I think this card is a fair sight more powerful than existing reviews give it credit for.

There are not many cards that grant two clues without demanding a skill test. The best examples in each faction as far as I'm concerned are Scene of the Crime, Connect the Dots, Intel Report, Drawn to the Flame, and "Look what I found!", but all of these are somewhat conditional or costly. Yet, despite their limitations, these are all great cards, well worth taking in decks that can support or set them up. Getting two clues without a test is fantastic, with the notable exception of playing solo where many locations have only 1 per investigator clues.

Excepting Drawn to the Flame, Stirring Up Trouble blows all of the above out the water when it comes to set-up cost. It's zero resources, and you must have Curse tokens available equal to your location's shroud. This is absolutely trivial. No enemies, no skill test, and completely resource free. If you ask me, this is a phenomenal advantage over its in-faction competition, Connect the Dots. I think this advantage is even strong enough to make up for the fact you have to spend experience to include Stirring Up Trouble in your deck. Level one cards tend to be fairly easy to purchase between scenarios unless you absolutely must save experience for a super weapon or Exceptional card.

Let's compare Stirring Up Trouble more closely to Drawn to the Flame. Both are free and zero set up save for the moderately costly punishment you take for playing them. The big difference is that even four Curse tokens is generally a much milder punishment than drawing an encounter card. Treacheries and enemies can take the better part of entire turns to deal with, or even cost an entire game round - and even drawing an additional mild treachery puts you closer to drawing the next awful one than you would have been had you not played Drawn to the Flame. After playing Stirring Up Trouble, you might not even draw all the Curse tokens you added before the scenario ends. Nothing bad happens to you at the moment you play Stirring Up Trouble - all the cost is deferred to future skill tests, of which there will be very few if you use Stirring Up Trouble to clear an objective location at the end of a scenario.

The other big point in Stirring Up Trouble's favor is that you might actively want at least some Curse tokens in the chaos bag, making its only cost into an upside. In particular, Curse tokens enable the additional effects of the cycle of Mystic spells in the same pack - Armageddon, Eye of Chaos, and Shroud of Shadows, and I think this will be a strong pick for Luke Robinson along with Blasphemous Covenant to make your first Curse token each round into an actually positive pull. This might be a narrower enabler than a card like Deep Knowledge, but it is likely a more powerful one. I think most decks reaching for Stirring Up Trouble will have some play for Curse tokens, but I actually don't think the tokens are so awful as to necessitate that. At least some of the times you draw a Curse token are during tests you would have failed or you end up succeeding anyway. And if not, well that feels bad, but just suck it up and be happy with your testless clues!

I'm not about to swap Working a Hunch for this, but then Stirring Up Trouble is quite a different beast. Working a Hunch is particularly good to finish off a location you were able to investigate once already, whereas Strinning Up Trouble will let you grab some clues even when you're not set up to investigate, or doing so would be prohibitively costly for some reason. This means it could also see play in the other present "off-class" Seeker Roland Banks, who appreciates this card's zero resource cost a lot. Finally, it is worth noting that this card does get a little weaker the more teammates you have past the first; more players means more future skill tests even toward the end of a scenario, and the two clues you discover will be a smaller proportion of those you need to clear a location or complete a clue-related objective. In big games, I might stick to other options without the endorsement of my teammates and some good Curse mitigation.

YIKES. I'm sure your first thought is "Well, it IS two free clues," but there are MUUUUUCH less expensive ways of getting clues. The XP cost is just the sewer icing on this giant cake of crap, built from the mound of curses you just dumped into your bag. This would be a fantastic card to add IF you're really diving into a curse-heavy build, but with that specific exception out of the way, it's reeeally not good.

This card costs an action to play, so right there it's already netting you no more than any other card that discovers an additional clue in an investigation attempt like Deduction, most Mystic investigative spells, Sharp Vision, those are just off the top of my head and either cost one XP OR a reasonable amount of resources for the use you get out of them (and that's not counting Deduction). But I hear you: testless clues are more valuable than you'd think on paper. There are plenty of ways to get testless clues (Working a Hunch, arguably "Look what I found!") that cost you a reasonable amount of resources while still completely bypassing the need for success. But this card is just 1 XP and 0 resources, right?......right?

