Cheap grind deck for beginner!

Tamius

From a completely fresh beginning, you should craft "Summer Day Memory", "Passcode" and "Hot Item" and use Size 1 cards. you have access to plenty from the default beginner decks.

Fugitive Iri Flina

Follower: 19

Cook Club Member x3
Gardening Maid x3
New Knight x3
Crescent Conumdrum x3
Game Starter
Student Council Roroa x3 (Best 1 point follower even after nerf)
Burning Guardian* x3 (or any cheap size 1 you like from the lab)

Spell: 11

Summer Day Memory x3
Passscode x3
Hot Item x3
Sacrifice
Four Messages

Afterward, you can try make your deck better with "Warning", "Table Manner", "Sword Girl Sita" and "Battlefield Sita". After you farmed enough materials, you can now do your own thing. I recommend "Sita" deck because it is well balanced. It can PvP and deal with bosses where normal "Passcode" is at a disadvantage.

iskillzi

Thanks for this, much better than the initial "maid" starter deck I was using.

Could you elaborate a bit more on what cards I should use/replace when I get into the sita cards though?

Akihito

@Tamius said in Cheap grind deck for beginner!:

From a completely fresh beginning, you should craft "Summer Day Memory", "Passcode" and "Hot Item" and use Size 1 cards. you have access to plenty from the default beginner decks.

Fugitive Iri Flina

Follower: 19

Cook Club Member x3
Gardening Maid x3
New Knight x3
Crescent Conumdrum x3
Game Starter
Student Council Roroa x3 (Best 1 point follower even after nerf)
Burning Guardian* x3 (or any cheap size 1 you like from the lab)

Spell: 11

Summer Day Memory x3
Passscode x3
Hot Item x3
Sacrifice
Four Messages

Bulshit deck.

Proper passcode: exchange hot item for rookie's debute. Char should be Alchemist Clarisse. Instead of Sacrafice and Four essages 2x linus fury in pve or in pvp mass recall 3 pointer. For pvp must is Lukif. Cut number of followers to 15/16 - add some spells instead like sage's, another linus or mass, warnings maybe 14 request,4 messages, swaps or party time.

Roroa is far from being best. She isn't either best in raw damage, tactical uses or survavilibity. Bus i admit that for 1 pointer in passcode she is probably best.
Best passcode char is anyway StreetIdol Clarice but she is expensive.

As for Sita deck actually best pvp 300 sita deck is only with 1 sita follower and 3 followers in totall - so called sita burn deck. Classical Sita deck is aimed for 300 dp - Battle Sita, AS Sita x3, SG SItax3, Sita's friend', SU Sita, maybe Cafe Sita, and 2 animal suit laynas for mighty 2 sizers. If you short on dp sita maids are very nice as well but only if u use Mania Layna which is anyway probably best char for sita deck 100 or 300 dp. To be honest- i still believe that sita deck has it's peak around 150 dp and actually 100 dp sita is better than 300 dp sita.
Mighty 300 dp decks (not all but probably more than less - there aren't many of those):
Novic Crux
Classical Taras burn
Rivelta loop
Sita burn
First Blood 2-sizers
Glacier - Vita recycle
Child Helena Lady
First Blood/Santa Shion Rion/Pajama Linus stall

Sita deck is 2-tier deck for pvp which still isn't worst. In pve it ranks better due to high buffing potential. Still as for pure buffing vita 300 deck i prefer Novic Vita, Layna Cookers or even well-balanced mixed Vita. Sita deck actually doesn't have much more special than +3/+3 spell buff and animal suit sita skill and forces you to play mostly (or only) sita followers which admitedly are very good followers what makes the whole concept worthy even if not top tier.

Cheers

Nietono

My thoughts on what has been said so far:

The initial deck build appears to be a very early build (using as few new cards and as many starter deck cards as possible). Eventually you'd want to swap New Knight for something sturdier and if running a Rookie's Debut version then more followers would need to be swapped (mainly for the various size 1 followers with 5/0/5 for stats).

Rookie's debut is the strongest (potentially) full field buff a size 1 Passcode deck has available and I personally prefer to use it, but it does have downsides:

Restricts which followers can be used (most notably Roroa and ep1 Layna are not Rookie-compatible).
Unreliable for buffing previously buffed followers as they're often damaged (works mainly as an initial buff and is otherwise a potential dead draw).
The matching ATK and STA condition is easily broken (similar to the size condition of Passcode, meaning you have 2 buffs that can fail).

With Rookies Debut you're basically trading reliability of the buff working and flexibility of the followers you can run for extra power (and hence more reliably destroying opposing followers). Hot Item is rather weak though and your other cheap options (other than those aready in the deck) only buff at most 2 followers, so the difference in power is noticeable.

I'd agree with calling Roroa the best 1pt common follower in the game:

Tied for lowest pt skill removal in the game but is only size 1 rather than size 6 (Snowty). She's also the only skill removal available to size 1 Passcode without considerably weakning the deck by replacing some of the spells.
Very few followers can remove skills more than once without using a specific character, let alone at 1pt, even if it is only temporary removal.
Size 1 is convenient for a number of purposes and while her stats are slightly low she's not particularly frail for a size 1 (the 5/0/5 Rookie-compatible followers are frailer).
Vita has good sub-faction support, including for Student Council followers (it does stop Vita's uncommon UE1 buff from working on her though).

I definitely agree with adding Warning when possible - it can salvage a lot of otherwise tricky situations. I also say at least 1 copy of 4 Messages should be kept in (to be used after the field is sufficiently buffed already) since one of the major weaknesses of size 1 Passcode is the lack of direct damage, plus killing faster in PvE tends to make for more consistent wins since it gives the NPCs less time to accidentally make something resembling a good play. 4 Messages also acts as a DEF buff, which is nice when Rookie's Debut versions in particular have a lot of low DEF followers.

