Fhtagn Simulator

Fhtagn Simulator

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A beginner's guide to archetypes
By Mistress Brightside
A beginner's guide to most of the archetypes in the game and ways to use them. By no means exhaustive or deeply thought out, this is intended for people who don't know how to use the various card types.
   
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Intro
Since there isn't a guide to how the various archetypes work, I thought I'd make my own beginner one. If you disagree with anything here or have suggestions on how to get more out of them, please say so in the comments, and I will update and credit accordingly.
Cthulhu, the Mighty
Core cards: Rlyeh, Cthulhu, [Cthulhu]
Core relics: Monolith
Suggested relics: Knife, Fang, Nightmarish Painting
A simple build, relying primarily on might generation from Rlyeh, Deep Ones and Hydras to stack might on Cthulhu. Monolith is your preferred relic, followed by anything else that ups your might, such as the Fang and Knife.
Shub-Niggurath, the Growing
Core cards: Forest, Broken Amnion, [Evolve]
Core relics: Lucky Coin
Suggested relics: Torch, Counter, Camera, Fang
An equally simple build, although more luck dependent. Forest and Lucky Coin help a lot. If it's working as intended your deck will quickly become humongous, which is good because you need as many chances to trigger Shub-Nigguraths as you can get. Difficult in Law due to the limited number of slots - Chaos absolves this by doubling the number of activations each slot gets. Don't worry if you never get to pick a Shub, your eggs will turn into them eventually. Extra draw from Torch and Space Mead can cover some bad luck, and the Counter, Camera, Nightmarish Painting and Aromatherapy Oven give you a nice boost in spirits.
Yig, the Destroyer
Core cards: Yoth, Snakes, Serpent People, Yig
Core relics: Snake Slough, Voodoo Doll
Suggested relics: Bell, Wills, Mirror
The mirror to Shub-Niggurath, a Yig build creates a massive graveyard rather than a massive deck, which then generates heaps of spirits with Yig and the Snake Slough. A few Serpent People will bring back cards so you can trigger Yoth again to add more snakes to destroy, and the Voodoo Doll will double the return from the snakes themselves. Adding Wills and the Bell will channel some Might into the handful of cards that don't implode.
Cthugha, the Blazing
Core cards: Cthugha, Fthaggua, Thermal Stone
Core relics: Letter of Nester
Suggested relics: Monolith
Fire bad, until it's not. At first glance this deck is self destructive, but once you get enough cards which make Burning positive it functions like a Might deck, with Cthugha generating plenty of extra spirit from all those lovely flames. The Letter of Nester simply adds to the Might comparison.
Ithaqua, the Frozen
Core cards: Ithaqua, Big Foot, Thermal Stone
Core relics: Freezer
I'll be honest, I don't really know how to get the most out of this archetype, but I have completed a run with it. Freezing compares to Multiple, and works by building stacks which are then expended when the frozen card activates, essentially delaying its activations so they all go off at once. In the presence of Ithaqua the spirit value of each point of Freezing is doubled, so you're really saving up until you can get it - or multiples of it - out. The Freezer doubles your Freezing stacks, which speaks for itself.
Shoggoths, the Madness
Core cards: Mountains of Madness, Proto-Shoggoth, [Discard], [Potion]
Core relics: Electric Gun, Fang
Another archetype I'm sure I don't fully understand. Feed your deck to the Shoggoth. That's it. There are definitely other things you can do with the archetype, but if you don't want to think too hard this is simple and effective.
The Crowded
The Faithful
Core cards: Believer, Host, [Human], Foresee
Core relics: Invitation Letter, Cultes Des Goules
Suggested relics: Pager, Bread, Pocket Watch
Perhaps the cultiest of cults, Faith scales fantastically well since Crowd is never cleared. A single Foresee, a few Hosts and Believers and as many humans as you can get will generate a ridiculously large amount of spirit. Pinning a few Yog-Sothoths will speed things up. Faith also works well in conjunction with other archetypes that can make use of loads of humans, and pivots out of them. Note that you'll never get rid of Investigators since they'll build Crowd as well, but as long as you protect your Foresee by blocking the spaces beside it that will never be a problem.

Update
Using the White Mask you can make monsters into humans, letting them join in and increasing the number of additional effects you can make use of.

