[Proof of Concept] 1 Librarian Love Town

[bgammax]

So since 2 Librarian Love Town runs are becoming pretty common the next logical question is "can we do it with 1?" To which the answer I have found so far is.. "Probably."

The idea is simple, with one Librarian you only have 2 Die, that gives 2 actions that need to be able to fend off 4 actions on the first floor, and 5 on the second. Obviously, not good numbers. However, we can cheat the system a little.

So, the primary reason action economy is important is because each of the Denizens of Love Town have a "Pommelin'" skill that does a lot more damage unless you clash with them, necessitating you use one of your actions to clash with one. This suggests that if all 4 of them decide to Pommel at once, you'd be guaranteed to let two of them through and take a massive amount of damage.

However, there is actually a way to initiate a clash without using an action. Thanks to these last few updates, we now have access to "Counter" die, which will take clash with the first one-sided attack aimed at them. Now we effectively have 3 actions on one Librarian, which just might be good enough.

Here's the build I ran with:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2173419425

A Yujin build with plenty of Counter die to enable a third clash.

We roll with Malkuth's Floor for 2 very important abnormalities.

1. Happy Teddy Bear. One of their cards grants a power bonus of 2-4 on every Clash, at the cost of 0-2 power on any one-sided attacks. We don't really have the action economy for one-sided attacks anyways, so all this page does is practically guarantee winning every clash. In fact, it even lets us compete with Tomerry's boosted "Triangles are Better" by letting Faint Memories roll well above a 10.

2. Gluttony. An abnormality card from the Fairies, Gluttony helps us sustain our HP for such a long fight while increasing the damage we deal in a way that gets around the downside of our other card. Unlike the other abnormality, Gluttony is replacable at least.

With these three things in hand we walk into floor one and....

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2173419516

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2173418485

With a lucky roll to get Teddy's card first emotion level increase and Gluttony the second, we actually leave the first fight with more health than we entered with. Unfortunately, I have so far been unable to defeat Tomerry themself due to running out of Light too early, however I felt the idea was polished enough to share and see if anyone can improve on it.

A few notes to be had, even attempting this requires significant thought into the game's weird spacing mechanic. In order for the build to work, you have to make sure your librarian walks through an enemy using a "Pommelin" skill on their way to clashing with something else, otherwise you risk accidentally clashing with a "Ram" skill and getting punished by both the ram and the extra Pommelin.

Secondly, since a single use of Faint Memories will likely raise your stagger resistance to full, it becomes far more important to conserve your actual HP than your stagger resist. Thus if you are forced to take a Pommelin, you'll need to make sure its from an enemy you endure.

Since Yujin's page has a counter die as a passive, its possible that we don't actually need to use counter pages at all. The ability to use fewer 3 costs would help with the light generation issue I noted above, and thus this is going to be the basis of my next attempt. However, there might be better pages than Yujin's, such as Olga's light generation passive or using Salvador's incredible staggering potential to single-handedly stagger Tomerry.

[circusBagels]

I look forward to seeing your run! Do you plan to use HP Boosting Battle Symbols? I feel like they might spare your Librarian what could be a fatal staggering.
Otherwise, Oscar could do the same and give you an extra turn where you might have been pummeled to death.

[PyroBurn235]

Pretty nice, I had attempted this but struggled with coming up with Stagger regen methods and hitting the right enemy with counter dice.
As such, I chose Tiphereth's floor for regen. Though, Happy Teddybear seems essential.
It may be useful to run some 4-cost cards due to Yujin's passive (Boundary of Death might OHKO a townsperson) or some status effects like bleed to provide passive damage.

[Shbnfc]

Cool! I was thinking about this and figuring we'd have to wait until next level cap rise or at least a proper 3 speed die page. Still unsure if we can really overcome the enrage phase, but I guess with really good luck it is possible.

Managed to get to the first stagger phase of Tomerry, leaving first encounter with 74hp using a Yujin build inspired by yours (3x overcome, 2x feast, 3x faint memories, 1 sharp claws) on Hod's floor with Today's expression and meal. Unfortunately Today's expression still doesn't render when moving to the next floor, so it was kind of impossible to do much of anything successfully.

Please make Today's expression render when moving to the next floor ;_;

[bgammax]

Yeah, we can at least get to Tomerry pretty consistently with one chara, which leads to the problem of actually staggering them with 1/4th the DPS intended.
My game lags a bit so I've never been able to use Today's Expression anyways, but if done right its basically Teddy's without the downside so that would work out better.

I'm trying something involving a few early deflects to chip away at Tomerry's stagger resist early then maybe using Observation the turn beforehand to burst them down.

If all else fails then, like Pyro mentioned, well. We ARE using Yujin anyways. So if we can't come up with a consistent way to stagger Tomerry, there is a totally gimmicky and inconsistent option in Boundary of Death.

[Poussey]

Now that's some fancy gameplay.

Also, I tried to handle that challenge personally.

I Used floor of Yesod and Yujin's page. Nothing really special were happening. I used parry cards. Killed town folks pretty quickly.
And about Mr."What's up Mommy", I just staggered him with Boundary of Death.

[Shbnfc]

Originally posted by Poussey:

Now that's some fancy gameplay.

Also, I tried to handle that challenge personally.

I Used floor of Yesod and Yujin's page. Nothing really special were happening. I used parry cards. Killed town folks pretty quickly.
And about Mr."What's up Mommy", I just staggered him with Boundary of Death.

What abnos did you pick and how far did you get in the second fight?

