Two receptions. I know I usually beeline to the Abnormality fights and Realizations, but the second reception for the Hana Association is too good to pass up; I mean plot-wise as well as the key page.

Fun facts about the Trigrams:
1) They are actually the symbols on the Korean Flag


and 2) they add a lot of consistency to any build.
A noteworthy thing about the basic Hana Fixer key page is that they start with 4 light.




Mirinae's focus is supporting others while also being strong. If you don't like Mirinae running "Unforgettable Melody," then swap it out for Confrontation.
Keep in mind that buffs from passives, including Offensive Position and Nikolai's "The Commander," do NOT get shared to other allies by Mirinae's "Hana for All" as it is strictly shares buffs from combat pages. "Hana for All" will share the buffs given to her from Yan's prescripts as they are considered combat pages.




Smoke singleton build for Harold because it is a powerful build. Smoke is too strong not to make more decks out of.




Olivier's key page is a straight up upgrade of Harold's as "Twelve Fixers" is an incredible passive.

At this point, you should have all the combat pages the game has to offer before the upcoming visit from Uninvited Guests. Let's update and finalize some builds.
The gold standard is to be able to get an effective +3 power with the minimum standing at +2 power.

You'll notice is how I'm putting Brace Up in effectively every single build. It is pretty good and very effective alongside Will of the City to cover economy requirements.

If you're unaware how amazing "Brace Up" is: if your hand is empty, it doesn't discard but it still draws you 2 pages next turn. The important thing here is that it draws 2 pages on the next turn; meaning using multiple copies with an empty hand doesn't reduce the pages by 1 because you had to discard what you just drew from the first Brace Up. This also means that it doesn't break something like Rain's passive or Margin. The only time you draw immediately off of Brace Up is if it discarded a combat page like "Switcheroo."

You can only give Roland passives. This build was made to redo the fight against Olivier and works perfectly fine against the next fight you have to do as Roland.
If you want to do old stuff on Keter to enjoy this Roland, you can swap out Lone Fixer with Offensive Position.




Once again, this is the strongest build for the Red Mist. As for passives, this is a solid setup with survivability built in via Health and Mind Haulers. If you want more power instead, you can replace the haulers with Fervor.







Purple Tear is an incredible key page. Stance alone gives you +2 power and each deck is designed to enjoy that benefit. The passives aim to give you more power regardless of what stance you're in. Reminder that when in Guard Stance, PT is immune to status ailments allowing use of Overcharge without the penalty of being immobilized.

As PT is compatible with Myongest, here is an alternative setup:


Very much usable when you're not in the middle layer.



Updating Binah's passives by giving her the awesome consistency of Trigrams. Binah rolls really well and a consistent +2 power along with Geon being a third is plenty.

The essence of Singleton; you play 6 unique combat pages and you enter "Blade Unlock" state which gives you +1 power and allows you to use your exclusive combat page. This applies to the Proxies, not Yan. I don't use Gloria or Hubert, so just used their passives to help Esther and Yan.




Esther is still strong and thanks to "Raging Torrent," you don't really need to run Will of the Prescript for draw. I'm keeping Unlock as it is very effective to play to get to "Blade Unlock" state. Gloria's Easygoing Breather helps him play more pages.




Yan is strong and has the capability of assisting another party member with his Prescripts. Make sure to give him a Red Abnormality page as he gains +1 power; keep in mind, he needs to have more red abnormality pages than green/blue abnormality pages.

Yae starts with 3 light. Exhale Smoke is pretty fantastic as it rolls well and instantly gains 8 smoke. No more singleton thanks to Brace Up's draw power and Deep Drag also drawing a page. If you want, swap out a "Smoke Blow" for a "Will of the City" for more economy.




I've been using a smoke build on Xiao because of two main reasons.
1) Smoke is really strong and is totally worth it.
2) Xiao's burn gimmick is entirely contained and strong enough in her "Force of Wildfire" passive alone.
Keep in mind that getting to emotion level 4 unlocks E.G.O. pages for Xiao which are empowered by smoke's damage amplification.
All that said, I will be changing this for the first layer.



Lowell is kind of a blank slate of a key page with Speed 3 and Fervor. Smoke is strong and it takes Lowell and makes him much stronger.

Over all, this is a really consistent and really sturdy build. The first turn might be a bit troublesome but otherwise, you should be good to go.
Ammo exhausts upon discard, so if you're worried about Brace Up discarding an ammo only to draw it later, then don't be.



Boris with a pierce build. +3 power across the board. Discipline has power null, so you cannot increase its power nor can you decrease its power.

I haven't changed Nikolai's deck, so the only change is the 2 passive points. A mind hauler can help keep Nikolai alive by not getting staggered. The point of this build is to support everyone by maintaining 11+ charge while also getting to play 4 combat pages per turn. Golden Opportunity is more defense than Quick Suppression, so if you want the build to be a bit more offensive, swap them out. Keep in mind that Golden Opportunity can net you a lot of charge if the evade dice wins a clash or two.




