Month: July 2025

Intro

The review for all the player cards in The Drowned City was originally written right after we got the full spoiler, before even having the cards in our hands. Now, that a few months have passed and we got the opportunity for hands-on experience with our new toys, i am going back to that review and adjusting the ratings. This page lists the changes i made.

Find the (now edited) full review here: Investigator Expansion Review: The Drowned City

Guardian

Crowbar: Excellent -> Good to Excellent. Crowbar is a good tool that allows Guardians to flex in a way they couldn’t before, but i want to knock it just half a notch down to not stand on a level with truly excellent cards like Book of War or Hunter’s Mark.
Remington(0): Okay to Good -> Okay to Bad. A clunky pistol that is hard to get full value out of. I don’t find myself wanting this gun, even if i plan on getting the level 4 later.
Locked and Loaded: Okay -> Good. I feel like we as a community collectively underestimated this one massively. I even put it in “Least useful” which is a crime. For 3xp you upgrade basically all of your weapons, the +1 ammo ends up being quite significant for primary fighters.
Quickshot: Okay -> Okay to Bad. Unreliable and clunky, these just don’t fire when you want to and clog up your deck.
Remington(4): Good to Excellent -> Excellent. As bad as the level 0 is, the level 4 rocks. 2 resource cost on your handgun is really fantastic for Guardians.

Most useful: Crowbar is out, Hunter’s Mark is in.
Least useful: Locked and Loaded is out, Remington(0) is in.

Seeker

Artistic Inspiration: Good -> Good to Excellent. Giving this one a slight bump because it worked out better than anticipated. Having to feed it cards is a cost for sure, but there’s enough synergy here to give the card several homes.
Oculus Mortum: Okay to Good -> Okay. The ability to gain clues for being attacked is fancy, but having to support the card with token manipulation to feed it evidence makes it just too limited in who can even use it.
Correlate All Its Contents: Okay -> Okay to Good. I found the value that i get from this to be very solid and i’ve put it in a bunch of Seeker decks alongside Grim Memoir now. It’s a card to upgrade out of, but at level 0 this does a lot of good things.
Misdirection: Good to Okay -> Okay. Sealing the token is a pain and the windows for this to matter don’t come consistently enough to be worth it. If you do manage to trigger it, it’s solid, so i won’t shove it further down, but i don’t have much of a desire to play this one.
Antikythera: Excellent to Staple -> Staple. It’s just that good. There is not a single Seeker deck that wouldn’t be better with an Antikythera in it. As long as your deck takes tests, this is insane in how many cards, resources and clues it feeds you over the course of the game. So far, being level 5 sort of meant to me that the card can’t be a staple, but Antikythera breaks that dam for me.

Rogue

Where’s The Party: Good to Excellent -> Excellent to Staple. I’ve been putting this in everything. It fetches up enemies for your evade/parley synergies. It draws cards. It digs for Victory. It even exhausts the enemy it fetches up, allowing you to go for an enemy that would be scary if it came down in a random mythos phase. Incredible card.
You’ve Had Worse(0): Good -> Okay. It’s a fine card at level 0 that does a job that needs to be done, but it’s nothing more.
Watch This(3): Good -> Good to Excellent. I glanced over how good Watch This(3) is as part of the encounter protection suite. Boosting your willpower from 2 to 5 can be game changing. 3xp is still a lot for a skill, but it has so many uses that it can be worth it.
You’ve Had Worse(4): Good to Excellent -> Okay to Bad. Turns out you can’t pay resources to yourself, so you can’t use this to protect yourself … which makes this absolutely awful. Arguably a downgrade from the level 0, there is no way that i’d ever pay 4xp for this.

Most useful: Robert Castaigne is out, Where’s The Party is in.
Least useful: Obscure is out, You’ve Had Worse(4) is in

Mystic

Blood of Thoth: Rating unchanged (Bad). But while i usually don’t mention the taboo list at all in these reviews, i do so here because the change is monumental.
Sign of Xelotaph: Good -> Okay. The card does its job better than the alternatives… but maybe that job is not worth doing in the first place.
Whispers of Doom: Good to Excellent -> Good. It’s a solid card, but the 3 cost on an event are enough of a drag that i am going to keep it out of Excellent.
Transfiguration: Excellent to Staple -> Excellent. This card is too specialized and weird to have the word “staple” attached to it. I originally thought that running it in any deck and seeing what you could turn into based on the situation would be worthwhile, but that doesn’t seem great after all.
Enraptured(2): Excellent to Staple -> Staple. It’s that good and universally useful. You need to be able to pass investigate tests to use it, but that’s a low bar to clear.
Lost Arcana: Good -> Good to Okay. Giving this a slight nudge down because while it’s solid, it’s also overshadowed by one-shot alternatives like Enraptured and Call the Beyond. Usually i don’t consider alternatives from the wider card pool too much for these ratings, but Enraptured is right there next to it in the set.

Survivor

Nautical Charts: Excellent to Staple -> Staple. Fantastic card, exceeded even my high expectations. I will gladly feed cards into this continuously, i think this is now the best investigation tool that Survivor has available.
Hand Hook: Good -> Okay. I originally ranked this slightly higher than Anchor Chain, but i do not do so anymore. I think Hand Hook does still have a place, but that’s mostly due to there just not being any good survivor weapons around that could compete (except for the .18)
Catch!: Good to Excellent -> Good.
Unconventional Method: Excellent -> Good to Excellent. Both Unconvential Method and Catch get a nudge down because i underestimated the cost of having an Item to discard for them.
Contemplative: Excellent -> Staple. This is just always worth it and consequently i’ve been putting it in all the decks that could run it.
Good Weather: Excellent to Staple -> Good to Excellent. I found it hard to find the three deck slots for this one. It’s certainly a good card, but never enough of a priority to actually put into the deck, at least at 2 players.
Last Chance(3): Good -> Excellent. I was underselling this one massively. Even with three cards still in hand, this commits for 3 wild and draws 2 cards which is huge.

Most useful: Good Weather is out, Contemplative is in
Least useful: Anchor Chain is out, Hand Hook is in

Specialist

Library Pass(1): Excellent -> Good. Fine card, but too few decks play enough tomes for this to be worth it.
Dreams of the Clay: Okay to Good -> Excellent. This thing plays so much better than it read to me. Helping with tests that you are solid for and then later on canceling a test you would have failed, this provides a nice double whammy of encounter protection for very little cost.
Dakota Garofalo: Good to Excellent -> Excellent. I’ve run her in a couple of decks now and she did very good work, carving out a niche even alongside the notoriously great rogue allies. Has been worth specifically getting Charisma for.
Archibald MacVeigh: Bad -> Bad to Okay. He’s really not great, but he’s also not Blood of Thoth tier. Giving him the slightest of nods here.
On Their Heels(5): Good to Excellent -> Good. I still stand behind my theory that this card is actually quite impactful, but there’s no denying that i struggle to actually put this into a deck.
Memories of Another Life: Excellent -> Staple. I’ve broken my stance on “level 5 cards can’t be staples” already with Antikythera, so let’s give Memories the recognition it deserves as well. This card is absolutely incredible and i believe that any deck would be better with it. I’ve played this a lot in the last months and it’s been obscene every time.

