This doesn’t need to be your first upgrade, but it’s a massive money maker, especially with sleight of hand. Rogues can run through money quickly. With sleight of hand, this is going to earn you potentially six bucks, or just refund you more easily with Gregory and hard knocks(4). A solid moneymaker for most clue seeking agility rogues.

This card is absurdly powerful in almost all survivors.

Bulletproof vest, which is the single highest soak item in the game, cost three experience, takes body instead of hand, has one soak more, cost two more resources and cannot be played from discard pile.

The play from the discard pile is outstanding and can't be overstated. Encounter deck makes you choose and discard a card from your hand? Gladly. Discard an asset you control and shield is already on the field? Yes please. Overdrew your hand and need to toss a cars? Me please. Playing from discard for one resource takes away so many other really bad things the encounter deck loves to throw at you.

What about that hand slot? In the rare case you have a survivor that can actually utilize two handed weapons (i.e.Daniela, tommy and Yorrick), Bandolier opens this up. Most of your other survivors though probably aren't going to benefit a whole lot from that other hand anyway and are more than glad to give it up.

Amazing soak, amazing dependability and basically eliminates some of the more annoying features from the encounter deck.

The trash can lid is now a survivor staple.

Daniela is the queen of making enemies murder themselves. With TSK cards, a lot of her weakpoints go away (namely Motivating speech). Keep in mind her investigator ability has no cap per turn, at all. Guard Dog, Flesh Ward, Survival Knife, Second Wind, Toe to Toe, Motivating Speech and Improvised Shield are mandatory imo in her decks.

Early upgrades should be charisma to get two guard dogs up, and spirit of humanity x2.

With those cards alone, Daniela is now absolutely murderous, tanky and will make short work of most enemies.

But it can get even more ridiculous.

"Stand Behind Me" redirects and converts all of the attacks a friend takes over to her. Keep in mind the wording of her investigator ability: attacks you provoke. This essentially means with Stand Behind Me, your friend who previously had a very annoying enemy on them can do whatever they want as you will be shredding the enemy if it hits them (a bonus if the enemy does physical damage, as your faithful guard dog can take the hit as well, dealing a whopping two total damage to an enemy completely passively, three if the enemy hits for at least two damage).

Toe to toe does a guaranteed three damage to any enemy Daniela uses it on at the cost of getting attacked (2 from the card plus 1 from her ability), and that's before guard dogs. It is hence possible to do five damage with this one card alone with her standard set up, guaranteed.

Spirit of Humanity gives a pretty reliable two horror and two damage heal every turn at the cost of adding curse tokens. This cost can actually be yet another benefit if you partner her with an investigator using curses spells, specifically Eye of Chaos and Favor of the Moon, as you will be able to more than easily keep their curse engine full.

The best part of all of this is it plays the same regardless of what difficulty you're on. Enemy abilities rarely get enhanced at higher difficulties (only thing that really changes is the bag and the penalties for drawing bs tokens). So, Daniela plays the same on easy as she does on hard.

Shes an extremely powerful investigator with a bit of a learning curve. She's not that great at punching enemies to death with weapons, she cant discover clues outside of Evidence! and she cannot ever pass an intelligence check. But she is a very strong bruiser character when built correctly, frequently making enemies take uncapped (primarily, two from guard dogs and one crom her), 3+ damage from her passives with a ridiculous amount of healing and soak and with minimal to no set up.

I think this is a garbage upgrade. Thieve's Kit lvl 0 is amazing. In many builds, it is 7 actions to get 3 resources and six clue - or at least a test with a FAR higher likelihood to do that.

Spend three XP and it nets you ~ probably ~ 3 resources and maybe a saved clue test?

Huh. Not that bad actually.

I suppose my hesitation is 6 XP for 2 cards is a lot in Green, with many XP Hungry cards.

Then again; 3 resources and maybe a saved clue test. A Emergency Chache and a deduction. That's pretty darn good?

I think the issue with the card is its Boring. It's expensive for a consistent, undeniably beneficial reward, but... so does the lvl 0 version.

I wanna spend my XP on fun cards like The Black Fan, The Red Clock, and Chuck Fergus.

Thieve's Kit lvl 3 is garbage.

edit

Way to read deckbuilding restrictions. Disregard. These dogs are still very good boys and going to ger a lot of use in a lot of decks, but Daniela cannot take them.

Charlie can though!

End edit.

guys are mandatory on Daniela. For give experience Daniela becomes able to kill most enemies in the game without lifting a finger.

Charisma, a regular guard dog and this upgrade. She has myriad soak and healing options, and basically being able to pull three testless damage out of thin air is ridiculous. "Motivating speech" also has the exact resource cost needed to put these guys into play.

You could very easily build an entire deck around this concept and a level 0 survival knife. Throw in a trash can lid and a teddy bear for the enemies that really hurt when they hit (or rod of animalism and everyones favorite footballer) and you are more or less invincible.

Daniela and her dogs are going to be a force to be reckoned with.