Depths of Yoth Review

You barely survived The City of Archives with your identity intact and now you awake, not in your comfortable bed, but halfway up an unfathomably tall staircase deep within the Earth. An ancient place. A place humanity has wisely left well alone. For here, in The Depths of Yoth, a long forgotten power still resides. 

But you will have to go quite a bit deeper yet. Unfortunately for you, the locals are non-too pleased with a couple of tourists bumbling about their sacred sites and loudly discussing their experiences with the local cuisine. Indeed, they’ll be chasing you down! The brand new ‘pursuit’ area will add quite significantly to the pressure as enemies build up there before joining you on the map.

Oh and I feel like I should mention that this is Yig’s realm, and he is pretty furious with you. All those tally marks you have steadily (or rapidly) accumulating will finally be coming home to roost. It feels bad, but actually might not be quite as bad as it feels. Yig may be furious but you might still be able to slip by to the true darkness beneath.

The Depths of Yoth is the car chase of Arkham horror scenarios. You’re looking to advance as quickly as possible while the monsters in pursuit attempt to slow you down, or better yet murder you. It is, after all a long way down. Very easy to ‘slip’ on one of those precariously thin bridges. Yoth: a health and safety nightmare.

Rating: Yoth Please

Player Cards

A fair subset of cards here let classes start to explore aspects of the game they tend not to be too interested in. Skeleton Key is a nice way to make clue finding vastly easier for the Rogues. The survivor’s, meanwhile, are just Winging It and maybe even more effective, letting you get two clues and playing it from your discard pile. The normally uptight Guardian’s are breaking out the Handcuffs! That’s a horrifying thought. These will lock down a single humanoid enemy for the rest of the game as an evasion attempt using strength. It even blocks doom which can be great against the more frustrating cultists but that makes it fairly scenario specific. Though they are really letting themselves go with Blood Eclipse! Self-harming for a mental attack! Leo might fancy a look in but after the beating I’d suffered this campaign, TLC was more what I was looking for.

Perhaps a nice Thermos of tea? A new neutral card with some pretty effective healing but my goodness they must have bought that from Fortnum & Masons – 4 resources!? Cripplingly expensive, but so is trauma I guess? Should your seeker be feeling ok, they can Feed the Mind at the risk of breaking it, though it is rather luck dependent. Speaking of luck, the Old Hunting Rifle could be an incredible find, 3 shots with +3 strength and 3 damage for mere 3 resources! Oh wow! Just a shame it is so prone to jamming. It’s one thing to get egg on your face, quite another when that egg will start eating it.

The cards just aren’t quite fitting together this set. The Colt Vest Pocket needs considerable support to make the most of its one round shooting spree. The Coup de Grace, while guaranteed damage, is only ever worth triggering at the very end of your turn. Though maybe that’s exactly what you need in those desperate straights when you don’t want to waste a whole bullet from your main weapon. Hemispheric Map is another intriguing one that sounds good on paper, but really not for the Forgotten Age with all its exploration mechanics. That said, by the end of a scenario it might make the difference. Finally Mists of R’lyeh certainly improves on it’s previous incarnation, but for 4 experience I find it hard to believe it will be taken over the usual Mystic suspects.

But then there’s Timeworn Brand, brandishing its awesomeness in the most timeworn of fashions. +2 strength and an extra point of damage for its most basic attack, rising to ludicrous heights with its once per game mega swing, especially if your wielder has the brains for it. It is not cheap, nor would you expect it to be, as it is clearly one of the game’s best weapons!

Spoilers

Finally your journey is coming to a conclusion but there is time for at least one more betrayal. Ichtaca’s eyes go a curious shade of yellow and she turns her bow upon you. Depending on what relationship you’ve managed to build with her at least. As usual, if you are not solidly in a state (forging your own path, or Ichtaca’s faith restored) you are left bewildered. Oh, she was working for Yig all along… why? Only with the context of the other threads, ones somewhat harder to achieve, will you learn that the serpents want the Relic too, their dreams of restoring the old world of Valusia driving them. And their God, Yig, reaching out to push Ichtaca into leading you and the relic down here, to the Nexus.

Speaking of Yig… as if the normal caleidoscope of coiled killers wasn’t enough, the Great Old One himself is in attendance. But rather than some intergalactic scale threat Yig simply feels like a vast and powerful monster. In other words, it feels reasonable for him to show his ugly face in an Arkham Horror scenario (I’m looking at you, end of Dunwich!) While a terrifying creature in his own right, Yig inspires brutal fury in his followers: you cant even hope to damage him while a serpent is with him and the Pit Wardens specialise at being with the big boy. 

But… that’s all ok. This is a scenario of flight, not confrontation. Indeed, keeping the roaming bands of overpowered monsters at bay is the only hope you have of surviving. This is a city of serpents! They are going to overwhelm you at some point! Your aim is to get as deep as possible into the scenario, tracked by a literal depth count on the scenario card.

Each ‘depth’ starts with you at a single location, and demands you explore to find the Steps of Yoth, the path to the greater depths or, as I like to call them, a staircase. Finding the staircase completely resets the map, you are on a different floor after all. But be careful! Any investigators not at the staircase when the group advance are immediately defeated! This scenario will take some serious coordination, especially once Yig gets involved and avoiding the hunters becomes even more important.

The various enemies chasing you get shifted into the new ‘pursuit area’, to be added to the map again by an encounter card or the agenda deck. They really control the intensity of the scenario this way. Initially, not too much is likely to find you but as the unusually thick agenda deck advances the pursuing creatures will be upon you all the faster. 

The agenda deck is the real embodiment of Yig’s fury. Before you even begin play you strip away agenda cards according to the amount of ‘fury’ you’ve accumulated across the campaign so far. Eating dramatically into the time you have available, though there are a couple of things that keep this from being truly disastrous. Firstly, the early agenda cards have low doom thresholds anyway, and secondly you don’t need to make it all the way to the bottom to survive the scenario, although it helps.

In the all too likely event that you are caught or defeated you are thrown from the heights (however high they may be) into the inky blackness that was ultimately your destination anyway. Should you be too high up when this happens you are rightly left as little more than a puddle of vaguely recognisable body parts. But get past the first couple of levels and merely you’ll take a serious injury which, by this point in the campaign, feels little more than par for the course. It is honestly astonishing how many long drops your investigators are capable of surviving…

Once again the various expedition equipment comes into play at the different locations you’ll find, meaning everywhere will bring a nice bonus or the anguish of an item left at home. The rope seems particularly excellent, giving you a once per game opportunity to descend an extra level at the staircase, by itself probably saving you from an untimely death.

The scenario ends as Yoth is left behind, now not even its maleficent glow around you to light your way. The darkness is absolute. Though even here, there are learnings to be had if you are in the right state, and have the right equipment. If not, then… well… you really are in the dark, aren’t you?

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Our copy of City of Archives was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can pick up a copy for £14.99 RRP from your local hobby store.

Previous scenario: City of Archives