Best-Laid Plans: The Drowned City

Spoilers

There are detailed spoilers for the Drowned City campaign ahead. I highly suggest that you stop reading now if you have not played this campaign once or twice before. I would always suggest to give any campaign a try or two on your own before reading too much about it. And then return to articles like this after you’ve been eaten by parasites and/or googley-eyed space aliens.

Introduction

Funded by the mysterious Randall Tillinghast, the investigators go onto an expedition into the depths of the sunken city R’lyeh. Their job is to find as many relics as possible and learn about whoever – or whatever – lives down there. What they didn’t expect is that they would end up disturbing something in its slumber…

This article takes a deep dive into the challenges posed to the players as they make their way along the campaign, and looks at the special mechanics, recurring themes and decisions they encounter. As in previous Best-Laid Plans, i will also give some suggestions for investigators and player cards that might work particularly well in The Drowned City.

This article is not going to look at each encounter set and each scenario in detail, this site already has pages for those. Please refer to those for more zoomed in views on the single cards that make up the encounter sets and encounter decks.

Campaign Structure

A total of ten scenarios are in the campaign box and the typical campaign will have you go through 9 of them, the final two of which form the finale. The tenth scenario is an alternate finale that can replace the regular two-parter which would lead to an eight part campaign overall. One of the regular scenarios (Drowned Quarter) is skippable, but not if you want to shoot for the alternate ending. So eight scenarios is the minimum that your campaign is going to take.
The opening scenario is always going to be the same, One Last Job, set in familiar locations in Arkham. But the six scenarios that make out the main part of the campaign, the expedition into R’lyeh, can be played in one of two directions: Either you start at the Western Wall and end at the Obsidian Canyons or you start in the Canyons and end up back at the Wall. The direction from West to East could be considered the “canon” way of going about it, it ramps up its difficulty and complexity better while being more balanced. The alternate way that starts at the Canyons has some pacing flaws that make it end up being easier than the eastern route overall, but at the cost of frontloaded difficulty and complexity.

East vs West

Since this is the first big decision you have to make in this campaign, let’s start with a comparison between the Western Expedition and the Eastern One then.

Scenario Order: The scenarios from West to East are ordered as followed: Western Wall > Drowned Quarter > Apiary > Grand Vault > Court of Ancients > Obsidian Canyons. There is somewhat of a complexity progression along this line: Western Wall has relatively easy setup and rules, Apiary and Grand Vault ramp up in what’s going on and finally Obsidian Canyons gets quite complex in its inner workings with a busy board that is moving constantly. This makes a lot of sense when playing the Western Route as it feels like a natural progression you’d expect from a campaign game, but if you start in the East it feels weird that the first scenario after the opener is very involved and then things get simpler as you progress. In terms of difficulty, the scenarios are fairly consistent when coming from the West with solid challenge throughout. Again, the curve seems off on the alternate route, as any player group that made it through Canyons and the Apiary will find no challenge at all with Drowned Quarter or Western Wall. There are some scaling factors in the setup that are meant to account for player power depending on if a certain scenario is early or late in the campaign, but they are much better balanced for the Eastern Route.

Story Ally: If you start at the Western Wall, the ally that will be accompanying you as a card for your decks is Andy, the reporter. He’s a +1 intellect ally for 4 resources which is of course fine. Most clue decks run an ally like this in their deck anyways and having Andy means that you can run one fewer in your deck than you otherwise would. He also has an ability that allows ignoring an attack, but only on locations that have no clue on them – very narrow and rarely useful. Overall, he’s just fine. But completely replaceable by several cards in the card pool.
On the other hand, the alternate route which starts at the Canyons, hands out Ruby Standish, the jewel thief. She raises agility by 1, but more importantly she comes with an ability that gives a free move as long as no enemy is at her location. This ability is a lot better than Andy’s, more importantly it’s one that isn’t as readily available in the player card and even then only for a handful of XP.
No matter which way you went, the finale will give you access to both of them. But there can be no doubt that Ruby is much more of a help during the R’lyeh expedition than Andy is. This shot in the arm is sort of required to enable a low xp group to even attempt Obsidian Canyons as the second scenario as it has very high requirements on moving around. But Ruby is a major part of why the difficulty scaling for the Eastern Route feels off in the scenarios after Canyons.

