Lu Jianxin Guide

by IsaiahKeys_
 Welcome to my Lu Jianxin guide! I will go over each deck/build that this character has to the best of my ability.
Please use the table of contents below to navigate this page.

Lu Jianxin is a unique Cloud Sword character in Yi Xian as all his decks revolve around his innate card: Clear Heart Sword
Embryo. Usually almost all the time you will take his innate fate every time you breakthrough a phase; these fates upgrade
this card so that late game you have an extraordinary card that enables special interactions!
The tradeoff for this is that due to having to take almost all his innate fates, Lu is typically outsped by most other
characters; this however can make his games easier as he can moreso counter and build around other players knowing
that he will go second, as opposed to having to absorb cards to win the cultivation race.

Table of Contents
Clear Heart Sword Embryo Fates

Early Game

Life Shop Best Gameplan/Deck

Fulu Turn 3 Kill

Fulu Turn 4 Kill

Fulu Unrestrained
 Plant Master Sword Intent Ultimate

Painter Sword Formation Ultimate

Fulu Cloud Multihit

Musician Predicament Dharma Ultimate

Musician Craze Dance Ultimate

Clear Heart Sword Embryo Fates

Foundation Innate Fates

Generally, always go for Sharp Blade. The 3 ATK can make a difference later for Dharma builds late game as well as spike
your early game a little more. Stable Blade can be taken ONLY for a pure defense Sword Formation build.

If you see cultivation/draw Fates however, I’d recommend to take those.

Virtuoso Innate Fates

You should take Intense Sword Pattern for Fulu Cloud and Unrestrained decks, and Chain Sword Pattern for Sword Intent
Decks. Charge Sword Pattern is not good as 1 stack of increase ATK is simply not enough for any build.

Immortality Innate Fates

 Choose Spiritage Forging for turn 3 kill Fulu boards and Spiritstat Forging for turn 4 kill Fulu boards.
Spiritual Power Forging should be taken for Sword Intent builds.
Note: For Unrestrained decks, do NOT select Lu’s innate; instead, go for the Mad Obsession fate in this phase.

Incarnation Innate Fates

 The first two fates are self explanatory for when they should be chosen.
Ultimate Heart should be taken for Sword Intent builds as well as the defense Sword Formation deck.

Note: Cloud Sword Heart can chase from its own effect if you are able to cycle back into it (with no other cloud swords).
 Early Game

Note: Lu’s “best” strategy currently does not follow this. Please follow the elixirist plan for a more consistent experience.

In this section I’ll explain what Lu Jianxin should typically look for. This gameplan is consistent in every build I have in
this guide. Lu can usually have a very strong early game but can also struggle during the Immortality Phase breakthrough.
Try to get consistent at his early game as this part of the game is where you can win early rounds.
 Above is an example early board consisting of the cards you should look for all the time. Lu should always stay in
Meditation Phase and not breakthrough into Foundation Phase. Giant Tiger Spirit Sword and Sharp Metal Fulu are also
okay to include (typically put these cards at the end).

Note: Round 1 is the only time where you CAN outspeed your opponent. Since Lu is given his innate card at the start, your
round 1 can be something like this:

Almost every character can only achieve a max cultivation of 2 in round 1. The exceptions are Wu Ce and Jiang Ximing
(who can also have 3), and Long Yao (who can get 4).

Round 6
 By round 6 you should always breakthrough two times so you can catch up in max health with the rest of the lobby; this
also bumps up a huge amount of your damage as you will upgrade your Clear Heart sword twice. The board seen above
does 80 total damage, and the average max health for characters will be 65 (+2 hp per round until next breakthrough).

Lu will then breakthrough into the next phase on round 9, where you will start collecting cards for your endgame builds as
seen below. Immortality Phase is usually the most difficult for Lu as other characters will quickly outspeed you here and
your average sword intent build will stop killing once the lobby is at around 80 max hp. But with this in mind, Lu can
safely hold onto cards for upgrades as he isn’t concerned about outspeeding his opponents.

Elixirist Qi Life Shop Strategy

Thoughts regarding this season
 In the post-Luck meta and with the introduction of the Life Shop mechanic, character strength in my opinion is
ranked, from best to least:
- Highest consistency (ie. bonus exchange like Wu Xingzhi, Xiao Bu, and Mu Yifeng)
- Strong P4/P3 gameplans
- Flexibility

Without Luck to guarantee very strong incarnation boards along with lower overall Destiny across the lobby with
Life Shop, P4 (Immortality Phase) board states matter a lot more as a whole. Characters that can immediately push out
aggressive decks earlier are more rewarded as a result.
The trio of characters having bonus exchange on top of their Avatar fates (survive with 1 Destiny/extra life), leads
them to having the most consistent strategies and thus “best” characters to top 4 on.
Flexibility is very important since without guaranteed strong options, it is important for characters to have a higher
floor/pool of cards to play with throughout the game.