Most useful: Motivational Speech is out, Memories is in

Intro

With the recent announcement of how FFG is going to implement set rotation into their game, i want to get myself an impression of how well what is going to be known as the “Current Environment” is set up to be a satisfying experience. Quick reminder, the term “Current” is putting together your card pool from the Core, the Investigator Starters and the three most recent Investigator Expansions. Right now, this includes Scarlet Keys, Hemlock Vale and Drowned City. This is what a new campaign box and new investigator cards will roughly be designed around, so there’s no years old design debt to carry around.
So just to give myself an impression of this card pool under this restraint, i want to build a quick series of decks. Two for each of the investigators in Current, to check out their options, both at level 0 and an upgraded version. With 27 investigators in the Current format, that’s a total of 54 decks. Welp. The goal is not to optimize these decks or get super techy with them – just to make a series of solid deck lists that can show us how well these investigators are able to do their thing. And to get a feel for the sort of options a new player has available if all they get are the most recent sets.

Arkham.build

I’ll be using arkham.build for these decklists, because it has a neat feature to restrict your cardpools to specific sets on a per-deck basis. Super convenient for this. The link will lead to a deck with 19(ish)XP, a common breakpoint for standalone decks. The decks will also have a level 0 version, accessible through the History tab on arkham.build (scroll down, click “Initial deck”).

EDIT: Apparently displaying the Initial Deck doesn’t work right now because they need their own dedicated share. I won’t be able to fix that immediately, but there is at least the list of upgrades and which cards i took out for them listed in the History, so you can reconstruct the Initial deck from that until i get access to the PC i did these on again.
This is fixed already thanks to the arkham.build dev helping out. You can now display the level 0 decks properly.

Roland Banks

Roland in Current

I’ve opted for a build that uses one-handed weapons. Using two-handeds is perfectly viable too, either going the shotgun or Runic Axe road. For allies, i am using a tried and true setup of three different ally cards, two Motivational Speeches and a Charisma.
The resource situation isn’t super comfortable, but that’s Guardian for you… the Motivational Speeches help a lot though.
Roland’s three intellect can be built on, but i generally find using cards like Mag Glass uncomfortable for him and much prefer getting +2 to my intellect tests. Grim Memoir and Prismatic Spectacles are great for that purpose.

Daisy Walker

Daisy in Current

Again, i put a range of singleton allies into the deck, this time backed by Archeology Funding instead of Charisma. The idea here is to just make her a solid Seeker that stacks intellect and confidently grabs clues. She doesn’t run a truckload of tomes, but has ways to restock their secrets through Enraptured and Library Docent so she can go on a good while. Resource income is decent to good, thanks to Voice of Ra and Burning the Midnight Oil. Not a whole lot of Mystic representation in the deck list, but i find that to be common with Daisy even in a full card pool.

Skids O’ Toole

Skids in Current

I like this Skids deck a lot. Built to be a true flex, this Skids can do whatever is needed at the time. Evade an enemy here, grab a clue there, finish off an enemy or two along the way.
One notable thing the Current pool is missing is a +3 willpower skill at level 0-1 for Skids. The full card pool has Steadfast, Take the Initiative and Savant to give him plenty options to prepare for the inevitable Frozen in Fear, all of which are in older sets. Watch This(3) exists, and i pick up two copies here out of necessity, but 3xp is of course a lot to ask. Running one or two Daredevil that can function as extra copies of Watch This(3) might be a thing to consider.

Agnes Baker

Agnes in Current

Agnes doesn’t have a whole lot in her card pool to specifically support her investigator ability, but Shrivelling, Ward of Protection and Forbidden Knowledge do allow her to get some extra damage triggers in. She gets to put together a fairly solid allrounder deck however, with spell assets that allow her to both fight and seek.
The upgrade to Shrivelling is sorely missed here, so the spells from the Jacqueline Fine deck will have to do the heavy lifting.
The resource situation looks pretty good, thanks to Agnes being able to use Forbidden Knowledge pretty well and getting Take Heart as an option, too.

Wendy Adams

Wendy in Current

Wendy evades enemies and grabs clues, and she does either very well. A Glimmer of Hope should be an early upgrade to get into the deck, as it can fuel her investigator ability and convert into clues through Nautical Charts. Lawrence Carlisle further rewards this with some extra resources, but he’s worth playing for his intellect bonus alone.
The Current cardpool has a good number of tools in it that allow Wendy to use her agility for more than evading, with several cards that allow clueing using her best stat and even the Bulldog as a solid weapon for emergencies.

Carson Sinclair

Carson in Current

Carson’s biggest strength is his investigator ability, which no format rotation can take away from him. The deck only needs to play support and luckily it looks fairly well set up to do that part. Carson has three subclasses to choose from. I went with Survivor here, because it seemed like it had the best skills to support the players around him, but Mystic definitely had some interesting cards in it as well. Seeker didn’t really speak to me, except for throwing around Thorough Inquiry it seemed like Survivor did everything that Seeker does.
The upgrades for this deck are fairly expensive, so instead of a range of cards being upgraded it’s few key pieces. The Axe takes up 6xp, maximised for use of the “Accuracy” inscription. Girish Kadakia is so good for Carson that i wanted two of them for another 8xp. Add in the Ever Vigilant(4) and the 19xp budget is almost spent, leaving only enough for a single At a Crossroads.

Vincent Lee

Vincent in Current

I struggled with this one. At level 0, there is just not a whole lot in the card pool that you can use to heal someone and feel good about having the card in your deck. Like, i don’t think that Vincent’s ability changes enough for me that i suddenly want to run First Aid or Medical Texts. That being said, Hallowed Chalice is pretty amazing and if you draw it early, it can carry Vincent’s whole gameplan. To make up for his healing related shortcomings, i tried to build the rest of his level 0 deck as a fighter/seeker hybrid which is statline is uniquely suitable for. The lack of weapons lets this lean hard to the seeker side, but that seems fair enough.
With the upgrades, i set out to focus on his team healing so he can play to his investigator ability. Soul Sanctification and two copies of Surgical Kit and Alchemical Distillation each eat up 6xp, once more leaving just 1xp for the obligatory At a Crossroads. I was sorely missing a weapon option among the upgrades. Vincent can play Runic Axe, but having free hands for Hallowed Chalice and/or Distillation seems pretty crucial to his gameplan. Overall playable with this card pool, but the first of the investigators where i felt they lack options and range.

