Reverberation Ensemble Guide (and beyond) [SPOILER-FULL]

Ghoulean August 17, 2024 Updated: November 27, 2024 #Library of Ruina Guides #lor
Library of Ruina Guides (Series)
Reverberation Ensemble Guide (and beyond) [SPOILER-FREE]
Reverberation Ensemble Guide (and beyond) [SPOILER-FULL]

Spoiler-Full Introduction

That means this section is full of spoilers. Don't say I didn't warn you. Go here for the spoiler-FREE guide.

Once you enter the Reverberation Ensemble, you will be locked out of burning books, abno suppressions, realizations, and any other reception. Forfeiting at any point of the game from this point onwards will reset your progress, so don't click the button that says "forfeit" (Clicking "return to title" is safe). If, however, you do accidentally click forfeit, immediately Alt-F4ing will close the game before it saves, hopefully reverting the game back to before you forfeited.

You must do all realizations by this point of the game, or else you will be completely locked out of the True Ending and forced to forfeit.

In the Reverberation Ensemble, each floor gets to fight a member of the, well, Reverberation Ensemble. Individually, each reception can easily wipe the opposing party if you brought the best key pages; to spice things up, Reverb Ensemble implements a layer lock mechanic. Once you use a combat page or key page and win, you cannot reuse them until the next layer gets unlocked. The layers are:

So for example, if you fight Malkuth with Xiao with Health Hauler (Lyla), you won't be able to use Xiao, any combat pages she was holding, nor 1 copy of Lyla for Yesod's, Netzach's, or Hod's respective fights. Once you beat Yesod, Netzach, and Hod, then you will be able to reuse Xiao for one of the Briah floors.

The following sections will present gameplay tips that will help you exploit the weaknesses of each Ensemble member.

Malkuth

Reference: Malkuth, spoiler free builds

Gameplay Tips

Philip is a 3-phase fight, with each phase locked behind a health gate. You can also accelerate the fight by staggering him. His natural resistances are quite high, but his stagger resistances change to fatal by inflicting 15 burn. Thus, the strategy is to quickly stack 15 burn before rushing him down.

Demo

Optimized Build

Equipped with this knowledge, we can construct a counterbuild specifically tailored to fighting Philip. You shouldn't bring this build to any reception other than this one.

This is an untrue solo designed to be both consistent and simple, centered around quickly grabbing Nostalgic Embrace and improvising the rest.

Nugget 2 Nugget 3 Only bring 3 nuggets

Abnos + Egos same as previous section.

Demo

Optimized Build 2

Similar to the previous build, except this one is a true solo centered around Happy Memories.

Happy memories solo build

Clash Fervid Emotions turn 1 against Searing Resolution in order to generate the positive emotion coins for Happy Memories.

Abnos + Egos same as previous section.

Demo

Todo

Yesod

Reference: Yesod, spoiler free builds

Eileen is also a 3-phase fight, with each phase locked behind a health gate. However, all three phases are pretty much the same. Killing a churchgear will cause her to take a huge amount of stagger damage and then use a mass. This seems threatening, but she also stops making all other attacks. Thus, forcing Eileen to mass is actually preferred over trying to avoid the mass attacks, and so the strategy is to frequently kill churchgears.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

Optimized Build

The builds outlined in Yesod, spoiler free are sufficient. Your gameplay and Ego page usage determine the fight.

You're free to make additional tweaks as you see fit.

Hod

Reference: Hod, spoiler free

Greta also has 3 phases, with each phase locked behind a health gate, and with all three phases that are pretty much the same. Due to her strong resistances, anti-stagger, and innate 3 protection, the general strategy is to kill her through indirect damage (namely bleed).

Her "Sharkskin" passive will resist your attempts to status her: she will ignore the first 20 status inflictions with her 20 stacks of Resilience. However, with the right build, you can brute force your way through 20 inflictions within 2 turns. Every 5 turns, she will refresh with 10 stacks of Resilience. At that point, you can brute force your way through in half a turn.

Upon entering the fight, she has three meat sacks with her. These don't do anything. You can ignore them.

Starting in her second phase, she will begin using the combat page "Into the Sack!", which will "sack" the librarian and put them in a sack. In the next scene, she will then attack that sack. Unlike in the first phase, this sack actually does do something: if Greta successfully lands the killing blow, your librarian is instantly killed. If, however, you land the staggering blow (and, thankfully, your attacks only do stagger damage), then your librarian is freed, healed to full stagger, and healed up to the sack's remaining HP. Therefore, with smart sacking you can navigate this fight heal-free.