With how Lu Jianxin works, he’s unfortunately the most inflexible Sword character due to the nature of his sword and its
upgrades; with all this in mind and with the devs posting a tier list of character strength, I’m led to conclude that elixirist
is Lu Jianxin’s best option to consistently climb ranked (ie. get top 4).

Why Elixir?
This sidejob offers the most consistency in that it offers stable cards early such as: healing, ignore defense, decrease
debuff and increasing Destiny/Max HP/Cultivation.
 This card is integral to our plan; it is offered in P4 which means our endgame
decks can be far more consistent to achieve as opposed to Fulu needing Divine
Walk which is only available at p5.

Qi Cloud Spiritstat Strategy

Your game plan until p4 is to save as many exchanges as possible; skip Lu’s innate fates beforehand and take fates
that improve cultivation, give draw, or give destiny/max hp.
It is up to you regarding if there’s a need to roll before then; generally, roll for upgrades to match the strength of the
lobby but try to have at least 10 exchanges saved up for p4. If you only need to lose one or two deck slots to get to the next
phase, it is worth doing.

Roll all the way down to 0 at p4 for your best board, and look for Qi cards, Sword Formation cards, and Spirit
Sword cards. Play your best board from then on.

Upon reaching P4, take Lu’s “Spiritstat Forging” option and upon reaching P5, take his “Cloud Sword Heart”
upgrade.
 His Spiritstat upgrade allows us to play into sword formation decks that come online at P4 anyways, as well as
provide much needed defense for Egret + Dharma decks.
His Cloud Sword Heart upgrade turns “Cloud Sword - Pierce the Star” into an amazing chase card.

The “Core” Endgame Decks:

The Capped Board:

This board is a turn 4 kill that offers defense; mainly look to do this vs decks that are also going for turn 4 kills or
scaling decks that aren’t quite defensive.
You can look to tech in cards such as Ice Spirit if Guard Up if needed; more qi is welcome if you need more damage
or you need to delay your damage, or use dragon roam/shade sword/chaos sword/multihits to get through guard up.

If you are against decks that have both guard up and defense, you will generally lose but that’s fine. The point of this
strategy is to achieve top 4 consistently, not win every lobby.
 The Consistent Board:

This board is generally your most consistent endgame deck as the combination of Sword Formation and Spirit
Sword cards is quite potent.

Rule Sky Formation can be subbed in with Moon Water Sword Formation;
during P4 this deck is very strong but by endgame you will need the
speed that Rule Sky offers.

Raven Spirit Sword or Chain Sword Formation can also be used in place of
where Egret is.

Dragon Roam can be a great tech in card provided it is upgraded enough to

counter Guard Ups; make sure your Pierce the Star still chases should
you play both cards.

Beware of Cide!
Unfortunately this deck is more easily countered by Cide as the cards
that chase generally have higher value. Make sure your Rule Sky/Moon
Water gets skipped as opposed to Giant Kun Spirit Sword and Pierce the
Star.
Specifically vs Hamster’s: Strike Twice + Cide setup, your goal is to
 survive her burst long enough until she runs out of qi.

The qi cards you’d like to play in the first 2 slots are:

- Spirit Gather Citta-Dharma
- Centibird Spirit Sword Rhythm
- Spiritage Elixir
*Note: of course, try to play around your opponents as sometimes
you’d like some defense upfront by turn 1 or 2.

Other Board Examples:

 Fulu Turn 3 Kill

This is the core of the deck (with this specific board it will deal 155 total damage).
Deck Code: gmak0ghxij

Keep Distubing Fulu as most of the time it will be very difficult to get enough
upgrades to have a consistent turn 3 kill (place it before Clear Heart)
My thoughts on the deck:
- This is a very difficult deck to actually achieve in every game; I do not recommend this deck for consistency’s sake
since it requires multiple upgrades for incarnation phase cards.
- This deck can easily be countered by weaken, Astral Move - Cide, Water Spirit - Dive, and any defense stacking
deck.

Note for this season:

- Be on the lookout for any Lifeshop that decreases both yours and opponent’s max HP. This deck performs much
more consistently then; on the other hand, I would shy away from this deck if the Lifeshop instead offers bonus HP.

- Here is a line that won me a game as it weakened the opponent enough for me to survive and the flaw granted me
enough damage to kill on turn 3.
Fulu Turn 4/5 Kill
Above are example builds for this deck. The big difference between this deck and the Turn 3 deck is choosing
“Spiritstat” as opposed to “Spiritage” in the Immortality Phase Breakthrough.
 These are the Cloud Swords you should be looking out
for. Keep track of which one will boost your damage
more throughout each round; since Lu is a slow
character you typically don’t need to care about the
cultivation turn race and can hold onto more cards.