Rudolph with Maxim's passive for even more stagger damage. The charge gain isn't over the top, but you don't spend charge at all. Once you get to 20 charge, you'll stay there, allowing the build to be pretty consistent.




Similar build to Nikolai. The thing about Nemo is that upon taking lethal damage, he will recover 5 HP per charge. At 20 charges, that's 100 HP which is more than his max HP. By the time that happens, Reindeer and Rhino Procedures will be giving him 2 strength and 2 endurance; paired up with his own passives to gain strength and endurance by gaining and spending charge, Nemo is a sturdy and strong key page despite not having speed 3 and also starting with only 3 light.

Allen is still strong and amazing at +4 power with the only thing standing out is how he starts off with only 3 light. This is addressed by having a third of the deck cost 0 and having plenty of economy pages; maybe too much? You might argue too much but it should be fine. Keep in mind his passive that destroys block dice if he is 3 speed faster and he's pretty handy.



+4 power to pierce, so I'm just giving him Allen's build.

The Udjat work well together but even on their own, random protection can be pretty fantastic. This build and its passives can easily be triplicated for a full Udjat party.



Emma with +3 power to all the blunt attacks; +4 with High-level Acrobatics. Decently strong and consistent. I probably won't be using this key page, but it is an option as Emma is strong.

Hopefully, you'll get to play one Brace Up every turn. +2 power might seem a bit low, but Final Stroke Impugnatio Ultima are strong on their own merits.



Olga would suffer from not having many pages in her hand but being able to play one Brace Up per turn should completely solve that problem. It might not be super consistent on the first turn or two, but it should be fine.
After discarding your entire hand, you'll have 3 pages in hand plus 2 pages per Brace Up you also play. If you played Final Stroke and Brace Up the previous turn, that's 5 pages in hand. Playing the exact two same pages this turn will result in the same situation again next turn; also you discard 3 pages which heals you 9 HP. Olga's heals from discarding can easily offset her lower max HP at this point of the game.

Alternatively, here's an Irina build that just uses Olga's Margin too:




Also, you can replace Puppet Skeleton with Rain's passive as your hand should be empty every turn.

This type of build has a slow start due to needing a couple of turns to play Clone. Make sure that you have your intended target for Clone in your hand when the page is used or else you might clone the wrong page.
Bottom Deal helps consistency as playing one Brace Up will draw 3 pages with it. This helps the consistency early on but it isn't necessary.
After the first turn, you shouldn't find yourself ever paying more than 2 light for Rapid Gashes.

Fun fact about Clone: It clones things based off original cost.




This is a very effective and "Carver of Scars" will inflict plenty of bleed too. Sadly, we only get 3 "Bottom Deals" and they're all used up for me (because I gave one to Olga, which isn't really necessary). I chose "Grit" instead as it effectively adds an extra protection and stagger protection; making Dong-hwan really sturdy and hard to kill. I do recommend just putting "Bottom Deal" instead of "Grit," but if you do, consider an alternative build like Olivier's.




Note: this build needs the Bottom Deal passive. You can use this for Dong-hwan if you give him Bottom Deal.
You'll notice instead of 3 Brace Ups, a Field Mods made its way to replace one. This is because your hand size limit is 8 pages, you can have your full deck in your hand after using Field Mods once. Your full deck will be six 0-cost Rapid Gashes and two Brace Ups. This allows you to play three Rapid Gashes and one Brace Up every turn at emotion level 5.

You can also use the Sweeper combat page "333" that's single-use instead of Field Mods. The purpose of using either one is to thin your deck. The beneficial effect of lowering the cost of the pages in your hand by 1 (Field Mods) or Persistence (333) are secondary and can be completely ignored.

Explaining this a bit more: At emotion level 5, you will play 4 pages and Brace Up discards one page, so that's minus five pages from hand; leaving you with just 3 pages in hand. At the start of your next turn, you will draw:
- 2 pages from Brace Up
- - and 1 more page from Bottom Deal
- 1 page from the new turn
- - and 1 more page from emotion level 5, for playing at least 2 pages the previous scene.
You will draw a total of 5 pages, putting your hand back your entire deck at 8 pages.

Until you reach emotion level 5, you might be paying a light or two for Rapid Gashes, but this fine as it happens in the normal build anyway. Don't forget that you get a full light restore every turn when you emotion level up; also you have Trigrams. Upon reaching emotion level 5, you'll most likely end up having to play two Brace Ups to get a full hand and have everything cost 0. It's super consistent right after that.





A twist on the build for Rapid Gashes specifically made for Kim. This is a fairly strong build where your burning flashes should be guaranteed to get their second attack. You get +5 power to everything but Clone, which gets +3 power.

I'm generally biased against burn builds; sorry for these being mediocre, but most people do agree with me, so I'm not going to worry about it.




A burn-focused build. Chun's passive is generally RNG if it'll land on something useful, so don't feel bad if it doesn't. Miris's passive will always trigger as long as you hit the enemy, as it doesn't disqualify burn applied from passives.