Relic progression: We’ll look at the artifacts a bit closer in a moment, but when comparing the two routes we can’t overlook the effect that acquiring these five story assets in a different order has.
On the Western Expedition, you (potentially) get the Barrier Core, Grisly Mask, Tidal Tablet, Shard of Y’ch’lecht and Obsidian Claw, in that order. Accordingly, on the Eastern Route, you can acquire the Obsidian Claw first, then go through the artifacts in reverse until you pick up the Barrier Core in the end.
There’s three potential problems with that which enhance the already existing perception of imbalance between the two routes:
There are five artifacts in six R’lyeh scenarios and the one scenario without a gadget is Western Wall. So the Western Expedition will have to play one more scenario without the help of one of these things while the Eastern one immediately gets handed its first price.
The artifacts are not created equal at all, in fact the Obsidian Claw is absurdly powerful compared to the others and indeed even when compared to most of the card pool. So the Eastern Expedition starts out with an invaluable asset from the start, always available and constantly adding what amounts to one or two bonus action for the investigator that holds it each turn.
And finally, the Obsidian Claw does the same thing as Ruby, providing free movement. So on the Eastern Route, two of the investigators basically have their movement figured out for them. As a result, the two story assets that players will likely have after Canyons (Ruby and the Claw) will act as a crutch that will boost them past any challenges based on time restraints or movement that the Western Expedition will frequently have to contend with.

As a summary, i personally find that the campaign on a Western Route is a much better experience. It has better balance, more even challenges and it feels more rewarding to pass scenarios on your own merits than on the back of two overpowered story assets. The Eastern Route can however be an option if you are struggling with the campaign or if you do want to play some more gimmicky decks than usual. I would also expect that solving the movement for your investigator would be a particularly huge boon for solo players who might find the Eastern Route more to their liking than the regular one which frequently demands a lot of travel between locations.

The Artifact Relics

There are two main goals that the expedition into the Sunken City has, and the first one is to recover any relics we find. There are five such artifacts up for grabs, each of them represented by a story asset that can be used in subsequent scenarios. To unlock the alternate finale, Sepulchre of the Sleeper, all five relics need to be recovered.
Relics have a primary ability that is always available and a secondary one that can be unlocked by finding specific glyphs.

Barrier Node: The Barrier Node offers a replenishing source of health soak, something that is very handy in this campaign and solves a lot of problems. Especially investigators with low health like Agatha will appreciate this taking the heat from a lot of incidental damage that the encounter deck throws at them through treacheries like Crumbling Masonry. Translating the four associated glyphs allows the Barrier Node to even buffer damage spikes at which point health pretty much stops being a concern for the investigator protected by it. To get the Barrier Node, investigators need to pull it out of the “Active” Barrier Core location in the Drowned Quarter.
If you get the required glyphs, the soak of the Core is increased by 2, which will allow the Core to even tank damage spikes.

Grisly Mask: This is a weird one. It will disengage all enemies and make it so they can’t engage you again until your next turn. However, it will also root you in place and you won’t be able to damage the enemies yourself. This can be useful to buy time when your seeker is threatened. Notably, it does work on Elites, up to and including Cthulhu. As a free trigger ability, it can be used in any player window, which includes after Hunter movement. This makes it a good tool to manipulate Hunter movement, just be aware that those enemies will likely re-engage you at the beginning of your next turn. Still, the uses for this artifact are a bit niche and it can be difficult to make good use of it at times.
Gaining it requires passing a difficult willpower test at the Growing Fields in the Apiary scenario.
Its bonus ability is very, very good an much less situational. At the cost of a horror, the Mask can deal 2 damage to any enemy at its location, no matter if its Elite or not. Again, this is a free triggered ability, making it insanely good at handling any sort of enemy as long as you have sanity to spare. The unlock requires 5 glyphs in total, spread over the four scenarios in the “east” of the campaign. So if you started in the East, you could have this unlocked in the same scenario you gained the Mask. Otherwise, it’ll be during Obsidian Canyons at the earliest.

