Should you embrace or purge the rot in Woolhaven?

(Image credit: Devolver Digital)

To Embrace or Purge the Rot in Cult of the Lamb Woolhaven is a binary choice between two doctrines, given to you by Yngya when you return the last Wool to the graves in Woolhaven and effectively bring back all the Lamb's spirits to the city. At this point you can either Embrace the Rot, being empowered by your decaying followers, or Purge the Rot, gaining strength through their destruction. You can't have both - so which of the two is better? I'll explain below.

Should you Embrace the Rot or Purge the Rot?

After returning Sariel's spirit to Woolhaven and effectively filling all the graves around the statue to Yngya, you'll be given a choice between two doctrines for your cult, as laid out below:

Embrace the Rot: Gain Faith for each day a Rotten Follower is in the Cult. Rotten Followers live longer.
Purge the Rot: Gain Faith when a Rotten Follower is killed.

Speaking personally, I think it's better to choose to Embrace the Rot. Rotten Followers are a part of the Woolhaven DLC that I personally find to be incredibly useful, as they don't really use up resources, and you get free supplies of Woolhaven Rotburn when they die. Doubling down on that advantage feels more than logical, especially considering that it shouldn't be hard to generate a steady supply of Faith at the late stage of the game that is required to even play Woolhaven.

There can be advantages to picking the Purge option - if you've made a cult that emphasises sacrifice and regular recruitment, this can certainly be beneficial - but Purge is only optimal for very specific sorts of builds.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.

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