An alternative defense build with +2 power to defensive and offensive dice. Your burn focus with this build is primarily done through your passives.




Miris/Chun with a burn focused deck.



Cecil/Mei build. I prefer using Cecil's page as both of them are nearly identical but Cecil's passive costs 3.

If I'm being honest, these Liu builds are not really strong. I'd rather take the key pages and use them for Fervor for other builds.

As people still hate this Realization, I have decided to update this section with more information. Also, I have discovered the character limit in one section of a guide, so I split apart Hokma's realization away to another section; and I moved the full explanation for Olivier Rapid Gashes build to the "Clone Builds" section (where it belongs, honestly).



Make sure to take Olivier with you. I also recommend the Rapid Gashes Clone build on Olivier for this realization, as such:




For more info, check out the section for "Clone Builds."


I used Binah, Olivier, Yan, Nikolai and PT.
I gave Yan "The Weight of Sin" which buffs him quite massively; Olivier got "Eternally Lit Lamp" and "Tilted Scale;" and you can give Salvation to anyone (except Yan so he keeps his +1 power).
Don't grab "Watchful Eyes."

Don't forget your Trigrams (Hana) and Prescripts (Yan).
If the first phase is giving you trouble, bring Kalo along to help Binah shoot the counter dice. Before this is over, you should've played all three clones for Olivier's deck.
The second phase is pretty straightforward: beat up the minions and one-side Roland to death (make sure he has no counter dice). I was able to get through it in 3 turns.
The third phase is a pain because it is Judgement Bird. I find it best to just kill him in one round; or at the very least stagger him. Bird endures slash and blunt, but is normal to Pierce. Overcharge has two pierce which helps a lot. Feel free to switch to Pierce Stance.

The finale starts with full power null which is a pain but Overcharge on PT and Rapid Gashes on Olivier roll insanely well and "Twelve Fixers" isn't "power gain." Note: Don't use Somber Procuration.
Plan ahead and use your economy accordingly. My experience is that it took me two turns to crack the first egg, one turn to crack the second egg, and one turn to crack the final egg. Finally, one turn to finish him off. Everyone was playing 3 or 4 combat pages per turn which is a lot of fun.

More info on the earlier phases:

1) Against Big Birb, when 1 person is enchanted, you can throw 1 fairy at the birb to remove the huge slash-insta-kill counter dice. This will save you one speed dice and let the enchanted person walk into the block dice and get staggered. An enchanted ally who gets staggered instantly wakes up from the enchanted and stagger. Odds are, they won't get staggered in one turn though.

Additionally, when two people are enchanted, there will be two slash-insta-kill counter dice with a block dice in between, so a total of 3 counter dice you gotta get rid of. You have some options when it comes to dealing with that.
The first one is to use three ranged combat pages, like degraded fairy and chain, but that's a tall order.
A second and more practical way is is Fairy (or Chain) + Pillar. Pillar will get rid of 2 counter dice and Fairy (or Chain) will get rid of the third. Due to counter dice being "first come first serve," you have two options in ordering it: Pillar then Fairy OR Fairy then Pillar.

I recommend you do Fairy then Pillar. Fairy will get rid of the slash counter dice, then Pillar's first attack will get rid of the block dice, but then the second slash counter dice will "hit" the block dice on Pillar's page. Thing is, Binah endures slash damage (and ineffective for stagger), so you'll take like 8 HP damage and like 4 stagger damage. Small price to pay to prevent two people from getting killed, and also save on a bunch of speed dice.

The other way around, Pillar then Fairy, will result in Pillar's block dice facing the birb's block dice, and you'll be taking 20 stagger damage.

Note: if PT with Myongest gets enchanted, she'll always roll double infinity, but ranged goes first, so it's fine.


2) Against Punishing Birb, make sure you pay attention to the minion speed dice. Another important thing to pay attention to is your own counter dice. If the Birb runs up to peck you and you have an offensive counter dice, that's like 50 damage coming at you. Turn 2, you should double check, but the birb will be using a bunch of evade combat pages with no counter dice, so that's a good turn to hit them if you've already knocked at least two minions into stasis.


3) Against Judgement Birb, one-turn kill tactics please, or at least one-turn stagger. Use pierce dice. Overcharge has two pierce dice and Rapid Gashes has one. If Yan is fast enough, use Baleful Brand to put 2 erosion on the birb to help with the insta-kill/stagger. If you gave Yan Distorted Blade instead of Double-edged Rencounter, this is a good turn to spend 7 light to drop a mass attack for the erosion.

If you're unwilling to go for that tactic, then you gotta play the gimmick with "Sin." Importantly, just make sure you don't get hit. Unlike in the normal abno fight, you can give Sin to the minion birbs, but not to Judgement Birb itself. You don't need to worry about redirecting his attacks away from his minions. Give the minions sin, don't get hit, and attack him. You have a bit of a ticking time element as the minions will die and you won't be able to give away your sin to them... unless you're willing to put them all on Binah again, but it shouldn't come to that. You shouldn't spend more than 3 or 4 scenes during this phase.
Keep in mind the minions use a ranged attack after getting hit.

