Urban Nightmare Decks

Welcome to Urban Nightmare! This guide's purpose is to provide decks and builds that I used while replaying the game. What I'm offering is something out there to make the preparation part of this game easier. So, if you like the game play of Library of Ruina but don't enjoy building decks, then you're in the right place. Keep in mind, I'm not making game-breaking builds or super "100% optimal and best possible decks." There are a bunch of guides that suggest possible builds and stuff but none where you can get a build for what exact reception you're doing and that's why I'm making these.

Before we begin

Like my previous guides, I'm going to assume you have done all the prior receptions, including the General Receptions and have all the key pages and combat pages you need.

The first thing that's on the table is the new passive attribution. It has been upgraded from 6 to 8, so we get to give more passive points, so let's update the important stuff, the builds of my main team:






You'll notice Meow isn't one of these. I fed all three Meow key pages over to my Full-Stop floor (see next section). I just bought back Salvador instead. Also, I removed Sayo from Jikan and I have my reasons.
You'll notice the use of Battle Ready. Battle Ready is a fantastic passive that increases your starting hand from 4 pages to 6 pages. As your entire deck is 9 pages, this adds consistency; also you stop drawing at the start of your turn if you have 8 combat pages in hand.

Olga now restores 3 light every turn: 1 from Margin, one from Stacking the Deck, and one naturally from the new turn. You'll have 3 combat pages in hand every turn.
Oscar has +1 Strength, healing from winning clashes and two more pages in his starting hand.
Salvador has +1 slash power and two more pages in his starting hand as well as some bleed to go with that burn.
and Jikan has a chance for +1 Strength and is very good at inflicting bleed stacks and doing damage.

Second Floor Updating

The next thing to update is my "Full-Stop Floor" which is my second floor to use if something happened and my first floor died.
In short: pick a floor you don't intend on using, give it this build:



Three times for three librarians. If you pick a floor with a fourth librarian, give them the same build, but you can't have more than three Meow and Liwei key pages (they're purple and you can have a max of 3 purple key pages), these passives can work instead:



Bzzz Bzzz helps the Full Stop strategy by weakening enemies some more on that first turn. The +2 pierce damage is just more damage, to ensure that you kill the enemies on this first turn.


I'd like to take a moment and explain something real quick:
When you come to burn Meow's book (as well as Sayo's book, for another example), it lists it as "2/2." If you burn some books and get two key pages and the rewards haven't reset, you'll see it at "0/2."
If you're in this situation, click on the book and manually click "reset rewards" and it'll become "1/2." Alternatively, keep burning books and the rewards will automatically reset so you'll be able to get the third copy of the key page anyway.
This was implemented to some books in the early access versions of the game to add some more grind.

For the record, each color of key pages have a different limit on how many copies you can have:
Green = 5
Blue = 4
Purple = 3
Golden = 1

This is consistent and true throughout the entire game.

Knight of Despair

Feel free to delay doing this and coming back with stronger stuff if you want.


The good news is that Knight of Despair is easier than Queen of Hatred. The bad news is that it is a gimmicky fight and you need to read. Also, your emotion caps out at level 2 instead of level 1, so that's nice.

Take Oscar, Olga and Salvador. Make sure to grab "Love" for the healing. You won't be able to kill her in one go so keep that in mind and prepare yourself to do the gimmick twice. During the two chances, you'll need to do a combined total of 150 damage to a staggered enemy.

The three ranged attacks you need to win against are:
A big single attack - which loses to Transpierce
The two attacks - which can lose to Daring Decision, Crack of Dawn, Collision, and some others
And finally the three attacks - which can lose to many combat pages
The swords are doing ranged attacks, so they'll go first and allow Transpierce to win against any of them.

Thing is, none of the clashes are guaranteed. Even Transpierce with +1 strength from Solidarity and +1 pierce power from Wedge can roll a minimum of 8 while the sword can roll a 9 or a 10 and beat you.

So... yeah...
There's RNG. The way I recommend handling "if the sword hits me" events is use your economy pages (light restore and/or draw power) to one-side the sword you're expecting to lose against. Don't take any losses to heart and just try again. It's okay.

