I thought I would give my impression on the Rumors in Eldritch Horror. For the most part, Rumors act as distractions – working on a rumor is usually making you lose resources you could be using to solve mysteries. That is basically there purpose. Easy Rumors can effectively be ignored, or take little to resolve. Hard mysteries will basically ruin your game. I've had more than one game that went from challenging to impossible because the wrong mystery showed up.

As a general comment, I notice that all Rumors that require a skill test require an Observation test. It's funny how an encounter that won't be random of course has completely predictable skill check. I wonder if Strength, Lore, Influence, or Will will come up for any future Rumors.

I'm gonna list off the rumors below and my thoughts on them. These might be spoilers for some of you, although there are only 12 mysteries in the deck so if you have played a hefty number of games you've likely seen them all by now. Fair warning.

EASY RUMORS

Fractured Reality – Advances Doom for each Gate on the board at the end of 4 Reckonings.

This isn't a terribly bad Rumor. You can probably let it go into effect anyway if there are few open Gates or a mostly full Doom track. For the most part it only causes the need for a brief side trip to a heavily trafficked space (Mu is between San Francisco and Tokyo IIRC). This is probably the easiest Rumor in the whole game.

Growing Madness – Give the Lead Investigator Madness for four Reckonings, and than at the end all investigator's lose three Sanity. The overall effect is mostly bad for the Lead Investigator. You can kind of cheese it though simply by not passing the Lead Investigator Token, since there are only three Madnesses int eh game and you can't gain the same condition twice; giving this to an Investigator who already has a Madness can reduce the effect. The card has a nasty synergy with Hallucinations however, as Hallucinations can cause you to lose all your clue tokens, so the lead investigator should not be someone trying to solve this rumor or the current mystery. Three sanity is nothing to sneeze at, but shouldn't drive any healthy investigator insane on its on. Mean, but not too bad.

Lost Knowledge – Defeat the Tick-Tock Men in three Reckonings, or lose all Clues. This card is surprisingly difficult. While it's not a “Lose the Game” condition on it's own, it might as well be. The Tick-Tock Men spawn in Australia, and unless someone just happened to be sitting on Sydney when the card was drawn it will take at least two turns to get to them. Clues spawn very very slowly in Eldritch. It's easy to not be able to recover from the effects of this card. Depending on the Ancient One clues might not spawn for a looong time. This should be rated Normal.

Secrets of the Past – Investigators must spend successfully investigate an expedition site within six Reckonings, or lose the game. What the hell, guys. The rumor requires travel to difficult to reach random locations, a successful roll, a Clue expenditure, and can make you lose the game. This is supposed to be easy? If you are lucky enough to be on the expedition site when the card is drawn and happen to have Clues and have Observation worth a ****, you might be able to solve the rumor. Outside of that, all Expeditions are in remote locations. It's going to take you two turns to get to almost any of them, and by then, whoops, another one is crumbled. This combines nastily with a Reckoning card that also causes the current expedition space to crumble, leaving you with five turns. This isn't even accounting for the nasty monsters that show up on those spaces. This Rumor is a pain in the ass, and should be rated Normal to even Hard.

NORMAL RUMORS

Faded From Society – Assets start disappearing from the game. I have no idea why this isn't considered a Hard Rumor. I have this Rumor come up nearly every other game, and I am so sick of it. Say goodbye to having weapons kids. Say goodbye to Private Care giving you some way of quick healing. Say goodbye to Charlie being useful. Say goodby to half the positive results of Sydney encounters. In four Reckonings, everything is gone. Even if you solve this rumor, at best you are spending clues to keep crappy items. Oh good, I can still buy Bandages. Woo.

Return of the Ancient Ones – Monsters spawn of Space 19, and if four monsters spawn there, than the Doom advances to 0. This Rumor will likely keep an investigator tied up for a while, but it's an easy to get to location. Several monsters that spawn will also move from that location. Dynamite, Tokyo, Diana Stanley, Agency Quarantine...there are a lot of options to deal with this one. Much depends on what you draw.

Stars Aligned – Omen Advances on Reckoning. Honestly, this one isn't that bad either. A lot with this one depends on Gate management. If you have relatively few Gates up, or have most of them piled on the green or red markers, it's not that big of a deal. I consider this Rumor only particularly bad when in conjunction with other rumors.

The Wind Walker – Investigators must defeat the Wind Walker in four Reckonings, or else suffer 6 Health. I like this Rumor. It IS a very deadly rumor, but first of all, it won't make you lose the game outright, and some investigators can survive failing it if healthy. It makes for a nice race against time effect though, and epic monsters have a lot of options to be dealt with. More Rumors should be like this one in my opinion.

