Guide To Your Ascension (Basic, no DLC content)

Overview

A comprehensive guide on your Ascension to the Tricuspid Gate.

Before getting to Occult matters

First and foremost, the most fun you have while playing Cultist Simulator is learning how to ascend to a Long by yourself. I have died and restarted over 20 times before reaching my first victory even if it was just a minor victory, so the road to becoming a Long is hard but exciting one! If it were that easy everyone would be immortal. But of course if you seem like you are stuck at a part of the game and don’t know what to do, feel free to check out the guide and I will try my best to answer any questions you have! Just remember, don’t frequent this guide if you want to have fun in this game. But if you do want something else added to the guide, leave it in the comments and i’ll try to add it ^^
Now let us delve into the Mansus together!

General Tid-Bits

Sure this may seem self explanatory but srsly, I have seen ppl who go through a whole run without pausing once and dying to a Dread check. Take the game slow, the second a Verb(the Work, the Talk ect) finishes PAUSE and READ the verb. The reason you pause after a Verb is completed is so you don’t waste any time restarting that verb again and to also check if the verb you have completed has any important cards to give you. You may gain a dread card from a verb so you will need to set up your next few moves to get rid of that dread. The reason I also emphasised READ is that the later you go into the game, more cards will appear, new cards that you don’t know what the ♥♥♥♥ it even does. 9/10 times, the card itself will explain what it does.

Make sure grid snap size is either at 1/2, 1/4 or off completely, this essentially gives you more board space which will need at end game

Make sure all your ♥♥♥♥ isn’t all over the place, have sections of the board set for certain cards such as a section only for books or a section only for your stats. Here is how I organise my board but this board is very late game so you can choose whether you want to look at it or not.
My board>>

After dying, you will gain options to take another path to ascension most of the times those choices will be Aspirant, Some rich kid(Forgot the name) and Physician. IMO Physician best rebirth, the 2 funds can rack up to be very very useful and I never have funding problems for anything. But feel free to stay at yoursenior position at Glovers, as this also gains 2 funds, granted you don’t put passion in and end the game there. Not only this but you can get an even bigger promotion which is very worth, never done this before as i’m a lazy ♥♥♥♥ and am happy with my 2 funds every 60s(or is it 30s?)

3 most important locations

Morlands, Orrflames and The Ecdysis Club.
If you don’t have these 3 locations, no wonder you’re not getting anywhere! You most likely already have Morlands, and now you need the other two. How you ask? Just put health into the explore verb or have a cultist do your work for you, you will either find a hireling, the Streets Strange by Moonlight or one of those two locations. If you do find the Streets Strange by Moonlight you can put that in your explore verb and it can give you glimmering, fascination, Subtle Fracture and contentment. So it can yield some very nice things but beware fascination if you have a sanity check coming up soon, but due to the new lore upgrading system, this can be a very easy to gain it for that! Oriflames is the place you go to if the books at Morlands have run out, or you want to get some ingredients or tools, most notably at Oriflames you can get STUMM!, which contains the sunset rite which imo is the best rite in the game. The Ecdysis Club is where you go to gain some contentment to counter dread, but be careful as you can get fascination or notoriety from going here aswell.

Lores

Forge, Lantern, Grail, Heart, Moth, Edge, Knock, Winter and Secret Histories. The 9 principles. You will mainly find lores from studying books. The lore aspects(magnitude) go up like this: 2,4,6,8,10,12 and 14. However, if you have 2 rank 2 lores for lantern, they can be combined together to create 1 rank 4 lore. Recently, in a new update, the devs have changed how upgrading lores work, needless to say, it is way easier to upgrade lores than before. Now clicking on a lore will tell you what you will require.
Here you can see that to upgrade this lore you will need Fascination, much better than just rng you need Glimmering, now you need Erudition, did that 10 times? Still need more glimmering… Also, if you don’t manage to finish upgrading it, your progress will be saved meaning if you put in Fascination but now you need Erudition, next time you upgrade it you will only need Erudition which is very nice! Other lores can also be combined with your desired lore to upgrade them, here is a chart for which one goes to which:

