Genius of Sappheiros revival thread

[Ghaleon]

Yeah I got the satori thing, but it doesn't really organize them in an order of "not really worth getting" to "might be useful sometimes" to "zomg it's the Grand train of this game". Thanks for your help so far serela, though you're a big fat liar about the 1st stage fairy thing >=P. I've never seen them cast squat but single target nukes. But I know where to get the aoe versions anyway (the elemental dudes like Venom and whatnot are probably easy sources). I just realized that my impression of demon shock is even worse though... My Satori is wearing the something that gives dark +20% >=P. The POW stuff was a given though. But yeah I don't have any experience with any of her learned spells except these evidently crappy single target ones so far.

Yukkuris are very rare, especially in stage 7. After clearing it completely, I only found one.

As for Regal star, yeah I suppose it is simple in the sense that you can backtrack all you want kinda. Except it's actually not like that for me since I often have to save and quit several times a day and going outside to save makes them respawn after 2-3 times (normally some respawns after 2, and the others by the 3rd). It still hasn't been an issue until stage 13/14 but the dungeon topography is still much more confusing on average than most RPGS IMO. I haven't played this chinese paladin series, is it in English (via patch or whatever)? It sounds interesting, and I love relatively challenging rpgs (is it challenging?)

The Elite mindflayers in stage 14 aren't actually bothering me much. I have great death protection on alice, so their hand rarely kills anybody, and the aoe par thing, I find they rarely, if ever cast it after the first turn, and even if they do, I have a couple characters with high enough par resistance that they can generally mop up whateve ris left over. Plus Reimu can aoe cure par the whole party, and she herself can only be par'd for a single turn with that pow ability.

What bothers me are power-ace's... they can nearly wipe out my entire party from full health in one turn! (and they're weak to absolutely nothing at all...Dark doesn't count, even with their weakness every dark spell minus silent selene hits like a wet noodle, so they take like 50 turns to kill) Brontaursaurus' are pretty dangerous too. They can 1shot anybody they want whenever they want, including alice, and they attack twice, and god help me if I don't have patchy in my party with earth javalin. without it there's no way I can dps them fast enough before they just pick of fmy dudes one at a time.

The demon officers are oddly enough not as dangerous as they were a few dungeons back when they were sitll just lesser demons, and the sylphs. oh god the sylphs. They take off my entire's party's health by half with that aoe slicing move (except alice), and can dodge almost everything but patchy's earth Javalin (my other casters can't hurt it by enough to really make me feel like its dying fast). They're pretty squishy though, but if they cast accellerate the first turn oh god oh god.. Then they use that effing slice move FOUR FREAKING TIMES IN A FREAKING ROW.. Normally I just have alice run away at that point while my other members get chopped into little pieces.

[theshirn]

I'm up to Eienetei redux and I still haven't seen a single yukkuri. 

[RegalStar]

You can save in the middle of the dungeon via the same trick as "reloading after a party wipe without losing item". Just enter the menu and exit to autosave, quit the game, and next time you want to play, rename the autosave file (remember, you have to use one of the two files that does not have numbers in its filename).

[Eliirae]

Mwahaha, got to the teleporter in stage 7.  What would be the best level range to be for Komachi?

[Serela]

Mwahaha, got to the teleporter in stage 7.  What would be the best level range to be for Komachi?

Considering that you said you were leveling to 23~25, and I think my highest level around Stage 8 was like 20 (And this was a minorly overleveled character)... yeah ;P

Strategy matters a LOT more then your level, really. The stat gains from a few levels are really insignificant, although if there's a useful skill picked up then that matters. In any case, you're probably much higher level then I was, and I had a breeze with Komachi; take advantage of Light magic and Dark resistance, and of Alice stuffs!

Then again, I got lucky and never saw her scary nuke. :c

Ghaleon:I said the fairies only have the single-targets, silly. Also, experience with Alice and demons leads me to believe Demon Shock is physical, although since I don't have it I can't peek to see if the icon has a fist or a wand. In general though, her magic seems way more potent then her physicals. Then again I'm also always using a staff on her for MP regen, sooooooo :V Her single-target magic pales mostly because, well, it's single target. Now that I've got multihits and educate myself on weaknesses a little, plus gratuitous Nitori chasers... much better!

The Elite Mindflayers statuses didn't really bother me (I decked out my party with 50+ res across the board except Nitori, who had a status resist item instead), but they were irritating to HURT. I probably should have equipped a spear, because I -think- they're weak to Pierce.

