At first glance... Ew no thank you but in chatting with friends I see surprising value in this. Note I'm not great at deck building but I love talking about it! mostly want to gather relevant cards to think about for discussion and deck building :)

Synergy Cards

First lets take a look at the cards that mitigate Ascetic then lets go into ways to use this.

Experience Gain

• In the Thick of It make it 13 exp at the start

• Refine

• Arcane Research

• Down the Rabbit Hole - auto take on mystics with Ascetic

• The Raven Quill

• Pelt Shipment

• Green Man Medallion - Jenny Barnes Only

  Investigators

• Father Mateo 5 free xp

• Kymani Jones 5 free xp

• Roland Banks alt 5 free xp

• Jenny Barnes reduced xp costs

• Skids O'Toole ignore weakness

• Joe diamond ignore weakness

Strategies

Have you met my identical cousin?

I don't like this strat but a friend mentioned it so I'll throw it out there. Use effects like Charon's Obol and get yourself defeated maybe using I'll see you in Hell! or Ghastly Revelation to get a bit more value from your defeat plus ensure you can trigger it at the last possible moment. This allows you to rebuild your investigator for every scenario. You'll never be great but if you know whats coming and wanna get meta you can be ready for that specifically. Like I said real weird not a fan but something you could do and gives a reason to take 2 cards that I imagine get very little play.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

As mentioned in other comments this is a solid, play by the rules, I died but lets not scuttle the campaign. Rare but nice way to continue in unfortunate events.

The Mentor Must Die

This is a solid one for teaching new players or to help round out a team. Survivors don't always need a lot of XP so having a survivor that helps carry while the team is coming into their own. Some investigators like Sister Mary heavily rely on XP to be functional so early missions can be a struggle. This arch-type can help pave the way for players that start slow. It could also be a great way to help new players get a crutch while they figure things out and feel really important and valued in later missions when the teacher starts falling off due to lack of experience.

Plans Within Plans - Wizardry Ascending

Mystics in particular have a lot of ways around the downsides of this card. 2 Arcane Research and Down the Rabbit Hole. These cards alone let you upgrade 4xp net worth when fully efficient. this can be 3xp on a spell and 1xp on any card, or 1 xp on 2 non-spells plus 2xp on a spell. so first scenario you could upgrade shriveling (0) to shriveling (3) plus a 1xp upgrade somewhere then the second scenario upgrade to shriveling (5) plus 2 other non-spell cards. Throw in some customizable cards to soak XP as needed and you are likely to always get value from all 4xp every scenario. All of this is guaranteed too. No slim pickings missions to stop your crawl to power. This will require a LOT of forethought in building your char though. Everything must be planned ahead of time or you'll get burned but a solid and interesting way to play a spell caster.

Conclusion

Way more nuance to this card than I initially thought. I'm actually tempted by that last archetype. I can see some fun play around this especially in helping new players find the same love for the game that I have. I hope this is helpful for people who want to see some fun and value in this card beyond a challenge all Ascetic team of investigators

Heartbreaking realization: String Along doesn't have the Trick trait, meaning that Rita Young can't take it. Granted, this isn't the end of the world, Rita's been on a winning streak the last few expansions (Dirty Fighting, Trick to the Plan, Lightfooted), but still, put it in the "Would be Amazing if Rita got Access to it" pile with Pickpocketing, Backstab, and Thieves' Kit.

This card does for Calvin Wright what no amount of soak can do: prevents him from dying to direct damage/horror. (You can't always draw Until the End of Time, and even that can only take so much of a beating.)

It's extra insurance against surprise bursts of damage once you've maxed out his statline, and if paired with the myriad A Glimmer of Hope / A Glimmer of Hope, you'll have a near-endless supply of discard fodder. Once his stats are 5s or more across the board, you may not need to be committing your Glimmers anymore; repurposing them to cancel incoming damage/horror can be very worth it.

Short Supply and/or Lucid Dreaming can help you get all three Glimmers into rotation faster, but since it usually takes a while to power Calvin up anyway, you should have some time to draw into them with the likes of Take Heart, Self-Sacrifice, and friends.

Grim Memoir is an underrated card that might see more use now that this card provides a path to recursion. This also reduces the cost of playing it. Daisy Walker can even use all 4 secrets before it expires.

And you still have free hand slots for Magnifying Glass or other tomes!

I feel like turning from Father Mateo into William Yorick will be extremely funny. Not only can you use Yorick's ability to infinitely pull your Codex and thus be able to recur anything in your graveyard instead of merely being limited to assets, but it lets Yorick wield some pretty good high end weapons.

Blessed Blade(4), Holy Spear, etc!

I do also find the idea of Daisy Walker turning herself into Mandy Thompson to be pretty humorous. Finally, pre-taboo 30 card Mandy is back! (with slightly different deckbuilding requirements, and no signatures, but hey.)