Thing in the Sarcophagus

This enemy is one of the factors that make Guardians of the Abyss hard. Not the biggest of course but it has 5 HP and it can potentially spawn very first round and dealing 5 dmg is not an easy task in the early stages of the scenario. It can be evaded, sure but that requires investigator with at least decent evade.

I'm not sure if I understand forced ability correctly. If I attack it with a knife then it immediately attacks me back and by doing that it gets exhausted afterwards and does not attack during enemy phase? Or it does not exhaust?

bugiel_marek · 24
Enemies only exhaust after attacking in enemy phase. That's a mere mechanism to mark, which enemy has already taken their turn, like flipping the investigator card. (Although it can be taken advantage of with some card effects.) For instance, an enemy, who makes an attack of oportunity also does not exhaust. — Susumu · 382
But it's clearly written in rules that attacks of opportunity do not make enemy to be exhausted afterwards. Here it's not aop. — bugiel_marek · 24
v — bugiel_marek · 24
Please don't get me wrong, it's not like I want to force this understanding of cards wording, I've played it like you suggested all the time. But I stumbled upon this card yesterday and read it's text carefully and wasn't sure what to make of it. — bugiel_marek · 24
The only mention of enemy exhausting is after they make an attack in the enemy phase. In no other occassion do enemies exhaust after making attacks. — suika · 9508
So since there's a place that says when we exhaust (and it's mentioned only there) then it explains it all. Thanks guys. — bugiel_marek · 24
In addition, this enemy attacks before your attack is resolved, because of "when" timing sequence. Therefore, even if you defeat this enemy, this enemy will attack you one time. — elkeinkrad · 498
Thanks @elkeinkrad for reminding, this makes it even nastier. — bugiel_marek · 24
Why this enemy doesn't get a VP is beyond me. It certainly is worthy of one. — Soul_Turtle · 495
If I were to guess why that is then I'd say that most likely whole scenario could potentially give too much exp. — bugiel_marek · 24
This. Plus the game might end up with to few enemies in the encounter deck otherwise. This is still relevant with one or two players, as Agenda and Act advancements reshuffles the discard pile into the encounter deck frequently. It sure is an enemy, that would be worthy a victory point, but there are others in the game, that aren't worth one either. I think, the difficulty of an enemy is one, but not the main consideration in design, if it is worth an XP. — Susumu · 382
How do you resolve the spawn? If no location has any clues, I would say it doesn't spawn att all. — RickH · 1
If no locations has any clues, the location with the most clues has 0 clues. In other words, you can choose to spawn it in any location. — suika · 9508
Pet Oozeling

I believe that Favor of the Moon and Favor of the Sun combos with this little being too.

You get 1 risk-free symbol per Favor you have out - and if it's Moon you even get a free resource!

I'm starting to get the impression that the Favors are going to break many mechanics since they can be used in non-skill test scenarios (for another example Henry Wan) to guarantee not pulling a mean symbol while also not losing the token from the Favor (since, as far as I know, and tokens only go back to the pool when resolved during a skill test).

slyguavas · 49
actually the favors release one token sealed on them and this token is treated as if just being drawn from the bag, so you have to draw another from the bag and return the cursed/blessed one to the token pool afterwards. they just work as a guaranteed first draw of these tokens — galge · 16
oh sorry i get what youre saying. pardon me — galge · 16
Henry is still a waste tho. — MrGoldbee · 1496
Bless and curse tokens revealed outside of a skill test have no effect on their own unless otherwise specified by a card effect. — Django · 5165
The tokens would go into the chaos bag, though, not back onto the favor. — OrionJA · 1
Mysterious Stairs

This is the worst luck-based bottom location in multiplayer.

We (4-player group) had to wait for another Endless Descent draw to push the scenario forward. If we ran out of those and this location was our last then srsly, this would be annoyingly broken :D

Vigerus · 33
While its annoying, you can just investigate to remove its effect. In fact you'd need to do it either way even if you do draw an endless descent since you can't move out of this location without gathering the clues. — madhatter152 · 8
I believe what Vigerus might be referring to is that when one resigns, by default they put all their clues on their location. Which means depending on how many clues each of your gators has. That would make resigning on this location extremely problematic. The "resign places clues on your location" rule so rarely matters that it's frequently forgotten, even by the designers I think I'm some cases. For example the resign location in "the house always wins" is victory. But managing to get that victory point without being defeated requires serious shenanigans :-P — NarkasisBroon · 11
A week ago, I got this location (after Endless Descent) to be in the bottom. First resigning investigator would drop few clues to the other one, making it impossible to resign there (shroud is quite high, cannot get clues in time). I just ignored the drop clues on resign rule here, seems too much punishing... — johniez · 3
Especially frustrating here is that they have the technology to fix this from other scenarios: Just make the Resign action take your clues and return them to the token pool (or put a forced effect that takes them when you're eliminated). — Thatwasademo · 58
Backpack

