Shroud deals

[Chastity the Celibate]

Can someone explain the cons to each covenant.

[Heimeri Klein]

well they are random usually theres a chance you get good ♥♥♥♥ and a chance your empire explodes.

[Ryvucz]

From what I've read, they all do something bad, some worse than others. Personally, I avoid all covenants as Stellaris likes to do things evil to the player anyway.

[Dialask]

The wiki has a page for the stellaris shroud events, with an entire section dedicated to covenants and the events therein. In general it is annoyances that affect specific planets in your empire, with pops mutating, dying, going crazy, lowering their ethics attraction, etc. The most serious penalties of the normal covenants come from the eater of worlds, who can occasionally shroud a planet, removing it from the game.

Of course, then there is The End of The Cycle, which you should definitely take if it pops up unless you have a specific goal in mind for the campaign. In a nutshell: you become super powered for 50 years after which your empire pretty much asploads and becomes a nigh-on unbeatable special end-game crisis for everyone else and your one planet of exiled remnants to deal with.

[Storm]

Always go with the plus 25% minerals and energy nothing can stop you then and you just take a hit to ethics which if you are spiritualist doesn't mean anything.

[mcsproot]

I believe Whispers of the Void gives a bonus to research, but carries the risk of leaders randomly getting substance abuse, and maybe even pops and leaders dying from suicide.

Don't quote me on that, even if it was right at the time, that was several patches ago so I've likely forgotten or it was changed. It's the only one I've ever taken though.