Kymani Jones

Kymani in Current

For the upgraded version of this deck, i went up to 29xp instead of 19xp, to be able to showcase what I’m going for here. At level 0, Kymani can play a similar game to Wendy, using their high agility score and leveraging it through various assets and events like a Mystic would use their willpower. This ultimately ends up as nothing too exciting though, mostly just a more limited version of Wendy.
Kymani’s interesting bit of deckbuilding is access to all Tool items, and while their statline isn’t great for using them there are two highpowered tools that are well worth building around: Fingerprint Kit(4) and Microscope(4) both allow them to pick up big chunks of clues at a time, with Thieves Kit filling in the gaps. Nose to the Grindstone boosts all of these, as do the Matchboxes and Fox Mask. A couple of Perceptions can come in clutch to secure the most important FPK tests.
The deck takes a fair amount of xp to reach its full potential, but each new 4xp tool that is added to the deck does a lot to give Kymani what they need to carve their own niche among the range of seeker-evader investigators. They don’t have a whole lot of range to their deckbuilding, but that isn’t the case in a full card pool either.

Amina Zidane

Amina in Current

Most of Amina’s signature doomplay cards come from the set she was in, so the whole aspect of a limited card pool isn’t too much of a deal for her. There is a bit of a lack of stat boosters beyond Living Ink and the cycle of Masks until you find the 4xp to get an upgraded Arcane Studies. I considered going up to 29xp with this deck as well, but i think it showcases what i am going for here already. Focusing on the clue side (mostly because Dowsing Rod is a much better card than the sickle), this Amina does what she can to pick up some clues on her own while also gaining extra options through heavy investment into Summoned Servitor. I spent 5xp on the Servitor so far, for the 29xp version the final 5xp for Daemonic Influence are definitely an option. With how xp-hungry she is, i could easily have gone to 39xp for the showcase as well, after all the Dowsing Rods aren’t even upgraded at this point either.
At 0xp i run a couple testless events that use the fact that i am almost not using my arcane slots at all before Servitor becomes relevant. Once some xp went into the Servitor, those are quick to go however. Living Ink is just there as +1 intellect, but there’s some potential here as well with extra upgrades.
Overall, this looks not all that different from Amina in a full card pool.

Darrell Simmons

Darrell in Current

Like Amina, Darrell got a huge package of initial support right in his investigator expansion, so the Current format is not going to impact him all that much. Losing the Hawk-Eye cameras means losing one particularly potent source of evidence counters, but with Empirical Hypothesis still around, Darrell should find himself with no shortage of tokens to spend. For his allies, he has two potent options: Either Milan for the resources and +1 int or Alton to give him the ability to buy clues for cheap … or free when he manages to drop the shroud to zero. Alton also collects evidence that Darrell can use in a pinch to reduce shroud.
I use the most recent taboo list for all of these lists and Darrell is heavily XP taxed by it (and rightly so…), with Old Keyring, Scavenging and Shed A Light all costing extra. Because of that, Improvised Weapon(2) barely missed the cut at 19xp, but fwiw i could totally see myself picking them up before upgrading the second Keyring.
The bottom line however is that Darrell is perfectly fine with this card pool, he’s very powerful and barely loses anything to rotating out the older sets.

Charlie Kane

Charlie in Current

Aww, no Cat General in Current. Unplayable, next.
Well, obviously someone like Charlie will always be playable and good, his extremely broad access to the card pool makes sure of that. So i don’t think I actually have much to prove to myself here, which is why i will take the opportunity to just go and do something wild here: Cursed Charlie, with Rod of Carnamagos. That’s Mystic for the first subclass and i want to play Spectacles too, so Seeker it is for the other class. Rogue with Scrimshaw looks mighty attractive too. The first one or two scenarios might be a bit dodgy, you basically try to fill up your ally slots as soon as possible with cheap allies, so you can pretend to have a 4 or 5 in a stat once or twice per turn. Hopefully that is enough to pick up a couple clues or evade a few guys and thus contribute. Once you got some xp in your deck however, you can hone in on your true purpose which is wielding Rod of Carnamagos(2) while investigating with Grim Memoir and Spectacles. Thanks to Call the Beyond you can keep that up for a good long time. Should work well enough for a gimmick deck quickly thrown together in half an hour.

Wilson Richards

Wilson in Current

The level 0 deck is a bit lacking in options, especially when it comes to suitable weapons the Pitchfork and Runic Axe are really the only things there. Since you really want to be able to use some sort of investigation tool alongside your weapon, Runic Axe is too awkward however – you can’t put it away with the Toolbelt or Tinker it to fit into a single slot. If only Machete was a Tool. Pitchfork is excellent, though. For seeking, there are however a good load of nice tools around and Wilson can play a solid clue hound for the first scenario or two. He upgrades really well, with Hatchet being an excellent weapon to complement the Pitchfork and Chainsaw able to act as an upgrade for the Fork. Wilson gets a lot of juice out of Cleaning Kit(3) which is why i prioritized two copies that can feed the Chainsaw and/or Fingerprint Kit(4) for massive payoff. There are a good amount of further upgrades to do for this deck too, a 29xp deck would benefit greatly from Grete Wagner(4), Nose to the Grindstone and an upgraded Keyring or two.
Onedimensional, but solid.

Kate Winthrop

Kate in Current

I thought there were a couple different ways to go with Kate, which seems remarkable given her card pool is mostly settled in one class. But she does use a good amount of recent archetypes very well, including clue drop and passing by exact numbers. I went for a more generic thing here, using her as an evadey Seeker that aims to get the most out of Microscope(4). She has a good amount of Science and Tool assets around, easily enough to let her play to her investigator abilties strengths. Confound works very well for her too, giving her the ability to collect clues for disabling enemies. Her Insight trait based access doesn’t give her a whole lot of off-class cards to choose from. Tinker however is quite good for her, as it directly translates to more Mag Glasses to carry around. Dial of the Ancients and Ravenous Myconid are both very solid options for her as well. Overall a surprising amount of depth in the Current Seeker card pool that Kate is particularly well set up to use.

Alessandra Zorzi

Alessandra in Current

Oh no, we lost our Fine Clothes, whatever will we do? How are we going to play our 4 intellect, 4 agility Rogue with a bonus action that got like a third of an investigator expansion devoted to her now? Aly is fine, obviously. Parley is printed on what feels like every second card in Hemlock Vale and thanks to her powerful signature, she doesn’t need that much support in the first place to use her ability for profit every turn.
Walter Fitzpatrick is the obvious ally to go for, but i decided to go a different route with my showcase deck here, leaning into Chuck Fergus because the overlap between Parley and Trick is actually considerable. That version of her deck is quite XP hungry with Snitches, Bulldogs, Chucks and a Fake Credentials eating up pretty much all of the 19xp budget. Not that this would look much different with Fitz instead of Chuck, mind you…
There’s a lot of room upwards with more investment. Bewitching and Dirty Fighting both are relevant engine cards. The Chuck version wants to upgrade its key tricks like Pilfer and getting Breaking and Entering(2) in there. Either version would really like the Watch This(3) as well.
Lots of stuff to go for with Aly and loses very little from rotating out the old sets except for that one crutch card.

