Godhood: Traditions Guide

Welcome again! This guide intends to discuss some of the details of Traditions. It is updated to 1.0 hotfix 2. I’m Bruno Carvalho, and as of this guide’s writing, I have over 450 hours played in Godhood, so I hope I can help you with the game! You’ll find here the description for all traditions, along with some strategy commentary to help you decide how you’ll build your Religion.

Traditions are the major features of your religions. You’ll gain new traditions whenever you get enough Tenets. Your first tradition wil come after 2 Tenets, the second one after 3 extra Tenets, then 4, so on and so forth. Realistically, you’ll be able to get 3 Traditions on most games, unless you really focus on Development Sparks – more on that later.

This guide classifies the Traditions in two categories. Economy Traditions and Power Traditions.

Economy Traditions are the ones which main ability give you more chests, more materials per chest, more faith, more happiness, development sparks and/or temporary buffs.

Power Traditions are the ones which main ability give you more XP, ability points, development opportunities and/or give you more offerings per chest. These traditions, alongside with Rituals, are the main way you’ll improve your disciples, giving them more power permanently.

In general, you want to take Economy traditions early on and Power Traditions later on. The earlier you gain extra materials, the earlier you can get your building upgrades rolling, and that will help you snowball your game. Power Traditions, on the other hand, generally help you the most after you’ve develop your Temples enough, so you can make the most out of that development opportunities.

These are the strongest Economy traditions and can singlehandedly kickstart your economy into a strong snowball. Pick whatever is most appropriate to your strategy and commandments. Without further ado, here’s them, in no particular order:

Cult of Silence

• Building: Cultist Hideout
• Passive Effect: Your Dark and Divine disciple can learn Silence. Silence is an extraordinary Morale ability, with high damage and with an anti-morale effect. Synergizes very well with Weavers and its ability to punish Clouded actions.
• God Action: Enforce Silence. Costs 150 offerings and has a 3 mission cooldown. Choose a disciple to randomly swap one of its abilities for Silence ++ for one mission. After the mission, you gain scaling Development Sparks depending on the number of Fear abilities on your disciples’ mind, with + abilities counting double and ++ abilities counting triple.
• Comments: This is the only Tradition that grants more development sparks, and the major way to gain more Tenets and the 4th or 5th Tradition. More Tenets means more faith, more happiness and more resources per mission, so make sure you make a team focused on Fear abilities.

Human Sacrifice

• Building: Sacrificial Temple
• God Action: Choose Master of Sacrifice No cost, 8 missions cooldown. Picks one of your diciples to be the Master of Sacrifice until it dies. It can learn Demand Sacrifice, a nice morale Ancestral ability that lowers physical armor.
• God Action: Human Sacrifice 50 offerings and 4 mission cooldown. Your Master of Sacrifice starts the next mission with Demand Sacrifice, and will give you scaling extra chests based on the number of Ancestral/Divine Disciples on your roster.
• Comments: This is the gold standard for Economy Traditions, and the +4 chests you gain from having 6 ancestral/divine disciples is a great bonus. So, if you plan on picking this, be sure to use only Ancestral and Divine disciples (it is not a big problem and you can win even on Impossible with it).

Grand Abberation

• Building: Cultist Hideout
• God Action: Choose Grand Summoner No cost, 8 missions cooldown. Picks one of your diciples to be the Grand Summoner until it dies. It can learn Monsterous Summoning, a very strong physical AoE Naure ability that may stun.
• God Action: Great Summoning 50 offerings and 4 mission cooldown. Your Grand Summoner starts the next mission with Monsterous Summoning, and will give you scaling extra chests based on the number of Nature/Dark Disciples on your roster.
• Comments: This is the other gold standard for Economy Traditions, and you should totally abuse the +4 chests from having 6 Nature/Dark disciples. I think it is even slightly stronger than Human Sacrifice since Monsterous Summoning is stronger than Demand Sacrifice.

Community Elder

• Building: Food Kitchen
• God Action: Assign Community Elder 3 mission cooldown. Assign one Prime or Elder disciple to be yhe Community Elder. You gain +1 or +2 tribute chests every time the community Elder goes on a mission, but you it also lose 5 faith permanently.
• God Action: Community Meeting No cost, 4 mission cooldown. Gain +1 Happiness and your disciples gain +10 Morale Armor for one Mission.
• Comments: If you have a way to manage faith, this is by far the strongest Economy tradition. Not only the extra tribute chests will help you snowball a lot, but the extra happiness (no other tradition gives more happiness) means more repeatables which means even more resources. Just be wary of it draining your faith too much, otherwise you’re golden.

