It comboes very bad with core set mythos card: Dissonant Voices, which prevents you from playing assets and ... events. This is an event, so if you drew Dissonant Voices and this on top of the Hunch deck, it's going to stay and there's nothing you can do about it (*you wound need to drop Dissonant Voices first to be able to play it). On the flip side, chances for that are really low.

Another interesting thing about this card is that in the last scenario of a campaign, you simply don't care about it. You don't need any experience any more.

After reading the other reviews, I found it curious how so many good points were brought up, yet the logical comparisons between Catalogue and Emergency Cache didn't mention the factor of asset-hating treacheries, of which there are quite a few. One secret could be left on the Catalogue to effectively replace a Crypt Chill's "Discard an asset you control" effect with a more palatable "Lose 1 resource". Besides the asset-hating treacheries, one could also consider the asset-loving SU-21 investigator who can devour the Catalogue with the last secret left. Plus, unlike investigators who might have no use for the Catalogue once fully set up with all the items they want, SU-21 always hungers for more cards to eat including items the Catalogue will help pay for.

My god get this travesty off of the Arkham page. What’s next laser blasters held by goblins? HP Lovecraft is rolling in his grave - all for modernisations and modern world sensibilities but this fanfic stuff brings the game down.

The magnifying glass has one interesting interaction with recursive decks - it allows you to pop used up hand items to the discard for 0 cost.

It plays wonderfully with the The Necronomicon when you have an additional Hand item in play - like Fingerprint Kit or Grim Memoir.

One Necronomicon is drained of charges you slide the Magnifier in play for 0xp 0actions, discarding the Necronomicon. Then investigate at +1 and if you succeed with 2 difference immediately put Necro back into play via Scavenging

If you took the last clue you can take the magnifier back into your hand and free the slot. Alternatively you can get rid of the other hand asset if its out of charges. Or just discard the magnifier and dig it out later.

So I'm sorry if I missed this in the discussion but I felt like an aspect of this card was sort of overlooked. In the scarlet keys there are attacks that can be made against things that are not enemies (trying to stay very away from specific mechanics discussion where possible as I don't know what would be considered a spoiler here). So I wouldn't categorize inscription of the elders as a lesser/Roland as I've seen discussed. Roland has to defeat an enemy to trigger his ability. I'd look at it more as having the possibility of replacing what I'd call "off spec helper" cards for guardians in conjunction with Bandolier.

As an example instead of having sixth sense as a method to get clues you could use inscription of elders and hunt to efficiently move and reveal cards at low shroud locations since one use could potentially net you a move a fight and another card flip (or clue) for one action and would serve as a good guardian backup weapon either with low xp investment or late campaign if you felt like upgrading that trusty backup Cyclopean Hammer or something. Hopefully that's a new perspective to look at it from? (This occurred to me in my now 3rd playthrough of scarlet keys)