Diaries Guide

This is a guide with tips for character builds in the Diaries DLC. You can help by adding your own ideas.

## Knight Builds

### Wind up Knight (Sleeping Wind Knight)

You start with a Wind up Knight equipment. It gives you a random equipment after the 1st round and a steady damage output each round, based on the number of equipped weapons.

* Shipborne Artillery, Cheese Trap, Toy box and Weapon Master will help you a lot with this build
* Most Action cards for this build get exiled. Try to get the Elegance blessing or 1 more Action point, but don't focus too much on it
* Try to get Attack cards with draw effects rather than damaging cards

### Hungry Knight (Fatal Fork)

You discard your leftmost card when playing an attack card, but each attack card triggers twice.

* Battle Horn will allow you to draw a new card for each attack card you play. This way you can draw all discared cards again in the same turn.
* You can go straight for damage or try and do any build from Lady Knight. Getting attack cards with draw effect (triggers twice) will help you set it up.

### Boxer (Mechanical Fist)

After playing an action card your next attack card will deal double damage. You'll also get 1 extra Action point next turn for each action card you play.

* Elegance blessing helps to kickstart your deck. You won't have any action point problems in the following rounds
* Only the first damage of an attack card will be doubled after playing an action card. If the card deals repeated damage the rest won't be affected
* Get Action cards with draw effect and Attack cards that deal high damage. Ideally get Battle Horn

## Witch Builds

### Thunder Witch (Hurricane Staff)

You get 1 mana for each 2 damage you deal by spell cards.

* Go for spells that deal direct damage. Poison is bad for this build
* You won't need many mana cards. Those you get should have a draw effect
* Hurricane is a must-have
* A second Hurricane Staff will make fights very easy, especially when combined with Hurricane
* The Magic Staff will deal damage when ever you gain mana

### Ice Witch (Ice Torch)

When enemy suffers chill you deal 1 damage for each 4 mana costs you own (Sum of all mana costs of your spell cards).

* Get the appropriate blessings and equipments for an ice build
* Code of Storm will increase the damage from your equipment while recovering your mana
* Code of Ice will let you trigger the Ice Torch repeatedly, but the temporary spells won't increase the damage
* Magic Frost, Portal, Inspiration and Wisdom are the best mana cards for this build
* Try to balance between Ice spells and mana cards

### Maid (Witch's Broom)

Get a random temporary spell for each 2 mana card you play.

* Try to get Mana cards with draw effect
* If you can, get the action card Cleaning Time, which will trigger the temporary spellcards again.

## Apothecary Builds

### Barkeeper (Cocktail Shaker)

When you play a card with the "Potent" effect (potions are more effective) you get a temporary Cocktail

* You will recover 1 action point after playing a Potent card (which you can use to play Cocktail)
* Get additional Potent cards and action points
* Try to get a potion of each kind
* This build is more focused on action cards than the potions, so you won't need that much mana. Some more will still help you
* You can choose the Devil cook exploration skill (has to be unlocked) for additional HP or mana

### Cook (Selected Recipes)

When you exile a card gain 1 mana and shuffle a card with effects doubled

* It's possible to get the equipment card form the Chemist class in the same playthrough and the exile effects both trigger.
* Witch's Crucible and Mercury Hourglass rely on exile effects
* Possible the hardest and most luck dependent Apothecary build, since your deck will be clustered with random cards

### Chemist (Blend Beaker)

Potions cards get tempered:

* Potions you play will be exiled
* Standard potions increases a counter by 1
* The last potion you play in a turn will be returned to your hand with increased strength, based on the counter (play 3 potions, you get a +3 Potion)
* +X Potions Potions will increase the counter by X, so you will always get a potion back that's at least as strong
* The returned potion will have the same number of stars as the last played one, so if you have a 3\* potion play it last
* It's possible to get the equipment card form the Cook class in the same playthrough and the exile effects both trigger.

* Get as many Potions as you can (or cards that will give you potions)
* Get some mana

## Ranger Builds

### Thief (Driver gloves)

Deal 1 damage when you get gold in battle. +1 Damage for each 10 gold gained during combat (card description says this combat, but it counts for the whole run). With a dedicated build you can get over 50 damage (500 gold !!!) on the Driver gloves.

* Get cards that give you gold
* Extra Action points and card drawing effects help you play the gold cards
* The Death coin blessing (Soul Hunter unlock) can become your strongest blessing here
* Use Rubbing to copy cards like Return fully loaded and Golden Dagger
* Golden Dagger can also deal some decent damage together with bleeding effects
* If you get it early, you can use Panning to farm gold (as long as you can survive). In late game farming will be difficult because of the damage you do.
* Sealed chest and Castle Thief are the best starting options for this build

### Archaeologist (Archaeological tools)

Get 1 gold when using cards that have not been used this game (they get highlighted with a "New").The first time you play a card during this run, its costs will be reduced.

* Get cards that give you temporary cards, especially form other classes
* Castle Heroes, Lizard Warlock and Wild Cook are the best starting options for this build
* This build is pretty random, but can be easily supplemented with the standard Ranger options (Action points, long bow, Action cards with draw effect)
* Going for a "discard" Ranger build helps to get rid of bad random cards. Try to play any cards with the "New" banner before discarding.

### Assassin (Sharp blade)

Any Bleeding effect you apply will be doubled. Bleeding triggers 2 extra times (3 times total if you don't have any other effects)

* Get Cards with bleeding effect
* Get some extra Action points
* Longbow and Actions with draw effect are the easiest way to put some damage in
* Frailty effect will increse the damage from bleeding
* Enemy won't bleed if you're only hitting its armor

## Monster card combos

Diaries allow you to unlock extra effects for future runs by defeating monsters (unlocked at random, you might have to fight the monster multiple times). You can choose one bonus for each category (exploring skills, cards, blessings). Some of them have a really strong combo with certain characters or other bonus effects.