Carnival

• Building: Tavern
• God Action: Carnival 200 Offerings, 4 Missions cooldown. All your disciples lose 2 Faith permanently. 3 Random disciples develop 1x Charisma. Gain 1 Happiness.
• Comments: Similar in power to Community Elder, but trading the extra Chests for Charisma Development. If you got a full Morale team, it may be even stronger than Community Elder. Remember that extra happiness means more repeatables which can grant you lots of resources, experience and time to further develop your Disciples.

Turn the Other Cheek

• Building: Tribunal
• Passive Effect: Your disciple’s non-Grace physical abilities become Devout (morale attack, Greater Devotion scaling), Devout + or Devout ++ (if they’re normal, + or ++, respectively)
• God Action: 50 offerings, 4 mission cooldown. Gain scaling Tribute Chests depending on the number of Grace abilities on your disciples’ mind, with + abilities counting double and ++ abilities counting triple.
• Comments: If you have enough Grace Abilities, this gives as many chests as Human Sacrifice or Grand Aberration. However, it is harder to achieve since it is easier to control your disciple’s class than it is to control their minds. However, do not underestimate the passive effect. Devout is a very nice way to turn good hybrid classes like Guardian, Chieftain, Harbinger, Druid and Smitesword into powerful Morale classes for commandments like Peace and Generosity who does not care about physical damage or Might. Also, Devout’s scaling is greater than any basic abilities’ scaling, so it is a direct buff for your classes when you have fewer Ability Points.

Might Makes Right

• Building: Colosseum
• Passive Effect: Your highest Might disciple gains +40 faith, and the three lowest Might disciples gain -2 faith each.
• God Action:Impose Right Your greatest might disciple adds 3 tribute chests to next mission if they participate. Your 3 lowest Might disciples gain -3 faith each.
• Comments: This is another great way to get chests. While not as good as HS/GA after island 1, its easier to use and also come with the biggest single-target Faith boost in the game. The Faith debuf is pretty minor and won’t cause much problems. If you intend to use a faith-lowering Power tradition, this is a superb Economy choice.

God of Thieves

• Building: Gold Hoard
• God Action:Steal Tribute Chests. 25 Offerings, 2 missions cooldown. Choose a disciple to lose 1 fervor and become unavaiable for 1 mission. Gain scaling tribute chests depending on your disciple’s Cunning.
• Comments: God of Thieves may seem that it starts slow (it only gets 4 chests at rank A, which is mid-late game), but its low cooldown means you’ll be getting those chests very frequently. After you have rank A Cunning, you’ll be swimming in materials. Just make sure you have enough fervor to support it.

These Economy traditions, while still powerful on their own, aren’t as good as the Core abilities to kickstart your economy. They can be selected to fill holes on your strategy or to make your mid-game ramp resources even faster. Here’s them, in no particular order:

Idol

• Building: Bordello
• God Action:Assign Idol. 8 missions cooldown. Assign one of your disciples to be the Idol until it dies. It grants + 0.5*Charisma Materials to all Tribute Chests when they participates on missions. The Disciple also lose 5 faith permanently and can learn Idol Glamour, a strong AoE Life morale ability scaling with Charisma that can Infatuate.
• God Action:Please Fans. 25 offerings, 4 missions cooldown. The idol lose 5 faith permanently and grants 2 extra Tribute Chests on next mission if they participates.
• Comments: Idol is strong, but suffers from not being that strong at the early game since your Charisma is not that great. After mid-late game, however, when both your Charisma and Faith are good enough to support it, it becomes a fantastic Materials accelerator, maybe the best one in the game.

Champion of Faith

• Building: Colosseum
• God Action: Assign Champion 8 missions cooldown. Assign one of your disciples to be the Champion until it dies. It grants + 0.5*Health Materials to all Tribute Chests when they participates on missions. The Disciple also can learn Champion Strike, a strong AoE Life physical ability scaling with Health that steals followers equal to 40% damage dealt.
• God Action:Rally Troops. 100 offerings, 3 missions cooldown. The Champion grants 1 extra Tribute Chest on next mission if they participates, and all disciple gain +10 on both armors.
• Comments: Champion of Faith is similar to Idol, but offer less of a economy boost (less chests, costs more in Offerings) in exchange for no Faith costs. As of 1.0 Hotfix #2, Champion Strike is bugged and steal much less followers than it should. Anyway, it is another mid-tier tradition, but can help if you’re having trouble with Morale enemies after the bug is removed.

