A Librarian's Guide to Beating Their Guests into a Pulp, Page 1

UPDATED to 1.0.0.5. Page 2 Released
Builds you can utilize across the (currently quite short) game. Different ways of beating your guest into a book. You want it quick? You want it slow and filled with hope for the guests to win but they will never make it out alive? Rare, tender, fully cooked, bled out or filled with chipped bones, you name it, the book has it (This is starting to sound like me trying to be one of the 8 Chefs already...)
This guide does contain spoilers for some cards and potentially some combat mechanics PM wishes for you to figure it out yourself. It is not related to the main lore by any means, though it will ruin the fun of figuring out what to use against the guests (specifically the tougher opponents) so please read with this in mind.
(Credits to the artist for their amazing art https://twitter.com/Jea_ue/status/1141031956097802240 )

Preface

So…. Deck builds. Library of Ruina is currently at the start of Chapter 4-Which is the halfway mark of the game. With that so far we have fought (a number near) countless guests and (another number near) countless pages to collect and utilize.

When you read this guide, by now you might have yourself a super prominent team and can swipe through the floors with ease. Though for those who don’t and keep struggling against some fights in specific, you might be able to take some of these decks here a draft to make your own team.

The team compositions below I will mention a few floor builds that I find extremely powerful (with one of them you can easily obtain, and beyond that point you can just refine it more with better Key Pages), then followed by specific character builds (general idea, rough draft of the deck I started with, a more optimized variant that I use after countless fletching out and some other replacements for some cards in that deck.)

All Key Pages I am going to use for reference here will be Lv20 versions of them. If you want to see the specific buffs they have, I suggest you check Dima Green’s lvl 20 key pages stats, abilities & stories https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2110420626

If you have any suggestions to any builds, or suggesting a new build you want to get added in here, feel free to tell me so in the comments. I would love to find more ways to thoroughly turn my guests into books.

I will add more builds later down the line, so far I want to show you guys the floor builds and some of the more early builds you can get. We will get into the Zwei, Molar, Stray Dogs, Full Stop and Carnival decks in a later update to this guide

Added in a couple builds. Apologies for not being able to take a capture of my builds because as of now, LoR is suffering a devastating bug for all English language user, preventing them from booting up the game (I heard it got fixed, though I am a bit busy now so I will upload the screenshots later, for now please make things do with the written out page list I put below any "Insert Pic")

Apparently Steam limits you to 30 captures on one guide. So there's that. I guess the "Page 1" joke I made on the guide became the truth after all. The builds I came up with beyond the ones I posted here will be on a new guide. Apologies for splitting them all over the place.

Oh, Page 2 came out! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130353475

Floor Builds

Before we actually delve in, Library of Ruina, like its predecessor Lobotomy Corporation, has a loveable history of tossing you into the game with you having absolutely no idea what to do, then proceeds to when you think you understand what you are doing and rush though the game like a breeze, the game gets your head maimed by Molar Fixers or Full Stop Office (Or with the latest addition, Dawn Office). Following that tradition, I will assume you have a perfectly clear idea what to do with the game and skip to a more “reasonable” point where building floor teams are actually something to consider (not something you actually need, mind you, because from what little time I have to play with the game, apparently you can beat every fight with a team using only basic pages-the ones with infinite copies, as long as you have good Key Pages).

Also just a reminder, usually floor builds I make falls in the category of everyone being equal in terms of role, if there is some role specifically integral to the build then I will have them on the Patron Librarian.

Bleeding Barrage

Also something I like to call "Make the 8 Chefs Proud Again" build, like what the name of the floor build mentions, this is to capitalize on how powerful Bleed are (after the 1.0.0.1h update that buffs and nerfs bleed). The team’s general idea is to just land 6-12 bleed stacks on someone WHILE keeping them not staggered, then you can either repeat the “bleedening” on some other guest, or if you desperately needs it, have the librarian drop Cruelty into that bleeding guest to heal up as they melt themselves with a penalty of (generally a lot of) HP loss everytime they try to use an offensive dice.

The upside is that you can get this kind of deck extremely early into the game-by that I mean you only need Pierre’s Bistro and Hook Office. And there’s literally no downsides, maybe expect for the fact this kind of deck makes you can’t really farm for pages because guests can die at Emotion 0

Usually you run Bleed because it punishes characters with 2 Speed Dices, since acting twice means more bleed triggers. Though with that many bleed stacks? Literally anyone melts

For comparison, remember the Dawn Office fight? The Pre-nerf fight where they dome you with a lot of Burn stacks. This is that. But it's bleed (and as long as you don't stagger your guest). And it's better. A LOT BETTER.

Rough Sketch
3 Overpower
3 Cooking Prep
3 Cruelty

Quite quick and simple right? You pick your victim-logically the guest who would lose to your Overpower opener (Specifically the first dice that inflict 2 bleed) and then have the other two librarian run in hitting that very guest, guaranteeing their hits (and 2 bleed stack each) with their own Cooking Prep/Overpower. With that you have secured 6 bleed stacks on the guest and if they are not staggered, next scene they are going to bleed themselves out for a lot of damage... Wait, they only bleed for 6..? Gimme a minute…

Refined Variant




The idea here is to finally turn your 3 decks into Embura's deck there with Beyond The Shadows instead of Overpower. Because it inflicts 3 instead of 2 Bleed, plus the fact you have a 3~7 Evasion Dice as an opener (Brute-forcing your bleed into the guest won't work all the time)

Yes, I sacrificed Mars for this floor just so I can have 3 librarians with 2 Speed Dices (shown above is actually a hastily made version used to demonstrate the build, currently I am testing different builds as well). Though if you are not willing to do this, instead you just use a 1 Speed Dice Key Page (Maybe Liwei later down the line or potentially someone else you think you can cram in here instead, an older version of mine have Pierre). As for Walter and Gyoung Mi you can just literally have one copy of them on every floor (which I do, because why not) so that is out of the question.

