Labyrinth of Touhou 9F

[I have no name]

Seeing the post about the Yukari skip, it sort of rekindled my interest from a while ago in planning/doing a segmented speedrun of this game.  Back when I originally considered it, I couldn't come up with any feasible ways to actually, you know, beat the game.  But I'm pretty sure I've managed to devise a team that can probably beat Rinnosuke with levels as low as the low 80s, with none of the characters in it taking very long to pick up either.
Meiling/Komachi/Reimu/Nitori/Youmu/Suwako/Patchy/Remilia/Iku/Marisa/Yukari/Ran
Additionally I have actually strategies for every other forced fight in the game that are basically guaranteed to work, except maybe for Maribel, but that just requires dodging Djinn Storm and the self-buff.

I have terse notes written up through Eientei now, I'll keep iterating and trying to refine the strategies a little better before beginning.  I'll post the Excel file I have here if anyone wants to see it.

[Serela]

Well, you could do a segmented run that is very fast in comparison to a normal playthrough. But iirc there was a TAS and it was still like 18 hours. That's like half the time a normal run by a skilled, knowledgeable player would be. But it's still like, an -entire- day, with a little sleep lost as well after factoring in bathroom/eat times.  So obviously it wouldn't be live speedrun viable, at least not in the traditional meaning :V

Anyway the same skip trick would help in bypassing 10~12f shenanigans. I haven't thought too hard but you can probably bypass like, 10 to 13f almost entirely. Reisen isn't that hard and you can skip Eientei/Yukari, so... Tam's Foe, Rinnosuke, Maribel to worry about? (You could pick yukari up after doing some 20f grinding to get op) Maribel is just a matter of "how much grinding on 20F are you okay with", because you can level up fast enough there that it's not a huge issue, even if you're really low level to start.

If you did NG+ in terms of starting with all characters, that'd help shave off some time. You'd be able to skip Cirno's boss fight, have Kanako's actual CLD nuke for Tam's Foe, have Tenshi to maybe help cheese some bosses, Iku/Keine offense buffs sooner, etc. Obviously, this would be a thing to do, but it's just that it's already soooo looong in the first place. :T

[LadyScarlet]

Yeah, here's what I've been using:
http://www.mediafire.com/?04zo5xbv3gxsi7b
I didn't make them; I assume they were made by someone on Pooshlmer.  It includes all of the characters except

Spoiler:

Renko, Maribel, or Rinnosuke

, since Sayori has not drawn those characters AFAIK.

I've also been making some alternate Sayori portraits to replace some of the ones I didn't like as much.  I've done alternates for Alice, Aya, Chen (lol), Cirno, Marisa, Patchouli, Reimu, Remilia, Sakuya (2 versions), Sanae, Suwako, Tenshi, Youmu, and Yuugi.
http://www.mediafire.com/?oo614kj77vma2

Here's a couple of the ones I made that I like:


Of course, if you've made some alternates also, I'd love to have them.

I have indeed made some alternates. Have some previews of all my alts, plus a Mediafire download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?26hayklf97cdmoq

[I have no name]

Well, you could do a segmented run that is very fast in comparison to a normal playthrough. But iirc there was a TAS and it was still like 18 hours. That's like half the time a normal run by a skilled, knowledgeable player would be. But it's still like, an -entire- day, with a little sleep lost as well after factoring in bathroom/eat times.  So obviously it wouldn't be live speedrun viable, at least not in the traditional meaning :V

I thought the RTA was 18 hours and the TA (segmented) was something like 15.
I'll have to mess around with 10-12F, but I think Eientei are blocking stairs, unless I can get OOB in a good place.  I have no plans to use Reisen or Eirin anywhere anyway, so skipping Eientei would be really useful.
Tam's Foe is a non-issue-just Iku-buff Cirno and spam Perfect Freeze and nuke with other stuff :V

Additionally Rinnosuke got a lot of theorycrafting to come up with the team mentioned in my last post, pretty sure if I get through his first phase the battle should be able to fall relatively easily (due to having buffs up and being able to abuse elemental nukes).
Maribel I'm not too worried about either due to chip damage during the kill the summons phase-just need a bit of luck to get through the last phase  :V

[SuccinctAndPunchy]

I thought the RTA was 18 hours and the TA (segmented) was something like 15.