4) Against the Beast, if you're missing any librarians, it'll be much harder. Everyone should be at least emotion level 4 when you get there. The pain is all the mass attacks because players just aren't used to dealing with them. In my opinion, the real pain is specifically losing light to the mass individual, so careful with that. Also, the ranged attack rolls really well and is annoying to beat when you're in power null. Besides those two things, after you break an egg, the Beast will get +2 strength and +2 endurance, so that's something to watch out for.

Power Null is probably the most overbearing effect and it comes first. Olivier's Rapid Gashes and PT's Overcharge should be able to deal with all the clashes.
The second egg randomly makes two pages in hand cost 1 more, which discourages you from playing them, but sometimes, you just gotta play them anyway. Sometimes, for economy pages that draw and restore light, such as Multislash and Will of the City, you should play them even if they cost 1 more as they'll be light neutral but they do draw a page.
Not too much to comment on the last egg that prevents status ailments. I think it exists to stop you from melting the Beast by just having so much fairy stacked on the same enemy until that point. Hitting the same target with Fairy and Pillar sure can stack pretty high and do lots of damage.

I'm running in with PT, Mirinae, Olivier, Harold and Yan.
The first phase might give you trouble but after that, as your emotion level rises, it should be fairly easy.
When it comes to sacrificing two librarians, you cannot evade this by redirecting both the attacks to one librarian. Also, don't try to go all-in to win it in one round because that's not happening. Your efforts are best spent knocking the two minions into stasis (or at least stagger).

Welcome to the final stretch of the game!
Once you begin, you cannot do any abnormality fights or realizations; you will not be able to burn any books; and you will not be able to replay any old receptions, though you can access the credenza.

There is no penalty for losing, except for the time you put into the game. You do not lose anything and you can immediately hop into a rematch or take some time to change any builds.

You can back out at any time but you will need to start over.

If you're unaware, you are locked out of anything on a floor that has beaten an Ensemble member until you get to the next layer. This means that the first layer will require the most prepared key pages at 20 as you have four floors with five librarians on each floor. I have put up more than 20 build, so use whatever you want. Also, you can fill in any missing key pages with the Ensemble key pages obtained as you progress.

I'll be using the builds I posted in previous sections of this guide; usually identifying which ones on which floor.

You'll need to inflict burn. With that in mind, I really like using this gimmicky build on Xiao for this fight.



Note: You don't need to use this and you're going to need the "Happy Memories" abnormality page for this build and it plays exactly like Rapid Gashes except you only pay the light 4 times, a total of 10 light (if you play one per turn) and then it is free. This allows Xiao to enjoy using her unique mass attacks after reaching emotion level 4. If you don't get Happy Memories, then this build will fail.

Alongside this gimmicky Xiao build, I used Allen, Kim, Rudolph and Nemo.
Grab the "Vines" abnormality page and give it to Allen (or Bayard) to buff him further. It also slows Philip down to a crawl as he'll only roll 1 for speed. This means that everyone can attack him before he does any of his attacks. One person will clash and the rest will be one-sided, making his counter dice the only threat. This is really helpful in the final phase as it allows you to kill him very easily.
"The Forgotten" can destroy all his counter dice, give it to your fastest librarian who will one-side him. "Green Stem" does enjoy the benefit from "Vines" which makes it better than "Fourth Match Flame" for the second phase.



A solid burn build. Philip doesn't have many passive slots. You can also go singleton for a setup like this. Chi Wen and Rekindled Strike inflict burn on you to maintain the +1 power. Miris's passive inflicts bonus stagger damage to enemies every turn if you hit them. Keep in mind that getting hit or hitting enemies inflicts them with burn so enemies are sure to have burn. I don't really intend to use this, but it is strong.



The singleton varation.



I used PT, Nikolai, Harold, Kalo and an Udjat.
PT with Myongest here really makes this fight much easier. Alternatively, giving your librarians Puffy Brume also makes this fight much easier. Fun fact: Eileen does NOT have Puffy Brume.
For the most part, you can ignore her Projectile attacks but make sure to save something for her mass attack as it immobilizes you on hit. It is a mass summation that rolls twice, not a mass individual. Note: PT in Guard Stance is immune to immobilization.
Allen, Bayard or PT in Pierce Stance can use "Magic Bullet" can make this fight much easier as all of the attacks during the synchronization are pierce with plenty of mass attacks. Furthermore, the moment you get to team emotion level 5 and grab "Dark Flame" is the moment you can rush to kill Eileen (or at least move onto the next phase).




After you win, you'll get Eileen's key page that is a direct upgrade from Yae. Ever-spinning Gearwheel gains 7 smoke and inflicts 7 smoke while having really strong rolls.
Yae can still be used or you can just give someone else "Immediate Repairs" which is a very powerful effect.