Kōhaku Narukami

Kōhaku in Current

Another XP hungry one and the second time i needed to go to 29xp to really show where this goes. Obviously, rotating one of the two bless/curse investigator expansions out of the format is going to limit what can be done with the set that is left in Current. Thankfully, Kohaku has very broad deckbuilding rules and a carrying investigator ability however, so this still works out.
Without the likes of Faustian Bargain, Deep Knowledge or Stirring Up Trouble around, he does need to lean on spell assets for a bit however, until he gets the necessary xp to get the big ticket payoffs for blurse in Hemlock Vale. At full power, he fights with Blessed Blade, investigates with Spectacles and converts the resulting tokens into bonus actions, heals and resources for an impressive total. It takes a rather long road to get there however and the generic spell assets do bother me quite a bit.
It kind of works, but Innsmouth is sorely missed for sure. Truth be told, i am more excited about that janky Carnamagos Charlie deck than about this Kohaku.

Hank Samson

Hank in Current

He’s a 5 combat investigator in Survivor. As long as he finds a stick that he can use to beat on something, he’s going to be just fine. One thing he doesn’t have at all in his Current pool is an ally that he’s excited about, however. I put a Granny Orne into his level 0 just for a bit of soak and encounter protection, but that’s already being quite generous. And no longer justifiable once some more upgrades got into the deck to improve his encounter resilience. There’s a slightly uncomfortable split in his weapon pool between one-handed items and two-handed ones (and no Tinker to solve this issues like there is for Wilson), but emptying the gun or throwing away the hatchet before settling with a Pitchfork and fight events seems like a workable plan nonetheless.
Seems fine.

Marion Tavares

Marion in Current

Welp, without the level 0 Improvised Events from Forgotten Age around i am suddenly VERY scared of her weakness. Glimmer of Hope(0) isn’t in Current either, so that leaves either going with Fortune as the chosen trait and beelining for Glimmer(2) or being ready to get royally destroyed by your weakness once per game. I choose Fortune.
The next big choice is the one of hand item: Book of War, Crowbar or something else? I quite like the Crowbar here in a full cardpool as it not only gives her a way to investigate, but also a good way to dispatch 1 health enemies without having to waste events for them. In the Current pool however most fight events only do a point of damage, so i opted to be safe and get Machetes. The level 0 doesn’t look super convincing, but should get the job done. Notably, it’s very weak to horror – it really makes a huge difference that we can get the Leather Coat in Current, but not the Keepsake.
The deck upgrades well, with Blessed Blade being a great primary weapon and enough event options to shed all but the most essential assets and skills. The recently unchained Flurry of Blows offers another solid fight event to double up on One-Two-Punch. Keep Faith gives a way to turn any event into a Fast one. As does Hunter’s Mark. Overall, for 19xp this list looks pretty good – not as good as one with Stick to the Plan and the works would look like, but still very good and with room to grow. Just a shame that i really don’t see her Gambit or Improvised sides work out well without some sort of way to mitigate her weakness.

Lucius Galloway

Lucius in Current

One of two investigators i played through The Drowned City with just cards from the Core and Drowned City, i know this works very, very well. It won’t get worse by adding three more investigator expansions worth of cards into the mix! With cards like Microscope, Breaking and Entering, Confound and Bulldog playing right to his strengths, you have no shortage of great options.
With Lucius you want to evade at least once per round and reap the benefits along the way. Not just from your investigator ability, but also from various assets that trigger on evasion, success and oversuccess. Fueled by the ever escalating card draw from Pickpocketing, String Along, Hypothesis and Lucky Cigarette Case (later Antikythera), this deck runs an obscene amount of one-offs even for my standards. In turn your board gets more and more powerful however, with all those slotless assets stacking up until you get overwhelming amounts of stuff with each action.

Agatha Crane

Agatha in Current

Before Drowned City, the last time that token sealing was in any way a relevant mechanic for player cards was all the way back in Forgotten Age, so way out of Current. We do have some token manipulation in Jackie’s deck and in Hemlock Vale at least, though. Looking at what we have available, the Seeker version of Agatha seems a lot more fleshed out in Current, both when it comes to enabling the ability through token manipulation and in regards to having Insights and Spells to recur. The Mystic Agatha version doesn’t have nearly the support.
Weirdly, she doesn’t really get anything relevant in terms of enablers with xp, her capacity to trigger her ability stays somewhat unchanged. That’s not completely true, as she does get (a lot) better card draw and that does help her to get those important pieces, but there’s not some nice upgraded asset that does a lot of sealing, ignoring or canceling… aside from Drowned City’s Researched card which awkwardly shares a slot with Agatha’s excellent signature. You do get a nice array of Insights to recur however, with standouts like Cryptic Research and Seeking Answers being able to catapult you ahead once your engine is running. Overall, there’s not a whole lot of variance to how she can build her deck. Even at a full card pool, her specific requirements to work (suite of enablers, suit of events to recur, balance them both, add resources) makes for very tight deck building which is of course only more constrained if you limit yourself to Current.

Michael McGlen

Michael in Current

The other investigator from the Core+TDC campaign. He was a tougher investigator to build on the micro-cardpool of just one investigator box and the Core, so looking at how Current fixes him up is a lot more interesting than with Lucius who was already perfectly fine on next to nothing. The big issues were a lack of guns to put into the deck and only very little in terms of resource events.
The level 0 here is about as straight forward as it gets: 10 guns. 4 resource events. 4 events that conjure up enemies to shoot. A bunch of skills to make use of McGlen’s great defensive statline. An ally, an LCC and two One in the Chamber. And a miser’s Embezzeled Treasure because once Michael starts shooting his guns, resources stack up very fast. Done. If you want to get slightly more fancy, put in Friends in Low Places for Firearms.
For the first 19xp, the upgrades to the Derringers (both .18 and .41) are too significant to ignore, but instead of upgrading the other pistols, Michael gains a lot from getting Locked and Loaded (basically upgrading all of the pistols at once) and better allies and a Charisma. Dakota Garafolo barely missed the cut here and would be the next 3xp to put into the deck. This will help a lot with Michael’s survivability as well, providing some much needed sanity buffer.
Michael is not an investigator that is complicated or requires too much specific support. As long as there’s enough firearms around, he’ll be fine.

