Religion inElinis intimidating. Your first exposure to it will often be encountering cult fanatics roving the wilderness or finding mysterious shrines in dungeons. Despite these first impressions, siding with a deity provides exclusive upsides and is a great way of getting strong party members and legendary weapons.

Which deity offers the most will depend on your playstyle, but there are no permanent penalties if you decide to shop around and see what all of them have to offer. This guide will cover the different deities you may worship, the benefits their faiths give, and how to build up the hidden piety stat used to get divine favors.

The player in Elin prepares to worship Lulwy of Wind.

How Faith And Piety Work

There are a few different systems around religion that run alongside each other and offer different rewards.

When you choose to worship a deity, the game will track how long you’ve been in their service. You’ll get someattributes and skill boosts proportional to this time. You’ll gain access to the Pray ability which can be used once per day to fully restore your health and mana.

The village of Somewhere in Elin. Decorative versions of the iron balls used for divine punishment are used as furniture, alongside a statue of Jure.

Praying also gives a small amount of faith and piety, so taking the Model Follower feat is a good investment. This will automatically pray once per day, making sure you don’t miss days when using fast travel or doing a week-long fishing vacation.

Paying tribute at the altars of your deity will give you piety, a secondary attribute that isn’t visible on your character sheet. At certain levels of piety, you’ll be given unique rewards the next time you pray.

The Truce Grounds in Elin, a site where the seven core deities can all be found.

You cannot gain more piety than you have faith, which is tracked on your character sheet. Unless you deliver large amounts of tribute very early in the game, this is unlikely to be an issue. To get the divine weapon you need a faith skill of at least 30. The message “You feel a sense of oneness” when offering tribute means you have hit the piety limit for your current faith skill.

How To Change Gods

Choosing to worship a new deity will forsake your previous one.They’ll give you the debuff “divine punishment"with a duration dependent on how long you were faithful.

Divine punishment is attached to a heavy iron ball that cannot be removed from your inventory until the duration expires (typically by traveling in the overworld, as the duration does not reduce while you are asleep.)The weight scales to your carrying capacity, so it is difficult to ignore but never a lethal threat by itself.

In Elin, a player pays tribute to Kumiromi. They are holding the sacred weapons of Horome and Kimuromi.

If you choose the Demigod race at character creation, you’recompletely immune to divine punishment. Blaspheme to your heart’s content!

There are two strategies for using faith and piety in the game:

Elin’s Blessing of Ehekatl allows your pet cat to upgrade any loot by licking it.

Youcan’t have more than two apostles in your party,or they’ll start fighting each other. They won’t mind sharing a village, so you may still recruit all of them.

All Gods And Their Piety Rewards

The easiest place to find most altars is the Truce Grounds, North of Palmia. Here, you’ll find the core pantheon of eight deities. The remaining three deities have shrines in nearby settlements:

Eyth of the Void is part of the core pantheon but not an active participant in godly affairs.Worshipping Eyth gives no benefits. Similarly, Yaksha of Oblivion is only worshipped by NPCs and provides no follower bonuses.

Elin’s Thieves Guild vault containing a golden statue of Ehekatl.

Gain bonus speed and can buff it further with stamina.

Angel (fast mount)

The unique NPC Misaki in Elin, who tends the shrine of Horome.

Knight (tank companion)

Cleric (healer companion)

The village of Somewhere in Elin, where players can recruit powerful adventurers and apostles.

Baked goods

Cat (mage pet)

The player in Elin faces off against the sealed God Innos of Hatred at the Place Where Winds Rest.

Android (ranged companion)

Resist fire, ice, and lightning damage.

A player in Elin uses their faith in Mani to dominate a hostile machine.

Exile (mage companion)

Better farming and higher sales value for fresh produce.