I used Dong-hwan, Irina, Olga, Eileen (or Yae) and Bayard.
You can make this battle much easier if you bring Philip (either Unstable Crying Children or Ensemble Philip) with you instead of Olga. The consistent burn will help chew through her resilience.
Feel free to let Greta attack the sacks but don't let her finish them off. Grab one of the E.G.O. mass attacks (or use Irina's mass attack if she is low on HP) to avoid having a party member get sack'd. If it is unavoidable, redirect as many attacks to the party member who is getting sacked because they will be canceled (the counter dice remain).
I gave the abnormality pages to Dong-hwan as Rapid Gashes is really strong and won almost every clash. The only troublesome thing was "Break an Egg" and if you want to counter it, swap out Bayard's "Laceration" for "Prod the Weakness."

I do not intend to use Greta; check the next section where I give her passive to Dong-hwan.



I used Yan, Olivier, Mirinae, Esther and an Udjat.

Laughing Powder is always good; it also buffs Yan. "Tentacles" on Esther proved really useful as it became really easy to stagger Bremen and move onto phase 2. Ever-repeating Performance is fantastic to just skip the mass attack and attack him when he's weak. Yan inflicting Erosion also helps speed this reception up. The most important abnormality page after Laughing Powder is certainly Incomprehensible as it'll trivialize the rest of the reception.

I do not intend to use Bremen, check the next section where I give his passive to Mirinae.

As we can now access key pages on the first layer, we can update some stuff thanks to the Ensemble's combat pages.
I'm switching Xiao off of her gimmick build and updating it a bit. Passives are unchanged.



As for Dong-hwan, same Rapid Gashes build, but just updating his passives. This isn't a popular choice but it works for me.



Lastly, updating Mirinae by replacing "Unforgettable Melody" and upgrade it to "Rooster's Crow;" and I gave her Bremen's passive.




She is less powerful which is fine because she is more supportive.

I took apart some builds since we only need 15 from this point onward, to keep things simple on my end.




I used Mirinae, Bayard, Kalo, Xiao and Rudolph.

Other than Stupify, it is an easy fight. You cannot avoid the first Stupify.
If you want, swap out Rudolph's pages with weaker stuff and have him on "get stupified" duty; something handy in the fight, especially with all the projectiles, but not too strong so you can ignore him and let him one-side you.



Bulky Impact is a bit dangerous but it should help you more than it should hurt you.

By the time the second Stupify came around, you should have mass attacks to destroy it; similar to Greta trying to sack people. Nihil is the cheapest E.G.O. mass attack to destroy it, at 3 light, while Xiao's Pu Lao costs 2 light and could also destroy it.




Oswald's key page is perhaps the best key page for the Rapid Gashes build. You can argue Olivier's is better, but that's because Olivier's key page is one of the most powerful key pages in the game and can run any build and be good. Anyway, "Splendid Performance" does apply to Rapid Gashes as it has Slash, Pierce and Block (none of them counter).

Feel free to run the alternative build where you give him a Bottom Deal (instead of Double Kick and Keeping in Stride) and replace a Brace Up with either 333 or Field Mods.



Obviously the Red Mist is coming. Alongside her, I used Nikolai, PT, Harold and Dong-hwan.

The most important advice in this fight is "read your Great Split: Vertical." The amount of times I've seen people use it on Beatdown is hilarious. It gets rid of something on ANOTHER speed dice.
The first time Beatdown is used, Tanya only does two attacks; you're supposed to use GS: Vertical on the attack that isn't Beatdown. The value of stopping Beatdown can't be matched. The second time Beatdown is used, you're supposed to use Great split: Horizontal on Beatdown directly, destroying it; Tanya does four attacks the second time around, so GS: Vertical would remove Beatdown at a one-third chance.




Tanya's key page is effectively a blank slate that revives; also she has Speed 3, starts with 4 light, and Nuovo Fabric helps. The build I made is around the premise of "I wanna use Beatdown as much as possible!"

Jae-heon

For this fight, I like to use this gimmicky Yan build that focuses on dropping Distorted Blades.




Note: You don't need to use this and you're going to need the "Torn Off Wisdom" abnormality page; without it, the build will fail.
The plan is simple: every time you play something, you discard another combat page and restore light, allowing you to get to 7 light to use Distorted Blade. You would run out of combat pages but that's why 5 out of 9 pages have "draw a page upon discarding this page" effects. Remember, Switcheroo is kinda decent for actually attacking and Stay Calm guarantees two emotion coins; 5 if you clash against Creak. Yan endures blunt damage.

Alongside the gimmicky Yan build, I bought along Olivier, Allen, Eileen and Esther.
The normal puppet starts with strings while the Nimble Puppet and Weighty Puppet get their strings on turn 2 and turn 3 respectively. If you kill them before they get their strings, you don't have to deal with the gimmick.
Personally, all I did was aim any extra speed dice on the Weighty Puppet to kill it on turn 2. I let some attacks one-side me to make sure I got the kill but everyone on my team endures Blunt Damage, except Allen, so it wasn't a big deal. If Courage comes up, grab it.

