I thought I should just point out the differences from the L0 version because it took me more than one second to notice.

• +2 willpower to the test
• Bonus effect triggers FOR EACH curse revealed, rather than just once.
• Extra willpower icon

I haven't played with Curses enough to know whether this triggers twice enough to make it worthwhile, but it seems like it'd require a full bag of curses to get good value out of it. I think I'd generally be happier with the extra clue from Rite of Seeking or Clairvoyance, despite their downsides.

While normally trading one encounter card only allows the ability to swap an especially bad treachery for a random one, another potential use case for this card is when the group has mythos scanning such as Alyssa Graham and wants to be able to give the top encounter card to someone who isn't first player. E.g. the lead investigator is a Guardian or Rogue and the other investigator is a mystic who sees Rotting Remains on top of the deck.

So first off I don't think this card is very good. 4 cost 4 xp is extremely high and most people would rather not take 1 and 1.

However there are two different decks which may be interested?

Tommy with Spiritual Resolve might be interested in three instances of 1 and 1. Same with anyone who has Peter Sylvestre and Jessica Hyde out -- that turns this card effectively into "skip the next three encounter cards you draw", which is very good.

I personally can't see why you'd ever want to activate the fast ability. Maybe there's something I'm missing here. I guess Tommy or Calvin can use this combo to just take 1 and 1 whenever they want, since nothing exhausts. Not exactly a mind blowing combo but it's something?

Is Dream-gate an encounter card? Seems like it function like one when in play. I asked and Maxine clarified for us:

Greetings,

Good question! In this case, I would say that while Dream-Gate is in play, it is an encounter card, since it is a location and location cards are generally encounter cards. However, while it is set aside and out of play it functions more like a player card, for deckbuilding purposes and the like. So if Gate Box moves you, that is a player card effect moving you, but when Dream-Gate moves you, that would be an encounter card effect moving you.

Hope that helps!

MJ Newman (she/they) Senior Game Designer

You know what I was really really expecting to see come out of Innsmouth, a higher level dark ritual with one change.

"...Spend 1 resource or release 1 curse sealed here. If there are no tokens sealed on dark ritual discard it."

The main issue with curses is having a lot of them around all at once, if you only have 2 curses about they are nowhere near as deadly and a single false covenant can easily just siphon them out of the bag, having a card that turns a large dumping of them into a slow drip feed would have been really useful, but I guess favor of the moon does that a lot better.

Given how much curse erasing exists just in survivor I don't see why you would run Dark Ritual for that, the biggest and best rogue curse card is Faustian bargain, it seems a little silly to use that and then follow it up with a resource sink.

Using dark ritual for short bursts seems to be the only use case it has, when you have a turn or two where failure can't be tolerated you can throw it down and spend the 2/3 resource cost to keep curses at bay, but even then at level 0 this card still looks poor compared to what tides of fate can do.

I'm trying my hardest to think if there's a reason you'd want curses sealed for the sake of it, like with guardian cards that can grab sealed blesses but I can't think of anything, I like to think every card has some amazing power if used well but for now I concede to Dark ritual.

Its coffin was carved by False covenant and buried with Favor of the moon. I hope like with all cards one day I will see where its power lies, every card is amazing in the right place, this one is probably going to need to see return to Innsmouth before that place arrives.