Thousand Evil Incantation can be slotted in to counter

a huge hit for a turn or two. While this will slow down
your deck by 1 turn, you can use it to counter an
opponent’s turn 4 kill deck if you can’t normally
survive by defense alone.

My thoughts on this deck:

- My personal favorite deck *and in my opinion Lu’s most consistent and best deck (not anymore). His innate
“Spiritstat” allows you to work with many more cards before you get to Dharma and Shade Sword as you can now
 include sword formation cards during your mid game. Below is an example of what you can play:

- As said before, Lu Jianxin is a slower character; using SpiritStat will allow him to survive almost every other quick
kill cycle decks while also only slowing down his own kill by 1 turn in comparison to the Turn 3 Kill Fulu build.

Fulu Unrestrained
 Lu has access to one of the best unrestrained decks (being as good as Yan Xue’s) as his innate Clear Heart allows a more
defensive option. I wouldn’t suggest this deck personally now as it requires 4 incarnation phase cards to really work well
on top of Mad Obsession.
This deck practically REQUIRES an immortality phase Mad Obsession to co
4 placement.

*Use all your luck to roll for this fate as it simply scales too slow otherwise.
(Not applicable anymore currently this season)

My thoughts on this deck:

- As said previously, this deck is very difficult to get all the cards you want. Even if you do get everything,
unrestrained isn’t that great of a deck in of itself as other decks may still kill you before you can cycle back OR you
can simply get outscaled as well.
- If you do NOT find Mad Obsession during Immortality breakthrough, you can simply choose Lu’s innate “Spiritage”
or “Spiritstat” and build around his cloud sword decks instead.
Plant Master Sword Intent Ultimate
 This board does 125 damage on turn 5 while also preventing opponent chases! This can be a fun build when you get
everything together and you know every opponent is using chases in their decks.
Unfortunately, if you never get a Cloud Dance Rhythm, Contemplate Spirits Rhythm, or Sword Intent Surge in a game this
deck falters.

*With the Entangling Ancient Vine nerf, you might as well not waste a turn playing it as it will only prevent 1 chase from
the opponent. It could potentially make a difference still but keep this in mind!
The decision for Vine now is to slow both you and your opponent by a turn, or choose to not play it and go for a turn 4 kill.
An important card to upgrade your deck. If you’re looking for Sword Intent Surge,
wait until this card grows into its 3rd upgrade (Triggering Dao Rhyme Omen).
Otherwise, use this card in its 2nd upgrade so you can continue upgrading your
Cloud Dance Rhythm and Contemplate Spirits Rhythm cards.

Your 2nd best absorb card. Save this card vs any guard up decks in the lobby (be
on the lookout for Long Yao, Hua Qinrui, Ice Spirit Guard Up Elixirs, and Escape
Plans.
Feel free to always put this card at the end (or even 2 of them) since your deck will
typically kill on its 5th/6th card slot.

A very good tech card to survive an opponent’s burst in case you ever need to
towards the late game.
The ONLY difference between this deck’s specific early game and the decks above
is that you should also be on the lookout for Sword Slash (preferably level 3).

Painter Sword Formation Ultimate

This build is not great this season as it usually is too slow to ramp compared to other defense stacking builds. However,
Painter does allow a level of consistency as well as having Flying Brush, which is typically the best as it enables you to
chase your Clear Heart into your Mirror Flower Sword Formation.
Unfortunately, this deck can also be easily countered by guard up and Long Yao has a better version of this deck.

Fulu Cloud Multihit

This is the only deck that makes sense to me with the increase attack upgrade. Unfortunately, this deck can get countered
fairly easily and also needs many upgrades to perform as well as the decks above.

Musician Predicament Dharma Ultimate

Here is the shell of the deck you’d want to go for, but this specific turn 4 kill will only work with massive upgrades for all
these cards.
I’d recommend against this deck as it is super inconsistent and relies on all of these cards to have a chance.

Use Sword Intent cards and Egret to extend your damage if you’re against any defensive deck.

Musician Craze Dance Ultimate

 This board does 159 total damage by turn 4!
I do not recommend this deck as it needs multiple incarnation cards and is risky in that Craze Dance also increases your
opponents’ damage. It is pretty fun tho 🙂

Bonus Genesis Fate Build

This deck is the hardest build to hit as you specifically need to hit both the Sunset Glow and Dragon Devours Clouds Fates
on both the Foundation and Immortality Phase breakthroughs. This particular variation will do 146 total damage on turn
4, and 172 total damage on turn 5.
Good luck if you ever try to go for this build!