Puppets

I know I usually go from left to right, but I'mma go right to left. I have my reasons. We're off to a flying start with this reception as it is long with three whole acts.

Jikan endures blunt attacks, which is nice, but due to the self-bleed, he will probably die. If you want to replace Jikan, you can bring Mars, geared with what Salvador is using.



Don't bring in Walter as he's weak to Blunt attacks; same with Sayo. If you're using Hanafuda instead of Olga, then you'll realize that's a bad idea as Hanafuda is also weak to Blunt attacks.

You get three floors but you can pull this off with one floor. You can use your Full Stop floor to finish off any enemies that beat your previous floor.
Just in case someone wanted a third floor, I did prep up three floors:
First floor: Olga, Salvador, Oscar and Jikan (or Mars).
Second floor: Full-Stop.
Third floor: Jikan, Jikan again, Mars (or Jikan a third time), and a Pam (doesn't matter which).



I gave her Walter's Speed, the other twin's passive and Stephan's first-turn power boost; just something to get through this reception.
This will most certainly be the only time you'll use this key page, if at all. Key pages are only going to improve and she is only usable as her weakness to slash won't happen in a reception where all enemies use only blunt attacks.

To be clear, my first floor was Hod's floor; second floor on Netzach's floor; and the third team on Yesod's floor.

All floors have their own benefits. I'm using Hod's floor because it has one librarian receive "Look of the Day" for +2 power; inflict enemies with -1 power with "Alertness;" and also "Axe" gives all the librarian's slash attacks a power boost (+1~3) with the downside of taking stagger damage if you don't land the hit; keep in mind, it's only for Slash attacks. "Axe" is good with Salvador as it will stack with Sayo's passive; Olga can also make use of it.

The Weighty Puppet will give you a good key page.

8 o'Clock Circus

To the left of the Puppets.This reception is much easier than the previous.

As far as the fight goes, don't let them land their buffs. Beating Noah will make Emma vulnerable.

After you win, you'll get a nice strong key page that will serve you really well. Put some puppet combat pages and the +1 Blunt power from Puppet, yes they stack, and here we have something amazing.



While you can use the Puppet key page and give it Emma's passives, but it would be worse as Emma has two 4-cost passives that you want. This is the better set up and the best part about it is how fairly consistent it is: three draw and four light restore.

Yeah, my main team is gonna be Olga, Oscar and two Emmas on Hod's floor.

General Invites

Let's take a detour over to some optional stuff. There are two general invites; one book invites the first against Seven Association; and two has Blade Lineage with Bamboo Hatted Kim.

When it comes to fighting Kim, if he using his big counter dice, don't clash with it and don't one-side him. One thing worth mentioning is how Bamboo Hatted Kim is a really strong key page. Another thing worth mentioning is Dante's Moulinet.




I'm giving him "Axe" on Hod's floor.
I don't use Dante as he is weak to Pierce. Kim only gets three slots for passives, because he already has a lot of them. I've seen a lot of people bend over backward to facilitate his Singular Strike, but it's a lot better to just focus on his slash power while getting to enjoy the benefit on some combat pages. With Sayo, it's at +3. Sharpen Blade brings your Slash Power up to +5 and it rolls 6 to 8 while buffing another page Kim plays by +2 this turn.

If you're unsure, the effect on combat pages like Sharpen Blade only apply for the character using it. You don't have to worry about enemies getting the buff; and it also doesn't apply to other allies.

Shi Association

Up next, to the left of the Circus, we have two acts and two floors.

Running in with Olga, Kim, Oscar and Emma. I suppose the main gimmick is Yujin's Boundary of Death as well as Kizuna granting strength and endurance after you start defeating the enemies. If you get hit by Boundary of Death, try to let it happen to Kim or Oscar as they have Unrelenting. If she has enough health, Olga can tank it and start healing back up via discarding (Best Choice passive heals ftw). They all endure Pierce damage, with Olga enduring Pierce Stagger damage too.
The minions and Valentin are weak to blunt attacks, so if you wanna go triple Emma, that's an option.

Yujin's key page is the only one without any Resistance problems and it's very good for now. She has an inherent +1 power to all dice via "Eyes of Death/Enervation," and so I made some different builds, so pick one.