Gloria Goldberg

Gloria in Current

If I’m not mistaken, the only cards in Gloria’s Current card pool that look at (not search for!) cards in the encounter deck are Scrying and Parallel Fate. So the choice of subclass doesn’t really give us much to work with when it comes to Gloria specific things. For the showcase, i’ll be going with Rogue because Gloria is the only Rogue/Mystic or Mystic/Rogue in Current. Gloria works best as a generic spell asset user, leveraging her willpower. Rogue can give her some extra resources to get those costly assets into play and Friends in Low Places to search for spells.
Can you play her? Sure. Is there a reason to when Jacqueline and Agnes both exist? Not really, unless you are really excited about being able to put Bank Job into your Mystic deck.

George Barnaby

George in Current

I’m not all that convinced of Forced Learning being the right call in the full card pool, so i am not particularly missing it in Current either. Putting together a solid George list isn’t terribly difficult, he has pretty great card access to the three best classes. His heavy skill focus also means that he’s not super hungry for resources beyond a couple assets that enable him to discard at various timing points to breeze through his deck.
For the leveled up version, the Gift of Nodens/Persistence engine still looks strong, even without some of the more insane oldschool skills like Resourceful. Looks good to me.

The five starter investigators all come with their own preconstructed deck, so the assumption is that they all are at least fine. Still, while I’m already at it, it’s worth checking out what the Classic card pool has for them to improve on the stock lists. I suspect i won’t have too much to say about them though.

Nathaniel Cho

Nathaniel in Current

Doesn’t look super different from what’s in the preconstructed deck, but the few additions from the other sets are significant despite their low number. Ready for Anything is a great way to keep the events flowing, while Motivational Speech gives the juice to keep multiple allies around. All 16 events in this deck are Spirit traited, making sure that the Boxing Gloves do find something whenever they are used.

Harvey Walters

Harvey in Current

Yeah sure. Here’s an updated take on the Farsight/Big Hand deck. I like how Thorough Inquiry and Captivating Discovery are both able to jump ahead on your hand size if it ever should dip too low, that’s a very nice backup if something went wrong or kickstart if you can pull off either of them early.
Since this deck already plays Captivating Discovery and Bizarre Diagnosis (to cancel out his weakness) i could see him go deeper on the clue drop archetype as well.

Winifred Habbamock

Winifred in Current

Wini, my beloved. The Wini deck is notoriously the one from the preconstructed ones that needed a bit more adjustment to really take off. And maybe it’s just the fact that i have played Wini a lot and am used to a certain array of cards for her that really make her sing, but this Current list doesn’t look all that exceptional. Certainly works, but this is really missing the easy resources from Watch This(0) and Easy Mark. And the willpower ensurance from Savant. Best i could do to replace Watch This is Sneak By (which is either a skill or resources, not both at the same time) and best i could do for Willpower is putting in a couple of Guts and hoping that i can pair them with some wild icons. That being said, Watch This(3) is pretty spectacular, so once that is in the deck things are looking up. I am almost tempted to remove the Opportunists, because without them Daredevil, when committed to a Willpower test, would always find either Watch This(3) or Anything You Do, making it actually a really potent way to handle that sort of thing. But i suppose Opportunist is just too good to pass up.
Most of the tests you take with this deck are agility tests and i made sure that most of the cards in the deck do have agility icons, so i would expect that this deck can still live by my “always commit at least two skills” mantra.

Jacqueline Fine

Jacqueline in Current

She’s somewhat boring, but she definitely gets the job done even on small card pools thanks to having pretty much everything she needs right in her preconstructed deck. That being said, just opening the pool up to Current allows her to specialize instead of just waiting to see which spell asset she draws first. I built this Jackie deck as a pure enemy handler, with combat and evasion. And Rod of Carnamagos to top it off and give it some spice, which allows us to use Wicked Athame and Call the Beyond to top off our spells while keeping the Rod fueled.

Stella Clark

Stella in Current

Here’s a fighty Stella that also picks up some testless (or quasi-testless) clues along the way. Thanks to the Stella cheat code that is Quick Learner, there’s not too much that you can do wrong with her deck and i have no doubt this works just fine.

So What Have We Learned Today?

Well, to no surprise it turns out that the game isn’t ending when new players can’t get their hand on the Forgotten Age or Innsmouth player cards.
Less tongue in cheek, this exercise has given me some solid insight into the options that are offered by the Current card pool. And honestly, it’s decent. When i did the TDC + Core thing with Lucius and Michael, i was noting that in that small pool there were basically no options to gain resources beyond Emergency Cache. With the Current card pool i didn’t run into a problem like that, i felt like all the essentials were there. And even heavily specialised investigators that need a critical mass of a certain card type (like guns for Michael or insights for Agatha) had enough to get solid decks going.
Obviously, the variance and depth of deck building was a bit lacking here and there, but in the vast majority of cases i found several options of where to go with that investigator and plenty of upgrades to pick from beyond the 19xp decks i put together here.
The one thing that doesn’t quite work out great is Cursed and Blessed with only Hemlock Vale. I did an effort to showcase a few Bless, Curse and Blurse decks along the way and it’s not like they don’t work, but without Innsmouth backing them up, it’s really an all-or-nothing situation where you take the cards as a package or not at all.

And that’s it. 54 decks for the Current Environment. Hopefully a good glance at what we are working with here if we want to follow this format. No matter if it’s because you are looking for a challenge as a player with already established card pool or if it’s because as a new player, these sets are what’s on the shelves, i hope this set of decks provides some guidance on how to tacklet this card pool.

My take: Meh. From the name and flavor of the set and the cards in it and how it’s mostly only used for the finales, this set looks like it would be this campaigns equivalent of Innsmouth’s Syzygy set or a similar high-powered set that’d make you perk up when you are instructed to shuffle it into the encounter deck.
But only one of the three cards in this set actually satisfies that expectation and that one only comes with one copy. The rest of the set is comprised of the most filler card possible and a card that might as well be blank because it does less than a Swarm of Rats.
Domination and Oppressive Influence are both fine cards taken on their own, but taken as a whole, this set just falls very short. I find this set disappointing.

Threat: Mid to High

As far as variants on Ancient Evils go, this is fairly unimpressive. It gives several alternate options to pick from, so unless you manage to screw up your pick here, this goes over fairly well most of the times. That being said, it is consistently going to hinder the whole team, as there is no test involved and Peril does open the possibility for the one who has to pick an option to choose poorly. Since it affects everyone at the table, it also has the potential to stack up in a bad way with whatever treacheries the rest of the players is drawing. Costing them an action when they draw a big enemy could be a problem, for example.
What stops it from being as potent as previous takes on a campaign specific Ancient Evils is however not only the added player choice from three actions, but also that there’s only one copy of these. So there’s no danger at all from multiple copies stacking up. Except for Sepulchre, which has the core Ancient Evils in it, there’s generally little in terms of doom acceleration anywhere in The Drowned City, so that one doom actually looks fairly attractive as an option – unless you are reaaaaally worried that your scenario comes down to the last turn, you can usually just take that doom and not worry about it too much.