Also, I have very little experience with stuff missing, in Stage 13/14... because my entire strategy for those two stages happened to be about spamming magic and Nitori's chasers. Constantly. And it worked really well! Neither can miss <3 The angels and demons suck though, yeah... really hard to damage, and dangerous.

Oh, and whenever you see a Yukkuri, keep in mind that they're immune to like all elements period. Only non-elemental physical stuff works. If you have Aya commander, totally use Paparazzi and you can likely get a kill on it.

Anyway, I beat Tenshi. She was a pushover! Alice's Artful series of spells totally kill her damage, along with making sure EVERYONE has earth resistance. Then Sakuya+Byakuren for major murder damage, and IMO two people (Sanae and Satori with support spells just in case is good!) spamming Elec to balance the land. She can nuke the everliving hell out of a single person per turn if she feels like it, so Mokou commander is very good.

okay all my rantiness is gone for now *Collapses*

[Kamil]

A question.  If you got your party wiped out.  Are all the stuff you carry since the beginning of the game "lost forever" type items now?

[Tsalop]

A question.  If you got your party wiped out.  Are all the stuff you carry since the beginning of the game "lost forever" type items now?

No. If you collected items from chests, you just have to collect them again...
If you got the items from the monsters... Well, you just have to hope that some
other monster will drop  you the exact item.

[Ghaleon]

As for leveling not mattering aside from new spells learned, yeah, stats go up by less than noticeable amounts when you level (except hp maybe). However sometimes I wonder if everything is scaled in level in general. Like an attack formula might be something like:
(1.00 - 0.05(attacker level - Defender level))Rest of whatever formula. I say this because after going to the previous dungeon that isn't very old yet (maybe just 1 or 2 dungeons ago), the enemies are much easier than anticipated, and I know it's not because of new gear or spells >=P.

But maybe not *shrugs*.

Anyway, wtf is up with the Hein enemies in stage 16? I can't seem to figure out how you know their new weakness. I just wasted over 100mp on patchy trying to figure it out and never got it once. I've tried casting spells of the same element as their last cast, and spells the opposite element, nope, wrong guess, It's stupid.

Did the English translation patch disable a notification queue for it or something?

[Serela]

I say this because after going to the previous dungeon that isn't very old yet (maybe just 1 or 2 dungeons ago), the enemies are much easier than anticipated, and I know it's not because of new gear or spells >=P.

Funny, because I go back to stage 8 after doing Stage 13, and they're still pretty able to wipe me out if I'm not using a party meant to handle randoms!

Prolly gonna start stage 15 in a bit, myself.

[Ghaleon]

Funny, because I go back to stage 8 after doing Stage 13, and they're still pretty able to wipe me out if I'm not using a party meant to handle randoms!

Prolly gonna start stage 15 in a bit, myself.

I don't remember anything in stage 8 being a threat even when it was new, unless the flowers were deathing you. And those power dudes who can clobber the entire party with that aoe spell. But they are so rare that you can do the whole dungeon and not see one.

You sure you didn't have a party that wasn't meant to handle randoms, or you didn't have a SINGLE CHARACTER suited to handling them randoms?
Anyway I just finished stage 16, I feel like I need new gear/levels. The boss could kill Alice from full health in a single turn without deathing or debuffing or buffing... Had to reset, try again, get luckier on the first turn, get some defensive buffs, then it was manageable. Hinitori skydance is seemingly useless for bosses now though. Seems like anybody other than the middle WILL be 1shot by anything that is meant as a damage dealer, even if they aren't the center target when I use it. Neo hakkurei is a great formation with reimu acting as healer since she can heal the entire group. But it's obviously bad  when the enemy uses spread attacks too. Oddly enough though, despite the 3 in the front being apart by like only 1 milimeter (the front 2 apart from the front middle that is), they do not share the same hit space for line attacks.

Line formations plus doll parry is great but I prefer not to use it, just feels cheap. Like using immunize+defender in Etrian odyssey 1.

[GuyYouMetOnline]

You hardly need Defender; Immunize is sufficient on its own. But not even the combo makes that game a cakewalk (you've still got quite a lot to worry about).

[Ghaleon]

Got some more satori spells.. still seems awfully lame. I got shadow boom, and was expecting it to do more than demon shock, but no, it's actually weaker (Despite costing 1 more mp). I'm using a crafted eye for satori instead of a staff, but the eye should actually be better since it gives a +20% boost to dark, and staffs themselves don't really offer much more m.atk anyway. If you go by the growth tree, it has 10 more in advantage if you max it out (which I haven't done for the eye yet anyway since the 3rd eye and satori tree are better regardless atm.

