• Q: How does Grizzled work with locations? Locations are encounter cards but the text on the card is "If this is a skill test on or against an encounter card (including fighting, evading or parleying)...", which doesn't list 'investigating' among the examples. Does investigating count as a skill test against an encounter card, and therefore enable me to get extra wild icons if a matching trait is listed on the Grizzled upgrade card? A: Since location cards are considered encounter cards, Grizzled is able to be played when resolving a skill test on a location. The examples given on Grizzled are not an exhaustive list of how it can be used; you can commit it to an investigation test. (September 2023)

With the permission of @Kelega from the Miskatonic Malcontent, I want to share this external link that breaks down in detail and with graphs on which traits to choose for every campaign up until TSK.

The author shows:

• What traits appear the most in each campaign
• What traits do enemies have in each scenario of each campaign
  • What is the best combination of 2 or 3 traits to cover most enemies in each scenario of each campaign
• What traits do treacheries have in each scenario of each campaign
  • What is the best combination of 2 or 3 traits to cover most treacheries in each scenario of each campaign

Warning This is full of spoilers, of course, but as Grizzled is mechanically made for guessing what the most common trait used is, if you have already been to this campaign and want to tech your deck, then this is all you're looking for.

For 6xp (Always Prepared and an additional Trait), you can either build yourself a repeatable enemy management tech or a 2-card constant +3 against treacheries.

Awesome for Patrice. Her signature weakness becomes trivial once you upgrade it to "always prepared"(still okay if you don't). The "monster" subtype trait is frequent enough for it not to be a dead draw. You can slam the extradimensional trait to have a juicy +5 on that particular test, or be content enough with +3 and put "humanoid" or "terror" on it to help your friends to deal with those pesky cultists/deep ones/frozen in fear.

It's a fairly expensive (in xp) skill card, so it's pretty easy to just avoid it. The fancy thing it does is 5 xp for Always Prepared, which is a lot even if you've got 2 copies, and it's limited to once per round. Usually it's pretty similar (+/- 1 symbol) to Unexpected Courage, and the traits portion limits it to monsters or treacheries, and can't be used to investigate or do tests on location cards.

Humanoid and Monster traits will get you a card that's useful against a bit under 100% of enemies, and enemies are only around 1/3 of the encounter deck. Adding Elite and Ancient One means it will give you 5 symbols against most of the more difficult monsters. The good news is, those 4 traits will get you almost all enemies (and double coverage against difficult monsters) in all campaigns for 3 xp. I'm not sure what combo's you would need to cover all of the tests in the encounter deck, but I can't imagine 4 traits would be limiting if you're careful.

Nemesis instead of Always Prepared (or with fewer traits; elite covers the monsters you'd want to use it on) sounds useful if you're willing to have a card in your deck just for fighting difficult monsters. Not a bad plan.

If you can find the traits that cover all of the really nasty treacheries, Mythos-hardened might be a way to thin the encounter deck. But that requires knowing about them ahead of time.