Labyrinth of Touhou 8F

[PapillonReel]

What's with all these "first playthough" with all chars unlocked thing? Getting them manually's one of the best things in the game, imo. The starting team and early members are enough to get through early floors since their skills don't take much SP.

I'm doing it more for the hell of it than anything, honestly. The sheer number of options and points and whatnot there are in LoT was overwhelming at first, so I figure I'd try something silly and run the dungeon with a randomized team while I learn how everything works. That said, odds are I will go back and start over from scratch once I do adjust - I've a feeling that you're right in that the game works better with a more gradual introduction.

That said: using some of the bosses against themselves is kind of fun, albeit in a goofy way.

Spoiler:

Hey Meiling, quit hitting yourself!

[Tangrelle]

What's with all these "first playthough" with all chars unlocked thing? Getting them manually's one of the best things in the game, imo. The starting team and early members are enough to get through early floors since their skills don't take much SP.

I was at 20f doing a main game run and a few days thereafter my computer got tossed, which was incredibly demoralizing to my everything involving a computer, so it took me a long while to get back into it. (And a new laptop to use it on)

And honestly a new game run with sticking to twelve is just easier me to keep track of. I'm really bad at keeping track of character's skill points among other things. Maybe I'll pull off another main game run as per normal, but I always felt underlevelled trying to keep up all my characters.

It's mostly because I'd miss Mystia, Yuuka, and Kanako too badly if I did a normal run, ahahahoo.

[Serela]

I always felt underlevelled trying to keep up all my characters.

Oh well, yeah, heh x3 I always stuck to twelve, it's just, I'd switch in new ones I wanted once I got them, and whoever was removed would then be promptly ignored forever. (Unless I brought them back in for Plus Disk or something, like the case for Rumia.)  Very rare for me to bring out a character other then my assigned 12, although I did do it a very few times for specific boss debuffing related reasons. Namely pulling out Cirno to Icicle Fall on Yukari and Agaustrobauma, which she doesn't really need SKP levels to pull off. The latter I coulda used Renko instead but :cough: pulling out Cirno for old times sake sounded fun. I stacked HP accessories on her so she could take a single hit from the boss.

[Ghaleon]

Eh, I think NG+ without levels/equipment/whatever but a full party is more fun. I've done both and I simply enjoy having whoever I want right from the getgo more. Early game might be odd due to many of the non-starting characters having extreme SP costs to their "cheap" spells, but then again you aren't supposed to have 12 characters then either so it more than balances out. Youmu is kind of a lame luck-based fight if you do her at a natural level (reimu 9 IIRC, 11/12 is what happens if you grind a tad IIRC)  in a proper playthru too imo. I mean if she decides to spam wind karma, you're pretty hooped regardless of your planning/strat. Or if her ghost ally does aoe poison very early, it is also pretty unfair, particularly because you have no means of curing, or even seriously boosting resistance to it early game.

But anyway, some people were talking about Patchy's usefulness. She's very useful from start to finish IMO. Silent selene is always a great spell with its high pierce, high damage, non-element, and good delay (not counting patchy's slow speed that is). Her high MND far outweighs her low hp and def for most fights, someone mentioned composite attacks, her mnd should be so high that she'll tank composite attacks better than everyone but your pure tanks too. Though sometimes if you fail to defense buff with reimu/yukari/ran/whoever first, what would be a composite attack which deals 0 to her might be a 1-shot later. As for physical bosses, it's true, she's an accident waiting to happen if a boss has thousand needles or arrow rain. But fortunately most with thousand needles use it in a predictable pattern, arrow rain is a 50/50 affair in +disc though. But honestly, I play defensively, and I like to clear the game at low levels. Truth is, most, if not all nukes, not just patchy, are often 1-shot by SOMETHING or another from most serious boss fights. The game gives you 12 characters to use in a fight, with only 4 duking it out at once. You can play 0-casualties hardcore mode if you like, but making educated risks using your characters is just part of winning imo.

As for tier listing, I'm sure many of you know, but I still think that a tier list is kind of silly in this game. There are so many characters, and so many combinations of them. Then there is your playstyle, level range. etc... Sakuya for example is flat out terrible if you're underlevel against a boss with even slight levels of defense, but if you're overlevel, or fighting something with no defense, she's a beast. Yukari is also likely awful if you have reimu or ran and/or kaguya. But if you have none of those, she's most likely going to be one of your most important characters for any difficult encounter. I personally have bias with my own opinions on characters in the sense that I pretty much always have china, Reimu, Remi, and Patchy. Between those 4, there is nothing I can't damage AND survive for a long ass time against. I like playing defensive, and those 4 can pretty much endure everything, minus patchy against arrowrain/needle enemies. China can heal herself, Remi can def buff herself if Raymoo needs to heal while def buffs are "only" at 30% or below .