Fairy (archer pet)

Vegetables and seeds

Fox maiden (mount)

Spell rods and rice wine

Vixen (mage companion)

Noodles and rice wine

Militant (support mount)

Swords and Armour

Best Gods To Worship

There are a lot of gods to choose from and not all of their weapons and apostles are equally strong. The most standout rewards we found were as follows:

Sinceyou can only have two apostles in your party,you’ll need to make some tough calls between the cat, fox maid and black angel. We opted for the cat and fox maid as our long-term party members. The weapons have no limitations, sowith enough arms, you can wield all of them at once.

There is no penalty for giving a divine weapon to a party member who doesn’t worship that god. A Fox Maid with Opatos' hammer can unleash earthquakes with comedic speed.

Gods With Unique Interactions

Some of the deities havespecial conditions and events related to themthat may influence your decisions to worship them or how you use their apostles and weapons:

Some gods have special interactions when worshipping and forsaking them:

Gods With Fixed Playstyles

Two deities in particular, Jure and Kizuami have a dramatic impact on playstyle that can influence class and feat choices:

The pacifist curse of Kizuami’s weapon is always applied to only the player, even if another party member or a villager has the sword equipped.Do not place it in a shared containeror you might find yourself unexpectedly cursed.

Gods With Bonus Apostles

Some gods have recruitable NPC worshippers who share the powers of their apostleswithout counting toward the two apostle limit.

The God You Can Fight

The sealed god Innos of Hatred cannot be worshiped but isavailable as a secret boss in The Place Where Winds Rest. Visit the site shortly before midnight and pay your respects at each of the graves on the map.

He’s stronger than every other boss in the game combined, so consider yourself a veteran if you survive more than one strike.

Innos does not despawn after killing you. If you want torecruit Eureka of Strife from the shrine on this map, you’ll want to do that before summoning the Prince of Betrayal.

How To Build Piety

Most of the deities have some easier or discounted method for building up their piety quickly.

There is ahidden throttling mechanic that prevents you from gaining too much piety from a single tribute.If you’ve got a large stack of items to offer, it’s best to divide them into stacks weighing about 10s.

The hardest deities to build piety with are the ones that don’t have an obvious or easy-to-craft tribute. For deities likeYevan, you’ll need to use a generalist approach.

All deities willaccept fresh corpses as tribute. Doing monster extermination or war quests and stuffing everything in your cooler box will give you a decent haul of piety. Corpses lose value as tribute if they are allowed to rot. An altar at your base allows you to teleport home and pay homage without any risk of spoilage.

War quests only appear after reaching 1000 points of fame.You’ll also want to gain the anatomy skill which increases the drop rate of high value corpses.

How To Get An Altar At Your Base

Getting an altar at your base is really useful in the long term.

The easiest method for getting an altar in your home iscollecting the Altar Of Earth in Palmia’s church using six furniture tickets.Repeatedly throwing it down the street until you get to the post office lets you stuff it in the delivery box and ship it to your homestead. From there you can attempt to convert it to your current deity.

Altars with a unique sprite cannot be converted. These apply to the three minor deities: Yevan, Horome, and Kizuami.

Converting an Altar changes the deity it is assigned to and gives you a nice chunk ofextra piety if it succeeds. Make an offering to itusing the same tributes you would use for your current deity. Higher quality tributes have a better chance of success.

Failed conversions will give you divine punishment for 200 turns. Attempting asecond conversion while under the punishment will instantly kill you.

Altars of Eyth will never resist conversion.If you find one while exploring, it’s always worth tributing a random corpse to it.

How To Convert NPCs To Your God

There are benefits for converting an NPC to follow a specific deity.

You’ll rarely encounter anancient book identified as dojinof a specific deity. Gifting this book to NPCs will cause them to read it andinstantly convert to the deity.

The books are rare but are more likely to be sold by exotic traders when you visit a town during a festival. They can also beproduced by painters in your homestead.

Apostles and certainkey NPCs cannot have their religion changed. The Fox Maid has a paladin feat that only activates when worshipping Jure but she will only ever be able to worship Horome.