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Cultist Simulator: The Thread Has No Walls Cultist Simulator is the latest game by forums favourite Alexis Kennedy, who founded the studio that made Fallen London and Sunless Sea, and who wrote the delightfully creepy Horizon Signal chain for Stellaris. The game is a take on the old Cthulhu mythos concept: you are a person in a kind of alternate-universe 1920s London who by one of a variety of paths becomes aware of tantalising mysteries and forbidden knowledge etc., and gradually goes mad trying to understand them. Or, potentially worse, you succeed. On the way there are cults to found, X-files types to avoid, and such sights to see.  Mechanically, it’s a plates-spinning simulator, where you drag cards into a variety of boxes with countdown timers to represent how your character juggles work, occult study and the business of founding and running a cult devoted to eldritch horrors that man should not wot of. It looks like this, and if you’re concluding that the only reason to play it is for the writing you’re probably right.  Most of the fun of the game is about learning the lore and putting the pieces together for yourself. That said, the UI is I think deliberately unintuitive so here are a few non-spoilery basics that I feel it could do a better job of explaining:
Have fun now, and careful what you read in case it reads you back.
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Jun 4, 2018 02:11
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 08:18 |
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Loving this game, but even while I’m having fun the grind seems to eat hours of my time with me barely aware of it. Cult management mechanic spoiler: it seems like a huge step forward for your cult is reliably being able to promote Believers to Disciples, since ability checks seem to just go 2->5->8/9/10? So two Believers doesn’t upgrade you to a better chance to succeed, one Disciple does, and two Disciples upgrades you to almost certain success. But being able to upgrade people—especially people of a different Lore focus than your cult is—is so dependent on the RNG to give you the right Lore scraps and/or Tools that it feels like I’m just going to end up grinding for ages to get the right stuff to start upgrading people and start reliably tackling expeditions.
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Jun 4, 2018 02:26
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Beefeater1980 posted:You can see the next random event by clicking on the day timer (the orange hourglass), which helps with planning. I ...did not even think to try that. That probably helps a lot lol. Loving the game so far, it's really enthralling. Do find that, like with Sunless Sea, it's hard to put down and I need to be strict about taking breaks regularly or I start to skim the writing and that feels really wrong.
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Jun 4, 2018 02:39
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I had two promising runs cut down by going from 0 dread to 3 dread really quickly. It's funny how often restlessness will pop right after I did a work task which will take as long / longer than restlessness to resolve, so I can't use the paint skill to remove it. Then a lot of times I have the following scenario happen: I get a dread, I'm in the process of obtaining a contentment card, and about 5 seconds before I get the contentment card a magnetized spot (despair? shadows?) will appear and grab the dread. So now, I can't dream away the dread, and the contentment expires while I wait for the timer on the despair to start ticking. I really dislike the way this happens and it seems to happen a lot. And then finally once you are fully in despair / dread stacking mode, if you get an RNG event that drops a dread or you get a poorly timed restlessness, it can go sideways really quickly. Using opium is a good tip, I had avoided that based on the game warning it was super dangerous, but it seems like disease and injuries are a lot easier to deal with than despair and dread. I've found painting, in particular with the higher passion skill (vivid imagination etc) unlocks seems to work well as a secondary source of it. I tried dreaming with the health card but found that unreliable.
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Jun 4, 2018 02:45
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Yea if you see the DESPAIR timer pop up buy opium. I've seen no side effects so far.
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Jun 4, 2018 02:50
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You can get rid of Restlessness by Painting with one Passion and putting Restlessness into the Yearning slot that then appears, and if you ever end up with a Dread and a Contentment on the table at the same time you can Dream with both of them to clear them. Not trying to imply you specifically didn’t know that, just listing two things I discovered in case people want an extra hand getting rid of Restlessness or Dread.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:00
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Yeah, you can use paint to get rid of restlessness, but it has a 60 second timer, and most jobs are 55 seconds or more, which means that unless you had your work action idle or just about to finish, you often can't paint it away before it turns into dread. And yeah, you can dream it away with contentment, the snag I ran into is that there's a random action that takes the dread card and temporarily ties it up for ~60-90 seconds, during which time contentment will expire, and then when despair starts ticking a contentment card was burned but didn't remove the dread counter.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:04
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I think you can use Dread to dream away Fascination too so it's not terrible to have one or two around e. Your Contentment expiring while the Dread is locked up for a minute is a bummer and I think it's just something you're going to have to try to plan for. Being able to cancel some actions would be neat though, there's probably some downside or something though Knorth fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 03:04
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Dread cancels Fascination the same way Contentment cancels Dread
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Jun 4, 2018 03:05
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Pirate Radar posted:Dread cancels Fascination the same way Contentment cancels Dread That's a really good tip that you and knorth pointed out. I'm going to try that tonight. One more contentment source: if you use health on exploring the city you can get the moonlit streets event. That card is good for 2 minutes but doesn't tick down while it's in the exploration slot being actively explored. So if you chain explore it you can have it hang around for a long time. Seems to generate a contentment roughly every other exploration or so.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:07
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Also this feels like cheating but if you put a timed card into a box and just leave the box up while you let time go forward it won’t expire. Not sure if that’s intended. Edit: and yeah, Streets Strange by Moonlight can help you find Contentment but I haven’t found it to be reliable enough. You can also of course randomly find Contentment by Dreaming on Ways but nothing about the Wood or the Mansus is reliable.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:09
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How do I get a promotion at the reason job? After I get promoted to alden’s asst I mean
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Jun 4, 2018 03:20
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Nightgull posted:How do I get a promotion at the reason job? After I get promoted to alden’s asst I mean There may be ways you can deal with Mr. Alden... (Spoiler for how to do this): Find somebody—a minion or a hireling—with 5 Moth or 5 Edge (maybe other Lore types also work, idk) and put them into Talk. Then drop the job card into the Talk box with them. They’ll try to kill Alden, or drive him insane. Then the job just turns into a reliable work for 2 funds arrangement and expires in 90 seconds instead of 60 so you can do other stuff in between workdays.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:26
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Nightgull posted:How do I get a promotion at the reason job? After I get promoted to alden’s asst I mean There are two ways that I know of, and maybe others.