When her third phase starts, she instantly kills all sacked librarians. The third phase is otherwise identical to the second.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

Optimized Build

The builds outlined in Hod, spoiler free are sufficient. You may optionally drop Bamboo Hatted Kim and replace him with another Night Awl. Note that you should still use Sanguine Desire off cooldown whenever possible despite the -2 Slash die power penalty because the value of the page lies in its effect and not its rolls.

Netzach

Reference: Netzach, spoiler free

Bremen, thankfully, does not have three phases. They have two phases.

In the first phase, they join with four...random...things...? I honestly don't know what the theme is. Occasionally Bremen throws out a buff and/or a debuff that makes you eat dirt for that scene. Upon getting staggered, Bremen recovers from stagger in the next scene. This happens up to three times. Note that Bremen has no health gate.

After staggering Bremen three times, they enter the next phase where they are unstaggerable and throw out various attacks, including an occasional mass. After throwing out the mass, their resistances turn to fatal and they become staggerable for the scene.

The gimmick is that Bremen can "only" be staggered three times total, and Bremen recovers from stagger instantly. Make each stagger count. Beyond that, simply win your clashes.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

Optimized Build

Although the builds outlined in the Netzach, spoiler free are sufficient, you may decide to throw in Deep Drag on a few nuggets like so, for extra damage:

Tiphereth

Reference: Tiphereth, spoiler free

Oswald's main gimmick is his possession mechanic. The card We Need You, You Know~? instantly staggers and takes control of one of your librarians for two scenes.

There are two ways to accomplish this: either give Oswald a nonthreatening librarian and mitigate the damage done, or give Oswald your most threatening librarian and shoot for Wrath and Tiphxodia.

Gameplay Tips

Mitigation strategy:

Tiphxodia strategy

Mitigation strategy

Tiphxodia strategy

Demo

Optimized Build

This build plays into Tiphxodia.

Tiph optimized

Your opening should look like this:

The rest of the fight is up to you. Be sure to pick up Blind Rage – that mass is relatively low cost, breaks We Need You, You Know~?, and deals a lot of damage.

Demo

Gebura

Reference: Gebura, spoiler free

Tanya's gimmick is that after you kill her once, she gains +2 strength and endurance for the rest of the fight. She also uses Beatdown on occasion.

This fight is more of a test on how well you can pilot Red Mist than actually playing against any gimmick because there's not much gimmick here to begin with.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

Optimized Build

The build outlined in Gebura, spoiler free is sufficient.

Although you can viably build a dedicated Mountain of Bodies team around solo Gebura, I recommend against doing so in this particular fight. Tanya is frail, and you can reasonably kill her quickly.

Chesed

Reference: Chesed, spoiler free

Jae Heon's puppets are practically unkillable so long as they have the status effect "Puppet Strings." In order to remove this status effect, you need to win clashes against Jae Heon's counter dice over four scenes.

When all four puppets truly die, Jae Heon doesn't do anything particularly special. Without the puppets backing him up, you can easily rush him down.

It's easier to simply prevent Jae Heon from inflicting Puppet Strings in the first place. The strategy is to rush down puppets without Puppet String as fast as possible, then clean up the rest later.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

Optimized Build

The builds outlined in Chesed, spoiler free are sufficient.

Binah

Reference: Binah, spoiler free

Similar to Gebura vs Tanya, this fight is moreso how well you can play Binah over any particular gimmick that Elena or Vermillion Cross can throw out. Unlike the Red Mist fight, however, this one basically boils down to "read the text on Degraded Pillar's first die."

Gameplay Tips

Note the following synergies among abno pages, which may situationally move the tier of an abno page up or down depending on the current game state:

Demo

Optimized Build

The builds outlined in Binah, spoiler free are sufficient.

Elena and Vermillion Cross are frail enough that you can kill them by team emotion level 3 or 4. Therefore, I recommend against trying to activate The Beast (unless you want to have fun).

If, for whatever reason, you want to kill Elena even faster than you already do, you can run the following build on Olivier:

Weight of Sin Olivier

You MUST pick Weight of Sin as your first abno card in order for this deck to succeed. After obtaining Weight of Sin, use Opportunity Spotted to activate Weight of Sin repeatedly. This deck works well with Big Eyes.

