I do not understand the combat in this game, and in-game tutorials, video guides, and written guides are not helping in any way

[PixelDemise]

Title. I want to play this game, it's design is super charming and the OST is excellent. However I am stuck in Yun Office part 3, after Finn's death, because the two fighters there keep endlessly stagger locking me, and nearly kill me that turn, followed by being unable to do anything the next turn when they kill me. No matter how many defensive cards I play, they ignore it outright, damage me without me blocking any damage, and then stagger me leading to a death.

What am I missing? The game seems so difficult to understand, yet I am stuck on what is basically still a tutorial.

I especially do not understand how the game manages blocking. When the enemy is trying to use an attack that blocks, then attacks for 2-6, and I use an ability that blocks for 4-6, I see the enemy regularly hitting for far more than 2 damage.

The game keeps mentioning I only have 1/3 librarians in use, but they don't show me how to get more, and most disscussions stress the importance of leveling up pages, but it hasn't shown me how to do that either.

[Flygoniaks]

Not gonna answer the whole thing because I don't have time but I CAN address one thing:

Originally posted by PixelDemise:

The game keeps mentioning I only have 1/3 librarians in use, but they don't show me how to get more, and most disscussions stress the importance of leveling up pages, but it hasn't shown me how to do that either.

That's the MAXIMUM number of librarians you can take into the battle, but for the battles at the beginning of the game you don't need that many (I honestly don't know why they have such a high limit number for these fights when you don't need it). You unlock more librarians by completing Abnormality battles, and you unlock Abnormality battles by progressing through the story and completing certain tasks (you can check the current requirements for a floor's next Abnormality battle by selecting the floor on the main screen).

As for leveling up Key Pages, that was a mechanic that was removed a long time ago, so those discussions must be super old. All Key Pages have their maximum stats available by default. Just make sure you actually equip the Key Pages from the Key Page menu.

I will admit that the game is complex, but the first few chapters thankfully aren't too difficult so you can learn and experiment. So don't worry if you don't understand everything right away, I'm pretty sure almost nobody understood everything right away.

[Altidiya]

1° Leveling up pages is a outdated mechanic, you have the full level ones everytime.
2° Remember to burn books and farm good pages.
3° Remember you need to do the abnormality battles with a red exclamation in a floor.

For what I understand, is because you are not making clashes and making clashes block vs block. When block vs block, the winning block do DICE damage to stagger of the loser, that's huge, use attacks vs blocks unless you are sure you could win.

[Flygoniaks]

Actually, now that I've looked over this, one more thing:

Originally posted by PixelDemise:

Title. I want to play this game, it's design is super charming and the OST is excellent. However I am stuck in Yun Office part 3, after Finn's death, because the two fighters there keep endlessly stagger locking me, and nearly kill me that turn, followed by being unable to do anything the next turn when they kill me. No matter how many defensive cards I play, they ignore it outright, damage me without me blocking any damage, and then stagger me leading to a death.

What am I missing? The game seems so difficult to understand, yet I am stuck on what is basically still a tutorial.

Is there a big red exclamation mark on the main menu? If so, click it for the Abnormality battle, which it sounds like you're missing. If not, send a screenshot of the main menu and hopefully we can figure out what's going wrong (whether it's on your end or a bug).

[Izzy]

Sadly, but thats the main problem with the game.

It has so much stuff in it that its overwhelming for newcomers, so a lot of people drop the game after the first few battles, or even after the tutorial (lmao). I feel bad both for the devs and new players, because quite a lot of ppl give up on this game just because its complicated, and miss all the good things it has to offer. And the devs, ofc, lose their players, so they lose potential income.

I didn't have much problems with all of that, but i see a lot of new players ditching the game because of that, and its just sad.

So, if even video guides don't help you, idk what will. You can still play and test all the stuff yourself to understand it better, if you're not planning on refunding the game, ofc. I learned some gameplay mechanics only after ~100 hours of playtime, so this game is not something you can learn in two minutes.

[CarThief]

You must be getting hit a lot because you're not clashing with the enemy's attacks. If you keep your Key Page and Deck up-to-date and clash smartly, you should be good to go.

So, how to clash? Either...
-If your speed value is higher, attack a enemy's speed die who's speed value is lower.
-If the enemy has higher speed but attacks you, assign an attack back.

How can you tell if a clash is succesfully assigned? There's 3 colours of arrows that can display on speed dice, Red Blue and yellow. Red and Blue are one-sided attacks or mass-attacks. Yellow indicates a clash, in such a case, there will always be an arrow connecting the two speed dice.
(These arrows display either if you're hovering over your or your enemy's speed dice, or if you've pressed 1/2/3 to show enemy/ally/clash arrows respectively.)

