I would like to preface this guide by proposing that you do not read further, close this guide, and play Book of Hours without external help. Book of Hours is a game best experienced with all of its mysteries and puzzles, and it is highly recommended that you take notes during your gameplay to organize your thoughts.

This guide exists for those of you who do not enjoy this, and would like to play Book of Hours with some concepts explained clearly, or those of you replaying who have already experienced Book of Hours as it is intended.

This guide is incredibly spoiler heavy, and makes no or very little effort in shielding you from spoilers. If you scroll down, you will be spoiled. If you do not want to be spoiled, please do not read further. A single glance in the wrong direction could sour your entire enjoyment.

Note that currently, this guide is not complete and is a mix of my experience, other player's, and some data mining. The guide covers most aspects of the game already, but some are only on this Steam guide, while others are only in the Google Sheets document available at the end of this guide. Feel free to drop recommendations, data or help in the comments, although I will give priority to my own enjoyment of Book of Hours first, and the completion of this guide second.

The first things a librarian of the hush house must master is the librarian themselves.

Principles...
are the main things that most of everything possesses. Rose, Heart, Scale, Forge are all exemples. These are the powers of objects, persons, and various things in the world. You need these principles to achieve objectives, such as reading books with a Mystery related to the principle, crafting things with skills, or opening rooms requiring a certain principle


Elements of the Soul...
are your various "stats". They have a strong principle and a weak principle, starting at 2 and 1 respectively. Heart, Ereb, Phost or Mettle are all exemples of Elements of the Soul. You can obtain new elements of the soul by putting Skills within the Tree of Wisdom, and you can evolve elements of the soul to stronger versions by using your skills at specific workbenches with two matching elements of the soul.

Memories and Lessons...
are "buffs" you can gain and use temporarily. Most memories give 1 or 2 of a couple of principles, and last until dawn. You can use memories in near everything, between reading books, buffing assistants, crafting, and more. Memories are generally obtained from reading books, and every book gives a specific memory, meaning you can re-read a book to reliably obtain a specific memory. You can only have one of a memory type, but you can have multiple memories that buff the same principle.

Lessons are special memories that don't disappear at dawn, only at Nume, which is a rare single-day season that takes away lessons. Lessons allow you to learn Skills, or upgrade them. They can also be used and consumed as regular memories, but this is never a good move, as lessons are very scarce.

Skills...
are your main way of increasing your principles and varying what you can do. You learn skills from Lessons, which you obtain by reading books, including your starting journal. You can level up skills using Lessons and Memories that match the skill's principles, higher levels needing more memories. Only a single lesson is necessary to level up a skill, and it doesn't need to be the exact same skill; so long as their principles match. As an example, Sky Stories is a SKY/ROSE skill, and Preliminal Meter is a KNOCK/ROSE skill. You can use a Lesson: Sky Stories to level up your Preliminal Meter skill, because they are both Rose.

At the beginning, you land on the beach. Choices will be given to you. Depending on these choices, you will start with different elements of the soul, a journal, a backstory, and some skills.

Everything depends on which Elements of the soul you choose right at the beginning. You also always get a Trist by slotting the journal in the Tree of Wisdom

To help you open various areas, you will need Assistants. These come in the form of the villagers of Brancrug, or traveling characters ready to lend you a hand. They can be hired for currency, however you start with a friend in town that will always be willing to help for free. The free assistant depends on your choices at the beginning, but is generally inconsequential later in the game as currency becomes more available, and challenges too hard for your friend.

Assistants can be "buffed" by many ways, and you can stack them. You may give them one of your Elements of the Soul's Principles and exhaust it, you may give them a beverage, you may feed them sustenance, you may share a memory with them (including Weather) and you may give them a tool. All of those can be done one after the other, so you can obtain very strong assistants by combining all of them.

The Sweet Bones non-seasonal assistants are drawn from a deck.

Do be careful, you cannot buff your assistants during dusk. Better prepare everything before then!

Elements of the Soul are assigned at the beginning of the game, and you obtain more by placing skills within the Tree of Wisdom. You can also increase your Elements of the Soul to higher versions, in which case every principle gets a +1, up to 3 upgrades per element of the soul. The exception is Health's Scale, which remains at 1 for level 2, then raises to 2 and 3.

The Tree of Wisdom is an essential asset for any librarian, allowing you to slot skills within Wisdoms to obtain extra Elements of the Soul, and evolve them even.

The way it works is as follows; Every skill can be put in two specific wisdoms, and gives an element of the soul when slotted. The element of the soul is pre-defined and not random, but the game doesn't tell you what it is. However, each wisdom can only give two different elements of the soul; so for example, Preservation will only ever give Health or Chor.

The level at which you put the skill does NOT matter; you always get one element of the soul of the same level. It only means you need better and better skills to go ahead.

A complete list of all skills and what they give when put inside the tree of wisdom is available on the sheets document.

