Eye of Chaos

Eye of Chaos

How to use this properly...

1.) In the Thick of it with level 2 grotesque statue. 2.) Backpack. 3.) Finish the first scenario with at least 4 experience. You can upgrade both spells to max with only 4. 4.) Tides of Fate with a high bless generation partner. 5.) Set to intentionally fail an investigate using the totem and only draw curse tokens (also clearing curses from the bag while doing so). If you can throw take heart into this test, all the better! 6.) Charge this up to ridiculous levels (8+ uses) and now you have a rite of seeking on tap with no downsides. Very powerful combo with only minimal experience and setup.

drjones87 · 201
I'm VERY confused: which totem ? Why do you want to fail ? How can you be sure to only draw cursed tokens ? It looks like a lot of work when you can simply use Twila Katherine Price, Recharge, Winds of power, Enraptured, Eldritch sophist, ... to get more charges. — AlexP · 278
Is is possible to reveal lots of curse tokens during single investigation even with statue? Although we find curse with 3 times of statue, the expected number of curse tokens is less than 2 with 10 curse in bag. — elkeinkrad · 500
In the Thick of if gives you enough xp for only 1 Grotesque statue. Even with 2 backpacks, your chances of getting one within the first 5 turns are, scientifically speaking, very slim. Furthermore, I'm not sure you're playing the game according to the original rules, because you literally cannot "upgrade both spells to max with only 4" experience points. Each copy costs 4 experience points. Meaning 8 in total. And lastly, in order to charge this to 8+ uses, you would have to pull 6 or more curse tokens in a single test (the first activation, the one you intended to fail removes one charge, leaving you with just two and each subsequent activation removes yet another charge). Even if you blew all 3 charges from Grotesque statue on the first reveal the chaos token step (which I'm almost sure you can't, because of the 'instead' wording), you would have a little over 85% of getting one curse token. A single. One. And about 0.2% of getting 6 in a row. Sooooo... no. This is definitely not how to use it properly. — Almevirian · 1
*all assuming you would have all 10 curse tokens and a standard 16 other chaos tokens in the bag — Almevirian · 1

Holy Spear

Holy Spear

With the release of Cyclopean Hammer this has lost a lot of appeal. Most bless oriented guardians have a high willpower and Hammer can be augmented quite reliably with reliable, which nets might plus will plus 2 (4 with two copies), has infinite uses and doesn't eat up bless tokens.

The bless generation from this thing is also quite paltry to the many other options often available to bless generators (Keep Faith recursion with resourceful, spirit of humaniry).

As a result, this weapon has gone the way of lightning gun and is firmly obsolete.

drjones87 · 201
I agree that the hammer is powerful, but I think this really only supports bless builds specifically. If you're running little to no bless tech, I would stick to the hammer — Therealestize · 74
+4 that is actually a +4 is pretty nice when the +will power is actually +willpower-3, the fact guardians have a lot of ways to boost willpower does seem to be the issue, but I'd take holy spear over hammer if my willpower was only going to be 3 anyway. (obviously IN a bless build, don't take spear if you don't have blessing raining down from on high.) — Zerogrim · 295

Moonstone

Moonstone

Having made the Ursula Relic deck, I think you either cheat this into play with Dr. Elli Horowitz, or you use Occult Invocation to discard it and get it into play that way. Which really both seem better from previous reviews of this card.

Seekers op btw :D

fiatluxia · 68
Do you think it's worth the effort when you have access to Tooth of Eztli ? If you use the Ornate bow as your main weapon ? But in this case, it uses both your hands if Dr. Elli Horowitz is holding the Moonstone. — AlexP · 278
The Tooth only helps in case of treacheries, I would consider Moonstone as an actual upgrade, especially to cheat it into play as described. — fiatluxia · 68

Back into the Depths

Back into the Depths

This is probably the most annoying error to date, they printed and had to errata. We have played the scenario more than 3 months ago, not aware of the bug, and it still bothers me a lot. So I thought, it might be a good idea, to give people extra attention to this errata.

It was our second run of Innsmouth and first ever campaign on hard, and up until then, we aced it, unlocked all the Flashbacks I to XIII. As a result, we got all 4 required keys to advance during setup, and because everybody starts at Gateway to Y'ha-nthlei and there is no "may" printed on the card, we had to immediately advance and started the game in Act 2. But by doing so, we didn't have the opportunity to grab some additional keys, we would have needed to unlock:

  • Flashback XIV in the game
  • an alternative, optional objective to fulfill
  • Flashback XV in the Epilogue

We had achieved the second bullet point on our Innsmouth blind run, and found it a rather easy campaign final on standard, but playing the scenario without the optional objective was a completely anticlimactic and lame affair, and loosing out on the Flashbacks double stings.

Susumu · 381
Considering that's based on an obscure and unintuitive ruling and they immediately errata'd it, I'd say the fact that, in the same level, Dagon and Hydra have useless actions printed on them is a much more annoying error. — SSW · 217
Why ist the action useless? There might be doom placed on them. — PowLee · 15
I also don't get, what you mean, SSW. How is the action on them an error? If you want to stay on the location, it is better to try to evade them that way. Of course, you need a character to likely pass the willpower (4) test, but it is a legit action. The forced advance on the other hand is an annoying bug. Yeah, they errata'd it. But we don't doublecheck every card during play, if there might be a missprint. At that moment, we were not aware, that this would cost us Flashback XIV and the rest. We were playing it for the second time, and the first was more than half a year earlier. It was a critical mistake, we now know. But it is likely to not notice it during play. — Susumu · 381
Dagon and Hydra untap then check to see if they are untapped.... — Zerogrim · 295
Gotcha! I indeed missed the "At the end of the round". Yeah, you could still remove the doom placed in the previouse round. But obviously, exhausting them is pointless. — Susumu · 381
I think the important part about the action would be to remove the doom, not to exhaust the ancient one. So I wouldn't call it pointless at all. I guess the default is supposed to be that you place doom on them while you're in their lair. Given that there are edge cases where you can exhaust them during upkeep after they readied, I still think that checking whether they are ready at the end of the round still makes sense.nk it's still appropriate that the game checks whether the ancient one is ready or not for the case that you trigger an edge case where you exhaust them during upkeep. Example for such an obscure edge case: Draw Overzealous, get an encounter card with a skill test, commit quick thinking, succeed by 2, use the extra action to evade them. — PowLee · 15

Lockpicks

Lockpicks

I have found a "sour spot" (the opposite of sweet spot) while using this powerful card. It is on investigator with 3 (Skids), with no other gentle boosts available in the deck, and having to work on 2 shroud location with something like 3 clues. Basic investigation with 3 struggles against 2 shroud especially you want to repeatedly succeed, and also using Lockpicks is slow to drain the location since it exhausts. It is like you are given a bazooka but was tasked to kill some birds.

You will have to intentionally find a more difficult location with 1 to make the best use of your action. And therefore replacing starting 2x Flashlight into 2x Lockpicks may not always be a good idea, regarding of flexibility even in Normal difficulty.

5argon · 11177
I think, Lockpicks has two applications. In solo, one clue per round is a good rate. You have to spend actions to move around anyway, so the exhaustion does matter less. In multiplayer, I agree the clueing potential is rather slow. But you get value out of an action per round, where you over succeed by a lot to dig out cards with LCC (3) and potentially trigger other effects. — Susumu · 381