I feel like I'm missing something

[Raggle]

Like a mechanic I just overlooked or something. I just feel like the game hasn't "clicked" for me yet. To be fair, I'm still in the near-early game but it feels weird to only be picking one card per turn and the game flow feels pretty slow. I'm either completely destroying my opponents or getting completely destroyed, no close calls at all. Some of the mechanics are a bit hard to understand, maybe I just didn't understand them too well but if I'm attacking with a slash damage card what determines whether it does stagger damage or regular damage?

[taotieh7]

both
the damage numbers are influenced by the opponent's resistances and debuffs

[ErRor1O5]

first of : yeah the early game is slow, the more you progress it gets faster as you will eventually struggle later on (and also you will be able to pick more than one page later on)

now stagger mechanic, it works as a kind of health bar, it doesn't always mean a game over if it is depleted. HOWEVER if it is depleted, you take more damage from attack

certain attacks deal more damage or either more stagger damage against enemies based on their RESISTANCE. as an example some enemies are WEAK to slash (takes more HP dmg) but NORMAL against pierce (take normal amount of HP dmg) and ect.

ALL attacks deal both HP and stagger dmg, some differ due to resistance

[ErRor1O5]

oh and some enemies may have different dmg resistance and stagger dmg resistance (eg. some enemies have FATAL pierce resistance BUT WEAK pierce stagger resistance)

[aidanfilson25]

the entire game until urban plague is "prologue" imo, you can win every battle up to that point easily by just hurling all of your combat pages at one person systematically or even if you just understand the game's combat well

[Flygoniaks]

All attacks deal both physical damage and stagger damage. However, they can deal different amounts of each type depending on a few factors:

• The opponent's resistances to physical damage and stagger damage can be different. For example, they might take x1.0 physical damage from slash ("normal"), but also take 1.5x stagger damage from slash ("weak").
  
  
• Certain dice effects, passive abilities, or Abnormality Pages can boost an attack's physical damage or stagger damage under certain conditions, but not the other type.

Lastly, some status effects only apply to physical damage but not stagger damage, or (less frequently) the other way around. For example, Bleed, Burn, and Fragile deal physical damage but don't deal stagger damage. Hopefully this helps you out.

[Frozenstep]

If the game hasn't clicked, here's some tips that can maybe help

1: Check what enemies are targeting and what attack they're using by mousing over their speed dice. To counter this, you can either use a card from the speed dice they target (note, they target speed dice, so once you get multiple you'll need to pay attention what they're targeting) or from anyone with a higher speed roll to target them. Instead of your enemy getting a free attack on you, it'll be a clash between two cards.

2: Clashes are important. Use the right cards against your enemy, and you can cancel enemy attacks. But you need to pay attention to how your cards will interact with the enemy's. For example, when two offense dice meet, whichever one rolls higher goes through while cancelling the other attack completely. If you understand that, you'll know never to challenge a 5-8 offense card with a 1-4 offense card, because your roll literally can't win and will always get wasted (other dice interact differently, feel free to ask if unsure). Of course, cards often have multiple lines of dice, so you'll have to see if a card with a big 3rd offense dice might be worth playing even if the first two lines will likely lose.

3: Clashes are important, but sometimes it's better to just let the enemy hit with their card without contesting it. For example, if the enemy is playing a card with only defense on you, you could focus on a different enemy. Or if they're playing a big attack and you don't have a card that can guard it (guard at least reduces damage, even if it loses the clash), then trying to clash with an attack that will certainly lose is pointless. On the flip side, if you target the enemy with a speed dice that's equal or slower then theirs, you get a one-sided attack (but keep in mind their defensive dice carry over from earlier in the turn).

4: You normally get 1 light (the energy to play card) and 1 card draw per turn. However, whenever you clash, you get an emotion coin, the colored bars below your characters health. Blue if you win/draw on the clash, red if you lose. Whenever you fill out the bar (takes 3 coins for the first time), your librarian gets one extra max light and a full light refill. So it's important to pay attention, you can use expensive cards on a character and get their light refilled as long as they reach the next emotion level. If on the first turn you use a 3-dice card against an enemy 3 dice card, that'll be enough clashes to get to the first emotion level and get the refill.

You also get emotion coins when you roll maximum or minimum damage, but since you don't control that it's not worth relying on. Also, this means one-sided attacks rarely generate emotions, and that's one reason why you want to clash often. Also, once any librarian hits level 4 emotion, they get another speed dice, allowing them to play more cards per turn.

[derw4tz]

its not noticable at first but there is a power creep in the cards; newer cards you obtain will be straight up better; if you find yourself loosing to some enemies pre level 10 just swithc out some cards.

also be aware card slots that you do not fill up are automatically filled by very weak low level cards

[Case]

keep playing even if you don't understand whats going on you'll catch on

[mars50120056666]

you can replay a fair number of stages to get decent rare cards that help, and switching your body? to a different characters helps quite a bit as far as health goes. Beyond that, eventually you'll get some extra characters and more librarians, which makes strategy far more important and clashes far easier to win.