So I was reading the thread on powerful characters, and slightly surprised (but surprised nonetheless) that Darell was getting a lot of attention. Obviously the trick was his ability and exploiting it for gain. Thought I'd start a thread on the best places to do so... If you mention a location, please include why you think so.

Kingsport: Someone help me out here. I guess I heard the Rope & Anchor is good..

Dunwich: Very much depends. Whately Farm is good for controlling the DH track and has a few good item encounters. Luck -1 [2] is a tough check but do-able for Darell if he's got clues for Alchemical Process. However, there are also a lot of clue-giving encounters, which may not be what you want with Darell... At Cold Spring Glen there are lots of item encounters and the marvellous encouter that lets you discard a unique item at least $5 in value to skip the mythos phase (2 such encounters in the deck too). Harney Jones' Shack is hardly ever bad, and usually results in benifit.

Arkham: I find the Curiositie Shoppe to be my weapon of choice. There are a few encounters where you can buy whatever you want from the Unique deck (or get it for free at the expense of a curse..), or trigger a sale for other players, which is extremely helpful if theres lots of cash but not much shopping time. The Silver Twilight Lodge deserves honorable mention, for its Inner Sanctum encounters, and it's not too difficult for Darell to pick up a membership. Problem with the STL is that lore and luck checks are both found in abundance, and Darell's Lore is not so great. Still, some very helpful encounters, also having to do with picking the Unique of your choice, getting money, etc. Darell is *nearly* as good of a Twilighter as Diana, he suffers from less Lore, and he has to pick up the membership, but Diana has to waste a few turns gathering clues and passing her PS if she wants to use the STL to its best effectiveness, both will get 2 encounters here (if Diana passes her PS).

Innsmouth: Yikes. Feeling risky, are we? Y'ha Netheli has some powerful encouters but some horrid penalties for failure. I wouldn't risk it. The Innsmouth Jail actually isnt bad if you're on a hunt for clues, (NOT the Jail Cell).

Heh, if the curiosity shop deck is thin, sometimes I use Darrell to hunt for the Dragon's Eye (then he can draw three cards per encounter with a sanity healing spell, or sanity loss prevention items, he can really blaze through a deck for the encounters he needs then).

Noramally when we have a free turn we spam the newspaper for money clues and retainers. Assuming he still has his retainer and money then I like Ye ol Magic shoppe. There's a bunch of pretty good encounters including ones that let you search the Spell deck but the one I really like is the one that says

Yada yada yada...

Turn the top card of one location deck of your choice face up. The next investigator to have an encounter at that location draws that encounter card.

It's a unique encounter I think and the only one that lets you draw an encounter card before visiting the area (acording to wiki there's one in the base and one in kingsport, dunno about Insumoth). If kingsport is in... well you should be at the Rope and Anchor but assuming you're not you can turn over any Kingsport card and you are likely to get one that has an ally on it. Otherwise you can turn over French Hill, Merchant District, or Rivertown to look for allys. You can even turn over a card in say south side or Downtown or other places people rarely have encounter to motivate people to go there.

awp832 said:

Strange High House has some amazing encounters, some of wich let you remove doom tokens, some let you acquire William Bain, which in turn removes a doom token, etc.

Avi_dreader said:

How can he blaze through encounter deck for cards he need when encouter deck are shuffled back before each draw ? there is no discard pile for encounters. (AH pg.8 ) So the ability is just a random 3 draw every try... no sure way to success.

Ivan Kerensky said:

I think "thin" here is maybe just base game deck. That means Darrell with DE sees 3 of the 7 cards in the deck each turn, fairly good odds of cherry-picking his choice of encounters.

Been a while since I saw I encounter stack 7 cards high

Ivan Kerensky said:

Yeah, unless the Arkham stacks are in double-digits and the first number is a 3, feels light . Of course, if only DH and IH got their boosts, even to 20+ each would be nice, 30+, well, wouldn't object.

Dam said:

I'd say thin means base game only, or base game + one expansion that doesn't add more than four cards to the Arkham locations. Personally, that almost never comes up for me. I just brought it up because some people don't use all expansions and boards. (Although I no longer use Kingsport's board, I feel like it just adds to the complexity and game time, without really adding to the challenge).

Wth?! Avi?! Making the game easier on himself?! Has hell frozen?!

"without adding to the challenge"?! lulz?! is this some bad joke?! If kingsport is left unattended rifts will open, and even one could cause havoc. Sure, they're easily attended, but that requires sending someone to Kingsport and in that time he can't help the rest, which severely makes the game more difficult. You can't have a good strategey playing with Kingsport, it's lose-lose. Either ignore Kingsport and the rifts will tear you a new one, or go tend them and in the meantime be one investigator short. Either way, it's sure as hell increases difficulty.

I find very ironic that on one hand you make some insane Ancient Ones and criticize everyone who doesn't make their ancient ones insanely hard and on the other hand you leave the Kingsport board behind, making the game easier on yourself.

Wow. Just wow.

Kingsport requires the attention of half an investigator to keep under control. I could play a four investigator team, making the game *easier* for myself with Kingsport. Or I can just cut Kingsport and leave the game at three investigators. There is no strategic complexity in dealing with the rifts. All it requires is a little time. I don't want to have to keep track of a fourth investigator, and I don't want to have to constantly be placing rift tokens, and I don't want *another* board out, especially considering that it adds essentially nothing to the game strategically, while if anything, it waters down the mythos deck for Innsmouth and Dunwich.

Sure, whatever you say...

No Kroen, whatever you say (which is a devastating and useful response by the way, as usual).

Say whatever you want, it won't change the fact that you're the biggest hypocrite on this planet.

If you say so, it must be so, Kroen. You'd know, since you're the most self-aware person on the entire planet. Once again, your valuable contributions to the forum are very appreciated.