Tidal Tablet: This artifact triggers on the flood level increasing at your location, offering a free move when it does. While that sounds useful, it ends up incredibly limited due to how few scenarios even use flooding as a mechanic. And one of them is the scenario you get the Tidal Tablet in, The Grand Vault. In an expedition that starts in the West, you even already passed the two flood centered scenarios, Drowned Quarters and Western Wall, at that point, so outside of some marginal use in the finale, the Tablet’s primary ability really only matters in an Eastern Expedition run of Drowned City.
If you do unlock the advanced ability on the Tablet through the glyphs, you can gain some extra use out of it. Those glyphs are, like the ones for the Mask, spread across the most eastern locations, so if you are on an Eastern Expedition you might have it fully unlocked during Grand Vault. Otherwise, not before the finale. With the extra ability, you get to manipulate flood levels, which is certainly very useful. Even at its worst, it’s a way to reliably trigger the movement on the first ability. That being said, be aware that this ability can only be used in scenarios where the flood counters have been added to the token pool, so no water based tricks in the Apiary or Obsidian Canyons, no matter if the ability is unlocked or not.

Shard of Y’ch’lecht: A really solid ability, but quite narrow. Ignoring an attack per round can be good, but since it’s limited to Star Spawn and Deep Ones (and there’s a good amount of enemies that are neither) it’s going to be hard to reliably gain more out of this than a Barrier Node or Diving Suit, both of which also protect from treacheries to some degree. A couple of Star Spawn, including the Inescapable, also have Relentless or other ways to gain extra attacks and push past the Shard’s ability.
The upgraded ability is excellent, exhausting an enemy before it can engage you will even prevent the Deep One engagement trigger from going off. But only if you are on an Eastern Expedition, you can have it online before the finale and even then only for Western Wall and a part of Drowned Quarter… both scenarios where Deep Ones are around, but also scenarios where the Diving Suit is particularly useful.

Obsidian Claw: The most powerful story asset since Lita Chantler and it’s not particularly close. As a free trigger, you move up to two locations each turn, basically removing most needs to spend actions on movement from your investigator. An outrageous ability that not only puts the famously powerful Seeker card Pathfinder on a quasi-Permanent asset, but then also doubles it and then gives it some side benefits for skipping locations for good measure.
The artifact is gained during Obsidian Canyons, meaning it can be in your investigators hands as early as scenario 2, trivializing much of the campaign that follows. But even if you only have it for the finale, it’s so incredibly useful there that this is easily the most important artifact you can pick up.
The unlock ability allows using the Claw as a weapon that fights with agility, deals 2 damage, uses no ammo and doesn’t cost a hand slot. Usually that would be incredibly powerful by itself, but since using it for that purpose means you can’t use it to move that turn, it’s more of an emergency option. If you picked the Claw up in your scenario 2, you can have it fully translated by scenario 4, the Grand Vault.

The two most useful artifacts out of the bunch are the Obsidian Claw and the Barrier Node, picking both of them up should be a priority for most groups. Grisly Mask and the Tidal Tablet are good if you can translate the glyphs on them to gain the secondary ability, otherwise they are a bit too niche. Finally, the Shard of Y is inconsistent enough that you are probably going to be better off running a simple Diving Suit in most cases.
The required glyphs for translations are heavily weighed towards the eastern scenarios, meaning that on a run that starts in the West, you are not going to be able to unlock any artifacts except the Barrier Node before scenario 7. If you are coming from the East, you can have several artifacts fully ready to go much earlier. This only adds to the perceived imbalance between the two routes that i mentioned earlier.

The Horror in Clay: The final artifact, the Horror in Clay, is found during the first part of the finale, in possession of Randall Tillinghast at his curiosity shop. It’s special in that it makes its bearer the Prey for any Star Spawn on the board. This is presented like a negative, but I’d argue that since you can decide who has to take it for the second part of the finale, it’s overall beneficial as well. If you picked up the right glyphs during the campaign, you do even get an ability to manipulate Star Spawn more directly. Truth be told this will likely be not terribly impactful at any point during the finale and is largely cosmetic.

The Glyphs

I posted a list of the glyphs, where to find them and what they unlock before, so i will just link to that article here: The Drowned City: Glyphs.

Enemies

A notable feature of the enemies you meet during The Drowned City is the high number of big Elites (or quasi-Elites) around. Including ones that simply come from the encounter deck and can just pop up during any Mythos phase.
As a result, investigators should be ready for fights constantly, without requiring a lot of setup. Often, the enemies are also set up in a way that they can stack on top of each other, having you engaged to multiples at once. Some sort of enemy handling is recommended for any investigator, so you can defuse situations where your primary enemy handler can’t keep the lid on the situation all by themselves.
Many enemies are quite durable, with 3, 4 or even more on Elites and non-Elites alike. In addition to just raw health, abilities like Aloof also add to how many actions enemies will take up before they are defeated.
Being able to deal 3+ damage per attack, bypass Aloof or attack into connecting locations are all things that are rewarded by the campaign and will make life a lot easier than if you were to just try and hack at everything with a Machete.

Willpower and Agility

The encounter deck tests both willpower and agility with its treacheries to a great degree. It follows in the footsteps of previous campaigns like Forgotten Age or Innsmouth in that agility tests are both common and important. In fact this isn’t limited to the treacheries from the encounter deck either, there are also agility tests scattered across triggers and abilities on locations, enemies and other scenario cards. An investigator that has low agility (like for example Leo Anderson) is likely going to fail a bunch of impactful tests and will need to compensate for those failures through other means unless they can patch their agility weakness somehow – similar to how many rogues need to consider what they do about their willpower issues.
Obviously, willpower is still an important stat to have and gets tested aplenty as well.
Test difficulties aren’t necessarily very high, instead the tests are frequent. That makes it difficult to cover for the skill needs with card commits, but makes asset-based skill bonuses (for example Hiking Boots, Peter Sylvester or Tooth of Eztli) more desirable.

The Chaos Bag

As usual, the makeup of the chaos bag gets worse over the course of the campaign, increasing the difficulty of tests. Something special for this campaign however is that the Eastern and the Western route add different tokens to the bag.
If you follow Andy on the Western Expedition you fill up the bag with Cultist tokens.
Following Ruby into the East instead will put Tablet tokens into the chaos bag.
No matter which route you go, you will get some Elder Things along the way as well.
Comparing Cultists and Tablets, there isn’t really one of them that is notably more punishing than the other.
Overall, despite the somewhat unique twist to how the chaos bag evolves, this effectively works out as expected from a campaign and probably doesn’t need any special consideration on a strategy level. It’s simply a thing that makes the scenarios slightly different when played on either route.

Tasks

I’ve looked at the tasks before, so for an initial evaluation of them, you can check that out here: The Drowned City: Tasks. That article was written before release of the set, so i want to go into a bit more detail about how they generally work now.

Tasks are chosen after the first scenario, with their weakness side being active for all of the R’lyeh expedition (Western Wall to Obsidian Canyons or vice versa). Then, during one of the interludes before going into the Doom of Arkham two-part finale, you need to have fulfilled your task or have to suffer the consequences.

To pass your task, you need to have collected 5 tally marks. There are six scenarios to the expedition and you can get a maximum of one tally per scenario. So that leaves one where you are allowed to not pass the conditions and still be able to overall succeed… unless you skip Drowned Quarter, which would then mean you’d need to get 5 out of 5.

This is modified by a unique opportunity for risk/reward that each player will encounter during the expedition where they can either earn an extra 2 tallies but will have a severe handicap for the next scenario. Or have to lose a tally in exchange for a temporary boon… or weaker handicap. A couple of them also affect everyone instead of just the bearer of the task.

Some of these are clearly more impactful than others. Especially those that hit the whole team can be quite the burden. There’s also a good bit of mental trauma going around which can tip the scales in one direction for a portion of investigators as well. Someone like Michael or Roland will be much less able to shrug this off than others. On the other hand, if you can just take a mental trauma without it being much of a bother, then the tasks that punish you with that trauma for taking the +2 tally option become easy enough to gain that value from.

If you enter the interludes before the finale with fewer than 5 tallies, you will have failed your task. This not only will mean that you do not get the (very powerful) Completed side of the task in play as a permanent asset for the finale, but also that you gain further penalties. These always include a trauma, but also slap you with something else, either weakening your deck or the chaos bag. In an extreme case this can mean that in a full group up to four failed tasks can ravage the makeup of the chaos bag before heading into the finale, adding more bad tokens or even removing the Elder Sign.

