods in that she dislikes animal sacrifice. Most gods don’t care what you give them for their mysteries and blessings; Erissa actively prefers goods over cows.

The treasure Aronpala’s Bulb decreases the number of worshippers needed to maintain a shrine or temple to Erissa.

Restores our sick people to health.

In Six Ages, “sick” people don’t have the sniffles; they’re bedridden. Your sick clan members aren’t able to help the clan by working or fighting, so it’s imperative to get them on their feet as soon as possible.

If you sacrifice for the blessing (which you can do even if it is active in your shrine), the blessing prioritizes healing leaders (circle members and other nobles with portraits), then Swords, and finally the rest of the clan. (Note that occasionally there are exceptions—there’s a particular event chain involving a sick chief, and you cannot cure them by sacrifice.)

Restores our wounded people to health.

If your clan’s Famous Event in Clan Creation was the Bone Mending Ballad, you will start knowing this blessing.

Healing is essential for similar reasons to Curing—you want your injured people to recover ASAP, especially if you’re a raiding-heavy clan. (If you have ten Swords and all are injured in battle, guess what? You effectively have zero Swords. Call on blessed Erissa if you want any of them to help defend the clan when your raid targets come back for revenge!)

As with Curing, Healing acts first on leaders, then Swords, and finally the rest of the clan.

Keep in mind that certain injuries—for example, if your warleader is blinded by Wheels—will not heal of their own accord. However, these injuries can be healed by sacrifice—and must, if you ever want that warleader to help you in battle again!

Helps us resist fear.

The problem with Hope is that Erissa’s other two blessings are essential. It would have to be game-changingly awesome to be worth using over either of the others, and it isn’t. As a matter of fact, I’m not actually sure what it does.

My best guess as to what it does is that it helps your leaders succeed at vs Fear tests—inspiring people to stay stalwart in the face of an enemy charge or some other grim situation, for example. Not useless, but I prefer Erissa’s other blessings. I’ve also seen advice that makes it sound as if this blessing helps your clan in dealing with foreigners—which would be useful, but again, not as much as Healing or Curing.

If you know this blessing and don’t have significant numbers of sick or wounded people, there’s no harm in keeping it active for a bit… but remember to switch back once you do have sick or injured people to worry about.

Gamari

Horse goddess, rescued by Hyalor.

If you build a temple (not shrine) to Gamari, you may experience an event in which another clan asks to use it; agreeing will aid your relations with that clan.

The treasure Gamari’s Feather decreases the number of worshippers needed to maintain a shrine or temple to Gamari.

Increases the fertility of our mares.

More horses is always good! Horses are valuable and culturally significant, and your people will become notably unhappy if you don’t have enough for every adult to ride. They’re also valuable: a Rider clan with few horses is poor and worthy of mockery, while one rich in horses can make a lot of money selling them.

Improves clan mood by producing more kumis.

Presumably what it sounds like, a mood bonus.

Decreases the travel time of expeditions.

This can be nice if you’re sending your clan circle members away on missions—Fleethoof means you won’t be deprived of their presence and advice for long!

On the other hand, if you’re using exploration to keep Beren away from the clan and delay the endgame, this blessing is actively counterproductive.

Hyalor

Hero who brought us horses and gave us law.

Hyalor is a major god for your people, and your advisors are always enthusiastic about honoring him. However, one midgame choice can make a shrine to him even more important.

If you accept the Cenala revelation, your shrine or temple to Hyalor will grow sacred vines, granting a Wilds blessing. This will help your hunters and foragers—but if the shrine is destroyed, you’ll lose the vines, and even if you rebuild it they won’t grow back.

Therefore, Cenalan clans should make sure to build a shrine to Hyalor, and avoid having shrines collapse over Sacred Time for lack of the goods to maintain them.

You can build a shrine up to a temple, or reduce a temple to a shrine, without losing the vines.

Allows the taming of wild horses.

I’ll be honest: in the dozens of games I’ve played, I’ve tried to capture wild horses only a couple of times. This blessing is necessary to do that; you don’t need it active the whole time, only when you launch the mission. When I’ve done this successfully, I’ve ended up with 6 horses. Not terrible, considering how valuable they are and the fact you don’t have to pay for them—but it’s still not my favorite blessing of Hyalor.

Prolongs the life of our horses.

If you play on Easier difficulty, you will start the game knowing this blessing.

This blessing increases your horse herds, without the need to send special exploration missions out. Given that horses are precious, useful, and expensive to buy—not to mention very culturally significant—this is the Hyalor blessing I usually keep active. It’s always good for a Rider clan to have more horses.

Keeps unresolved disputes from souring clan mood.

My best guess is that this helps the clan mood out when your circle doesn’t have the social skills to make their decisions go over well.

Inilla

Goddess of Foraging, and wife of Dostal.

Helps locate hidden things.

I think this helps with vs Elusiveness tests. And given it’s grouped with Map blessings, it may help find treasures while exploring.

