Parallel Wendy Adams (https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/71/05/7105c2ad-df5c-40b0-87b3-9b1d3dd5403f/red_tide_rising_cards_v2.pdf) can now litterally shit the bag with tokens or heal all horror from everybody.

Just play Cosmic Newton's Cradle, then play it again with Come back to the safety of my deck, sweat litte event. Far far away from THIS FUCKING WEAKNESS!!! from the top of your discard pile and shuffle it back into your deck ... it doesn't cost you anything else than action and XP of cause.

You can attatch it to a Jellyfish-Egg to keep it safe from THIS FUCKING WEAKNESS.

For Wendy it is a strong replayable enabler for Esoteric toilett paper or other covenants. Pair it with Nethphthysythsithysphysphysthys and maybe a Eso Blingbling.

Maybe even take More Cards and More Tokens.

Fill the bag. Empty the bag. Whatever strikes your fancy. Anybody running either and/or mechanics will love this. Especially in multiplayers where the player count tends to churn through tokens fast, "sanding off" tokens and preventing the really big play, like a Hallow.

It's a spell, so even if nobody is running the / mechanics you can set yourself up for a combo using Word of Command or Lucid Dreaming to do a "Heal 10 horror", which is straight up amazing.

In my opinion one of the most interesting places for this is Carolyn Fern, who can run both Hallow and Rite of Equilibrium, although you might want to do this with some curse usage or management in the team.

I'll quote user @Susumu in another comment: "if you ever want to choose the first option. It would be spending 5 XP, an action and a card just for removing the restriction of X=3" when compared to Tempt Fate, which is a freaking biiiiiig ask. So that second option better be one hell of an effect.

And I mean, in some ways it is. It's probably the most action efficient horror healing card in the game. The closest example is probably Logical Reasoning, which heals up to 6, costs 2 and can only heal from investigators, but costs 1 xp less. I basically never upgrade to level 4 Logical Reasoning though; that much horror healing is pretty much overkill and xp is usually spend better elsewhere.

In conclusion, I don't think Rite of Equilibrium is worth it's xp cost at all, and is probably up there with worst level 5 cards. Tempt Fate is just so much better, even when not taking into account xp. But hey, at least it's not Flute of the Outer Gods.

Pretty awful card honestly. Tides of Fate essentially does the same thing from a game state perspective (fill the bag with curses, needed to trigger the curse spells) but as a fast action for 0 experience.

Maybe icing on a maxed out curse deck but definitely a low priority upgrade.

This review is pre-Feast of Hemlock Vale (loosely halfway through spoiler season, specifically), so I have no idea how this will play out in practice, but this card might be worth another look in the context of Kōhaku Narukami. While Tempt Fate does still do a very good impersonation of the first mode without the action cost and with a draw, playing this for x=10 at the end of round one effectively banks 5 actions for you. Since you're also already incentivised to fill the bag with blesses and curses, and his weakness does a lot of horror damage, the second mode of this card should be pretty usable as well for when you draw it with a full chaos bag.

It remains to be seen if we'll get any other full bag/nearly full bag payoffs like Hallow in the rest of the expansion, which would further give this card a niche over the raw efficiency of Tempt Fate for just getting some tokens in the bag. (Though you can at least run both in Kōhaku for a very expensive extra turn - 2 actions, 3 resources, and 10 curse tokens is probably only worth it if someone in your group has curse payoffs or mitigation in some form.)

Let's evaluate two uses of Rite of Equilibrium.

Firstly, playing the second option with a full bless/curse deck can almost guarantee total horror heals. But is it worth the cost? While Horror is a problem in most games, this card seems unreliable if it was the only source of horror heal and normally, the game does not care if you finish with 1 sanity or full sanity so over healing is not necessarily the best use of the card. Choosing this option means you are playing with a blurse deck and this move tends to reset your deck (which is not good)

Secondly, the first option can be used to replenish your bless/curses. As others have mentioned, this can be paid cheaply with Tempt Fate so unless you use Dayana Esperence to squeeze more juice out of this single card, it is normally better to stick with tempt fate (having both to fill bag up faster is an option, but usually there are more things that need to be added to a blurse deck before this one)

Overall this card does not seem playable without Dayana, and if we look at the other spells cards that are 0-cost high xp cost that synergizes with Dayana ( Deny Existence and Recharge), Equilibrium seems to fall short of the other two of the effectiveness though (even Soothing Melody seems to do better)

It could be a niche card to take in Carcossa (or equivalent) campaign with more horror but little damage.

Overall, this card does have a unique effect and can be used in some cases (e.g Agnes Baker to continue her ability) or if there were better rewards for over heal. It might be balanced if the 1st option came with a card draw to at least be on par with Tempt and makes it worthwhile to combo with Dayana, and the second option included damage heal as well (or did not remove the bless/curse)