Books are the main challenge of Book of Hours, and there is a vast amount of them. They all have a Mystery to them, and to solve the Mystery, you need to match or exceed the Mystery's principle with your own, using skills, elements of the soul and memories. Books all give memories, and you can obtain these memories at wish by re-reading the book; it will always give the same memory. They also provide, only once, Lesson memories.

You can also put books in workstations, mainly Desks in the "Papers" slot, and use an extra tool to solve them. This can allow solving some particularly difficult books with lower skills if you've found, scavenged or crafted a strong tool.

A complete list of all books is available on the google sheets document.

The Hush House, periodically, will be visited by various characters. These are usually experts within the lores and will be seeking books of varying principle and mystery. Most visitors will come to you about a specific affair, which is given to you and found in your Sundries upon getting visitors.

You will need to talk to your visitors and provide them a book matching their principle and mystery that they seek. Said book can be given to multiple different visitors, but cannot be given twice to the same visitor. If you do not own the proper book for the visitor, you may give them lodgings to extend their visit, and the lodgings can be provided over and over again, so long as you don't forget to tend to them by lodging them again at the end of their stay.

Visitors have two interest, of varying principle level, and they know specific languages. Most of the languages the librarian also knows, but some visitors will know languages the librarian does not, and you can ask them to tutor you, for a price in Spintria.

Succesfully giving a good book to a visitor awards the librarian with Spintria, the currency of the occult. This can be traded in for the average british currency, or used to learn languages or other uses, like buying books from Auriflamme's, an event that happens every now and then.

The list of all known visitors is currently complete and available on the google sheets document.

The librarian begins with knowledge of many languages, but there are many more that the librarian does not master. Visitors can bring mastery of some languages, and this can be necessary to read books in languages that you cannot read by default.

Visitors can be paid in Spintria to learn a language they know. Said language will be learnt and can be then used to read further books.

A complete list of languages and their tutors is available on the sheets document

Memories are temporary buffs you can use once, and can only possess one of each type at a time. They are generally obtained by reading books, but can be obtained by crafting, interacting with objects, and various other methods.

You can use memories while talking to assistants, reading books, crafting, gathering and much more.

A near complete list of all memories is available in the google sheets document.

Through exploring and gathering, librarians will find beasts willing to co-operate. These pets can be kept around and talked to to obtain memories consistently. You can tame them by feeding them and you can talk to them once before they go hungry.

The Viper Egg, found within the Moor or in the Hush House, can be hatched by putting it near a fire for multiple minutes.

A near complete list of pets is available on the sheets document.

Skills are permanent methods for the librarian to become better at solving books, gathering and crafting. Skills are obtained from Lessons found within books, and can be levelled up using Lessons alongside memories. Note that only one lesson is necessary to level up skills, and it only needs to have matching principles, not necessarily to be the same skill.

Skills can also be assigned a slot within the Tree of Wisdom, giving Elements of the soul and attuning the skill to said element of the soul. The librarian can then fuse two matching elements of the soul at a workbench that is attuned to the wisdom the skill is in. As an example, if you attune your skill to Hushery, you'll need to find a workbench that is attuned to Hushery.

Skills can also be used for crafting within workbenches. Every skill has their own result when creating things, and can create up to 6 things; level 5, 10 and 15 of both of their principles. The results of crafting can be memories, inks, beverages, sustenance, tools, things and more.

A complete list of all skills, their principles, sources of lessons, what they craft, possible wisdoms and other aspects is available in the sheets document.

Seasons come and go, and every day has a new weather provided to you. There are 5 seasons; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Numa. Numa is a single-day season that happens at times, changing vastly every building and removing your unused Lesson memories. Numa does provide strong weather, however.

Despite Numa being a season, it will get its own section later in the guide due to how complex the season is.

Weathers are given once per day, and act as a normal memory for most uses. It can be used once, and you get a semi-random, season-dependant weather every morning a bit after dawn.

Weather works as a Deck. See "Game Systems: Drawing from Decks" for an explanation of those.

Below is a table of all possible weathers and how many of them are in which deck.

Numa is a unique season that can happen at any time, lasting a single day. During numa, a lot of things change:

• You can no longer get assistance from characters in town
  
• You can work at the Sweet Bones for a longer period of time, rewarding a spintria (don't remember which? Silver?) but possible causing malady to your EotS
  
• You can gather Numa-only items in the Moor, Sands, and in the gardens of the Hush House
  
• You can turn skills into lessons that work for all skills but aren't persistent, so they leave at down
  
• You receive a Numa visitor that is interested in a Numa event, with higher requirements than regular visitors

You, however, lose all persistent memories at dawn, so your lessons will all be gone after numa if they are not used.

You also have the Nume-Brume weather, a KNOCK 5 / MOON 5 / ROSE 5 / WINTER 5 weather.

Numa arrives around every 9 season, but it can happen at very varying rates. Here's how it works:

(presumably, this is not confirmed, simply my interpretation of the game's files)

The game has a deck it draws from at the start of a new season. The deck contains 8 "towards.numa" cards and 1 "next.numa" card. Drawing "next_numa" will cause Numa to appear. The deck resets upon having drawn all 9 cards. This means you will get 8 seasons of non-numa and 1 season of numa per deck. This doesn't mean that numa is every 9 seasons, however, as you could get 2 numas in a row (last draw of the deck, then draw it first next deck).

