A solid pick for Diana Stanley if you're building clue focused. In my deck I went from enchanted blade to this. I'm trading off a bit of damage but gaining flexibility. We're also freeing up an arcane slot.

This is great for killing 1 hp enemies like cultist and rats etc getting your base fight upto 5. When you don't have to worry about enemies because your teams fighter has things handled you get a +2 on your spells which is really helpful if you haven't maxed the number of cards under you. The core argument of "boosting something you're already good at" is exactly where this is so good. There will be some turns diana isn't as good at what she's supposed to be good at (willpower). This can also cover your back when your weakness cleans out your stored up cards. Lastly it can be dual wielded for a bigger one time boost or two uses. This should either be before you get your signature weapon or in conjunction with Bandolier.

Bandolier (2) is another place you could make solid use of packing spirit athame alongside your signature & enchanted blade. This lets you get a bigger fight boost than the base enchanted blade and allows saving the charges for when you really need it. The bonus from Bandolier(2) is a welcome one for increasing your base heads. Possibly more of a play on a flex build.

I like sixth sense on diana so I don't have to worry about charges once setup and I also use Alchemical Transmutation to make me money to afford the plethora of expensive assets I run. The spirit athame works great with both of these.

It's a strong enabler with permanents.

You just start with 1x Charisma. Leo Anderson loves that. Every Seeker loves not having to choose between Dr. Milan Christopher and non*-allies like Research Librarian.

You just start with 1x Relic Hunter. Wendy Adams loves that.

You just start with 1x Ancestral Knowledge. Minh Thi Phan and Amanda Sharpe love that.

You just start with 1x Another Day, Another Dollar. Money-builds might love that.

You just start with 1x Blood Pact. Marie Lambeau loves that.

You just start with 1x Higher Education. Rex Murphy and many other Seekers with a Dr. Milan Christopher love that.

You just start with 1x Keen Eye. Cops and other guardians with money might love that.

You just start with 1x Streetwise. Rogues with money might love that.

You just start with 1x Studious. Everybody who likes to mulligan hard for special cards might like that. Big handers as well.

You just start with 1x Versatile. Everybody who needs additional cards likes that. E.g. Tommy Muldoon with a Joey "The Rat" Vigil or Harvey Walters who wants a True Grit, a Leather Coat and/or a Deny Existence to counter his Thrice-Damned Curiosity.

Everybody who wants a covenant (Sacred Covenant, Blasphemous Covenant, False Covenant, Paradoxical Covenant or Ancient Covenant). Starting with a Ancient Covenant and some bless token engine in scenario #1 is a stong enabler.

If I want to use the card -> Investigate, so what action is correct:

1 - Would I need to have The Man in the Pallid Mask in my threat zone? 2 - Or just I can use this action because I am in the same location and it is no neccesary to have it in my threat zone?

With Bob Jenkins's of 4 and his access to Lola Santiago / Gené Beauregard, he looks like a good candidate as a cluever in a duo. And with Shrewd Dealings, Scavenging and the free action to play an Item each turn, you have a great combo to cycle Old Keyring / Flashlight as long as you succeed your investigations by 2.

As Flashlight doesn't discard by itself, you can use Joey "The Rat" Vigil to discard it for a profit and have it in your discard pile ready to be scavenged.

And once the Old Keyring is free, the Flashlight makes you a profit of 1 thanks to Joey, you can go for a Well Connected deck.

All of the Level 2 talents have the same flaw compared their Level 0 version - at Standard difficulty, the XP only saves a few resources on a card that your probably are using because you have a lot of resources. If this card were Level 1 and otherwise printed as is, I’d consider it more often. I wish the Level 2 talents had the Fast keyword to remove the action cost.

That said, Hard Knocks is the one of the few Level 2 talent cards that isn’t made obsolete by the Dunwich permanents. As fun as Streetwise is, you can run out of resources or only have one left. That happens to me often in Jenny, so having a zero cost talent that allows you to pump Agility and Combat at +1/resource can be okay. It obviously won’t help you with investigating, like Streetwise.

Parallel "Skids" O'Toole is another investigator that can use this to buff fight tests when critical and you can keep the Level 0 version in your deck if you want.

There are a lot of good XP cards that Rogues can spend XP on. This card just seems like a luxury card - if you’re already kicking the scenario’s butt, it might be nice to have.