How does a clash work? If you've set it up right (easily confirmed if you see a yellow arrow), it will be the dice of your page vs the dice of their page. If one side runs out of dice the other side can attack unopposed with their remaining offensive dice on that page.
If a unit has leftover defensive dice after using a page (be it a one-sided attack or clash), those dice remain active for the turn and they will be used against future one-sided attacks for that turn.

If a unit wins or loses a clash they get "Emotion Coins" (red for losing, blue for winning). These are very important, especially a bit later on. The idea is to clash whenever possible to neutralize or atleast minimize the enemy's attacks and gain Emotion Coins.
That said, if there's no way to win a clash sometimes you'll want to perform a "one-sided attack" instead. That or use defensive dice to lower the damage intake. The clash starts for both units as soon as one units initiates it.

You will find there's some different interactions depending on which dice clash against eachother. Their interactions can be complex but it helps noting Evade Dice re-roll themselves if they win against an attack and also restore your Stagger Points, but they are riskier as you take full damage if you fail, whereas Block always partially reduces damage even if it fails to roll higher. And Block Dice can cause Stagger damage if they roll higher.

But either way, you'll want to ensure all enemy attacks are clashed with if possible, especially if one of your units is staggered, then you should definitely have one of your allies with higher speed initiate a clash with a lower-speed enemy.
Speaking of stagger... Staggered units take x2 damage, use that to your advantadge to finish them off.

---

Also, a lot of early invitations allow for 3 Librarians but it takes a while until you get them, so don't worry about it. They should be perfectly doable with 1-2 librarians at the beginning.
If you want more librarians though, be sure to do the Abnormality battles whenever they become available.

Levelling up Key Pages is a outdated feature that's gone now, so don't worry about it. All key pages start out with specific stats, so there's nothing to level up anymore. If you want more power, you'll have to find stronger key pages from stronger encounters.

[PixelDemise]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

I will admit that the game is complex, but the first few chapters thankfully aren't too difficult so you can learn and experiment. So don't worry if you don't understand everything right away, I'm pretty sure almost nobody understood everything right away.

Considering I am going on a 6 time lose streak in the damn tutorial, I am going to have to disagree that things aren't too difficult.

[PixelDemise]

Originally posted by CarThief:

You must be getting hit a lot because you're not clashing with the enemy's attacks. If you keep your Key Page and Deck up-to-date and clash smartly, you should be good to go.

So, how to clash? Either...
-If your speed value is higher, attack a enemy's speed die who's speed value is lower.
-If the enemy has higher speed but attacks you, assign an attack back.

How can you tell if a clash is succesfully assigned? There's 3 colours of arrows that can display on speed dice, Red Blue and yellow. Red and Blue are one-sided attacks or mass-attacks. Yellow indicates a clash, in such a case, there will always be an arrow connecting the two speed dice.
(These arrows display either if you're hovering over your or your enemy's speed dice, or if you've pressed 1/2/3 to show enemy/ally/clash arrows respectively.)

How does a clash work? If you've set it up right (easily confirmed if you see a yellow arrow), it will be the dice of your page vs the dice of their page. If one side runs out of dice the other side can attack unopposed with their remaining offensive dice on that page.
If a unit has leftover defensive dice after using a page (be it a one-sided attack or clash), those dice remain active for the turn and they will be used against future one-sided attacks for that turn.

If a unit wins or loses a clash they get "Emotion Coins" (red for losing, blue for winning). These are very important, especially a bit later on. The idea is to clash whenever possible to neutralize or atleast minimize the enemy's attacks and gain Emotion Coins.
That said, if there's no way to win a clash sometimes you'll want to perform a "one-sided attack" instead. That or use defensive dice to lower the damage intake. The clash starts for both units as soon as one units initiates it.

You will find there's some different interactions depending on which dice clash against eachother. Their interactions can be complex but it helps noting Evade Dice re-roll themselves if they win against an attack and also restore your Stagger Points, but they are riskier as you take full damage if you fail, whereas Block always partially reduces damage even if it fails to roll higher. And Block Dice can cause Stagger damage if they roll higher.

But either way, you'll want to ensure all enemy attacks are clashed with if possible, especially if one of your units is staggered, then you should definitely have one of your allies with higher speed initiate a clash with a lower-speed enemy.
Speaking of stagger... Staggered units take x2 damage, use that to your advantadge to finish them off.

---

Also, a lot of early invitations allow for 3 Librarians but it takes a while until you get them, so don't worry about it. They should be perfectly doable with 1-2 librarians at the beginning.
If you want more librarians though, be sure to do the Abnormality battles whenever they become available.