I want to address two things. First is that you just ramped your bleeding output from 6 to 10-12 (With a fully refined version be 10-15 Bleed stacks). Using the same execution method like the Rough Sketch, you this time guaranteed 8 (if you have 1 librarian with 1 Speed Dice) or 10 (all 3 librarians have 2 Speed Dice). Though at this point you do have to be mindful of accidentally staggering your guest. Which is why Beyond the Shadows works like a charm-ish (Not really, sometimes you might fumble yourself into hitting for 45 Dice Power's worth of Slashing damage multiplied with resistance modifiers from the guests. But hey, at that point you instantly killed the guest)

Second, for those who might wonder why I specifically have my bleed team on Hod's floor...

I'm just going to leave it as "You might be able to drop 30 bleed stack on 1 guest if luck is on your side"-Oh... Right, with the new update this goes up to 40 Bleed stack. Because reasons. And a lot of leg-chopping mayhem. Mostly leg-chopping mayhem.

And the Daring Decision+Hold Up/Loosen Up package? It is a filler package I add in as a way to close out fights. Not that you ever need them, but it doesn't hurt to have your backup plan be "Light Regen into big damage". Plus you're going to use 2 pages/scene a lot, so the mass discard from Daring Decision won't matter by the time you need to play it. You can totally ignore having it in for more bleed stuff or opt for a different backup plan. Just saying you can use anything you want as long as it is Light Regen-even C-Charge Up!, Preparation, As the Prescript Orders works

Generally this floor build is used for nuking down guests with one fell swoop, though you can technically play the stalling game to farm books for this. Overall powerful and solid. You can beat though every fight with even the Rough Sketch version of this.

Interlude-Bleed Versus Burn

Sanity-wise speaking, these builds has their own pros and ♥♥♥♥. I partly keep making references about Burn being weaker than Bleed is because I have picked up how to drop Bleed on the guests without actually staggering them (and believe me, later down the line their high Stagger resistances actually helps you with this).

In reality, if we get ourselves technical... (Thank you Mizuki for this, though if you do not care about the calculating and minmaxing process, just skip to The Arsonist where I start posting pictures of my build)

Bleed is a very high-risk high reward build because Bleed goes away after one Scene. And yes, even though inflicting 30 Bleed stacks means just one attack dice melts the Guest, you might take a lot of damage, and potentially get librarians staggered out of the attack chain during the process because of how meek those Bleed-inflicting dice are.

Burn doesn’t suffer from this, and in fact you are rewarded when you manage to stagger a guest. Initial calculations shows that if you can somehow out-inflict Burn in a 1.25:1 ratio, then Burn start to out-value Bleed. Though if you recall correctly, Burn stacks doesn’t go away in one Scene, it dies out across multiple Scenes. So in reality this ratio will start to decrease over the course of the act on one guest, and if the act lasts long enough, Burn will overall do more damage than Bleed. Which is also why you notice pages like Taste My Flaming Bat!, Butterfly Slash gives you a really solid Defense Dice while cards that is lacking in protection department gets a powerful effect if used on the right Key page (Flash of Sunup on basically anyone who is not Olga Twinstrike and Gyoung Mi Beatdown)

So when would this “theory” kicks into action? When it takes you more than 3 Scenes to knock out a Guest even with constant supply 12 Bleed Stack. For Bleed to work you need all Librarian attention on that one Guest to nuke them out of the act, while with Burn, a single librarian can sustain 12 Burn stack with ease, since by now they only have to inflict 6 Burn stack every Scene (Or not if you ran out of Light, then again the person who make sure the Burn stack stay reasonably high should be Salvador, by then nothing should bug you in terms of sustaining Burn).

Take the Dawn Office encounter for example, (I will assume your Bleed team is on Hod’s floor while your Burn team is on Malkuth’s floor, Abnormalities kicking in at the start of Scene 3 and you managed to pick Sanguine Desire for Hod and Ashes for Malkuth). It is clear that this fight you should slaughter Yuna second, and pick either the Buff Salvador or Emotion Rush Phillip to kill first (When we get to Philip and Wedge Office, we might get to see his deck added into our arsenal). I will assume you be reasonable here. Both Bleed and Burn doesn’t care about Salvador’s buffs because you always inflict 1 damage at minimum when your attack connects, and that is enough to inflict damage already-so we are definitely going to butcher Phillip.

With Bleed, on average it takes 5 attack dices from him to melt through (Assuming you get 10 Bleed triggers every Scene, let’s be real, most of the time Phillip might deflect your first Beyond the Shadow’s Bleed Dice with the clasher and this is excluding someone got staggered because Yuna decided to Eject on the librarian Salvador decided to use Crack of Dawn). It happens to be that his main attacks are Stigmatize with 2 Attack Dice and Sunset Blade with 3 Attack dice. So he’ll melt in like 2 Scene if you time it correctly (Might take 3 Scenes if he plays Handle Request). Remember, this is all librarians ganging up on that poor fixer.