I hear plenty of talk about a TAS of this game, any links that can be provided? I want to see how much the game can be pushed with infinite RNG manipulation.

[Serela]

I've only heard talk myself. I dunno where to find it, and I haven't felt like copypasting moonrunes on Nico :V

[koakoa]

Yeah, the idea of a joint TAS effort or segmented run is pretty exciting to work out and think about.

[I have no name]

Ok, so after getting some backed up save files from a friend (thanks DarkDespair5) I've been able to test Eientei/Yukari skips.
The verdict is that you can change Reimu's direction on the Fail-Safe Lock tile, but it ejects you to the same tile regardless, not the opposite direction.  Additionally you can skip through any color gates, but you cannot get OOB and walk straight to the 13F stairs with them (if someone can prove me wrong that'd be great, but I tried about a 100 times and there's no way my timing was off as I got the skip through 3 times in a row).
Yukari skip works 100%.  It requires 2 frame perfect direction switches in a row, in addition to some good encounter luck on 17F to reach the 18F relay point.  But hey, it worked.  I wonder how many other triggers could be skipped like this?

[Rukoto]

Explored the remained of 6F, as well as all of 7F and 8F. Tam's Foe was a rather easy fight thanks to Military Rule + Kanako. The Calamitious Souls also went down without much issue. Suwako at Wriggle 35 was a different beast, however. I made the mistake of choosing to use Military Rule on Mystia, who was only hitting 5K at 80% ATK. However, I did use the buff on Rumia, which amplified her healing abilities to survivable levels. Eirin helped out with a bit of tanking, as well as healing up people with Hourai Elixir. Utsuho did a sizeable amount of damage for once, although I'm guessing the bulk of my damage was from Wriggle's Poison. My Suwako was also very handy in landing about 3 or 4 par procs on the enemy Suwako (which if I didn't land them I would have most certainly have lost). Flan did a nice chunk of damage while she lived, but I let her get exposed to Froggy Braves the Elements, which promptly killed her. Tenshi got decimated by the first Croaking Frog, so it was actually up to Keine to tank 1st slot, on which she did an excellent job. Rinnousuke also endured the entire battle in slot 2, tossing Gold Swords whenever he had enough SP to do so.  Aya didn't see too much action this fight, and I think Kanako was essentially foddered to one of Suwako's attacks. Although I had almost lost, I could have come into the fight better prepared as well.

[LadyScarlet]

I found this great picture on Zerochan that had lots of character portraits in Alphes style on a white background. Therefore, I'm working on an alternate set of Alphes charagraphs. Here is a preview of my work:


BTW, how exactly do you TAS an RPG? Speeding up the framerate?

[I have no name]

BTW, how exactly do you TAS an RPG? Speeding up the framerate?

By planning ahead a lot, using savestates to force the perfect (or best possible) luck to push through the game as quickly as possible, usually meaning while underleveled.
For PC games this can be accomplished through the program Hourglass-not that I expect to see one for this game pretty much ever due to the level of RNG manipulation that'd be required to make a decent TAS, as well as the level of planning to push through as quickly as possible.

[RNG]

TASing only uses commands that the player can normally enter in-game, albeit with lots of slowdown and frame advance to make precise inputs easier. So speeding up the framerate is right out.

There's a really funny TAS of Earthbound, oddly enough.

[DarkAtma]

Finally beated rinnosuke at reimu lv100, Now my important question: should i stick grinding at 18F or try to tacket lv20 trash? i heard it gives good exp, or try lv19 junk first?

[Serela]

20F randoms are like minibosses and give similarly high exp/skp. It's drastically higher then what you get from earlier floors. It's also a lot tougher, but the payout is high enough that it's fine if you're going back to gensokyo every few battles.

[DarkAtma]

Defeated genocider and great intelect at first try, now rising kaguya MND to withstand rainbow dragon attacks them gonna try cosmic

EDIT

Phoenix down  :3

[I have no name]

20F randoms are like minibosses and give similarly high exp/skp. It's drastically higher then what you get from earlier floors. It's also a lot tougher, but the payout is high enough that it's fine if you're going back to gensokyo every few battles.