Cult Management

NO. Just because you have want to go for the Enlightenment victory doesn’t mean you have to have a Lantern Cult, whatever your main Cult Doctrine is(e.g For a Lantern Cult, the Cult’s main doctrine is the Lantern Lore) only changes who you can upgrade to an Exalted member of your cult. Having a Lantern Cult means that you can Exalt a member that has a Lantern Aspect to a Seer(10 lantern, almost guarantees an aspect check during an expedition). Be that as it may be, having a corresponding Cult for your Temptation can speed things up very slightly, but Lantern Cult sucks 😛

On the topic of upgrading cult members, each cultist when being upgraded can only go to maximum of 5 through using only using lores/trappings unless of course you exalt them. A believer will only have 2 of a certain aspect, a disciple will have 5 of an aspect, and finally as already stated, an exalted has 10 of a certain aspect but it also comes with a fancy name change e.g exalting a member of the forge cult will change them to -Name here-, A Reshaper, which i think is a very nice touch. Also, after doing a couple playthroughs, you’ll realise that every follower has the same aspect every single playthrough, e.g Cat Caro will always have a lantern aspect, just a small thing that you may not know. One very important thing to keep in mind is that, while pawns are just pawns, they can prove to be very useful in Rituals,and no i dont mean for sacrificing, unless you’re talking to Poppy, in which case its better to give a pawn than an actual cult member the mix of edge and another aspect they give is much more important than most ppl think. Not only this, but they are limited you can have up to 8 during a single run once you have exhausted that supply, that’s it, no more. The same applies for named members, after you get a card called “Mistaken Identity”, it means that you have gotten every patron/member available. Now as messed up as this is going to sound, when your cultist gain a wound, its not the worse thing in the world and sometimes you may even send a person by themselves and cause them to gain a wound on purpose. As you can see my member has a Grail aspect and a Edge aspect from a wound, however if you a member does get a wound, make sure to patch them up quickly before they die. One other thing to mention is that the leader will always be the one to gain the wound.

The main purpose of your fellow cult members is to help out in expeditions but they can have their own effects, if you drag them into the talk slot and place your cult card in the slot where it says “subject” they can do different tasks for you depending on their aspect.
Here is a list of what each aspect does:

If you are starting out in cultist simulator I would recommend choosing either Heart, Grail, and Forge. This is because these are the aspects that the card Restlessness gives as you can see.
You may also notice that Restlessness gives Lantern and Moth aspects but imo i feel like the lantern cult is useless, Seers (Exalted) don’t do much and just overall aren’t worth the time. Moth Skintwisters(Exalted) are the only Exalted that can die doing their job,wtf? They are no better than disciples at removing evidence but i guess having a guarantee for removing evidence, is pretty game breaking. Grail is also a choice that you can choose but will you have the greatest time with your Cyprian?(Exalted) Probably not. Well, if you need prisoners for the Spider Door I guess so… Grail checks in expeditions are not as common. The only positive of choosing Grail is that it speeds up the Sensation victory. I may be being bias here but Forge is 10/10 best Cult. Forge is used to summon King Crucible who is arguably the best summon in the game and has the ability to solo expeditions the main reason being that Forge is extremely common during expeditions and this summon has 12 Forge and 12 Edge, so it can kill everything and blow up any doors that stand in its path. Not only this, to re-enter the Peacock Door, you will need a Wildering Mirror which can be easily repaired to allow easy access back through the door.

Your Temptation/Desire

Your win condition. Now if your desire is still a temptation, it can be changed, but once it becomes a dedication, your stuck with it for the rest of the run. This is how to change the temptations:

Temptation: Sensation
Dreaming on this with Passion will transform it into Temptation: Power
Dreaming on this with Reason will transform it into Temptation: Enlightenment
Dreaming on this with Grail Lore will transform it into Dedication: Sensation
(Dancer DLC only) Talking about this with Sulochana will transform it into Temptation: Change

Temptation: Enlightenment
Dreaming on this with Health will transform it into Temptation: Sensation
Dreaming on this with Passion will transform it into Temptation: Power
Dreaming on this with Lantern Lore will transform it into Dedication: Enlightenment
Cannot change into Temptation: Change, change into sensation or power to change the temptation(Thank you user Akylon!)

