Library Of Ruina

Library Of Ruina

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The Library and You. Beating Guests the Easy Way
By snek
Some advice on starting out in Library of Ruina, and how to build decks for late/end game early access content. (Accurate as of patch 1.0.1.0) (Now updating for patch 1.0.1.1)
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Some Introduction
Deck building and how to prepare yourself right before heading into a fight is crucial for not losing over and over. This doesn't just mean what pages you use, this is also down to what cards you use for each character and thinking about how they synergize with the decks they are on, and the characters present in each fight. The most obvious example of this is Olga's page, revolving around a deck of cards built solely for it and it alone thanks to the passive it has.

Early game can be pretty tough starting out, but there are ways to ease it up which hopefully I can describe despite being unfamiliar with the new early game, since I had started on release day.

The intention of this guide is to help with figuring out the early game and how combat mechanics work, as well as giving advice for deck building and picking cards which is of particular importance in later sections of the game, which is something I've seen people have had issues with.

Please note this guide is very much so a work in progress, as is the nature of build guides and a game that updates regularly. Suggestions are welcome for standout cards, decks and builds, as well as advice for newer players.
What's a Speed Dice?
Library of Ruina has a relatively complex means of handling turn order via the use of a dice roll on how fast someone will be. The value affects some pretty interesting things and makes combat fluid and also manipulable by the player to give yourself an edge.

Speed Dice affects the following:
  • How fast a character moves across the screen (a character that rolled a 5 moves much faster than a character that rolled a 1)
  • If you can manipulate opponent attack directions or not (your speed dice roll must be higher than the opponents to redirect their attack)

How Does Speed Dice work when there are multiple Speed Dice?
Speed Dice on a character will go from highest value to lowest, i.e. a 5 will take priority to a 3
Speed dice of same value will go from left to right

As an example, say you have 5 speed dice and you rolled the following

[4] [5] [3] [4] [1]

Take the rules above and you will act on the 5 first, then the leftmost 4, then the other 4, then the 3, then the 1.

Forcing one-sided attacks on the opponent
Take the following example:
I am facing a certain big lump of flesh and I messed up the charge phase, he currently has his big attack coming but luckily my librarian at the back of my party rolled higher than him!
I force him to target my backline librarian while having my other librarians target him for their first attacks.
One of my librarians intercepts him in the battle phase and engages in a one-sided attack that does just enough damage to stagger him, hooray I'm no longer gonna die!

What that is an example of is using backliners to force one-sided attacks by your frontline librarians, this is because if characters collide with each other they'll end up fighting if one was intercepting. This is a pretty niche thing to do but it exists and it shows how heavily you can manipulate turn order in LoR.

If your opponents are slow enough, you can safely use one librarian to stuff attacks from two different opponents generally, as they'll move to their first opponent and conduct a clash before going to their second for another clash. (If the second had successfully intercepted, it will be a 1-sided attack as you're still moving for your first attack and you assigned your second attack to the second opponent)

What happens if the opponent has higher speed dice?
As far as I'm aware whatever page you use for the dice targeted will be what is used for the clash no matter what, I'm not sure if there are cases where the opponent can cause 1-sided attacks this way as I'll have to figure this out a bit more.

My current theory on this is that it works the same way as it does against attacking opponents who also use two speed dice.
If you are targeting their second dice and you attack them while they're still trying to reach for their first dice's target, you will hit them with a 1-sided attack.
With this in mind, I'd expect it to operate the same way on your opponent's end.
Getting through the early game
Early game can be a tough time, so here is some advice i can personally give.

Level up your pages
Levelling your pages is pretty important, this gives you more HP and SP that can help turn the tide in a fight, every page starts at Lvl 1 and ends at Lvl 20, gaining a couple of changeable passives along the way that boost a couple things by a small amount with a percentage chance.
You can level up pages by either resolving them or by using them in fights as seen in the image below, longer fights will give more XP.

XP gained from fighting Rats vs Zwei Crew Part 1

Generally the better a page is, the more points it will need for realisation but also the more points it will give if used in realisation. I personally found that even in early game it didn't take much to level pages up thanks to the amount of combat and the number of pages gained for each book burnt.

Don't be shy about burning books either! You get a large number of pages from books and pages contribute a lot to XP! Generally grinding for certain pages and cards will net you large amounts of trash pages that you can use for resolving to level up fast!