In this build, I decided to just give her Sayo's passives for a slash build. It powers up "To Overcome Crisis" (going to call it "Overcome") because it happens to be slash. Yujin gets to enjoy the full benefit of Overcome, drawing a page and restoring a light.




Naturally, a blunt build which takes advantage of the low starting HP. If you don't like it, swap out the Overcome with two Puppet Blockades and a second Gigigigigig. This is technically weaker than Emma because, just like Emma, this build has +2 blunt power, but it doesn't have High-level Acrobatics. It does have Boundary of Death.




A pierce build. This is probably the weakest one because we have no Urban Nightmare pierce combat pages.

Fun fact: Boundary of Death doesn't really benefit from the added pierce power because rolling a 51 instead of 50 isn't that big of a deal. Keep in mind, to land the +45, it's a 25% chance as the NATURAL roll (so, without modifiers like passives or strength) between 1~4 needs to be MAX, so a 4. If you have Feeble and it drops the max roll below a 4, then you also won't get the +45.
Yes, I like Boundary of Death. Yes, it is a bit of a meme but I'm not getting rid of it.

Scarecrow Searching for Wisdom

Feel free to delay doing this and coming back with stronger stuff if you want.


Quite gimmicky as you need evade/block dice, so here's a surprise fourth build for Yujin.




Safe to say, this isn't going to be useful outside of this abnormality.
You need two more librarians, so I changed Emma a bit for this.



If you're wondering "what's up with all the light regen?" Well, like Queen of Hatred, you only get one emotion level up. You're gonna be tight on light. If you use up all your light, you'll be left with just one light, so it's better to be able to have something to play to restore light so next turn you have some light while dealing damage. Also, it's okay to use, for example, Gigigigig when you're at full light to get some damage in.
Remember, the counter evade dice don't disappear if they win against a block dice, but they do against evade dice.

Pinocchio

I'm grabbing Yujin with the Slash build, Kim and Emma. This one is straightforward. The gimmick of "telling lies" isn't that big of a deal because the game makes it really obvious when the lies are going to happen. Also, the lies themselves aren't subtle at all.
If you don't like Pinocchio using Boundary of Death on you, feel free to swap out Yujin for Oscar.

If you're having trouble because of randomized costs, they are random RNG, but you can probably get away with making your entire deck full of 3 cost combat pages. You can still win with the usual builds.

Sweepers

I went in with Yujin, Olga, Kim and Emma. You should bring Oscar as all the enemies are weak to Pierce.

The big gimmick is just to be careful and assume that the sweepers won't die if they have Persistence. They also heal up quite a bit from Corpse Cleanup.

The main use of the sweepers is to attribute their Health/Mind Haulers. I don't intend to use them as they don't have speed while also having weaknesses. Some good combat pages are "Sweep the Backstreets," "For the Family" and especially "Extract Fuel." I'll make use them later.

Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary

Feel free to come back to this later if it is giving you a lot of trouble. Also, I decided to edit in more information. Good luck.



I cleared this with slash Yujin, Emma and Olga. This is just a tricky fight as you can't kill the Wolf as Red has to land the finishing blow.
If the Wolf bleeds to death when clashing against Red, it counts as a win.

The most important detail to remember is that you're max emotion level is locked to 1, just light against QoH, so you'll need plenty of light regen.
For Emma, you can swap a Creak off for a third Puppet Blockade. Don't replace Forceful Gesture because you need the draw and Forceful Gesture inflicts -1 power which is amazing in this fight.
Olga restores 3 light per turn, so you should be able to use Daring Decision every turn.
Yujin's Overcome restoring a light and drawing a page is really good.

Forceful Gesture inflicting -1 power helps everyone, including Red, win clashes against the Wolf. Bleed and Fragile can go in your favor as fragile lets the Wolf take more damage from Red's attacks and as I stated up top, if the Wolf dies to bleed while clashing with Red, that counts as a win.

Allowing Red to land her mass attack to gain strength is possible if you leave the speed dice empty (the one she's aiming at). Using Forceful Gesture on the mass attack's turn (with your other speed dice) should result in Red effectively winning every clash the next turn.

