Touhou

[EifieFlare]

I'm beginning to think people picked my team half out of favouritism and half out of sadism

I didn't contribute to the votes, so no finger-pointing at me.

And it's not too sadistic. Think of it along the lines of raising a Magikarp in Pokemon. Sure, early on it's terrible and can't really pull its own weight, let alone help the team much. Once you get higher and higher though, it really starts to shine. Similarly, things will probably get better as Youmu progresses. Ha, Pokemon references.

[Cogwheel]

I didn't contribute to the votes, so no finger-pointing at me.

And it's not too sadistic. Think of it along the lines of raising a Magikarp in Pokemon. Sure, early on it's terrible and can't really pull its own weight, let alone help the team much. Once you get higher and higher though, it really starts to shine. Similarly, things will probably get better as Youmu progresses. Ha, Pokemon references.

Except that half the team consists of Magikarps. That's the better half.

The other half is Abra and will never evolve.


Edit: To be fair, Yukari has a nice buff, Patchy slaughters everything for little SP, and Suwako hits like a freight train. But aside from those three... nah.

[Tono]

See, thats why you gotta share exp amongst your people and trade them out from time to time. Then, Alakazam!

[Cogwheel]

See, thats why you gotta share exp amongst your people and trade them out from time to time. Then, Alakazam!

I do carefully share XP. I meant "and will never evolve" as a way of saying "half the team is awful and the other half is worse."

[Tono]

That post was mainly for the puns.

[Cogwheel]

That post was mainly for the puns.

Sorry. Too early in the morning for wit.

[Mirrinus]

Except that half the team consists of Magikarps. That's the better half.

The other half is Abra and will never evolve.

Come on now, you know that's not true. I've used every character in the game for at least a full runthrough of the main game, if not the post-game as well, and I believe I can safely say that every character in the game is usable. You're probably just having trouble because much of your team has bad SP costs for the early game (which is normal, given you're not suppose to even have them yet).

Eirin - Most durable healer in the game, best raised for defense to act as support. Don't expect high damage though.

Mokou - Fairly average offensive capabilities, but above-average survivability for a mage, so she can stay out on the front lines for a bit instead of needing to switch out often. Once she gets enough SP to use her spells often, she's a reasonable damage dealer.

Sakuya - Raise her defensively, use her solely for speed buffs. She can become a high-tier attacker, but Iku's more or less required to make it work.

Remilia - Solid DPS for bosses, great survivability too. Kind of boring to use, but very consistant and effective due to her awesome self-buff.

Meiling - Arguably the best tank in the game.

Patchouli - The epitome of the squishy wizard. She's really slow, though, so she's one of the few for whom speed buffs are very valuable (I normally ignore SPD buffs; I actually like using both Sakuya and Aya as DPS backed by Iku).

Orin - Blazing Wheel is probably the most powerful composite attack in the game that doesn't come with crippling drawbacks (like all of Flandre's). Her last two spells are decent for both boss fights and killing mooks, with Blazing Wheel close to nuke-level status, except with decent delay and Orin's higher speed for more spammage.

Tenshi - A complete stone wall, although she's not great until you get status resistance gear. Once she can freely use State of Enlightenment, it's almost impossible for any boss without DEF/MND piercing attacks to kill her.

Suwako - Glass cannon and probably the best attacker on your team. Focus on ATK, her MAG spells aren't that good outside of killing mooks, and that's easy enough as is with the rest of your team.

Yuyuko - Not good until you get enough SP to spam Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana, but you'll get there eventually. She eats mooks with ease thanks to all her instant death effects.

Youmu - In practice, she ends up as one of the top-tier physical attackers of this game. Slash of Eternity has the 5th best damage formula of any attack, beaten only by Master Spark, Megawatt Linear Gun, Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana, and a fully-powered Shikigami +. That should be your main boss killer unless the enemy is weak to NTR or WND.

