This card is unfortunately severely overcosted in my view. An asset that allows me, for an action, to do 1-3 testless damage against a non-Elite only, is useful in some circumstances. Big beefy non-Elites like Mindless Dancer, Eater of the Depths, or Deep One Bull can be taken down more easily with this pickup. But is this honestly the best choice of tech for those situations?

Let's go through all the negatives. First, it's exceptional, meaning you're paying 8 XP for a one of in your deck. With enough draw, this isn't inherently too much of a problem. You need curses to Seal. This is more of a problem as Mystics don't have much in the way of either Bless or Curse gen. Tides of Fate paired with a Bless investigator might be the way to go here. Now it is worth noting that part of the benefit of this card, presumably, is that it can seal curses for you in the short term. Unfortunately, this is hampered by the additional resource cost, where if you want to seal lots of curses, you need to pay a heavy upfront fee, and that too is another major negative as Mystics are one of the most resource starved classes. I think worst of all is that this exhausts. I would love the opportunity to spend several actions trying to manipulate enemy placement to get the best damage numbers possible, but the exhaust clause severely hampers this, and I genuinely don't understand why it's even on the card. Flute's uses are already severely limited by three(!) other things: resources, curses, and actions.

I would love to be proven wrong by this card. I think the movement opportunity and the ability to have enemies hit one another, or themselves, can be useful. But honestly, this card is severely hampered by one other element, which is the hand-slot. Traditionally, not a big deal in Mystic. But we just got Sword Cane this cycle, which costs 2 resources, doesn't require any curses, and gives you an immediate use when you play it. It also exhausts, but it allows you to evade an enemy or ping an enemy for one damage using willpower (not testless, but still your highest stat in Mystic most of the time). If you like directing where enemies are on the board, evading one and then running will have the hunters enter in and group together with the evaded enemy. If you want to do damage, 1 is not far off from the amount Flute would normally do, and it's perfectly fine to follow that up with a few Shrivelling charges for 3/5 health enemies. They're not exactly the same, but in practice I do think Sword Cane is a much more flexible card that has similar functions with significantly less investment. Now you do have two hands, so there's no reason you couldn't run both, but hand slots are at a higher premium than they used to be thanks to the taboo'd version of Scroll of Secrets being pretty good draw.

It's a bit of a shame, as I think this was meant to be the big Curse payoff for Mystics this cycle, but it misses the mark pretty badly in my opinion. But again, I would love to be proven wrong. There may be way more situations than I'm able to realize where this card just overperforms anything else.

With the advent of Astonishing Revelation, I have completely come around on this card. It has evolved from 'nice card to play if you can draw it', into a genuine wild-card that you want to try to mulligan into. If your deck is dependent on a particular card for a combo, you now have an additional copy of that (or those) cards. AR may end up getting drawn, sure, but if you get this one first, you are taking 0 actions and paying 0 resources to take any card out of your deck. Talk about consistency! If you are particularly insane about min-maxing, you can include 2 AR's, and 2 NSU, and use one to pull out the other, and then use the second NSU to pull out the card you want. I think 2 is the sweet spot for AR, unless maybe your deck size is large, and you can always add Practice Makes Perfect to help weed them out.

If you're running a seeker with more experience than you know what to do with, I recommend giving this card a try. Maybe even with a versatile to add in the AR's. You might be surprised at how much fun it is....or your might draw all your researches on your mulligan and come back to complain!

Really interesting in The Circle undone: with an investigation action you can evade a Witch enemy and then all the investigators at your location can automatically discard their Hex treacheries. Even better in The Secret name !

I'm currently running a "lowering difficulty" (Quick learner + Leo de Luca + Haste) Wendy deck and even in hard it's very efficient !

Even though I wrote an a bit doubtful remark in flamebreak's recent review, I now played this card with Carolyn in a campaign, rather than First Aid. It had been under perfect condition for this card: together with Agnes (and Minh) through Carcosa.

On paper, these two cards are very similar in cost: number of uses, resource cost, XP of the upgrades are all the same. First Aid can heal horror and damage, even on allies, and is a slotless talent, while with this card, like pointed out by flamebreak, Carolyn's ability can easily net two resources to the group in one action. Overall in a vacum, I would estimate First Aid's advantages to be bigger, yet, there had been a couple of reason, I did not choose the other card.