Levelling up Key Pages is a outdated feature that's gone now, so don't worry about it. All key pages start out with specific stats, so there's nothing to level up anymore. If you want more power, you'll have to find stronger key pages from stronger encounters.

Thank you for explaining things in a more clear manner, though I am still confused over some stuff.

"So, how to clash? Either...
-If your speed value is higher, attack a enemy's speed die who's speed value is lower.
-If the enemy has higher speed but attacks you, assign an attack back."

This sounds like "always attack, never defend". If the enemy is higher, attack back, if you are higher, attack back. What is the point of purely defensive cards then?

Additionally, this is what I have been trying to do, as defensive cards don't seem to do much, so I have tried just damage racing the enemy. However, that then leads to this very situation, where they hit me, stagger me, and kill me. If I use block cards, they hit me anyways, but if I use attack cards, it seems almost random whether I hit them first and then they hit back, or they hit first before I hit them.

You also mention defensive, block, and evade dice. The game mentions them as well, but I have never seen them in game, only the speed dice rolled at the start of a turn. What are they and how do I use them?

[dirk]

To comment real quick, though I'm sure someone is probably typing a response while I'm typing this out;

Block and Evade dice show on the combat pages themselves, the ones you pick for each Speed die, along with the offensive/attack dice (Slash, Blunt, Pierce).

The major thing is needing to clash as your offensive or defensive dice won't automatically go against theirs.

When selecting a target for the page you picked to use, you need to make sure that the arrow that appears after you select a dice to target is yellow/gold, that indicates a clash, which means your dice will go directly against theirs.

CarThief above mentioned 'attack a enemy's speed die' and 'assign an attack back', but they were referring more to just using a card in general against it, not necessarily only cards that have offensive dice.

And as Flygoniaks mentioned, if you're on the third fight for Yun's Office, you should be able to see and click a red exclamation mark on the main Library screen, where you can look at Roland's floor. That will let you do what is essentially a mini-boss fight which will unlock another librarian on that floor for use.

Hopefully this helps a little.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by PixelDemise:

Considering I am going on a 6 time lose streak in the damn tutorial, I am going to have to disagree that things aren't too difficult.

Again, have you done the first Abnormality Battle and unlocked your second librarian? You're kinda supposed to do that before the last encounter with Yun's Office, and if you've beaten Finn, you should have access to it. I'm pretty sure the game explained this too.

[Izzy]

Each card's "move" - attack/defense/evade etc is a DICE.

"Defensive dice" is just a term for block or evade, because you simply don't attack with them. At the very start, the game gives you basic CARDS with some evade, block and attack. So you certainly saw them all in game.

SPEED DICE is another thing. Basically speed dice is a slot for your CARD to be played that shows your speed.

[AritheReaper]

Yeah, like Izzy mentioned, the biggest issue the game has is getting started. It's the kind of game that is deceptively simple, but often looks like a complicated mess when put on paper.

Alright, let's try this...

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The blue icons for dice rolls on cards/pages are defensive dice, the red icons are offensive dice, both of varying type. The two types of defensive dice, block and evade, act drastically differently from one another, so I'll try to explain them as best I can.

If the blue icon is of a shield, it's a block die - those deal stagger damage (yellow bar) based on how much higher the block die rolled than the attack. These are also useful for mitigating the damage you take from powerful attacks, as they reduce the amount of damage you take when losing a clash based on what you roll on them.

If the blue icon is the other symbol, it's an evade die - if used against attacks, these can be used multiple times as long as they keep winning. Every time you win a clash against an attack with an evasive die, you heal some of your stagger resist (yellow bar). This also means that if you dodge every attack an opponent makes on a card that is only attacks, it'll leave an opponent open. Evade dice are next to useless against other defensive dice, though.

While purely defensive cards are actually rather rare, the purpose of using them is essentially to either mitigate damage, deal stagger damage, heal your stagger resist, or leave the opponent open to attacks after an evade die.


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It's up to you if you decide to clash or not - it has its advantages and disadvantages.
As far as turn order goes, the higher the number a character rolls on a speed die, the sooner they act. Unless two or more speed dice have tied, that's basically it.

Oh, and in case you need it clarified, the highest number in a clash determines which one goes first. If a 5 clashes against a 3, and another character has a 4, the 5 and 3 go first.

In the case of a tie, if one of the tied speed dice is clashing, it goes first. Say, for example, you've got two opponents, and they both roll a 4 (say 4A and 4B). You roll a 2, and you clash with 4A. 4A is given priority, and goes first. 4B goes after.
Otherwise, ties are decided based on how far away characters are to their target.