I got firebreath too, and even against those weak to fire, it hits for like 200 only, where reimu can exterminate them (the 6mp one) for like 300...When they are neutral to light, I just don't see how satori is any use at all with these spells. I'm thinking that she really needs some super amazing spells to be any use (well she's useful for status odwns I guess but that's not what I mean). I DID get mass heal though, I rekon that'll be handy for emergencies.

However, I can't help but wonder...sunburst. Is it as good for satori as it is for the sunflowers? Sunflowers only have 4 more m.atk than the caster fairies, who hit my dudes for like 40 with their spells. Sunburst on the other hand, hits for like 160, Does anybody have it? Is it proportionally powerful for Satori? I'd get it and find out for myself, but... well, I'm trying, she just wont learn it sigh. I don't want to spend more hours doing so only to find out it isn't any better.

Also I crafted Sakuya the hauteclair, half-expecting the enemies it is a slayer for to pop up a bit more often, but no. Are they more common later on? I'm thinking it may actually be more worthwhile just to stick with her old sword for trash (the one that slays birds, beasts, and plants).
Last, the wiki lies again (I don't mean to offend here, just being a goof), it says that one shouldn't worry about farming meteorites in stage 15 because you find more in stage 16. Unless I'm missing something though, there's only 1 in 16, and not a single one of the enemies can drop it there either, I'm bummed, I never even got one in 15! (from trash, I found the 2 in chests).

[Serela]

Sunburst has some Slayers on it, which is cool. It might be kinda cool, actually. Buuuut it's single target which makes me sadface.

I find, if you want to use Satori offensively, either Poison with The Green Eyes and IND buff accessories+maxed Trauma tree, or use her to activate Nitori's chasers with all-target attacks. At least that's how it seems so far. I find her basic All-Target magics do nice damage for me after I hit enough POW for 40% damage bonus and the attack bonuses in Third Eye, along with a staff, but Nitori's Chasers bump them up to awesome because hell yeah chasers. Or use her pseudo-offensively by stopping everything with Petro Breath or Mind Blast; not sure how often it works with maxed Trauma and all the IND you can get at later stages, but the few times I used them so far, they worked wonders.

Breaths don't seem very strong at all. But, they're all-target and physical, so I like to use a staff to get the 3% mp drain and activate hit-all chasers, it's VERY mp-efficient and they deal decent enough damage; add on the real point, the chaser, and it's pretty nice. At your point you should have the MP to use the much better all-target magics instead though, at least with the right staff (-10% mp cost staff or +20% mp is cool!). Hitting weaknesses is also pretty important when possible, as usual, especially if you're using chasers because that's even more elemental damage.

Also, Area Heal > Mass Heal, sorta. Area Heal can be used every single turn, and should heal at least ALMOST your entire party, depending on your formation. Satori can have a job of spamming defensive skills to good effect in bosses if nothing else, and has lots of nifty supports other then fancy heals. Admittedly, I still need to play past stage 14 and get around to actually trying that out, though. *Winces*

[Ghaleon]

Yeah I kinda want her as a damage dealer more though because Byakuren and Sanae are already more support than I need (normally I just use one or the other for a boss, certainly not both unless I need byakuren to act as a dark nuke or something). I want Satori as another damage dealer source as opposed to everyone else though because nobody else  has access to all the elements. Not even patchy really does since she only has 1 dark/light nuke with big cooldowns, mp costs, and bomb useage, plus as you say, chasers, so..yeahh.. Plus she makes a pretty pathetic support character with 25 points (when you have less than 50 to spend) in the satori tree because you still have much to learn, but that tree thankfully buffs the damage stuff somewhat.

As for sunburst, that sounds like a you don't know. I know it acts as a slayer and is single target, what I mean though is the damage like 3X more than the standard single target nukes (flame arrow, whatever) like it is for the trash enemies (without slayer in effect). If so, I rekon it's worth getting, but with its relatively awful learning rate, and the fact that sunflowers can only blow it once per fight (even in hinatori skydance formation, they seem to enjoy casting it away from the middle when I park satori there, argh, and they resist effing control like nobody's business), it's a bit too hard to make me want to go thru the effort just to find out it's just star burst with slayers.

[RegalStar]

Sun Burst is 25% more powerful than the basic elemental attacks, and its slayer effect is 50%.

[Ghaleon]

Whoah, that is exact, thanks! Is there some kinda stats table you looked up so I can find out similar stuff myself?

[Serela]

Damage info is on the jap wiki I know, but it can be a little bit of a thing to read Satori's through google translate. Everyone else you can tell pretty easily, at least.

There's also lots of other nifty info, like drop rates and formation data (Both how to get them and how much of an effect they have on stats, listed in seperate pages.)