Demo

Hokma

Reference: Hokma, spoiler free

cracks knuckles Alright, this one's going to be a doozy.

Pluto is a 2 phase fight with contracts. I'll explain the contract part in a bit.

In the first phase, your non-patron librarians get cloned as "Shades" that you'll fight against. This is a similar but different take of "I'm you but better" compared to Pinocchio: key pages including passive attributions are copied over, and shades either play a card from the nugget's deck or a Shade-exclusive card. During this phase, Pluto is immune* to damage, so the only way to progress is to kill all the Shades. Then, Pluto will enter the second phase.

In the second phase, Pluto will "trap" one of your librarians and clone them into another Shade, while also firing off various attacks of his own. During this phase, Pluto is not immune to damage, so you win by rushing him down to death.

This would be a fairly straightforward fight if not for the contracts, which Pluto hands out on turn 1 and persists for the entire fight. Each contract provides a small buff in exchange for possibly crippling deckbuilding restrictions. You get to choose which librarian gets which contract(s). The combat pages and buffs both explain what each contract does, but for convenience I will copy them here:

Gameplay Tips

The contracts' restrictions prevent the usage of "typical" decks entirely, "typical" here being decks that follow the 5-4-3 rule (a rule that I just made up): 5 card draw, 4 light restores, 3-cost clashers. The intent of this fight is to improvise your deckbuilding. There are various strategies for tackling this; I'll go through them from least to most cheesy.

Strategy 1: Tech it up

To tech is to prepare a special tool or strategy in order to counter an opponent. In other words, we'll tweak our decks in order to synergize with these contracts:

Demo

Strategy 2: Sacrifice a dedicated contract holder

You get to choose who gets which contract by redirecting them. As a consequence, you can let one person get 3 or 4 contracts, and then kill them off. This allows your other nuggets to freely run decks free of contracts.

Axe gang, axe gang

Redirect

I suggest you leave Swiftness un-redirected because that one mostly doesn't do anything, but you're free to run other contract(s) that you want to keep for whatever reason.

Because the Shades copy the keypage of your assistant librarians, the fight quickly reduces to a mostly-typical 4 vs 4 fight.

Strategy 3: Blockma

Through the power of Combat Preparation and Bi An (mostly Combat Preparation), the Shades' decks become mostly non threatening, while your librarians' decks still pack a punch. Blockma abuses Shades' battle behavior: they alternate between two different "modes". First, they play a card from the copied librarians' deck alongside "Shadow Image". On the next turn, they either play two copies of the page that beat the Clash Lose die effect, or two copies of "I'M THE REAL ONE!!!" (a 9-9 9-9 9-9 offensive page) if the Clash Lose effect was not activated.

Shadow images I'M THE REAL ONE!!!

By stacking irresponsible amounts of Endurance on all your librarians using Combat Preparation, you can slowly stagger the Shades while being untouchable. Aim to play at least 2 Combat Preparations across all librarians every turn (ideally 3 or more). Try to prevent the Shades from copying Combat Preparation also.

Blockma 2 Blockma 3 Blockma 4

(note: no attributions)

Although Combat Preparation practically guarantees that you win every clash, I do not recommend going full Blockma. Instead, leave one or two non-Blockma decks so that you have a nugget that can finish off Shades who get staggered from all the blocking. Ironically, the best non-Blockma holder is Hokma himself as Shades do not copy his deck.

Blockma Xiao

(Aside: since Shade-exclusive pages are mono-blunt, attributing Stiletto on your assistant librarians will make clashing with Shadow Image and I'M THE REAL ONE!!! easier. Keep in mind that this will also boosts the Shades' pierce dice)

Demo

Strategy 4: Whatever Po Po is doing

Here, just...copy whatever Po Po is doing (he takes Swiftness and Amplification – build in English at end of video)

Keter

Reference: Keter, spoiler free builds

He has Lone Fixer, but so do you (unless you forgot to attribute). He also has some mechanics with Vibration...but with the exception of clashing vs Resonate, you can ignore Vibration for the most part.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

Black Silence

You have to feel the same sorrow as mine...

Bring your Elite Squad to deal with this mess. You can go back to the deckbuilding screen by quitting to title and re-entering the game.

