Thread: Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown:: Strategy:: Relics 101 ranking and thoughts

by Exearder

Hello! I'm going to give a quick rundown of each relic starting from the ones I think are the strongest ones to the weakest ones.



I'm doing this 4 at a time in brackets.
S Tier
1. Runecaved spear, what do I need to say? This is easily the most busted relic. Extra attacks are really strong when it fips it can give you up to 3 extra attacks! I think it tends to be better with a brawlering character you can always just target something weak, extra, like a cultist. To keep your extra attacks consistently incoming.

2. Glowing ring. If you have played sister beth you know her signature skill is really strong. We'll I imagine getting it for free at level 2 would be pretty good wouldn't it? It fips to give you 2 hits per tentacle woo! Gotta watch about pushing sanity to much it really helps the early game although. Has some synergy with toughness. To where, if you get toughness, to level three, you can block your own tentacles somewhat get the free extra hits at no cost to you!

3. Jade amulet. At first reading this, I thought, yeah, that sounds good, but I definitely didn't think it was a top tier relic. Holy cow i was would be surprise of the value of that free action. The ability just to not have to deal with stuff by moving it away, is invaluable like stealth to a point. This gets silly once it flips being able to move 3 enemies wherever you want as a free action??!?🤯🤯🤯

4.Shiny jewel obviously, free levels are really strong. This is really investigator dependent, but boy, is it stupid on the investigators that have really good signature skills. If you pull this with Sandra at the start you can end a game with 6+ relics!



A+ Teir
5. Replica blade. This isn't exciting, or does anything super fancy, it's kind of a dead relic on marksmans characters. But the extra dice will add up through the whole game and it comes at no caveat or downside. Old reliable extra dice!

6. Crystal ball. This somewhat reminds me of Fatimas abilities one of my favorite investigators. Having any control over the mythos, deck and possibly slowing down the advancement or a particularly nasty card is quite good! Fips to let you bury 2 cards deep. Side note, unknown monsters make this mechanic a little less valuable because their mythos cards always are not super threatening, but you just play another so it makes it difficult when you see a unknown monster mythos card as what to do with it.

7. Sinister book, similar to glowing ring. I think it's the lesser of the 2 still quite good. The thing I don't like about it is it's negative synergy with arcane mastery it's redundant. And it's only once per turn on the 1 st side of it. If the glowing ring is the broken version of this, the book is the balanced version. It's still really good on investigators without arcane mastery and has synergy with toughness letting count one strar as 2 hits without the sanity loss later in the game.

8. Rtual mask similar to jade amulet, I was surprised i'm ranking this one as high. As the reason before it turns out having the ability to ignore stuff, it's really good I think. I really like this relic with a stealth character when it fips you get to be safe with 2 enemies chilling around! It's kinda funny beating up the elder one and then it doesn't even attack you thinking you're one of it's cultist i think it's sanity, altering effects started to affect itself with this relic around!



A tier

9. Mysterious key, okay this is where we start getting into the more loose ended relics. You get an extra dice some of the time. Much easier to get the extra dice once it's flipped over. You get the really unique ability of being able to travel between portals as if they were adjacent, I think this effect is really episode dependent in how good it is, but it's really nice to have available.

10. Old rosary, this is a free action! Sometimes it's enough sustain to keep you from having to rest at all! Once it flips over it's really good! Just a soild relic I tend think effects the help you deal with enemies are better by either helping you avoid them or kill them easier.

11. Ruby amulet, it's an extra dice! Woohoo!
But you light yourself on fire! Boohoo! This relic becomes significantly better once it flips turning all that fun pain that you would take from fire and letting it deal it to an unfortunate bystander! This has a higher ceiling, depending on the mission, and if you're fighting nyarlathotep or not where fire is everywhere this is an s tier relic in those situations. Everywhere else it's a great relic once it filps before it's rather tough to use. It dose have synergy with toughness making fire less deadly to you.

12. Lucky coin! Nothing bad here it's just not to exciting. Rerolling is always good and there is no caveat to it, it's just free rerolls!
😉



B TIER

13. Handheld magnifier, if I could put more relics in A tier this one would be there, but I just had the rank the other is over it. The ability to always investigate really helps you become powerful in the late game but sometimes investigating is bad for you the best part of this relic is the stress heal you get before investigating. The annoying thing I found sometimes is you get an unfortunate mythos pull and you fend off a few monsters probably using your stress to reroll things and then you investigate immediately after which ends up being a downside because healing 1 stress is not the 2 you need for most discovery cards so you end up with unwanted conditions etc so the relic just beats you while you're already down sometimes. Granted the potential you can get throughout the course of the game by investigating every trun 100% makes me always excited to pull this relic. Because I know the game play will be insane, with all of the extra benefits of discovery cards.

14 brass compass, the front side of this card isn't that great with unknown monsters running amok you're not gonna be moving those extra spaces that often. When this relic really shines is when it filps and adds 3 sneaks to your extra 2 spaces!! Insane. And this becomes silly with stealth or swiftness investigators. It's in B TIER because the front is underwhelming.

15. Ritual dagger, I want to like this relic i really do. But it requires you letting yourself getting attacked to use it since it's an end of turn effect. Now the times this works because a mythos card moved an enemy into your space great! But that shouldn't be your goal. You should try to Finnish off monsters you move into and try to investigate to get discovery cards to get stronger in the later game. Now when this filps deal 4 free wounds two 2 enemies is nuts! If i'm playing a character with toughness and I see this as one of the two relics, i'm more than happy to take it for that late game effect.

16. Viol, now this can save you if you don't have stealth being able to rest up while foes are around the extra 1 ponit is nice too. I really like this once it filps over as with most B TIER i think they rely on flipping too much. To really have a big impact. But 2 rest actions and dealing 2 wounds to everything in your space now that's spicy clear out all the cultists and weekend mobs or swarm monsters!

I rather not have this and fight unknown monsters tier


17. Wooden pipe, now I realize that effect is really good the issue is it's really unreliable to make use of it in my opinion. Once it filps 3 rerolls per roll is insane and it tries to let you have it active more consistently but I just don't like the fact that it doesn't have a big impact until the vary end when you're on those last two insanity thresholds before going fully insane. I like my relics helping me early deal with those pesky monsters. Toughness helps let you have some control over it staying on insanity spots where it's active easier.

18. Ancient idol, I don't like this relic. Maybe it's because I play on two players. I think it's better at higher player count to protect you and also lets you really push your insanity to level up. But at 2 players you don't need to push your insanity fast it's going to happen anyways.