Temptation: Power
Dreaming on this with Health will transform it into Temptation: Sensation
Dreaming on this with Reason will transform it into Temptation: Enlightenment
Dreaming on this with Forge Lore will transform it into Dedication: Power
(Dancer DLC only) Talking about this with Sulochana will transform it into Temptation: Change

(Dancer DLC only)Temptation: Change
Dreaming on this with Health will transform it into Temptation: Sensation
Dreaming on this with Passion will transform it into Temptation: Power
Dreaming on this with Lantern Lore will transform it into Temptation: Enlightenment
Dancing in the Ecdysis Club with this as a goal and at least 5 Heart or Moth and this as a Purpose will create a Garments, surrendered card, which will be consumed in Ambition season and transform this into Change: Leaf.

IMO, the Temptation: Power is the easiest ascension as to get the marks, all you need is funds rather than human beings

Dealing with checks

Simple, go to The Ecdysis Club and dream with Dread and Contentment, or if the check is already on the table, it will be magnetised, just make sure it doesn’t run out before it is magnetised! Dreaming with a coin will let you use Opium which will generate Contentment. However indulging in Opium can sometimes create an affliction (right now there is a bug where the rate at which you can get an affliction from Opium is low to none), Let the check go to three and you become depressed and kill yourself. Remember to always use your Restlessness if your check is high in a rite or as a trapping when upgrading members of your cult.

Dream with Fascination and Dread or once again let it be magnetised. You can also let Fleeting Memories be magnetised which can be gained by dealing with a Dread check or dreaming with Dread and Contentment. Let that check go up to three and you go crazy and die. Stay away from the Mansus or the Streets Strange by Moonlight when your check is very high. A reliable way to gain Dread is to dream with Passion and add a Moth lore, this will generate a Buzzing in the brain which will turn into Dread after a minute. Restlessness also decays into Dread.

Talk with a cult member with the heart aspect and drag your cult card into the subject slot. This only works when the Notoriety check is not on the board. However, i’m pretty sure if you board has mystique it will magnetise that first not 100% about this. But if there is no mystique there is nothing u can do. Hunters don’t always generate evidence from Notoriety, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Find a hireling with high moth (at least higher than 5 moth) and get them to destroy the evidence and it’s like it never happened.

Seasons

One of the most important functions in all of cultist simulator and can be the difference between you dying of depression or you living till you pass through the Tricuspid Gate.
As you can see, in the “Time passes verb” there is a small icon in the bottom right, this will change each “season”(every 60 seconds, when a cycle of a “Time passes” finishes) click this icon or even looking at the icon will tell you what will happen in the next 60 seconds and you should plan accordingly, if you have a notoriety check coming up, talk to a cult member with heart and get rid of it, or study heart so you can gain vitality for an upcoming sickness. This is something you will definitely need to get in the habit of checking constantly

The Mansus

This is about to completely ruin the Mansus for you, read at your own risk. Thanks to kleneth427 on reddit for researching all of this btw, he has his own very comprehensive guide to Cultist simulator, but it is quiet old, hence why im making this guide (also most guides don’t go as in-depth on steam) but if u want to look at that instead here is the link:

A mostly comprehensive guide to Cultist Simulator (warning: unmarked spoilers) from weatherfactory

Most locations in the Mansus can give you Dread and Fascination, so be wary of this when entering the Mansus (anytime something will give u Dread or Fascination i will make it bold)

To unlock each Way, you’ll need increasing levels of Knock or Lantern Lore. Re-entering a Way will require another card. If those Ways require Health/Reason/Passion, don’t worry, they only exhaust, not consume them permanently! Reddit user Landis963 also tells me that the doors of the Mansus can take one other Aspect to open at discount compared to Knock and Lantern Lores. Thanks to Akylon once again, we now know which Lores can be used instead of the traditional method:
Wood: Moth 2 White Door: Winter 4 Spider Door: Grail 8 Peacock’s Door: Edge 10
Some info may be wrong or incomplete, just inform me in the comments! I’ve abbreviated Secret Histories Lore to SH to shorten the text.

The First Way. You’ll need to dream using Passion first, and then using at least 2 Knock/Lantern. Re-enter the Woods using Passion. Completely safe, and it’s good way to get Vitality and some Influences.

