I am wondering if I upgrade "Distract", could I automatically evade an enemy engaged with another investigator at this location? Or do I have to engage the enemy first? Hope someone could please clarify my question. Thanks in advance.

I didn't see this combo in other review so I wanted to add:
Sefina is the only 'gator that can take one copy of Stargazing, Double, Double, and Drawn to the Flame, to generate a free action and massively increase the odds of activating it and the value of skipping an encounter.
If you were going to play Double, Double absolutely consider using 1 xp for this.

I am usually doing extensive reviews, but here I think the main combo hasn't been mentioned by other reviews yet, so I'll make a short one.

This card should always come with its symbiotic partner: Persistence.

Joking, I can't keep things short, so let me develop.

Phase 1: Play Gift of Nodens and thin your deck.

• Short Supply is a tremendous help to start with a far thinner deck
  • Add Resourceful and Scrounge for Supplies to your deck to make sure you don't discard Gift of Nodens without any options to get it back.
• At a Crossroads and Unrelenting also help a lot, and any other draw card your investigator has access to

Phase 2: Loop and never re-shuffle

Initial State

1. One Persistence in your hand
2. One Persistence and one Resourceful in your discard pile
3. You have Gift of Nodens on the table.

During any

1. Commit Persistence from your discard pile
2. Use the of Gift of Nodens
3. Discard Persistence from your hand
4. Commit Resourceful from your discard pile

Results

1. +2 skill value to your test (if it wasn't )
2. Resourceful is placed at the bottom of your empty deck
3. Persistence is then shuffled with Resourceful, into your deck
4. Resourceful brings back any card to your hand
5. As soon as you draw Persistence again, you are back at the initial state of 1 Persistence in your discard pile and 1 Persistence in your hand.

This is so strong because:

• Once you set up Gift of Nodens, you really don't want to shuffle your discard pile into your deck. This would remove all the targets of both Gift of Nodens and Resourceful.
  • Persistence is the easiest way to add a card to your deck to prevent it from happening.
  • Persistence is also the easiest way to commit a card to a test, to trigger Gift of Nodens's , since it has a and doesn't even require you to have it in your hand.
• Resourceful is the most versatile target for Gift of Nodens, but if you want to use Resourceful to recur a skill card like Contemplative, Long Shot, or Brute Force, you can target it right away.
• If you draw exactly 2 cards per round (1 during the upkeep and one other), you have an unbreakable loop where you can basically use Resourceful or any other skill every single turn until the end of the scenario.

The last question is:

Why not simply using Gift of Nodens on a chosen skill card, place it at the bottom of my empty deck, and draw it during the Upkeep phase, rince, and repeat?

This doesn't work because Gift of Nodens wants you to:

1. Commit one card to a test
2. Discard a card from your hand

So you need an input of 2 cards in your hand every turn to feed Gift of Nodens, which would require you to draw more than the 1 card placed at the bottom of your deck.

This card allows some funny interactions with Eye of Ghatanothoa (2), Alyssa Graham (0) and all versions of Scroll of Secrets (0)/Scroll of Secrets (3)/Scroll of Secrets (3):

There are many, many treacheries with designators like "Limit 1 per investigator." (e.g. Calcification), that stay in your threat area. When you already have one of these, you are safe from getting additional copies.

You can use this to trigger Shrine of the Moirai "for free".

You can also use the shrine in the window of a skill test on a treachery during the mythos phase to prevent another player from drawing the next (already known) treachery or enemy.

“Always Current” Environment Review

As per my last review, I'm reviewing this from the perspective of starter decks (like Harvey's) and the revised core being always current environment - which will become the established meta. Unless FF changes what they consider current environment, this should remain a constant and can be used for all deck building going forward. All the cards I discuss below, unless otherwise stated, are all also current.

Should Seekers use this? As other reviewers have pointed out, level 0 Mind over Matter allows you to test instead of or . For most Seekers, the level 0 version is usually good enough to not want to upgrade, as you can commit cards to those tests which you can't do with this card. This makes the additional XP for adding to or less worth it, as you can just commit what should naturally be in your deck (things with icons) to match the elevated skill value on the upgraded version. It draws a card as well, but that's largely irrelevant to a class which draws cards easily. Further, Magnifying Glass (as it only boosts investigate) doesn’t help with a boost here either.

The answer is therefore generally a no to this on Seekers. I think when you are using both Dr. Milan Christopher and Whitton Greene so your outside of Magnifying Glass is higher, and/or you have Encyclopedia (*cough* Daisy *cough*), then it’s a little more worthwhile if you have the XP to spare - but otherwise the base version is good. Lucius may also be an exception to this rule when playing focused.

Who then should use this? For non-current investigators, as other reviewers have pointed out Joe Diamond is a good fit - but I'd probably rather spend XP on boosting directly with a Beat Cop. Legacy Trish also uses it okay but it's a bit of a waste of XP, same goes for (currently current) Darrell.

The real answer to who should be using this is yo' boy, Roland Banks. Using Mind Over Matter •• you can add +3 to your tests (or even to your for specific tests) which is pretty decent for a fast card which draws a card to replace itself. Common allies, such as Grete Wagner ••• and potentially Dr. Milan Christopher then add additional boosts for a Mind Over Matter •• turn while making Roland more well-rounded at clue finding. As this is a singular event in your deck, you will need to lean in to card draw to find it, but Seeker tech and Glory help with that.

The real question is, when is Mind Over Matter •• worth it on Roland? Super boosts for a turn are fine, but you do need to spend XP to put this in your deck, when instead you could be running Grete Wagner with Beat Cop and commit things like Overpower to have a good boost on a Machete, .45 Automatic or a Roland's .38 Special fight action.

The main use case here is Shotgun. Shotgun is now the only current big gun (TSK, FHV and TDC are current environment at the time of writing). Previously, no one used Shotgun because Lightning Gun was instantly better than it in Dunwich Legacy - but without that competition Shotgun becomes worthy of consideration again. With Shotgun and just Mind Over Matter •• Roland fights at a 10 skill value, with Grete Wagner ••• and Dr. Milan Christopher or Beat Cop that becomes at 13. Bosses like Umôrdhoth often take the full 5 damage when playing on standard difficulty at a 13 test (it varies, but it's around 80% of the time normally, and you do 3 or more damage around 95% of the time).

While this is all combo-erific, I'd say this is a very solid option for Roland which hasn't been considered much previously but perhaps should have been because the damage potential per action is very high. As long as you have good card draw, I think this is a new standard for what good damage looks like in current environment. I've made Roland deck based on this to coincide with the review here, check it out here if you're interested.

TL:DR Roland with a Shotgun is realistically the main use-case I would consider for this card which is also always current environment. That said, it's one hell of a cool use case and I think the juice here is worth the squeeze to assemble the combo.