Phase 1 - Roland

5v1 fight where Roland is kinda normal. He cycles like so:

  1. x1 Atelier Logic, x1 Durandal, others
  2. x1 Wheels Industry, x1 Durandal, others
  3. x1 Crystal Atelier, x1 Mook Workshop, x1 Durandal, x1 Atelier Logic, others
  4. x1 Furioso, x2 Durandals, others
  5. Repeat

"Others" here referring to some combination of Alias Workshop, Old Boys Workshop, Ranga Workshop, and Zelkova Workshop

Tips:

Phase 2 - Smoke Monster

Big Roland spawns 4 minions. Each time one of his minions die, Roland loses 50 HP and respawns the minion. This continues until Roland goes down to 300 HP or below, which will deactivate this effect.

If you stay on this phase for too long, eventually he'll start throwing out mass attacks.

Tips:

Phase 3 - Angelica

There are two mechanics you need to pay attention to: Soul Link and Combo.

Both Roland and Angelica start with 4 stacks of Soul Link; they're practically invincible while Soul Link is up.

Every scene, Roland and Angelica use Dark Bond and Ashen Bond, respectively. Redirecting these attacks may not seem to do anything since they're both pages with only counter dice, but this gives you a same-scene "Dark Presence" buff (Dark Bond) or "Ashen Presence" buff (Ashen Bond) that can be used to deplete Soul Link.

Additionally, every scene, Roland and Angelica play their own version of Unstable Bond. One die on each of these pages have an on-clash lose effect: if the attacker has a specific Presence buff (Ashen Presence if clashing vs Roland, Dark Presence if clashing vs Angelica), Soul Link depletes by 1.

Therefore, in order to deplete Soul Link:

Combo

If Angelica and Roland target the same librarian with the same workshop page, then Roland will give his dice to Angelica. For example, if Angelica's Zelkova Workshop (4-8 slash, 3-8 blunt) and Roland's Combo: Zelkova Workshop (3-8 slash, 3-8 slash) both target the same librarian, then Roland will not play Zelkova Workshop, but Angelica's Zelkova Workshop will attack the librarian with a 4-8 slash, 3-8 blunt, 3-8 slash, 3-8 slash in that order.

Therefore, there are three main strategies to deal with this:

  1. Split focus: multiple librarians clash into these cards to prevent one from getting overwhelmed.
  2. Clash Angelica's Combo page with a single strong 3-cost clasher. The threat from Combo pages come from obscurity: your librarian has to defend against more dice than the pre-combat screen will lead you to believe. But even with dice getting shuffled around, most combo pages are 3- or 4-dice attacks. This strategy should mitigate most of the damage that your librarian would otherwise need to endure.
  3. Ram a combo page into a counter die that you know will win every clash.

If you can't properly counter Combo no matter how you try to clash, then prioritize following the instructions in the Soul Link section over the instructions here.

Phase 4.1 - Memories

Roland uses a bunch of cards. He spawns several weapons behind him over 3 turns. At the end of the third turn, he uses a powerful mass. He will move to Phase 4.2 if he hits 400 HP.

The strategy is to deal damage hard and fast enough to force a phase change before the mass attack happens. Ignore the weapons he spawns behind him as that will prevent dealing damage against Roland himself.

Do not sacrifice econ in order to deal damage. While Roland is charging up his mass, his attacks are fairly weak. Use this opportunity to rebuild your econ (card draw and light restore) and prepare yourself for success in the next phase. Even though this segment is a DPS race, at this point, your librarians should be at high emotion level. Even by using mostly econ cards, you should still be able to kill him.

Phase 4.2 - Abno Clones

Roland goes to sleep and spawns clones. In 3 turns, he will wake up, use a powerful mass, and move to Phase 4.3. If the clones are still alive at this point, they will follow him to Phase 4.3.

The strategy is to kill the clones:

There is no priority as each clone is fairly frail. Try to spread out your damage for maximum efficiency.

Phase 4.3 - Finale

Roland throws out attacks until he dies for real this time. So just kill him.

For the mass – if you have less than +6 power on yourself and/or don't have a strong first-die page, accept that you'll get hit.

Demo

Keter Realization

Bring the Elite Squad.

Note that during the entirety of this realization, you gain twice as many emotion coins.

Unlike every other realization in the game, each phase is checkpointed. At any time, you can go back to the deckbuilding screen by quitting to title and re-entering the game, and you'll pick right off where you last were.

Phase 1.1 - Wrist Cutter

Objective: survive.