Limited (purple) grade pages are your friend
Limited pages are universally a major step-up from Hardcovers, having significantly better resistance coverage (usually having a single damage and stagger weakness vs multiple), you will want to switch into these the moment you get them.
The only true drawback with Limited pages is you can only equip one of each Limited per floor, this means you can use any spares you have to also fill out other floors you may have too.

The first few Limited pages you get are
  • Yun (Yun's Office Part 3)
  • Mo (Brotherhood of Iron)
  • Taein (Hook Office)
These may take a while to roll due to the randomness of book burning, though I'd personally advise to get generally the newest Limited/Objet grade pages for your main floor ASAP from then on (Particularly those with two speed dice!).
What cards should I look for?
This section is still a work in progress, but you can find the rest of the cards I'll be covering at the bottom of this section
There are many cards present in the game even in early access, so it can be overwhelming to think about how to tinker with your deck, there are of course, much like other card games, cards which stand out above the rest.
Some may eventually end up outdated, but these are generally good for their grade, and you can expect to see good use from them even later than when you first got them.

E-Endure (Brotherhood of Iron)
  • 1-Cost
  • 2-5 block dice
  • 3-4 block dice, apply paralysis on clash win on next scene
  • 1-3 blunt dice, apply paralysis on hit next scene
The card with the longest staying power so far in the game, by far one of the best 1-cost cards thanks to having good dice distribution and a powerful effect.

Paralysis is an extremely powerful status effect that weakens X number of dice on next scene, where X is the number of paralysis stacks. This hard counters a large swath of cards and is almost always guaranteed to get the final paralysis hit off to net you one stack, which is generally good enough.

That single paralysis stack is good enough to stuff up a lot of your opponents actions, letting you take full advantage of their weakness.

This is also an outright hard counter to Tomerry's Welcome To Love Town card, the first block dice of E-Endure stuffs the dodge roll of WTLT, and the 2nd block dice always beats the attack dice which is exactly what you want (as that applies a +5 strength buff to all on hit, which you absolutely do not want), the final hit of E-Endure will also hit too, giving you two paralysis stacks for free.

Cooking Prep (Pierre's Bistro)
  • 1-Cost
  • 4-4 block dice
  • 3-5 pierce dice, on hit apply 2 bleed
Another strong 1-Cost, the two dice used will generally beat a number of other 0 and 1-costs, and can also beat some 2-costs.
Bleed can be a deadly status effect especially when used in conjunction with other effects, such as the Sanguine Desire Abnormality page on Hod's floor which doubles the number of stacks applied.
Bleed heavily punishes opponents that use a large number of attack dice (Stray Dogs, Tomerry, EGO Philip phase 2) as it applies damage equal to the number of bleed stacks per attack, with coordination this results in enemies outright killing themselves by attacking you.

Taste My Flaming Bat!
Strong defensive 1-cost that inflicts burn, great for soaking damage.
Burn acts as a damage-over-time effect that lingers unlike bleed, making it a more slow-but-consistent way of dealing chip damage.

To add details on:
Taste My Flaming Bat!
Suppress
Blade Whirl
Retaliation
Wait Up!/Loosen Up
Scratch That!
Brawl
Full Stop to Life
Observe/Wrath of Torment/Opportunity Spotted
Sharpen Blade/Clean Up
Sparking Spear
Searing Sword and Feather Shield
Branching Paths! Where do I go?
Spoilers for fight lengths and some mechanics!
This section is slight spoilers in terms of fight lengths and some mechanics, I've made sure to leave out any major spoilers though.

After facing Zwei you will find yourself to have different paths to take! This starts out as just two on the Urban Legend section but turns into 4 different paths on the Urban Plague section, some of these fights are significantly harder than others!

From my current knowledge of the difficulty of each fight, without spoiling their contents I'd suggest the following order (if possible, can someone verify if this order is possible)

Urban Legend:
  • 1) Molar Office, 1 Act fight, has a great Objet d'art page
  • 2) Stray Dogs, 2 Act fight, I'd recommend getting a second floor beefed up by now (Your first floor should be at this point a Mars, Olga and Walter, your reserve second floor should be something like Walter, Rain, Lulu)