So. Scene 3-4. You might get Sanguine Desire now, so things are going to be a lot easier. 14-20 bleed on Yuna, 14-20 bleed on Salvador, this will make them bleed out in 3 Scene at most. (Alternatively nuking Yuna with 32-40 guarantees her death in 1 scene, then gang up on Salvador in the next, again, not counting for the truth that someone might got staggered already on your side). It takes 5-6 Scene’s worth of execution to handle Dawn office, and if we calculate in the reality of librarians getting staggered, you not drawing the needed pages, this might go to 9 Scenes

Burn? Scene 1 you pop in 10-12 Burn stack on Phillip, or even up to 20 Burn if all 4 librarians are nuking him out of the fight. At this point if your Salvador can do his job of sustaining 6+ Burns, Phillip dies in 4 Scene (accounting damages you dealt to him, you should have at least hit him for 12 by the time you got to Scene 5 right?). The three remaining Librarians can work on Yuna now, and if they did their job correctly, they inflicted 10-16 Bleed stacks on Yuna and she will burnt out in 4 Scene after Scene 1. And because Burn attacks have proper defense dices, you can fend of 3 burning guest for the duration of 4 Scenes while starting to chip out Salvador. This cycle goes on until Salvador dies, and because he has 80, reasonably he would die at Scene 6-8. This also might go to 9 Scene, accounting for some minor problem occurred in the act.

You just saw an analysis of an invitation that supposedly Bleed is favored thanks to Stigmatize, Eject, Butterfly Slash, and most importantly Sunset Blade, and yet Burn somehow can cram in a victory with the same amount of scenes from both Bleed and Burn, this is not accounting for anyone got lucky (Burn) or unlucky-ish (Bleed, though you will play Bleed with the intention of not to stagger, so this can be avoided) guest staggers

So, my prediction on this? Bleed might lose its value in the long run, and we have already saw Project moon is not reluctant letting pages have one massive dice instead of multiple small dices, Burn might be better than Bleed

The Arsonists

Same concept as Bleeding Barrage, though this time it's with Burn.





With the addition of Salvador+Yuna and their Stigma weaponry, they make this deck/floor build more viable. Though it still loses to Hod's Sanguine Desire (Yes, an Abnormality page it all it takes to make a build better than the other)

The way you play this floor is similar to how you play Bleeding Barrage, sadly this floor is going to be somewhat weaker comparing to Bleeding Barrage (explained in the "Burn" Individual Build deck). All you have to do is to sustain 12 Burn on the guests to make it work, and this is in reality a lot easier than Bleed

I picked Malkuth's Floor because of Ashes getting me more burn stacks and Happy Memories giving me card cost deduction. Overall good floor for Burn support, similar to Hod's Bleed support

Not a bad floor, though not the best floor I came up with

Immortal Joe Olga

Good deck? Nah. Farming potential? Absolute. Can beat every floor so far? Yes, if you know what you are doing. Funny? DEFINITELY.

For comparison, think of the fight against Dawn Office, notably Scene 1 and 2. This is that. But you are the Dawn Fixers. And it is like that for every Scene after Scene 1-Hell, it even includes Scene 1 if you have Salvador in this floor.

I have to state this right off the bat. This floor build is the opposite of Bleed build. You don't really nuke anyone down properly (so it's going to pose a problem instantly against fights that behave like the Stray Dogs, specifically the Gyoung Mi encounter). Though what this floor build does well is the fact you can draw aggro into one librarian and force the opponent to clash with them, while the remaining two librarians buff Endurance/Protection like a crazy person (as if they are not insane already knowing they are using a kit that makes them punching bags). And because blocking/dodging attacks gives you and the guests a bunch of emotion points, you can just stall 1-3 Scene ramp everyone up to Emotion Level II and then beat them up for extra books. So basically a decent farming build. Also there's that laughable moment where the opponent hits you for 1 damage most of the time.

Rough Sketch
Olga
3 Hold Up!
3 Art of Rapid Steps
3 Daring Decision/Retaliate in any combination (Preferably 2/1)

The other 2 Librarians
3 Fence
3 Combat Preparation
*Something Else*

Basic idea is that you play Scene 1 with a hybrid-opener, taking hits all around with the 2 "support" librarians and use Olga Scene 1 as a damage cannon via (usually) Daring Decision+ Hold Up! (You pick your targets this time, no restrictions to what where who why when). The "support librarians” here will use stuff like Fence or Combat Prep to buff everyone with any combination of 2 Endurance/1 Protection. From Scene 2, the two other librarians can either keep buffing the tank Olga or swing into combat themselves using an offensive card (belongs to the "Something Else" section) while Olga herself will keep drawing the heat using her dice as intercepts and basically an endless supply of either Light Regen, 1~8 Evasion into a good whacking from Art of Rapid Steps, or just being mean and hit someone else with Retaliate or Daring Decision. Remember that you want Olga's hand to be empty all the time so that she gets +2 Light +2 Page instead of the usual 1 Light 1 Page. Well... Even with 69HP you can't tank forever..? How about we just... Ramp up the tanking.

Refined Variant
*Looks at the Malkuth floor.* Oh great this is Liwei Support. Let me go fix that back to Immortal Olga



Yeah, the rough sketch of the support characters didn't receive any changes, just that they once again uses the full on 2 Speed Dice approach so that they can deliver a higher protection level to Olga. Just saying this is not that refined. Personally I would cut 1 Fence on them to add one more Loosen Up!/Hold Up! because they need Light Regen to keep up the defensive buffs.
Olga got a change however, she has 2 Struggle now for 2 reasons. For one it is so that she can also buff herself, and it is a 2 Protection buff, so it's really good for her (Though if you like 2 Endurance self-buff more and want a cheaper card, use Silent Night instead).

