Afraid so. The icons at the bottom of a location tell you which locations you can move to. If you're on a Blue Triangle that has a Red Square at the bottom, but the Red Square doesn't have a Blue Triangle on its bottom, it's one way.

Having played further into TFA now, I'm back to say that it is really hard in true solo. I don't think I'll ever play it with less than two investigators from now on (I used to do two handed solo a lot but prefer the lonely feel of true solo).

It looks like it's at the 7 minute mark in the video. it can definitely be said that even with a full card pool, each campaign so far has been harder than the ones before. But that doesn't mean they're unplayable without past sets. It can be hard for long-time players to evaluate how essential past cards are because we take them for granted. I've been saying that it would be helpful to the community if some veterans of the game tried playing cycles with only cards from the core and the cycle (I'll be happy to try it once I get all my existing campaigns done). Just as an experiment, I threw together a few decks using only two cores and The Forgotten Age cards Leo Anderson Agnes Baker I haven't tried these, but that Leo one is very similar to the one I started my blind TFA run with. He did pretty well until getting perma-killed in the fourth scenario, but that was because of a dangerous player card that I chose to acquire earlier, not the scenario. So it's very possible to go straight to Forgotten Age and have valid decks. On the other hand, Calvin Wright builds tend to look very similar to each other, with cards that are largely from Dunwich and Carcosa. So not every TFA investigator will be easy. But he's pretty advanced to play anyway. And then again, I haven't built Calvin using all the TFA mythos packs, and I know there have been some good ones for him.

Given the timing of past deluxe announcements, I am anticipating the announcement in the next week or two. But with Forgotten Age ending in November (probably), don't expect the release until at least January.

I didn't think the original title was spoilery, since you were only asking whether it happens (and it doesn't). Frankly, the update is worse -- the possible spoiler is still there, and now it tells you which cycle it's spoiling. "Question about Peter Clover (spoilers)" should suffice. People who don't know who that is will know not to click.

Not for every scenario, but every cycle. For example, if Dunwich used Rats and no other campaign used it, you could forever keep Rats in your Return to Dunwich box. It's not just encounter sets, though. Forbidden Age uses locations from one of the core scenarios (which, okay, I guess technically is still an encounter set), and I'd say it's a sure bet that it will happen again.

I have no tips, but I can commiserate. I have yet to get more than four of the cultists. I'm REALLY confused at the amount of XP people talk about getting -- I'm pretty much always under five, usually less, but I also mostly play true solo.

How about this idea (edit: which I now see is kind of what rsdockery is getting at): the new encounter sets and the "Return to X" cards make this independent of the core. So the Return campaign then becomes a self-contained box, though it would still require the original Dunwich Legacy. Done that way, someone could technically just buy Dunwich and Return without owning a core, but who would do that?

It's worth noting that Carcosa and Forgotten Age were each announced within a week of the release of the previous cycle's fourth mythos pack... Edit: Oops, not quite. Blood on the Altar was the third mythos pack. Scenario number minus two equals mythos pack number.

I suppose that's true. If adding Naomi's Crew is meant as a catch-up, then making it seem like a penalty on the surface is some exceptional design.

No. It doesn't replace a card. When you purchase a card, you check to make sure your deck requirements are maintained. If they are not, then you have to remove a card. When you buy a Permanent, your requirements have not been violated, so no cards have to be removed.

I'm going to guess Chilling Cold and Nightgaunts get replacements. Chilling Cold doesn't make much sense in Miskatonic Museum (except for the art on Obscuring Fog, which is legacy art). Nightgaunts could be a more thematic enemy. I've always felt that not having Naomi's Crew in Blood on the Altar is meant to be a reward but in actuality makes the encounter deck harder, since the cards in Crew are almost all pretty easy. I wonder if that will be tweaked. I also wonder if we'll get more background on The Experiment and/or the Thralls. There's a lot of story implied, and I don't necessarily want everything explained (the bane of horror storytelling), but a few more hints would be cool.

This is beside the point, but such a product (which I'd love) wouldn't include basic weaknesses -- you're only supposed to use one set of those no matter how many cores you have.

That sounds about right. And yeah, I'm sure some of the replacements are for Dunwich encounter sets.

It appears that the replacement for Ancient Evils gives you the option (as a Peril) of drawing two more encounter cards instead of taking the Doom. Interesting choice.