The Survivor's Magnifying Glass. useful to a clue minded investigator who needs something to do with his/her hand. The net effect of +1 is not always a worthwhile bonus but depending on your character and other cards you may stand to gain a lot if you can hit the magic numbers (2 above the difficulty for Standard, 3 for Hard). Wendy Adams can put this to use till she gets her Lockpicks, the other survivors all suffer intellects of 2- or preferable alternatives. For them Flashlight is a better pure-investigation tool.

But Lantern has an extra use. Automatic damage! Autodamage is always good, a guaranteed dead Swarm of Rats or Acolyte can be absolutely critical, or as a finisher to a foe that you managed to tag with a punch or to end a foe that you've chipped at with a proper weapon. This is the real kicker for this card, say for example you hit someone with a .45 Automatic leaving them with 1 hitpoint, say you wanna avoid some particular tokens in the chaos bag, the Lantern got you covered.

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A note unmentioned in a review of this card insofar.

A -1 Shroud value will affect tertiary card effects, by this I mean Double or Nothing, Lucky!, "Look what I found!" ETC.

I.E, if you reduce a 3 difficulty location to difficulty 2 and fail, your minimum value (0) ensures that you can play "Look what I found!" on the test you just failed by 2 points.

Given the arrival of crafty there is something neat about the humble lantern that allows it to shine above all other investigate tools.

Lantern is the only tool which investigates your location without having uses or exhausting, this means that along with crafty you always have a reliable, repeatable source of tool based investigate actions that also has the benefit of reducing the difficulty by 1. I tried a crafty Bob Jenkins with Scavenging and boy howdy, does having a never ending supply of free key rings, flash lights and lock picks while still be able to boost yourself by an effective 3/5 in an investigate (if you have two copies of crafty) make a pretty reliable investigator.

So lets all give it up for the humble lantern, which can be a zero cost, bonus action to play asset that even allows you to deal with the occasional annoying odd health enemy.

Technology decides wars. In Arkham's scope, technology decides which cards are being played and which stay in the binder. There are circumstances in which the old-fashioned Lantern beats the Flashlight. Every character that can include Lantern without spending xp should have a look at the following passages, all other character classes can adhere to the neutral Flashlight.

Let me start to evaluate Lantern's worth on the background of it's main use, as a clue finder tool. Reducing shroud can either have a very powerful effect or a mediocre effect - depending of the final shroud value.

Reducing a location's shroud to zero is the ultimate chance for success, because any result will match the test difficulty of zero. Only the auto-fail token lets the test fail (1 out of 16). Currently (with Path to Carcosa just released) there are 23 shroud-1 locations across all campaigns, 6 of which do not have any clues on them. 17 of 147 locations can be reduced to shroud-0 with the Lantern. As a result, it can not be recommended for the powerful effect.

The mediocre effect kicks in if the shroud is still 1 or more after applying the modificator. Investigating at that location gives you a bonus of 1 on the skill test, comparable with having a +1 Intellect boost on your investigation attempt. While on Hard/Expert mode failure is unforgiving, this marginal bonus is absolutely neglectable, it can make all the difference in Easy/Normal gameplay. Even better, Lantern does have unlimited uses! So, if you play a Survivor in Easy/Normal mode, add Lantern to your deck!

The Lantern also serves as a throw-away combat tool. For one action you can once inflict 1 damage to one target at your location. Not overly powerful, but a decent weapon against Whippoorwills: Lantern absolves you from spending one additional action and executing the skill test.

Pros

• Unlimited uses to boost investigation tests by 1.
• With the lantern, shroud-3 locations can be conveniently cleared with the help of Look what I found! or Lucky!
• Decent install cost.
• Has an alternate one-time usage as weapon, either as coffin nail for bigger foes or against nerve-janglers: list
• Combo with any skill commitment card.
• Works best on Easy/Normal mode.

Cons

• Almost never sparks the really powerful effect that Flashlight can ignite.
• Can not be combined with Flashlight, because both require an action.

Recommendations

• In Extracurricular Activity there are two shroud-1 locations, spoiler and spoiler.