Librarian | Darkest Dungeon 2 Wiki

Video Strategies

[Video Example]

Strategy Writeup

The team lineup that was used for this guide are the Heroes who can manage the team's stress, increase Burn resistance, and overall heal the team. Heroes that have effective ranged attacks that can deal damage and also inflict the Blight status effect are also recommended since the Librarian is susceptible to poison damage. If you've managed to increase your player profile level and have unlocked new heroes, you may use them and still follow the strategy by using similar skills and tactics listed down below.

Recommended Team Lineup:

• Plague Doctor
• Grave Robber
• Highwayman
• Man at Arms

The Librarian is placed at the fourth rear position of its party, the middle to front ranks consist of 3 stacks of books. These books will not do anything on their own and act as a barrier between the Heroes and the boss. Every turn, the Librarian uses an ability called Page Burner that burns a stack of books for one third of its HP. Once a stack of books has been fully burned, the Librarian gains an ability called Burning Bright which targets all the Heroes and inflicts damage and Burn.

This boss battle is a race against time: you need to focus on dealing damage on the Librarian and ignore the stacks of books positioned in front of it. The goal here is to quickly reduce the Librarian's health as quickly as possible before it reaches the front ranks. If the Librarian reaches the front rank and there are no books to burn, he will start spamming Burning Bright until he wipes your party. Since the Librarian has lots of turns on each round, DOT effects such as Blight and Bleed are very efficient on him. Don't bother using Burn effects as he is highly resistant to that. As the Librarian will be positioned at the rear part of its team, you can go for ranged attacks that can deal Blight effects such as the Grave Robber's ability Poison Dart  or the Plague Doctor's ability Plague Grenade. These skills can help whittle down the Librarian's health quickly if you can manage to land these attacks successfully. You can also use the Highwayman's ability Pistol Shot to deal damage while the Librarian is still at the back.

You can also go for the option of knocking back the books (Leper's Purge, Man-at-Arms' Rampart), which will allow your front-liners to gain access to the Librarian. You would also need to manage your heroes' burn resistance so it is advisable that you stack-up on items such as Burn Salve and Medicinal Herbs, these items can go a long way in minimizing the Burn effects receive from the Librarian.

The Librarian will constantly use Mandatory Reading - a ranged attack where it throws stacks of burning pages to the selected target, inflicting damage and applying Burn. The Plague Doctor's skills Battlefield Medicine and Ounce of Prevention are quite useful for this as one skill removes and the other increases the resistance to Burn status effect respectively. Other items or trinkets that can help remedy the Burn status effect are also useful in this situation. Watch out for the skill Categorize as it randomly shuffles the positions of all the heroes, this will make some of your heroes' ability blocked, so make sure that you can spend a turn where you can move your characters around before this skill could be activated. Also be wary of the Librarian's skill Smokestack, another ranged attack that targets the rear party member, inflicts a small amount of damage and also applies Blind status effect. The Librarian receives a Dodge token afterward. You can use the Man at Arms' skill Command in removing the Blind negative status effect. This can also boost a teammate's confidence and uplift them by increasing their Strength once. You can also use the Highwayman's ability Tracking Shot to remove the Dodge token status of the Librarian.

In summary, always focus your attacks on the Librarian, use heroes with damaging ranged attacks since the Librarian is placed at the fourth rank of its party. Use as much burn heal and burn resistance as possible, as the main attacks of the Librarian focus on dealing Burn damage. The Librarian has a low resistance to Blight status effects, exploiting this weakness can help whittle down its health quickly. In conclusion, the Librarian requires a team that can consistently target back ranks or knock back the books from the front, as well as a team that can handle being shuffled. If your team can do these things, you will find that he is one of the easier bosses in the game.

Attacks & Counters

General Strategy - As of Torch and Trophy Update

The Librarian is the easiest lair boss for most teams and can be beatable for some teams even  in region 2/4, he deals relatively low damage, stress and burn early on in the fight, with the damage increasing as the stacks of books are burned down. To maximise your chances of success your team composition needs to be able to:

Deal good damage to positions 3 and 4 so you can avoid waiting for the books to burn (ideally with abilities that can be used from multiple ranks due to point 2.
Have a plan to reposition efficiently or remain effective after 'Categorise' shuffles your party into alphabetical order.
Include a strategy for managing a relatively high volume of single target and later AoE burn damage (e.g Taunt to stack them on a single character + battlefield med/ burn salves)
Ideally, bring Milk Soaked Linen for removing the blinds often applied during the fight.
The Librarian is a damage race fight, you need to plan around dealing consistent damage to get through his HP relatively quickly. Taking the fight too slowly by focusing on blinds, weaken, block etc. increases the risk of getting to the dangerous stages of the fight where the Librarian is in Position 2. Worst of all, he may even reach position 1 where he 'ignites' to heal and repeatedly uses Burning Bright which will deal huge damage to even a highly defensive team.

Particularly Strong Characters for this Fight

• Plague Doctor (Plague Grenade and Battlefield Medicine excel here)
• Man at Arms (Retribution lets him deal great damage and focus the burn damage on one target to cure)
• Grave Robber (Poison Darts is great for the entire fight)
• Leper (Only if you have a plan to get him back to Position 1 after 'Categorise', then withstand/intimidate > Solemnity can mitigate a huge chunk of the librarian's damage while chipping away at his vocational dodge tokens, purge can also let you move the librarian forward by pushing the books back if your party can't attack rank 4 effectively)

Particularly Weak Characters for this Fight

• Runaway (Only Ransack and Smokescreen have any real effect in this fight)
• Hellion (Iron Swan and If It Bleeds are her only pos 3/4 options and they're both relatively weak and have positioning requirements) 

Librarian Lore

Boss Lore & Story Goes here

Librarian Notes & Trivia

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• Notes, & Trivia Go Here