Urban Plague
  • 1) Carnival, 1 Act fight, the thing to watch out for is their passive ability and their 4-cost (You should have an Olga, Gyeong-Mi, Mars and Walter for your main floor now, maybe you have Gyeong-Mi and Walter users on your extra floors too!)
  • 2) Full-Stop Office, 1 Act fight, watch out for the ranged weapon gimmick!
  • 3) Dawn Office, 1 Act fight, tough, but has a great Objet d'art page and some great cards too
  • 4) Gaze Office, 1 Act fight, shouldn't be too hard but has some nice cards and a okay Limited page
  • 5) Kurokumo Clan, 2 Act fight, can be pretty tough due to the powerful cards the Clan use but the great cards and the amazing Sayo page makes it easily worth it.
  • 6) Musicians of Bremen, 1 Act fight, in my opinion the hardest non-boss fight due to the large number of buffs and debuffs the Musicians use, has good cards and a strong 2-speed dice Limited page
  • 7) Wedge Office, 2 Act fight, 2nd act is a boss fight, both must be done in a single floor. You can lose the 2nd Act and keep the books from the first, letting you take a chance at getting the Objet page from this fight which in itself is really good. The boss from this encounter is honestly easier than Love Town.
  • 8) Love Town, 2 Act fight, 2nd act is boss fight, the boss from this is easily the hardest boss currently available due to having minions and a more annoying gimmick to handle, by this point you should have two floors of 4-man groups both with every librarian having double speed dice.

Urban Nightmare
  • 1) Shi Association - Really hard second act but thankfully you have two floors and the pages from this are absolutely worth it (1 Objet and 2 2-speed Limited pages!), they both have insanely good cards and passives and are otherwise great for levelling up pages to 30.
  • 2) Puppets - 3 Acts, 3 Floors, all 3 acts have 5 enemies, I'd advise you to get three 4-man floors up to a modern build and at level 30 for each page, I'd suggest try to do the first two acts with one reserve floor, and wipe the 3rd act with your death squad floor (which should be a Yujin, Sayo, Oscar and Salvador imo). Start with your weakest reserve floor and work your way up.
A preface to decks and deckbuilding
Please note that most of this is my own subjective experience with using these decks and how I feel about them. I've personally had a lot of use from these though you may find you have more optimal decks.
If you do have deck suggestions, please suggest them, I'm open to any sort of suggestions for strong decks/complete floors.

Decks I'll be covering:
Standard Olga deck
Bleed Sayo deck
Brawl deck
Zwei deck using Walter page
Pierce deck using Oscar page
Burn deck using Salvador page
Buffing deck using Meow page
Walter Zwei Deck
A pretty solid older deck in my eyes until you start going to the later fights where you can get more specific builds.
Page used: Walter
Deck used:
3x Wait Up! or Loosen Up
1x Guardian, Riposte, Blade Whirl, Suppress, Retaliate, Tailoring

OR

3x Wait Up! or Loosen Up
1x Taste My Flaming Bat!, Guardian, Combat Prep, Blade Whirl, Suppress, Retaliate




Advantages:
  • Very strong defensively thanks to Your Shield passive, makes it an extremely good choice for a defence-focused aggro pulling deck
  • Doesn't need a specific page to be truly great, will just be strong regardless of what page is used
  • Variety of buffs and debuffs, which can be helpful, particularly the paralysis from Blade Whirl


Disadvantages:
  • DPS not as good as Olga or Brawl decks, or other dedicated fights for that matter.
  • Has issues with burning through hands, though build changes to include Sparking Spear and such is a large boon.
  • Double weakness to Blunt damage, can melt pretty fast against undefended blunt strikes

The first 2-dice page to come out, I find it's still good for a reserve team that has to contend with a Tomerry below 50% HP thanks to a defensive focus that lets it pull aggro for others to blast Tomerry with one-sided attacks.

Recently with the release of new cards such as Feather Shield, I think this deck is more relevant again as an aggro taker deck thanks to Feather Shield's more consistent output and the fact that it's a 2-cost. Sparking Spear + Clean Up work well in light gen and draw engine purposes too.