Link!

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?rurl=translate.google.com&u=http://www26.atwiki.jp/touhou_souzin/pages/1.html&usg=ALkJrhiuX7XkRHY8M6XGqyKKhT0JZr5zCQ

I think Sunburst had a 5% base learning rate, too, which actually means with maxed learning tree it shouldn't be too bad. You could reduce the amount of members in the party to help it hit Satori, if you need. Unless a boss is weak to it's slayer though, I don't think it's particularly worth the effort to learn (Unless you just like learning attacks that you might EVER use, like me, but :V Any boss weak to fire it'd do nice against too, I suppose)

The Excel file of pre-expansion Satori moves says it's Fire and has Slayer on Undead/Transcendentals. I'm not sure if that means in the current translation, Foreign Gods (Useful! I see lots of those, like those Angels/Demons and several bosses) or Celestials (Not even sure which symbol those are x_x A little guide to which is which would be cool)

Satori as a damage dealer for bosses, yeah, Dark/Light/Earth are probably her strong points there, as they aren't nearly as abundant in other characters (Or Mystic, notably so if you're having Nitori chase mystic spells. Nitori's Mystic Chaser deals a significantly larger amount of damage then her others, by the way, to compensate for costing a bomb!). I also know she gets several nice Light/Dark spells at some point or another. If you pick up Mad Thunder on her, that's also very notable, because from the videos I've seen it's friggin powerful, but I haven't looked up where to learn that (Other then 2% rate off of Iku, which would be >>)

rantrantrant off to do other things

[Anima Zero]

Everyone is now at least lv28.  Some characters are higher than that too.  Sakuya is lv29, Marisa is lv30 I believe.  Then you have my Patchy and Nitori, both lv34 because they're my main duo for bombing most encounters I came across.  Running into 3 Yukkuris during an enemy cleaning run of stage 7 probably helped too when I had Aya as a commander + Sakuya abusing Private Square to ensure they wouldn't run away.

POW levels get pretty high too with all the level grinding.  Several characters are around the upper 30s/lower 40s, some are in the mid 40s, and a few are in the upper 40s/lower 50s (Looking at you Patchy & Nitori!).

Satori has multiple skills learned too so I'm good to go for invading stage 9 & 10 tomorrow.  Might go and snag Poison Hand for her real quickly before that happens though to utilize in boss fights.

[Ghaleon]

Just finished level 19 yay...Barely. Pretty much everyone (who was still standing) was out of mp and bombs, which is pretty much a you lose to a boss who regens 1000hp a turn. But, she went down on the very very last turn I had that could deal that much, yay. Unlocked new equipment, and the requirements are flat out ridiculous. I mean.. like.. I don't think it's even possible to make a single one of them without cheating without having the luck of the gods with these 1% drops from 1% rare spawns, or without farming so much your level will double. Atm My party is 46-54, and I rekon I wont make a single one of these things until at least 70 =\.

But it's still a great game, it's just.. the drop rates are really pretty obscene, I don't know what they were thinking with them. Kinda wish the game had some kind of currency you could use to work towards them. They'd be expensive for sure, but it'd be better than some stupid 1% of 1% crapshoot. I just hope that the rest of the game isn't near impossible without at least a couple, resulting in a grindfest as bad, if not worse than Touhou labyrinth's 30f grind.

[Anima Zero]

Current status...cleared out the eastern half of stage 9.  Pretty much a nukefest basically.  Patchy + Nitori is all I really need to wipe or severely damage stuff on this side with Sakuya and/or Marisa doing clean up work if needed.

West side...I just speedran through it to solve the puzzle and unlock the teleporter at the end. 

Went ahead and got all the equipment & accessory drops from stage 9 enemies this morning.  Some very...uh, colorful words were said when two enemies (Gapuuins, AKA the super evasive mecha octopi, plus the Ax wielding Inabas) decided to drop their CRAFTING item first before their equip drop.  Seriously game?  You're a jerk...and perhaps a dingbat too  .

To boot, it took like half an hour to get the Ax Inaba to fork over its Mallet.  Why am I so dead set on wanting to get almost every new piece of equipment that enemies drop in every new stage I visit now?  Crazy  .

At any rate, I just need to grab the rest of the treasure chest items from the western side of stage 9 and I can then go tackle the bosses of this stage.

[Battler]

Hit level 40, going around learning Satori spells, but for whatever I absolutely cannot get the Sword Sunflower Fairies to cast Leaf Shield at all. Like, I've never seen them cast it even once in the entire game, whether on us or on them, and I've tried every possible thing I can think of to try to trick them into doing it. Yet, after a full hour of trying, they simply won't cast it.

