Tips for Davkul run

[Trappist]

I have plenty of bb experience, but really find Davkul hardest to get going. Can anyone provide some tips?

And.. Is it correct you always have to sacrifice a cultist to promote another cultist?

Cheers

[bulbatrs]

you sacrifice one of the 4 lowest xp of any origin and all other cultists get 50% chance to get promoted.
sacrifice can happen very early, like day 8 I think and chances depend on number of cultists. as a result having other origins tends to be a risky investment.
in the early game conversions can take a lot of time, due to low number of cultists and high number of potential events, it's best to focus on having as small pool of events as possible. thus try not to hire bros with event traits such as pessimist. also travel off the road once 3 days have passed since last event as a lot of events are on the road.
you can buy some time with angry bros before they leave by having angrier bros. the way desertion works is the angriest leaves one at a time, so if your potential convert is on the frontlines fighting he will be slightly less angry than the once that seat in the reserve. having 5+ of those can give you over half a day to make it to the tavern.

[Trappist]

If i hire a beggar at lvl 1 when all other bros are > lvl 1, will he always be an option for sacrifice?

[bulbatrs]

Sacrifice is a choice of 2 from 4 lowest level, so you will need 3 lvl 1 beggars, with all others being over lvl 1, to guarantee that one of them gets sacrificed.

[McFuzz]

If you want a semi-decent seed for a cultist run, try YDFHDJSVOS

None of the original brothers are particularly stand-outs (none are that bad, though). But there's a Swamp City a short walk to the north from spawn, which you don't see a lot, so you'll be able to get frequent cultist recruits.

[Elder Borjoyzee]

If you have Blazing Deserts you can always have sacrifices.. The indebted cannot leave your company and have no gold upkeep. They can't be converted either so you won't accidentally waste your conversion event on them.

[Estieukua]

It's hard to get going with cultist campaigns if you try to play "normally" and hire lots of talented mercs and level them quickly. If you do that, usually you have trouble finding good cultists or else you hire and level lots of talented non-cultists but then have them all get angry when you roast someone alive to appease Davkul, so that you then have to worry about always being near a settlement with a tavern (and buying round after round until the angry ones get disgruntled and all the others are drunk so that you'll have to avoid fighting for a couple of days until the effects have worn off).

If you play more slowly, keeping a small and low-budget roster of mostly cultists (plus a few potential sacrifices/converts), you can concentrate mostly on travel, exploration and low-risk contracts in the early-mid game, and in the mean time you'll have a higher number of events (sacrifices, cultists joining, non-cultists converting into cultists, cultists transforming simple hoods and gambesons/surcoats into improved cultist variants). Some of the event-gained cultists will be highly talented, and the cultist traits gained via sacrifices will gradually turn mediocre cultists into good ones, good ones into great ones, etc.

[bulbatrs]

you don't have to play very slow and there is a lot of value in large squads. more cultists = faster events. I still do a lot of fighting and get max cultist squads asap. I find it a lot of fun fighting with crappy bros and a lot of them die only to be replaced by the same mediocracy while I look for amazing converts. with that sort of strategy recruiter is a must.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by Trappist:

I have plenty of bb experience, but really find Davkul hardest to get going. Can anyone provide some tips?

And.. Is it correct you always have to sacrifice a cultist to promote another cultist?

Cheers

Cultists are fine for any role except ranged and have great resolve. It's not like you can afford premium bros at first so other than managing sacrifices it's not so different from usual for me.

At first, stick with any functional cultist and talented ones could be endgame. Company doesn't need to be big. 6 bros can function. Also have a few indebted with low exp for sacrifice.

Then hire noncultists eligible for conversion but only have 1 prospect worth keeping at a time. For example a talented poacher for ranged. At first you just hope you can keep him if a sac happens or that he is converted first (after a sacrifice is a good time to recruit non cultist due to cooldown). Head to tavern for anger if you can. Later in game keep happy powder to cure anger before desertion. And if you have enough happy powder you can do multiple unconverted prospects at once.

[anaphylactic god]

problem with cultists is that they ususally suck and converting anyone of value is a big pain.

[hakimio]

There is a detailed cultist guide on reddit.

[Trappist]

Cheers for all the advice. I'll have another punt at it.

[Eraziel]

A few tips for the beginning

- Recruit every cultists you can. It's important to have a critical mass of cultists earliest (10 minimum) to be able to convert other backgrounds. Each cultist add chance to trigger the conversion event. The more you have the faster you convert, and it's really important that you can consistently convert early as possible.

- If possible, avoid recruiting other backgrounds before the first sacrifice. You don't know when it will happens and you can't afford desertions because of the sacrifice.

- Because your brothers are mostly crap at the beginning, buying warhounds can help during the firsts days. They are stronger then a baddly equiped weak brother.

- Avoid every cultist loss. It will delay your conversions.

- When the first sacrifice has happened and you have enough cultists, begin to recruit valuable backgrounds. Generally, you can convert only one guy between two sacrifices so don't recruit more unless you have happy powder.

- Valuable recruits will be militiamen (best Matk of the lowborns) for duelists/twohanders, farmers/lumberjacks for BF tanks or duelists if high Matk and 2-3 stars, thieves for nimble tanks or maybe a fencer. Butchers and brawlers are also a good pick. When it's possible to afford them, each hedge knight should be try on for the dumb trait. And sellswords too...their only weaknesses are wages and health, and Davkul wipes them out with 20 hp and a beggar's paycheck.

- You should always have 3 fodders lv 1 for the sacrifice event. Early they should be cultists or indebteds (can't be converted) because you don't want the convert event to be spend on them. Later they could be from others backgrounds if you have nobody you want to convert because they can provide +2 resolve on a good brother who convert them.

- Don't forget to never keep low armors/helmets in your inventory because that can trigger the cultist leather armor/helmet event which can delay the sacrifice or the convert event. You want the least factors that can trigger others events.

[bbqsauceomgwtf]

I've had sacrifices required as early as day 4 =(.

[Tephros83]

Here's a cool cultist seed I just found: HSRIFCWALE. I had been hoping for a good sergeant as a starter since voice of davkul goes best on a sergeant, but with cultist bonuses that light tank guy (Halsten) is probably the best I've seen in any game. Haven't played it yet, but map also looks good for transport, northern and southern ports, decent roads. Also for cultist it has two keeps in the swamp. I think the map would be the same on a few other origins too, I think peasant militia is one of them.

Originally posted by cliffhangerlife:

I've had sacrifices required as early as day 4 =(.

I think the wiki says it's day 6 that sacrifices can start (by 2nd event), but maybe it used to be earlier. It's not like the starting 4 guys are all spectacular anyway.

[Trappist]

Cheers Tephros. My run is going well around day 150, I have some really good guys, though mostly nimble. I hava a nimble tank with 150 hp and 80 matt haha. Only thing im finding is not hitting many f the cultist upgrades during the sacrifice event, but thats just rng 50 50. I read on Discord that you can have prophet by day 120 ish. But by day 120 i had liek 2 of 18 cultisits that got the +20hp buff. Anyway its my new favourite background!