No matter if you failed or completed the task, you will at least earn your number of tallies in experience. That means that the decision to take the +2 tally option vs the -1 tally option also represents a 3xp swing. If you took the +2 tallies and also fulfilled your task’s condition every scenario, you can earn 8xp here.

As should be apparent, these task cards are clearly worth caring about. Despite their completed side only ever being active for the finale, the other mechanics around them make sure that you want to be aware of them throughout all of the campaign. Depending on the specific tasks, they can actually dominate a large portion of the decision space you have during your games and influence who goes first, who opens up locations or picks fights.

Finally, here is an overview of the task’s conditions to gain or lose extra tallies, which scenario this is checked at and what the consequences are for failing them:

Do No Harm: Western Wall
+2 tally: Start with an extra doom in play, gain the Hunting Parasite weakness
-1 tally: No clues on the starting location, suffer 1 mental trauma
Fail: 1 mental trauma, add a Tablet to the chaos bag for the finale

No Place Like Home: Drowned Quarter
+2 tally: *Each* investigator starts with 2 fewer cards in hand, you suffer 1 mental trauma
-1 tally: Heal a trauma.
Fail: 1 trauma of your choice, add a Cultist to the chaos bag for the finale

Walk in Faith: Apiary
+2 tally: First encounter card *each* investigator draws gains Surge, you sugger 1 mental trauma
-1 tally: First encounter card drawn by *each* investigator is skipped, replaced with draw from deck
Fail: 1 mental trauma, you treat the Elder Thing as an autofail for the finale

Toe the Line: Grand Vault
+2 tally: -1 to all skills during first agenda, suffer 1 mental trauma
-1 tally: +1 to all skills during first agenda
(Note: The first agenda only has a doom threshold of 3, so it’s over fairly quickly)
Fail: 1 physical trauma, two random numerical tokens get replaced by tokens that are 2 lower in value (so for example a -4 would become a -6)

Good Money: Grand Vault, during resolution
+2 tally: Can not gain resources during upkeep for complete next scenario
-1 tally: Start next scenario with 3 extra resources
Fail: 1 physical trauma, add an Injury or Criminal basic weakness to your deck

Plumb the Depths: Court of the Ancients
+2 tally: *Each* investigator starts with 1 fewer cards in hand, you suffer 1 mental trauma
-1 tally: *Each* investigator starts the scenario with a clue
Fail: 1 mental trauma, add a skull to the chaos bag for the finale

Dreams of Destruction: Obsidian Canyons
+2 tally: *Each* investigator draws an encounter card at the start of their first turn
-1 tally: Gain 2xp, suffer 1 mental trauma
Fail: 1 mental trauma, remove the Elder Sign from the chaos bag for the finale

Prove your Worth: Obsidian Canyons
+2 tally: *Each* investigator begins with 2 fewer resources, *another* investigator suffers 1 physical trauma and gains 2xp
-1 tally: *Each* investigator begins with 1 extra resource, you suffer 1 mental trauma, *each other* investigator gains 1xp
Fail: 1 mental trauma, lose 10xp worth of upgraded cards from your deck

Sepulchre of the Sleeper and the Big Red Button

The Sepulchre scenario acts as an alternate ending to the campaign. To unlock it, you need to have collected all glyphs and all artifacts by the time you finish the expedition part of the campaign (before the interludes). Also, you must have pressed the big red button within the Core in The Grand Vault.

The Grand Vault has a (very small) interlude that pops up when you enter the Core after activating the locations around it. In that interlude you are presented with a button you can either press or not. If you don’t, you get an XP. If you do, Sepulchre potentially gets unlocked. If you are already missing a glyph or artifact at that point, you can just take the XP because you won’t be able to do Sepulchre anyways. Otherwise, you can press the button and hope to finish the rest of the expedition flawlessly as well. If you pull it off, you get to play the alternate ending scenario. If you don’t… you are out 1xp which won’t be too bad either considering that you are doing pretty well so far.