Visible cards: Occult Scrap (2 SH), Peculiar Rumor, A Buzzing in the brain (2 Moth)

The Well: An Awareness of Appetite (2 Grail), Peculiar Rumor, Vitality

The Temple of the Wheel: A Furtive Truth (4 SH), Peculiar Rumor, Subtle Flaw (2 Knock)

The Second Way. Unlock by using the Way:Woods card with 4 Knock/Lantern. Re-enter using Health. Extremely useful for all stages of the game, particularly for controlling Dread/Fascination, summoning, getting Erudition/Glimmering, and if you or your cultists are close to getting arrested.

Visible cards: Forgotten Chronicles(6 SH), Restlessness, An Icy Atmosphere (6 Winter), A Furtive Truth (2 SH). Restlessness is a good Influence for summons/promotion or reducing Fascination since it decays to Dread.

Orchard: Contentment, Forgotten Chronicle (6 SH), Glimmering, An intensity of radiance (6 Lantern). An Intensity of Radiance for summoning Hints.

Lodge of the sage knight: Fascination, Subtle Fracture (6 Knock), Erudition, A Favour from Authority, Forgotten Chronicle (6 SH). Subtle Fracture is useful for all Summons, and Favours are great if you’re close to getting arrested.

The Third Way. You’ll need to get the Stag’s Riddle card first by using your Desire when Dreaming about the White Door, and then solving the Riddle using a random level 6 (at least) Lore. Re-enter using Reason.

Visible cards: Forbidden epic (8 SH), Subtle Rupture(10 Knock), A trembling heat (6 Forge), Forgotten Chronicles(6 SH). Trembling heat to summon Caligines, yipee.

Ascent of Knives: A furious Air (10 Edge), A bitter atmosphere (10 Winter), An Urgency of Appetite (6 Grail). A bitter atmosphere for summoning Maid-In-The-Mirrors (my waifu), and An Urgency of Appetite to summon Raw Prophets. A Furious Air is nice for summoning creatures with Edge.

Painted River: Fascination, Erudition, Forbidden epic (8 SH). If you’re looking for Erudition, Fascination, or the next tier of SH, Painted River is the place to be. If you haven’t noticed, knowledge usually comes at a price of sanity!

These are the answers to the riddles this can be very annoying so looking at the guide for this is fair 😛 All of these Riddles requires 6 Aspect of each respective lore

The Fourth Way. Unlock this by using 8 Knock/Lantern when dreaming about Stag Door. A little trickier than the other Doors as you’ll need Prisoners to re-enter. One good thing about using Prisoners for this is they don’t turn into Corpses afterwards (so no Notoriety)!

Visible cards: A forbidden epic(8 SH), A Favour from Authority, An imperative of appetite(10 Grail). Another way to earn Favour, and a powerful Grail Influence to summon Ezeem.

The Chamber of Ways: Forgotten Chronicle (6 SH), A howling in the heart(10 Moth), Wrong Door (15 Knock), A Blaze of Radiance (10 Lantern), A Bitter Atmosphere (10 Winter), Fascination. Some very useful influences, but Blaze of Radiance and Bitter Atmosphere decays to Fascination and Dread respectively, so be careful.

The Malleary: An incandescence (15 Forge), Fascination, Iotic Essence(12 Forge ingredient), Unresolved Ambuiguity (10 SH). Incandescence and Iotic Essence are useful for summoning King Crucible and Ezeem, or winning the game if you Desire Power. This is also where the next tier of SH is found!

The Fifth and last Way available, to mortals at least. Unlock using 10 Knock/Lantern on Spider’s Door. To re-enter, you’re gonna need mirrors which are Uncommon and Rare treasures, or the Franciglave (Rare) which doesn’t break and allows you to enter whenever you want. They break after you use them though, and you’ll need Forge cultists and Bronze/Silver Spintrias to repair them. If all your Forge cultists are dead, you can use Forge Hirelings to repair them. I’m also not sure about some of the cards here, sorry! If you Desire Sensation or Enlightenment, you’ll likely need the Influences here to win. If you want to explore the 14 SH Vaults, you’ll need the Vagabond’s Maps from here and combine them into Port Noon Anecdotes (14 SH Lore) since only Rare SH books can directly give 14 SH Lore. Unresolved Ambiguities are also ok, but you’ll need 4 of them and a lot of time Studying to get just 1 Anecdote.

Visible cards: Fascination, Unresolved Ambiguity (10 SH), Scholar:Vak, A Splendour(15 Lantern). Learn Vak from here! Splendour to summon Teresa or win through Enlightenment.