Helps foragers gather more food.

If you play on Easier difficulty, you will start knowing this blessing, and may have a shrine providing it (unless your Famous Event was either the Milk Blessing or the Grain Contest, or your ancestors were the best herders—in which case you will get a different shrine).

This is my preferred blessing from Inilla. More food is always good! Also, because I’ve seen some confusion on this point, I’d like to clarify that foraging brings in food year-round—not just when you send out foragers on the map or conduct a foraging venture. This blessing is useful to have up even if you don’t do those things.

Nyalda

The great Earth Mother, who provides food and clothing.

Nyalda has a lot of mysteries, and they’re not at all equally useful. She offers one extremely practical blessing, two that can be quite handy in specific circumstances, one that’s usually terrible, and a rather finicky ritual. If you choose Nyalda as your first god, you’ll start knowing her most useful blessing and not have to sacrifice to her for the rest of the game, unless you want to.

If you build a temple (not shrine) to Nyalda, you may experience an event in which another clan asks to use it; agreeing will aid your relations with that clan.

The treasure the Nyalda Stone reduces the number of worshippers needed to sustain a shrine or temple to Nyalda.

Increases the fertility of our women.

Children in Six Ages come of age (and start to do adult work) at thirteen. While this is early by modern standards, it’s a significant amount of time in the game. Until it’s been active thirteen years, this blessing basically just gives you extra mouths to feed. (Okay, the extra numbers probably do raise your worship cap.)

Basically, the only time I’ve ever kept this blessing up was when I was actively pursuing the Splitter achievement (which requires having so many people that the clan becomes unmanageable and you split in two). Otherwise, don’t bother.

Helps basketmakers, potters, and weavers produce more.

If you choose Nyalda as your first god in Clan Creation, you will start with a shrine granting this blessing.

This blessing gives you extra goods. It’s my favorite of Nyalda’s blessings, and I recommend it.

Also, if you choose Nyalda as your first god, you start with this blessing active and never have to sacrifice to Nyalda again unless you want to. Which, in some games, I don’t.

Enhances venture effects.

If you chose the Werris Mur as your Famous Event in Clan Creation, you will start knowing this blessing.

This can be handy. If you know it, I recommend switching your shrine to provide it immediately before performing a venture, and then switching back to Crafting afterwards.

Eases dealing with guests and allows more feasts.

This blessing allows you to use the Feast venture multiple times a year, even if you’ve already performed the maximum number of ventures (provided you have enough food, of course). This is a nice way to increase your clan mood. It also unlocks the Feast Neighbors venture, which helps your relations with your neighbors.

As with Cooperation, I would generally recommend switching to this blessing before performing a feast venture, then switching back. (However, if you have a temple to Nyalda, this is a reasonable choice of second blessing to keep active, given its additional function of helping out with guests.)

Osara

Flame Sister, Elmal’s daughter and patron of women warriors.

The treasure the Singing String reduces the number of worshippers needed to maintain Osara’s shrine.

Improves the effectiveness of our skirmishers.

Osara has just the one blessing, so you know what you’re getting from her when you sacrifice.

It’s also quite useful for making your skirmishers effective; I recommend sacrificing for this blessing and building a shrine early in the game. Especially combined with Dostal’s Sureshot, it takes skirmishing from a dubious proposition to an excellent strategy.

Pela

Barley Mother, and goddess of the land.

The treasure the Obsidian Sickle reduces the number of worshippers needed to maintain a shrine to Pela.

Improves crop yield.

If you choose the Grain Contest as your Famous Event, you will start knowing this blessing, and (on Easier difficulty alone) you will start with a shrine keeping it active as well. You will also start knowing this blessing if you choose to adopt farmers.

Note that you can gain this blessing in two different ways in Clan Creation. Making both of those choices is redundant, and you’ll lose out on another possible benefit.

This is a very useful blessing! I definitely recommend getting the shrine up ASAP. However, since it’s Pela’s only blessing, it’s quite easy to learn through sacrifice, so I recommend taking something else in clan creation.

Relandar

The wise advisor and teacher.

Fair disclosure—Relandar is the god I tend to neglect the most, so I’m a little vague on his blessings.

Improves the quality of advice.

You will start the game knowing this blessing if you chose Seventeen Banner Camp as your Famous Event in Clan Creation.

I think it lets advisors give better advice than their skills would normally allow—for example, if your best warrior is only Very Good, this can help them give solid warleader advice anyway.

Helps leaders develop their abilities to their fullest.

I believe that this blessing causes your leaders’ abilities (all of them, not just the ones in your clan circle) to increase faster.

Strengthens our knowledge of sacred stories and lore.

You will start knowing this blessing if you chose the Star Ledger as your Famous Event in Clan Creation.

I believe what it does is help out with Lore tests, which would make it a good choice if you have no circle member who is especially good at that skill.

Uryarda

The Goat Mother, daughter of Nyalda, makes our goats prosper.