Threat: Mid

The willpower/horror counterpart to the Crumbling Masonry treachery from the R’lyeh set. Just by sheer volume of how often the set is used, Masonry is a much bigger part of the campaign than Oppressive Influence is, ironically making the latter not much of an oppressive influence on the campaign at all.
It’s still a card that does its job of course, but i don’t think of it as remarkable in any way. It’s here because it sort of needs to, the “willpower test for horror” treachery is sort of expected and would be missed if it was completely absent. But the only thing really noteworthy about it is that it almost only shows up for the finale of the campaign where it kind of just appears as filler among the more impactful stuff that is around.

Threat: Low

Honestly, i find this one very disappointing. A treachery with a name as iconic as the Cthulhu ftaghn phrase deserved to be something with a bit of a kick behind it. Instead it just deals a single point of damage and even that can be avoided with a test. And in the already unlikely situation that this single point of damage would ever matter and you failed the test, you even get to take horror instead if you want to.
Complete wet noodle of a card, this does effectively nothing.

My take: This set is only used in two scenarios and what’s more, only in the Western version of Apiary and the Eastern version of Court. So in a given campaign, you will encounter this set exactly once. And one of those scenarios uses it a lot better than the other…
In Apiary West, the Pilgrims are an integral part of the scenario mechanics.
However, in Court East, it’s just filler that doesn’t interact with anything.
Honestly, these enemies should just have been part of the scenario specific Apiary set, they add nothing to the 37 card tall stack of cards that is the Court of the Ancients encounter deck.

Threat: Low to Mid

I am being a bit generous there with the threat assessment and am just going to assume that you can’t just ignore him completely. Sometimes that is going to be the case however and then you just have this dork sitting there all Aloof and doing nothing because the only three Cultists in the encounter deck don’t show up.
When they do, those cultists do get some considerable bonuses. What’s going to be easier for you? Punching through that +2 fight to kill those other cultists? Or going after the 3 health Aloof guy? Most of the time the answer is likely going to be that you’ll ignore the Leader and just take the extra difficulty in fighting the cultist followers.
Of course, if you do have any anti-Aloof tech or other ways to quickly dispose of a 3 health non-Elite enemy, then this is a good target.

Threat: Low

How often do you end up being attacked by a Ghoul? Likely the answer to this is “barely ever”. So that gives an indication how often their ability on attack is relevant… barely ever. Now, the Pilgrim Leader can boost these guys up to a 4/2/2 and that does make them more difficult to defeat. But i’d argue that any fighter worth their salt still should find little trouble here. Them gaining Hunter (and double attack for double the doom) is kind of neat, however. So you will want to defeat them, even if they don’t have a Leader boosting them right now just because they might get that later on.
Still, they are a basic 2/2/2 enemy, so defeating them is no ordeal at all.

Intro

At long last, we got our new FAQ today! The last one was honestly a bit lackluster for me as it mostly focused on introducing the new refraction/boon system and pushed the stuff we usually expect from these FAQs back. So i expect something meatier today. Do we get it? I actually don’t know yet, i’m writing this while going over the changes from front to back. I’ll go over what is new and what i think of it.
If you want to read along, the official PDF is here: [FAQ 2.4].

Errata

The non-optional changes to card texts, mostly to fix issues with cards or setups working correctly.

Some addressing of issues with Drowned City. I outlined some of these issues just recently on my Drowned City Setup Checklist. Notably absent is a change to the setup of Western Wall East, so as written you should be shuffling the Inescapable into the encounter deck. I do still think this is an oversight and that the big guy should be set aside, but i will amend the Checklist to reflect the official ruling, of course.

Errata for the Forgotten Age in 2025? Kinky. Here’s the card that is modified: Threads of Fate, Act2c. This changes it so you can’t hide Nightgaunts in a Binder’s Jar or similar, the act will now pluck the enemies from anywhere not just the areas that were listed on the original card. Sure, why not.

I don’t understand this one. Here’s the card: Black Throne, act 2a. Its clue threshold as printed is already 2 per investigator, so i don’t see what would change here? Is the card misprinted in the Revised version of TCU or something?

I assume this is about the player card? Which is card 107, not card 20? Looking over other cards this could refer to, nothing really makes sense, so that must be it. So it no longer is able to move Elites, which makes perfect sense, of course.

Errata to a card in parallel Monty’s personal scenario. I am not familiar with those parallel scenarios (they don’t appeal to me) but from what i can gather this changes a location so you can’t draw locations from the explore deck with it outside of the regular exploration actions. Sure.

Cleaning up language on Pitchfork. As written one could rules-lawyer that the ability moves with you instead of staying with the pitchfork.

This is the Barn from Hemlock Vale‘s Longest Night. As written, Ajax wouldn’t be put into play if the Barn got revealed during setup (no opportunity to trigger reactions then) and this change fixes that. Cool.

Two cards from the most recent investigator expansion that had badly worded timing points on them. In case of Katarina, it even put into question how the card actually works. It is now correctly worded as a replacement ability for the normal draw of a token. Sutra arguably doesn’t work at all as printed, so cleaning this up is appreciated.

Rule clarifications, rule changes and FAQ

This is as far as i am aware not a change to the rules, but a clarification. It’s one of those things that comes up every now and then because honestly it’s not particularly intuitive. Especially the part about being able to lose actions you don’t have is just weird.
I wonder why that clarification investigators always starting with 3 actions is there, are there exceptions that would put this into question? Not sure what to get out of this personally.

Switching places not counting as movement is a good clarification, as is explicitly pointing out that all attachments and tokens stay on the card and that it maintains its ready/exhausted status. This is intuitive and probably the easiest way to handle these things.

This is one of those questions that has been asked a lot. And has gotten conflicting answers via email ruling in the past. Nailing the answer down in the FAQ removes the ambiguity from those conflicting answers which can only be good. It’s not a very intuitive ruling at all in my opinion, but i guess it makes sense.

I mean, this wouldn’t make sense to do in the first place as this would remove the customizable card from your deckbuilding restraints. Adding boxes to Raven Quill just so you can’t put it into your deck anymore is not a winning play…

Yeah right, let me just shuffle my whole collection together real quick.

This is interesting, i would’ve expected the lead investigator to get the nod here. Neat.

We sort of knew this already from Hank Samson’s interaction with cards that were put into Hemlock Vale specifically to bypass his “can’t heal” drawback (like Wrong Place, Wrong Time). But it’s good to see it spelt out.