I’m afraid i can’t offer any input on the Sepulchre scenario itself – I have not played it myself yet as I didn’t manage to fulfill the prerequisites for it so far. From what i hear, it does bombard you with a lot of direct horror and damage while asking you to deal a lot of damage yourself, so it sort of plays out like a race? So i suppose my main advice would be to make sure that you can take a punch before going in there.

One thing to note is that if you enter Sepulchre, you will not do the other interludes beforehand. Meaning that you won’t finish up your tasks and gain the last couple of XP. Obviously, you will also not play Doom of Arkham in that case, after Sepulchre the campaign is over – one way or another.

Experience

Drowned City is a campaign that offers a generous amount of experience. You can usually expect between 6 and 8 points for each successful resolution and even on fails you can often get a decent enough portion from discovered glyphs and victory enemies.

One Last Job:  4 (locations) + 2 (Sadie and Naomi) + 2 (Enforcers) = 8XP
The Western Wall: 2 (locations) + 1 (Frieze) + 1 (Matron) + 1 (Star Spawn) + 1 (Eel) = 6XP
The Drowned Quarter: 1 (locations) + 2 (Glyphs) +2 (Leviathan) +1 (Eel) + 2 (resolution “power diverted”) = 8XP
The Apiary: 4 (locations) +2 (glyphs) +1 (Amalgam) +2 (Mother, only East) +1 (Star Spawn, only East) +2 (resolution, pilgrims saved, only West) = 9XP(West)/10XP(East)
The Grand Vault: 2 (locations) + 3 (glyphs) + 1 (Slitherer) + 2 (Star Spawns) + 1 (interlude, ignore red button) = 9XP
Court of the Ancients: 1 (Ancient Altar) +1 (Tyrant) +5 (Glyphs) +1 (Observer) + 1 (random Star Spawn, only West) = 9XP(West)/8XP(East)
Obsidian Canyons: 4 (locations) + 2 (glyphs) + 1 or 2 (Star Vampires) + 1 or 2 (Star Spawn) = 10XP(West)/8XP(East)
Interludes: 8XP (Task Progress)
The Doom of Arkham I: 4 (locations) + 1 (Randall) = 5XP
The Doom of Arkham II: 3 (locations) + 9 (Cthulhu) + 4 (Star Spawn) + 5 (resolution, “Arkham in ruins”) = 17XP

This means you can enter the Interludes (or Sepulchre of the Sleeper) with a theoretical maximum of close to 60XP. This could be brought up to around 70XP through the interludes and Doom of Arkham I before you face Cthulhu in the second part of the finale. This is of course a maximum and not what you will get in practice, but you can plan confidently with around 40xp after the expedition and 50xp for the Cthulhu confrontation in Doom of Arkham II. This doesn’t quite reach the excess of XP in Forgotten Age, but it is a hefty chunk more than most campaigns offer. It’s especially a lot when compared to the other two most recent campaigns, Hemlock Vale and Scarlet Keys, which both severely limited the amount you can gain by limiting the number of scenarios you could play.
As a result, this is a good campaign if you want to play decks that throw multiple high-XP cards at the game or depend on fancy interactions between such expensive cards.

Investigator Choices

I like to end these deep dives with a couple suggestions for investigators and player cards that work well for the campaign. Drowned City doesn’t use any campaign-defining mechanics to focus on (like Hemlock’s Evasive or Scarlet Keys’ Concealed) so this is mostly going to be fairly common advice. You’ll want to make sure that you can pass agility tests and tank a decent amount of horror and damage. Investigators with low sanity totals will need to be aware of the mental trauma that they can get through the tasks. Elite enemies are plenty. Aside from that, there’s nothing too campaign specific to say except that efficiency is key if you want to collect as many glyphs as possible.
I’d avoid anyone with a 5 in either health or sanity and be at least wary of anyone with a 6 in sanity. A low agility score can also be a huge liability as it can put the Inescapable into play and add unnecessary tension if you don’t compensate for that eventuality.