First, I had two copies of Arcane Research, so the cost in XP is really not an apt one any more. The difference of 4 XP among 2 copies is huge. I had two other main healing assets in my upgraded deck, Ancient Stone and Liquid Courage. It was quite a shame, that the Agnes' player did not slot Drawing Thin to at least attempt to forget her Dark Memory while drinking. Not that I think jumping through these hoops would have actually worked, but it would have sure being fun and thematic at least trying. At 1 XP each, Clarity of Mind clearly won the popular vote against Liquid Courage from all three of us. For 5 XP (thanks to Shrewd Analysis) I got both copies of the Ancient Stone, and that was so much better, than two copies of First Aid could ever be (at 1 XP more!), upgrading other great cards like Stand Together and even the upkeep phase, i did not need to use a "draw 1 card" action just for the trigger one time.

Second, I had the Eldritch Sophist as one of my allies. Clarity of Mind is cheap to play, in particular with Ever Vigilant, but I never needed 8 charges from 2 copies, even with Agnes vs. who's name she liked to call. (Also, because it was not the only card, I had for horror healing.) Of course, the secrets of the Sophist were always well spend, on Carolyn's stone, but even more several cards from Minh. But with his ability, Carolyn also became kind of Agnes' Venturer, loading up her Shrivelling or Rite of Seeking, with spare Clarity-charges.

In summary, this card was pretty great in my deck, and I likely would take it again in Carolyn. Still, I don't see it in any other investigator's deck, not even in Agnes, for whom 2 horror heal in an action kind of equals 2 testless damage in an action, which is quite awesome. For one, the arcane slot is among the most competed slots in . A power mage will almost always want to put a big fight and a big investigate spell into his or her main arcane slots. Now the card pool is in flux, we got (or soon to be getting) almost everything but footwear converted into an arcane slot, and I'm quite stoked for the cards spoiled from "Return to the Cycle Undone". But there are so many other options, for evading or sealing, or maybe even a Sixth Sense next to a Rite of Seeking for charge preservation in 4 player games, I would rather slot.

Second, this card was 1 XP (and the opportunity cost to have an awful card in the lever 0 deck) in a Carolyn deck. I would consider it still 3 XP in any real . Why? Because Carolyn (as of now) has only 3 viable cards, she can upgrade each twice with Arcane Research: Clarity of Mind, Deny Existence and Blood Eclipse. CoM is the "mandatory upgrade", you want to flush the level 0 version out of your deck ASAP, DE is the "great upgrade", something to pleasantly anticipate after scenario 3 and 4, BE is the "luxury upgrade", nothing to sneeze at for a free upgrade, but not that much better than the level 1 version. The mental traumata are not a real cost for Carolyn, the 2/15 and slots rather something to consider. At least the upgraded Deny Existence will free some slots again for a couple of level 1 or cards. Blood Eclipse was also a fun card to play in Carolyn with Brother Xavier. Of course, real wizards will also take Arcane Research, but they have so many spells to choose from, they can't really say, "this Clarity of Mind cost me only 1 XP". For them, AR is just a flat +2 XP each scenario, even with several side stories stuffed into the campaign. Carolyn can simply either take the 12 XP discount from these six cards, or not. It would need several new valid upgrades for her to reevaluate this card "at level 3".

I think it's fair to say that, with most of the Innsmouth cycle completed, given all the later packs only include XP cards, that this is the best Bless Token generator at level 0. It's fast, so you only spend 1 card and 2 resources to get 40% of the maximum allowable tokens into the bag. Scrounge for Supplies and Resourceful can both get this back to you at the cost of an action. Preston Fairmont can take Ancient Covenant and pay for Leo De Luca very easily to afford Scrounging for this, though his Resourcefulness isn't quite as reliable (but can definitely work with some moderate boosting from a Mariner's Compass, Fire Axe, and/or Well Connected). William Yorick can take either the Ancient Covenant or the Sacred Covenant, and has access to both pools of Bless Token cards, including the resource saver Rite of Sanctification. Father Mateo can use this in combination with Blessing of Isis to trigger his Elder Sign ability way more consistently. I think the absolute top dog for this, though, is the rookie cop Tommy Muldoon, who can take almost any worthwhile Bless Token card in either of his classes and has the resource generation to back it up.

Worth noting also is that Tempt Fate is another level 0 card for Scrounging purposes, but with Keep Faith in the same deck, I see it being the more likely target. Still, Tempt Fate costs 0 instead of 2 and draws you a card, so having that option is nice. I doubt any Bless token deck wouldn't include both if it could (sorry Sister Mary).