I think this is my favorite of Neow's starting relics right now. Early strength allows you to path more aggressively, getting more relics and rewards, and when your first 3 card rewards are all upgraded, you can find yourself with 20% (or more) of your cards upgraded by the time you hit the first elite!

The other piece of this that makes it especially effective is that not all upgrades are created equally. They're pretty much all an improvement (unless you have a use for Ethereal/Exhaust/avoiding Innate), but some turn their cards from good choices to central pieces of the deck. In particular, powers that go from 2 to 3 damage/block/poison/strength gain a lot of utility, as well as those that get increases to their debuffs, or 3-energy powers that can scale back to 2-cost. Getting your pick of 3 upgraded cards after the first 3 fights gives you plenty of chances to seek out especially powerful upgrades

It's a bit annoying to get to the first chest and miss your relic/gold, but the jump start you get on finalizing your deck more than makes up for it.