Every Prayer Ranked: What Each Sermon Pays and When to Preach It

A prayer is the script you read from the lectern every Wrath. It never wears out, it has no resale value, and it only works from your backpack. What separates one prayer from another is the crowd it needs, how it splits the collection plate between Faith and coins, and whether a successful sermon leaves a blessing behind. Here is the whole catalogue for version 1.008, with the arithmetic already done.

All prayers at a glance, ranked

Ranked by how often each prayer earns its place in your backpack over a full game. Crowds read “need to start / guaranteed success” for bronze, silver and gold. Faith per head is the best grade’s total on a successful sermon, without perks.

An eleventh prayer arrives late in the main story. It is covered in a spoiler block below.

Every sermon, grade by grade

Each grade of a prayer is its own item with its own numbers, so you can actually hold 27 different sermons. Here are the 26 you can reach without story spoilers. “Faith per head” is the base part (always paid) plus the success bonus. Coins per head are always paid; the success coins are multiplied by your graveyard quality. Coin values are in bronze, the smallest coin: 100 bronze make 1 silver.

All values without perks. The Priest, Cardinal and Performer perks add to every row (see below).

How a sermon turns a crowd into Faith

The full church playbook lives in the church and sermons guide. The three rules that decide which prayer to pick:

• Parishioners are the lower of your Likes and your Church quality, never the sum. Everyone who can come does come, and each one spends a Like. More Likes come from Town Gratitude and town orders.
• Below “need to start”, the prayer cannot be used. Between the start and the guaranteed number, your success chance is parishioners divided by the guaranteed number, rolled the moment you press Start.
• The base part always pays, rounded to the nearest whole Faith. Success adds the success Faith, your graveyard quality times the success coins, and the blessing. Faith drops on the floor in front of the lectern; coins go into the Donation box.

Worked example: a silver Faith Prayer at 30 parishioners pays a base of 12 Faith every time, plus 15 more on success, which happens 75% of the time (30 out of 40). That is 27 Faith three weeks out of four, 12 otherwise.

Which prayer to preach, and when

By crowd size

Three edge cases. At exactly 9 parishioners, the bronze Faith Prayer averages 5.4 Faith against a sure 5 from the Basic Prayer. Between 12 and 14, it averages 8 to 9.6 against a sure 7 to 8: a small gamble with a small edge. And with the Priest and Performer perks, the bronze Faith Prayer already beats the Basic Prayer on average from 7 parishioners.

What graveyard quality does to the coins

Graveyard quality never adds a single parishioner or a single point of Faith, but it multiplies the success coins. The bigger your graveyard, the more the coin prayers pull ahead. Coins per successful sermon, in bronze:

A Money Prayer week also turns Faith into coins at a better rate than selling it, as long as your graveyard has some quality. At 70 parishioners and graveyard quality 200, a gold Money Prayer pays 42 Faith less than a gold Faith Prayer but 4,750 bronze more: about 1.1 silver for each Faith you give up. Homobonus pays 5 silver for 10 Faith, less than half that rate. More coin routes in the money-making guide.

Blessing weeks

A blessing costs Faith: every blessing prayer pays less per head than the Faith Prayer grade you could have used. Blessings last 45 minutes at bronze, 90 at silver and 99:59 at gold (shown as “100 min” in game); Prayer for Storms lasts 90 minutes. Nobody has confirmed whether that timer runs in game time or real time, and with a game day lasting about 7.5 real minutes the difference is enormous, so use a blessing straight after the sermon.

• Prayer for Storms when bodies, collars and liquid are ready for a second resurrection run.
• Hypno Prayer when Excessive zombies is active and no PR Machine run can cover it.
• Prayer for Excellence when a craft you need sits one mastery point out of reach.
• Repose, Combat and Harvest only when a corpse delivery, a fight or a field of crops actually falls inside the blessing.

Every prayer in detail

Faith Prayer

The Faith specialist and your default for the whole game. From 15 parishioners up, no other prayer you can write pays more Faith.

