Godhood: Beginner’s Guide

When I started playing the Early Access version of Godhood, I felt like I was thrown into the deep end. Too many concepts and terms thrown my way, without being given a solid idea of what they mean or what they are supposed to do.

A new player might already have a feeling they would like “War” over “Lust” when customizing their god, but that doesn’t explain what a “commandment” actually is and how it affects gameplay. Let alone what a “Totem” might do, why you are forced to dream in your first turn of the intro, what some of the resources do and what many of the late-game options are. Despite the simple, pleasing visuals, Godhood can be a surprisingly deep game with lots of plates to spin.

Sure, I got the hang of it after my first campaign and I’m sure you can too. All of this is forgivable too, since (as of the time of this writing – March 2020) it is an Early Access title.
Still, I’ve chosen to create this guide for people like me, who prefer a slightly more forgiving introduction to Godhood so that they don’t feel like spending their first campaign merely learning what everything does.

I can promise that any reader who finishes this guide, will know how to play Godhood, without having had to play Godhood first.

Though the game breezes past it without further explanation in the intro, especially because the scene plays out automatically, it is indeed battle, or “Sacrement” as the game calls it, that lie at the heart of Godhood, moreso than it’s religion or city-building aspects.

The first Sacrement during the intro of the game.

In essence, Godhood is a turn-based action RPG – and one that just so happens to play out by itself. As an RPG, it comes with all character stats you’d usually associate with that, and in fact, it’s these statistics that give context to everything else we’ll be doing during gameplay. For this reason alone it’s worth further investigating these stats before we look at the citybuilding or religious portions of the game.

Circled in red are some of the most important statistics you might want to know about. The screen shown can be accessed by pausing the game with spacebar, then using the mousepointer to hover over the data.

From the image above, the four major concepts that this game deals with, are:

1.1 Health
1.2 Stats
1.3 Class
1.4 Affinity

If Battle Sacrements are at the heart of the game, then beating the enemy is the ultimate goal. For most RPGs, this is simply a matter of giving the enemy a good physical or magical trashing until their health pools drop to zero.

Godhood’s first complication, is that sending your opponents to the hospital isn’t actually the primary objective of the game. It helps of course, but it’s not the fighters or the events in the arena that decide the outcome. It is in fact, the audience surrounding that arena that decide.

Your gawking, swooning, soon to be adoring followers.

Godhood is about converting the audience to your side. Not necessarily through battle, but by putting up a convincing show during that battle by any means possible.

To reflect this, Godhood’s second complication is that there are actually two different pools of health. Each of these is more susceptible to a different type of attack than the other.

Physical Health/Attacks

The first and most obvious type of health/attack, are Physical ones. Every fighter in the arena has a physical health bar presented directly below them. When a physical attack is made upon an opposing fighter, most of the damage done decreases the physical health bar of that opposing fighter. When this bar reaches zero, the fighter in question is knocked out of the fight.

Moral Health/Attacks

The second type of health/attack, are Moral ones. These are designed not so much to harm the other team, but to inspire and impress the audience. This bar is shown to the top of the Sacrement screen, alongside a counter that shows the player how many people need to be impressed to win a Moral victory. When a moral attack is made upon an opposing fighter, most of the damage done increases the moral victory bar of the team that made the moral attack. When this bar fills up all the way to the middle, that team wins the battle.

The Moral health bar at the top of the screen. When one team fills it up to the middle bar, they win. Shown also is the amount of audience that the middle of the bar represents.

This means that there exists a dynamic between a team of purely 

 Physical fighters and a team of purely  Moral fighters.

It’s the job of Physical fighters to knock out the opposing team of Moral fighters, before the opposing moral fighters manage to impress the audience. Moral Fighters can’t win a Sacrement and convince people to follow them around when the Physical fighters have confined them to a hospital bed.

It’s the job of Moral fighters to impress the audience, before the opposing physical fighters manage to knock out the Moral fighters. Physical fighters can’t win a Sacrement if a Moral Team manages to prove the Physical fighters are just a bunch of unrefined pagan brutes and bullies.

Of course, Moral attacks don’t EXCLUSIVELY deal moral damage and the same goes for physical attacks. A physical fighter landing a deftly placed haymaker that launches an oppenent ten feet into the air, makes an impact on chin and audience both.

It’s usually better to build a team of either exclusively Moral Fighter, or exclusively Physical fighters. Mixing together a team that does both, will mostly lose against a specialized team, unless the player knows what they’re doing and their characters have an interesting dynamic of abilities that make up for it.

To see which attacks deal Moral Damage and which deal Physical damage, a player can hover their cursor over the individual attacks in the ability bar.