Puppet Angelica gets her strings on turn 4 but she endures all damage so rushing her down before she gets her strings isn't very rewarding.

I do not intend to use Jae-heon; check the next section where I give his passive to Nikolai.

Giving Jae-heon's passive to Nikolai:



What this passive does is give the "Puppet Strings" effect to an ally.
For example, Nikolai will give them to PT and as long as Nikolai is alive, the effect remains. If Nikolai dies, the effect is gone.
What is the effect? It gives PT 1 strength or 1 endurance every turn and prevents PT from dying. If PT's HP reaches 1, then the effect will go away next turn, so PT will survive the turn; like Unrelenting but better.





An alternative to using Oswald is to give Olivier his passives and use Rapid Gashes on Olivier.

Binah is going to shred her apart. Alongside her, I used Eileen, Olivier, Esther and Allen.
There isn't much to comment on here. Make sure to use Degraded Pillar on the Vermillion Cross's "Rampageous Strike." Other than that, "The Weight of Sin" on Olivier can stack up ridiculous strength and endurance, so that's an option. I gave it to Yan during the realization and he ran around with like 5 strength every turn.



If you don't care much for the mass attack, swap it out for a Double-edged Rencounter.
The important thing about "Bloodfiendish" is that you need to actually heal in order to gain the strength. If you're at full HP, you cannot heal, so Offensive Position and Kizuna/Extreme Fatigue should guarantee that you're always healing while giving you a total of +4 power (if two allies die).


This is my least favorite Ensemble Fight.
I used PT with Myongest on Hokma, Yan, Nikolai, Mirinae and Xiao. Make sure to not give Myongest to an Assistant Librarian. My least favorite ensemble fight. There are cheeses to make it much easier but I don't end up doing them; Myongest is plenty.

Pluto will start the fight giving out contracts, where his speed is fixed at 1. You can freely decide who gets which contract and you can give one person up to 3 of them. Phase 1, Pluto is immune to damage, but his immunity does not prevent additional damage. This phase ends when you kill all his shades; shades that copy your assistant librarians' passives and also use some of their combat pages.

Dealing with the contracts normally, meaning one contract per librarian, you'll need a build that does not have more than one attack on any combat page or you else you get staggered. For that, I changed up Yan.



For the restriction, the Might contract will give you 2 strength. This deck is not Singleton but it doesn't matter as none of the singleton pages have only one attack; regardless, you have enough unique pages for Blade Unlock.

Swiftness contract is easy to deal with on PT. It buffs Myongest but forces you to clash, but guard stance prevents the feeble and disarm penalty.
I gave Nikolai the Amplification contract and Xiao got Obligation contract. RNG on what is chosen, but try your best to make use of it. The last contract is for Light. To handle it, I updated Mirinae.



The Light contract will fully restore light every turn but you'll lose HP if you have any leftover light, so this build should enjoy that. Giving her Baptism can help ensure you don't have any leftover light.

If you see this:

Then clash with the "Counterpart" combat pages you get from the contracts. It's an easy way to make one of the shades effective skip its turn.

Phase 2 has him trying to trap one of your librarians and make more shades. If you have a mass summation (or individual with at least 2 attacks), you can destroy the combat page and prevent it from happening.

If you stagger him, he dies because he has a tiny amount of HP compared to his stagger. Sooty Thwack + Mark put in a lot of work towards making that happen.

Cheesing Pluto

As for cheesing Pluto, you have options on how to do this but I'll only discuss a couple. There are Blockma strats using "Lean Bloody Wings."


This build requires "Lean Bloody Wings" to work as it is the source of additional damage that Pluto is not immune to.
Alternatively, give your entire party, except Blockma, something along the lines of a build like this to try and kill Pluto in a couple of turns.

Make one of them Rose's key page. Or maybe use no key pages but give them speed along with these passives. The point of this build is to get lucky as Pluto is not immune to the RNG damage from WARP passives. You play the first two or three turns and if you don't win, quit out and try again.
Fun fact: if you have someone with Yujin's "Speed 2," you can have them take 4 contracts as a sacrifice so you only have to worry about one contract.

Saving the best cheese for last, I got permission from "po po" to share his strategy to defeating Pluto.

Let me explain what you just watched. What happened is that Pluto was burned to death from Philip's "Plumed Escutcheon" (it can be either Philip). Pluto can be harmed by burn (or any status ailment) only AFTER reaching phase 2 of the fight, which is after you defeat all his summoned Shades.
Speaking of the Shades, you'll notice they're all weak. This is because they copy your assistant Librarians down to their HP and Resistances. In the video, the librarians had no key pages equipped, so their HP was at the base 30 and they were weak and fatal to pierce and blunt respectively.

You can see the builds towards the end of the video, fully translated.
The plan is simple: Make sure Hokma doesn't get the light contract, use his combat pages to get to 20 charge ASAP and kill the Shades. Once that's done, you can just keep passing your turn until Pluto dies.

