The rules for ES: Unseen Forces state that blessings and curses are discarded when the AO awakens, but doesn't say anything about items which allow investigators to gain a blessing (such as Holy Water). If an investigator uses such an item during the final battle, does he gain a blessing or is the item useless? And if he can gain a blessing, how does he lose it since he can't fail an adventure to discard it? For my games, I've been allowing players to use items to gain blessings during the final battle, but they must discard the blessing if they don't defeat the AO during their turn (instead of failing an adventure).

My guess is that if B&C are removed at the start of final battle, it's not intended that you have those statuses at all during final battle.

Agreed with Tibs (and another fulgid example of how badly UF rules were thought / worded)

My biggest contribution to the playtest of this expansion was to make sure Blessings and Curses were balanced and playable with respect to Abhoth. I wish I had spotted this oversight. Chances are the rules would have been updated to say that B&C can't be obtained during final combat (also, fittingly, that Abhoth's slumber ability no longer works in final combat; contrast this to Cthulhu's).

This is (one of the many) problem(s) I have with UF rules

On pag. 3, in the Cursed section, the third paragraph reads:

After each roll (and after all rerolls, abilities, or terror effects have been resolved ), if the investigator’s black die result matches the result of any other die in his dice pool […]

This basically makes the Cursed die almost non-influent for the resolution of the adventure. Problem is that terror is checked after failing an attempt to resolve a task; so that at the moment you check whether you passed a task or not, the Cursed die has no influence on the dice pool. It has influence only after you pass / fail the task, so that actually it works (in case you pass a task) only on a restricted dice pool, hence it’s a lot less dangerous.

It’s worth noticing that the example given on pag. 3 is in clear contrast with the hereby written rule: Rita checks the Cursed die before controlling whether she passed a task or not . But terror effects are resolved only in case a task is failed.

On the timing of the black die, after communicating with FFG, I was informed that the example provided should be the way to go, and that the rule was stated incorrectly. Personally, I assume that the word "after" (all rerolls etc.) should be "before", and everything works fine.

On the timing of the black die, after communicating with FFG, I was informed that the example provided should be the way to go, and that the rule was stated incorrectly. Personally, I assume that the word "after" (all rerolls etc.) should be "before", and everything works fine.

Yep, I think it's the only possible reasonable explanation, otherwise the Cursed die would be just a breeze. I was not that concerned about the answer; I was just stressing the bad wording rules for the expansion had

As for the original poster's query: I asked FFG. Got an answer a couple of days ago from Sam Bailey, and I mailed him back with a couple more observations. As soon as we finish debating the issue, I'll post the final answer

Asked FFG about the Blessing status during Final Battle. Sam Bailey answered, and he was positive about being allowed to gain a Blessed status after the AO wakes up. So, be Blessed, if you can!

So Blessed is sometimes possible, but Cursed is never possible.

What, then, was the original point of losing all Blessings and Curses at the start of battle?

How do you lose the new blessing during final combat? I was under the assumption that Blessings and Curses were discarded because there was no way to lose them.

This doesn't add up.

I replied to Sam, asking about how Blessings are discarded in Final Battle, whether by failing once the Ancient One's battle task or never (since there are no adventures that can actually be failed), and the answer was: