Your followers’ faith in your cult drives everything in Cult of the Lamb. If you fail to keep them fed and happy, or if you decline their sub-quests too much, or even simply neglect to clean up their poop, their faith will drop. Any kind of wrongdoing, neglect, or slight against them, can cause them to lose faith in you. This will be stressful but don’t fret too much over it. In my 19-hour playtime, my cult’s faith hit basically zero multiple times, and I usually only lost a follower or two (they’d steal 10 coins and peace out).

When faith first reached zero, I was terrified – I assumed that’d mean game over, or I’d lose a bunch of my followers, but that’s not what happened. If you run out or have little faith, just focus on getting it back up, and you’ll be okay. Of course, I don’t recommend letting it sit there for a while, but your cult will be alright if it needs to be low for a day or two.

The quickest way to get your cult firing on all cylinders is to create some daily routines. You can perform many faith-building systems in Cult of the Lamb once a day – sermons, inspirations, and more – and you’ll want to get into the habit of ensuring you complete them each day. Typically, while my followers were asleep, I’d clean up the area, gather resources, and get some buildings ready for construction when they woke up.

Upon their awakening, I’d visit each other and bless them (slightly raising their loyalty to me). Over time, you can upgrade your blessings to inspirations, which increases their loyalty even more. You can also preach sermons in your temple daily, which is essential to making your lamb stronger for their upcoming crusade runs through the game’s four main dungeons. There’s plenty more to complete each day, and you’ll want to get it all figured out to ensure you’re upgrading and maximizing your cult’s potential.

When your cult reaches a healthy number of followers, you might feel like you’re all set … but you’re not, for two reasons.

1. To progress through the game, you must get those follower numbers up. There are four main dungeons to get through in Cult of the Lamb before reaching the game’s finale. To unlock the door leading to each, you’ll need a certain number of followers (each door requires more).

2. There are times when you’ll lose followers quickly. They can die of sickness, old age, murder, sacrifices, and more. Plus, at any moment, they might just up and leave your cult altogether, having lost faith in you as a leader. The more followers you have, the better these situations will be!

Lumber and stone are two essential resources your cult can acquire. They’re needed to build basically everything, and you’ll always need them. Even when you’re focused on making things that don’t require lumber or stone, you’ll need to refine these materials into wooden planks and stone blocks to construct bigger and better things. As such, be sure you have followers in the lumber yards and stone mines collecting these resources for you at all times.

I spent a small portion of my time in Cult of the Lamb ignoring gifts, and I regret it because gifts made cult life so much easier for me. You’ll earn gifts on your dungeon runs that typically amount to a special type of necklace. Some of these can increase the devotion a follower creates at the central shrine. Others can increase the speed at which they work for you. The most important one, and my favorite, is a necklace that makes it so that a follower doesn’t need to sleep. You can probably already imagine how helpful that is. A follower that works all day and night? Excellent (albeit morally wrong, but you’re a cult leader after all).

As someone who did this (blade for life), don’t. You will run through the game’s randomly-arranged dungeons many times in Cult of the Lamb, and the starting weapon and the random weapons you might find later in the dungeon will vary. You’ll want to focus on getting proficient and comfortable with each because there’s a good chance you’ll reach the dungeon’s boss without your favorite weapon in hand. And fighting one of the game’s many tough bosses with a weapon you’re not great with will not be a fun time.

Tarot Cards will be crucial in every single dungeon run, and that’s because they’re potent bonuses that can change the tide of your run. You’ll sometimes find Tarot Cards in chests, and in each phase of a dungeon, you’ll almost always come across an NPC that lets you choose one of three to activate for free. Mind you, these bonuses only last for this dungeon run, so don’t grow too attached, but in the late-game parts of Cult of the Lamb, you’ll complete a dungeon with nearly 10 cards activated. Some give you extra health, others speed up attacks or boost their damage, and some can even resurrect you.

What’s more, is that there are other systems in the game that interact with these Tarot Cards. For example, I have a tunic that gives me a diseased heart (essentially health) every time I pick up a Tarot Card, and this made some of the more challenging bosses a breeze, which was nice.

One of my biggest critiques with Cult of the Lamb (you can read my review here) is that it features many cosmetic items for your cult compound but rarely gives you the time in the game’s opening hours to focus on them. Instead, the game pushes you to use your followers to produce resources to empower your lamb further. This is fine – it’s clearly what developer Massive Monster intended – but the sooner you realize this, the better. You need to upgrade as much as you can as fast as you can before focusing on making your cult look nice aesthetically. You’ll be thankful you did.

You’re the leader, after all. I mention this because many of your followers will ask you to do tasks for them to raise their loyalty to you. Sometimes you’ll be asked to feed another follower a bowl of poop. Occasionally, followers will ask you to murder someone or sacrifice them in the temple. If you decline a follower’s sub-quest, you’ll lose 35 faith, but sometimes, this is worth it because, for example, murdering a follower could cost you even more faith. Weigh your options before deciding what you want to do, and don’t feel like you need to do what your followers ask of you every time.

It’s good fun to name your followers after people you know, pets, or characters from your favorite movie or show, and it’s just as easy to spend time designing them to be awesome. However, don’t get too attached to them. Ultimately, because of Cult of the Lamb’s resource management mechanics, you’ll need to view these followers as workers first, friends second.

What’s important is what they can do for you. You’re a cult leader, after all; part of that is being a dirtbag, like it or not. Plus, your followers don’t live forever, and sometimes, sacrificing one for the good of the cult instead of letting one die of old age is worth it. Growing too attached to your followers makes doing so harder.