The positive and negative quirks each follower rolls, from work-boosting Industrious to Faith-draining duds you can reroll away.
Follower Traits are the hidden stat sheet that decides whether a cult member works hard or quietly drains your Faith. Every follower rolls one to three of them, and the good ones can push work speed, Devotion, and Loyalty well above baseline.
They come in two flavors. According to the wiki, positive traits carry a green up-triangle and improve performance, while negative traits carry a red down-triangle and hurt it.
The best news is that traits are not permanent. The wiki notes the Woolhaven Exorcism Altar lets you reroll a follower's traits, so a dud recruit is fixable.
This guide covers how followers roll their traits, the best positive ones, the worst negative ones, and how to change them with Doctrines and the Exorcism Altar.
Positive and negative quirks, one to three per follower. Industrious and Faithful for work and Devotion speed.
Sloth and Faithless, which slow work and Devotion.
Doctrines and the Exorcism Altar add or reroll traits.Most followers get their traits randomly at recruitment. Per the wiki, generic 
followers roll a first and second trait from the starting pool, then have roughly a 20% chance at a third, rarer trait, landing on one to three traits on average.
Unique characters break the rules. According to the wiki, unique Followers carry their own pre-set traits rather than rolling, and some traits like Fear of Death or Against Sacrifice are limited to a single follower at a time.
The DLC adds special cases. The wiki states Rotten Followers from the Woolhaven DLC always carry the Rotten trait on top of their rolls, while followers hatched from Dragon Eggs get only a single trait.
The strongest positive traits speed up the three things your cult runs on: work, Devotion, and Loyalty. Per the wiki, Industrious increases work speed by 15%, Faithful generates Devotion 15% faster, and Gullible boosts all Loyalty gains by 15%.
A few reward specific playstyles. According to the wiki, Fashionable generates 20% more Devotion while a follower wears a unique outfit, and Naturally Obedient hands you 10 Faith the moment you recruit that worshiper.
Industrious (+15% work speed)
Faithful (+15% Devotion, rare) Gullible (+15% from all Loyalty sources)
Naturally Obedient (+10 Faith on recruit)Match traits to jobs. In practice you want Industrious followers on work stations and Faithful ones at worship, since stacking the right trait on the right task multiplies your output.
The negative traits mirror the good ones, dragging down the same systems. Per the wiki, Sloth cuts work and Devotion speed by 10%, Faithless slows Devotion by 15%, and Cynical strips 15% from all Loyalty gains.
Some are actively disruptive. According to the wiki, Jerk followers steal money, wake sleepers, and start fights, while Hot Tempered followers pick fights that can spiral through your 
camp.
A couple hurt your Faith directly. The wiki notes Natural Skeptic drops 10 Faith on recruitment, and Terrified of Death costs 5 Faith every time another follower dies, which stings during a rough stretch.
Sloth (-10% work and Devotion speed) Faithless (-15% Devotion)
Jerk and Hot Tempered (theft and fights)You are not stuck with a bad roll. Per the wiki, permanent traits can be granted through Doctrines, so certain cult-wide traits come from your teachings rather than luck.
The Exorcism Altar is the real fix. According to the wiki, the Woolhaven Exorcism Altar lets you reroll a follower's traits repeatedly, the main exception being elusive traits, which cannot be rerolled.
Some traits can be talked away. The wiki notes that reassuring a follower enough times removes the Coward or Jerk trait, and players even use the Exorcism Altar to roll a follower down to a single removable Coward or Jerk trait, then reassure it off for a clean, trait-free worker.
Reroll before you invest in a follower. In practice it is cheaper to fix a bad recruit at the Exorcism Altar early than to build your whole endgame economy around followers stuck with Sloth or Faithless.
A few traits exist purely for flavor. Per the wiki, Royal Pooper makes all of a follower's poops golden, and Coprophiliac followers point and laugh at mess instead of gagging.
One trait is almost impossible to get. According to the wiki, the 
Immortal trait is a special one tied to The One Who Waits and the River Boy, though any follower wearing a Golden Skull Necklace gains it too.
Grief has its own trait. The wiki notes the Poet trait, where a follower stops working to write poetry all day, only appears after you defeat a Bishop for the first time.
Traits are one layer of running a healthy flock. These guides cover the forms over them, the doctrines that grant them, and the rituals and marriages they interact with.
Game data and screenshots adapted from cult-of-the-lamb.fandom.com, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Original content remains the property of the wiki contributors and Massive Monster and Devolver Digital.