On turn 3, Wrist Cutter will use many threatening pages. In order to counter this, you want to use x2 Display of Affection. You need 6 light to do this, which means you should spend the first 2 turns building emotion level:

So long you manage to not die by the end of turn 3, you'll move to phase 1.2.

Abnos:

Phase 1.2 - The Cavalry's Here

The rest of the team spawns in.

On the first turn, Wrist Cutter uses some powernull pages that inflict "Depression." If both attacks connect, your librarian will likely be staggered in the next scene. At the very minimum, clash against a strong first die page to prevent instastagger.

On the second turn, Wrist Cutter uses various triple offense pages. Try to clash versus these with assistant librarians.

On the third turn, Wrist Cutter uses a 25-25 mass alongside a bunch of counter dice targeting Angela. Redirect ALL the counter dice away from Angela; otherwise she'll take a lot of damage and likely die. With Angela, play Display of Affection against Wrist Cutter's mass (taking care not to redirect counter dice) followed by Lean Bloody Wings, which will deal a lot of damage to Wrist Cutter.

This 3-turn cycle repeats until either Wrist Cutter or Angela dies.

If you're having trouble keeping Angela alive, bring Mirinae with the following changes: cut Fervor and Remain Vigilant in Peace on Mirinae and then replace them with Puppet Strings and Nuovo Fabric. When Mirinae spawns, use Puppet Strings on Angela.

Demo

Phase 2 - Aspiration

Aspiration has four hearts, whose effects are randomly ordered and explained in their status:

These effects are centered around gaining "Hankering", which has the following effect:

While this character is on the offensive, gain Strength equal to the amount of this status. The amount of Hankering is reset when this character is Staggered or when the Scene in which Aspiration goes on the offensive ends.

In other words: every four turns, Aspiration launches a mass attack whose power is (15 + Hankering count), and she fires other attacks that likewise scale off Hankering count. At low Hankering, this is very easy to beat; at high Hankering count, this will instantly wipe your entire team. Therefore, aim to keep Hankering as low as possible at all times, preferably 10 or lower.

Note that, due to The Wait's and The Pain's effects, preventing Hankering gain is impossible. You can try to rush down both of these hearts, but you will inevitably let at least 6 or so Hankering through. Since gain prevention is impossible, the strategy is to focus on forcing Hankering loss through The Faith's and The Effort's special loss effects.

To reduce Hankering, either win every clash against The Effort, or win every clash against the page "Inclination" from The Faith. Some tips to consistently bleed her out (pun intended):

Due to the Hankering loss strategy, prioritize Pain > Wait > Faith = Effort.

Aspiration's mass will instantly heal all hearts. Despite this, on her mass scene, prefer to burst down a living heart over targeting Aspiration, which will set you up nicely for the second cycle.

~~

During Aspiration's non-offense turns, she will use a large amount of 20-20 counter block dice. Usually, this is not possible to break through, and you will stagger yourself if you try. However, by using the abno page "Learn" or by using Nikolai's Disposal, you can destroy every counter die with that one page, opening Aspiration up for some serious damage.

If you want to use this cheese, disregard the recommendation to burst down a heart over targeting Aspiration. Instead, now use the first cycle to punch some damage into Aspiration, and then Learn or Disposal on the next turn to finish her off.

Abnos:

Demo

Phase 3 - Pinocchio

Marionette has four puppets, each with their own effect:

Additionally, each puppet copies the deck of one of your librarians.

Every three turns, Marionette uses a Lie – this is a card with wrong dice. In the same scene, Angela and a random assistant librarian will obtain the page Lying is Bad!, which isn't actually explained but here goes:

The strategy is to kill the puppets from most to least threatening: All > Backwards > Lies > Curiosity. Masses, such as Angela's Fearlessness to Keep On Living (in Ego hand) are situationally helpful also.

Occasionally Marionette uses Eliminate Error against one of the puppets and instakills them. Ignore this; she's helping you. Additionally, you can provoke her into playing this card by bringing a puppet to half of its HP or less.

Abnos:

Demo

Phase 4 - Snow Queen

Similarly to the Snow Queen suppression, you need to free all your librarians. Afterwards, Angela throws out a bunch of attacks.

Thankfully, you can free your librarians easily due to the plethora of masses in Angela's Ego hand. The gist of it is that you want to use Courage to Protect or Expectation for the Meaning of Existence in order to deal damage as well as get that juicy +5 strength buff, followed by using blunt masses such as Fearlessness to Keep On Living to free the librarians. Use Shyness and Token of Friendship to simultaneously push emotion level, protect yourself, and restore light.