Second, this is Block Dice, and a decently high one as well (2~5 and 2~5 Block Dices). They are here to deflect stagger to the guest, slowly chipping their stagger away while you are defending as an added bonus. Plus Olga with 4 Endurance and 2 Protection means she is going to block attacks left and right, and even if they manage to get through, they are -2 damage (To a minimum of 1 damage inflicted) multiplied by Olga's resistances (Which is 1 for Blunt and Slash, 0.5 for Pierce)

Still play this build out like the Rough Sketch. Support buffs. Olga open aggressively Scene 1 OR she buffs herself even more with Struggle then she tanks/ intercept attacks. After everyone got to Emotion II? Go on the offense.

Reason why I picked Malkuth's floor is because you can use Scorched Girl's Ashes and pop it on Olga to simply set everyone who attacks her ablaze while they ping her for 1 damage, and then you can also use Happy Memories to have the cost reduction buff to one of the two support librarians (Which is why I run 3 copies of buffing stuff on the support decks, even with 1 Retaliate, you can still easily get rid of that card and reduce the cost of something else later)

And if you wonder what happens if you add Salvador Buff in...


Just more protection stacked on top of protection. Basically it's guaranteed to only hit Olga for 1 damage now

Generally a farming build. Not the best but definitely not my worst floor build.

Angels With A Shotgun

This is a full-on Gun Floor. So far the options are really limited because you only have Full Stop Office supporting this kind of build, though it's very doable and if the opponent are not super resistant to Pierce, this build decimates them

If you want to check their Rough Sketches, have a gander at the Full Stop section of Individual Builds



<Insert Pic>
Tamaki+Stephan
3 I hate CQC
2 Indiscriminate Shots
1 Headshot
3 Going for Bullseye

(Why can't I insert-Oh... I see... Steam limits to 30 captures...)
You can add anyone else as a 4th Support/Damage dealer librarian.

Hits like hell, and you can pile up to 66 Dice Power on one guest (once again, multiplied by the guest's resistances for the real damage). You should put it in Netzach's floor because Pierce and Proccubus's Negative Emotion page. Then again, this is a very niche deck, it is designed with the intention of catching the guests with overall meek Pierce resists with their pants down.

The Generalist

Well, this floor is for when you have absolutely no idea what in the world should you do to handle the opponent (For example they have high damage cards on literally every type of damage and they have good speed dices, stuffs like that) Then you can make this floor as the "Jack of all trades" floor to toss the guest in and fight them tooth and nail.

This floor has no Rough Sketch because there's literally none, all you have to do is to use the best stuffs in your deck and what the floor offers.



Why does this floor feels all over the place? Because it is. Reason why I pick those three is because Grade 7 Fixer Page 3 have Normal across the board and Mars+Olga is the same, though Olga have Endured on Pierce while Mars have Endured on Slash. So no one is going to suddenly hit you for a bunch of damage. These Key Pages also comes with decently high HP, so they resonate with Neztach's A Token Of Friendship/Teardrop (Though usually you would pick the former and slap the negative effect on Grade 7).

Also this floor comes with Tentacles from Fragment of the Universe. You can just cram in cards that have at least 1 Pierce attack and sooner or later, even if the guests somehow have Ineffective Stagger Resist, that will slowly get knocked down to lower resistance levels and once they are staggered, everything goes to x2 damage.

Olga runs the fairly standard "Scene 1 discard your hand into 2 Page barrage" for the rest of the act. Mars is just Mars. Super effective and he plays like Walter, just that he is better. Grade 7 Fixer then he is just either support or your meat shield.

Since this is a Jack of all Trades build, usually nothing will surprise you, though I can assure you every fight will not be a walk in the park because you do not excel at anything on this floor. Then again good heals abnormality/ team HP bomb/ team stagger bomb might help you enough to pull through the fight all the time. Also if you are in the mood to draw out the fight, this is also really easy to get your guests to Emotion II and farm their books.

Object'd Art-Floor of Legends

Like that title suggests, this is the place where you toss in every Object'd Art Key Pages and let them tear the guests apart.

This is more or less an "upgraded version" of The Generalist, so all premises stays the same-not a true team build, just use what is best you have right now and adjust to match the Key Page's passives






Twinstrike Olga, Standard Mars (by "Standard" I mean a general build with no distinct goals in mind, just a good deck with good damage and defense capabilities), I opted for Buff Salvador instead of Burn Salvador (Because as much as I like Burn and made a burn floor, try to look at me in the eyes and say "Crack of Dawn is not a good page") and for the 4th slot I jammed in Standard Grade 7 (originally I want to run Liwei Support for 4th librarian, but then I accidentally burned away my third Lv20 Liwei while realizing Salvador). The three Object'd Art Key Pages have amazing resistances, and since most of the Chapter IV invitations have you fight in only one floor, why not just toss them all in at one spot? Once again I am using Neztach's floor because of how "good" it is.

Netzach's floor doesn't excel in anything, but it has everything-Team HP Bomb, Team Stagger Bomb, Team HP Regen, Stagger Resist Debuff (which is why I want a Liwei with his Pierce-orientated pages), Stagger Heal on getting hit and 50% Light Regen on getting hit (both are from Porccubus). So if you are losing your edge in one particular department, the abnormality pages will help you catch up.