Backpack is literally made me play Emergency Cache again. Its such a good deck thinning and combo piece finder. I never not want to have it. That is all. Muahahahah. Favorite card. Kiss kiss me me. Hue hue hue. 200

Hyperawareness

Physical Training, Hyperawareness, Hard Knocks, Arcane Studies, Dig Deep are part of a cycle, and partly share a common review. These cards are really, really inefficient, yet they have unique capabilities and I at least consider whether to take them every time I make a character. They have two main purposes:

  1. Making use of excess resources. Most characters are tight for resources early on, but many times a character will reach the point where they have what they need, or they can't afford the actions to play any more cards, and they start just building up resources. These cards ensure that you can never have too much money, because if nothing else your one resource per turn becomes a flexible, storable +1 each turn. If you really have run out of other ways to spend your resources, a card to turn resources into bonuses can become a very effective play. However, it is important to be aware that just because your character tends to have a few resources hanging around at the end of the game is no reason to take this card, you would be better off taking a skill card. Just playing the card alone will use up 2 resources before you even gain a benefit. You really need to have a character who would otherwise end up with at least 6 extra resources at the end of this scenario, before you start to get excited by this type of card. That is entirely possible for certain characters, but most characters won't end up in that situation. You need to be very aware of what kind of resource economy your character has, and that your character really does spend substantially fewer resources than they earn over the course of a scenario, before you put this type of card in your deck. (Some characters make money more quickly than one per turn, and have stronger reasons to take this card).
  2. Flexibility. Sometimes you have other ways to spend your resources, but this card gives you the flexibility to spend a bunch of resources on two very different skills, in any amount and any way you choose. Normally skill cards are way, way more efficient than this kind of card, but a single skill card isn't going to give you, for instance, +7 on a test of your choice, and this card can. Inefficient though this card may be, if you have it in play and you are forced to make an extremely critical skill check, it is quite comforting that there is almost always something you can do to improve your chances – you can make the decision that a resource you otherwise would have spent on something else would be better spent giving you a +1 on this test. So you don’t really need to have nothing at all to do with your resources, in order to play this card. But you still need lots of available resources. A character who is tight on resources (which is quite common) just should not use this type of card; even though the flexibility might be useful, you can’t afford the action and 2 resources to play it.

If you do play one of these cards, when it is worth using? A really good situation is when +1 skill would turn 3 tokens (about 1/5 of the bag) from failure to success. So if turning a failure into a success isn’t worth 5 resources, you shouldn’t be using this.

I find Hyperawareness to be one of the more tempting cards in this cycle because it has an interesting ability to give evasion ability to a class without a lot of evasion options. It isn't usually practical for a seeker to play permanent evasion bonuses that will almost never be used, and putting a couple one shots kill bonuses into the deck may not be enough to get the job done. But with this card you are only committing half a card in your deck to agility (since the other half of the card is boosting intellect), but if you get into a desperate situation you can spend a whole bunch of money and suddenly become an expert evader. Or at the end of the game, if your seeker abilities have become useless because the goal is now to kill a boss monster, you can use all that money you've been building up from Dr. Milan Christopher to become the party evasion master and keep the boss occupied while your friends kill it. The intellect boosting side of the card is less exciting because it is usually more efficient to just retry a failed investigation attempt, but the scenario designers like to put situations in the game where that is not true and you really want to complete an investigation in a timely fashion, so boosting your intellect can still be pretty useful. Of course, this card is still far from an auto include, it is an expensive card and you still need to believe that your character’s deck design is such that you will end up with a bunch of money saved up by the end of the game (Dr. Milan Christopher helps with this).

ChristopherA · 114
I think this is a fairly in-depth look and I agree with the "not the most efficient" stance but: 0xp, No Slot, decent icons, means you can just run a 1 of in a base deck and always have a resource sink, which I think is important in any character. If my deck doesn't have any other on demand way to spend resources I always include one of these, because a pile of unspendable is even more inefficient. — Zerogrim · 296
Counterpoint: Seekers have a lot of easy-to-include resource sinks such as Working a Hunch, and better ways to deal with enemies (e.g. Occult Invocation, I've got a plan, Occult Lexicon, Mind over Matter). Seekers among all classes have the easiest ways to translate resources into game advancement that Hyperawarness should almost never make the cut. — suika · 9508
Counter Counter point there is limited deck space for enemy problem solving and resource sinks, running hyper awareness allows you to solve issues more than once without having to include lots of cards that might be better spent on other things. (it is also core set, so it being the floor of options and not being really that bad is pretty neat) — Zerogrim · 296
It's a bit of a stretch to call Hyperawareness an enemy management solution when you need to spend 4 resources and an action to play it beforehand before it becomes better than a manual dexterity. — suika · 9508