Both of Uryarda’s blessings are useful, and it’s a reasonable choice to build her a temple so you can have both. In runs where I have only the shrine, personally I go for Milk Blessing when I’m actively food insecure, and Kid Blessing otherwise, because after a certain point extra food is likely to go bad, while extra goats will produce yet more goats.

Although a cow is worth two goats, as far as I can tell Uryarda’s blessings are worth exactly as much as Busenari’s.

(However, unlike Busenari, she doesn’t have a special temple event. So if you build a temple to only one of them, it should be Busenari.)

The treasure the Copper Fleece reduces the number of worshippers needed to maintain a shrine or temple to Uryarda.

Increases the fertility of our goats.

If you play on Easier, your ancestors were the best herders, and you did not choose either the Grain Contest or the Milk Gift as your Famous Event in Clan Creation, you will start knowing this blessing and with a shrine providing it.

This blessing increases the rate at which your herds grow. More goats = more food and more wealth, basically.

Increases the yield of our goats.

If you adopted goat herders in Clan Creation, you will start the game knowing this blessing.

This one gives you more food.

I usually chose to adopt goat herders in order to have this blessing available ASAP—in my opinion it’s the handiest option from that choice. Having Uryarda’s shrine giving you more food in the early game is very useful; later you can switch to Kid Blessing if that seems more useful, or build the shrine up to a temple and have both.

Venurtera

Goddess of Pottery in Dara Happa.

Note that Venurtera is not a goddess you can worship at the beginning of the game—no matter your choices during Clan Creation.

There is an event chain that starts with a group of Dara Happan refugees begging your clan for sanctuary. If you grant it, let them remain with you as long-term guests, and choose in the end to adopt them and allow them to retain their own worship, they can tell you how to build and maintain a shrine to Venurtera. At this point, Venurtera will appear in the gods list and you’ll be able to build her shrine immediately (no need to sacrifice to learn the blessing!)

However, there’s a catch: if your ancestral enemies are Dara Happans, your ancestors will not be happy with you for taking in some of their foes! In fact, you will be dealing with ancestral displeasure for the entire rest of the game. Venurtera probably isn’t worth that, sorry to say!

Produces fine porcelain.

What this blessing actually does is give you an extra Exotic Good. In other words, it raises the cap on the number of trade routes you can maintain by one.

If you have as many trade routes as you can maintain, it’s definitely worth it to build this shrine so you can have another.

Zarlen

Bright-Tailed Wanderer, god of explorers.

The treasure the Radiant Lodestone reduces the number of worshippers needed to maintain a shrine to Zarlen.

Enhances our explorers, and helps them find their way home.

This is the Zarlen blessing I basically always go for. Exploration is dangerous, and Pathfinder is the deciding factor that makes it more than a way to get rid of nobles you don’t want. It gives you a solid chance of actually getting fun exploration events and various rewards. It doesn’t make exploration safe by itself, of course—you’ll also want to commit magic to Exploration at Sacred Time, for one thing—but it helps a lot.

If you want to explore at all, this blessing is essential, and you should get it up as soon as possible.

Watches over our missions so they are not ambushed.

Okay. The thing about Safe Travel is this: if you don’t explore, bandits and other threats will build up, and you may start losing expeditions (caravans, emissaries, leaders sent to assist other clans’ sacred rituals, and so on). This is what Safe Travel helps with. Fine, good so far.

But, if you explore new territory (the bare areas of the map) frequently, you will deal with the bandit threat to the degree that missions will basically never be ambushed.

In other words: you only want Safe Travel if you’ve sworn off exploration. Personally, I never bother with it; I explore enough that it’s basically useless to me. But if you decide to be a homebody clan, you may want to keep it active. (Alternately, you might be able to deal with the problem by using the Scouring for Bandits venture, though I don’t know how efficient that would be.)

There is basically no circumstance in which you will want both of Zarlen’s blessings active. They’re designed so that having one of the two is useful, even essential, but having both is pointless.

Concluding Advice

Build shrines rather than sacrificing for blessings—in the long run it’s much more cost-effective.

Keep your temples (as opposed to shrines) to a minimum, because they’re much more expensive to maintain.

Remember that you can swap out blessings depending on what you need currently. As the game goes on, your circumstances will change, and your clan will need different things. For example, you may well need more food shrines active in the endgame than you did in your earliest years.

If you’re having trouble with a specific area of the game, see if you have the relevant blessings active. If you’re struggling with warfare, seek the blessings of Elmal, Osara, and Dostal. If you’re poor, consider Ekarna and other gods who provide wealth-related blessings.

Yearly Sacred Time magic can compensate for weaknesses in your shrine strategy, and vise versa. This gives you a bit more freedom in what to focus on.

Finally, keep track of your upkeep costs and make sure you don’t have a goods shortfall at the end of the year—losing a shrine because you didn’t have enough goods for those end-of-year sacrifices is always frustrating.