Reception
"It's simple. You just have to deal with the guests. In a physical manner, of course. The Library presents the guests with an ordeal, and books will open up in the process."
- Angela
Reception is the name of the where the Combat takes place and the Main Phase of gameplay. It is when Guests are faced by ordeals, which comes in the form of battling Librarians.
The Reception must be started by first sending an Invitation to the Guests. Once the Invitation is completed and sent with the books, it will then lead to a General or Red Invitation. In a Red Invitation, the player will face a specific group of Guests and will require a specific set of Books to register in the Invitation.
Preparation Phase
The Preparation Phase is before any combat starts, and the player can prepare for the battle by inspecting their Librarians and Guests' stats, and their Combat Pages and Key Pages. From here start the Reception and it will have a set number Acts and how many librarian are permitted, similar to waves of Guests. Each Act might contain different Guests and Librarians will conserve their 
HP and any active Abnormality Pages cross Acts until the Reception ends. You cannot modify the Librarians' Pages here, that's done in the Library's Menu.
The player can check which current Act is in play and they will have to pick a Floor, from where the Librarians of that Floor receive the Guests of the current Act. Librarians who die in battle will not be revived until the Reception ends, and you cannot use a Floor which has no Librarians alive. There can be up to 5 Librarian on each team depending on the act involved.
Once the player is done checking, they can continue by selecting the button at the top screen to Begin Stageplay.
Stageplay Phase
The Stageplay Phase is where Guests are 'entertained', being engaged in combat by Librarians. This phase is the main part of the gameplay and combat, as well as, where the player has to pick Combat Pages to inflict damage to the Guests and eventually kill them to turn them into Books. The respective Guests and Librarians are transported to the Floor picked and combat will soon start.
The new Screen will display the main battlefield of the respective Floor. The Guests will be on the left side and the Librarians will be at the right. All Characters have floating Dice above themselves, representing their 
Speed Dice; and a set of yellow small orbs, being their amount of 
Lights, used in the cost of Combat Pages. At the top of the screen, there is a large gauge with different colored sections, and an icon representing each side. This is the 
Emotion Gauge of each side. At the bottom of the screen, the player will see the Combat Pages of any selected Librarian, and at the left and right side, the player can see the Guests' and Librarians' Information. The information displayed will be their name, HP Gauge, 
Stagger Gauge, and Emotion Gauge, which is filled with Positive or Negative blocks, depending on which Emotion Coins are gained.
The Stageplay is composed of a set of Scenes (Turns), following a set of actions and events:
- Scene Start: If this is the first Scene, then all
Lights of the Characters will be at their Maximum. Otherwise, All Guests/Librarians generate 1 Light. 
Burn effects will trigger here. Most Status Effects will also have their duration reduced here. If a Character doesn't have any 
Stagger left from the previous Scene, then they will be 
Staggered, which means that they are unable to act or generate Light in this Scene. - Rolling
Speed Dice: All Guests and Librarians roll their Speed Dice for each 
Dice Slot. Pressing the Spacebar will roll the dice. This will determine the Speed of the Character and how fast they will act/move to reach their target. - Choosing Combat Pages: At the start, Guests and Librarians who are not Staggered will draw a Combat Page from their Deck. The player will have to pick Combat Pages for each Librarian and then select their target (By selecting the
Dice Slot above the Librarian's heads and then targeting a Guest's Dice). All Librarians/Guests have individual hands.
If you target a Guest who has a lower Speed Dice than your attacking Librarian's current Speed Dice, the Combat Page of the Target Guest is redirected to the Attacking Librarian (This is reverted if the Librarian changes targets).
If a character has more than 1 Dice Slot, then the Dice with the highest Speed will go first, then the next lower Dice. If Dice are equal in Speed, then the one to the nearest left will go first, moving to the right.
To finish this phase, the player can click on the top screen button or press Spacebar to finish, even if a Librarian isn't using a Combat Page.- Types of Dice:
- Attack Dice have 3 Damage Types, which deal Damage based on the Resistance of the Enemy to that type:
Slash, 
Pierce, and 
Blunt. - Defensive Dice have 2 types that act differently.