Exa Grains, Raijin's Expenditures, Executioners and Blue Comet SPT Ancient Soldiers are not completely immune to death.  None of them resist SPI either so Komachi can be a useful nuke against them  :V

and before you tell me "lolnope" I've gotten Scythe that Chooses the Dead to kill a Raijin's Expenditure  :V

[Scarlet_Meister]

After reaching floor 20 and grinding for a bit (got 2 'Flower Blade Kikuryusei' and absolutely love those ^.^) I decided to just spend my saved skill points to boost some characters to max for the fun of it. Tried Remilia with Speed first (which I got to ~750...), but wasnt that impressed; so next I buffed Attack on my favourite nuke, Suwako and headed out to test her!
Cause lots of attack calls for lots of HP,

Spoiler:

Mari

seemed like a good choice (thought I'd loose just like my last attempt, which was paralyzing and killing her before the summonings ). I won though...
So now I'm sitting with Suwako at LVL 216 Attack, spent a little more than 4.5 million skill points on it and don't really want to challenge the final boss again... I hope the next bosses don't have lots of Nature/Mystic resistance :/

The damage is quite gorgeous though^^ Got it up to 480k with 70% buffs, at LVL 137

[DarkAtma]

After reaching floor 20 and grinding for a bit (got 2 'Flower Blade Kikuryusei' and absolutely love those ^.^) I decided to just spend my saved skill points to boost some characters to max for the fun of it. Tried Remilia with Speed first (which I got to ~750...), but wasnt that impressed; so next I buffed Attack on my favourite nuke, Suwako and headed out to test her!
Cause lots of attack calls for lots of HP,

Spoiler:

Mari

seemed like a good choice (thought I'd loose just like my last attempt, which was paralyzing and killing her before the summonings ). I won though...
So now I'm sitting with Suwako at LVL 216 Attack, spent a little more than 4.5 million skill points on it and don't really want to challenge the final boss again... I hope the next bosses don't have lots of Nature/Mystic resistance :/

The damage is quite gorgeous though^^ Got it up to 480k with 70% buffs, at LVL 137

wow i should really grind for maribel (defeated cosmic and finally reached her  :V) fun thing unlike above is that the character with the most high skp level is kaguya with 80 MND, everyone else got at least 40+ levels on their important stats, upon trying maribel i only reached her 2nd summon and got party wiped by black hole later  :colonveeplusalpha:

Team that i am pretty sure i wont change
Reimu 104
Meiling 103
Marisa 97
Remilia 88
Yuugi 95
Aya 95
Komachi 94
Flandre 92
Orin 98
Kaguya 95
Renko 101
Utsuho 91

(after15F i just decided screw it and turned random encounters off to hunt treasures and explore fast i just turn them on when i feel like i grinding  :3)

[LadyScarlet]

(after15F i just decided screw it and turned random encounters off to hunt treasures and explore fast i just turn them on when i feel like i grinding  :3)

How do you turn off the random encounters? Atashi de honto baka, I know.

[DarkAtma]

How do you turn off the random encounters? Atashi de honto baka, I know.

This is the random encounter adress i am using with cheat engine, just put 0 and freeze it 00181580

[I have no name]

This is the random encounter adress i am using with cheat engine, just put 0 and freeze it 00181580

I might as well throw in that this varies by OS, for me the address is 00171580.

[DarkAtma]

Ok this is BS, i brought maribel down to her last minion (the psysical one) and starting plowing sparks and starbow breaks at her, and she didnt die after all my firepower, she ended killing all my party  , Whats maribel hp if you left one of her minions alive?

[Eilaris]

Final boss HP is weird.  It starts out at 103.5 million (yes, that's not a typo).  On her first action after falling below 103 million, she summons the Shredding Amnisieri and shifts to her second phase.  On her first action after falling below 102.5 million, she summons Aria-singing Toruastory and shifts to her third phase.  On her first action after falling below 102 million, she summons Staring Igmaruji, and then her HP is set to exactly 2 million and she shifts to her fourth phase.  Until she shifts to fourth phase, her HP is checked every time she takes an action, and if it is below (500000 * number of enemies) it is reset to that.

The answer to your question as such is 2 million, I think.