Godly Floor. You have to do your best to even lose in this place (or just rapidly spam spacebars)

Indiviual Builds

Once again, before we jump into them, I just want to say that these builds are more situational, they are more or less you "splashing" your combat style into either a full-on floor build, use as replacements for Generalist floors or just a mephitic mixture of different combat styles put into a floor because you wanted to. Of course I won't be able to give you ALL of the possible builds, though I will try my best to show you what I brew up with the time I have with this game.

Bleed

Well, literally what I meant. This is basically just the Bleeding Barrage build, though you are only using 1 character to drop and utilize bleed synergies.



This build works literally the same as Bleeding Barrage. Nothing much to add about it. Though because you are not planning to nuke anyone down with Bleeds, I suggest replacing Daring Decision with Tailoring just to have a better bleed output late into the act.

Burn

An alternative to the Bleed deck. You also gain access to this deck extremely quickly (Starlight Office is right after the Bleed package). Does reasonable damage, and this deck resonates with Scorched Girl's Ashes. The charm of this deck over Bleed is that your Burn stack lingers for a few scenes, deal damage even when the guest is staggered, and that damage also stack up if you do the hit-and-run tactic (Burn the opponent up and then keep parrying attacks, rinse and repeat). Though personally I think Bleed does this better than Burn purely because of the damage output bleed does if you are willing to tank a few hits. Still, good deck to use when you don't actually have what is needed to support 2 bleed floors. Or you want a solid deck that is not just bleed.

One of the variants I run on Burn. This one sticks to Lulu's root and gimmick of her cards, directly inflicting burn stacks.

A different take on Burn stack. This one doesn't guarantee the burn, but relies on Lulu's 50% chance to inflict burn instead. So basically the shell of a Discard Deck with Burn synergy (Though in this one I would replace 1 Hold Up! with Gamble.)

Salvador/Dawn Burn

With the Dawn Office update, Burn just got a whole lot more viable, as mentioned in The Arsonists, Stigma weaponry (Passive) inflicts 1 extra Burn whenever you inflict Burn to your opponent. And literally every Dawn Attack Dice have Burn 1 on them, plus they still trigger Burn damage on a staggered guest. So why not try to become the Dawn Fixers for a change? (Minus the fact Bleed is actually a lot better if you can time it correctly so that the guest does not get staggered)

<Insert Pic>
Salvador
2 Hold Up!
2 Have a Taste of my Flaming Bat!
2 Flash of Sunup
2 Sunset Blade
1 Butterfly Slash

Why are there Lulu's cards here? Because you should cram in some protection for your librarian, specially when they are doing full Burn. Though on that note, you can totally replace Taste My Flaming Bat with Crack of Dawn. Because if you ask me, Crack of Dawn is amazing, to the point it should be in everyone's deck

Zwei/Salvador Buff Support

A deck as old as time-Well, this is the halfway mark of the game we have so far. You can clearly notice guest’s decks have an upsurge in terms of power. And we are about to have our hands in these pages…

This is the more direct approach, buffing yourself and your allies while dealing a small amount of damage during the buffing scenes, then to wrap up the act using a powerful high-end card like Retaliate, Blade Whirl or Suppress.

Rough Sketch
3 Fence
3 Combat Preparation
3 Suppress/Blade Whirl/Retaliate (Or Rapid Assault) in any combination

As mentioned above and in the Immortal Olga section, you simply use this deck to buff your team up and plow through the opposition. You can get yourself some damage reduction using Fence, buff up your defensive dice using Combat Preparation then seal the deal using potentially a Retaliate with 2-4 Endurance boost.

The good thing is you can literally have a floor with 3 Zwei Buff Support and they themselves will usually be unbreakable if you know what to do, plus they are perfect as early game stallers in terms of farming books.

Bad news is you are going to have a really hard time getting yourself back to 3 Light at this rate… Well, I’m going to change that here



I opted for the good old Light Regen package (By now you should notice I really want to have a high Light Count at any time I wish rather than banking on Stagger/Kills/Emotion Level Up) and go for the 2 Retaliate with 1 Shocking Blow splash (Works as an Anti-Full Stop page, I will get to it later). Since this is a buff build, you can use any key pages to support. The most common answer would be Gyoung Mi or Walter because they use 2 Speed Dice-More buffing and more killing, or a combination of both each scene. Though there are alternatives like Sans, Isadora, Julia for slight damage boosts and roll power percentage boost. Another approach to consider is Pierre and her Instant Cooking being able to put you back into the fight if you can time the killing blow correctly

You can use Guardian instead of Fence if you want to solely buff Endurance. Though personally I want to have a bit of variety in terms of my defenses. Plus Guardian is 1~6/1~6 Attack dice, you might take more damage than expected with that as your buff card

Salvador Buff

<Insert Pic>
Salvador
2 Hold Up!
2 Flash of Sunup
2 Fence
2 Combat Preparation
1 Crack of Dawn

Nothing else changed besides the fact you now gain access to Flash of Sunup as a way to sustain playing 2 page/Scene. And the fact Salvador's passive effects are really good. And the fact Crack of Dawn is one nasty page. I am transitioning all of my Zwei buffers to use some of Dawn's card, specially replacing a copy of Retaliate for Crack of Dawn

Zwei Debuff Support

You debuff your opponent with this deck. As simple as that. You also gain access to this option towards the end of the Zwei encounter (And you also gain some niche additions to your deck from Stray Dogs and Full Stop Office). Your goal is this deck is to debuff your opponent not with Burn or Bleed, but via Bind, Paralysis, Fragile and Feeble (Though the majority of Zwei cards are Bind, Paralysis and some Bleed splash). Oh? There's Disarm as well? Well... Only the Spiderlings has them for now.