War Slaves

• Building: Colosseum
• Passive Effect: -1 hapiness. All repeatable missions wield 1 extra Tribute Chest.
• God Action:Double Shifts. 3 missions cooldown. All your disciples lose 2 faith permanently. The next mission wields double materials if it is a Repeatable.
• Comments: War Slaves is the go-to Tradition to buff Repeatables, but unfortunately you don’t have enough Happiness to exploit them at the early game as you can do on mid-game. As a mid-game tradition, however, War Slaves can give you lots of materials. The fact that its earlygame is very weak, however, keeps it from being a Core Economy tradition.

Holy Judge

• Building: Tribunal
• God Action: Assign Holy Judge. 8 mission Cooldown. Assign a disciple to become the Judge. It can learn Judge Violence, a Reason, Grace Devotion-scaling Morale Ancestral ability that blocks 2 physical abilities on the target’s mind.
• God Action: Holy Trial. 100 Offerings, 3 missions cooldown. Choose a disciple to lose 5 faith permanently and gain 2 Clouded Thoughts for one mission. The Holy Judge develops 1x Devotion and next mission gains 1 tribute chest per 2 Reason abilities on the Judge’s mind.
• Comments: Holy Judge is a mixed tradition that tries to give chests and develop at the same time. In the end, it gives too little of a economy boost and too little of development to be really reliable for both. If you already have a strong Reason-style team, it may be useful, but other than that, you’d rather avoid this tradition.

Animism

• Building: Hallowed Tree
• Passive Effect: Your Light and Nature disciples gain +20 Faith
• God Action: Commune with Spirits. 50 Offerings, 3 mission cooldown. Choose a disciple to regain 2 Fervor, gain 20% stat bonus if theres a Nature Disciple in your team, and +50% offerings from tribute chests in the next mission.
• Comments: Animism is a mixed bag. Its main effect is the 20 faith for Nature and Light disciples, which is equivalent to 8 happiness or 50 materials and offerings per mission (as you’ll need two Adoration Tenets less) if you have (and you should have) a full Nature/Life team. However, it action is also great to keep your disciples combat ready and give you some offerings to boot. It won’t pick up your economy from the ground up, but is a nice bonus that can round up your Tradition lineup, or offset a faith-lowering Tradition.

Baptism

• Building: Bath House
• God Action: Baptize. 3 mission cooldown. Choose a disciple to permanently gain +25 Faith, recover all Fervor and develop 2x Devotion. Each disciple can only be Baptized once. In addition, you gain double offerings from tribute chests for one mission.
• Comments: Baptism is a fantastic mixed tradition that can not only increase your devotion very well but also let your disciples handle some faith debuffs without problems. In a sense, it plays and feels like Animism, but swapping its short-term effects for more long-term power (and handling more Faith, Fervor and Offerings). Baptism is also another “enabler” tradition that can let you (ab) use other traditions better.

Power Traditions give you stats, exp, offerings, ability points, making your Disciples stronger. As these buffs generally benefit from having better Totems and upgraded Temples, you’ll in general want them as your 2nd or later Traditions, since they won’t give you great power increments early on. Exceptions should be noted under the Tradition’s Comments. Without further ado, here’s them, in no particular order:

Hermit Pilgrimage

• Building: Communing Grounds
• God Action: Hermit Pilgrimage. 100 offerings, 1 mission cooldown. Choose a disciple to become unavaiable for one mission. On return, they gain 8 XP and 2 ability points. Chosen disciple needs a minimum knowledge value.
• Comments: A fantastic ability to train your disciples, and one of the best ways to gain ability points. This is one of the best traditions to shape your disciple’s mind to whatever you want them to be and one of the few Power traditions that you might want to have on the early game.

Just New World

• Building: Food Kitchen
• God Action:Declare Revolution. 250 Offerings, 6 missions cooldown. All your disciples finish their current rituals, and gain +10 phys and morale damage for one mission. You’ll gain double materials from chests on next mission.
• Comments: Just New world is a strong and flexible development source, as you can tailor it to whatever you want by using your rituals. Its quite costly and weak early game, but once you got your development power up and some upgraded rituals, it’ll increase a lot the power of your disciples. The on-mission buffs are cute, but the long cooldown makes them too weak to have them as your main economy source.

Burials

• Building: Burial Ground
• Passive Effect: When a disciple dies, gain scaling Tribute Chests on next mission based on the Disciple’s Health Rank.
• God Action: 100 offerings, 3 mission cooldown. All your Disciples develop 1x Health. You lose 2 happiness for 3 missions.
• Comments: Burials is a fantastic tradition if you need Health. After your Elder disciples are strong enough to have rank A, you’ll gain 7 tribute chests whenever a disciple dies (either by natural causes or the take Soul action). The -2 hapiness is a very weak penalty and will not even interfere with your score if you time it right. All in all, Burials is one of the strongest Power traditions and a fantastic candidate for your second tradition.

