Overview
A very spoiler-heavy explanation of the ways to cheat the system using nothing but your mouse and the pause button.
Introduction
So, you fancy trying to bend Cultist Simulator to your every whim and desire?
It’s not hard to figure out how, in time it would definitely come to you and these are not difficult things to do – but it is even easier when someone tells you how.
This is a non-comprehensive list of ways you can avoid certain fates in unconventional manners, this is only going to make sense to those who are already in The Know – so another warning:
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Understood? Then let’s begin.
Immortal Verbs
There’s some assumptions here such as you already know ways to use the existing Verbs for fun and profit, like using Work with the painting skill to hide some notoriety during the season of Suspicion.
That’s great and all, but you’re not here for all the standard uses of Verbs, you want to know the odd ways to use them.
Here’s the key, when you open a Verb and put cards in the slots, time freezes for that card as long as the Verb interface is open.
Try it, pause the game, open up Study, put two glimmering/erudition/vitality in the slots, don’t click on start and then unpause the game – the rest of the timers will tick down but those two cards will freeze until you leave the Verb.
Incredibly useful for cards on timers that you wish to hang on to for a bit longer, however there are two limits to doing this: firstly, you can’t do anything else whilst that Verb is open. If you open another Verb, the original Verb will close and the cards will be put back on to the desk and continue ticking down – so planning ahead to have the right Verbs available at important times is a must (as is liberal abuse of the pause button). Secondly, the open Verb will not prevent cards from being drawn in to magnetic spaces, so you can’t use it to hide or save a card from another Verb affect, you would have to activate the Verb to lock the cards in to that Verb to prevent them from being used elsewhere.
You can also make use of a subject space in an active Verb, such as when you Talk to a Cultist and you can pick a subject for 60 seconds. Whatever you put in there will be frozen in time and will remain there until the timer counts down, then after that timer the effect will occur (if any, if no effect then the cards just return to the table). This is why if you want a minion to take care of some evidence then you must only put the evidence in the subject space at the last possible moment, if you did it from start then that’s 60 seconds of the evidence timer not counting down and if your devious minion fails then the evidence is still just as fresh as when you started. So use the available subject spaces wisely, put in something you wish to keep fresher for longer and the switch it with whatever you want your minion to actually do a second before their subject timer is complete.
A Card in the Hand is worth two in the Verb
So now you know an open Verb can freeze the timer on whatever you’ve put in there, similarly an open subject on an active Verb will prevent the card decaying – but it doesn’t prevent the card from being sucked up by a magnetic space. The minion you’re talking to about damning evidence won’t be able to hold on to it if the season of suspicion matures enough to suck it up. You could avoid it if your timing is spot on, or you could just do this: Grab the evidence and don’t let go.
It’s as easy as holding down the grab button, any card you are holding cannot be drawn in to a magnetic subject space. If you ever put it down whilst unpaused then it will be almost immediately sucked up, however pause lets you put it down or put whatever you’re holding in to a Verb and start the Verb if appropriate.
So for example, if a season of suspicion is coming up and you have both a notoriety and a mystique, the notoriety is almost decayed but the mystique is still fresh, then you could pick up the notoriety and let the season of suspicion take the mystique instead. Yes the season will last longer but if the notoriety decays first then you’ll be a lot safer.
There are three limitations to this, the first being most obvious in that you can only hold one timer decaying card at a time – so if you have a lot of something that a season wants then you’ll have to find another way of tying up the rest. The second is that cards which decay in to something else are slippery, for instance if there’s a season of despair and you’re holding a restlessness card then when it decays in to despair it will actually leave your hand and be taken by that season. The third is visits to the mansus interrupt this card holding process, as visits to the mansus force you to drop the card and returning from the mansus has the game unpaused. You have 0.1 of a second to pause the game when returning from the mansus as that’s the delay between returning and the card you wanted to keep being pulled in, it’s possible but difficult – much easier to not dream about the mansus at such time crucial events.
You can also grab on to cards to force the draw space to behave differently, for instance if you have one investigator and you hold on to them during the season of suspicion then they won’t be part of the investigation – although if you have mystique and notoriety then another investigator card will be generated at the end of the season. Having two can be beneficial, as next season of suspicion you can hold on to one to guarantee that your preferred investigator will be picked.
That’s it for now
It’s pretty much just those two things, anything less than that is just using the game mechanics as intended and playing the game with a good sense of timing. Really if you check the time passes Verb frequently to see what season is coming next and plan ahead then most of the time you won’t need to grab on to card for dear life, but it’s good to know you can prevent something game ending from happening just in case you get caught short.
If I learn any other techniques to twist the system to a preferrable outcome then I will add a new section, in the meantime I hope this dark knowledge is of use to some of you out there who may be struggling with game ending seasons or cards decaying before you’ve put them to good use.