The Price Of Flesh – Acolyte of Decay Achievement Guide (Surviving the Mountains)

Tips for the Acolyte of Decay achievement by surviving the mountains as long as possible, or just in general.

How to Obtain Acolyte of Decay Achievement

All credit goes to CelestialLizzie!

Sacrifice Achievement

• I am putting this at the top, with an image attached, to get your attention…
• Because this achievement requires you erase all your game data.
• Not just your saves, but every trace of every ending and everything you’ve unlocked.
• Don’t be like me and 100% Derek and Celia and then Mason’s route, leaving this one ending/achievement for last… I just didn’t want to spoil myself by looking at guides.
• I will recommend you play around on Mason’s route and figure things out for yourself a bit with the help of this guide before wiping it, so you at least don’t have to wipe everything clean more than once.
• This achievement requires you survive as long as possible without dying once – including in other routes.
• This will unlock both the Sacrifice achievement and the Acolyte of Decay achievement, as it’s the same ending; You Changed.

Common Deaths

• Bears! – If you keep dying to the bear whenever you sleep at night and not knowing why, it’s because you have something on you that is luring the bear to you: blueberries and fish. It’s not that you can’t ever have these on you ever, just be careful when you first get them and be sure to use them well before you sleep.
• Bleeding Out! – The obvious part is just try to do everything in your power to not be hit, by saving often, reloading, and rewinding (scrolling your mouse wheel up, but you can only go back so far) when you see the dialogue “Something’s not right.”

Note: Also, if you have been injured twice and are ‘Gravely Wounded’, you can use your pocket knife to cut strips of cloth to make a tourniquet, to slow the bleeding down back to ‘Wounded’.

• Freezing to death! – Just make a habit of starting a fire before you Search the Area, or Stay Here. You will automatically snuff it out if you leave, and for Mason to find you via smoke takes a LONG time; plus, he’s in his cabin during the night so you can stay in one spot by the fire to sleep or whatever during that time. Once it reaches daylight, though, snuff out the fire or leave since it’s been going long enough that he’ll see all the smoke relatively easily.

Note: If you see the dialogue say “The sound of the fire crackling seemed a bit hypnotic.”, rewind (see bold letters above) or reload.

• Traps! – There are two traps: a bear trap at the rocks/creek and a snare by the large tree in the deep woods. They will start after the first night begins, often later, when you try to leave the screen. You might come across these by accident, but just rewind and select Search the Area to find the trap – this will also give you an option to take the trap with you for later, to not disable it and find it later, etc.

Note: Also, it happened to me a couple times where I disabled/found a trap and then immediately was found and crossbow’d by Mason…I’d try to rewind, but as rewinding only takes you back a bit so I ended up having to reload if I wanted to not be ‘Wounded’. Keep this in mind as yet another reason to save often

General Tips for Survival

• Save often, and organize your saves. You can’t name your saves, but you can label the pages. I had page 1 dedicated to early saves I could always go back to so I could start past the auction or introductory, before and after the first confrontation depending on whether or not I wanted to get shot. There are a number of endings with deal with low sanity, so I had a page dedicated to that, too.

• You might as well mark every location down on your map. At the very start of the game, after Mason tell you to run, Walk into the trees, then Go deeper into the woods, then Climb the tree action. This will get you away from Mason, and when you climb the tree you will automatically add 2 locations to the map in your inventory. This action takes no time, and if you find all 5 locations, you will unlock the secret black swamp the next time you go into the trees.

Note: About the secret area… You can’t really do much here, can’t even start a fire, but it is needed for a lot of endings.

• You will never starve! I’m not certain why Gatobob made that decision here, but there are still downsides. If your ? is at 0, your energy will drop -3 every turn instead of -1, making you have to sleep or forcing you to pass out at inopportune spots constantly.
  Try not to eat before sleeping, as you will lose a lot of hunger during your rest.
  The red berries do nothing for your hunger, but they will make you lose -20 and then -10 sanity.
  There are also only 3 food items in this route, all of which you can only get once, so use them wisely.

• Trail mix > -24 ?

You start with them, as Mason gives them to you in a backpack that you cannot start without, even if you try not to take the backpack.

• Fish > -12 ?/ Cooked Fish > -24 ?
  Found by clicking the Search Area action at the rocks/creek.
  To cook it, start a fire with the flint and steel, click on the fish, and there will be an option for Cook.
  I recommend you find and cook and eat this as early in the day as possible, after sleeping.

• Blueberries > -10 ?

Found in the trees, alongside red berries.

Recommended that you find and eat these in the morning, after sleeping.

• Only take traps when you plan to use them right away, as they will give you the ‘Encumbered’ status, which takes away -3 energy each turn… and if you are also at 0 food, you will be losing it doesn’t combine, so you will still be losing -3 each turn.
• Start fires all the time. To fend off the frost, even having one +☀︎ can make a big difference, but if your at full ☀︎, moving two screens it won’t kill you. Things like filling out the map, leaving the area, or eating do not take time and therefore will not allow you to warm up. To warm up, you will have to either do an action like Sleep or Search Area, or Stay Here. Always start a fire before you sleep, or else you could “never wake up”, as the game says.