Ritual

Feed the altars, earn an Audience with the King in the Mists, carry his Head through the Rite of the Nameless, and face the Bodach beneath Caer Tarth.

Start: Rituals in your maps
Tribute0%

0 of 4 lessons · 0 of 7 stops · test not taken

The road to the Bodach

Seven stops, in order. Tick each one when you've done it in game.

0 of 7 done in game.

  1. Stop 1

    Ritual in a map

    Kill around an altar, activate it, and kill the revived monsters for Tribute.

    You finish every altar in one map.

    Taught in Rituals in your maps

  2. Stop 2

    Caer Tarth

    Aoife sends you to her home, the Ritual hub west of the starting town.

    You enter Caer Tarth.

    Taught in Caer Tarth, Aoife and the King in the Mists

  3. Stop 3

    An Audience with the King

    Offer leftover Tribute to the King until the bar fills.

    The Audience is in your inventory.

    Taught in Caer Tarth, Aoife and the King in the Mists

  4. Stop 4

    The King in the Mists

    In the Crux of Nothingness. Escape his vine maze, then finish him.

    The King is dead and his Head is in your inventory.

    Taught in Caer Tarth, Aoife and the King in the Mists

  5. Stop 5

    Rite of the Nameless

    Give the Head to Aoife and run five connected maps. Each final altar gives a piece of the effigy.

    You have five effigy pieces.

    Taught in The Rite of the Nameless

  6. Stop 6

    The effigy

    Place the five pieces on the effigy in Caer Tarth.

    All five pieces are on the effigy.

    Taught in The Bodach

  7. Stop 7

    The Bodach

    In the prison beneath Caer Tarth. Three phases, with the Three Sisters helping.

    The Bodach is dead and Aoife is at peace.

    Taught in The Bodach

The King in the Mists

Fought in the Crux of Nothingness, revealed with An Audience with the King. He drops the Head of the King, which begins the Rite of the Nameless.

He comes before the Rite, not at the end of it.

The Queen in the Mists

Optional. With the Mysterious Rites passive, 8% of Rituals are the Queen's Ritual: one altar summons her, and the Favour screens are bigger.

GGG says she can drop three corrupted Idols; the wiki says her Ritual offers them as Favours. Some guides say the King drops them. He doesn't.

Lessons

  1. Rituals in your mapsAltars, Tribute, Favours, the Ritual types and leftover Tribute.Up next
  2. Caer Tarth, Aoife and the King in the MistsThe hub, An Audience with the King, the King's maze and the Queen.Open
  3. The Rite of the NamelessFive connected maps, bosses that come back, and the effigy pieces.Open
  4. The BodachThe effigy, the prison beneath Caer Tarth, the fight and repeat keys.Open
  5. The RitePass it to light up the test node on the map.After the lessons

Tribute and Favours

Ritual is a crafting farm in disguise.

  • Every Favour is a Unique or an Omen. Buy them with Tribute from the monsters you kill twice.
  • Reroll or defer. The wiki says one reroll by default, and deferring costs 15% for a 10% cheaper Favour later.
  • Nothing is wasted. Leftover Tribute fills the bar toward An Audience with the King.
  • Parties since 0.5.5. Each player earns their own Tribute and gets their own smaller list.
Read the Omens lesson
Read “Rituals in your maps” as text

Find the altars

Ritual altars stand inside circles in your maps. The wiki says a Ritual map has three, and each extra source of Ritual adds one; since 0.5.5, more than one Ritual Tablet adds an altar where it can. When you finish one, a swarm of locusts points the way to the next.

The maps around Caer Tarth, west of where your Atlas starts, always have Ritual.

Run an altar

Kill most of the monsters around the altar first, then activate it. Darkness closes the circle so you can't leave, and the monsters you killed inside it come back to life. Kill them again for Tribute.

If it goes wrong: The wiki says each revival of the same monster gives 25% less Tribute, and dying ends the altar early. Pull extra packs into the circle before you kill them.

Spend Tribute on Favours

Finishing a map's altars opens the Favour screen. Every Favour there is a Unique or an Omen. Buy what you can afford with Tribute. Since 0.5.5, everyone in a party earns their own Tribute and gets a smaller list of their own, which they can't reroll.

Reroll or defer

Not happy with the offer? Reroll it; the wiki says you get one reroll by default, and Atlas passives and Tablets add more. Or defer a Favour you can't afford yet: the wiki says that costs 15% of its price, and it comes back in a later Ritual 10% cheaper.

Since 0.5.0b the reroll cost can't be cut by more than 90%.

Know the Ritual types

Every altar in a map shares one type, and each fights back in its own way. The wiki describes them like this.

  • Contaminated and Infested: Waves of blood that knock you back, or a rat tornado that follows you and breaks your armour. Pick it when: You hit hard and can take physical damage. The cost: Knockback and Armour Break get you killed in big packs.
  • Sapping: Purple clouds take 30% off your elemental resistances and slow you, while monsters in them get tougher. Pick it when: Your resistances are well over the cap. The cost: Maps with minus maximum resistance stack badly with it.
  • Smothered and Tainted: Chaos orbs from plants chase you, or chaos bubbles burst as you get close. Pick it when: Your chaos resistance is good. The cost: Chaos damage adds up fast.

Save leftover Tribute for the King

Tribute you don't spend isn't wasted. Offer it to the King to fill the bar toward An Audience with the King, which is how you reach the next part of the storyline. Lesson 2 picks it up from there.

The Crafting course has a full lesson on Omens, the other half of every Favour screen.