Spirits/Guide

This is a relatively detailed and specific strategy to summoning spirits and may contain SPOILERS. You will want to think twice before reading.

Return to Spirits.

Get a Rite
You should acquire books from Oriflamme's Auction House to quickly get a rite to summon spirits: During the process, you may, and will obtain many lore fragments. The rest of the strategy assumes you have lore fragments level 6 or at least level 4.
 * STUMM! yields Sunset Rite, which accepts:
 * 1 Lore
 * 1 Follower
 * CONSUME 1 Influence
 * A True and Complete Accounting of the Asclepian Mysteries of the Roots of the House yields Rite of the Map's Edge, which accepts:
 * 1 Lore
 * 1 Tool
 * CONSUME 1 Influence

Try summoning
Early on, you can use Sunset Rite together with a 2 or more follower and one of:

You can get a Chilly Atmosphere at Way: The White Door or first summon a Voiceless Dead and wait for it to expire.

Use the summoned
Most summons can be used on Expeditions.

Raw Prophet, Voiceless Dead, Caligine can be used to get rid of Evidences. Especially Raw Prophet has a low summoning hurdle.

Maid-in-the-Mirror, Hint, Percussigant can be used to get rid of Hunters or on Expeditions.

Spirits accept any topic when talking to them. This is useful to prevent the decay of certain cards, such as magnitude-15 influences, at the cost of occupying the Talk action.

Why Sunset Rite for everything?
Sunset Rite uses an assistant in the process. Compared to tools, assistants can have more than 1 type of aspects, thus easing the requirements for summoning. This can be achieved by:
 * Giving them scars: Especially useful as each scar gives you 2 extra points in, or . Care must be taken, as 3 scars of the same type kill your follower.
 * Giving them tools: Magnitude-8 tools give 2 extra points in the aspect they belong to. Many tools are unique, thus, must be chosen wisely. Luckily, Masterpiece paintings can be used as magnitude-8 tools so you can give normal tools to your followers.

If you have followers with the right aspects, you can summon without consuming any influences or ingredients. Although putting in unneeded influences will help getting rid of them.

A useful combination would be a follower with: 2,  2 and  2. For example: a Dextrous Disciple (Upgraded Pawn), with  scar, given. You can use them in a rite with the right lore to summon:
 * 6: Caligine, for evidences.
 * 6: Maid-in-the-Mirror, for expeditions and hunters.
 * 6: Hint, for expeditions.
 * 6: Percussigant, for expeditions.

Sunset Rite can also be used to summon duplicates and unique spirits, cheaply.

Why not Rite of the Map's Edge?
You can use Rite of the Map's Edge. It's not a bad choice, only slightly less versatile when compared to Sunset Rite.

This rite requires tools, which makes it useless without them. With the right tools, however, it is surprisingly useful. Especially the magnitude-8 tool can be obtained very early, and can be used to summon Maid-in-the-Mirror.

You can reliably collect magnitude-8 tools by painting Masterpieces.

Summon duplicates
Once you have your spirits, you can use Sunset Rite together with lore level 2 or higher and 1 spirit as assistant to summon duplicates of themselves:
 * Hint
 * Percussigant
 * Raw Prophet
 * Maid-in-the-Mirror

This summoning requires no influence, thus costs you nothing except for time and can be repeated many time to create many duplicates. Furthermore, any excess influence can be thrown in and gotten rid of, regardless of their aspects.

There are several reasons why you would want to duplicate your summons:
 * More minions to send on expeditions.
 * You're attempting actions that may result in the minion dying, thus wanting some spares:
 * Getting rid of Hunters.
 * Getting rid of Evidences.
 * Minions leave influences when they die or expire (including failed summoning). With a little time and effort, you can get tons of influences and upgrade them to higher level influences (requires at least lore level 6):
 * A Hint leaves a Consiousness of Radiance ( 2)
 * Can be studied with Erudition to yield Erudition: a Lesson Learnt.
 * Can be left to decay to Fascination.
 * A Percussigant leaves Trembling Airs ( 2)
 * Can be studied with Vitality or 2 influence and level 6  lore fragment to yield  6 influence.
 * Can be left to decay to Vitality, useful to get rid of negative influence.
 * 10 or higher influences are required to combat curses.
 * A Raw Prophet leaves an Awareness of Appetite ( 2)
 * Can be left to decay to nothing, useful to get rid of negative influence.
 * A Maid-in-the-Mirror leaves a Chilly Atmosphere ( 2)
 * Can be studied with Vitality or 2 influence and level 6  lore fragment to yield  6 influence.
 * Can be left to decay to Dread.

Summon unique spirits
Then, you can, again, use Sunset Rite together with lore level 6 or higher to summon unique spirits:
 * Caligine as assistant and 1 Restlessness.
 * Summon King Crucible. You can learn Deep Mandaic from him if you've already known Aramaic.
 * Raw Prophet as assistant and 1 Restlessness.
 * Summon Ezeem, the Second Thirstly. You can learn Phrygian from him if you've already known Greek.

With the right tools, Rite of the Map's Edge is a better choice. Use lore level 6 or higher and:
 * Masterpiece and 1 Restlessness. Summon King Crucible.
 * Masterpiece and 1 Restlessness. Summon Ezeem, the Second Thirstly.

There's no way to summon Teresa cheaply. The most simple way is to use lore fragment level 10 or higher and:
 * 2 from Fleeting Reminiscence or Paradoxical Curio.
 * 5 from follower or tools.

In the beginning, unique spirits are most useful to learn languages (because normal spirits are more than enough on expeditions). However, they are very useful as assistants in performing your last rite to ascension, which require 36-degree of the right Principle. For example:
 * 12 from Spirits, 12 from Lore, 12 from Ingredients.
 * 12 from Spirits, 14 from Lore, 10 from Influences.
 * 12 from Spirits, 10 from Lore, 15 from Influences.