• Unlock: Religious Writing I (5 red, 5 green, 20 blue).
• Write: 1 Story, 3 Clean Paper, 1 Ink. Book writing 8 guarantees gold.
• Pays: 11 Faith at 15 (bronze), 36 at 40 (silver), 77 at 70 (gold), 220 at 200. With Priest and Performer that becomes 1, 1.2 or 1.5 Faith per head, up to 300 per sermon.
• The catch: a gold copy cannot start below 50 parishioners, and from Book writing 8 every copy you write comes out gold. Keep all three grades in your backpack and choose each Wrath.

Plan three copies with the crafting calculator.

Basic Prayer

The Nun hands you a single bronze copy at the end of Holy Moly!, once the church reaches quality 10. No research unlocks a recipe for a second one, and you never need it: prayers do not wear out. Your very first service can be held on any day; every later one waits for Wrath.

It starts at 4 parishioners, cannot fail from 8, and pays 6 Faith at 10. While Likes are capped at 10 before the Port opens, it is the safe pick for Faith. Retire it once you seat 12 to 15 people.

Money Prayer

The coin twin of the Faith Prayer: same research, same paper, same crowds (7/15, 20/40, 50/70). It pays 0.2 Faith per head plus 0.3 on success at every grade, but 10, 20 or 30 bronze per head and 20, 25 or 30 per graveyard point on success. A gold copy at 50 parishioners already pays 1,500 bronze before the success bonus. Keep the bronze copy for small crowds and the gold one for big ones; once you can write Prayer for Storms, it beats the silver copy.

Prayer for Storms

The necromancer’s favourite, and usually the best coin prayer from about 25 parishioners until the gold Money Prayer takes over (somewhere between 50 and 70, later with a bigger graveyard), with a blessing on top.

• Unlock: Reanimation (30 red, 10 green, 10 blue). It stays hidden until you repair the Resurrection device, and it also gives the Bronze Zombie Collar and Resurrection Table I.
• Write: 1 Story, 1 Blank Softcover Notebook, 1 Ink, Book writing 8. It has a single grade, so the gold-only trap never applies.
• Pays: 28 Faith at 40 (8 less than a silver Faith Prayer), 20 bronze per head and 30 per graveyard point on success.
• Blessing, God of the storms (90 minutes): the Resurrection device works on any day, as many times as you like. Normally it fires once a week, on Envy.

Before Wrath, put the collars in your backpack, the Reanimation Liquid in the room’s storage and prepare every table in the Resurrection Lab. Preach, pick up your Faith, then run to the lab. Storm weeks also speed up the Necromancer achievement. Every new zombie counts toward your zombie limit, though (see the zombies guide).

Hypno Prayer

The panic button, written on a Blank Hardcover Notebook and unlocked by Reanimation II (100 blue). It needs Book writing 16, the highest of any prayer you can write.

A successful sermon grants God of delusions, which switches off an active Excessive zombies penalty at once. The sermon that grants it is still taxed, because the blessing lands after the payout, and the penalty stays off after the blessing ends until a later zombie-limit check puts it back.

Its Faith and coins are identical at every grade (0.3 + 0.2 Faith, 10 bronze per head), so the bronze copy (60 to start, 120 for a sure success) is the one worth owning. A gold copy needs 220 for a sure success, and since Likes stop at 200, its success chance tops out at about 91%. Until you seat 60, the PR Machine does this job.

Combo Prayer

Balanced Faith and coins, but only for very large crowds: 30, 60 or 120 to start. The bronze and silver copies lose to the Faith Prayer for Faith and to Storms or the Money Prayer for coins, so skip them. The gold copy is a genuine late-game option: at 200 parishioners it pays 200 Faith against 220 for a gold Faith Prayer, but 2,000 bronze per sermon plus 30 per graveyard point, against 1,000 plus 15. With a big graveyard, that is 20 Faith traded for a pile of coins every week.

