One of the most common questions I see across a variety of games is what happens when you die, and Cult of the Lamb is no different. Regardless of whether you’re playing a survival game or a roguelike and you’re not sure how the developer handles death. It’s always useful to understand the potential death penalties.
While there is a death penalty in Cult of the Lamb, there are a couple of useful tricks to get around it. Although they do require finding a specific room on the map or making some progress. Continue reading below for what happens when you die in this in-depth guide.
What Happens When You Die in Cult of the Lamb
Dying during a run can be a pain when you’re just starting out in Cult of the Lamb.
Unlike your cult followers, you can’t die at the camp since you won’t get sick or die from old age. However, you can obviously lose a Crusade run when you leave the camp to try and make progress. Simply put, if you run out of hearts and don’t have a Tarot Card that prevents you from dying, you’ll get the penalty.
By default without any tricks to prevent it, you’ll lose 25 percent of the resources you’ve gathered during your run. Aside from losing those resources, your followers won’t be happy that you failed your Crusade. And due to this, you’ll lose some faith which can lead to dissenters if you don’t stay on top of it.
Be careful to not let your faith drop too low, otherwise, you’ll run into problems with your followers.
When I died I lost 10 faith, so I’m assuming it likely stays at that amount. But, I haven’t tested to see if it can get worse or varies each time. Fortunately, you can offset this loss by blessing a follower or two daily to get some faith. Otherwise, there are plenty of other useful tricks depending on the upgrades you have.
Regardless of losing faith, there are three useful tricks to prevent the death penalty from getting you. The first popular one I recommend taking advantage of is the Omnipresence Crown Upgrade. You’ll need to defeat one of the four Bishop bosses to get a Heart of the Heretic for this upgrade, however.
Crown Offering upgrades can be a gamechanger so long as you continue making progress to unlock them.
But, Omnipresence is a useful ability that lets you teleport back to your camp during a Crusade run. If you just completed a room and you’re low on health, this is a good ability to recall safely. Otherwise, you won’t be able to return to the camp without completing your run the normal way.
With that said, plenty of us are still tempted to take the risk with low health before using Omnipresence. That’s why there are two other useful tips to take advantage of if you die in Cult of the Lamb. Before mentioning the one that doesn’t require a Crown Upgrade, let’s bring up the Resurrection upgrade first.
The Resurrect Crown Upgrade can be useful if you have a follower you don’t mind sacrificing.
The Resurrection Crown Upgrade lets you sacrifice a follower when you die on a run. Since this is a choice, you don’t have to do it but the option is there once you’ve unlocked it. After dying on a Crusade, you’ll end up in a bright white area with your followers surrounding you. By walking up to each one, you can see how much health you’ll get from sacrificing them.
I typically avoid sacrificing followers, but this can certainly give some purpose to an Elder. Otherwise, there’s one more option that doesn’t require sacrificing anyone or having a Crown Upgrade. This requires a little luck and planning as mentioned in our best tips and tricks guide, however.
If you’re playing on a high difficulty or struggling to stay alive, the shrine room can be worth visiting.
When you complete an area during a Crusade, you can see pick which room you want to go toward next. This often will set you on a path that may block out other rooms, so it’s important to plan ahead. One of the rooms has a crown icon that represents a shrine.
If I recall, there can be negative outcomes from visiting the shrine as well as the good one we’re hoping for. When entering the shrine, you may notice a ton of red Camellia Flowers surrounding it. In my experience, this means the shrine will give you a buff preventing losing any resources on death. Unfortunately, you’ll likely still lose faith.
This is definitely one of the best ways to keep your resources after dying in Cult of the Lamb.
Going off memory, I recall one negative outcome that made enemy projectiles quicker. But, the few times I visited the shrine, I usually got lucky with the buff mentioned above. If you come across some negative outcomes, be sure to comment below and I’ll update this guide.
That’s all there is to this Cult of the Lamb guide on what happens when you die. Fortunately, the death penalty isn’t too rough compared to other games. Especially ones in the roguelike/roguelite genre where you often lose everything.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.