I think the suggestions of Table Manners, Sword Girls Sita, and Battle Sita were meant to be part of the Sita deck. Lukif (ep11) is an interesting PvP suggestion though rather misses the point of size 1 Passcode (cheap to build for what it does) and the ep11 dungeon (Underground Altar) is mildly challenging even on the non-boss floors (the boss is one of the harder SG bosses but you technically don't need to be able to beat her). To be honest size 1 Passcode in PvP is usually more to do with using your dungeon deck in PvP because it's your only deck than being a serious PvP deck (it makes for a nice litmus test though - if your PvP deck consistently loses to size 1 Passcode then you probably need to fix something). It used to be much stronger on the old version however (upgrades and pre-nerf 4 Messages).

I will say that if you're looking for a cheap grinding deck then it's too early to be worrying about PvP performance - you still get rewards for losing in PvP so you should generally aim to reach a point where you can grind effectively (and hence craft whatever you want fairly easily) before worrying about winning in PvP.

I prefer to stick with the starter Iri character for size 1 Passcode in PvE, but Alchemist Clarice is a viable alternative. Cutting the number of followers makes sense with Clarice (she spawns a follower every turn anyway) but for other characters I'd stick with that number of followers. Please note that size 1 Passcode decks use an unusually large number of followers compared to most decks.

Pros of Alchemist Clarice:

Uses up cards more slowly (less prone to decking out).
Guarantees at least one follower on your field.

Cons:

No life burn nor buff.
Can't get -5/-5 out of Warning.
Some of the buffing goes to waste each turn.

Street Idol Clarice is stronger (it takes until turn 6 before her spawned followers become weaker than those of her base form) but as a transformation she misses the point of a cheap early game grinding deck by a mile - if you can comfortably farm cards for a transformation you're almost certainly past the point of moving onto a new grinding deck anyway (though size 1 Passcode does work surprisingly well against the boss of Vita Public School, the non-boss floors of Catch That Cat, and a couple of Muspelheim floors).

Novic is a particularly troublesome boss character to obtain - if you have Novic then you're not only far beyond the point of needing advice on cheap grinding decks, you're also beyond the point of needing advice on what to make after your initial cheap grinding deck - you're probably close to finalising your grinding deck if you haven't done so already. She is indeed a very potent character for certain decks however.

Akihito

@Nietono
Veri nicely explained. I agree fully with small exception of Clarice.
I quote:
Pros of Alchemist Clarice:

Uses up cards more slowly (less prone to decking out).
Guarantees at least one follower on your field.
What is more important it gives you:
- more slots for spells
- better card coordination - every biggest issue of passcode is rng rolls with card distribution - if you gonna have continously 4 followers with sth like hot item  or 5 of them or 2 with 3 spells your potential will be hugely lowered. What Clarisse does it's doubling your card distribution effectivity.

Cons:

No life burn nor buff. - Indeed.
Can't get -5/-5 out of Warning.  - Agree.
Some of the buffing goes to waste each turn. - Not true...

if you have some experience in that char. All passcode buffs are multitargets which means that "lost" buff isn't really taken from other follower but is simply restored by new follower with initiall stats. This means that at. buff is indeed lost but also means that sta may be not lost (as follower took some damage) and you get another target for rookie debut! All in all passcode deck is mass deck and you shouldn't fall in love with any of your followers - just replace them one after another.
I wouldn't say it's lost buff.

All in all i tested several chars for passcode and
Street Idol i found simply the best. Normal Clarice is worse as you don't get such nice initiative boost and overall your follower (even if mathematically the same) has slightly lower stats due to average fight time scenarios.
There are some other nice passcode characters though like for example dress luthica.
All in all if you use rookie you should use Clarice - if you don't than you may try other chars (but still i would prefer one of Clarice)

Anyway Shana, do you have any information about new ep.?
I didn't logged to the game for 2 weeks, just did it yesterday for few seconds to check if it's on.
I wonder if updating game was already abandoned.

Nietono

@Akihito, you might want to fix your formatting, parts of your post turned into code blocks.

Increasing your chances of having a decent mix of spells and followers is part of why guaranteeing you have a follower on the field is a pro. More slots for spells isn't necessarily a pro in this case (I'd say it's neither a pro nor a con) since you're playing cards more slowly and hence drawing fewer cards (you're not playing more spells). You increase the variety of spells in the deck but actually decrease the consistency of drawing any particular spell.

You do typically lose some buffing with Alchemist Clarice since if the Homunculus survives you can't continue buffing an already buffed Homunculus. It is possible though the new Homunculus might have more STA if the old one barely survived, and being a Rookie target does make the new Homunculus easier to buff. You do however always have an unbuffed follower on the field at the start of the turn whereas without Clarice you can potentially end a turn with all of your buffed followers surviving, particularly when buffed followers from a previous turn can help newly buffed follower survive by destroying opposing followers more easily (or if an NPC randomly plays an all-spell field or a field that fails to do any damage, since this thread is primarily about grinding decks).

Not saying Alchemist Clarice is bad (she definitely improves the consistency ofgetting a mix of followers and buffs), but she does hurt your ability to maintain a field. Street Idol Clarice is a somewhat different story since her Homunculi have stats similar to an already buffed follower on early turns. Again though we're in the teritory of making a PvP version of a deck that functions best as a cheap grinding deck (transformations are not cheap and there's a lot else you can make with the materials requires to make ~200 1pt commons). If someone is going to make a transformation to use with a size 1 Passcode deck though then I'll agree that Dress Luthica is also a good option (though she doesn't work well with Rookie's Debut).

No news about the new ep, last I heard it's still only 1 person working on it in their spare time (afaik anyone else is too busy irl).