I do not understand why this upgrade costs 3XP. It just adds one clue (and some icons). Why is it so expensive ? The effect is nice, but for 3 XP, it could cost less resources or give maybe even more clues.

Comparable to chapter 1's knife.

Still neutral, still 1 resource. Discarding no longer gets you a useful +2 to hit, but you don't decide until after you hit.

Is it a card you would ever include in a deck if you have access to any other method of dealing with enemies? No.

Is it a card-shaped piece of cardboard if you need to proxy something? Yes.

Do we need 10 copies? Not unless something happened to the rest of your cards.

The first part is nearly as good as the magnifying glass (this is not fast), and anyone can use it.

The second part discards for a -1, tempoarily. Lose the card, but potentially set your teammates up. Maybe yourself, but that would need a weird situation. I think the old compass (survivor) is the only card that combos with this right now, so you would only get to -2 total, but that can get you to a 0 difficulty, or make sure you fail by -2 or less on a 4 shroud location for Look What I Found.

Worth it? Maybe. Need 10 copies for 4 players? No.

This is a strange, niche card and I'm not quite sure which investigator it was designed for.

The obvious comparison is with the classic Emergency cache : one action nets you 3 extra ressources. Same Old Thing is immediately less interesting, because you need to have 2 ressources available to play it, and you can only use the ressources for events. An Intellect icon to commit doesn't seem enough to make it worthwhile, and sharing the ressources with others seems situational.

The other major difference is that ECache is an event, while Same Old Thing is an asset. Even in Miguel de la Cruz, this is a disadvantage : while Miguel wants ressources to pay for his events (for which ECache works equally well), he cannot use his extra "event" action to play Same Old Thing. And while it is an asset, it is a Condition, not an Item, so Bob Jenkins has no special advantage with it either. So far, Chapter 2 recursion seems to favour events over assets (Hunter's Instinct, Respite). And good old Scavenging doesn't work either (not Item).

So who might prefer Same Old Thing over ECache ?

First : Anyone focused on supporting other investigators while not really needing the ressources themselves. Preston Fairmont comes to mind.

Second : a Dark Horse deck with an emphasis on events ? I have never tried Dark Horse but I'm not seeing it...

Third : William Yorick, who can play it from his discard pile without using an action. How useful this is, compared to bringing back other assets, depends on which events and assets are included in the deck.

Conclusion : making this an Item would have opened up more interesting uses...

Dynamite blast, but cheaper and with more brain power required. You're going to need a way to corral enemies (or wait for a spawning boss) if this is going to be worth your $3 and 3xp. It's great that this comes with Miguel, because putting it down a space away from you means that theoretically, you could lure a bunch of hunters to one spot before taking them out. Testless damage, if you're willing to use other traps (or other trickery) to be where enemies aren't.