Heavenly Art

• Building: Market
• God Action: Assign Heavenly Sculptor. 8 missions cooldown. Choose a disciple to become the Heavenly Sculptor. It can learn Beauty of Art, an strong Life Morale attack.
• God Action: Inspire Great Art. 200 offerings, 3 mission cooldown. All your future disciples gain a +1 bonus to all stats. You gain followers based on your sculptor’s Knowledge. For the next mission, the Sculptor have a chance (based on Faith) to use Beauty of Art inbetween rounds. This action’s cost permanently increases with each use.
• Comments: Heavenly Art is much stronger than it looks. Stat developments have a built-in diminishing returns mechanic: the more you develop a stat, the less it increases when you develop it again. Direct stat bonuses, like this one, circumvents this mechanic, so your newbies will become much stronger much faster. In addition, this is the go-to tradition if you want to get the highest scores, since doing 3 repeatables cost 6 happiness (or 9% extra score), and you can get around 5k followers lategame with his action, allowing you reach scores of 100k or bigger.

School of Philosophy

• Building: Monastery
• Passive Effect: Reason abilities gain extra damage equal to 25% of the disciple’s Knowledge.
• God Action: Send to School of Philosophy. Chose a disciple to become unavaiable for one mission. When they come back, the Disciple gains 4 XP, develop 1x Knowledge, and learn a new ability, choosing a Reason ability if possible.
• Comments: School of Philosophy is the lynchpin of the Reason synergy. It singlehandedly makes Reason abilities some of the best morale attacks in the game. If you’re going for a morale strategy, it is hard to justify not picking it if you have the chance.

Estactic Salvation

• Building: Bordello
• God Action: Grant Ecstasy. 100 offerings, 3 mission cooldown. Choose a disciple to develop 2x Cunning and gain +10 Faith. In the next mission, you gain extra Materials per tribute chest equal to half of the disciple’s cunning if it participate.
• Comments: Ecstatic Salvation is the best cunning development Tradition and a great mixed tradition. If you intend to get a faith-lowering tradition next, it may even be worth to pick it as a first tradition and rely on it and Philosophy tenets as your main Economy early on. You won’t have such great economy as if you had picked a core Economy tradition, but the power increase from the extra cunning may be worth it if your Major Relic and classes synergize with high Cunning.

Canibalism

• Building: Consuming Grounds
• Passive Effect: There’s a small chance a random disciple will gain +1 Might, Health and Cunning and lose 2 Faith permanently.
• God Action: Cannibal Meal. 2 missions cooldown. Choose a disciple to develop 1x Might, Health and Charisma and lose 10 Faith permanently.
• Comments: This tradition has the second biggest development/mission stat of all. It is a great way to make your physical disciples absolutely terrifying. The Faith cost is steep, but if you can mitigate it with Relics and/or Traditions, they’ll make your team very strong very quickly.

Holy Marriage

• Building: Bathouse
• God Action: Holy Marriage. 8 missions cooldown. Choose a disciple to be your Holy Spouse. It grants 0.25* Devotion extra offerings per Tribute Chests if it participates on a mission.
• God Action:Holy Procession. 100 Offerings, 1 mission cooldown. The Holy Spouse develops 1x Devotion and 0.25x all other stats and lose 10 faith permanently.
• Comments: And here we have the biggest development/mission Tradition in the game. Holy Spouse can easily make the chosen disciple an absolute beast that will be a force to be reckoned with, should you be able to manage its faith. Focus on faith buffs but be wary that should you become too reliant on your Holy Spouse, you’ll struggle a lot once it is dead, so be prepared for huge power dips whenever you need to assign a new Spouse.

Doom Prophecy

• Building: Cultist Hideout
• God Action:Doom Prophecy. 0 Offerings, 3 missions cooldown. Choose a disciple. It becomes mad for 1 mission, gaining a clouded thought, and develop 0.5x Charisma and Knowledge. If they participates on the following mission, gain 1x Knowledge extra Offerings per Tribute Chest.
• Comments: Doom Prophecy is the strongest Offering tradition come mid and lategame. It is also the cheapest Development tradition, as all costs of it are temporary and its cooldown is relatively low. It won’t get you snowballing as hard as the Materials traditions, but you can’t get more efficient than this price tag.

Trade Missions

• Building: Market
• God Action: Trade Mission. 150 Offerings, 5 mission cooldown. Chose a disciple. It becomes unavaiable for 2 missions. Once it returns, you gain scaling passive materials depending on its Knowledge Rank, and all disciples develop 1x Knowledge.
• Comments: Albeit it shares lots of similarities to Burials, Trade Missions has a weaker resource gain but also starts rewarding you earlier. It probably isn’t enough to snowball you on t

By brunocarvalhopaula