Deck used:
1x Wait Up!
1x Rules of the Backstreets
1x Cumulus Wall
2x Clean Up
1x Sparking Spear
2x Feather Shield
1x Crack of Dawn

Not as good damage as other decks, but it functions well as a defensive wall with Walter's bonus, focus on getting Block Mastery for replaceable passives.
Brawl Deck
The classic deck
Strongest floor to use: Malkuth (Happy Memories can let you reduce the cost of Brawl, making it significantly more abusable)
Page used: Generally any can work
Deck used:
2x Wait Up! or Loosen Up
2x Of any card, personally I use Sparking Spear for good damage and deck cycling
3x Brawl
1x Scratch That!
Advantages:
  • Can have some insanely high damage output when you have a good hand setup/good luck, as Brawl can roll Scratch That! for insane damage or into another Brawl card for high damage with light gen included
  • Doesn't need a specific page to be truly great, will just be strong regardless of what page is used


Disadvantages:
  • High risk of having dead hands from my experience, you can end up with multiple turns where it's a major waste to use Brawl, Sparking Spear can lessen this issue by letting you cycle your deck faster for more Brawls and Scratch That!
  • You'll generally burn through hands fast, with the release of Sparking Spear this issue isn't as bad as it was, but you may find yourself without a card to play at unfortunate moments.

The first deck that was non-page specific that had a lot of power, I've personally found its starting to fall on the wayside a little as more consistent decks come out. I've stopped using it on my main floor as I use a Sayo, Oscar, Olga and Salvador all of which have their own little decks to use, but it's still strong on my reserve team floors.
Olga Discard Deck
Probably the most consistent deck there is in terms of building it, there isn't much variation to this as you exploit the light gen power of Wait Up! and the passive of Olga's page (Margin).
Page used: Olga's page (Objet d'art grade)
Deck used:
  • 3x Wait Up! (WU!)
  • 3x Gamble
  • 3x Daring Decision (DD)
Advantages:
  • Generally very consistent high damage deck, Daring Decision will generally beat almost all other cards while Wait Up has no risk of being wasted due to the light gen being on use rather than on hit
  • Since the light and emotion update this deck has even less risk, if you end up with a hand with DD but no WU! you can still use DD and not have to wait next turn thanks to the extra light you will have from each emotion level
  • Olga page in itself is an extremely strong page, having no weakness and also a damage and stagger resist to pierce attacks

Disadvantages:
  • You won't always get the ideal hand of DD and WU!, you may end up with a Gamble + WU! or worst case 2x WU!, Gamble is still a strong card but you may end up with some moments of having a bad hand due to draw RNG.
  • Pure raw damage, has no real synergies or effect that can be used

Gamble can be swapped for another card of your choosing, preferably a 1-cost to stay neutral in the event you get a hand with neither WU! nor DD. Though Gamble is probably one of the strongest 1-costs for such purpose and also lets you continue to use the Margin passive after recovering from a stagger (as you'll have 3 cards instead of 2, Gamble will throw away the 3rd).
Sayo Bleed Deck
Extremely powerful bleed deck that has both draw power and light gen, this is the deck Pierre looks up to
Recommended floor to use: Hod (for bleed stack maximisation via Sanguine Desire, though remains a powerful deck on other floors)
Page used: Sayo's page (Limited grade)
Deck used:
2x Rules of the Backstreets
2x Clean Up
2x Sharpened Blade
2x Dark Cloud
1x Ink Over
Advantages:
  • Insanely high amount of bleed damage, even without use of Sanguine Desire you can expect to see around 6 bleed minimum on a single target if hit with both cards from the Sayo page user
  • Sharpened Blade + Clean up is an extremely strong 3-cost combo that is effectively free thanks to Clean Up's on-use effect. Sharpened Blade turns both cards into extremely powerful cards that can deal double digit damage per turn even before taking bleed into account
  • Large amounts of hand sustain thanks to Battle Ready (start with 6 cards instead of 4) and continued sustain via Rules of the Backstreets, letting you use double pages for far longer
  • High single damage option with Ink Over available
  • Probably the best deck for boss killing that also works in normal fights thanks to bleed punishing heavy attack dice use (both bosses as of writing make use of large amounts of attack dice especially in their final phase)
  • Due to being a Limited page, you can use it on every floor! Great considering its strengths and the fact that it has 2 speed dice


Disadvantages:
    • Extremely dedicated to slash damage, you may find the deck loses use in possible future fights due to resistances to slash (bleed will still fully apply though)
    • Damage weakness to Blunt, I personally don't find this as much of an issue that a stagger weakness would be, but that is mostly my opinion
    • Ink Over might not be as good of an option as I currently think it might be, harder to use in conjunction with Clean Up to generate light due to being a 4-cost, you can swap it out if you want
    • Not truly optimal on floors other than Hod

I've had a lot of fun with this deck ever since its release, it has a great amount of sustain and light generation with large amounts of damage and bleed applied each turn, giving it a DPS comparable to an ideal-situation Brawl deck or pre-nerf Olga decks
This page becomes an absolute monster on Hod's floor thanks to Sanguine Desire, letting you easily reach double digits in bleed stacks which will shred through both regular opponents and bosses alike.