Why does this work? Every time you get hit, you inflict Pluto with burn.
Maximum Crash reduces all damage taken by 30% and then Grit reduces all damage by an addition 1 (not percent). On top of that, you have Toughness giving you Protection and Stagger Protection which further reduce all damage. If you want, you can clash with Pluto a couple of times to get to emotion level 5 to maximize Toughness's buffs, but as you saw in the video, it isn't necessary.
This is like the "Pet the Malkuth" challenge (but weaker).


I will not be using Pluto's page unless I want to give someone only "Nuovo Fabric."

This is probably my favorite fight in the game and the easiest one to prepare for. The only passive you need is Lone Fixer but you can make the fight easier by grabbing other passives. The build I posted for Roland should be able to clear this no problem. Just in case, here is the same build again:



Here's some late night, rambling, unedited advice off the top of my head:

1) The most important thing is to plan ahead in terms of economy; Full Commitment does help you with your economy, but alone, it doesn't do enough. Make sure you're using either Old Boys or Mook Workshop every turn. If your hand is small or you run out of light, you're kinda dead.
1.5) You should emotion level up once a turn, every turn until you hit emotion level 5, which restores your light, so that's nice; but you'll still want the draw power of the two pages, and also Zelkova Workshop.

2) You do not need to clash with every attack; you have counter dice and so does he. If you're gonna definitely lose a clash, then just one-side instead and let that attack hit you. You have boosted HP and SR for a good reason.
2.5) Looking at you, Trails of Blue; either clash with that using Wheels Industry or Old Boys Workshop, or don't clash at all.
2.75) If you can set it up, Crystal Atelier's counter dice is really good against his "Scythe Slash." It's also decent against "Sequential Blitz." If you clash with Crystal Atelier instead, it should refill some stagger.

3) If you want to make the fight a bit easier, set up the very first clash in the first to lose (like Ranga Workshop vs Dissonance) -> so you can get 3 red emotion coins -> to grab Pulsation.

4) If you took Trigrams, use them every turn.

5) Don't take Fervent Beats unless you really know what you're doing.

6) You should be able to ready Furioso twice, so use the first one asap.

7) Remember Roland's Black Silence passive gives him +2 power every third combat page.
7.5) Sword of Frost allows you to completely control the flow of the battle. This should make setting up the +2 power very easy.
7.75) Atelier Logic is ranged, so it goes first and it can screw up your order if you're not paying attention.


Building Argalia is pretty straightforward: just put all his exclusive combat pages. Alternatively, if you're fighting an enemy with ranged attacks, give them his passive.




+4 power including Resonance. Playing Argalia is matching your speed to the enemy's vibration. If the two numbers match or you're only off by 1, Resonance activates. Also, you're going to start combat with 8 pages in hand. Trials of Blue has power null which can be incredibly handy.

Honestly, there are no new builds to be made at this point. All possible decks have been made, so I'll just type up some tips and leave it at that.




You should have more than 15 builds prepared, so pick your preferred floor and pick five builds for your librarians and charge right in. Before you charge in, prep two more floors juuuust in case.

If you're a fan of using the Red Mist, this reception is going to be a lot of fun if you play well.





Your support key pages are Nikolai, Mirinae and Yan. Bringing all three with you can reduce the difficulty of any reception. It is the reason why I took all three with me to beat up Pluto. That said, none of them have smoke, which is why I also took Xiao with me.

The key thing about each part of this long realization is to understand what is expected of you. This was added after the game was released and was carefully tuned to be quite demanding. Thing is, there was an intention to make it easier but due to certain... reasons/circumstances, it was left as-is. The result is something that feels over-tuned, but it really isn't that bad.

Personally, I think being able to give Angela passives would've been the only change that would make this so much easier.

Wrist Cutter
I must say, I was disappointed the moment it went from a 1v1 duel to a 5v1. I like duels.
Giving Angela Puppet Strings allows you to let Wrist Cutter to just attack Angela while everyone else one-sides her. Using Learn to give Wrist Cutter a copy or two of "Depression" can make this a cake walk.
Don't feel bad about restarting if things go really badly.

Proof that using "Learn" to inflict "Depression" does work. I got lucky and landed 2 hits and her stagger resist is at 59 while being more than half. This was one turn after my Librarians joined.



To achieve this, the optimal way of starting this battle is:
Turn 1: Token of Friendship -> grab Pulsation
Turn 2: Token of Friendship or Display of Affection -> grab Urging
Turn 3: Play two Display of Affection, make sure to clash with the "second attack is big" -> grab Learn
Turn 4: this is when your librarians join, have them redirect attacks away from Angela, but make sure Angela clashes with an attack that gives has two "On Hit: give Depression."

This will result in the previous picture where Wrist Cutter has so little stagger resist. You should stagger her on turn 5 and win by the end of turn 6.
If anything goes wrong, just reset.