Yukari - She's pretty useless for offense on your team (her only seriously damaging spell requires Chen and Ran active as well), so raise her for defense and use her two awesome support spells. When you get the SP to use it, you'll find Yukari's Spiriting Away to be one of the most powerful tricks in your arsenal when combined with long delay attackers like Suwako, Youmu, Yuyuko, and Mokou.

The main issue with most of your team is that you don't have enough SP to use them properly, which makes sense given that you're not suppose to recruit Mokou or Yuyuko or Orin until much later on in the game. But you will get there soon enough. SP is easy enough to come by as is, which is why it's generally a bad idea to use your level bonuses on SP. By the time you reach the endgame, you'll have more SP than you can ever hope to use. At that point, you're really limited more by bosses that spam SP drain effects than your actual max SP.

[Cogwheel]

...Well, now I feel bad.

I was mostly joking with that comment. Didn't mean to make you write all that.

Still, thank you for the very, very helpful analysis. I'm becoming pretty aware that, yes, this team just needs much more SP. That, unfortunately, will mostly be fixed by grinding.

I've also yet to spend skill points in the library. Any suggestions?

Maybe my team does need to be stronger. This is really my fault for not including Cirno.

[EifieFlare]

SP is easy enough to come by as is, which is why it's generally a bad idea to use your level bonuses on SP. By the time you reach the endgame, you'll have more SP than you can ever hope to use. At that point, you're really limited more by bosses that spam SP drain effects than your actual max SP.

Ahaha...ha. Oops.

On the bright side, considering how I only used the SP level up bonuses on characters I'm probably not going to use in this run, it shouldn't be too bad.

[memnarch]

I'm beginning to think people picked my team half out of favouritism and half out of sadism

Well, yeah. What else did you expect from asking in a fan thread.

[Cogwheel]

Well, yeah. What else did you expect from asking in a fan thread.

Cheat codes and railguns.

[EifieFlare]

Cheat codes and railguns.

But didn't you yourself edit out the extra experience your characters all had stockpiled because you thought it'd make the game too easy?

And if you asked, we could've given you Nitori. ...What? At least one of her attacks has "Gun" in it.

[Cogwheel]

But didn't you yourself edit out the extra experience your characters all had stockpiled because you thought it'd make the game too easy?

And if you asked, we could've given you Nitori. ...What? At least one of her attacks has "Gun" in it.

But that would be cheating.

Look, if you think about it, it's really your fault for expecting me to make sense.


Edit: Besides, I already used up my arbitrary favouritism slots getting Patcholi and Suwako on the team. Given how useful they are, I have yet to regret the choice.

[Cogwheel]

Mirrinus, could you, by any chance, upload your portrait pack when you have a moment? It's much, much better than anything I've managed to find, and seems to be a mix of a few. Most of which I can't actually find.

[EifieFlare]

Here's another set. I use a combination of that set and the SWR set (mostly the former).

Quoted from the original LP Labyrinth thread. For the record, several characters (ex: Suwako, Yuuka) have numerous alternatives, while some (ex: Chen, Flandre) only have maybe one or two. Also, some of them are pretty creepy (namely one of Suwako's) or just plain random (lizard Patchy lolwut).

You're on your own with finding SWR portraits though, since mine came with the game and I don't know if there's a download link for those.

[Mirrinus]

I've also yet to spend skill points in the library. Any suggestions?

My strategy for spending Skill Points is to set a certain threshold and fill each character up to that point. For example, let's say I was at a point of the game where my threshold for each character's most important stat was 500. That means I'll keep spending points on my tank's HP/DEF/MND or my attacker's ATK/MAG until it costs over 500 points to raise it to the next level. Next, I'll have a lower threshold of maybe 300 for other stats that are helpful, but not as essential. So I'll spend my remaining points on my attacker's HP/DEF/MND until it costs me more than 300 to get the next level. These are all hypothetical numbers, but this is the general principle that I go by. Raising SP with skill points isn't bad, although you'll stop doing it at all after a certain point. Also remember never to raise EVA, because it just doesn't work.