Here's a sample cycle, though depending on the cards you draw, you may need to deviate from this. Feel free to play around and figure out your own Ego spam strategy (a lot works):

Once your librarians are free, Snow Queen will throw out a mass attack (you will almost certainly fail defending against this) followed by a somewhat uneventful beatdown afterwards. You want to stabilize in terms of emotion level and econ as soon as possible, which will make handling the beatdown easier. You should also use this opportunity to use as many unused Ego pages in Angela's Ego hand as possible.

Abnos:

Demo

Phase 5.1 - Silent Girl

Remorse spawns four hands that will beat you down.

Hands play combat pages that have either a cost-up or a cost-down mechanic: the goal is to get the nail hands to lower their costs by hitting them with higher cost pages (so they gain less power), and to get the hammer hands to raise their costs by hitting them so they brick. Note to yourself that the front hands will likely gain +3 power due to their Guilt passive. Beyond that, you can ignore this mechanic.

Hammer and nail hands also inflict a status that occasionally does a lot of damage. You can ignore this mechanic also.

The back hands occasionally play one of two pages: Splitting Heart, which gains power equal to the user's remaining light, and Collapsing Heart, which is reused for every point of remaining light. For Splitting Heart, respond with a leading block to mitigate damage. For Collapsing Heart, destroy this page with mass attack.

It is highly recommended that you use each of Angela's Ego pages at least once by the time this phase ends.

This phase ends when all hands die. Prioritize killing the front hands first, then the back hands, one at a time.

Abnos:

Phase 5.2 - Remorse

Remorse spawns four more hands…and joins the fight herself.

The strategy is to focus down the hands one by one, using the powernull to stay safe against the +10 power buff. You should also use a mass on occasion to reset the back hands' timers. Once you've cleared out all the hands, you can safely beat down Remorse.

This part of the fight is also a DPS check. You should have enough damage to kill all the hands, and then Remorse, within 9 turns, even with Guilt's effect. You may play Guilt in the event that you somehow did not kill Remorse within the 9 turns, but ideally you should avoid entering this situation in the first place.

You can use Purple Tear's stance change in order to remove the "Guilt" card from her hand and deck. You can even switch back to your original stance, and it'll just be gone. As stated before, however, you should aim to win the fight within 9 turns, so this trick is usually inconsequential.

Demo

DEnsemble

They're back, so we have to beat them up again. Once again, you can clear this using the Elite Squad.

Act 1

In this act, killing a member of the Ensemble will either grant your team buffs, or debuff the enemy team.

The four goons of Assiah are here:

Priority: Bremen > Philip > Eileen > Greta.

Both masses are weak enough for you to roll against each time using strong mass busters like Duel, Double-Edged Rencounter, and Sturdy Defense. As a result, the masses end up reducing the overall damage of the enemies. Bremen's buffs on death should swing the battle in your favor.

Greta's Tackle Mount seems terrifying, but unless you're low on stagger, it's surprisingly ignorable. Your key pages should be able to shrug off its damage easily with Health Hauler and Mind Hauler. If you really want to win against this page, however, use strong first-die pages such as Duel or Deep Drag.

The first act is tougher than the others; don't be afraid to reset if you lose a librarian.

Act 2

The three stooges of Briah are here:

Priority: Jae Heon > Oswald and his minions > Tanya.

Use mass attacks to clear Oswald's minions. Make sure the mass doesn't hit the 10-10 block page (reroll the mass targeting if it does). There's nothing you can do about Oswald's hiding mechanic, but he doesn't really do anything beyond being annoying. Haulers shrug off the chip damage from his passive easily. When Oswald unhides, he uses an 18-20 mass summation attack. Any clashbuster can win against this: Duel, Sturdy Defense, Double Edged Rencounter, etc. all work.

Tanya is a weaker version of herself from Ensemble. Haulers shrug off the chip damage from her damage passive. If she's alone, she gains 1 strength (regular Ensemble version gives herself 2 strength) and 2 extra speed dice (she wasn't using all of her speed dice in the first place). Despite ranking her as the least threatening, you should still aim to win clashes against her pages to mitigate damage.

Jae Heon is dangerous due to his "Red Strings" effect, which contains an instant kill mechanic: if at least 2 participants, librarian or enemy, have this status by the end of the turn, all of them are instantly killed, and Oswald spawns Mx. Bunny.