Block Dice reduce the incoming damage by the roll obtained and can deal Stagger Damage if the roll is higher than an Attack/Block.
Evade Dice will ignore all Damage if is equal to the opponent's roll. If the roll is higher than the opponent's Attack Dice's Roll, then the Character will ignore all Damage from the opponent, recover 
Stagger equal the roll, and retain the Evade Die for the next action, until the end of the Battle, or until rolling an equal or lower.
- Attack Dice have 3 Damage Types, which deal Damage based on the Resistance of the Enemy to that type:
- Types of Dice:
- Combat Stage: All Guests and Librarians will start to move towards their targets. Their movement speed depends on their Speed Dice.
- Battle Stage: Depending on which Attacker reached their Target first, they will engage in Battle, performing actions and stopping the movement of all other Characters. The Dice used are in the order that they are shown on the Combat Page, from left to right. The two Characters will perform their actions, rolling their Dice.
When rolling a Max/Min result, the user will generate 1 Positive/Negative
Emotion Coin respectively.
The actions resolve in two ways:- Clash: If both Characters picked each other as Targets, then it will result in a Clash. During Clashes, both Attacker and Target will use their Attack Dice and Defensive Dice against each other, even if they are of the same type (Attack vs Attack, Defensive vs Defensive).
The Character who has the highest roll will successfully attack or block the opponent's Die and inflict Damage (this will lower the
HP and/or the Stagger of the loser). This is considered winning the Clash. Defense vs Defense is still considered a Clash, and getting the highest roll also counts as winning the Clash, even if no damage is dealt.
Winning/Losing a Clash will make the Character gain 1 Positive/Negative Emotion Coin respectively.
If the Rolls of both Dice is equal, is considered a Draw, both dice are nullified and both Characters gain 1 Negative Emotion Coins, if was an Offense vs Offense Dice.
- Clash: If both Characters picked each other as Targets, then it will result in a Clash. During Clashes, both Attacker and Target will use their Attack Dice and Defensive Dice against each other, even if they are of the same type (Attack vs Attack, Defensive vs Defensive).
- Battle Stage: Depending on which Attacker reached their Target first, they will engage in Battle, performing actions and stopping the movement of all other Characters. The Dice used are in the order that they are shown on the Combat Page, from left to right. The two Characters will perform their actions, rolling their Dice.
| "On Clash" Table Grid | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| vs |  Offensive Dice
|
 Block Dice
|
 Evade Dice
|
| Offensive Dice
|
Win: Deal damage equal to the winner's roll. If melee vs ranged, the melee winner's die is recyled and moved to the back of the dice queue. Draw: Both Dice are negated. Lose: The loser's Dice is negated. |
Attack Win: Deal damage equal to the die roll minus the roll of the Block die. Draw: Nullify damage. Block Win: Nullify damage and deal Stagger damage equal to the difference of the rolls.
|
Attack Win: Deal damage equal to the winner's roll. Draw: Nullify damage. Evade Win: Nullify damage, recycle the die, and recover  Stagger equal to the winner's roll.
|
| Block Dice
|
Block Win: Nullify damage and deal Stagger damage equal to the difference of the rolls. Draw: Nullify damage. Attack Win: Take damage equal to the winner's roll minus the roll of the Block die.
|
Win: Deal Stagger damage equal to the winner's roll. Draw: Both dice are negated. Lose: Take Stagger damage equal to the winner's roll. |
Block Win: Deal Stagger damage equal to the die roll.
Draw: Both Dice are negated. |
| Evade Dice
|
Evade Win: Nullify damage, recycle the die, and recover Stagger equal to the die roll. Draw: Nullify damage. Attack Win: Take damage equal to the winner's roll.
|
Evade Win: Recover Stagger equal to the winner's roll. Draw: Both Dice are negated. Block Win: Take Stagger damage equal to the dice roll.
|
Win, Draw or Lose: Both Dice are negated. |
- One-Sided Attack: If an Attacker's Target does not have any Dice to use, whether it is because they have a different Target, or they are Staggered, or they did not choose any Combat Pages, then it will result in a One-Sided Attack. When this occurs, the Attacker will not use, but instead retain any Defensive Dice in their order, and skip to their Attack Dice.
