Introduction and Themes
This guide is a largely spoiler-free guide that talks about the general mechanics of the Souls of Darkness fan-made campaign made by JackofHearts. If you're interested in learning what the campaign's unique mechanics are, and hearing suggestions for investigators and cards that are particularly well suited to the campaign, read on!
In Souls of Darkness, the investigator's snooping in an auction of relics soon leaves them embroiled in the plot of an ancient order of blood mages, as they attempt to stop the vampiric cult's plots.
General Mechanics
Blesses and Curses
The Souls of Darkness campaign uses Bless and Curse tokens. If you're already running bless tokens, you'll find more ways to generate them here - if you're already running curse tokens, you'll be happy to have your curse negation, but be aware you might not always be able to add all the curses you want into the bag.
Downtime and Fighting Rushes
Some of the scenarios involve a bit of downtime, where there are no enemies - fighters should be prepared to help get clues or support in some way during this downtime, so they're just not sitting around with nothing to do. Likewise, there are some truly terrifying bursts of enemies to deal with. Not only should your clue-focused characters be ready to fight (and often for more than just a single event!), and cards with big, dramatic effects can find a lot of use - multi-target attacks and mass evade tech is actually useful here.
Enemies at Range
The later half of the campaign especially has a lot of "acolyte" style enemies that can spawn away from you and make you run all over the place. Any ways to attack them at a range, or drag them to you, can save a lot of actions and keep you from running around. Likewise, cards that can remove them from the deck early and spawn them where you want might save you a lot of hassle.
Evading and Avoiding Enemies
At a few points in the campaign, there's enemies who you won't want to kill or need to hold off for a turn or two. Evasion will help, but ways that can move, discard, or otherwise remove enemies without using damage can be great here, which are often found with the Parley focused cards. Being able to move around enemies and get to further away goals or take longer paths can be another way of dealing with them.
Dealing with Damage and Horror
Souls of Darkness has a lot of damage and horror, and makes a new mechanic out of Siphon, which triggers when your investigator or one of your allies takes damage. You're going to want extra health soak outside of allies if it's available within your class, or if you can choose to soak for other people. This is also a case where just healing can come in handy, too, due to direct damage/horror and other effects that prevent soaking, as well as cards like Dodge that can avoid damage in other ways.
Lots of New Toys
The campaign begins in an auction for relics, and you'll get to take quite a few of them home. Not only are there a ton of story asset items, there's a handful of new allies to pick up, too. You won't need Charisma if you stick with just one extra ally thanks to special rules, but if you have other ways to dig items out of your deck or make extra use of them, you'll be well rewarded.