If you're using Smoke, make sure you're running Sooty Thwack as staggering the wolf is a surefire way to let Red finish it off. If you're not running Sooty Thwack, then the wolf will lose too much HP compared to Stagger and you won't really be able to stagger it before it dies.

Fun fact: "Fatal" resistance (like being staggered) applies its 2x damage amplification last. While this doubles Protection's effectiveness, as reducing an incoming attack of 5 down to a 4 will double it to 8, two down from 10, it is more fun when you look at the other side:
Smoke's +50% damage is doubled. Same for Fragile as any added damage is added first, then doubled.
Examples with numbers: if you attack with a 10 on a staggered enemy with 10 smoke, it'll be calculated as 15 damage first, then doubled to 30. For fragile, if an enemy has 3 fragile and you hit them with a 2, it'll be calculated as 5 then doubled to 10.

Yes, they stack and they also stack when the person attacking has 10 smoke with Puffy Brume. Example: if a librarian with 10 smoke rolls an attack of 20 on a staggered enemy with 10 smoke, that'll be 90 damage. 20, amplified by your 10 smoke, is 30 which is then amplified by the enemy's 10 smoke, makes 45 and Fatal doubles that to 90.
I currently don't know when/where fragile is added into the calculations, or I'd use an example of all that coming together, but I can say for certain that it definitely adds into the increased damage.

In conclusion, Fragile and Smoke on a staggered enemy is grounds for enemies to die when poked. Anyway, all this can help Red finish off a staggered Wolf, so plan ahead and good luck.

Index Proselytes

Back on the usual track of left-to-right.
I'm going in with my usual team of Olga, Yujin, Kim and Emma on Hod's floor.

These jerks all aim at one character. Don't do this strategy back at them because they'll clear you out faster. They do introduce "Singleton." All the decks I've made so far don't abide by Singleton as the condition is to have no duplicates in your deck. The main reason to use it is clearly "Will of the Prescript." It is an amazing combat page and it helps make Oscar much better.



A bit better. Three light restores and two draws for four pages.

Queen Bee

Malkuth is getting her fifth Librarian.


I'm taking my usual team and running in. I know I just updated Oscar, but I'm not taking him.

This was much easier than I remember. I beat all the worker bees in two scenes, staggered the Queen on turn 3, and beat her on Scene 4.

Malkuth Realization

Feel free to delay doing this and coming back with stronger stuff if you want.



A realization is a test on your comprehension on how to play the game; from preparing decks and to playing them.

I ran in with Olga, Emma, Kim, Oscar and slash Yujin. This should be a breeze as long as you appropriately use your economy pages. Every turn, you draw a page and restore one light; at emotion level 5, if you use at least two combat pages, you'll draw two instead of one, but you'll only restore one light though.

If you're unaware, giving Yujin "Happy Memories" while Boundary of Death is in hand will make the abnormality page choose it. Thanks to Overbreathing/Exhaustion, you restore 2 light every time you use anything that ORIGINALLY costs 4 or more, so after two uses, Boundary of Death effectively costs 0 and after that, you'll regain light for using it. Vines is a fantastic abnormality page and it buffs Oscar.

Smiling Faces

You get one floor for the two acts and it's pretty swell that you now have a floor with E.G.O. available, so that's what I'll be using.

Olga, Emma, Kim and slash Yujin on Malkuth's floor.

Yujin's "Overbreathing/Exhaustion" passive restores 2 light if she plays something that costs 4 or more. This gives her a peculiar edge for playing expensive E.G.O. combat pages.

Wang's key page is the the best of these because he endures blunt instead of slash and "Sooty Thwack," his unique passive, costs 2 while the other two's passives only cost 1. Sooty Thwack is also the best smoke passive.



Pretty straightforward build designed to give smoke, gain and maintain smoke as well as draw and restore light. The two passives just add +1 power to all your rolls.

Laetitia and Big and Will be Bad Wolf

For Laetitia, I'm running in with Olga, Emma, Yujin and Kim. If you want, a team of three Emmas can wreck things up pretty well. Olga's discarding is as effective as you'd imagine.