Prayer for Excellence

A successful sermon grants God of craftsmen: +1 mastery in Building, Smithing, Farming, Book writing and Anatomy while it lasts. It pays 0.3 + 0.3 Faith and 20 bronze per head at every grade, so the bronze copy (40 to start, 90 for sure) is the practical one; higher grades only buy a longer blessing. A sure gold sermon needs 200 parishioners, meaning 200 Likes and a Church quality of at least 200.

Line up the craft before Wrath, then cash in the point right after the sermon. Just do not write a low-grade prayer during the blessing: it raises your Book writing too.

Prayer for Repose

Unlocked by Graveyard Path and Fence I, a graveyard research from the Anatomy and Alchemy tree, not a Theology one. A successful sermon grants God of dead: every corpse that arrives while it lasts comes from the next tier up. Its success Faith is thin (0.1 to 0.3 per head), but it pays a flat 20 bronze per head and 20 per graveyard point.

The catch is timing. Donkey deliveries come on Gluttony, Lust and Pride, never on Wrath, so check that a delivery can land inside the blessing in your own save before you build a week around it. Better corpses are covered in the corpse quality guide.

Combat Prayer

A successful sermon grants God’s fury: +2 damage per hit with the Keeper’s swords and +3 with bows, including your zombies’ bows and the mercenaries’ upgraded ones. Pikes, archer towers and the mercenaries’ starting weapons gain nothing.

Most Town battles run on Sloth, two days after Wrath, so the blessing may well have expired by then. The fights you can start on any day are the safe targets: Break Through to the Port, Sewer Brawl I and II, Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement and the Sewerena. Pair it with Zombie Motivator Potions and read the battles guide for squads.

Harvest Prayer

Unlocked by Fertilizers IV in the Farming tree. A successful sermon grants God of nature: every growth tick on Garden Beds and Vine Trellises is 20 seconds shorter, so a 2:00 tick becomes 1:40. Its success Faith stays at 0.3 per head at every grade, so only the base part grows with the grade. Preach it only when a lot of beds are mid-growth; the farming guide covers the rest.

The story prayer (spoiler)

How to write prayers at the Writing Desk

What each prayer costs

Every prayer is written at the Writing Desk in the Writing Basement (research Writing Basic, then build it for 4 Wooden Plank, 6 Bronze Nails and 1 Polished Bronze). Each step costs 4 energy, so a prayer takes 56 or 64 energy at its required mastery.

Every prayer also takes 1 Story and 1 Ink. The sub-recipes:

• Story: 3 Faith, 2 Clean Paper and 1 Ink, from Books I (Book writing 6).
• Clean Paper: 1 Leather Scroll makes 6 at the desk (10 with Paper maker); a Skin makes 4 Leather Scrolls. Later, the Paper Press turns 1 Paper glop into 20.
• Ink: 1 Ash, 1 Water and 1 Melted Fat make 4.
• Blank Softcover Notebook: 1 Leather Scroll and 4 Clean Paper make 2 (Books I).
• Blank Hardcover Notebook: 2 Softcover Notebooks and 1 Golden ingot at the Printing Press (Writing Tools II).

Short on time? The Alchemist sells Clean Paper and Ink from his first level, Softcover Notebooks from the second and Hardcover Notebooks from the third. The Town Tavern sells bronze Stories for coins, which saves the 3 Faith a written Story costs.

How the grade is decided

A prayer is a star craft. The job is split into steps, and each step is logged as a success or a failure:

• At or above the Book writing requirement, every step succeeds, so the prayer is always gold.
• Below it, each step succeeds with odds of about mastery divided by requirement. Failed steps still move the bar, and the final count of successes is compared with the bronze, silver and gold lines.
• Below the bronze line, the craft fails. The Story, paper and ink are gone, and with them the 3 Faith the Story cost.
• Head starts count as free successes: a silver material in a slot is worth 1 step, a gold one 2, and the Sermon writer perk adds 2 to every prayer.