That's kind of my problem with this game. I love it to bits, and I like experimenting with parties, but I pretty much nailed down the optimum party for my playstyle (aside from those 4, I feel like I'm gimping myself if I'm not including Ran, kaggy, Nitori, and Mino...Though I haven't played since it was discovered that Iku's buff was 70%...not 35% like the wiki originally listed, I MIGHT be able to replace ran with her, but I do make use of ran's def buff too so I dunno).

As for Eiki, I found her to be very useful the time I used her. Her damage is obviously good. Yeah her trash clearing options are limited, but defense ignoring is actually pretty useful for SOME trash...you know, the really really annoying kind that are otherwise the kind that might make you decide to just flee from instead.. But more importantly, she's one of the beefiest top-tier nukes in the game. Her MND was fantastic, and her hp wasn't shabby either. Best of all, BECAUSE she ignores defenses, you can forfeit spending level up bonuses to her atk, and the "gimp" factor won't be as bad for her since its effective damage from 0 is so much wider due to defenses not eating her atk up...err.. I can't explain it well. I'm sure some people who aren't real theorycrafters will think I have it backwards but I don't >=P. But yeah, again, defensive stats on a nuke aren't really a turn-on for many people, so whatever.

[Serela]

but if you're overlevel, or fighting something with no defense, she's a beast.

nope
her attack stat isn't quite high, nor is Killing Doll equipped with a nuke-level formula, TBH Mystia is probably better although less tanky even on a target without real high def

Totally usable as an attacker, yes, beastly, uuuunfortunately not. It'd be cool! But :c

Yukari is also likely awful if you have reimu or ran and/or kaguya

No offense, but this is in absolutely no way true at all :V Even if you have all three of those people. IMO a party designed for the sake of being really good would have all four of them. If we're talking about, like, Winner only, then things change, but.

Although I never find Ran's buffs useful until later in plus disk (And godly for Winner/SoC, 80~100% def/mnd on everyone for the whole fight fff yes) she's still an awesome and tanky attacker with her composite spell.

And yes, Eiki is quite great, but what I meant is just for the main portion of the game (Not Plus Disk) she simply doesn't have the SP to be really useful in comparison to other choices.

But, anyway, there actually isn't as many useful "character combinations" as much as several characters capable of adequately filling a useful role for your party. Technically yes that's different character combinations, but it's an overcomplication. Playstyle does have a bit more leeway, but it does also come down to Playstyle That Is Better and Playstyle That Is Worse (But still entirely usable, of course) in many cases.
 Sakuya will never be an ideal attacker. Even if the target doesn't have great defense. But she CAN be an acceptable attacker, and usable for that fashion, yes.

Characters can definitely be tiered in this game, because it all comes down to numbers. Touhou Labyrinth is a very number oriented game, when it comes down to it. Some characters are just not ideal. They're still, for the most part, totally usable though. If you love Orin, you could use her as a nuker, even though the result isn't quite as impressive as other choices, she still certainly gets the job done alright (And is great for the less-important-to-worry-about random battles!). Yeah, people in the low tiers can also still be very useful; but they don't have as high of an importance. Alice is a good choice for a stay-in nuker in Plus Disk, but her damage also won't be nearly as exciting as someone else could be (Except when fighting Yuka), and her presence is not going to have a large impact on the party.

The main difficulty with tiering is more on how much a character's usefulness differs depending on what part of the game you're in. Status effects/debuffs become overall less useful, while support skills, and defensive capability overall jump in usability and power, nukes become more spammable, and overall damage of skills rounds out somewhat. That would be big things that gradually occur between midway through the maingame towards the final boss of maingame, and then a drastic jump when you hit plus disk (Wriggle going from super awesome to useless once you hit Plus, for example.  Although her usefulness takes a hit after beating Yukari, as well.).

[ExPorygon]

Evade does nothing, so invest no points in it. Focus on improving the stats that characters are already good at. The improvment is proportional to their natural ability, so you can't really undo weakness. For instance, don't waste your time on Patchy's HP. Her magic and mind are what she's best at, so focus on those.

In a similar way, do try not to spend your level up bonuses on SP. Skill points are more or less fine if you wanted, simply because you can garner them much more quickly, but your group's SP will shortly catch up to the cost of whatever expensive spells they have and more, especially post-game.

Um, other than that, the wiki happens to have a lot of information on characters, along with some general advice somewhere, I believe <3

Building your team defensively makes bosses easier but trash harder and vice versa. And never bother using the normal attack, it does nothing.