To lessen damages, there are also two different types of defense stats to lessen the blow of either type of attack. These two stats are shown directly below the health bar and presented as a blue Mirror symbol for defending against moral assaults, and a golden Shield for defending against Physical assaults.

More on how to increase these defenses in the next segment of this guide.

The above image gives a rundown of some of the more common statistics in the game. Perhaps the most obtuse are the big white ones at the top, showing a white symbol, next to a number.

The symbol is the “class” of the character. More on this later.

The number is the powerlevel of the character, but unlike in most other RPGs, this does not represent how many times the character has “leveled up”. Instead, it gives a general sense of how high the character’s stats are and how well they play to the character’s “class”. Again, more on this later.

Although the game is currently somewhat bad at giving context to terms, it’s not bad at all explaining the statistics. Hover over them with the pointer and a good rundown is given. Now that we understand the important differences between Physical and Moral Health/Attacks, these stats can be grouped together for a better frame of reference.

 Physical Stats

There are three of these: Might, Cunning and Health.

Basically, a Character’s Might statistic defines a  Physical Fighter’s ability to reliably attack. Health defines their ability to reliably defend themselves and teammates against incoming Physical Attacks. Cunning defines their chance to attack or defend in a more fancy way – dealing critical damage or completely ignoring an enemy’s Physical attack.

If you remember the yellow Shield symbol previously mentioned (defense against physical attack), then it’s the Heart Statistic that raises it.

Moral Stats

There are three of these: Charisma, Knowledge and Devotion.

Basically, a Character’s Moral statistic defines a  Moral Fighter’s ability to reliably attack. Devotion defines their ability to reliably defend themselves and teammembers against incoming Moral Attacks. Knowledge defines their chance to attack or defend in a more fancy way – dealing critical damage or completely ignoring an enemy’s Moral attack.

If you remember the blue Mirror symbol previously mentioned (defense against moral attack), then it’s the Devotion Statistic that raises it.

As you can see, the three statistics are easily categorized under their ability to be helpful to either Physical or Moral fighters.

This does not mean there shouldn’t be any crossover though. For a Physical fighter to have some devotion, grants them resistance against moral attack. The same goes for a Moral fighter and their resistance to Physical attack by investing in Health.

Even knowledge may be helpful for a Physical Fighter, to be able to single out a weaker individual on the opposing team, or cunning for a Moral Fighter, to be able to take their turn faster.

However, the benefits of that are small and I’d definitely wouldn’t recommend might for Moral fighters or vise versa. It’s better to stick to what your team is good at and build stats accordingly, instead of creating a generalist who’s good at nothing.

Let’s for a moment, return to the two white symbols presented at the top of a fighter’s statsheet.

There are actually no levels in Godhood, or more accurately, the number in white doesn’t correspond to it. XP is awarded after every victory in the field and put into a bar, but when that bar fills up, the number in white won’t increase and neither is the character awarded an increase in statistics.

You now might be wondering “Well, then what do I get for my XP?”

The answer to that is “Options”. Most of these options can be found in the city-building part of the game and are called “Miracles”, but for now, let’s stick to just increasing our understanding of the characters themselves before discussing how we can improve them.

Out of the options you’re given after filling a character’s XP bar, the most important is the option of picking a job, or a “Class” for your character.

All characters you’ll receive beyond the one you begin with, start out as simple acolytes. These fighters are weak, unspecialized and have a random mix of both Physical and Moral attacks. They’re exactly the kinds of weak jacks-of-all-trades we don’t want to take into battle. If we do however and the Acolyte manages to grab enough XP to fill their bar, then they get to pick a Class for themselves. This happens only once and only after the first time you manage to “level up”.

One of these characters has leveled up for the first time and is given the opportunity to select a class for themselves.

The trick to classes is that each of them is defined primarily by two of the six statistics previously discussed. These two are the most important for them. In the example below, the two most important statistics for the Class known as the “Rage Prophet”, are the statistics of Might and Health. Rage prophets are therefore class characters that can dish out and endure a great amount of Physical damage. This is signified by the little star symbols present in the listing of stats to the left of the screen (1).

The screen shown when an Acolyte is rewarded by picking a class for them, after leveling up for the first time.

The characters themselves, in the middle of the screen (2), also tell you what Classes are favored by them, based on the stats they possess. For a lowly acolyte who possesses high Health and high Might, becoming a Rage Prophet is the most intuitive and therefore favored. In this way, your characters are almost ordained to taking certain jobs from birth this way, though the player may choose to change fate.

When an Acolyte claims their class and graduates into a specialization, their otherwise weak mix of both Physical and Moral attacks, is then replaced by a line up of specialized abilities that suit them. This is shown on the right of the earlier image (3). For the Rage Prophet, this means a solid line-up of powerful Physical attacks.