- After an Attack:After an Attack, the Attacker - and Target if they were in a Clash - will retain any Defensive Dice that wasn't used.
- If the Target of an Attack dies, all the Attackers of the Target will stop on their spot, and if they have not used their Combat Pages yet, the Combat Page will be returned to the Characters' hand, and they will receive the used
Lights of the Combat Page back. If the Target dies in the middle of an attack, any leftover Defensive Dice that the Attacker has are conserved for the rest of the Scene. - If a Character Staggers an enemy, then they will gain 1 Light. Similarly, if a Character kills an enemy, they will also gain 1 Light
- While a Character is Staggered, they will discard all Dice that they were going to use in the Scene, and their Resistances will be lowered to Fatal (x2.0), taking double Damage from Enemy attacks.
- The Combat will end when all the Attacks have finished.
-
Emotion Level: If a Librarian or Guest have gained enough Emotion Coins to fill an Emotion Level, they will gain 1 Maximum Light, regain all Light to the Maximum, and gain additional effects depending of their current level. The Emotion Level depends of the Floor's Realization Level. Guests have their own Maximum Emotion Level and modifies the rate of Books that they can drop.
- At Emotion Level 4, the user gains an additional Dice Slot.
- At Level 5, the user will draw 1 additional page when using 2 or more Combat Pages.
- At
- Abnormality Page Selection: When all the Librarians have a total sum of their own Emotion Level equal a Level (1 to 5) x Number of Librarians, the player will be able to pick an Abnormality Page from a set of 3 and varies in Tiers. all depending of their own Floor (unless Floor does not have any Abnormality Pages available). At Level 1-2, the player can pick Tier I pages, at Level 3-4, Tier II Pages, and at Level 5, Tier III Pages. The player must pick a Page, and then select which Librarian to apply it to (if the Abnormality Page only affects an individual), and then the Scene will End.
- Scene Ends: The Scene will end and a new one will start shortly, resetting the position of all Characters. Staggered Characters will recover here, back at their full gauge.
When a Guest dies, they will become a random Book of their pool. They will drop more, and better, Books if they are at higher Emotion Levels.
Once one side, Guest or Librarians; has been defeated, the Act will then end. If it was the last Act, then the Reception will end if the player won. If not, then the player will be returned to the Preparation Phase in order to pick a Floor on which to continue the Reception.
The HP of the Librarians and Guests, and any active Abnormality Pages, are conserved across the Acts. If the Librarians were defeated and there are no more Floors to use for the Reception, then the Reception will end prematurely. Being Defeated will consume the Books used in the Invitation.
Post-Reception
The Post-Reception is achieved when the player concludes all the Acts. In this phase the player gain the rewards of the defeated Guests (if any), being the Books, and in the case of defeat, the books lost by the Library shown at the left side of the screen, the defeated Guests and the floors they were defeated in at the centre of the screen, and all Librarians who participated in the combat will be shown on the right side of the screen along with any Battle Symbols they may have earned.
Then the player can finish by pressing the button Close Curtains at the top side of the screen.
Story
The 'Reception' of the Guests is considered the ordeal that they must overcome, in order to obtain the Books that were featured on the Invitation. Floors of the Library are designed with their own teams of Librarians to deal with the Guests, and defeating the Guests will turn them into Books. This is the only way that the Library has to acquire new Books, as explained by Angela. Librarians are Books themselves and therefore cannot exit the Library. Angela uses this method to get closer to the final book that will release them, as the Red Invitations will eventually lead Angela to the said book.
Gallery
Starting Scene
Abnormality Page Selection
E.G.O Page Selection
Choosing Pages
Victory of the Act