Another thing you'll want to pay attention to is elemental affinities. You'll want to raise each character's elemental affinity to at least 100 by the mid-game. Elemental affinities suffer from diminishing returns due to how the formula works, but as long as your below 100 affinity every level you put into it can mean a huge difference in how much damage you take. In case you're curious, the formula for elemental affinities and damage is:

(Damage before calculating resistances) X (100 / Elemental Affinity) = Damage Dealt

So raising an elemental affinity from 50 to 100 will cut the damage you take by 50%, but raising an affinity from 200 to 300 will only reduce the damage by about 17%. The first few levels of affinity are crucial, and probably will help protect you more than many more levels of DEF/MND. Usually, I only focus on raising elemental affinities in preparation for a boss that uses that particular element. That means I'll get busy raising NTR affinity just before the Tenshi boss fight, and give everyone a bunch more MYS before fighting Reisen, etc.

If you do want to make your team stronger, I'd probably consider replacing one of your attackers with Iku. Iku is by far the game's best offensive buffer, and can single-handedly increase your whole team's damage output by a significant amount. Plus, I like to put all her level ups into MND, which turns her into one of the most durable magic walls in the whole game (this also lets you have your other tanks focus more on DEF instead of MND). She is rather tricky to use, though, since her buff will severely paralyze anyone without near immunity to paralysis, but once you acquire some Para Resistance Rings (they drop off a common floor 6 enemy), you can make liberal use of Thundercloud Stickleback for massive damage. Take note that Youmu comes with naturally good paralysis resistance (with no equipment, she resists completely about 60% of the time).

(The last paragraph might contain my own biases. I'm probably the only person in the world who would name Iku as the best character in the game, but by golly, that's what I believe right now.)

Another thing that you could do is replace Eirin with Minoriko as your healer. Remember what I said at the beginning of Team Unappreciated about how I felt confident in being able to beat the game with Meiling, Minoriko, and any other ten characters? I still stand by that statement. Of course, you can always use Reimu, who's probably on every single player's top tier list as a support character, but I never use her anymore for my own personal reasons.

Mirrinus, could you, by any chance, upload your portrait pack when you have a moment? It's much, much better than anything I've managed to find, and seems to be a mix of a few. Most of which I can't actually find.

My image pack is a combination of the following. You can pick and choose. I think the links should still work:

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody art style set
Touhou Pocket Wars art style set
Squidtentacle's set (Includes Touhouvania portraits)
Nightfall's set
Spookedmouse's set (Mostly joke portraits/alternate outfits)

[Cogwheel]

The most helpful post in the history of ever.

Whythankyou, sage Mirrinus (and yes, the title does seem appropriate at this point). Thanks a lot

Characters changed, Rumia downed, now to spend those skill points and go... search for dolls. And items.

Well, at least this'll be suitably soul-crushing. That's a good thing, right? Not looking forward to the telepoter maze.


Edit: Alice is dooooown. Much easier this time around. Suwako's Croaking Frog move (not to mention Patchy's Silent Selene) hit far harder than is entirely reasonable. Even after Suwako got hit with the healing doll's weakening curse. Hate that curse so much. Makes me wish I had Rumia's Demarcation or something similar to deal with debuffs. As it is, I have to wait it out.

[Cogwheel]

Well. I finished floor 5 and 6. Including Yuugi (got the drop on the first try). Then I finished the maddening teleporter maze that is floor 7.

Then? Completely forgot about Tam's Foe and went in unprepared. With Patchouli dead on the first turn. Scraped by with a gradually dwindling team, but died with, at my estimation, about 7k HP left on the boss.

The last time I saved was very shortly after downing the floor 6 sigil guardian, meaning I have half of floor 6 and all of floor 7 left.

Raaaaagequiiiiiit. For now.