The Worm Museum: Dread, The Perfect Frost (15 Winter), A Vagabond’s Map (12 SH). Oof, Dread everywhere, Vagabond’s Map though!

The Red Church: An Incarnadescence (15 Grail), Amaranthine Nectar (8 Grail ingredient), A Favour from Authority, A Vagabond’s Map (12 SH). This is the place if you want to summon Ezeem or satisfy your Desire for Sensation! Amaranthine Nectar is also a good source of Funds.

Rites and Summons

One very common misconception is that all the rites do different things. They all summon beings from the Mansus or cast spells the only difference between the rites is that they have different requirements, that is the only difference between all of them. Because i’m a lazy piece of ♥♥♥♥ i’ve just got a screenshot of the wiki rather than coding the table in. The boxes coloured in red are the things that will be consumed, and yes the Rite Intercalate consumes everything.
imo, Sunset Rite is by far the best Rite in the game, all you need is a follower, lore and influence and the only thing consumed is the influence

The thing that you probably didn’t know existed but after summoning King Crucible(K.C) ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ your gonna wanna summon him every game. Once again i’m gonna be a lazy ♥♥♥♥ and take a table straight from the wiki.(Don’t judge me coding in a table is long ;( )
The main summons that you are gonna want are K.C and Ezeem. Teresa is pretty useless but at least she wont eat your try to eat your soul if the Ritual goes to ♥♥♥♥. I forgot to mention that btw, there is a chance when summoning theses creatures from the Mansus that they eat on of your followers, patrons(not sure if they can eat you).The ones that do that are the ones that have the Devourer perk. They can also eat a reason, passion or health, this is the Deceiver perk. If a summon does start to go awry, don’t continue to summon it, it’s not worth it. Summoning is not that expensive to try again. It’s also important to remember that summons cannot perform Cult tasks e.g Ezeem can’t go and kidnap someone for you. But if you something like a Raw Prophet, you can send him out to get rid of any evidence.

Patrons/Languages

Found by talking about any kind of Lore, they will require reason instead of passion and will ask you to perform commissions in return for Spintras, a very important currency to learn languages from patrons or to repair broken tools. To receive a request for a commission, simple put the Patron in the Talk Verb and in 10 seconds they will give you a commission for a lore. These can be completed by putting the commission into the Work verb and the corresponding lore for that commission, followed by 1 or 2 reason. Commissions can come in varying levels: Every Commission grants you either Notoriety or Mystique and Glimmering and Erudition.

Each Patron will also give specific Commissions, I have also included what languages they teach, an Iron Spintra is enough for them to teach you:

Even though Sulochana Amavasya does not offer Commissions, she is not completely useless. If you have the Dancer DLC she is a very vital part of that victory. Also, when talking to her, can you place anything you want in the talk section and it will stop the timer on any card which is very useful if you need to hold onto an influence for a Rite, or even just Restlessness so you can avoid a Dread Check. She can also give you special locations if you place a SH Lore into the Talk Verb with her and she will give you a location that will not have set drops and instead will give you 3 random items.

So now you can speak Latin, Greek and Aramaic, if you learnt those ones, you can learn even older ones now! When summoning Ezeem, you can talk to him to learn Phryigan make sure you tell him that you can speak Greek so he can teach you. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ is learned from summoning Teresa and will require you to know Latin. Deep Mandiac is learnt from summoning King Crucible and requires Aramaic to learn. Of course instead of summoning creatures from the Mansus you can learn all of these languages from traditional books, but who wants to do that when you can learn from an Otherworldly creature :D! The final and oldest language is Vak which can be learnt by going to the Peacock door, it will be a visible card, ofc it will not always be there but, just repair the Mirror and try and see if its in the Visible slot, you can also learn Vak from reading The Uyrus which is found after doing the level 10 SH, Snow’s keep or talking to Sulochana Amavasya with a level 10 SH and getting it out of RNG(1/23 chance)

Final Notes

Be sure to like, and favourite the guide if you found it useful and if you have any questions leave them in the comments and i’ll be sure to answer them! Also, if i there is some misinformation in the guide, correct me in the comments(without being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ please :D) and I will swiftly change the guide! Enjoy your trip in the Mansus and I’ll see you at the Tricuspid Gate 🙂

-S