The clarification here is that you can trigger the ability on Mateo (and the other similar cards) on things other than skill tests, like for example when resolving a Voice of Ra.

Agatha’s ability caused some discussion about which things can be replayed. This ruling does allow cards like Cryptic Research, due to her trigger still going off in her turn. But do note that she can’t for example replay a No Stone Unturned(5) because the ability doesn’t happen in a fast trigger player window.

This does line up with how you usually resolve encounter cards, so it makes sense to me. I am not deep into Gloria and her interactions, so i am not sure what exactly prompted this question or what the implications of the answer are.

George’s ability is one of those that are sort of hard to wrap your head around without playing him and just strictly going through the motions a couple of times. If you draw Card Adrift in your upkeep, you don’t need to go into the next turn with zero cards in hand and under you, you will have one in hand and one in the boat.

This means that Robert can fire the same pistol for you every turn, you don’t need to discard or play it afterwards. Pretty solid.

Transfiguration is a card that was bound to throw up some questions. These two things make sense and are in the spirit of making things work as one would expect.

Again, the spirit here seems to be that things should work, so don’t sweat over some formalities. I approve of this mindset.

We had errata for the TFA and TCU campaigns, here’s a rules clarification for a Carcosa as well. I wasn’t aware that this was in question, but if it ended up in the doc, i have to assume this was asked more than once. Sure, as the answer states, being treated as an asset doesn’t stop it from still being a treachery in your threat area.

This is actually solid tech for those buggers. Once you have three of them around, this gets harder to pull off, but it’s a way to get these out of your way.

Taboo

And with that we finally reach the changes to the taboo list, where overperforming cards get reined in and sometimes we even see some boosts to underperforming cards.

Chained/Unchained:

That’s a good attempt at making this more attractive and one where unchaining seems like a better call than making mechanical changes. Flurry of Blows gives the equivalent of four actions for two actions, a card and 2 resources, a trade that was never really appealing at 5XP. For 3XP, this seems much more likely to see play and also pulls it out of the shadow of One-Two-Punch(5). Good one.

Yeah, definitely. From his first reveal he’s been maligned for costing 5xp. I do actually like the text on him and i’ve seen him do some solid things in an Agatha deck, but at 5xp the barrier to trying him out is just too large. At 3xp, this seems much more likely.

Mutations

I assume this is some protection from infinite action combos? The card itself is fairly irrelevant, so i don’t think this matters much in the grand scheme of things.

Fair enough, no more Backstabbing enemies during the enemy phase after hunters move. Chuck Fergus remains one of the best allies in the game with this change in place, so there’s not really any room to grovel about this too much!

Wait, we are changing Power Word again? Has the card not suffered enough? I’ll have to look up the exact wording of the previous mutation because i’ve not looked at this card since it got butchered then, here it is taken from the 2.3 FAQ:

So, the willpower 3 test got lowered to a willpower 2? Nah, that changes nothing. It’s still a “Willpower matters” card when it really shouldn’t be. Not to mention it’s still a pain to resolve all those tests. I suppose it comboes neatly with Fine Clothes now.
Nah, this is a miss imo.

It no longer replaces the fight ability! This actually matters a truckload and makes this worth a second look. It’s still a good deal worse than I’ll Take That!, but ITT! is really good and Hold Up with this change is close enough that it could just make an impression.

I like this a lot, too. Hand-Eye Coordination was already on the cusp of being good for me and ignoring all costs instead of just the action gives it a lot of spice. It can save a charge from an asset or give a free high-powered swing with a Sledgehammer now. They limited it to level 3 so we can’t Sledge(5) with it, though. I get it. I don’t think it’s necessary, but i get it. Overall excellent mutation.

The butt of all jokes since its reveal, can this be the comeback story of the year? Blood of Thoth gets three changes: One, it no longer exhausts to add resources. Two, you only spend two resources from it to gain the action. Three, activating the second ability doesn’t also remove all other resources from it.
Yeah, that seems fine for a level 0 card. It’s not going to save the doomplay archetype all by itself, but if you are heavily dipping into that archetype, this can reliably serve up an action every other turn. And the ability to give that action to anyone at the location sets it apart from other action granting assets.
Doomplay as an archetype is still largely not worth the headache, the new Blood of Thoth doesn’t change that. But at least it is a good card within the context of its archetype now. Not something i am personally super interested in but i am sure the Aminaheads in the community will appreciate this taboo reworking.

Forbidden

Ha. Good call, honestly. This is basically saying that they can’t keep designing around this silly card so we should all try and ignore it … and i agree. Once Library Pass was revealed to be a card, the writing for this was on the wall. Now all that is left is to revert Sleight of Hand back to its printed text because it can no longer recur Necronomicons. Pretty please with sugar on top?

Ultimatums, Boons and Refractions

How is this an Ultimatum. Does the type of person that exploits exile cards in standalone scenarios care about ultimatums in the first place? Seems like they don’t respect the spirit of the game in the first place.

Nonsense. This should have been errata.

Giving Cthulhu more health that investigators have to chew through is spicy. Has a lot of implications for how long those limbs stay in play and matter for the Cthulhu action cards, lets the doom on the claws matter more and just generally lets him hit harder during the enemy turns. An easy change to implement that has fairly wide consequences. I could see trying this one out when i reach Doom of Arkham with particularly powerful investigators and decks.

Environments

Honestly, i don’t want to comment on this too much right now. If anything, i might make a dedicated post for that at a later point but i feel like for most people nothing really changes much because the game isn’t competitive and you usually just play with whatever you own. The Limited environment is pretty interesting however. I am also noting that they pulled the five Investigator starters into both Current and Limited. Hopefully that indicates that they stay evergreen and in print, but how much anything about environments actually aligns with their printing schedule is completely unclear, so who knows.

This page can be used as a reference during the campaign to make sure you set up your scenarios correctly. It will list the number of cards in the encounter deck, set aside cards and locations in play at game start and give a brief rules reminder where necessary.
This does NOT replace the setup instructions in the campaign log! It is meant as an additional resource to double check that you followed those instructions correctly and to prepare for common rules questions ahead. There are no spoilers on this page beyond what you’d pick up when setting up a scenario.
Disclaimer: We don’t have an official FAQ for Drowned City yet. The errata mentioned below were collected from community efforts and online comments by the designers.
Note: This page doesn’t include Sepulchre of the Sleeper for now. I’ve not played it yet, the cards for it are even still in their foil in my box… I’ll add it in time.

EDIT: The FAQ 2.4 is out now and it includes (most of) the errata that were anticipated in this checklist.

One Last Job

Reminder: Do not use the Midnight Mask treacheries, only the locations.