Here are two suggestions per class:
Mark Harrigan: What elevates Mark over other Guardians is how good Sophie is at letting him pass any random test that comes his way. He can capitalize on that ability a lot in this campaign.
Tommy Muldoon: Tommy doesn’t need to fear the incoming damage and horror thanks to his wall of assets protecting him.
Rex Murphy: Rex’s relatively flat stat line is usually a strike against him when compared to 5 intellect seekers, but in this case the 3s in both willpower and agility let him start at least with a chance against what the Mythos throws at him.
Ursula Downs: Similarly, she handles all sort of non-combat tests well enough. The often wide open maps play to her strength well.
Sefina Rousseau: Many Drowned City scenarios apply pressure from the first turn and Sefina’s unique way of starting out strong suits this very well. Her decks also tend to be very hungry for experience and this is one of the campaigns where she can really indulge.
Finn Edwards: The archetype of the evadey seeker is quite strong in this campaign. There are several investigators that fit the bill, but what lets me highlight Finn over other contenders like Lucius or Trish here is his high base sanity that allows him a lot more wiggle room when dealing with the consequences of both his willpower and his tasks.
Diana Stanley: The encounter decks in this campaign are quite swingy, with their power often concentrated in specific cards. That means that a Mystic that can surgically neuter those cards can really shine. Now, everyone can run a Ward or two (and i’d argue they should), but nobody does that job as well as Diana does. Getting to play cards that cancel damage and/or horror is also quite valuable.
Luke Robinson: Playing Luke always feels a bit like cheating, but this campaign is particularly good for him as it allows him to bypass much of the movement requirements related to seeking out glyphs.
Wendy Adams: She’s sort of the survivor equivalent to the evadey seeker archetype and gets the nod here for similar reasons to Finn. She doesn’t fight, but in exchange she is resilient to everything.
Hank Samson: I often struggle with finding reasons to play Hank over other fighty survivors like Daniela or Silas. But the additional ability to soak up some sanity before going down can really matter a lot in this campaign, giving Hank a bit more of an edge than i usually concede to him. Just be aware that his weakness can be a huge deal, depending on what it attaches to.

Notable Player Cards

And here are some player card suggestions. These aren’t necessarily your usual staple cards (i don’t need to tell you that Vicious Blow and Milan Christopher are good cards), but such that will play particularly well in The Drowned City when compared to other campaigns. As with the investigators, i am limiting myself to two per class but will mention several alternatives that do similar jobs where possible.

On the Hunt: With so many chunky enemies in the encounter deck, getting to engage them on your own terms is valuable. Aside from the strategic benefit, there is also quite a lot of XP to gain this way. The rogue events (Hornet’s Nest, Where’s the Party) are also good for much of the same reason, but won’t find Elites for you.
Dynamite Blast: Being able to deal area damage is more useful than usual in this campaign. Not only does it offer a way to defeat multiple Constructs at the same time, it also is exceptionally powerful against Cthulhu himself. Other options include Storm of Spirits and the Gatling Gun.
Transmogrify: With some enemies refusing to die (or being at least resilient), cards that strand them in a location become better.
Hiking Boots: Hiking Boots’ bonus to agility never looked better. The additional movement is also welcome, especially when you are on a Western Expedition.
Counterespionage: With lots of power concentrated in single treacheries, i found cancels of all kinds to be a good deal better than they already are usually.
Lonnie Ritter: Obviously an excellent ally in all campaigns, but her ability to patch up the Diving Suits that can be picked up for free can be very useful.
Mind Wipe: One of the few ways to stop the Constructs from returning each other permanently. A mind wiped Construct that is defeated will not only be unable to return any Construct from the Victory display, but it will also go into the discard itself where any further constructs won’t find it.
Crystalline Elder Sign: Any asset based bonuses to your willpower and agility go a long way, and cards that provide both are impactful. Accordingly, cards like this, Tooth of Eztli or Peter Sylvestre go up in value.
Newspaper: Specifically the level 2 version. A lot of scenarios have effects on their act or agenda that allow spending clues for effects, making it easier than normal to go down to zero clues over and over and make use of the Newspaper’s bonus.
Survival Technique: There are a lot of tests on locations, usually related to unlocking glyphs. Survival Technique helps with those, no matter which skill is tested.

As usual, these suggestions (both for player cards and investigators) are just meant as food for thought. Don’t take them as something you absolutely need to do.

Surge

Continue reading here:

• Article hub
• Drowned City campaign hub