In addition, Zwei cards that inflict debuffs happen to have a really high max power attack dice for openers and the effect of weakening the opponent’s dice upon winning the clash. This way you are going to slowly take advantages from being able to constantly intercepting guests (Thanks to Bind) and weakening their dice into a lower power number (Thanks to Paralysis)

Rough Sketch
3 Riposte/Deflect
3 Blade Whirl/Suppress
*Something Else*-Though might have 1 Retaliate

Deflect is a good Paralysis card and Riposte is a decent Bind card for their costs. Blade Whirl is a solid damage card with debuffs (when you unlock Zwei) and Suppress is a good card to fully overwhelm a clash with all of those debuffs. A debuff deck’s general idea is to ensure you are in control at all times. Retaliate is.... Just good. A 1~10 Evasion dice with Enhance on clash win is not a thing to joke around, specifically against opponents with multiple Paralysis stacks.

Refined Variant



Standard version of the deck. Of course when you do not have Hold Up! You can replace it with C-Charge Up! or Prepareation (Or Loosen Up later in the game). This deck is a full-on debuff where you apply negative effects to all opponents and then overpower them with attacks should the need arise. You can commit fully on just Bind or Paralysis and replace Deflect/Rispote with the other pages



A hybrid version with just Paralysis that I run usually on a floor for control and farming. I put in Art of Rapid Steps because it is a good page to stall and gain Emotions, specially when you managed to inflict debuffs to that guest already

Molar-Vitality Mika

This is... A very special build. It started with the idea of "Hey, apparently healing is really good on Pierre, what happens if you have a deck where you actively heal yourself up?" And here we are...

Rough Sketch
Mika
3 Stay Calm
3 Gamble/Fierce Onslaught in any combination
1+ Daring Decision
Something Else

This deck relies on Mika's Lv20 passive ability healing her for 3 every time she discards a page. And since Stay Calm draws you a new page whenever it is dumped, that means you can load up for another volley of heals next Scene should the need arise. At minimum you heal for 15 throughout the Act

Though this deck does stumble towards a tiny problem-you can't exactly open with Daring Decision because the Heal effect triggers first before everything, so you would just heal 0 Scene 1 no matter what. So your "Something Else" in this case might have to be entirely devoted to be a Scene 1 opener. If we are talking not using stuffs beyond Molar, the two reasonable solutions are Art of Rapid Steps-like pages (for 1 Light card that has good Evasion Dice and a decent punch in it, plus it allows you to play Daring Decision next Scene) and Shocking Blow/Destructive Impact-like pages (just big damage)

Refined Variant Pre-Salvador


Alternatively when we talk later down the line there is the Carnival's We Make Fine Silk that adds another card into your hand-more discard fodder for Daring Decision



Well... With the Dawn Office update however we do have ourselves a completely revamped deck

Refined Variant
<Insert Pic>
Mika
1 Hold Up!
3 Stay Calm
1 Gamble
1 Fierce Onslaught
2 Flash of Sunup
1 Daring Decision

With the addition of the Dawn, specially Flash of Sunup drawing you a card instead of creating a card, this makes the discard engine a lot more consistent as you can now draw back Stay Calm or scramble for Daring Decision a lot faster. This is also why I'm confident enough to cut down to only 1 Daring Decision.

Hold Up! acts as a quick Light regen to setup for Daring Decision should you ever fall into a position where you have to use it and you lack the Light to do so (this happens for me more often than not, though if you are confident with your Light control, feel free to drop this page for something else, I recommend another Flash of Sunup or Art of Rapid Steps)

As for Fierce Onslaught and Gamble, I just splash both pages in for different situations. They act as a small Heal 3 and they are overall better than your typical 1 Light Melee pages. Most of the time Gamble is more useful (because higher minimum output>higher maximum output in my opinion) Though there are cases where you want to dish damage through Block dices, and in that situation Fierce Onslaught is a lot better. I add them in because of the small Heal they gives you (and I am more comfortable with that), an alternative to this is replacing these two pages with We Make Fine Silk for even more page generation, or just Art of Rapid Steps because this deck currently lacks defense (then again, the heal package is here to mitigate it, plus Flash of Sunup has a built-in defense dice)

Molar-Twinstrike Olga

This deck is already featured in "The Generalist", though I am going to mention it again because of how prominent it is. The premise of the deck is to flush out your hand Scene 1, then have enough of a support to constantly attack others for 2 Pages every Scene as long as she is still alive.

No rough sketch, because the idea of this particular one is just play your best cards and adjust it to her passive. Not to mention 69HP plus amazing resistances more or less make sure she never dies first, or be able to deliberately intercept and tank a few hits for your other librarians



Nothing much changes in terms of execution. Scene 1 play Daring Decision if possible, and if you are lucky you can also play Hold Up! as well. After that? You have yourself a solid Scene 2 with 3 (possibly 4) Light and 2 pages in your hand where you can definitely play both. There is the off chance where you draw up 2 Daring Decision at the same time, though that does not hurt you as much because playing one of them will get rid of the other.