[Mirrinus]

Well. I finished floor 5 and 6. Including Yuugi (got the drop on the first try). Then I finished the maddening teleporter maze that is floor 7.

Then? Completely forgot about Tam's Foe and went in unprepared. With Patchouli dead on the first turn. Scraped by with a gradually dwindling team, but died with, at my estimation, about 7k HP left on the boss.

The last time I saved was very shortly after downing the floor 6 sigil guardian, meaning I have half of floor 6 and all of floor 7 left.

Raaaaagequiiiiiit. For now.

Welcome to Labyrinth of Touhou. With that ragequit, you are now one of us. In fact, I've made that exact same mistake before. 7th floor sucks.

I've ragequit several times with this game already. In fact, I should probably tell you some of the other "Surprise! Boss kills you!" ragequit moments, just so you're ready for them:

8F: The last treasure chest containing a Frozen Frog will automatically trigger a boss fight against Suwako without warning. This doesn't have a boss icon, so it will likely catch you off guard. Once you've collected 7 Frozen Frogs (count your inventory if you haven't sold any yet), be extremely cautious around any treasure chests on the 8th floor.

8F: This one will only surprise you if you're on a New Game + (and you are!). As long as you have fewer than 20 characters, there's an event near the northeast corner of the floor where you just speak to Sanae normally. However, if you have 20+ characters already (and you automatically do on a NG+), touching the event icon will trigger a boss fight against Sanae's Foe (whom you probably have no chance of beating if you don't prepare specifically for it, as it's a lot harder than Tam's Foe). Once again, this isn't a boss icon, so it will catch you off guard. This one has probably made me ragequit twice on two separate playthroughs (you'd think I'd learn by now).

9F: Nitori's hiding at a dead end really close to the starting area. You ought to save immediately after reaching the 9th floor, because there's a good chance you'll accidentally run into her boss icon if you start exploring immediately.

14F: If you head straight south from the starting Sigil, you will run into Yuyuko without any warning whatsoever. She starts off the fight with Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana, which when used by her boss form has a DTH rating of 300. You'll need 34+ DTH resistance to become immune to it, otherwise it'll still have a fairly high chance of instant death even if you're close to 34. It will also do extreme SPI damage as well.

15F: When you get close to the stairs to the next floor (it's the area in the middle of the map that requires a teleporter to reach), stay away from the walls if you haven't saved recently. The Great Stamp is hiding along the left-side wall fairly close to the stairs, and it's arguably the hardest non-Touhou character boss in the main game given when it appears. It's another strategy-intensive fight where you ought to prepare your equipment to resist its attacks.

20F: After defeating the final boss, a new area opens up to the east of where the final boss appears. Suwako V2, Meiling V2, and Yuyuko V2 (I think?) are all hiding in dead ends that you probably won't be expecting. The former isn't that hard, but the latter two may be quite a challenge. Bloody Papa is also there, but you have to select "Yes" at the Bloodstained Seal to fight him, so that shouldn't surprise you.

24F: The Flame Tyrant's boss battle has actually caught me off guard for some reason. This is a really easy boss fight, but if you walk in unprepared, you may just game over immediately from his first Flowing Hellfire if you don't have fire affinity gear equipped.

[Cogwheel]

Well, I knew about the Suwako one, but thanks for the rest.

Knew about Sanae, too, but it hadn't occurred to me that it would auto-trigger on NG+.


Aaaand now to re-do floor 7. And collect all the loot, too. Lost a few of those MAG+20% things I looted off enemies, just for good measure.

Now, getting a few of the forbidden whatevers or blade cuisinarts off the enemies right about now would be great. But nooooooo, it never drops. That would be fair.

Ah well. Maybe I'll at least run into Nitori this time.



Edit: Forbidden Tablet found on my first battle on floor 7. Apology accepted, game.

More edit: Incidentally, to anyone who suggested Youmu, she has since earned her place in the party. St. Elmo's Fire, Slash of Eternity. Saved the day, or at at least a lot of time.