Once Numa has passed, the game still draws the other "towards.numa" left before resetting, and then starts from a fresh deck again.

The google sheets document has an incomplete list of things gatherable during numa.

The Hush House contains many workbenches, allowing the librarian to perform various actions, usually crafting, but many other things are possible.

Each workbench allows only specific principles within it; somewhere between 2 and 4 principles are allowed, and only things bearing that principle can be slotted within the workbench.

Workbenches come in different types; some are instruments, some are desks, and they come in various forms. Different workbenches can contain different things, like inks, remains, or such, and create different results based on this.

Desks are a type of workbench that can take Papers, and this includes books. Finding desks allows the librarian to allow extra things to books of a specific principle and solve them a bit more easily, depending on the tools at hand.

Workbenches can also be attuned to a specific wisdom from the Tree of Wisdom, allowing you to use attuned skills on these workbenches to fuse them into stronger skills. However, note that the workbench must be attuned to your wisdom, but also be able to slot your skill and element of the soul. This can make it very difficult to find a proper workbench to evolve your elements of the soul.

A complete list of workbenches, their assigned principles, locations and attunements is available on the google sheets document.

This is a bit of a technical section, but it will help immensely to understand how the mechanics work.

Many parts of the game use Decks in the background and draws from them to give the librarian events. Here's how this works:

When something needs to happen (for example, weather in the morning, or scavenging the moor), the game will draw the result from a deck. Said deck contains all potential results, and there can be multiple of the same result in the deck. When a result is drawn, it is removed from the deck, until there are no more results possible within the deck, at which point everything is shuffled back in.

Here's an example; in Spring, the "weathers" deck has 3 Sunny, 2 Clouds, 2 Rain, 1 Gale. This means every morning, the game draws from that deck, and the drawn result is given to the player and removed from the deck until all results are drawn, then it resets. Not every deck resets, however, some can be empty forever.

This system applies to many, many parts of the game; gathering at locations, weathers, events for visitors, employables at Sweet Bones, challenges when failing books.. the list goes on.

All of the data in this guide is compiled in a google sheets document. The steam guide contains mostly explanations, but most of the data will be in the google sheets document, mostly due to its size.

The Google Sheets document also contains tools, name a full map with unlock requirements. We're working on bringing more tools as well, so keep an eye out!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pVGeohFPTgjTK7gTaz_foeLm25xEK0EMGvxHXNa9ne0/edit?usp=sharing

Below is a list of the status of information of the spreadsheet, detailing the status of different documentations. This is half for my own reference, and half for readers to know the reliability or completion of what they are reading. Also, any and all information regarding the things mentioned in the below list is very appreciated

• Assistants: Complete.
  
• Books: Near complete. I believe every single book has been documented, alongside their memories and skill, but it's not impossible that one or two are missing.. Not impossible that the amount of lessons dropped is incorrect. Very likely that some languages are missing. In the long term, I would like to add the shorthand title on the spine of the book, since this is usually what is looked at to find the book within libraries.
  
• Memories: Near complete. Likely missing a couple of crafted memories.
  
• Skills/Crafting: Near complete. Every skill is noted down, every crafting is noted down. Scholar level crafts do not have a note detailing the special material they need, but keeper ones do. Interface could use some upgrades.
  
• Numen: Complete.
  
• Gatherable Items: Very incomplete. Only the Moor and Beach were datamined, and even then, a lot of the datamined info isn't complete. Very likely to be changed immensely at one point.
  
• Workbenches: Complete.
  
• Weathers: Complete.
  
• Languages: Complete.
  
• Visitors: Half complete. Every visitor and their tutorable languages is well documented. However, interactions between visitors and specific books is very lacking. Testing and information from the community will be necessary, but I've documented my thoughts.
  
• Pets/Tools: Incomplete. Pets are all likely there. Tools are not likely to all be there. It also needs better formatting, and I'd like to include more things, like sources or locations of tools.
  
• Elements of the Soul: Complete.
  
• Tree of Wisdom: Complete.
  
• Item Investigation: Very Incomplete. Likely to be deleted, actually. We'll see what this can be useful for.
  
• Barons & Librarians: Complete. Every baron and librarian has been noted. It could use better formatting, and showing the source room for each busts.
  
• Hush House Map: Complete.

This guide was made possible through the work of many, many devoted members of our wonderful community, and I would like to thank them.

The branding image was made by @constantinnenn (twitter) as a commission.

Special thanks to:
-Totoro, for being my partner in editing and helping TONS with the sheet.
-Valerie, for helping editing data and catch mistakes
-Nicholas Kane, for providing extra datamined information
-Theifswimer, for helping with secrets and providing data
-Alvarofreitas, for the help in editing
-Various helpers in the comments, you are too numerous to name. I thank every single one of you for helping me, or each other as a community, may it be once or repeatedly.

And of course, you, readers, for trusting us with providing good information.