Is there something I'm missing here?

[Jelly Belly]

I have only seen the sword fairies cast Leaf Shield when they are in a formation with:
1 Sword Fairy, 1 Spear Fairy, 1 Staff Fairy and 1 Dragon
and
1 Sword Fairy, 1 Spear Fairy, 1 Staff Fairy, 1 Axe Fairy, 1 Mantis and 2 Cockatrices

I don't think it casts Leaf Shield in any other formations for some reason, but I could be wrong.
Oh, and you can't control it to use Leaf Shield on Satori either, so you'll have to rely on charm to get it.
(Byakuren with her IND booting scroll, some IND boosting equips, Hyper Trigger on herself and with Youmu's first commander skill gives a good chance to land charm on it.)

[Battler]

Yeah, I knew about Charming them and have no problems doing so, but I never knew about the formations. That's really helpful to know, thanks.

Any idea where those particular formations can be found? I guess I'll go look in the meantime, but that's a lot of ground to cover.

[Moekou]

>>7795556
Does anyone have a backup save on stage 9, anytime before fighting the dual bosses? My computer mysteriously died for some reason ;_;

If not, a save around stage 9, give or take a stage or two is fine too

[Jelly Belly]

Yeah, I knew about Charming them and have no problems doing so, but I never knew about the formations. That's really helpful to know, thanks.

Any idea where those particular formations can be found? I guess I'll go look in the meantime, but that's a lot of ground to cover.

I know for a fact that the formation with only three fairies appear in the M area, and I think that the one with four fairies can be found in the O area, but I'm not entirely sure.

[Ghaleon]

>>7795556
Does anyone have a backup save on stage 9, anytime before fighting the dual bosses? My computer mysteriously died for some reason ;_;

If not, a save around stage 9, give or take a stage or two is fine too

I don't anymore, but if you're feeling unlazy you can look at the touhou projects page and see if one of my bug report "here's a save file so you can see for yourself" posts are around level 9ish. I can only recall doing that at stage 14 atm though, might have done earlier, dunno.

edit: nm I just checked myself, no dice sorry.

[Anima Zero]

>>7795556
Does anyone have a backup save on stage 9, anytime before fighting the dual bosses? My computer mysteriously died for some reason ;_;

If not, a save around stage 9, give or take a stage or two is fine too

If you give me about an hour or so here, I can run through the last half of stage 9 to grab treasure chests and leave you right before the dual bosses.

[Serela]

Oh my god I'm an idiot.

Fighting Stage 17 bosses, I forgot when one dies the other regains all HP. I'm trying very hard to bring the red one down first (Youmu spamming Slash of Eternity on it), but amusingly it's so much easier for me to damage the other that they lose HP at about the same rate... and by complete chance, I kill them with the same move.

They try to recover HP, but they both die anyway :V

oh thank goodness

edit:Aw shit I don't think I got the encyclopedia entry for one of them. I'd do it again, but I've already entered the menu aka saved... oh well.

[Ghaleon]

Crab girl only shows up in it once, genii twice if you're curious.

[RegalStar]

Just finished level 19 yay...Barely. Pretty much everyone (who was still standing) was out of mp and bombs, which is pretty much a you lose to a boss who regens 1000hp a turn. But, she went down on the very very last turn I had that could deal that much, yay. Unlocked new equipment, and the requirements are flat out ridiculous. I mean.. like.. I don't think it's even possible to make a single one of them without cheating without having the luck of the gods with these 1% drops from 1% rare spawns, or without farming so much your level will double. Atm My party is 46-54, and I rekon I wont make a single one of these things until at least 70 =\.

But it's still a great game, it's just.. the drop rates are really pretty obscene, I don't know what they were thinking with them. Kinda wish the game had some kind of currency you could use to work towards them. They'd be expensive for sure, but it'd be better than some stupid 1% of 1% crapshoot. I just hope that the rest of the game isn't near impossible without at least a couple, resulting in a grindfest as bad, if not worse than Touhou labyrinth's 30f grind.

If you can last until post-game, there will be quests that give you those rare materials - gold bars, character-sepcific materials (and you can forge "advanced" character specific materials by using up 6 lesser character specific materials), and if you can handle them, obsidians/emeralds (this one's really easy - instant death = free 2 emeralds and 65535 exp)/diamonds/what have you. Material farming still tedious, but at least they're ensured now. You got no easy way of finding the more common materials like Iron ores and piclestones and stuff though, but I find that running the first six maps of stage 15 to be fairly effective in gathering those.