Heart of Aspiration
Starting from here, Angela will have E.G.O. pages that are based on an E.G.O. from each floor. You'll unlock more as you progress.
Each Lung has a different effect. The Heart will inevitably get hankering so your goal is to limit it. Be wary of the "Faith" Lung; and watch out for "Turbulent Beats" as it has power null.

The expectation is you go through the entire pattern almost two full times because Aspiration gets staggered after 8 of her minions die. That said, there is a way to beat this faster:

Grab "Learn" and use it against her counter dice when she's passive. Learn kinda breaks the game code a bit and has counter dice fight one another, resulting in a unique interaction where you'll break all her counter dice until you stagger her. Just make sure you have some endurance to actually win the clashes and then pile on.

Marionette
The easiest part of this realization. When she is about to dispose of a Pinocchio using "Eliminate Error," you should be able to out-speed her and kill it first; do NOT clash with it. The only time you should clash with it is if you grab Learn and give it to Olivier; you'll be able to use it against "Eliminate Error" and deal a lot of damage to Marionette.

If things go out of hand because of "Eliminate Error" or you get unlucky with randomized costs, then just reset.

Keep in mind the minions Pinocchios don't have your passives, unlike Pluto's shades; so if you have smoke builds, the puppets will debuff themselves while buffing you.

I ran out of characters to type, so I split this part into two sections.


Frost Splinter
This one feels overwhelming but Angela is prepared. At the start of battle, make sure to avoid getting too much Chill as getting immobilized when Angela is alone is a reset.

Here is the optimal path for the first bunch of turns, and if you low roll, just reset.
Turn 1: Token of Friendship + Shyness.
Turn 2: Tiphereth's EGO + Shyness
Turn 3: Strength 5, Netzach's EGO + Shyness
Turn 4: Gebura's EGO + Token of Friendship + Shyness
Turn 5: Strength 5, Tiphereth's EGO + Display of Affection + Shyness
Everyone should be free here.
Turn 6: With the 5 strength, you should be able to win against the mass individual. I do recommend using Hod's EGO this turn; because it is good to weaken Frost Splinter next turn if anyone on your team is immobilized.

After that, it's smooth sailing as she doesn't repeat the mass attack.

Remorse
Phase 1 is messing around with the hammer and nails. The most important thing is stopping the hammers' "Splitting/Collapse Heart" combat page by Mass Attacks.

For phase 2, let's be clear here: You win when Remorse's HP hits 0 and you used all E.G.O. pages. People forget this super obvious fact and keep trying to get rid of Guilt thinking they'll win if they get rid of it.

Fun fact: PT can swap decks, which can completely get rid of Guilt.
Meanwhile, discarding Guilt will not exhaust it; so it will still be in your deck and you can just draw it again.
Update: I can confirm that you can discard Guilt and it won't be in your hand next turn, but since it did not get exhausted, it'll be in your deck available to draw again.
I did a run where I bought in a discard build and used Final stroke to discard my entire hand and next turn, there was no Guilt in hand, but the turn after that, I had Guilt in hand again (I used Final Stroke and Brace Up, so my hand size was 5, including Guilt).

If you want to cheese it, and I recommend doing so:
Phase 2
Turn 1: put the mark on Remorse by attacking her LAST with Nikolai (or whoever has the passive) and put some smoke on Remorse.
Turn 2: Swap to Slash Stance on PT and go all-in on Remorse. Remorse's attacks are ranged, so if you want someone to attack her first, use the ranged pages to get to her first.

Ideally: Remorse will have both Mark + 9 or 10 Smoke. With PT's Slash Stance inflicting +50% more damage, this should allow you melt Remorse in one barrage.
If you want a one-turn kill, you can give PT Puffy Brume (you can use Ever-spinning Gearwheel) which results in Slash Stance doing 100% more damage.

Note: PT gains +1 power on the turn stance is swapped.

The intended way to handle phase 2 is to clash with Remorse to get special status ailments, which include power null. Using power null, you can clash with the front minions and negate their +10 power gain. Angela's E.G.O. can casually keep pecking at the back minions as they only use counter dice.


Distorted Ensemble
Situation is similar to the Black Silence reception but there are multiple acts; so take your preferred builds to your preferred floor and charge right in. Again, prepare some extra floors just in case.
In the first act, read the passives carefully and decide your plan of action.
For the second act, don't allow your units to be instantly killed; use Tanya's big attack to your advantage, don't try to beat it with a mass attack or one of the Red Mist's Great Split attacks.
In the final act, try not to leave Argalia too healthy because he will start using an absurd Mass attack when he's alone. Also, your entire team emotion levels up twice every turn in this act.

Congratulations! Enjoy the credits rolling with another Mili song.
I hope my guides helped you. I hope you enjoyed the game. I love this game hence why I made these guides.



The Final Reception
No builds, no gimmicks, no abnormality pages, none of that. Just one thing: gameplay. Good luck!



One last note: I have talked about my general goal of getting 5 of every book after I'm done burning them. I have accomplished this. I made a gif scrolling through my entire collection and uploaded it to imgur for you to enjoy. Enjoy![imgur.com]