For Big and Will be Bad Wolf, I'm running in with Olga, Emma and Yujin. Same like before, a team of three Emmas can really wreck things up.

The Crying Children

Between Malkuth and Hod, Malkuth's floor is the only one with E.G.O. so I'm going with her floor. What's good enough to beat a Realization is plenty enough to beat this reception; especially now that you have E.G.O. on your side.

I will make one quick change to Kim to help with the ranged attacks. Switch the page back afterwards.


Kim's Yield will have a lovely +5 thanks to all the passives and +7 if you also use Sharpen Blade in the same turn. It's pretty sure to win against the ranged attacks. Oscar's Flèche is also a fantastic combat page to use against the ranged attacks. Also, Forced Gesture beats Restraint.



Heads up, I'm not really fond of this key page, so I'm most likely not going to use it. I gave it Oscar's Sayo, so I had to update Oscar's passives.



Gave him Mind Hauler, which makes Oscar's survivability pretty good.

Alriune and King of Greed

You get four librarians for each of these.



For Alriune, I'm running in with Olga, Kim, Oscar and Emma. Focus one minion at a time, grab Laughing Powder, and you should be good. Flèche is super effective against her.
I didn't bring Yujin because if the mass attack targets the broken speed dice, then you're kinda screwed.



For King of Greed, I'm running in with Oscar, Emma, Wang and Kim.
Again, Yujin can get screwed over with that broken speed dice. Also, Olga can discard the Fragment of Bliss. Read the passives.

Secondary Team Update

Now that we have two floors with 5 librarians, I thought I'd quickly add a fifth member to the Full-Stop team.



Not as strong as the rest, but it is one more person doing damage and weakening the enemies a bit.

WARP Cleanup Crew

You get two floors for the two acts, but only four librarians on each floor, so you don't really need to worry about the fifth Full-Stop librarian.

My main team is going to be Olga, Yujin, Emma and Kim on Malkuth's floor.
Be wary of their "Overcharge." Expect to lose the clashes against it. Moulinet is probably your best chance to win against Overcharge. I ended up swapping Yujin out for Oscar between acts because she took the brunt of their Overcharge moves and almost died.

Now, you're probably expecting me to make a Rose build and because this is a guide, I will. I just want you to know that, in my opinion, Rose is worse than Mars, so I'm not going to use her.



10/10 passive points because you should've just unlocked Star of the City. If you want 8/8, remove one of the Haulers.
Deep Drag works in this deck because it doesn't give you any smoke, only the enemy.

To Star of the City!

I'll be splitting SotC over multiple parts. I'm thinking two or three parts will be appropriate. One thing for sure, it won't be one part. I hope this guide was helpful.

Did I grind to have 5 of every book after I finished burning? Of course I did.



Seriously, don't do this. lol

[Dice_24K]

My section on QoH is at the bottom of Urban Plague.

If you've already done a bunch of Urban Nightmare, give Kim a nice singular strike build and go beat her up.
If you're worried about Hysteria, then do not clash with her melee attack and do not one-side her with the "Villain."

[shad0wloren]

Any tips on how to do QoH?

[Dice_24K]

You do not. I did it for two reasons.
1) It made me happy.
2) I was making sure my decks worked properly. Like... I didn't wanna win once and think "okay, that worked" and move on. What if enough rolls were "really just lucky" - think of how Deep Drag rolls 6 - 19 -> what if the enemy consistently rolled low and I just had an easy time? Unlikely, but replaying it a bunch was one way to be sure.

Also, fun fact: it was not hyperbole when I said I fought Queen of Hatred 10 times with every build in that section. lol

[karu]

do i have to grind 5 of every books, or not?

[Mugman]

I have now completed Shi, Smiling Faces, Sweepers and Index. Philip is next.

[Dice_24K]

I'd recommend going left of Puppets.

[Mugman]

yo yo, i have beat the circus, Pinocchio, the puppets, The Knight Of Despair and the WARP cleanup crew, any advice for where to go now?

[Dice_24K]

Well, if you follow my guide, I started with the far right and then went left.

[Mugman]

Yo, ME again hehe, Which one of the first row of UN receptions should I do first?

[One Bug]

Ah I see, thanks for explaining!