Just as good as the Carnivorous Strain, except for treacheries. Just need as much growth as the shroud where you stand and you are now immune to treachery effects. Between the 1-2 Uncanny Growths (in case you held it over from last turn) and Pathfinders/Shortcuts from being Seeker, this is a trivial task. Never mind that you can use it on any investigator no matter where they are!

You barely have to play the game with this thing. At the very least the cost of drawing Uncanny Growth should be an action like on the base unidentified version.

This card is completely out of control. Instant, checkless, on-board enemy deletion that gets recharged by investigating well. Once your mushroom is big enough to eat (often from a single good check) you'll have a chance, often 2 since you can just hold Uncanny Growth from previous turns, to make him big and hungry again.

Assuming your seeker is at all capable of investigating, you'll likely instantly kill every non-elite you draw for the rest of the game once this guy is up and running.

This needs to be made exceptional and even then it's too good.

Quietly a much better upgrade than it looks like.

One of the big problems with a Dark Horse build is a lack of resources, only made worse by the total lack of skill bonus on their key assets unless you're spending money, like Fire Axe and Mariner's Compass. Unfortunately money is the one thing you aren't allowed to have, and you probably want to be playing a flex investigator to take advantage of Dark Horse. That makes it hard to get your passive skill boosts- you're broke and need every stat, here.

Scavenging is probably your best way of recurring cards to add skill boosts, but a lot of assets have pretty weak icons. While a lot has been made of 2 XP only adding Fast to this card, I would argue that's the least significant thing on this whole card- the real draw is a second Combat commit on an Item. Your only other options for this are Baseball Bat, Chainsaw, Gravedigger's Shovel and Sledgehammer. Not a lot of stuff there that's useful in such a build, and nothing less than 2 XP.

So, is two recurring combat icons worth 2 XP? If you're not playing Dark Horse at all, this probably isn't very exciting, and if you aren't playing a flex build you probably don't have enough recursion to benefit from the extra icons (or at least, have better ways to use your recursion). But if you're hitting the road with both your Axe and your Compass, this is probably a nice upgrade you want to consider alongside stuff like Persistence. Niche, but very much appreciated as an upgrade in my opinion.

Working a Hunch but discounted by 1. Given the requirement of revealing a curse, its less flexible for things like snagging a final clue and moving, although it has the niche upside that it can discover the clue outside your turn.

It being Cursed means that it can also be taken by ||Wendy and Kohaku.

There was a classic Vincent Lee combo: makes a slash with his Bonesaw and commit On the Mend, takes 1 dmg and heal with Bandages, add another On the Mend to your hand. Well, now the strong-armed doctor may do this trick in any other weapon (or lets say surgical instruments). To other guardians, its also useful to cancel the and does more damage. Its a better form of Analysis to all who want to fight.

BTW its fix Ornate Bow pretty well. It is the only card that can easily commit to the bow shooting with a plus dmg.