This Guide was originally written for version v0.3.040.

Played through once.
Overall the first impression got confirmed.
A lot of improvements have been made to the core.

The big difference I ultimately noticed is mission difficulty ranges "fixed" from 1 to 10.

• high level missions take longer
  You need multiple missions in parallel around lvl 6.
  
• On 9 or 10 the Skill point costs are crazy.
  You need Covered OPs.
  
• positive traits become much more valueable.
  Ministry of Alteration has a point. Still costly.

Currently playing. will see.
What I notice on the first glance is that the research tree got re-organized into something consistent. Good.
The traits and effects on each Acolyte changed. This makes it a bit more complex. My cult now also has a much higher chance of anyone leaving. that is interesting.
Random events seem also a nice bonus.
Missions may also be calculated slightly differently again.

This is mainly cosmetics and some bug-fixes.

I saw a trait for the first time that seems rather nice:
"Unlimited Potential" - Blue Infinity 8 - +2 Max Levels for this Acolyte

Currently I am getting a hang of this patch.
So far there is only a short notice possible.

• Mission levels raise slower, but have more impact on skill point needs.
  
• The new faith mechanic is quite intuitive: Faith enables Divine Inspiration Research.
  
• There has been tons of QoL UI Improvements.

In the past
Compare the highest skill in each column with the mission level and figure things out.

Now
the average Skillpoint per Acolyte are compared to the Level & Type of a mission.

Good or better Acolytes with maxed values will still bring a punch.
But they only fit on one-in-x missions. So the tradeoff is "Glaqass Cannon" vs "Reliable".

In missions with 2 - 4 acolytes you need almost 2 - 4 times the skill points in total!
So you need MANY who are good at MANY different things.

Example for mission impact
Basically if you avoid having skills at 3/4 you do well.
We are not including the sermon buff here as it litterally grants a flat +3.

An acolyte with 20 skill points.

• With 4/4/4/4/4/ 0...0 : 5x0 / 4 / 8 / 12 => 7 - 15 with Buff
  
• With 5/5/5/5/ 0...0 : 6x0 / 5 / 10 / 15 => 8 - 18 with Buff
  
• With 6/6/6/2/ 0...0 : 6x0 / 2 / 8 / 12 / 18 => 5 - 21 with Buff
  
• With 9/7/4/ 0...0 : 7x0 / 4 / 7 / 9 / 11 / 13 / 16 => 7 - 19 with Buff
  
• With 10/7/3/ 0...0 : 7x0 / 3 / 7 / 10 / 13 / 17 => 6 - 20 with Buff
  
• With 10/10/ 0...0 : 8x0 / 10 / 20 => 3 - 23 with Buff

Notes about non-mission impact

• A rating of 5-7 seems to work very nice for most skills. Resulting in 4-5 "strong" skills.
  
• Empathy / Social 7 seems to be a sweetspot where many rooms offer about 1.0 influence per Tick
  
• Butchery / Improvisation ... go in to 6 or not. Cooking got harder.
  
• Retail is quite powerful, 5 is good enough.

Note when going for lower totals you need Covered Ops more often. True.
But once you hit that mark you can do 2 missions in parallel.

Acolytes have some relevant properties:

• Quality
  
• List Traits (some positive, some negative, some situational)
  
• Current Level
  
• Current Skill Set

One of the traits you cannot (?) change later on: Quality.
Once you got the "Ministry of Alteration" (Room) researched and ideally also the "Trait Gain 5%" (Sermon Ability) ... you will manage your Traits "as you please".

Current Level and Skill Set - that's where you distribute points. These usually depend on many things, but before we look at what are good choices, let's look at what you can do.

Impact of Follower Quality

Generally there are BAD, Shifting, Positive and GOOD traits.
Some are permanent, some are temporary.
Let's just focus on the permanent ones that are related to skill modifiers.

Since v0.4.069 traits appear almost on every level up, sometimes 'just because'. So managing traits becomes a quest on its own. But this has an up and a need. You want your followers to have 3+ 'good traits' ... just to keep up with the game. That makes later rotation tricky though.

Apathic: -3 Empathy
Disorganized: -2 Empathy, -2 Planning

Clinical Training: +1 Butchery, +2 Improvisation
Scheming: +3 Planning
Charismatic: +2 Bluffing, +2 Social

Added Value: +4 Retail
All Star: +1 to EACH skill.
Medical Training: +3 Butchery, +3 Improvisation
Perceptive: +4 Espionage, +4 Planning
Unlimited Potential: +2 to Level Cap => +4 skill points free of choice

Eg. on the Path of Darkness your Acolytes can learn daemonic traits. They MAY be stronger, but may also have random downsides.

There are some that affect ...
... your mission outcomes (get caught, outstanding success chance)
... your minions stats (hunger, endurance, healing)

What Skills do your acolytes need ?

Well this highly depends on the stage of your game.

you have ~ 10 acolytes of (very) poor quality.