There is no grade selector, and a zombie writer is not a reliable workaround: players report conflicting results.

How to land a bronze or silver copy

Our estimates, from the mastery-over-requirement odds, with no head start:

Go much lower and failures creep in: at mastery 1, a Faith Prayer with no head start fails about half the time. A gold Story or the Sermon writer perk covers the Faith Prayer’s 2-step bronze line before the first swing, so it can no longer fail.

The routine for a low-grade copy:

1. Sleep first. The game only saves when you sleep, and a reload is your safety net.
2. Strip your mastery. Take talismans and books off the tool belt, skip the Bowl of sauerkraut, and never write during God of craftsmen.
3. Use a bronze Story. The one from Holy Moly! or one bought at the Tavern; a silver or gold Story adds free steps.
4. Write before the writing perks. Scribe (+4 at the Writing Desk) and Voice of Faith (+4 on sermons) together put you at mastery 8 or more on every prayer, so from then on every Faith, Money and Repose Prayer comes out gold.
5. Check the stars. Wrong grade? Reload and try again. Every prayer you keep also counts toward the Prayer Writer inspiration (1, 5, 15, 30 and 50 prayers written, 16 Faith to claim it all).

How to guarantee gold

Reach the requirement and every step succeeds. Book writing mastery comes from your talent perks, Scribe and Voice of Faith, talismans (Bronze +1, Silver +2, Golden +4), the Primer, Dictionary and Glossary (+1, +2, +4) in the tool belt, a Bowl of sauerkraut (+1 to +3) and God of craftsmen (+1). If you fall a little short, a gold Story and Sermon writer add up to 4 free steps.

Perks that change every prayer

Priest and Performer together lift the gold Faith Prayer from 1.1 to 1.5 Faith per head. The full perk plan is in talents and inspirations.

Excessive zombies: the tax on every prayer

Your zombie limit equals the quality of the Resurrection Lab, which starts at 0. When a check finds you above the limit, every prayer in the tables above loses Faith and coins per head:

In practice a silver Faith Prayer at 40 parishioners drops from 36 Faith to 8. The check only runs when a PR Machine run starts or ends, when God of delusions ends, and at two steps of Congregation Trouble. Fixes, from cheapest: the Good fellow perk (its +10 only counts from the next check), PR Machine runs, and a bronze Hypno Prayer once you seat 60 (a sure success only from 120).

Prayers you cannot get in version 1.008

Thirteen more prayer names sit in the game’s data, most of them with effects attached. In version 1.008, none of them has a working recipe, quest or shop, and no player has reported owning one. Do not spend research or Faith hunting for them.

Common mistakes

• Writing only gold copies. A gold Faith Prayer cannot start under 50 parishioners. Write bronze and silver copies before Scribe and Voice of Faith.
• Picking by tier instead of crowd. At 22 parishioners a silver Faith Prayer averages 15 Faith while the bronze one pays a sure 16.
• Preaching the silver Money Prayer once you have Reanimation. Prayer for Storms beats it at the very same crowd.
• Leaving prayers in a chest. Only prayers in your backpack appear at the lectern.
• Writing at mastery 1 with no head start. A Faith Prayer fails about half the time, and each failure burns a Story worth 3 Faith.
• Expecting graveyard quality to fill pews. It only multiplies the success coins.
• Counting on a Combat Prayer for a Sloth battle. Use it on the any-day fights right after the sermon.
• Writing a gold Hypno Prayer. Its sure success needs 220 parishioners, which Likes can never reach.
• Forgetting the payout. Faith lies on the church floor and coins sit in the Donation box until you collect them.
• Chasing Prayer for Protection, Speed or Likes. None of them can be obtained in 1.008.

Ready to fill the pews? The church and sermons guide covers attendance, church furniture and the weekly schedule, and the weekly calendar shows where Wrath fits in your week.