Thanks for the tips guys, I'm starting my game today. Wish me luck!

[Serela]

I have nothing better to do so to waste my time I typed up some big tiering list with lots of notes and :shrug:

when I look back I wonder why Sanae isn't in crappy tier, but I suppose it's because, it's not as much that she's crap as that Meiling covers your status cure and can do it more handily then Sanae due to already being out, and then Minoriko handles the actual healing part better (With actual dedicated buffs overshadowing Miracle Fruits too much for it to really be worth having Sanae in, it's slow and she's not all that durable and stuff like Iku is way faster)

[Tangrelle]

Sometimes I just wish I could drop some, say, Seraphim Diamonds into a New Game just so Yuyuko and others with similar SP costs won't be so shafted the whole time ;.;

I wonder if that's possible, maybe? Oh well.

[Zil]

You mean carry over items? Yes that's possible.

[Tangrelle]

Ah, if I carried over all the items, I'd be too tempted to drop on the really good stuff when things got hard ;.; I was trying to say just the specific item, but if it's not possible, I can make do, I guess!

I've managed to keep two separate playthroughs going so I can always drop the one with Yuyuko if it's not going to work out.

[Zil]

You could sell everything except the items you want to carry over. The game forces you to keep one of each thing, but you could then equip as many of those to the party as you can, since anything equipped won't carry over. You'd still end up with lots of lone high power items, but you could easily tell if it had been carried over or found in the new game by just subtracting 1 from however many you have.

[Starxsword]

Oh yeah, Flandre is one of the few characters that you can use the attack command, if you do not wish to use Star Bow Break. Her regular attack hurts a lot.

[Pesco]

The only time you'd use a normal attack is when you're back on 1F grinding BP.

[MysTeariousYukari]

Actually, some characters have enough Attack to get away using the command, if you did a character carry-over and are on about 1F-3F.

It's never a great option, but better then nothing as well. I've survived a few fights that would otherwise be a Game Over, or a complete mess, thanks to Attack command when I couldn't use a Spell.

[Serela]

It can, used carefully, eke out a small bit of use for awhile. But by the time you're reaching double-digit floors, only Flandre will almost ever be able to really get any actual use out of it. Rising SP numbers/regeneration and harder times telling when the enemy is at critically low HP makes it less and less helpful to try and take advantage of it to save small amounts of SP.

That being said, even Flandre's isn't very strong, but it is good enough that it can be usable sometimes. Especially as Starbow Break will drain her TP real fast. She's awkward for randoms unless she can finish it in one fell swoop with Laveateinn.

[Tangrelle]

But to be fair, there is very little trash that doesn't die to laveateinn! The only ones I can think of would be the 20f guys.

[Shin Rokuren]

If you're going with average/slightly above average levels, the mooks starting at floor 21 and up can withstand Laveatein.

[Serela]

Plus anything that resists fire or has abnormally high HP, of which there is many in the later floors of even just the maingame.

[Tangrelle]

Right, so I figure I'll give Magic Suwako a try for a bit <3

Her Cold nuke should have numbers at least somewhat comparable to Kanako's if you account of the leveling and growth differences, I believe. Her SP costs also aren't as restrictive as Kanako as well.

Although I will admit that Mishaguji will not do anywhere near as much damage as the Frog that Croaks Often (Maybe half?), it only really comes into play during Yukari and NatureRinno, so seeing as Cold affinity often favors her Cold spell, it should do numbers pretty much the same as Croaking Frog, right? Assuming the enemy in question is weak to cold, which is pretty common, I'd say. If I actually need to use Croaking Frog anyway, I figure I'll just drop in some Attack skill points and switch her gear and that would probably be alright I think.

[Ghaleon]

Despite kanako having the best cold nuke in the game, its damage is still not very impressive unless the target it weak to cold since her magic growth and level up rate aren't steller (plus the formula itself isn't amazing so much that there is a serious lack of competitive cold nukes in general). The only real reason why kanako isn't "crap" tier is because she's very beefy for a dps.

Given Suwako only gets 1 more mag growth per level, levels a little bit faster (maybe 1 or 2 levels higher once you're in the 100s), has a formula that is fairly significantly worse, but has the survivability of chen...I'm pretty sure she's gonna feel like a wasted spot for anything but trash.

[Starxsword]

Yeah, Suwako's defenses are sad.

It can, used carefully, eke out a small bit of use for awhile. But by the time you're reaching double-digit floors, only Flandre will almost ever be able to really get any actual use out of it. Rising SP numbers/regeneration and harder times telling when the enemy is at critically low HP makes it less and less helpful to try and take advantage of it to save small amounts of SP.