Personal Notes:
I'm not sure how the effect for Dark Cloud works, does it apply to slash attacks from ALL of your characters or just the user? This is something I'll need to check.
Salvador Burn Deck
A deck with good light gen and draw engines, focus on burn for additional damage and bonuses to stagger.
Page used: Salvador's Page (Objet d'art grade)
Deck used:
2x Wait Up!
2x Flash of Sunup
1x Butterfly Slash (Can replace with Feather Shield once you get it)
1x Full Stop to Life (Replace with Searing Sword)
2x Sunset Blade (Can replace with Searing Sword)
1x Crack of Dawn


Advantages:
  • Strong at focusing down one target at a time, the passive stagger bonus on burned targets leads to targets attacked by Salvador users to get staggered extremely fast
  • Searing Sword hits extremely hard in general, matches Sunset Blade in terms of burn stacks and will likely beat it in terms of total stagger most of the time
  • Good defensive options with both Feather Shield and Crack of Dawn
  • Protection is nice to have in terms of survivability

Disadvantages:
  • DPS is low once it has to focus on drawing via Flash of Sunup, DPS I find can be very up-and-down throughout a fight.
  • Sunset Blade is pretty bad for anything other than maximising stagger damage output
  • Light generally has to be carefully managed due to top-heavy nature and only two light gen cards.

A pretty powerful deck focused around exploiting bonus stagger damage to cause staggers fast than can be followed up with hard hitters like Searing Sword. Burn is great for stacking on additional chip damage.
Meow Buffing Deck
A deck focused around buffing with Observe (+Loosen Up for additional light) then using Wrath of Torment and Opportunity Spotted. This is also complemented with a buffing card for allies to also give them an edge too.
Page used: Meow
Best Floor: Yesod? (Metallic Ringing AND Chained Wrath both boost blunt) or Hod? (Glitter on a Meow that used Observe earlier will result in allured opponents running to their death)
Deck used:
2x Loosen Up
2x Opportunity Spotted
1x Unforgettable Melody
1x Sparking Spear
2x Observe
1x Wrath of Torment


Advantages:
  • Hits like a freight train, Observe followed into a Wrath of Torment + Opportunity Spotted combo will generally instakill anything that isn't a boss, and will rip apart anything that is a boss
  • Strength buffing from passive and Unforgettable Melody will let your librarians win clashes more often and can give that slight edge
  • Neutral or better typing to all damage and stagger types, is practically borderline between a Limited and Objet d'art in terms of resistances
  • Focus on Blunt damage ensures Improv Drumming almost always procs
  • Moving up an emotion level lets you essentially spew out WoT + Opportunity Spotted guaranteed next turn if they're in your hand, Observe + LU! is great for generating emotion from clashes.

Disadvantages:
  • Deck has no means of life regen, this doesn't matter at the moment since fights end fast but the life cost from WoT may become costly as fight lengths increase
  • Can dead hand pretty badly due to 3x 3-costs and generally being a very top-heavy deck

Hit like a tank, and live like a tank because winning clashes means you don't get hit at all, can work extremely well with another librarian that has paralysis-causing cards to make the WoT + OS combo near enough guaranteed.
Oscar Pierce Deck
A deck with good light gen and draw engines, focus on burn for additional damage and bonuses to stagger.
Page used: Oscar's Page (Objet d'art grade)
Can have use on Netzach's floor thanks to Tentacles.
Deck used:
2x Wait Up!
1x E-endure
1x Clean Up
1x Upbeat Performance (could replace with another Clean Up?)
2x Sparking Spear
1x Transpierce
1x Collision


Advantages:
  • Unrelenting can be a lifesaver, passive activation is -25 to all damage outright upon taking what would be a killing blow, can exploit this to lure high damage attacks into targeting a low health Oscar user to waste said attacks
  • Focusing on pierce for main attacks results in great damage and stagger
  • Good draw power and light gen through Sparking Spear, Wait Up and Clean Up
  • High power option with Transpierce combined with a cost-effective option with Collision.