E: f;b
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Jun 4, 2018 03:27
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Cultist Simulator more like Kill Your Boss Simulator
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Jun 4, 2018 03:30
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A tip for playing the police officer It seems like you're meant to go Observe witness -> Get tentative evidence -> Get Damning Evidence -> Lock them up. When you do, you won't have a target for the job action anymore, and it doesn't seem like you get a new one. I didn't figure out how to get a new troublemaker to investigate. What you can do though, is just keep observing the first person you get. You can keep gathering the tentative evidence over and over again, I never hit a limit, and you get 2-3 funds each time you do it, depending on how much reason you use.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:31
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I got gibbed by an investigator but (basic investigator mechanics) never generated notoriety because I was being boring early game and didn't see any cards popping into his magnet (although I wasn't looking closely). Do I just need to watch closer?
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Jun 4, 2018 03:31
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Ham Sandwiches posted:A tip for playing the police officer I discovered this and it's great like, not mechanically ideal compared to other professions, but conceptually hilarious
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Jun 4, 2018 03:33
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Pirate Radar posted:There may be ways you can deal with Mr. Alden...
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Jun 4, 2018 03:34
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You can probably also use Grail for it which would be nice because so far I have no loving idea what Grail is for
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Jun 4, 2018 03:37
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Pirate Radar posted:You can probably also use Grail for it which would be nice because so far I have no loving idea what Grail is for I enjoy the concept of Grail and my currently running cult is grail-focused.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:39
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I enjoy the concept of Grail and my currently running cult is grail-focused. Lol so is mine even though I don’t know what it does, but don’t ruin it for me, it’ll probably be fun to figure it out.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:45
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Working the 9-5 is for chumps, struggling painter daubing pictures of what he sees in dreams is where it's at (it's also a lot less stressful; just keep painting when you need money). The way the mechanics feel right in this game is unreal.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:46
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History cult is pretty interesting. You don't use the history aspect for anything so you can be pretty flexible with things like upgrading cultists
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Jun 4, 2018 03:47
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Knorth posted:History cult 
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Jun 4, 2018 03:51
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Pirate Radar posted:Lol so is mine even though I don’t know what it does, but don’t ruin it for me, it’ll probably be fun to figure it out. I picked it because it sounded like the most "this will go wrong in hilarious ways" of the lores, which is saying something
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Jun 4, 2018 03:54
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Pirate Radar posted:Also this feels like cheating but if you put a timed card into a box and just leave the box up while you let time go forward it won’t expire. Not sure if that’s intended. It's intended because advanced painting explicitly warns you about that applying to any notoriety you use while painting. Also summoned minions can be "Talked" to about literally any card (even though they only respond to a handful) so keeping a familiar around to preserve your Contentment, prevent an Illness from progressing, or provide Erudition during research is pretty dope.
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Jun 4, 2018 04:16
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I really like how if you take notes about this game, it reads like the ravings of a lunatic.GreyjoyBastard posted:I got gibbed by an investigator but (basic investigator mechanics) never generated notoriety because I was being boring early game and didn't see any cards popping into his magnet (although I wasn't looking closely). There's an investigator trait - erratic, IIRC - that means that they often fail at converting Notoriety into Evidence, but will sometimes create Evidence out of nothing. Tehan fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 04:44
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TheBlandName posted:It's intended because advanced painting explicitly warns you about that applying to any notoriety you use while painting. Cool tip, I’ll remember that.
