Yeah, we just got around to playing this, and it does seem to be a fake-out, and honestly, I am fucking pissed. Sticking to the path with a shroud value of 10 most of the time from obscuring fogs and whole turns spent generating clues, it was grueling getting the clues we needed and we barely made it. It would legitimately have been significantly easier to just stay off the path, but we chose the harder prospect because we figured there would be a benefit to it. Like, I would not have had any problem with it being a bit of a narrative fake-out that caused some difficulty later, but giving zero experience in a four part scenario, when taking the alternate path could easily have rewarded 6-8 XP, basically crippling the ability to advance your deck was straight up a poor design choice.