The Ghoulish
Core cards: [Ghoul], [Graveyard], [Offering]
Core relics: Invitation Letter, Cultes Des Goules, Mirror
Theoretically the monstrous version of Faith, in practice it's much harder to leverage the Crowd Ghouls acquire, until you can get a Ghoul Priest, Ghoul Crowd, or the Cultes Des Goules. It also needs a steady source of humans to build numbers, while Faith can run itself. Don't take the Shotgun, Ghouls don't have the Kill type. I've never gotten this one to work personally, but I hope to one day. Once you've got a decent number of ghouls you can switch this into an Offering deck to get a steady supply of additional spirit (thanks TinyDoomCloud).
Witches, the Coven
Core cards: Witch, Rat Thing, Yog-Sothoth, Foresee, [Spell], Hourglass
Core relics: Pocket Watch, Monolith
Suggested relics: Human Skin Book, Freeze Gun, Philosopher Stone, Mirror
Witches casting spells to make themselves stronger. What more do you need? Use Foresee to draw everything you can and then watch the Might rack up. Pivots decently into Faith thanks to all the Countdown.
Offerings, the Sacrifice
Core cards: Bast, Black Pharaoh, Altar, [Offering], [Kill]/.45 Pistol
Core relics: Black Pyramid, Bell, Brain Container
Suggested relics: Shotgun, Cat Paw, Monolith
Blood is what the gods so often want, so why not give it to them? Bast can keep some poor unfortunates alive forever, feeding your monsters and empowering the Pharaoh. Giving him the pistol will allow him to benefit from a Multiple offering as well.

Alternative build
Core cards: Bloated Woman, City
Core relics: Wills
Alternatively you can let your monsters feed on a city, switching the precision of offerings for mass carnage.
The King in Yellow, the Dramatic
Core cards: Script Writer, Actress, Bast, Black Pharaoh
Core relics: Brain Container, Voodoo Doll

Offering style
Additional cards: Stranger, Nyarthalotep, City
Additional relics: Safety Box, Pager

Faith style
Additional cards: Missionary, Believer, Foresee, Hastur, Theatre
Additional relics: Pocket Watch, Invitation Letter

The eldritch theatre group. Maintaining enough people to actually READ the play can be an issue, but is generally solvable in two ways: generate more readers, or use Crowd to keep your readers alive. Both paths synergise reasonably with those archetypes. Pinning an item other than The King in Yellow to your sources of readers and books will prevent you running out of both.
7 Comments
Mistress Brightside  [author] 13 Dec, 2024 @ 2:54am 
Just use those spells to complete the last level to get their endings. For Silver Key that would be on the 7th level, while Stars Return would be after the 4th. Triggering either of them *before* they would complete the last level doesn't count.
ต้มไก่ เทโพ 13 Dec, 2024 @ 1:25am 
does anyone know how to get the silver key and stars return ending? old post but help please ; w ;
Mistress Brightside  [author] 5 Jan, 2023 @ 11:00pm 
I... completely forgot to mention potions. Oops. I also didn't say anything about the Hunt type, but that was intentional because I can't think of how to apply it.
I will add a credited note about Ghouls into Offerings.
TinyDoomCloud 5 Jan, 2023 @ 5:16pm 
Forgot to add, Spirit Potions are your friend for both ghoul and freezing deck. Plopping and x3 spirit on your high crowd/frozen card will rake in a large amount of spirit. Note about to win Difficulty 9 with ghouls just for others knowledge.
TinyDoomCloud 5 Jan, 2023 @ 5:15pm 
This was helpful so let me add to the knowledge:

Ghoul Deck, I got it working stronger by trading out my graveyard for an altar after I got a high crowd ghoul (via the spell) and a Nyarthalotep. Nyar is great because it gets the human tag so ghouls will eat it and when they eat it you get 5 spirit -and- a new Nyar in your deck. This can create a cycle with the altar where you're now getting 10 spirit a pop, granting your ghouls crowd and of course gaining more Nyars.

A note on freezing, it adds to the spirit of the card so eventually you can have cards worth 20+ spirit an activation. I advise spreading out big foots early on or just stack them close together if you got thermal stones. The spirit will stack hard and fast.
Gordolf The Bright 25 Dec, 2022 @ 4:54pm 
Man, great guide, I'm a total newbie but I just won a round with ghouls by locking the ghoul creation environment in slot 1, grabbing a ghoul and then getting offerings that have crowd to be eaten creating more ghouls and powering up the eaters. After a nucleation point I put a ghoul crowd making card at the end, wiping the map of all the trash, after a couple times of this I start nabbing up the ghoul priests. I'm sure much better players can figure out ways to make this go totally crazy but for me, man that was fun feasting on kids, teens and the occasional clerk or whatever that gives the ghoul crowd multiple.
Odin 5 Dec, 2022 @ 10:32am 
Shub-Niggurath, the Growing is completely broken. I just got 1 Broken Amnion, 1 Forest and 1 Egg. I am in Difficulty 4 endless mode and have made 3313 spirits this turn with a deck of 101 cards and am sitting at 21280/1230 spirit. One turn on max speed takes about 1 minute.