There are many classes in the game and Steam User RVWinkle has created an excellent list of them, right here:

However, not all of them are available at any one time to a player. This has to do with yet another concept, called “Commandments”, or “Virtues” by the game. Basically, it’s the type of religion chosen by the player at the start. The abilities awarded by picking a class also come with interesting effects on gameplay and something called an “Elemental Affinity” is also awarded, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and discuss these terms later.

To circle back to the white symbols above a character’s statsheet:

The white symbol to the left signifies a character’s class. Shown here is the symbol of a class known as the “Executioner”. If this were a Rage Prophet’s statsheet, it would’ve been a skull. When no class symbol is shown, we’re dealing with an acolyte.

The number in white next to that, is not an indication of level, or how many times a character has filled up the XP bar. It is instead, an indication of all of a character’s statistics, and how well they combine with a chosen character’s class. It is therefore a Powerlevel, rather than strictly a level in the classical RPG sense.

There’s one last basic concept that should be considered, before we have a good understanding of our characters. It’s one that has to do with the previously mentioned concept of Class Jobs.

It’s called Elemental Affinity and don’t worry, it’s one of the easiest concepts of the game to wrap your head around!

Whenever a character gets assigned a Class by the player, this also comes with an elemental affinity. From this moment on, the character represents one of the five qualities of sainthood.

These are:

Ancestry (Red)
Life (Yellow)
Dark (Purple)
Nature (Green)
Divinity (Aqua)

As you might be able to tell from the orientation of the arrows in the above image, it’s a basic rock-paper-scissors system. Red defeats Yellow, while Red itself gets stomped by Aqua.

The primary example from our previous explanation of the Class System – The Rage Prophet – is a  physical fighter who focusses on the statistics of Might and Health and has strong direct attack abilities.

We can now also consider that the Rage Prophet it is a class with an elemental affinity for Red “Ancestry”, as shown by his white skull symbol to the left of their name, being set upon a red background.

The Rage Prophet isn’t alone in this. The Ambassador Class for example is also a Red “Ancestry” class, even though its primary statistics are Charisma and Devotion, which means the Ambassador has abilities that focus more on  Moral Attacks instead.

Regardless of statistics, abilities or even powerlevel by quite some margin, both of these Red Ancestor classes are likely to easily beat any class that has an affinity for Yellow “Life”, while getting beaten by any Class that has an affinity for Aqua “Divinity”. The damage and the efficiency of the Class with an Elemental Affinity advantage, is far higher, while taking less damage in turn.

When the classes do not have an affinity that has a direct connection as shown in the diagram above, then battle continues as usual.

It is in the best interest of a player to have a healthy variety of characters with different affinities in their roster, and to therefore graduate their acolytes into a variety of classes. The Rage Prophet is fun to have on the battlefield, but if a player trains nothing but Rage Prophets, then they’re in trouble if they face an enemy team with a dominance of Aqua affinity Classes. Flexibility is key in Godhood.

As a summary of the concepts we’ve just gone through.

The most important part of Godhood is the Sacrements (or battles). Within a Sacrement, the goal is to either deplete the physical health bar of each of the three opposing fighters by making  physical attacks upon the opposing fighters, or to increase your own team’s Moral Victory bar at the top of the Sacrement screen, by making  moral attacks upon the opposing fighters.

When a character has defenses to Physical or Moral damage done to them, both goals are slowed down from happening.

The strength of these attacks and the ability to endure, is governed by the six statistics that each fighter has.

These are Might, Cunning and Health (which are strongly associated with  physical attacks and health).

And these are Charisma, Wisdom and Devotion (which are strongly associated with  moral attacks and health).

Once characters have leveled up for the first times, they’re granted a Class. Every class is associated with two of the six character statistics. The character that gets to pick a class, favors and is best suited for the class that corresponds to their two highest statistics.

Classes also come with a rock-paper-scissors Elemental Affinity, that make classes better at fighting certain other classes that have an opposing Elemental Affinity.

Now that we understand what makes our characters tick, it’s time to go back to the beginning of the game and consider this screen more closely:

Commandments, yes. We all have an idea of what “Generosity” and “War” means and “Lust” might give us a good giggle, but what does it actually DO inside the game?

Commandments, basically decide on which of the many Character Classes in the game are available to you. And within that range of classes, each Commandment has a theme towards which Statistics appear most important to that Commandment.

Each Commandment also starts out with a character that’s already been granted a class from the start. This class is exclusive to that commandment.

On the amount of Elemental Affinities available, commandments have little bearing. Most get to pick from a range of Classes that together have all Elemental Affinities as options.