(Side note, if you've ever played a tabletop game like D&D, it may help to think of speed dice as "initiative rolls" as that's effectively what they are.)


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For the "hitting for far more than 2 damage" thing, I assume you mean you're seeing them roll mid~high more often than rolling low. In which case...yeah, that's just luck. Unlike some games with luck mechanics that use weighted RNG (e.x. Fire Emblem Three Houses), what you and your opponent roll comes down to abilities/buffs/debuffs and pure luck.

As you progress, gaining new key pages and passive abilities, RNG becomes less and less of a factor, to the point that you can easily consistently win every fight. You've gotta live with it in the tutorial-esc sections, though.


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Keep at it - I know this looks like a lot, but, as they say, practice makes perfect. It's easier for this stuff to sink in by doing it, rather than reading it.

[Hearts™]

I've been playing the game for just over a week now. I am in love with it, but I definitely had to seek a little help with the combat system outside of the in-game resources. Things like how "clashes" work and how intercepting attacks between speed dice work are really confusing until you start to pay a lot of attention to how it all works in practice. I was able to pretty much coast until a particularly rough boss battle though that required me to backtrack and learn a lot of game mechanics I had ignored up to that point.

One major piece of advice I'll give you: spend a lot of time in the planning phase. READ everything on the screen, especially what your enemy's cards do and what their unit description is (because sometimes there are special properties they have that you wouldn't know about unless you were to read the info on-screen. Learn how to set up "clashes" by pointing your attack at enemies that are targeting you: if the dotted-line arrow turns into a solid orange bar, then you are setting up a clash. You can do this to protect vulnerable units from being attacked as long as you "clash" with a dice that rolled a higher speed than the enemy. When you "clash," your dice roll against the enemy dice. If you don't "clash," either they or you will get an uninterrupted attack (which might hit unused defense die, but that's something you'll figure out as well).

Basically, look at the card the enemy is going to play when it targets you. Then, look at that unit's cards. Do they have something good to use in response to it? If so, try clashing with them (use it on the dice that is targeting your dice). If not, see if any of your other units have a card that would be good, and if their speed dice is high enough, they can intercept it by "clashing." There's a lot more depth to it than this, of course, but this is a good start and getting a grasp of this was where I felt like I was finally starting to understand the game.

[AritheReaper]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

Originally posted by PixelDemise:

Considering I am going on a 6 time lose streak in the damn tutorial, I am going to have to disagree that things aren't too difficult.

Again, have you done the first Abnormality Battle and unlocked your second librarian? You're kinda supposed to do that before the last encounter with Yun's Office, and if you've beaten Finn, you should have access to it. I'm pretty sure the game explained this too.

Oh, yeah, and it does sound like you probably have a red exclamation mark sitting next to your Keter floor.

[Hearts™]

Also, I think one thing they should add to the game is a good tutorial. Not just "easier missions" as a tutorial, but battles that specifically teach you to do certain things like setting up clashes. I know this is a game about a library, but all the reading it expects you to do isn't the best way to actually learn.

[PixelDemise]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

Originally posted by PixelDemise:

Considering I am going on a 6 time lose streak in the damn tutorial, I am going to have to disagree that things aren't too difficult.

Again, have you done the first Abnormality Battle and unlocked your second librarian? You're kinda supposed to do that before the last encounter with Yun's Office, and if you've beaten Finn, you should have access to it. I'm pretty sure the game explained this too.

The game never explained anything about abnormailty battles until after I started them, and before hand, with this art style, an explanation mark does not stand out in any way. This isn't the first time either, entire mechanics like apply passive cards to Librarians was never pointed out until after I stumbled across them by chance when exploring menus, or mentioning how quick mode can be activated with a certain key, before the game automatically activates it regardless making me less likely to try pressing it because "this is already way too fast, why would I make it even faster?".

Things are starting to click now, but the game definitely seems to favor style over readability. It flipflops between handholding your way through everything, and leaving you to explore important features on your own, seemingly without reason. It's UI is very messy, making most things outside of clear and obvious buttons like the Invitiation/Burn Books/Credenze, extremely difficult to tell if they are buttons or just art. A clear example being the post-match screen, where if not for the very faint pulsing(in a game where 90% of the screen is extremely bright) "Curtains Closed" does not in any way imply that you should click on it to end the battle, and appears more as a "yo the match is over" title screen. Or that there are two simultanious "Send invitation" buttons, and the one that flashes and looks like a button doesn't actually do anything and is just enviorment, while the one that does nothing and looks like an artist stamp is the actual button to press. Even the first Vn segment regularly blurs the screen to such a point that it is hard to make out some of the sentance.