Adding a relevant note about Lola's limitations, from Fantasy Flight rules enquiries: "The player window between steps 1.4 and 1.5 does not occur until all investigators have completed resolving 1.4 (aka drawing the top card of the encounter deck.) If Lola wanted to play a Mystic card (like Ward of Protection) in response to drawing an encounter card, she would have to already be in the Mystic role before the Mythos phase began. Matthew Newman."

Don't get me wrong, Lockpicks are good. It's probably a good idea to buy them as Wendy, Sefina, and "Skids", and even Jenny might consider them.

They're a very welcome addition to the card pool, as the Rogue class previously had a severe dearth of investigation options. With Lockpicks, they at least have something, even if they do have to spend XP for it.

However, a couple things must be said against them. Lockpicks are both expensive and slow. The fact that they exhaust every time you use them is a really hurts. In solo play it's not quite so big a deal as lots of locations only have one clue. But if you're playing with, say, three players and you need to clear a 6-clue location? The once-per-turn limit is going to make Lockpicks extremely slow.

Even more critically, with Lockpicks you're still only getting one clue per action. That's why I think this card is nowhere near as good as something like Rite of Seeking. Being able to pass investigation tests more reliably is good, and that's why I often do run Lockpicks. But a really excellent investigation card would let you get more than one clue per action, and Lockpicks doesn't do that.

Once you hit Expert difficulty, Lockpick's charges will start running out, but on lower difficulties I'd imagine they stay in play for quite a long time.

Since Lockpicks can get you a very large modifier, it can be nice to use Double or Nothing with them as a kind of janky Deduction. This can help alleviate the tempo issue I mentioned earlier.

Three campaigns in, and Machete remains the best level 0 weapon in the game. At the very least, for all five Guardians presently in the game, it is the weapon of choice. It could cost 2 or 3 XP and it would still probably be worth buying. At 0 XP, it's a steal. Getting a weapon that deals +1 damage into play early is vital, and there's no better option than Machete.

Compared to .45 Automatic, .41 Derringer and the like, the fact that Machete doesn't have to deal with ammo is a gigantic advantage. One Machete can last you literally the entire game. These other weapons will run out of ammo after killing an average of about two monsters, which is nowhere near enough to last a scenario. There's no contest here.

Compared to Baseball Bat (also a great weapon), the fact that Machete doesn't break and only takes one hand slot gives it the clear edge, in my opinion, even for Yorick.

Compared to .32 Colt, the Machete's to-hit bonus just makes it better, as far I'm concerned, especially when the difficulty level goes up. Guardians will often want to run both, of course, but there's no doubt which of the two I'd rather draw in the vast majority of situations.

Fire Axe may be better for investigators with very low Combat, like Wendy or Rex, who nonetheless want to fight with Combat. But for investigators with decent or better Combat, Machete will deal 2 damage much more efficiently and consistently.

As for Machete's "only engaged with one enemy" drawback, I don't see this as that big a deal. In solo play, enemies most often come at you one at at time anyway. In multiplayer, you can usually coordinate with your teammates such that the Machete wielder is only engaged to one enemy at a time.

Furthermore, if you are absolutely swarmed by enemies, the Machete still isn't necessarily worse than its competition. Will a .45 Automatic be better if you're fighting a bunch of enemies? Hardly, as it'll just run out of ammo.

Extra-damage effects like Vicious Blow, Beat Cop, and Zoey's Cross are also helpful for circumventing Machete's drawback, as if you are fighting two enemies you can use these to rapidly dispatch one, and then unleash the full force of Machete on the other.

Yes, there are occasional enemies, like Poltergeist and Conglomeration of Spheres, against which Machete doesn't work or doesn't work well. But so what? In the grand scheme of things, these enemies are relatively uncommon. The fact that the Machete isn't absolutely perfect isn't much of a criticism against it. Against the vast majority of enemies in this game, it's dominant.

I generally find the Ritual Candles to be an (cheap and less effective) equivalent of Dark Horse. Let me explain. The Ritual Candles gets you +1 on roughly a fifth to a third of the Chaos Bag, so at best, it's equivalent to +0.2 to +0.33 static boost to all your stats, for 1 resource, which is not bad. For example, it's 25% of the Core Set's normal difficulty chaos bag.

I tend to find better than any other class just because they are the only class capable of using so easily all their slots (hands, arcane, body, accessory, ally), they have a level-0 to enough cards of each slot-filling type.

As of today (end of Carcosa), I don't think there's much level-0 cards to fill in your hand slots to begin with. investigators can actually use the Flashlight and the Knife but most of them do not need more combat (Agnes) or clue-gathering (Marie) abilities. So If you're looking to optimize slot-filling your investigator, you should definitely consider the Ritual Candles, at first.

However, though I think it's an underrated card, it certainly isn't top-tier, that's why I recommend swapping them as soon as possible with the Spirit Athame, since you're usually performing Spell tests anyway.

I think the FAQ

Any investigator at the same location as "Ashcan" Pete with Wracked by Nightmares in his threat area may trigger the to discard it, as per the FAQ [V1.0, section 2.1].

Is wrong, first it's section 1.2 in the newly released FAQ (V1.2), and it does state

An investigator is permitted to use triggered abilities ( , , and abilities) from the following sources:

• Any card that explicitly allows the investigator to activate its ability.

which it does not since Wracked by Nightmares reads

: Discard Wracked by Nightmare

and further

• A scenario card that is in play and at the same location as the investigator. is includes the location itself, encounter cards placed at that location, and all encounter cards in the threat area of any investigator at that location.

which also does not apply here, since this is not an encounter card.