In order to get rid of the Red Strings status, you need to get rid of the Red Strings combat page in your hand. This card is a 3-cost 28-28 block die with special text: it does not leave your hand unless you lose a clash with this card.

Thankfully, Tanya uses Beatdown every turn beyond the first: a 29-35 blunt die that conveniently outrolls the 28-28 block. You should clash Red Strings against Beatdown every turn you can in order to get rid of Red Strings. Additionally, in the event that you cannot get rid of Red Strings by the next turn, clash against the 10-10 block on Oswald's minions to prevent the instant kill effect from activating.

Act 3

The two idiots of Atziluth are here (and Argalia):

Priority: Pluto > Argalia when he's above 100 HP > Elena > Argalia again

This fight can be threatening due to the plethora of masses that each Ensemble member throws out, resulting in unavoidable damage that may snowball out of control if you've taken too much stagger damage prior.

If you're scared of Elena's anti-recovery, strong first die pages and mass summations can break the 6-9 easily. On turn 4 or so, Elena throws out a 6-9 8-19 mass individual. You cannot beat that second die; just accept that you'll take the damage. Elena is non threatening otherwise, and it is useful to keep her alive to prevent buffing Argalia.

Pluto attempts to give out a contract every scene. All of his contracts damage your draw economy in some way:

Generally speaking, you want to get rid of your contracts as soon as you get them.

Pluto also spawns a Shade that clones your Patron Librarian. The shade dies if Pluto dies, so prefer dumping damage on Pluto's head instead of the Shade's.

Occasionally, Pluto throws out a 5-8 5-8 4-7 mass individual. Most 3-cost clashers can win against this card with some power investment.

On turn 2, Argalia uses a 6-9 mass individual. When both Pluto and Elena die, Argalia uses a 30-40 mass summation. The mass individual isn't a big deal, but the summation is very threatening; even the best mass busters can't consistently win against this roll without significant power buffs. To mitigate the effects of this mass summation, kill Elena as late as possible (when Argalia is at his 100 HP health gate) so that you can hopefully rush him down the next turn for the finish.

Demo

The Head

This is a scripted fight: Barel and Zena play the exact same cards every turn, every time you play this fight (with perhaps different targeting). Here are some general gameplay tips to help you through the fight. If you manage to get through without anyone "dying," you get an achievement also.

Gameplay Tips

Demo

A Short Word on Deckbuilding

Everyone has their own opinions on what is or isn't a "good" deck. The personal rule I follow is...

The 5-4-3 rule

"5 card draw, 4 light restores, 3-cost clashers."

You may have noticed that I have a tendency to build Singleton decks. This is because Singleton is the easiest deck archetype to build for that satisfies these requirements, thanks to Multislash and Will of the Prescript. Additionally, you do still have some degree of freedom in choosing your remaining light restores, and a lot of flexibility with your 3-cost clashers.

Other deck options

You can beat the entire Ensemble and the rest of the game using only Ominbrace Duel:

You can also beat the entire Ensemble and the rest of the game using only Rapid Gashes:

I don't recommend doing either as the first seems really boring and the second actually was boring

Credits

Special thanks to the following people who contributed to the making of this guide:

Loki

This is Loki.

Series
Reverberation Ensemble Guide (and beyond) [SPOILER-FREE]
Reverberation Ensemble Guide (and beyond) [SPOILER-FULL]
Index
Spoiler-Full Introduction
Malkuth
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
- Optimized Build 2
Yesod
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Hod
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Netzach
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Tiphereth
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Gebura
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Chesed
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Binah
- Gameplay Tips
- Optimized Build
Hokma
- Gameplay Tips
Keter
- Gameplay Tips
Black Silence
- Phase 1 - Roland
- Phase 2 - Smoke Monster
- Phase 3 - Angelica
- Phase 4.1 - Memories
- Phase 4.2 - Abno Clones
- Phase 4.3 - Finale
Keter Realization
- Phase 1.1 - Wrist Cutter
- Phase 1.2 - The Cavalry's Here
- Phase 2 - Aspiration
- Phase 3 - Pinocchio
- Phase 4 - Snow Queen
- Phase 5.1 - Silent Girl
- Phase 5.2 - Remorse
DEnsemble
- Act 1
- Act 2
- Act 3
The Head
- Gameplay Tips
A Short Word on Deckbuilding
- The 5-4-3 rule
- Other deck options
Credits