I like this a lot in an Ancient Covenant / Favor of the Sun deck, especially Father Mateo because he can get Bless fully online at the start of a campaign with his 5 Bonus XP plus 3 from In the Thick of It: Ancient Covenant, 2X Favor of the Sun, 2X Priest of Two Faiths, 2X Radiant Smite.

• I miss the Sanity Soak that Holy Rosary provides...
• ...BUT in AC Bless with Favor of the Sun I know exactly how much my test will succeed by any time I choose to use my Favor rather than drawing a token, or can just hope that a token will come out even if I don't (and Nkosi Mabati makes those odds better).
• You can still upgrade to Holy Rosary (2) if you feel you aren't getting enough tokens into the bag (but my deck is also running Book of Psalms to heal the 2 Mental Trauma I took for In the Thick of It and add ).

Assume I attach The Raven Quill to e.g. Archaic Glyphs.

When I identify Archaic Glyphs by placing the third secret onto it, I have to discard it. The Raven Quill is attached and gets discarded with it. What happens with the reaction effect on The Raven Quill at the end of the game?

It says "When you resign or the game ends: Either mark a checkbox on The Raven Quill's upgrade sheet, or reduce the experience cost to upgrade the attached asset before the next scenario by 1.".

For this effect to work, The Raven Quill needs to be in play, am I right?

Same goes with other "unidentified" and "untranslated" assets like:

• Ancient Stone
• Forbidden Tome
• Cryptic Grimoire
• Forbidden Tome
• Strange Solution

If it wouldn't be the case that The Raven Quill needs to be in play to have it's effect working once played, you should be able to trigger it twice.

1. Play named asset
2. Attach The Raven Quill
3. Identify / Translate the asset -> Discard Asset + The Raven Quill
4. Play 2nd Copy of named asset
5. Attach 2nd copy of The Raven Quill

That should be enough to trigger both instances.

Some might even argue if you could repeat that multiple times with Scavenging and discard recycling e.g. with Minh Thi Phan.

It's strange ... If discarding The Raven Quill and disabling the reaction effect seems kinda dumb. The other way seems dumb too ... Help me.

Decent card for Rogues or other Fighters with access to Green (2).

• Even low Fight, high Agility investigators can take advantage of it using the Ornate Bow (3).
• Ideally, you'll want to combine this card with a way to get a free evade action, like Stealth (3), Blur (1 or 4), or one of the Rogue events that Investigates or Fight, then auto-evades and returns to hand.
• Based on the wording, it might even be possible to use it to Fight something at a far away location, provided you can somehow evade the enemy there (ie using Decoy, Pendant of the Queen, etc). I'm not 100% sure if this really works

I'll compare this to Spectral Razor since they fill many of the same use cases

Pros:

• Testless damage. Depending on your difficulty this could be very valuable
• Potentially Costs 1 less if you're targeting low health enemies like Acolytes
• Synergy with arcane slot increasing effects such as Familiar Spirit
• Synergy with empty arcane slots, clearing the way for a beefed up Eldritch Initiation

Cons:

• Anti-synergy with standard arcane slot spells (unless you managed to spend all the charges already)
• Must be engaged. Razor comes with a free engage to deal with pesky aloof enemies
• Increasing the damage potential still requires you to pay one more resource per damage. You can easily reach Dynamite Blast cost but for situationally less payoff since you're always targeting just one enemy.
• Only target non-elite. This a deal breaker.

In my opinion the best reason to run EW over Razor is to lean into that big payoff explosion. This requires you setting up assets to maximize your slot conversion which will be a significant resource and card investment. All of that setup to be able to target basic enemies only is a let down.

For most investigators Razor will get you more mileage. The only Mystics who I can see potentially taking Ward are those who cant reach useful + scores (so just Marie Lambeau?)

Whenever kate apears, I'm sure she'll love it.

For 1xp (Mending Distillate) you get an easier to aquire more versatile version of this 4xp (+ researched) card:

• Strange Solution

(Though, lets be honest we only cared about: Strange Solution.)

Works great with:

• Lab Coat