Disadvantages:
  • Can have issues against enemies that resist Pierce
  • Only a single endured type, compared to other Objet d'art pages which have two

Strong attack power with a good emergency defence option in the form of Unrelenting. Sparking Spear and Clean Up make for a strong combo that combines great damage, draw power and zero effective light cost.
Yujin MOTIVATION Deck
This is gonna be a rush job since the update just came out, but I can fix this later

PAGE: Yujin
DECK:
3x To Overcome Crisis
3x Faint Memories
2x Sparking Spear
1x Boundary of Death OR Ink Over

In my small amount of testing, the info is the following
Advantages
  • You will NEVER have a dead hand, you simply never have light or page issues thanks to the huge amount of Hand Drive and Light Drive you have, use TOC for one-sided attacks for free page draws.
  • Hits like a freight train, Faint Memories finally has a use, and it has an insane evade roll (4-10) on top of some really good damage (2x 4-8), the 0-cost deals decent damage too
  • Boundary of Death is essentially a 2-cost thanks to Overbreathing, it has a 25% chance of basically an instakill or instastagger otherwise
  • You can swap BoD with Ink Over, since this can handlock incredibly fast through TOC and SS spam, you can easily push max damage with Ink Over while only paying 2 light instead of 4

Disadvantages???
  • Well, the Deflect Assault passive can lead to you eating the clash lose cards from Love Town? I can't think of much else.
  • Yujin page has pretty low health for an Objet, sitting at 61 HP at Level 30, you also shouldn't use the Combat Symbols that raise HP unless it brings it to a multiple of 4, because you risk rounding up and going over the 25% boundary.
  • Not nearly as optimal as the handlock deck that exploits C-Charge Up! explained in the other guide on here by R. Anakova, for guaranteed BoD every other turn (but I fully expect that to get fixed by PM) Turns out that method doesn't work, rip.

Finally, a page perfect for Vergil, what a crazy power spike this page is.

You can use this with any of the 2-dice Shi pages in fact, with generally from best to worst being Yujin > Tenma > Valentin in my opinion.
Tenma has a means of getting an Olga-like light boost, but instead you gain light from the passive by using up all your light, meaning you go back to 2 light next turn. This is somewhat difficult to pull off but you can do this by replacing the 4-cost here with a 3-cost so at EL 2 you can run the 3-cost + Faint Memories/Sparking Spear then next turn TOC to go back to 5-light, and repeat.
Valentin can make strong use of cards like Shocking Blow, Harsh Notes, etc, but this means you're only running single dice cards, which aren't particularly effective.

Something of note is that the Limited pages do not round up to a multiple of 4 at level 30, so you'll have the issue of potentially rounding over above 25%, use Combat Symbols such as Pied Piper (+1 HP), Ironclad Brother (-1 HP, +1SP) and Hotblooded Brawler (+3 HP) to manipulate your HP to a multiple of 4.

What Floor?
There's a lot of variation you can do according to what floor you use with these thanks to their extreme health.
Malkuth: Can either run a suicide bomb setup using Footfalls, or you can create a hypertank through the Fairy Festival abnormality pages
Netzach: Same can go here with either Teardrop or Token of Friendship
Yesod: Since you have a high degree of blunt damage thanks to Faint Memories, you can make use of Metallic Ringing
Keter: Aspiration is a simple HP boost and a speed increase, which can make Flashing Strike viable in use, Pulsation however is a terrible idea

There's room for decks that make use of health restore abno pages to make a hypertank that can constantly spam Wrath of Torment (light permitting, obviously) too, this does mean a more standard deck that can't make use of TOC and such.
Puppet Skull Cracking Deck (wip)
I haven't had a good thought over the Limited Puppet page so this is mostly a filler section for now.

The new limited is looking really solid if you focus on Blunt damage, it'll deal tons of stagger and has a better chance of winning clashes thanks to +1 to dice power on Blunt attacks.
Repressed Flesh is pretty good for a gold card, solid damage, draw power and a counter card on top.
Forceful Gesture is basically a CoD with slightly worse damage but instead of Protection it hits an enemy with a full -1 to all rolls on hit next turn while having draw power on top.

Puppet Blockade is literally Wait Up! but better.
Gigigig is a viable alternative to Clean Up
Marionette is a decent defensive card
Creak is nothing special, I don't see it shaking up any of my decks
Automated Movement is an alright 3-cost, could work well with a deck that makes use of Flashing Strike perhaps?
Proselyte Cards, a big change in decks
With the Proselyte update, we got ourselves yet another fight.

The page itself isn't too interesting, suffering from being yet another 1-cost, though the gimmicks are really neat otherwise.

