How to make your base work for you.
When the little Lamb gains The Red Crown, he also gains a base in which to gather followers. The former chosen one, Ratau, is helpful in the beginning and gets us started with the essentials. Right away, you need a temple, a shrine, and a cooking fire, and Ratau will let you know what each of these does.
Setting up your base is something that happens incrementally. Gathering devotion will unlock Divine Inspiration. With each Divine Inspiration, you will unlock another structure. It takes time, and figuring out how it all works is part of the fun! However, here are a few tips to keep in mind as you make choices throughout the game.
The Farm
Your farm begins as just a few plots you build. As you move through the different realms and grow your followers, you will gain access to different types of sees, including berries, beets, cauliflower, pumpkins, flowers, and mushrooms. As soon as you can, it’s a good idea to invest in a Farmer Station. You have to unlock it with Divine Inspiration, but once you have it, there’s no need to worry about watering. Your followers will do it for you!
The Farmer Station has a certain number of plots it can reach. Anything outside of that perimeter will be ignored by your followers. Building a Scarecrow is also helpful because those birds will take out your precious crop. In the picture above, I have the upgraded Scarecrow that traps a bird and gives me +1 meat when I empty the trap. You can see the large area the Scarecrow covers. Try to arrange it in a way to cover as many Farm Plots as possible.
Upgrading to the Farmer Station II is a game changer. Your followers will be able to water, plant, and harvest your crops for you. All you have to do is empty the chest to receive the seeds and vegetables. Building a Seed Silo and Fertilizer Silo will also let you equip your farming followers with the tools they need. Empty the Outhouse to collect poop and put it in the Fertilizer Silo. Deposit seeds into the Seed Silo for the followers to plant. You no longer have to do most of the work!
Adding the Natural Burial structure was surprisingly useful in this regard. I have a small cemetery going, but I can’t take over the base with graves. Also, followers get a little creeped out if you keep eating the dead bodies of their friends. Natural Burial turns a body into fertilizer. Then you just deposit it into your Fertilizer Silo. I keep the two close for less walking. Moving the Outhouses closer would be smart too, but I like my little arrangement. It just means that I make a longer trip across the grounds.
Devotion Generators
Once you get rolling, investing in devotion generators will make your economy boom. In the beginning, the main sources of devotion are your followers as they level up and the Shrine where they pray. The little red orbs that float around in the base at night can also be caught for +2 devotion, but that is more of an exciting bonus.
Adding and upgrading a couple of these structures will passively gather devotion for you. Once you have unlocked everything, these locations stop giving you devotion and give you gold coins instead.
- Tabernacle – Build this mini-shrine for passive devotion-gathering from your followers. It’s helpful when you are away and the Shrine becomes too full.
- Grand Shelters – Starting with Sleeping Bags, then upgrading to teepee Shelters, you can unlock Grand Shelters and take things up a notch. These lovely rooms will also gather devotion while your followers are sleeping!
- Perform Funerals – You will first need Body Pits and the funeral doctrine. While choosing the funeral doctrine means that you can’t resurrect followers, it does allow you to perform the Funeral ritual. For every funeral you perform, you have one more grave that will generate up to 10 devotion/gold coins. There’s an easy way around the space concern. Unlock and build the Natural Burial structure to take care of bodies that won’t fit in your cemetery.
Decorations
Building decorations seems pointless beyond personal taste, but they are there for the followers to admire! Apparently, they like their home to look pretty. I built a pond in my base and found a follower happily sighing while staring at it more than once. Finding resources like Crystal Shards can help you build more unique decorations.
Beyond just making them happy, sometimes building decorations serves a purpose. Followers may ask you to build at least three decorations to gain their devotion. Paths are an easy build that cost nothing. Sozo, the mushroom guy, will actually reward you with a piece of a Holy Talisman if you build his mushroom statue in your base.
Other Useful Structures
None of the structures are necessarily a waste, but some are more useful than others. I completely understand the point of the Missionary, but I barely used it. There are a few that I’m very glad that I took the time and resources to build.
- Refinery and Refinery II – The Refinery allows you to convert materials. In the different Realms, you may gather gold nuggets. The Refinery will convert them into gold coins. Then they can be converted into gold bars. Wood is turned into wooden planks, and stone is turned into stone blocks. All of these are requirements in the higher-level structures, so you need a Refinery. Upgrading it to Refinery II allows you to double the queue. Instead of 5 items, you can convert 10.
- Prison – When you encounter a dissenter, they can do some real damage if left unchecked. Just one Prison will keep them from bringing down the Faith of the entire cult! From Prison, you can re-educate them once each day until they are cured. Then you can let them go back to being a happy follower.
- Healing Bay – Sometimes the followers will fall ill. You can send them to bed rest, but it can sometimes take them days to recover. There’s also an occasional quest to indoctrinate new but sick followers into the cult. Instead of letting them roam around vomiting and looking miserable, the Healing Bay lets you cure them with 15 Camellia flowers almost instantly. Since I always have a ton of Camellia flowers in my inventory, this is super useful.
How to Edit
When I first started, I just assumed structure placement was permanent. My farm was a mess, and I had decorations in the way. I never noticed the “Edit” button! Just in case you’re like me, go to the Build Menu. At the bottom of the screen, there will be an option to edit structures. This includes moving them or tearing them down.
The base is yours to decorate and interact with however you want. I liked to make my followers happy, so I spent a lot of time here. None of these tips are hard rules to follow, but they will help your followers thrive and enjoy their time in the cult. Happy followers mean less time spent worrying about your Faith plummeting in a day.
