This guy is weird. He costs too much money to effectively generate the money and bonuses that he might seem like he is supposed to be granting. There are too many disadvantages. The highly competitive slot, the high cost, the high bonus threshhold.

But then when you add in a powerful resource generation framework for him to inhabit, some Hot Streaks, a few Burglaryes, a little Lone Wolfing, Jenny Barnes's natural ability, Dario will take off and fly you to the finish line like a magic carpet ride.

That really is the gist of it. If you can generate the kind of $$$ that Dario needs, he's really really good, but getting there takes a lot of cards and quite a bit of time, you better have some powerful resource dumps ready for the late game to make all this setup worth it.

Baffled and disappointed when you saw this card?

Lets put things in perspective:

-This card is an arcane item, it no longer occupies the hand slot.

-This card lets you investigate without provoking attacks of opportunity.

-If you succeed on your investigation check while using this item, an enemy is automatically evaded.

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It is really easy to misunderstand the purpose of this card:

-This is not the card that lets you evade with your .

-This is the card that lets you totally ignore an enemy at your location while you investigate.

The scenario you need this card for: You're the clue-hoover, you pick up nearly every clue on the map while somebody else clears the way. An enemy spawns on you, it's some small fry with a half decent fight value and 2-3 hitpoints. What now? The fighter has to come running and deal with it right? Not with this card in play! You can just keep investigating, totally ignoring the threat, and if you happen to succeed in acquiring the clues you're there for (which is highly likely) you'll have evaded the enemy as well! Now if the location hasn't been cleared yet you can keep doing this for a couple more rounds if you need to.

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By far the most powerful part is the fact that this card lets you investigate opportunity attack-free. If you find yourself hard pressed by a monster (multiple monsters even) at a difficult and important location (Difficulty 4 or 5), you can use this card to get the breathing room you need to throw multiple attempts at the clues you need to close out the game.

An enormously strong card that encourages Seekers to build around it in multiplayer games. By itself, it will probably only net you one, maybe two extra clues at best, and that is assuming the chaos bag doesn't entirely hose you.

Enter Higher Education.

Every resources invested in Higher Education while using Guiding Stones essentially picks you up an extra clue (assuming you don't auto-fail) which is immensely strong in multiplayer. Rex especially, who has access to Burglary, can generate up to 4 resources and 1 clue with a single action (Burglary + Dr. Milan Christopher) and then follow it up by picking up 4 to 8 clues with Guiding Stones depending on shroud and chaos token drawn. Other Seekers can't generate resources quite as quickly as Rex can, but anyone with access to Dr. Milan should be able to have powerful turns with Guiding Stones.

Minh Thi Phan is runner up for using Guiding Stones well, as she gains +4 Intellect from Inquiring Mind and potentially +5 from Desperate Search. Playing at 3 or less Sanity is pretty dangerous, but a little more manageable for Seekers now that they have access to Logical Reasoning. And a Minh deck filled with skill cards will probably have more free resources to spend on Higher Education than a Daisy deck will.

Just don't bother playing it in solo games, as locations simply won't have enough clues at them to take advantage of the power of Guiding Stones.

This card pretty nearly reads: Whenever you enter a location with a clue on it. Draw a Perception card. Sept the card cant draw anything but more Perception cards.

You can expect this to net you 3+ useful triggers if you draw it in the first 2 turns. If drawn later then the returns will depend on the map.

This card has a short and simple learning curve, try not to explore new places as a last action, also your friends should get used to leaving you some clue scraps, they shouldnt be investing cards and time into clues that you get a bonus on picking up.

Definitely worth the slot for folks who can freely slot Yellow cards. Probably not worth the dip for the Dunwich Investigators.

The biggest downside is that this might be a dead draw if drawn lategame.

-EDIT: A lightning gun Roland Banks will really appreciate this card as a way to keep up his clue gathering prowess.

I really want to make this card work with Sefina Rousseau. I feel like Sefina's 4 Willpower is really not enough to use Mystic spells all that effectively, and her 5 health is obviously a problem. David could potentially kill two birds with one stone, while also providing a nice influx of resources. Jim would probably also be interested, as like Sefina he really needs Willpower boosts, and right now David is the only in-faction Ally who could provide that for him.

In practice, though, I've found David almost completely impossible to use. Obviously his benefits are not at all worth it if he costs the team one or more turns. And it's not like Arcane Initiate where you can just play it while the agenda is about to advance, the doom goes away, and that's that. This guy is no longer useful if the doom goes away. So unless there is a very long span until the agenda goes off, David doesn't work. That means that his ability is unusable the vast majority of the time in this game. I tried to use him over a number of different scenarios, and each time I drew him I either immediately saw that I couldn't play him and use him, or I did play him but ended up having to kill him off before I could benefit much from his abilities.

So right now I'd have to say this is a card that looks really effective at first glance, but in practice is just unmanageable. But maybe other people have figured out how to make better use of him.