Research Mechanics - How to choose your HQ and Skills?

This is a copy of my guide from Reddit on research mechanics. It will help you choose your Reason and Passion skills along with Headquarters to maximize your research potential!

Intro

This guide explains how to choose Reason and Passion Skills as well as HQ in order to be able to complete Research as effectively as possible. It's a copy of my old guide from Reddit (thanks u/Vouru for proposing posting it here!) with a few additions.

Types of Research Challenges

These are all Challenges that are present when upgrading Lore:

• Knowledge – deliver Erudition or use a Library,
  
• Intuition – deliver Glimmering or use a Sanctuary,
  
• Illumination – deliver Fascination (which might breed), use Rarefied Mind or use a Library,
  
• Grim Lesson – deliver Fascination (which might breed), use Silent Intensity or use a Pit,
  
• Paradoxical Resolution – deliver Passion (which may be damaged), use Open Soul or use a Sanctuary,
  
• Obsessive Research – deliver Reason (which may be damaged), use Never-No or use a Library,
  
• Practical Experiment – deliver Health (which might be injured) or deliver a Prisoner. I will not mention it again because you can't use a Skill or HQ to satisfy it.

Reason and Passion Skills

The main problem with with Skills is that they are mutually exclusive, so you can't have both Rarefied Mind and Silent Intensity as well as both Never-No and Open Soul. You will also need any Lore of the following aspects to upgrade them:

• Rarefied Mind – Forge, Knock, Lantern
  
• Silent Intensity – Winter, Edge, Secret Histories
  
• Never-No – Heart, Moth
  
• Open Soul – Grail, Knock

Headquarters

There are three types of Headquartes:

• Library – Morland's Shop
  
• Sanctuary – Heterodox Church or Candle-lit Mithraeum
  
• Pit – A Darkened Warehouse or House Violet

Underlined Headquarters are Secret, which gives a 30% chance to destroy a Reputation card every time they're used. Note that the Library is the only HQ type which cannot be Secret.
You can change your HQ throughout the game, however abandoned HQ are no longer usable.

Setups

These setups are sorted by the type of HQ used.

1. Library, Silent Intensity and Open Soul. The only Challenge not satisfied by these is Intuition, for which you'll need Glimmering.
   
2. Sanctuary, Never-No and any Reason Skill. Depending on which Reason Skill you choose, you'll need to deliver Fascination for Illumination or Dread for Grim Lesson. Additionally, you'll need Erudition for Knowledge.
   
3. Pit, Rarefied Mind and any Passion Skill. Depending on which Passion Skill you choose, you'll need to deliver Reason for Obsessive Research or Passion for Paradoxical Resolution. Additionally, you'll need Erudition for Knowledge and Glimmering for Intuition.

As you can see, the Pit setup is objectively the worst – it leaves a chance to damage your Skill and requires generating Erudition and Glimmering. The remaining two are a matter of personal preference, depending on whether you care about Secret HQ or not.

[vitez_vaddiszno]

@Kasa

It is not wasteful in the case of the Sanctuary. If you keep 1 HQ throughout the entire game, then the other potential HQs are, essentially, an unutilized resource, which is exactly what wasteful is. There are, however, multiple Sanctuaries. Swapping a Heterodox Church to a random other HQ then swapping it to Mithraeum loses you literally nothing. Only that you cannot use your HQ in that 2 minutes. But in the end, you get to keep a Sanctuary-type HQ all the same.

If you have Damning Evidence plus 2 Notorieties on board, and you need to do something drastic, and let's say, there are lot of Mystiques on board so Heart cultists are unreliable... then a double HQ swap is very beneficial.

Using Church - whatever - Mithraeum is strictly better than using only Mithraeum. It's the same outcome with 2 less Notoriety, at the end of the day.

[Kasa]

@vitez_vaddiszno

Swapping HQ just to lose Notoriety is a extremely wasteful action as there are many ways to get rid of it without swapping HQ so that entire point is moot.

And there is "Priest build" that's a scenario with it's own challenges. If you are going for a traditional ascension then nothing really beats Library, the other scenarios have their own goals that may or may not be bettered served by the different HQs.

[vitez_vaddiszno]

Note: even though the Library setup seems best, the Sanctuary setup has advantages.

1. Even with the Library setup, some Lores/Lore combos have both Knowledge and Illumination requirements, and you can only use the Library once. So you have to provide either Erudition or Fascination.

2. With the Library setup, you cannot swap headquarters. If you do, you cripple your skillset. But with the Sanctuary setup, you can swap Temporary HQs with the Heterodox Church (1 Cold Trail), and once you have multiple Notorieties, swap it for a different HQ (2 Cold Trails) then immediately swap it for the Mithraeum for a total of 3 Cold Trails. That's 3 Notorieties cleaned up. Plus you still end up with a secret Headquarters in the end. Just make sure to use the Church first and finish with the Mithraeum.

Sanctuary is especially good for a Priest build, since he already starts with a Heterodox Church, and gains another one with the Abandoned Church.

[Kasa]

Thanks for re-posting your guide here! It makes it much easier to find then searching a 5 year old reddit post.