[hogeyama-kun]

I tried with Yujin's passive counter die.(without counter combat page)

Keter:
"Lies" is useful page. But it's not a realistic solution without HP regen.

Malkuth:
I used "Display of Affection" and "Gluttony". This is a bgammax's way.
It's a pretty good solution, because we need HP regen and dice power.
But required crazy abno page rolls on every trial.

Tiphereth:
I lost dice power in exchange for stable abno page rolls.
So I used "Boundary of Death" instead. The good point about this solution is the fast decision to restart.
But, in conclusion, we need dice power...

[hogeyama-kun]

I tried Olga(at Malkuth floor).

Target controlling is easier than Yujin's one.
For example, I can choose from "Automated Movement" or "Scattering Slash(Defense Dice carrying over)" or "None" according to the situation.

But lack of "Faint Memories" is very serious. Dice power +1 also.
So the stagger management of Olga is very hard.

[bgammax]

Ah, right. I'm glad you noticed that detail about Scattering Slash (or any page with a defense die 3rd), because it got me experimenting a bit.

So as you know we can use a counter page to clash with the first one-sided attack we see, and a page like Scattering Slash or Creak to use their leftover die to clash with another one-sided attack. If you're careful with the order, you can use this to cheat out a 4th clash, letting you avoid the extra damage from 4 Pommels in the same turn.

Since using both a counter and Slash requires 5 light its normally impossible, but if you were to use the Lies page you'd have the option of running a heavy Brawl deck with Emma's page, making up for both the lack of power (as Emma will give most of your deck +1 or 2 power anyways) and reducing the need for healing. This strategy might make it possible to just... Not take damage on the first floor and make up for the inability to heal. At the very least its probably the fastest reset since all you have to do is see if your first Abnormality page includes "Lies" and after that its just about fine-tuning the deck.

[hogeyama-kun]

I tested Roland.
I used Yujin because I wanted to use useful 2 cost pages, and selected "Lies" and "Blood".

it seems Roland has a few possibility.
but, in reality, probably, we still need HP regen...

https://youtu.be/9VbRr6UjZLc

[bgammax]

I spent most of yesterday working on Malkuth/Yujin's strat and I was able to find some progress after finally succeeding in staggering Tomerry.

Unfortunately by this time I had stopped recording, however I did have the presence of mind to screenshot the before and after
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2175735412

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2175735467

you can pretty consistently stagger Tomerry with the classic Observe into Opportunity Spotted combo so long as you remember to Observe them on turn 3, 8, 13, etc. Unfortunately I stumbled in my usage of Faint Memories to maintain my stagger resist and ended up getting staggered two turns after, falling from there.

As for the deck I ran-
Yujin's page
3x To Overcome Crisis
1x Rules of the Backstreets
3x Faint Memories
1x Opportunity Spotted
1x Observe.

While the build seems too inconsistent to rely on (it took me 4 hours to get 2 good runs, though much of that was resetting for the correct abnormalities), it does demonstrate a few tips for any fight as long as this is gonna be.

1. The number of card draw pages needed to play 2 every turn and never run out is 4. This allows you to cycle through your 3 copies of a specific card (Faint Memories in this case). With 4 cycle cards you have space to hold up to 2 situational cards until the right moment. Until absolutely needed, you can pretend these two cards aren't in your deck. And as any deckbuilding card game players would know, the smaller your deck is, the better.

2. A point that gives me a lot of hope for your version. HP farming. One thing Opportunity Spotted was good for is getting a lot of hits, repeatedly triggering Gluttony, while doing minimal damage. This made it extremely useful to heal back up at the end of the fight, when there is only one Townsperson left to attack. Unfortunately, the build above requires staying below 25% hp in order to work effectively, so I was unable to fully take advantage of it.
However, the build you showcased had no such issues. And with Yujin's page and Blood, you might be able to completely ignore a Townsperson for several turns as you draw into Feast in order to slowly build your health up higher than originally intended. Making it into Tomerry proper with a good bar will be vital.


The problem with my build is best exemplified in Rules of the Backstreets, the 0 cost 2-8 slash that draws on hit. With both Display of Affection and Yujin's bonuses, that's still only hitting between 5 and 13. Lowrolling a 5 makes it extremely beatable, and it only has to lose once for the entire strategy to start falling apart.
And between the 0 cost and Faint Memories, you're making 2 or 3 of these vital clashes every turn. While the odds of losing an individual clash are low, as you keep rolling the die more and more often, the odds of failing at least once rapidly approach zero.

I was hopeful that this Sweeper encounter would give us a better solution to Roland's hp generation problem, but Project Moon seems to be onto us and made sure none of the healing cards start with a block, except the one that's unique to Sweeper pages.. So I'll try it by leaving a Sharp Townsperson alive and repeatedly Feasting them.

[bgammax]

It turns out we actually did get a useful page this week, with the Sweepers providing a good page to farm Rams with, we can now get over our starting hp on the Keter floor, giving a much-needed HP buffer before fighting Tomerry themselves.

https://youtu.be/anpcqqEe0AY

Deck in question is
Yujin's Page
1x Repressed Flesh
1x Extract Fuel
1x Feast
1x Retaliate
2x Scattering Slash
3x Forceful Gesture

The Retaliate was chosen as a high-value evade that wouldn't hurt a Pointed townsfolk, but can be easily replaced for something with higher numbers to stagger Tomerry themselves.
Its also important to deflect a few attacks early in the Tomerry fight to bring their stagger resist down to a reasonable level, in case any one else is bored enough to grind this with me.