I was playing a solo game against Yig. I got the Crown of the Serpent Mystery and now I have the following situation. In a city event (#16) I got the option of getting a Tome Artifact. Now the question is, since I'm getting an Artifact can I exchange it for the Crown even though it's not a Tome?

Yes i do have a same situation and i believe no you cannot get Crown couse is specific say tome artefact…...

Simple answer ... Yes!

The main category is that their all Artifact cards, so whether it's a Tome, Item or Magical, the main thread of all of them allows you to trade any one Artifact for the Crown,

Walts

Yay for contradictions. But I do believe that Vala_Melkor is correct and that's what I played.

Also it didn't help the game kicked my ass

That's just an inordinately nasty Mystery. I do not like that one.

I actually had the same thing happen yesterday with the Cthulhu Hydra mystery. We had spent probably over 6 turns going to encounters trying to get an artifact but everyone we passed did not give us an artifact. We ended up getting that encounter to get an artifact tome and took the sword we needed as it was no fun slowly losing the game due to lack of mythos cards as we were down to two.

I do not like that mechanic of the mystery card as it seems too random to be able to get an artifact when you need one, but maybe we were just unlucky that game.

I agree that mysteries that tie themselves to gaining a specific artifact are tougher given that gaining an artifact is not straightforward.

 We had spent probably over 6 turns going to encounters trying to get an artifact but everyone we passed did not give us an artifact.

You don't say what type of encounters these were, so apologies in advance if what I'm going to say is already known and you just had a run of bad luck.

Expeditions encounters are, of course, the best way to gain an artifact since 14 of the 24 cards allow you gain an artifact. Failing that, you can fall back to just a generic wilderness encounter, since 4 of the 12 cards there all you to gain an artifact. In addition, 5 of the 24 Sea research encounters for Cthulhu grant you an artifact (in one case, the precise sword that is needed to kill Hydra).

So, when I see this mystery my strategy is to focus on

- gather clues at sea if possible and hope for an artifact on the way

- go to the active expedition and, if I don't get an artifact, just stay put with that investigator and try my luck with generic encounters (maybe sending another investigator who is closer to the expedition)

The same thing happened to me yesterday. I decided to try out Yig for the first time by playing a 2 investigator solo game.

The first mystery was the Serpent of Crowns.

Successfully completed the first expedition and retreated doom by 1.

Successfully completed the second and gained 2 spells (way hey! - just what I didn't need).

The next expedition ended up on the same space as the Colour out of Space monster which needs a 5 or 6 on a die roll to be defeated.

Both investigators in the space failed the roll for 2 turns.

Mythos deck almost exhausted, I gave up.

To be honest it left such a sour taste, it left me with a low opinion of the FL expansion. It seems to me to have made the game harder by adding a lot more randomness. Before FL, EH was more skill then luck. With FA its seems to be more luck than anything else. In addition, I wasn't a great fan of the delayed mechanism - so I wasn't that pleased with the new Lost in Time and Space miss a turn condition.

The only thing that I'm worried about the Hydra mystery is that basically the toughness of the monster is variable with the number of investigators, but no more than one investigator can attack Hydra per round due to the fact that trading happens before combat, so, you cannot attack and then handle the Sword to someone else. It's somehow balance in the sense that playing less investigators implies you need more time to get the artifact and have it reacing the proper space to resolve the mystery, but still, this could result in several turns of no-progression due to constant failed combat checks. It's probably the Cthulhu mystery I'm less enthusiastic about.

The Cthulhu Hydra mystery is not as bad as the Yig Serpent Crown mystery but its still fairly nasty compared to the other Cthulhu mysteries. What I've done to make it less nasty is to add the following to the mystery card.

If this mystery is the first or second mystery drawn, swap it with the third mystery card.

At least it gives the group time to power up before having to attempt it.

It also gives defeating the epic monster (as the last mystery) something of the feel of defeating a boss monster at the end of a video game.

I agree that mysteries that tie themselves to gaining a specific artifact are tougher given that gaining an artifact is not straightforward.

 We had spent probably over 6 turns going to encounters trying to get an artifact but everyone we passed did not give us an artifact.

You don't say what type of encounters these were, so apologies in advance if what I'm going to say is already known and you just had a run of bad luck.

Expeditions encounters are, of course, the best way to gain an artifact since 14 of the 24 cards allow you gain an artifact. Failing that, you can fall back to just a generic wilderness encounter, since 4 of the 12 cards there all you to gain an artifact. In addition, 5 of the 24 Sea research encounters for Cthulhu grant you an artifact (in one case, the precise sword that is needed to kill Hydra).

So, when I see this mystery my strategy is to focus on

- gather clues at sea if possible and hope for an artifact on the way

- go to the active expedition and, if I don't get an artifact, just stay put with that investigator and try my luck with generic encounters (maybe sending another investigator who is closer to the expedition)

Sorry I was not specific, we were going to expeditions (or rather running around the board to get to expeditions.) I have not figured out the chance of getting an artifact from an expedition so thank you for that. Thanks for the suggestion of the sea research encounters, we will need to try that next time. We have not played that many games yet so are still figuring out the best way to handle things.

Yeah the expansion added just 2 expeditions with artifact and 4 without. Before it the ratio was 12 artifact x 6 without.

So from 2/1 chance of having a chance of wining an artifact (mind you you need to pass 2 tests and reach a expedition), it became, 1,4/1,0 chance of having a chance.

Yeah the expansion added just 2 expeditions with artifact and 4 without. Before it the ratio was 12 artifact x 6 without.

So from 2/1 chance of having a chance of wining an artifact (mind you you need to pass 2 tests and reach a expedition), it became, 1,4/1,0 chance of having a chance.

Expeditions encounters are, of course, the best way to gain an artifact since 14 of the 24 cards allow you gain an artifact.

Just 14 out of 24? It's dangerously close to 50% - I supposed the ratio is higher. With such chances it's easy to be beaten by bad luck.

Although, in the last game vs Cthulhu we have vanquished the Hydra by advancing the mystery.

Not so sure I get your last point, Tsuma. Advancing the Mystery when there's an epic monster in play, implies a toughness reduction of 2 points for the Epic Monster. You need more than one "advance the Mystery" to get rid of Hydra

Maybe it already had a couple of wounds?

If then Toughness would decrease, it could very well be defeated by a single "advance the active Mystery"-Event.

Just a sidenote: I also only recently learned, that the "Final Mystery" is NOT the "Active Mystery". "Active Mystery" only refers to Mysteries coming from a Mystery-Card, that has been drawn randomly.

Not so sure I get your last point, Tsuma. Advancing the Mystery when there's an epic monster in play, implies a toughness reduction of 2 points for the Epic Monster. You need more than one "advance the Mystery" to get rid of Hydra

There were two or three advances, enough to smite the foul beast. The point was: While the new cards dilute the chance of getting an artifact, they also introduce some nice alternatives. As we got lucky and didn't even need the Sword*.

*Although I didn't know about it at that point.

Edit: Typo