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Jun 4, 2018 05:13
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Midgame spoilers: The game really opens up when you can reliably summon something that can dispose of evidence. I think the easiest way to get there is summoning the Caligine via the Sunset Rite. Ingredients: 1) The Sunset Rite, acquired by buying 'STUMM!' from the Auction House and watching it with Funds. 2) Forge 6 from Lore 3) Winter 5 from a Winter-aligned Disciple 4) Knock 2 from A Subtle Flaw, can be dreamed up easily by going to the Temple of the Wheel via the Wood. Since the Temple of the Wheel can only have Subtle Flaws, Furtive Truths, or Peculiar Rumours, it usually only takes you a few trips to get the Flaw, so once you've got the rest of the pieces you can have Caligines as needed. Really basic but easy to miss Lore mechanic: Two lore of the same level give you one of the next level up, but each lore can also use a piece of another lore of the same level to level up. It goes: Lantern > Forge > Edge > Winter > Heart > Grail > Moth > Lantern Knock can be combined with any Lore of the same level for the same effect. Tehan fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 05:41
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I personally think non-esoteric paintings (i.e. those without a lore inspiration or weird pigments or whatever) shouldn't generate notoriety in and of themselves just because they're successful, I've had two characters get sent to Wizard Jail just for being a moderately-successful but totally mundane painters. In a world where the Surgeon origin exists, making a living painting shouldn't involve playing chicken with a freight train. Game is otherwise very good, can't wait to see what kind of support it gets post-release. Having an ascension-ending for each lore type would be magnificent. Pirate Radar posted:Loving this game, but even while I’m having fun the grind seems to eat hours of my time with me barely aware of it. I might be misunderstanding you, but if not, big hint: You don't need your follower's lorescore to upgrade them, you use your own cult's score. As soon as you can whip out 7 Grail on demand you can upgrade everyone in a Grail cult to disciple regardless of their specialty, for ex. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 05:41
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:I personally think non-esoteric paintings (i.e. those without a lore inspiration or weird pigments or whatever) shouldn't generate notoriety in and of themselves just because they're successful, I've had two characters get sent to Wizard Jail just for being a moderately-successful but totally mundane painters. In a world where the Surgeon origin exists, making a living painting shouldn't involve playing chicken with a freight train. They don't, as long as you don't use Lore as inspiration and only buy pigments with Funds or not at all, you only get Mystique from paintings, not Notoriety. Mystique does get you a Hunter though, and if your Hunter is Erratic they can pull evidence out of their arse.
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Jun 4, 2018 05:48
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:I might be misunderstanding you, but if not, big hint: You don't need your follower's lorescore to upgrade them, you use your own cult's score. As soon as you can whip out 7 Grail on demand you can upgrade everyone in a Grail cult to disciple regardless of their specialty, for ex. I know, yeah, I just only have 4 Grail lore and haven’t gotten a Grail item yet. I keep Dreaming or going to the Club to see if I can get a Grail Influence but I’ve been out of luck so far. It’s that “being able to whip out 7 lore on demand” that’s the hurdle.
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Jun 4, 2018 05:52
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Pirate Radar posted:I know, yeah, I just only have 4 Grail lore and haven’t gotten a Grail item yet. I keep Dreaming or going to the Club to see if I can get a Grail Influence but I’ve been out of luck so far. It’s that “being able to whip out 7 lore on demand” that’s the hurdle. Restlessness has 3 grail
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Jun 4, 2018 05:55
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Tehan posted:Restlessness has 3 grail gently caress
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Jun 4, 2018 05:56
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Tehan posted:They don't, as long as you don't use Lore as inspiration and only buy pigments with Funds or not at all, you only get Mystique from paintings, not Notoriety. Mystique does get you a Hunter though, and if your Hunter is Erratic they can pull evidence out of their arse. Not my experience, if a painting is successful enough (I think it's like generating 5 funds or more) it generates 1 notoriety regardless of what you put into it, like even if you just used Passion and a mundane inspiration. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 06:00
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Can't say I've seen it myself, but then I've only seen 4 funds for a painting once, never 5. What's the secret to mad painting profitability?
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Jun 4, 2018 06:06
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The physician is also real good for making money. and if you need to kill someone, I have found nothing better than the maid-in-the-mirror. I got these 8 winter aspected manacles out of a vault and hoo boy did we send the dead forth to kill.
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Jun 4, 2018 06:33
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Tehan posted:Can't say I've seen it myself, but then I've only seen 4 funds for a painting once, never 5. What's the secret to mad painting profitability? (I've done my best painting when sticking 2 Notoriety in with 2 passion. It's 2x as potent as mystique. IF you only have 2 and keep using it, it will never be around when the inspector want to pick it up. FYI timers on cards don't move while they are involved with verbs. You can use this to keep Cards alive longer than you normally would. If you have trouble getting rid of evidence: You can time it out by keeping the inspector busy. If you paint mundane paintings using Mystique you can generate more Mystique. Every time the detective takes a Mystique, they will chew on it for a whole minute. Painting can easily generate more Mystique than you use. Alternately, if you are trying to keep them from snatching a Notoriety by sticking it in paintings, you can simply not paint for awhile, letting the timer on the Notoriety tick away while the huntard is busy. When the investigation timer gets low, suck the Notoriety back up into painting while the shlub picks up another Mystique. I call this move "Baffle 'em with bullshit." Tenasscity fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 06:51
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Another hot tip, concerning cool painting tricks. (mid game-ish) Cool poo poo happens when you get the edge of your painting higher than 12 or 16. (Not sure what the cutoff is.) 4 passions will give you 8 moth. Then have the focus of the painting be a good level moth lore. Finally use that moth based pigment. Let me know when you do this and how cool the result is. Tenasscity fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 06:54
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