What is interesting though, is the cards that come with it, of which are generally extremely good.
The big gimmick of these cards is that to use their effect, you need to have no duplicate cards in said character's combat deck. Considering how amazing some of these cards are, it's worth going with some sub-optimal choices just to get to use these cards.

Will of the Prescript is the winner here, a 3-cost that's basically the same as a low hp Faint Memories (their rolls are near enough the exact same) makes it pretty decent. But the effect is what really makes it. On use, draw 3 cards.

This is an amazing on-use, it lets you get an instant handlock with a Sayo, and can give a massive restore to your hand regardless, and because you fill out your hand, it gives a high chance to just reroll it again and thus go back to a handlock.

Execute is another good card, with it's boost being a +4 to the first roll, turning it to a 6-9, which beats out a lot of cards.

To Where The Prescript Points is similar, except it exchanges some raw damage with applying Fragile.

If I can find the time, I hope to show the current Salvador, Sayo and Oscar decks I've made to come up to accommodate these new cards.
12 Comments
Hotmud9 21 Nov, 2022 @ 2:00am 
@Loaf yeah, old mechanic. This guide is heavily dated.
Death by coughs 17 Jun, 2022 @ 9:20pm 
Leveling up pages? Is that an old mechanic, or something I'm missing here?
snek  [author] 3 Aug, 2020 @ 11:08am 
I've been really busy with irl obligations making it difficult to keep this up to date, the 0-cost RotBS is needed to keep up with draw power.
My brawl deck really needs updating on here, things like Sharp Nails have since come out and they are really good for it, though granted I just don't use Brawl in my main floor anymore so I don't really test it as much. I'd much rather have someone attacking each turn rather than have someone out of action every other turn because that's one person not redirecting attacks, dealing damage, etc.

This all especially needs an update after the most recent fight, which has provided some insanely good cards (the prescript 3-cost can let you instantly handlock with Sayo, as an example) but has required me to really rethink my decks (as I can't have duplicates).

My main decks are now turning into having 3x draw cards, 3x light drive cards, and 3x of anything else.
snek  [author] 12 Jul, 2020 @ 11:49am 
Mind you, OS isn't really necessary as a combo tool in that regard since it's only 3x 5-6 rolls on a target that has paralysis (which Observe may not even hit the paralysis to begin with!), the main thing is just getting bang-for-your-buck with WoT by buffing it the turn prior.
A Puppet deck can be similar to the Meow deck thanks to its focus on Blunt Damage (+1 power and +2 Stagger on Blunt Hits), except there are now a swath of hand drive/light drive cards that can be exploited.
The latest update to Gluttony makes WoT even stronger thanks to the HP restore on hit guaranteeing you come out near enough neutral or better in terms of HP on top of a higher damage output.
snek  [author] 12 Jul, 2020 @ 11:41am 
True, I somewhat lifted it from a boss killer deck which made use of the full restore upon gaining an emotion level to immediately follow up an Observe + LU! with WoT and OS, I can look into it, Clean Up/Gigigig could be a good alternative for that combo.
Daskter 12 Jul, 2020 @ 11:39am 
The Meow Buffing Deck does not function.
At 4 Light Cap; Using Observe+Loosen Up sets you at 2Light
You need 3 Light to cast WoT+Opportunity Spotted. The only way you can get the combo is to be at 5 Light, or to get a Stagger/kill with Observe/Loosen Up

The combo requires Observer+Clean Up(4Light) to do the combo reliably then WoT+Opportunity Spotted(3 Light).
snek  [author] 10 Jul, 2020 @ 5:54pm 
Good point, there are pages that are made obsolete due to later pages just simply being better, there are of course some pretty obviously bad pages.
Personally I'm not a fan of the 3-costs that are just a single dice roll, though Transpierce and CoD are solid thanks to their defence dice and effects.
Dodge should be replaced ASAP from being your starter 0-cost, it's honestly pretty terrible, there are other bad cards like Multi-Hit too which are outclassed hard even at their own level.
Outskirts of the Pancakes 10 Jul, 2020 @ 10:46am 
What pages would you avoid using at all costs?
Section 2 5 Jul, 2020 @ 2:42pm 
Where is the card that gets me a gf?
CoreReboot 5 Jul, 2020 @ 12:36pm 
You had my attention.
Now, you have my interest.
Time to grind like a maniac. :aos2saki:
I know a bit's changed since then, but, more cards to unlock, so, looking forward to that.