I do not know what Massive Monster puts into Cult of the Lamb. You’d think after over 50 hours, completing the game, and doing absolutely everything possible, I’d get tired and move on. But no, as it turns out, I can never get enough of collecting and fighting little critters. So you can probably imagine just how normal my reaction was when I got wind of the new Woolhaven DLC.
You’re introduced to a new cult figure, Yngya, and her dead lamb followers, who were massacred at their home at the base of the mountain and left to rot. They’re not very happy with it and even less pleased with who’s moved in, a wolf deity, Marchosias, who also comes with a bunch of new figurehead followers who you can defeat in battle and indoctrinate into your cult.
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Tearing through the mountain in both the snowy top and the rot-filled underbelly is just as exciting as it is in any of the maps. But now with new enemies to fight and weapons to bonk them on the head with, whoever thought of the flail needs a raise—it feels like a whole new adventure. But I’m not here to convince anyone of how fun Woolhaven’s combat is—it’s more of the same, so of course it works. No, the best part of Woolhaven actually takes place back at your cult.
Walking into Woolhaven, you’re met by a very helpful moleman named Gofernon, who immediately cements himself as one of the best characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting by expanding your base camp. Yes, you heard me, Gofernon, alongside his mole pals, dig into the bottom of the map and create a whole new area for you to decorate and use. You can do this a couple more times until you get a new area which is almost the same size as your initial camp.
To say that this made my day is an understatement, for months I’d been packing my cult tightly together, trying to optimise space and efficiency while ensuring it still looked somewhat appealing, but now I had double the area to work with. And the first thing I did was move all my new farm pets in.
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One of the other great perks of Woolhaven is the introduction of ranching. Now you can build a farmhouse and fence off a field to keep animals like Yakish, Cowish, Llamaish, and Turtleish. You can shear these for wool, butcher them for meat, or milk them for, well, milk. All of which are precious items which will come in handy when the winter frost sets in.
Winter takes it all
Managing your camp in Cult of the Lamb is a multitasking effort that I’ve always loved. It may not be for everyone, but I actually enjoy looking after these hapless critters who won’t stop shitting three feet away from a perfectly good toilet, are incapable of cooking food if you haven’t set out a meal plan, and just generally let things go to hell if you’re away too long. But now with Woolhaven, you have the extra stress of snow.
At first, it isn’t too bad—it’s mostly just aesthetic as your cultists make snow angels and get into snowball fights, but the more you interact with Yngya, the worse the frost gets. Snowstorms can trigger out of nowhere, freezing your cultists, stopping crops from growing on frozen land, preventing cultists from working or praying, or even destroying structures if you haven’t set up enough heaters around your camp to ward off the snow.
The snow also won’t stay forever—it comes and goes for different lengths of time, and you can predict storms before they happen and how long they’ll last by building a Weather Vane. But it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the need for new resources to keep your camp warm at the start.
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You’ll need to gather new items like Rotburn to keep the fires going, Charged Shards to fuel the warm baths, or Cursed and Pure Yewbark to create new buildings, which are integral to your flock’s survival during the winter days. All of which you can find during runs and then harvest in your base afterwards by building structures like a Lightning Rod for Charged Shards or a Rotburn Mine.
But managing these resources is just part of the puzzle of Cult of the Lamb, and if you’re frugal and smart, it won’t take long to overcome it and stock up enough of these items to last you through any storm that comes your way.
The way in which Cult of the Lamb rewards forethought and meticulous planning is actually my favourite part of the game. I soon got into the habit of freshly planting seeds in my farmland and then performing the Ritual of the Harvest the night before the snow set in. Not to brag, but maxing out the amount of food I could harvest between the winter snow stints meant that my flock never went hungry, and I was able to build up quite a pantry, which meant I never had to butcher one of my beloved animals. (Okay, that was a little brag).
Woolhaven proves that there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing—as it turns out, more of a good thing is pretty darn great. Not only was Woolhaven a chunkier DLC than I first thought it would be, with way more combat levels, side story content, and new camp structures, but it’s the perfect answer to someone desperate to keep the good times going.
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