
At a glance, you'd think Abigail is Daisy Walker's new best friend. Well, you're probably right - she fits in most Daisy decks with little effort, though you may want a Charisma first. However, there should also be some attention on whether or not she can fit into non-Daisy decks, and that's a lot fuzzier.
Abigail has the ability to repeat any Tome for free. This effect will determine whether or not you include Abigail. You can still get an extra hand slot by attaching Tomes without on them, but there's little reason to do so. Ally slots are valuable, and trading an ally slot for a hand slot is likely not worth it. That being said, most characters who aren't Daisy will have a hard time running numerous books and then constantly burning actions to use them. If someone is only running a single book, Research Librarian's consistency and relative cheapness is going to compete for the same slot, and likely be the cheaper and more reliable choice.
One important note is that the Abigail resolves the effect of the , not the full . This means that costs are not part of the effect, so 'free' doesn't only apply to the action, but to any other costs as well. This allows you to squeeze extra uses out of anything that has limited uses. As a result, you will want to keep a careful eye on Tomes with uses, since they become more tempting than before.
For easy reference, as of March 2020, here are the list of Tomes that have corresponding effects:
- Unlimited Uses
- Old Book of Lore (0) and Old Book of Lore (3)
- Medical Texts
- Encyclopedia
- Book of Shadows (1) and Book of Shadows (3)
- De Vermis Mysteriis (Requires appropriate event in discard)
- Dream Diary (0) (Limited use, since you can only have one Essence of the Dream at a time)
- Number of Uses
- The Necronomicon
- Archaic Glyphs (Untranslated)
- Pnakotic Manuscripts (But the reaction is very similar)
- Scroll of Secrets(0), Scroll of Secrets (3, Seeker), and Scroll of Secrets (3, Mystic)
- Esoteric Atlas
- Scroll of Prophecies
- Otherworld Codex
There are some definite hits in here - an Old Book of Lore drawing two cards every turn or an Encyclopedia giving +4 would be two very common and powerful examples. Scroll of Prophecies can also let you tear through absurd amounts of your deck, and Otherworld Codex can clear an absurd amount of problems or give you two shots at clearing one. If you're using a couple of these effects of these very often, Abigail can give you a lot. However, those are very action and resource intensive combos to pull out for anybody who isn't Daisy.
If you're using at least four copies of Tomes with ... Well, I hope you're playing Daisy. But it's only in those circumstances that I would say the reliability of Abigail is high enough to justify the cost, given many Tomes cost XP to get in the first place. If your build otherwise functions with all of those Tomes, Abigail is worth looking into. Otherwise, it's best not to put too many actions into a combo that might show off a neat trick or two, but won't reliably help you do things that need to be done.