Inscryption is a complicated and in some ways difficult game, fusing the deckbuilding, board game, and roguelike genres with puzzles and meta elements. To survive in this demanding environment the player will need every tool at their disposal, from cards to teeth to consumable items. Everything is precious, and nothing is wasted.
Amongst the player’s most valuable possessions are Boons, a handful of extremely powerful cards with unique effects that can dramatically change how the final boss battle of Act 1 goes. Each Boon is unique, and each can help a floundering deck to eke out a win or make an already solid deck even stronger. Given the variety of builds and routes through the game that is possible in Inscryption, it’s worth considering which of these Boons are best.
Updated September 4, 2022 by Patrick Armstrong: One of the most interesting aspects of Inscryption, aside from its mind-bending meta plot, is its use of items other than the basic creature cards to strengthen and complicate decks. While cutting cards with Scissors and making them fly with the Harpie’s Birdleg Fan may be more dramatic, Boons can have an effect that’s even more powerful despite its subtlety. The many strategies that become possible with these cards take time to learn, which is just one more thing that keeps players coming back to Inscryption.
6 Minor Boon Of The Bone Lord
Allows the player to start the battle with one bone. A Minor Boon, this card is obtained by sacrificing a standard creature during the Bone Lord event. Bones are the resource used to play certain creatures, and starting a match with additional resources is always a good thing, but the Minor Boon of the Bone Lord is just that: minor.
Since it takes multiple copies of this Boon before the player will notice much of a strategic difference, the Minor Boon of the Bone Lord is bottom tier in terms of value. Is it better to have than not have? Absolutely. Compared to all the proper Boons in the game, however, this minor one leaves much to be desired.
It’s typically not worth going out of one’s way to reach the Bone Lord event and receive the Minor Boon of the Bone Lord. If, however, the player can receive the boon without giving up a visit to a more valuable event (such as the Campfire or Mycologists), picking up this Boon can be worthwhile. This is particularly true if the player is running a deck heavy on cards with Bone costs, as even a minor resource boost is better than nothing.
5 Boon Of The Forest
Allows the player to start the battle with a Grand Fir on all of their spaces. A Grand Fir is a terrain card with 3 Health and the Mighty Leap Sigil. There are distinct pros and cons to having them on the board, which is part of what makes the Boon of the Forest one of the least useful Boons. With 3 Health and Mighty Leap allowing them to defend against the opponent’s Airborne creatures, the Grand Fir is excellent at stalling, providing a solid defensive wall between the player and their opponent. This wall gives the player time to draw and prepare for sacrifices.
Unfortunately, this wall of Grand Fir takes up spaces that would otherwise be inhabited by the player’s own creatures. This prevents the player from chaining together multiple, back-to-back creature placements. It also puts the player at the mercy of their opponent when it comes to where and at what speed they can place cards. If the only Grand Fir the opponent destroys happens to be on the edge of the board, for example, playing a card with Bifurcated Strike in the only available space wastes half that card’s strength.
The Boon of the Forest can be potent in decks that take unique advantage of its placement, but most of the time this Boon arguably does more harm than good to the average deck. If the player intends to use this Boon, they are best served by planning for its inclusion from the beginning so that they don’t find their own cards blocked by its defensive wall.
4 Boon Of The Bone Lord
Allows the player to start the battle with eight bones. The supersized version of its minor cousin, the Boon of the Bone Lord can make a massive difference in the utility of certain decks. Starting the match with eight bones can mean the difference between struggling to play one or two bone-cost creatures in the late game and playing a number of them, or one or two powerful ones, immediately.
Being able to field such creatures as soon as the match begins is obviously advantageous. The main thing holding the Boon of the Bone Lord back from true greatness is its somewhat niche appeal. Some decks use bone-cost creatures only a little or not, making some other Boons far more attractive.
Unlike the Minor Boon of the Bone Lord, this Boon is almost always worth pursuing if the player has a deck reliant on bones. This Boon also has good synergy with the Worthy Sacrifice Sigil, which causes creatures to produce three bones when slain instead of one, thus ramping up one’s creature drops all the more.
3 Boon Of Goat’s Blood
Allows the player to start the battle with a Black Goat on the board. The Black Goat has one Health, zero Power, the Worthy Sacrifice Sigil, and is a member of the Hooved Tribe. Though its stats are incredibly weak, the Black Goat is still a highly valuable card due to the Worthy Sacrifice Sigil, since cards with that Sigil can be sacrificed for three Blood instead of one.
Starting with the Black Goat without having to pay its own cost of one blood means the player is free to use all three blood to play other creatures, including expensive and powerful ones such as Grizzly and Urayuli. The Boon of Goat’s Blood and Boon of the Bone Lord are similar in that both accelerate the player’s early game, but the Boon of Goat’s Blood is better overall because the player is much more likely to have a deck dependent upon blood than one dependent upon bones.
The Black Goat also provides an advantage that a pile of bones doesn’t: it’s a creature, so it can be used for soft tanking in an emergency. Though the Black Goat can’t inherit traits like Many Lives that would given to other Black Goat cards to buff them, it’s still a fantastic and flexible addition to any battle.
2 Boon Of The Ambidextrous
Allows the player to draw twice at the beginning of their turn. As simple as it is impactful, the Boon of the Ambidextrous does a couple of important things for the player. The first is helping the early stage of the match tremendously by speeding up draws when getting cards on the board for sacrifices is most important.
The second is helping the player to find a specific card or combination of cards they’re looking for, by cutting the amount of time necessary to progress through the deck by half. Given that by the time the player has reached the final boss they most likely have a few cards upon which they are particularly dependent, almost nothing beats the Boon of the Ambidextrous for making sure the player’s plan comes to fruition.
The Boon of the Ambidextrous benefits small and large decks alike, enabling the player to move through large decks without being hampered as much by the glut of cards. If the player instead limits the addition of new cards and uses events like the Bone Lord and Mycologists to weed unneeded cards from their deck, the player can use the Boon of the Ambidextrous to essentially guarantee that they will draw their combo cards when needed.
1 Boon Of The Magpie’s Eye
Allows the player to choose which card from the deck they want when they draw, instead of drawing blindly. At the beginning of the game this card would have little impact, but by the end of the game–when the player’s deck has many cards and may depend heavily upon one or two of them–having the Boon of the Magpie’s Eye is in itself almost enough to ensure the final boss’s defeat.
Whether the player’s deck and strategy are centered around unkillable Cockroaches, replicating Beehives, or the strength of the player’s on Deathcards, the Magpie’s Eye allows the player to fetch what they want when they want it. When paired with the Boon of the Ambidextrous this card is even stronger, guaranteeing that the player can dictate the rhythm of the entire match and obliterate the boss.
The Boon of the Magpie’s Eye is in some ways a strategic reversal of the Boon of the Ambidextrous, since the former Boon is strongest when the player has many cards, whereas the latter is most potent when they have few. The pairing of these two Boons is one of the strongest in the game, but even by itself, the Boon of the Magpie’s Eye can turn an average deck into a great one.
Inscryption is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5, macOS, and Linux.