[Rolaran]

That's why I eventually threw up my hands and stopped trying to play this game. I used to have more patience for the kind of game where defeating any boss required copious amounts of metagaming (I played Nethack, for Byakuren's sake), but these days I prefer the kind of game where if a boss curbstomps you, it's because you just weren't powerful enough, not because you lacked the psychic foresight required to outfit all your characters with fire-retardant/paralysis-proof/anti-instant-death equipment.

[EifieFlare]

I think I'm the only person who saves frequently, almost to the point of obsession, so I can't say I've raged over that type of mistake. I'm paranoid about losing my progress in the ways listed above, so I save every single time I return from the Labyrinth, even if all I did was something inconsequential like fight 2 battles and warp back.

I think the most progress I've lost in LoT was running into a boss with an exploration party on floor 16 or so (whichever floor is just a bunch of boxes and has the Rin fight), and it was only half of the map covered anyway.

[Eliirae]

Nah, I'm a pretty obsessive saver, too. Never stopped me from ragequitting against a few bosses in LoT though :P

[Cogwheel]

So, Mirrinus. About Reisen being an easy boss....

Well, I, at level 34~35, got completely annihilated. Admittedly, I don't have group-paralysis (the best I have is Moriya's Iron Rings, I think, but I may be forgetting another single-target one). So to get Reisen's drop, I decided to refrain from attacking the minions at all.

In hindsight, I should have just left one surviving, but ow. That did not go well.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you're clearly much better at this than mere mortals (read: me), but I guess that's not really news

[EifieFlare]

So, Mirrinus. About Reisen being an easy boss....

Well, I, at level 34~35, got completely annihilated. Admittedly, I don't have group-paralysis (the best I have is Moriya's Iron Rings, I think, but I may be forgetting another single-target one). So to get Reisen's drop, I decided to refrain from attacking the minions at all.

In hindsight, I should have just left one surviving, but ow. That did not go well.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you're clearly much better at this than mere mortals (read: me), but I guess that's not really news

According to the wiki, the recommended level for Suwako would be 36-40. Oh wait, Suwako's from the previous floor. IMO, you sound a bit underleveled at this point.

Of course, if you're looking for a challenge, continue on at your current pace. If you're not, or you think you're already having enough of a challenge using your current team, go on a grind-fest. In case you still haven't found out, you can hit the "M" key to instantly set your Encounter Rate to 200%, making the next step a guaranteed battle.

[Cogwheel]

According to the wiki, the recommended level for Suwako would be 36-40. Oh wait, Suwako's from the previous floor. IMO, you sound a bit underleveled at this point.

Of course, if you're looking for a challenge, continue on at your current pace. If you're not, or you think you're already having enough of a challenge using your current team, go on a grind-fest. In case you still haven't found out, you can hit the "M" key to instantly set your Encounter Rate to 200%, making the next step a guaranteed battle.

Didn't know about the M key trick, thanks.

But yeah, didn't fight Suwako. Didn't trigger despite my having the right amount of frogs, oddly enough.

And yeah, I figured I'm underlevelled, but I one-shot almost all mooks on the floor, and Mirrinus claimed to be a bit overlevelled when fighting Reisen at level 35~37, so I figured this would do.

[EifieFlare]

But yeah, didn't fight Suwako. Didn't trigger despite my having the right amount of frogs, oddly enough.

And yeah, I figured I'm underlevelled, but I one-shot almost all mooks on the floor, and Mirrinus claimed to be a bit overlevelled when fighting Reisen at level 35~37, so I figured this would do.

This is a NG+ right? Did you carry items from the previous save file over with you? If so, then your Frozen Frog count's going to be off by at least 1. For reference, you need 8 to trigger the battle.

And which characters was Mirrinus using? The difference in characters might account for the ease he might have had, since some characters are just better suited to some fights. Or you might have simply had bad luck.