That being said, even Flandre's isn't very strong, but it is good enough that it can be usable sometimes. Especially as Starbow Break will drain her TP real fast. She's awkward for randoms unless she can finish it in one fell swoop with Laveateinn.

Flandre's regular attack is comparable to Remilia's Spear the Gungnir, so it is respectable. But this is because Remilia was built defensively and Flandre was built offensively. Not that I can see any other way to build Flandre.

[Sophilia]

I actually main teamed a mixed Suwako.  Not bad up until 16F, but I'd say that post-Yukari, she was pretty much relegated to paralysis slave.

[qno2]

Might be a bit selfish to ask but hope it's alright. I'm dealing with the postgame on my first playthrough and my team does not feature anyone besides Reimu that can actually heal HP: should I expect any problems with that or can I just go on? Switching out generally takes care of the problem but longer bossfights tend to drain the ressources after a while. Or is there a plus-disk character that could fill this spot?

On an unrelated note: hunting for that one item I'm missing for the star ... it's been two hours, get me out of here! Please! The grind just won't stop!  There probably isn't any way to raise the chances of an actual drop, right? 

edit: nevermind, finally got it ... typical.  :V Should've whined about this much sooner!

[Zil]

I went through the whole thing with only Reimu for healing and everything went fine for me. According to Serela, Rumia's heal starts getting usable. There is a plus-disk character who can heal but that's not her main attraction and it's probably worse than Rumia's thing. And don't worry about longer boss fights draining your resources in the plus-disk. Reimu's SP will be effectively infinite once you reach a high enough level, and running out of TP becomes impossible with all the skillpoints and items you get to boost it.

[qno2]

Guess that means I should prevent that anything could ever kill her. Tenshi's doing it, sitting all smug in bossfights, not taking damage (not dealing any either but that's another story).  :V 
Thanks.

Generally speaking: are the new characters worth switching your line-up (and probably spending a lot of skill points)? Mystia is a definite yes, not sure about Kanako yet. 's alright to just speak out of experience if there's no definite answer.

[Zil]

I'm not too sure about Kanako. I didn't use her, but I hear she's nothing special. There certainly are some good plus-disk characters though. Spending skillpoints on them isn't a problem, so don't worry about that. You'll get more skillpoints and levels in the plus-disk floors than you got in all of the main game floors put together.

I'm not sure how well Tenshi works in plus-disk because I didn't use her either.

[qno2]

Tenshi has been a great tank but really can't dish out anything (again: nothing, nada, completely worthless, at least if you go with the tank-build, I'm happy that she can deal 30k damage... in the plus-disk, that's really good for her! :V). Which is actually pretty convenient, she's perfect for organizing the team, no second thoughts about any damage or status inflictions she could possibly deal instead of switching somebody in/out, ensuring a lively ensemble of many different nukes popping in to provide damage. Combine that with a few items that make her immune to any status afflictions and you can use her self-buff for 100% MND/DEF as long as you want; you might argue that Reimu and Yukari could take care of it too but imagine that her defensive buffs are running on a different "engine", so it's a lesser strain for them to keep track of the main-tanks buffs (and personally I try to avoid having both Reimu and Yukari at the frontline for prolonged intervals, losing both of them would be a disaster). Of course this is related to keeping the SP-usage of Reimu/Yukari in check so it's probably not going to be that much of an issue anymore.
But Tenshi definitely prevents sudden deaths even as the battle draws to a close (unless you're severely underleveled of course) - most of the time she is the last one standing in any boss fight (assuming that everything went wrong for the player) and it can take a long time until she's actually taken down (... you can probably restart and go through half the battle in that time).

So much for the advantages but attacks that completely ignore defense are a problem for her (so if they increase in number on the plus-disk... well you get the picture), even though she has enough health to deal with it (at least in my game). Her MYS attack that "cuts" away buffs of the opponent doesn't always work so that's not a reason to keep her either. All in all I'll probably drop her at some point in exchange for a lot of points into Yukari's defensive stats - I'll remember her fondly though.

[Starxsword]

In the Plus Disk, defense becomes somewhat important, unlike the Main Disk, where defense is almost useless.

[Serela]

Yeah, survivability overall increases significantly. For an example, Alice is tank-level in the back, and can take a decent physical hit as well.

[Ghaleon]

Defense is useless in the main game!? What the goodness are you smoking. Anyway i didnt like tenshi in the end because i find she did NOT have the hp pool to survive ANY defense ignore attacks other than that lolweak one from hill gigas.