No. Determining how bad this card is in normal play just boils down to understanding how expensive putting a curse token in the bag is, so let's compare this card to one I actually like: Faustian Bargain. Let's assume you play this on a 2 shroud location, costing the same as FB. FB gives you 5 resources to distribute among players, making it provide virtually the same number of resources as a Lvl. 2 Hot Streak, except 1.) you don't require the overhead of 5 resources, 2.) you can distribute to other players, and 3.) It's a Lvl. 0 card, all massive, massive boons (lol sorry, didn't mean this to veer into a FB review). The difference is that it adds two curse tokens, and with all things considered, I STILL hesitate and consult my friend before playing this card sometimes (I usually end up playing it) because curse tokens strengthen the chaos bag in a game that's already very unforgiving.

Stirring up Trouble gives you a very, very mild advantage over other clue-granting cards, and it costs 2 curse tokens AT A 2 SHROUD, a shroud that you'd likely rather just investigate yourself. When you get to shroud 4 or higher (or even 3 on harder difficulties), that's way too many curse tokens to even CONSIDER adding. I think........you could maaaaaybe argue using this on 1-2 shroud in expert because testless cards are......just really, REALLY good in expert, and you're kinda expecting to fail many of the tests there anyways, so 1-2 curse tokens could be passable in a bag with -7 and -8. Even on expert, though, it doesn't change the fact that there's going to be many tests where you're already struggling to succeed against the average token pull, only to be kicked down the stairs by a curse token. Personally, I'd be getting nervous even at 2.

I hope you've been noticing that I've been reviewing this card primarily at 2 shroud; I would never dream of playing it on a shroud higher than that. The only good use of this card is at, like a 5 shroud or something with Cryptic Grimoire, Tides of Fate, etc. in hand, and at that point, you're not planning on playing with those tokens in the bag for long. As far as paying the cost in curse tokens go, this card is way too rich for my blood.

tl;dr, if you were just scrolling through cards that might look interesting to add to your deck and didn't have a curse token-fueled plan in mind, PLEASE do your chaos bag a favor and skip RIGHT over this one.

Heavily underrated card.

Partnering with a curse based Mystic, this card gives you testless free clues and fills the curse engine. It can be used to power a Tides of Fate to turn those into a bless and pull them out with favor of the sun. Or you can just deal with the curses and accept you can't pass tests, which on the higher difficulties you can't anyway.

Basically this card provides excellent curse generation, no additional mythos and two testless clues for only 1 exp.

Well, it's a way to unlock that Cryptic Grimoire....

Otherwise, it seems kind of expensive in terms of XP and Curse token to get a couple of clues, which is not something the card pool has ever had any trouble doing. It could help with those very few annoying high shroud locations that even Seekers struggle with, but it seems like you would regret the decision more often than not, unless you had some way to bleed out the currse tokens.

Is never upgrading the Cryptic Grimoire and using it as a way to ameliorate the number of Curse tokens you are throwing in the bag a viable strategy? It seems kind of card-intensive and inefficient.

So. In lieu of the massive walls of text, I want to give you guys a TL:DR.

2 automatic clues that cost no resources is bonkers freaking good! Take it in characters like Roland Banks, Tony Morgan, Joe Diamond or Luke Robinson (I.E, characters that struggle to crack locations with regular tests, especially in hard).

Dont even hesitate to use it just for the test security and speed, nail that 2 shroud location for 2 clues and keep moving! It's especially great for group play where if the Fighter can actually cover that 2 clue 1/2 shroud location, that's incredibly good for tempo. With something like a 6 or 7 character blasting other locations with Investigates, the will barely register on their radar.

This might already be hinted at by the other, huuuge, reviews, but to me, this is an indescribably good card for the tiny-tiny niche it fills.

To synthesize other reviews (and then add to them), I think we can say this card is "not great" in general :)

It might be good if you're playing in Hard/Expert (to avoid the Chaos bag) or a Curse deck. But it might be really bad otherwise (even 2 curse tokens can destroy an important skill test at the wort moment).

BUT,
no other review considered this card when you Investigate on a 0-shroud location ! Then it becomes one of the best investigating card : 2 clues for the cost of only 1 action (and synergies in your deck).

Cards like Arcane Insight or even Vantage Point might completely negates the cost of Stirring Up Trouble.

So you could easily take 2 clues from a 2-shroud location (or reduce the price to investigate a 4-5-shroud location but not ideal).