This variant however is a bit risky because there is that chance you draw a 2 cost and a Daring Decision, shutting down your engine temporarily. Though this is actually really hard to randomly occur

<Insert Pic>
Olga
2 Hold Up!
2 Art of Rapid Step
2 Gamble
3 Daring Decision

This variant is definitely you going for the big hits. A lot more risky in terms of shutting down your engine for a Scene or two, though this is going to make short work on the guests. And when you enter Emotion Level II, light is going to be the least of your concerns. And there is also that off chance karma lets you draw 2 Hold Up, though it's like a 3% chance if we are talking pure percentages (this "3%" is foregoing a lot of draw mechanics, the exact answer is.... Oh, it's actually 2.(7)% what are the odds of me making a quick calculation being the correct answer)


<Insert Pic>
1 Hold Up
3 Gamble
3 Fierce Onslaught
1 Art of Rapid Steps
1 Daring Decision

This is a "safe" variant. You are basically crippling your maximum damage potential to guarantee your engine never gets shut down.

Good deck. No wonder why Olga is Object'd Art

Full Stop-Liwei Hybrid Support

So... We have officially reached the second update of Chapter IV (I'm ignoring Carnival because they have good pages but really horrible Key Pages). Full Stop Office introduces Ranged Pages and (more or less) Range Combat.

Before we jump into this deck's idea, I need to make sure you understand this: Ranged pages ALWAYS ATTACK FIRST, no matter their speed, clashing or one-sided

Ranged versus Ranged behaves exactly like Melee versus Melee

Ranged versus Melee however is a bit different. Your Melee offensive dice all turns into temporary Evasion- dices as long as the ranged character is still shooting you. I said Evasion- because you do not gain Stagger upon winning the clash, you just retain the offensive dice for the next roll. Once the gun ran out of attacks, all melee offensive dice that "survived" the ranged attack now go back to being... offensive dice.

Another thing you will notice when looking through the Ranged pages is the fact each page can only be used once per Act, and they mainly deal Pierce (with a splash of Blunt on the more... Underwhelming Ranged pages) at a higher damage cap (similar to Discard pages from Molar Fixers)

Also did I mention Stephan and Tamaki can only use Ranged Pages? While Liwei can use both Melee and Ranged pages (yes, only these three can use Ranged Pages)-Of course, this is when we're not counting for Passive Transfer Project Moon gave us. Because that means you have to farm quite a bit to replace a Blue Passive with Liwei's Ranged Blue Passive. Though that does make the game a lot easier to play

Now that's out of the way, we can get into Liwei's deck.

Rough Sketch
Liwei
2 Hold Up!
3 Art of Rapid Steps
1 Headshot
3 Going for Bullseye

Originally he is going to be a main damage-dealer with this kind of build (I will address this later). Opens up with either Going for Bullseye to inflict nasty damage, specially to anyone with weak Pierce resistance in any shape or form, or in some unexpected cases, utilize Art of Rapid Steps for Light stalling and negate some damage+restore Stagger with a 2~8 Evasion Dice. Though after some testing...

Refined Variant

<Insert Pic>
Liwei
2 Hold Up!
2 Art of Rapid Steps
1 Headshot
3 Going for Bullseye
1 Tailoring


The pages in the deck didn't receive much changes, though Liwei shifted into a role of field Support. If you are wondering why, there is a strange influx of characters with Normal, if not Endured resistances in the Pierce department. And with the Salvador fight starting the scene off with 3 Protection for every guest, Going for Bullseye dealing more than 5 damage is a blessing at that point.

That however doesn't matter if they are Staggered. So Liwei now falls back to a role of executioner, picking out anyone who is staggered with a now 12-40 damage Bullseye. Most of the time he will severely cripple the guest, if not outright kill them with one shot. Alternatively if you can't spare the extra librarian to confirm the kill, you can instead hit them with a Headshot and let the guest bleed out by themselves.

Also, Tailoring is in here because there is a niche chance you need Liwei to dish out game-ending damage.

For floor teams mainly rely on only 2-3 librarians for damage output, Liwei is a fine addition to let those damage dealers focus on another guest after staggering one, while Liwei will tie up loose ends via a Bullseye signed with that very guest's name on it.

Full Stop-Tamaki/Stephan Ranged Support

These two decks I developed after the Liwei version, so they share the same idea of "dealing the killing blow" to the staggered guest.



(You can also use Stephan for this by the way)

Your Dodge tool is I Hate CQC, which is basically the bread and butter of the deck. However you only have 3 go at this, so if you think you can get away with not using any card, do it.

Usually Tamaki will have to rely on your two librarians to stagger the guest and then have her going in for the kill. It regains 1 light when you kill someone with her and thanks to her 12-40 damage potential, she can literally take out anyone stunned with a Bullseye and you only have 1 dead turn (at most) to wait for Light regen.

And even when that is a bit too much to ask for, you can try to deal 10-24 damage from a Headshot to a stunned guest should the need arise. Plus this will literally parry ANYTHING the guest throws at you as their opener. And 3 Bleed might just kill a really weak guest while we're at it

Indiscriminate Shots? They are to surgically remove attack dice and defend dice, in case you want her to become a meat shield and you have the Light to spare. This attack actually really soften up the enemy, and also have the chance to stun them, regaining you 1 Light as well to boast

Why do I prefer Tamaki over Stephan?
For one, I REALLY like the rifle.sfx Tamaki's gun makes.

