So I finally played this card in a Lucius Galloway deck in The Dream-Quest campaign, after only theorizing about it before.

All in all, I am happy with my experience and it went as expected. A few things to consider, though:

• The deck/investigator is specialized in not defeating enemies, but instead handling them via evading - a perfect fit for the card, because not defeating victory enemies is not a loss.
• The 2 campaigns in The Dream-Eaters are short (4 scenarios each). Granted, you get more victory overall, but I found them also to be challenging and there is hardly enough time to clear each location anyway, so another good fit.
• The first scenario instantly rewarded me for going Ascetic, as there was an ingame reason to not pursue victory locations. I did - and I kid you not - finish the scenario with 0 victory, which felt great!
• I drew Offer You Cannot Refuse as my basic weakness. Boy, that ground my gears! Do I get the 2 experience as usual or not? If yes, can I spend them? After all, according to the Rules Reference, basic weaknesses are drawn at the end of the deckbuilding process aka after I included Ascetic... No worries, bullshit FAQs to the rescue: I found a ruling here that explained (despite conflicting with the Rules Reference) you can still spend the experience gained by Offer You Cannot Refuse before the first scenario. Now to the other part: Do I even get the experience? I ruled that one myself and said yes. Why? Because Ascetic uses both the words "gain" and "earn" in relation to experience. Offer You Cannot Refuse makes you gain experience, whereas in the course of scenario resolutions you earn experience (which is what Ascetic apparently wants to prevent). It's an edge case, but I am convinced my ruling is both correct and fair.

One downside I noticed, though, was a psychological one, from a player's perspective: If you don't go for cards with experience cost reductions or pack Adaptable, you are playing with. the. same. deck. the. entire. campaign. Even if you like that card as much as I do, that can get boring, because it robs you of a significant part of the AH experience.

Never has a more perfect investigation tool been designed And then printed into

It gets better with more players as more enemies are drawn.

Combos:

• Evade/ kill enemies at location with microscope
• String Along
• Bum's Rush
• Search for more enemies:
• "Where's the party?"
• Kicking the Hornet's Nest
• On the Hunt

Never has a more perfect investigation tool been designed And then printed into

It gets better with more players as more enemies are drawn.

Combos:

• Evade/ kill enemies at location with microscope
• String Along
• Bum's Rush
• Search for more enemies:
• "Where's the party?"
• Kicking the Hornet's Nest
• On the Hunt

People would think a lot more highly of this card if they'd just waited to release it with George Barnaby lol. Turning 1 card into 1 health/sanity repeatably is obviously not a great value proposition, let alone for 3 resources + 1 action upfront. It quickly looks better when the first skill discarded in a turn effectively goes back into your hand AND draws a replacement, though.

And while the rate doesn't get there on its face, I think it's worth pointing out that repeatably preventing the first N damage/horror over a scenario adds up to a LOT of sustain. I don't think it's quite good enough if you don't have some insane synergy like George does, but I also don't think it's horrendous either. This game likes to nickel and dime you to death. Most encounter decks don't have haymakers waiting to hit you with chunk damage. It's all 1 damage here, 1 horror there, then you look up and suddenly the monster that's about to hit you for 2 damage and horror is lethal. Not so with a trusty necklace.

Worth 3 resources and 1 action? Almost certainly not, but make this thing Fast and cost 1-2? I'd probably test it in builds with good card draw and/or recursion. And red is the color for that...

So as I understand the rules for evading in the reference book, you can not activate this action if there are no enemies engaged with you. Which makes this kind of a nasty weakness! There will be many turns in this game where you don't have the chance to deal with this, which means it will show up again and again. (Frenzied is similar, but different in the sense that you can use it against an enemy engaged with a different investigator at your location - of cause with the added risk of hitting your friend, especially due to the -2 skill value.)

(un-tabooed) mr rook could be good tech to fish out this weakness when you feel comfortable about your ability to evade an enemy currently engaged with you...