To become Shepherd, you must have eight each of the three auras: tanaga, katsin, and shial. You gain or lose these by engaging in mind combat. To fight well, you must know the aura counts of your opponent.
You wake up each day at 8:00 AM. Upon waking, you know a randomly-chosen count of each acolyte. For instance, you might know Wiki's tanaga count, or you might instead know his katsin count, or you might know his shial count, but you'll only know one of these counts. You must decide on candidates to attack that night and learn all three of their counts. Even if you have decided on a single candidate, you may want to gather some extra information in case you get attacked by somebody else.
Communication[edit]
The entire game, other than the interstitial stories, uses an "inverse parser". This is a system that assesses the possibilities and presents the user with a list of applicable words (here, represented as icons), rather than forcing the user to type in words, only guessing or memorizing what words are applicable. For simplicity, the game does not allow anybody to lie or form nonsensical sentences. If you are unsure of what an icon means, you need only click and hold it to see its meaning.
Interstitial stories[edit]
- Use common sense. Making fun of Skordokott won't make him happier.
- Being mean to Chris Crawford makes the game harder.
- Don't worry too much if none of the answers make sense.
Mind combat[edit]
Mind combat is a game of rock-paper-scissors: tanaga beats katsin; katsin beats shial; shial beats tanaga. If you win a round, you win your opponent's aura. If you lose the round, you lose your own aura. If you both use the same aura, nothing happens.
Mind combat is a matter of picking your battles. Sometimes you will be attacked, and have no choice, but you can at least choose your own opponent wisely. You want to find somebody who, if you were to engage in mind combat, is likely to play an aura that you need. As a general rule, your opponents prefer to play auras they have an excess of, and they prefer to gain auras they have a lack of. So, for instance, if Kendra has eight tanaga, six katsin, and seven shial, and Gardbore has seven of all auras, Kendra is far more predictable: she wants to play her tanaga and win a katsin.
Mind combat is harder on the highest difficulty setting, because your opponent will actually use the information he or she gathered about you. That is, your opponent will try to guess your move. One problem here is you don't know how much your opponent knows about you. It is probably best to assume that he or she has complete information, especially if he or she attacked you to begin with.