[Mirrinus]

I really can't recommend going for Reisen's drop if you don't have some form of mass paralysis spell (Reimu, Cirno, Renko, Yukari, or Mystia each have one; I like Mystia's Poisonous Moth Dance the best). Whenever I try to ignore Reisen's summons to concentrate on her, I always try to paralyze the underlings first, as they have pathetic resistance to paralysis. Without a way to reliably paralyze them, you're better off killing Reisen the old fashioned way: use multi-target attacks to kill the underlings each turn, forcing Reisen to spend her entire battle guage to resummon them every time and make her unable to attack you. Since you're using multi-target attacks, you're still
hurting her each time while preventing her from using any relevent spells.

Leaving a single minion alive doesn't really work that well either. Reisen can still resummon them even if one is left alive. If all are dead, though, then she will always resummon them.

If you're dead-set on getting her drop (which you can get another copy of when you fight her again on 12F), then consider switching in someone with mass paralysis effects.

[Cogwheel]

I really can't recommend going for Reisen's drop if you don't have some form of mass paralysis spell (Reimu, Cirno, Renko, Yukari, or Mystia each have one; I like Mystia's Poisonous Moth Dance the best). Whenever I try to ignore Reisen's summons to concentrate on her, I always try to paralyze the underlings first, as they have pathetic resistance to paralysis. Without a way to reliably paralyze them, you're better off killing Reisen the old fashioned way: use multi-target attacks to kill the underlings each turn, forcing Reisen to spend her entire battle guage to resummon them every time and make her unable to attack you. Since you're using multi-target attacks, you're still
hurting her each time while preventing her from using any relevent spells.

Leaving a single minion alive doesn't really work that well either. Reisen can still resummon them even if one is left alive. If all are dead, though, then she will always resummon them.

If you're dead-set on getting her drop (which you can get another copy of when you fight her again on 12F), then consider switching in someone with mass paralysis effects.

Ow. I guess I won't bother, then.

The minions really are a pain - I found out about what you mentioned the hard way, sadly. Leaving just one alive does not work in this game. The magic ones eat SP, and the melee... well, they aren't too bad if they stick to hitting Tenshi.

Then bam, Mind Starmine. Suwako is dead, Mokou is alarmingly close and Remi is on 1/4 HP. Tenshi wasn't harmed, so that's one thing to be smug about, at least.

By the way, in terms of damage-dealing, my hardest hitter is very definitely Suwako with Croaking Frog at this point, followed by Patchy (I honestly expected that to be reversed). I don't use Flawless Nirvana often enough to say either way on Yuyuko, and haven't used Blazing Wheel on bosses in some time, so I can't really comment on Rin either. Probably a little further back on the list, but handy. So I guess third place is Youmu with Slash of Eternity, followed by Yuyuko/Rin, then Mokou, most likely. Actually, Eirin may be ahead of Mokou.

Honestly, I give Mokou some of the best caster gear I find, but her damage output is just sad. I'm not sure what's going on there.


Edit: I forgot that Yukari has moves that aren't quadruple barrier. Apparently they include a multi-target paralysis (and speed-lowering) move with tiny damage output. Glee.

[Mirrinus]

I've personally found Mokou to be better than Eirin, although that's not saying much. As far as pure damage dealers go, Mokou would probably be considered low tier, sadly. Her main saving graces are decent elemental coverage and above average durability compared to most other magic users in the game.

Patchouli is an odd one. She's more DPS than a pure nuker, I think. She's slow, so it's very hard to switch her in and out efficiently. However, Silent Selene has relatively low delay for its power, and Patchy does tank magic attacks well, so leaving her in the 4th slot against enemies with few physical attacks and just spamming Silent Selene turn after turn works well enough. Suwako, on the other hand, is definitely a pure nuker. Unless she can keep a boss PAR-locked, she should be switched in for Croaking Frog and then immediately switched out. Her speed isn't bad, so this is a lot easier to do with her. She's definitely a glass cannon, though, just like Flandre and Nitori.