HARD RUMORS

Dimensions Collide – The investigators spend clues on a successful encounter with a variable number of Reckonings, depending on the number of Gates, or lose the game. Honestly while this rumor is troubling, I don't think it is that bad. A large factor is, once again, the number of Gates. With a lot of Gates, it's pretty deadly, but if drawn early it can be easily dealt with. It's also not in a super difficult to reach location.

(This rumor mentions Chaugnar Faaugn. I hope this is an indication we will see him in future expansions.)

Web Between Worlds – The investigators must defeat the Spinner of Webs within three Reckonings or lose the game. I think I've drawn this rumor only once, and that was on a game that was almost over anyway. It's basically a harder version of the Wind-Walker Rumor, so I suppose I'm fine with it as it's rated.

Spreading Sickness – The investigators take Health damage each Reckoning until they spend clues on space 17, and the requirement for Clues goes down over time. This is not that bad of a Rumor. In fact, I'd say it's closer to being Normal difficulty than Hard for many games. The trick is how it scales. In a two player game, the price to solve it is incredibly cheap before the damage gets very high. In an eight player game, getting it down to half price might kill the whole party. It's weird. You also can't lose the game from it.

Mysterious Lights – Investigators can't close Gates until they solve the Rumor. I don't get why this is considered Hard. For the most part, closing gates is a secondary objective in Eldritch Horror; many turns investigators won't be doing any such thing. It doesn't really hurt you, it can't make you lose the game directly, it doesn't spawn a really hard monster even. It's not particularly difficult to solve. So I don't get why it's hard when at worst it should be considered Normal, and possibly even Easy.

That's my take. What are your impressions? What are the best/worst Rumors? Are there any that seem the wrong difficulty? Any type you want to see more of?

Nice analysis, Wolfgar

I agree that Lost Knowledge should be normal. To be easy it should have had some way to stop the timer like Web Between Worlds has.

Secrets of the Past is not that bad, it has a very long timer (assuming you don't get the mythos you mentioned, or the one that activates all mythos reckonings) and sooner or later the expedition will move to a space that's one space from an investigator.

Your group should probably try gathering clues for a while so that anyone can take the opportunity to handle it when it comes around.

I suppose it could be normal, only because of the steep penalty.

In my experience, Dimensions Collide was never really a concern. It rarely comes close to popping.

I think I can see why Mysterious Lights is hard. In a way it is a lost the game clock. As long as it's active, unless you are extremely close to winning anyway, it will start accelerating doom in a way that will be very hard to recover from.

Stars Aligned – Omen Advances on Reckoning. Honestly, this one isn't that bad either. A lot with this one depends on Gate management. If you have relatively few Gates up, or have most of them piled on the green or red markers, it's not that big of a deal. I consider this Rumor only particularly bad when in conjunction with other rumors.

If this shows up in an Azathoth game, it can really cut the fuse on time if not handled quickly. I believe that this rumor is normal for that purpose.

I totally agree about rumors being a distraction. Since most rumors come out fairly early in the game either in the phase I or Ii part of the mythos deck if you can manage them quickly they are recoverable. If they come out very late (last card of phase Ii for example) sometimes they can be ignored b/c there aren't enough turns left to fail them.

But I hate the mythos card that sets off the rumor or makes you draw another if there are no rumors in play. (Dont have game in front of me so I don't remember specifics) this always seems to be the top card of my mythos deck so I have 3 rumors to deal with in a game.

For time rumors Such as tick tock man i usually fail on purpose and try to gather as many clues before it goes off. I don't think we've ever lost more than 2 clues this way. Same with fading from society if I already have a good number of items.

For epic monsters we usually have one beefy investigator go pummel it and another sit on tokyo hoping to deal damage from afar.

But the rumors are often what set the tone for a win or loss especially if you have to waste turns just getting to the space to deal with it.

Cheers,

Guardian of the Gate Yemon

With Lost Knowledge the Tick Tock Men also eat up all clues investigators possess. It can be pretty severe.

With Lost Knowledge the Tick Tock Men also eat up all clues investigators possess. It can be pretty severe.

Well, We've been playing that one completely wrong...lol. I always read it as lose all clues from the board, kind of like how fading from society doesn't remove investigator items but depletes the asset deck. I guess I can use the same lose clues strategy if it comes out early enough but if it comes out late it would really hamper the game. Guess we have to trek to sydney and tokyo from now on. It just takes a few turns to get there so 3 reckonings is not alot of time (4-5 mythos cards on average I would guess plus fighting time for a reasonably high toughness).

Guess I have to try playing 'correctly' on my next game which probably wont be until after FL comes out.

Guardian of the Gate

Growing Madness – Give the Lead Investigator Madness for four Reckonings, and than at the end all investigator's lose three Sanity. The overall effect is mostly bad for the Lead Investigator. You can kind of cheese it though simply by not passing the Lead Investigator Token, since there are only three Madness in EH game and you can't gain the same condition twice; giving this to an Investigator who already has a Madness can reduce the effect. The card has a nasty synergy with Hallucinations however, as Hallucinations can cause you to lose all your clue tokens, so the lead investigator should not be someone trying to solve this rumor or the current mystery. Three sanity is nothing to sneeze at, but shouldn't drive any healthy investigator insane on its on. Mean, but not too bad.