As you cannot gain much by leveling them (total 8-10 Skill points) and most missions are level 1 - 5, so a skill far beyond 4 is unlikely to help.

Traits are extremely strong in the beginning, so rotate unexperienced Acolytes until you get some with positive traits.
A single +2/+2 or a +3 trait is probably as good as the 'next quality level' of follower.
a very poor Acolyte could still be trained 4/4/2/2 or 3/3/3/3 with a single +2/+2 trait.

Also I think you want to have 1 Dot in retail and 1 Dot in Empathy for any follower at that level.
Making money early on is limiting.

By the time you get 'average' acolytes to appear simply "rotate up" as they get up to 14 skill points.
Any of them beats a 'very poor' one unles that 'very poor' one has a ton of positive traits.

You are likely to encounter missions on level 3 - 8.

You still want focus in your acolytes, but go a bit broader. All those new rooms pile up.
Also Influence becomes more important.

Try 5/3/3/2/1 where you do: <1st>/<2nd>/<3rd>/Empathy/Retail or <1st>/<2nd>/<3rd>/Retail/Empathy
or 4/4/4/2 for some other cases eg. when you do a "pure therapist" or a "pure module room" acolyte.


You have it much harder to recruit good or very good followers.
I assume that is unless you spec a few followers "all in" into "sales" and "hireing".

So with a lot more "average" followers being around for a longer time perk management becomes a thing with every follower of "average" or better quality.

Generally you also will find quite a point in the "Sermon Trait" gains or actually a mandatate to use the "Ministry of Alterations" to prevent all your followers from becoming incompetent by leveling up.

I had as much as 15 attributes on some followers and just removing all the bad ones when leveling up becomes quite an effort.

These are your 'good' acolytes. Every now and then you may even find a 'Very Good' one.

Your missions will be 8 to 12 in level and sometimes one Acolyte has to do them alone having 2 solid skills, and one "near zero".

So skill ratings of 8 or 9 should exist even though you may only have 18 - 22 Skill points.

Anyway on these acolytes it gets interesting to remove "bad traits" and gain traits using sermons.
All these little "+2/+2" or even "+4/+4" abilities will give your Acolytes NON-Mission skills.

Also Influence gets a rare currency, so do NOT forget 'empathy' as the 'catch all' thing for all 'therapy rooms'.
The sermon boost +1 to your retail is probably sufficient to keep the money coming.

Late in the game you will get characters eg. from Divine Intervention that have a rating of Very Good, Incredible or God Like.

These are GEMS and given you face often Missions with a Level of 9 to 12 ... yeah 12 Points in a skill may not be a bad choice.

A very good Follower has 22 points, so 11/11 is possible, but maybe you want 10/8/4 and "amp it up" with some "trained" benefits to exceed that norm and/or have more "breadth".

Anyway at this level any skill at a +1 is almost meaningless on missions, the +1 thing Still helps making money

In general the earlier in the game the more you can gain from rotation.

Since v0.4.069 heat grows faster the bigger your cult, so rotating early is actually not that bad any more. Later on you will need your Heat Reduction missions "just to keep heat ok" ...

While you have only (very) poor acolytes rotate hoping for positive talents as much as reasonable.
eg. Heat <= 150

However even late in the game you may notice that you "failed spec'ing" a skill set.
Replacement IS an option.

Basically if you can go 2 or more quality levels up, do so.

- Replace any 'very poor' with an 'average' acolyte.
- Replace any 'poor' with an 'good' acolyte.
- If you can upgrade any 'good' or less rated acolyte to a 'Very Good' or even 'Incredible' one, do so.

Traits matter most both in the beginning and in the end.

In the beginning they offer diversification. Many +2 Skills is good.
In the end they allow diversification. You need to have at least 10/8 or 9/9 on 2 of your skills, but you only go 18/22/26 skill points from levels.
With 24 points you can have 10/10/4, as a good skill set.

This is mainly about two things:

• the sermon ability to grant additional traits
  
• the ministry of alteration to remove traits from an acolyte

Generally I think it is good to use it once you unlock the advanced stage that implies that if you remove a trait the follower might gain an additional POSITIVE trait (like ~ 5% chance).

Some negative traits gained during level up / sermon are a must-remove once you got all your folks to "good" or even better.

Influence Cost
the price for using it is quite high: 200 Influence.
Top Research Cost is around 750 Influence
Top Divine Inspipirations seem to top around 600 Influence

I am using it even though it costs influence.

But right now I get a 50:50 chance of gaining a bad trait IF my cultists gain a trait in the first place.

Given the high chance of bad traits I would not use it before I got those extra abilities to Ministry of Alteration done.

I think there is a phase in the late game where you should use both. But in the mid-game all those extra costs of Influence probably slow your research down A LOT.
200 Influence every other day to remove a bad trait sums up quickyl to postponing techs by a week or two.

Especially on at most average cultists I would really hesistate to use any of both.
However once you got VERY GOOD cultists ... you WANT those extra perks.