[DarkAtma]

YESSSSS~ Finally defeated maribel  :V, locked Maribel and right summon in galaxy stop par lock, them proceed to nuke maribel with master spark+peerless wind god and spear the gunghir and finish off the remaining summon, only casualties were kaguya,flandre and orin  , Now to look around for the extra goodies  :3

[Rukoto]

Congrats! If you have any intentions of doing plus disc material then you still have a lot in store for you.

As for me, I explored all of 9F, and thrashed Reisen at Wriggle 38. I didn't expect things to go so smoothly, but I guess Wriggle's poison is a miracle maker indeed (no casualties!). However, fighting Nitori at Wriggle 39 wasn't quite as smooth, with quite a few casualties throughout the battle. I had Flan specced to take her cannon nuke, but I continued to fail to count the turn she'd use it on, so that plan didn't really go through. However, my team had enough fire power to knock her over before she did the same to me. Next up is the iron maze, which shouldn't be very bad considering that this team is blessed with solid trash cleaners.

[blabla1994]

So, this is my first serious attempt at this game. I've screwed around a bit with it before, but I'm actually making an attempt to beat this game without doing something like Cheat Engineing EXP advancement to attempt to solo the game.

Does my party seem like it would work for the entirety of the game?

Rinnosuke, Maribel, Flandre, Komachi, Tenshi, Shikieiki, Eirin, Youmu, Rumia, Marisa, Reimu, Yukari.

[I have no name]

Rinnosuke, Maribel, Flandre, Komachi, Tenshi, Shikieiki, Eirin, Youmu, Rumia, Marisa, Reimu, Yukari.

Tanks: Tenshi, maybe Komachi.  Would need upkeep, and Eirin fails in that regard.
Healers: Reimu.  Eirin can't do this well, and Reimu's heal is expensive early game.  Rumia can be late game.
Nukes: Shikieiki, if you have the SP to spend.  Youmu and Marisa otherwise.  Also Flan.  Rumia can be late game.
Enablers/Buffers: Yukari, Reimu, RInnosuke.  He can do some damage with Scarlet Gold Sword too.
Debuffers: Eirin can, but it's not great.  Likewise for Shikieiki, at 240 SP cost O_O.  not really an issue though.
Status: Komachi inflicts DTH.  I see a lack of PSN/PAR outside Evil Sealing Circle, which isn't really a problem but could make your life a bit harder.
Status Recovery: IIRC, none in this party.  Could be a bit of a problem.
Elemental Coverage: Fire, Spirit, Mystic, Wind.  Not much cold/nature, which could pose a problem against Yukari, but you have Youmu so Flashing Cherry Blossoms.

I would remove Rumia and Eirin and add in Meiling and Mystia, assuming you have plus disc characters.  Meiling is an outright better tank than Tenshi (though Tenshi has her moments, especially when she takes 0 from everything), and can self heal and heal statuses.  Mystia can also heal statuses, is really really fast (amazing for randoms), has good PAR and good damage.  If you do not have Plus Disc characters.  I would also probably add Suwako in to replace Tenshi or Komachi as tanking is kind of already taken and you won't need all 3 of them, and Suwako adds a powerful NTR attack for the Yukari fight and a very good PAR effect.

Though beating the game with the party you chose is possible, it'd result in some unnecessary pain with the lack of status healing (unless Rumia can do it, she might be able to, but I think it's just debuff removal), and the lack of early game healing.  Also any party using late game characters will have SP issues for a long while.  It could work, but would work a lot better with a few changes.

[Ghaleon]

That party isnt what id call a perfectly balanced party but it absolutely could clear the entire game without unreasonable leveling.

[blabla1994]

Yeah, the whole status thing was a probablem I hadn't foreseen, largely because I thought Rumia would be able to clear them. :V

I was smacked in the face with this fact upon fighting Youmu. I lost like half my party to poison.

I'm definitely going to add either Meiling or Mystia, just poison alone gave me way to much trouble.

It was really annoying, the earlier boss fights were no trouble. I just droped both Yukari and Reimu's barriers and cycled in and out my damage dealers while nothing could scratch my tanks. Then Youmu happened.

[Ghaleon]

Youmu's poison if done early is a pretty much "you lose situation" regardless. But yeah if youre willin to dump someone for china itll make your party way better... China is just too important in this game imo... She even functions as a good healer for squishy characters like patchy/kaggy/etc