Though the real reason is because you can open Scene 1 aggressively with +3 attack power. That amount of power is either used to try and knock someone dead early, or usually used to try and drop the final stunning blow to the guest (usually via Indiscriminate Shots which have the average of 10-16 damage, then you add 3-9 damage because you are doing this Scene 1)

3 Bullseye means three executions, 3 CQC means 3 chances to stall out and let the other two librarian stun the guest, the 2-cost stuff you can change all you like, but I like one Headshot as backup plan and 2 Indiscriminate Shots for utility

Overall it is slightly weaker than Liwei support, but this is doable because you can have a really aggressive opener with Indiscriminate Shots, that attack alone can potentially stun a guest Scene 1, while the 2-3 other librarian can stun another guest (or two even), making Scene 2 a killing fest. Also fits perfectly if you want a Gun Floor or you need more than 1 Ranged librarian

Take The Shot versus I Hate CQC-Bleed/Stagger Support Versus Execution Support

This is something that came up a while later between me and Miss Scripty. She asked me to reconsider the value of Take The Shot. You clearly saw why I like I Hate CQC, so I will omit that and show you why you should also consider the other page.

For starters, it deals more damage on average and overall. If you are confident that your other librarians can intercept the incoming attacks, Take the Shot will help you chip the enemy down, and more than often help you secure a Stagger Regen. And because you lack the Light Regen on Tamaki and Stephan (which are the only two who would consider these over Hold Up!), Take The Shot works wonders as a Light Regen alternative.

An additional benefit comes from you splashing them into a Bleed Floor. Usually you would have a problem making Bleed trigger. Though if you recall what I just said, when a Melee Attack Dice wins the damage clash, it is retained as if it is an Evasion Dice. Though since it's still an Attack Dice... The Bleed still triggers. So basically you just gave yourself a way to force the opponent activate Bleeds. And this is also a reliable one if you ask me, as Take The Shot have its dice split into smaller ones, it is more than likely to successfully lose all 3 clashes, ultimately give the guest massive Bleed damage, or outright kill them. Usually I would say "If you don't mind the damage, do it", though considering you can just never take the damage, it's a pretty powerful method to support Bleed.

Stray Dogs-Gyoung Mi Beatdown

Actually a good concept from the PM team with Gyoung Mi as a guest (albeit he cheats with 4 Scratch That!)

Rough Sketch
Literally cards that deals a lot of damage for high cost

Like... That's it. Just beat a guest with his pages every other scene

Refined Variant
<Insert Pic>
1 Loosen Up!
3 Brawl
1 Scratch That!
1 Crack of Dawn
3 Tailoring

This is a Brawl version of the deck. The idea still stands, but you can clearly see I gave him cards from all over the place for Brawl to cheat out, and there is a single copy of Loosen Up! since Gyoung Mi has 2 Speed Dice, it would be a waste if we leave the other dice unused. Just remember if you're using Brawl, make sure you use Loosen Up if it is in your hand as well, or Brawl might copy the idiotic 2~6 Blunt

Good Key Page, also resonate with Charge Up/Metallic Ringing abnormality pages from Yesod's floor

Final Regards

So... Thanks to Steam and the magical passive of limiting me to only have 30 captures on one guide, we have sadly reached the end of this guide. Though this will not be the end. I will work on Page 2 of this guide and when it is ready to be released, I will link it here. It's linked at Preface, have fun reading~ And I can tell you, it comes with another broken build. That even rivals Bleeding Barrage in a way

Thank you for spending your time reading, I hope what 17 hours of writing I had in here gave you good inspirations to combat the upcoming foray the Guests give you.

Special thanks to R.ANAKOVA for... "Lending me ownership of posting the guide". Because Steam and their "Level 0 Accounts can't post guides" stuffs.

Another special thanks to Mizuki, for being the gaming therapeutical fanatic you are and test out all the build with me. The builds you see in here are from me, though this is only a small fraction of it, countless builds I tried before got a "Seal of Denial" from her because it doesn't make the game easier. Well, it makes the gameplay fun, though not easier.

[censoring me is a bad move]

bleeding barrage is a useless piece of shit build. thanks for nothing.

[Sanities]

Thanks for the guide! I didn't even know that it's possible to combine different decks (suppose I'm not yet at the point where the game tells you how to, if it does at all)

[ITAndroMedian]

I think Twinstrike Olga has been nerfed a bit, in a way Daring Decision + Hold Up! opener doesn't work anymore, because now light is taken at the end of the turn, not at the beginning. That means Hold Up! won't give you extra light and you'll be stuck with just two lights, if Emotion level didn't go up.

[Mened (she/her)]

Nah keep it for fun but just dont use it lol

[Mizuki-MixOre]

Yeah, PM removed it during the hotfix. Or more correctly they changed it to have Blue Passive be actually unique. Well... I seriously need to do something with the Salvador with Margin now... Possibly I will just burn it.

[Mened (she/her)]

I don't think you can do that actually

[Mizuki-MixOre]

Oh, I need to add this in. My builds won't be abusing the whole "Passive transfer" Project Moon just gave us. Because by that, in definition you can just replace all of Water and Gyoung Mi "Bad Blue Passive" (Yes, Blues are major passives and Yellows are Minor Passive) With either Olga's Margin or Salvador's Guardian (Or another Speed Dice because lol you can't have too many Speed Dice. Stuffs like that. Like, they make the game a piece of cake. I literally have to ask someone else for a new savefile after discovering how broken transferring passive is. Yeah. Imma be crippling my own foot playing this game.
Why? Since I was here from LC, and I know the fun of the PM game is by making it hard for yourself after you know exactly what to do, just to enjoy the journey it gives you when beating it.

[Dima green]

I fear no librarian... But that thing *looks at Bleeding Barrage build*... It scares me