Earthly Serenity

Earthly Serenity

This is in some ways worse than Earthly Serenity (1), since any high negative chaos token will bring your skill value down to 0 and you will succeed by 0 and lose 2 resources. With Earthly Serenity (1) you would instead fail and not loose any resources.

While test on Earthly Serenity (4) is very slightly easier and you have two charges more it does not really outweigh the more severe punishment and easier to encounter punishment, especially on higher difficulties.

tdctaz · 49
I think that you could make that Argument on Blur (1) to Blur (4), where the penalty is either taking one or two damage. Damage is much harder to remove than resources to replace. But I do agree in general that for a high willpower mystic or survivor, that it's not worth three exp to maybe get a little more healing. — DjMiniboss · 44
I think if you're spending the xp on this, a simple solution presents itself: stay broke. Mystics are a great class for setting up and never needing resources again, while survivors have dark horse. — SGPrometheus · 847
Also, these cards look more like a "2 action event", than a real asset. You want to preferably use them in one highly over committed action, to heal 6 points of horror (or 4 with the lower level) at once. Succeeding by 0 is at that point less likely than (auto)failing, and a waste of an action anyway, because you gain no healing out of it. — Susumu · 382
An arcane is quite expensive for an event. All the more reason to empty it quickly to replace it. — Django · 5163
By calling it a "2 action event", I meant 1 action to play it, 1 action to use and empty it. So yes, no long commitment of the arcane slot. Akachi might also be interested to heal only 4 horror in 1 action with it, and use the 3 spare charges to tame her spirits. — Susumu · 382
It definitely is a lot stronger than it seems, especially in 'grinder' campaigns like TFA where you can be doing things correctly and still be staring down potentially lethal unavoidable damage. As Susumu said, the downside basically never matters if you are using it on a high WP character as you ideally just blad all the charges out in one or two actions and almost never will actually succeed by 0. Being able to give your team what is probably a full heal in 2 actions can swing some harder situations Arkham can throw at you. — dezzmont · 222
If the WP is high enough (like 5 in most standard bags) you CANT succeed by 0. In other bags, you can just try yo win by a number that isnt in the bag — Jota · 7
So, if you pass the test by 0, you can't spend a charge to heal? — CrovaxTheFallen · 1

Backpack

Backpack

Let's keep it simple: Any XP you spend on that fancy Exceptional item is essentially wasted if you don't draw that card during the scenario. Even hard mulligans can fail and leave you scrambling to get set up. This card is one of the best ways to make sure you pull The Skeleton Key or The Red Clock, and even if you are lucky during mulligan, you're likely running other items that it's still helpful to draw into early.

I pretty much always take this card before buying my expensive Item assets unless I'm playing a character who has access to repeatable card draw or better (or more specific) tutors like Mr. "Rook", Research Librarian, or Prepared for the Worst + Stick to the Plan.

mikecheb · 5
In rogue lucky cigarette case 3 is better than backpack. Or take both, they can find each other — Django · 5163
I think Trish may want this, but I agree most rogues probably want Lucky Cig Case 3, both for the tutor power and because modern rogue is basically 'built' around at least 2 cards a turn off Lucky Cig Case. — dezzmont · 222
Think of how many signatures and story cards are items....its a lot, like...a lot, back pack 2 makes it into so many of my decks that emergency cache often sees play just because backpack 2 is so good. — Zerogrim · 295

Dendromorphosis

Dendromorphosis

Anyone knows what happens if you are playing as Daisy and draw this card and also The Necronomicon: John Dee Translation?

I think rules state that you can discard a weakness, but if you do not have enough hand slots and nether Dendromorphosis nor The Necronomicon: John Dee Translation can leave play.

condedooku · 2
Interesting question. I'm not sure, but I would treat it like an Enemy, that can not spawn and be discarded. "Cannot leave play" is absolute, so I would say, the first card you draw, stays in your thread area, while the second simply cannot enter. (Unless of course, you have been smart and played the Tote Bag.) But I'm not sure, it's just the most reasonable solution, I would have. — Susumu · 382
This is one of the few cases where you can be overloaded on hand slots. See the faq on the encounter card "straightjacket" which is a similar situation — NarkasisBroon · 11
Straitjacket — NarkasisBroon · 11
dire jackets — MrGoldbee · 1493
Money for nothing — SGPrometheus · 847
There is one odd niche effect of being overloaded on hand slots with The Necronomicon. If you use other card effects to remove the last horror from The Necronomicon, it doesn't discard itself but it stops being unable to leave play. Normally that would mean you'd need to play another asset to overwrite it, but if you already have Dendromorphosis out it'll leave play that way. — Thatwasademo · 58
That's a great catch, NarkasisBroon! — Susumu · 382
Thank you to you all!!! — condedooku · 2

Favor of the Sun

Favor of the Sun

Someone above pointed out the virtues of using this with Ancient Covenant, but it also has a lot of synergy with grotesque statue, any of the curse based spells and Paradoxical Covenant.

Using the three above you can basically fish in a bag full of curses for only curses and then release a blessing from this card to make it an auto success. This results in extremely powerful Mystic spells.

drjones87 · 203
Did you talk about Paradoxical Covenant? — elkeinkrad · 497
I think he talks about combining alll of the mentioned cards. Use a curse spell with tentacle statue to fish for curse tokens, then use sun favor and paradox cov to profit. — Django · 5163

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 · 203
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 · 287
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 · 497
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