So, it's been a while since I've picked the Growing Madness Mythos and I've got confused by the Reckoning Effect ...

" The Lead Investigator gains a Madness Condition , the discards 1 Eldritch Token from his card for each Madness Condition he has. "

... Looking at the base game, there are THREE types of MADNESS ... Hallucinations , Amnesia & Paranoia .

My question ... Can you have one of each of this type of MADNESS, just not duplicates of the same, i.e. if the player has Amnesia, he could suffer a Paranoia or Hallucinations!

I'm getting old and constantly forgetting things, please help! ... Walts

Ignore me, I've found the answer in the Ref Guide (P6) ...

Gaining Possessions and Conditions ... Madness is a TRAIT

... so yes, you can suffer all THREE conditions!

Walts

Excellent analysis, very well done. I want to digest your post a bit more, but I have a couple of thoughts:

As Yemon said, if getting to the Tick Tock Men is an issue, remember that the encounter effects in Tokyo cannot defeat or discard epic monsters, but they can damage epic monsters. Dumping a number of investigators on Tokyo is a viable strategy for dealing with the situation.

Also, if clues are scarce, park someone on London, as the encounters there often generate clues. Charlie is fantastic for this as he can buy items there and send them to people while he clue farms.

If you want to meta-game the system, look at the mythos deck construction recipe in the ancient one card. Based in the current phase the game is in (I, II, or III) and what cards you have seen, you can determine how many reckoning effects are left, and thus, if a rumor will detonate before the game ends. If it will not trigger, you can ignore it if the ongoing effect is not serious.

Good thread, In my current game (Syzygy, 4 investigators), I had the misfortune To have "Faded from society" (second mythos card) , which I got to after two eldritch tokens had disappeared, leaving me with 1 and 2 in the asset deck....further along, "Corrupted Business" popped up, emptying the asset reserve until the next reckoning....so basically, my emotions went from praying not to get a reckoning card, to hoping the next one would be one....got to love this game..

I agree that "Faded from society", should be on the hard list, if it pops up early (within the first four cards), you have to deal with it immediately..and with an investigator with a good observation and clues to boot. Fun fun fun..

Yeah I always thought Fading From Society should be hard and Spreading Sickness should be normal, and Tick Tock Men should be normal.

Spreading Sickness is one of the only instances in the game where something gets harder the more investigators there are. Nearly every thing else in the game gets easier as the player count goes up (don't get me started how unfair Shub-Niggarath's monster spawning or Agreement condition clue cost is to a low investigator game).

Another strange off-kilter rumor is that normal difficulty one (forget the name) that spawns in the west africa wilderness. Every reckoning there's a monster surge if an investigator is on a gate and a monster surge on the rumor space if you try to solve it but fail the skill check.

Seriously? That rumor is the definition of ignorable. I breath a sigh of relief whenever it's drawn because it basically means you got away with one less rumor that game. I have no idea why it's rated normal when it's objectively the easiest rumor in the game.

Except...with the expansions, there is an even easier rumor. That one from the base game that discards an expedition location every reckoning and you lose the game if you run out of expedition locations. With the expansions adding more expedition locations, it's literally impossible to run out of expedition locations even if you draw the rumor in the first turn. Another "free pass" rumor. Even with just the base game expeditions, it was possible to ignore this card if you drew it late enough. Even if you drew it early, you had a long time to solve it and there were no ill effects in the meantime.

But yeah, Fading from Society is by far our least favorite rumor. It's not just that it's difficult (it is), but it just sucks the fun out of the game. It should at least give you a buffer and start with one or two more eldritch tokens. The way it majorly screws you over before any team can realistically react stinks. It can totally ruin the game if drawn early. Even if you draw it late, it means you're useless if your investigator is defeated and you have to draw a new one. We've house ruled this rumor to hard, and are considering removing it from the game entirely. (the only mythos card we've ever house ruled out is The End is Neigh).

The rumor you are describing - Secrets of the Past is not supposed to be hard, and it's not supposed to threaten you with losing the game. The ill effect is that while it's active you can't go on expeditions. Now usually, expeditions are a low priority anyway. But sometimes, especially when one of the artifact requiring mysteries arrive, or you play with an expedition focused investigator like Leo, Ursula or Monterey Jack it becomes more of a problem.

Update: we've tried a couple games using a new rule where Fading from Society starts with 2 additional eldritch tokens.

The results are great. You now have time to react to the rumon and CAN stop it before it discards assets, but it still has teeth and major consequences if you ignore it.

I highly recommend using this house rule. At the very least, consider the rumor a hard card instead of normal.