Western Wall

Errata: Treat the Objective on the act as if it wasn’t mandatory, meaning you can decide whether you want to finish the scenario when you all are at the target location, you aren’t forced to.
Reminder: Make sure you read the location adjacency correctly, as it works different than usual. Locations on the same depth level are NOT connected with each other, even if physically next to each other on the table. Locations a level above or below ARE connected, even if physically apart on the table.
Reminder: On the matter of moving between locations, remember you can not enter an unrevealed location while there are still clues on your current one. You can however backtrack to an already revealed location freely.
Reminder: No matter if you are on an Eastern or Western Expedition, you will always start at level 1 and move towards level 5.
Note: Notably, the Inescapable gets shuffled into the encounter deck in the Eastern version. This reads to me like an oversight that wasn’t addressed by the errata in the FAQ, but as written it is what it is. My personal suggestion is it set the Inescapable aside on the Eastern route as well, but the numbers above are of course the official ones.

Drowned Quarter

Rules: The central Barrier Core location has the Seafloor trait itself, which means it can count towards the six location threshold for it’s own ability (both on the revealed and unrevealed side).

Apiary

Reminder: Remember to add a cultist or tablet token to the campaign bag as instructed before setup.
Rules: As long as Apiary Entrance is the only location in play, it counts itself as the farthest location from it, meaning it can refill its own clues with the free trigger ability.
Errata – Eastern Expedition: There is some incomplete instructions about the Inescapable in the campaign guide. If you don’t end up removing the Inescapable set completely (because you defeated it permanently in the Vault), set aside the four cards of this set. Do not shuffle them into the deck, they will be added at a later point.
Errata – No Place Like Home task: The task is meant to be able to trigger on locations coming into play through The Apiary’s special location mechanics, even though they technically aren’t being revealed.

Grand Vault

Reminder: Remember to add an Elder Thing token to the campaign bag as instructed before setup.
Errata: The Core of the Vault location is missing text on its unrevealed side that investigators cannot enter it. Treat it as if it had that text, meaning you can’t go into the Core before you activate the locations around it and it reveals itself through its own Forced effect.

Court of the Ancients

Reminder: Remember to add a cultist or tablet token to the campaign bag as instructed before setup.

Obsidian Canyons

Handling: The treacheries used as facedown cards for the Open Sky are not revealed at any point of the scenario, which treacheries you use here doesn’t matter at all. You don’t need to specifically gather Ancient Evils, Chilling Cold and Striking Fear, just as long as you have 14 (or 11, on the Eastern Route) otherwise unused treacheries at hand. Or any cards that share the same back, really. I suggest sleeving them differently from the regular encounter cards used in this scenario, so you don’t accidentally mix them up with the cards in the encounter deck.
Reminder/Handling: Remember to trigger the winds each round, and to flip the card from Western Winds to Eastern Winds and back each time. I suggest moving the card to the East and West side of the board at the same time, to more easily keep track of the winds. Also, remember that the winds look specifically for symbol tokens to trigger their effect, not for any token that isn’t an Elder Sign.
Reminder/Handling: There are a couple non-Summit locations that are fixed in place like the starting location. When applying Winds to their row, move only the Open Sky and Summit locations. If such a non-Summit is in the middle of a row, it will cause moving locations to skip past them. Example: A row is ABXCD where A, B, C and D are Summit or Open Sky locations while X is fixed in place. The Winds move locations from right to left. In this example you will end up with BCXDE, where E is the new location from the bottom of the Summit deck (unrevealed). A went to the top of the Summit deck. X stayed in place.
Reminder: At game start, there is no row 4. Western Winds, which applies to rows 2 and 4, will only affect row 2 until the fourth row is added down the road.
Rules: Locations put into play through the ability on the Act card enter play unrevealed, and the move that is part of the ability will not bypass the need to test agility as per the Forced effect on the unrevealed side of the location.
Rules: Mid-scenario setups on advancing the act will reshuffle the board. Do not move cleared Victory locations to the Victory display at that point, they are shuffled into the Summit deck like any other location. That means you can only claim their Victory during the last leg of the scenario or when they get pushed off the board by the Winds.

Doom of Arkham I

Handling: Technically, Your House and Graveyard are set aside, but they are unused.
Errata: The campaign guide is missing the instruction to set aside the Randall Tillinghast enemy card during setup. Do not shuffle it into the encounter deck.
Reminder: Don’t forget that the agenda starts with doom on it, one per player.
Rules: This starting doom will not trigger the flooding ability on the agenda.
Reminder: Speaking of the agenda, that Forced trigger for flooding on there is easy to forget. Try not to, maybe put a flood token as a reminder on the agenda or something.
Rules: There is no flood related penalty on the agenda or act, so there is no “drowning” effect like there is in other scenarios that involve flood counters.

Doom of Arkham II

Handling: Technically, Your House and Graveyard are set aside, but they are unused.
Reminder: Remember to add one final Elder Thing token to the campaign bag as instructed before setup.
Reminder: We are back to only using the locations from Midnight Masks, do not use the treacheries.
Reminder: Remember to carry over some of the flooding from Doom of Arkham I, as instructed in the campaign log.
Rules: Since the Cthulhu deck is not an encounter deck and the Cthulhu action cards don’t count as treacheries, you cannot cancel them with Ward of Protection, manipulate them with Gloria, peek at them with Scrying or similar shenanigans.
Errata: The combined act/agenda card The Final Seal is missing text that makes you lose the scenario when advanced by meeting the doom threshold. If you end up dooming out during The Final Seal, you do not win! Instead move to resolution as if everyone got defeated or resigned.

Sepulchre of the Sleeper

(thanks to Anaphysik in the comments for these numbers… i still didn’t play this one myself…)

Handling: There is no act deck, just an agenda deck consisting of two special agendas.
Handling: Unlike typical Drowned City scenarios, Artifacts are handled separately from the Expedition assets in Sepulchre of the Sleeper. Here, each investigator gets to bring a single Expedition asset AND all of the Artifacts get used. Since there will be more Artifacts than investigators, players must divide control of them as evenly as possible.
Reminder: During the first agenda, Disturbance effectively replaces the role of normal doom mechanics, and most types of doom get replaced by Disturbance instead — with the one exception outlined on the agenda itself. Note that this can greatly muck with a lot of player cards that use/reference doom, including things like Tony’s Quarry.
Reminder: By contrast, during the second agenda normal doom mechanics are back in effect and Disturbance no longer changes.
Reminder: The free trigger ability on the second agenda has a bunch of restrictions on it that are easy to forget, including that it can only be used during your turn despite its effect being global and lasting all round.
Possible error: It probably was intended that doom was not to be removed from play when advancing the agenda, but this isn’t explicitly stated. One should ignore this oversight and let the doom in play persist into the second agenda.