Labyrinth of Touhou 8F

[Parallaxal]

That's what I don't like about Marisa: she's entirely dependent on MYS attacks. MYS might just be the most commonly resisted element in the whole game, or at least it sometimes feels like it. Yuuka has more than just Master Spark going for her, thankfully.

Took down Suwako and Nitori. Reisen was probably MVP against both of them, thanks to one Grand Patriot's Elixir followed by 3x Discarder hitting the FIR weakness for tons of damage and debuffs. Patchouli also a great job here, and both of them were able to receive multiple Three Treasures: Orb for some fantastic damage output. Once their role was done, Flandre and Ran managed to clean up nicely.

Keine had no problem tanking either of them. Thanks to a Holy Mist Robe (dropped from Suwako) and a Love Machine 3322, Keine was taking only ~1k damage from Megawatt Linear Gun, and she has about 1.9k HP anyway. No other attack came close to killing her. The biggest problem against Nitori was just her tendency to snipe other characters with Air Torpedo. Her other spells weren't too bad, thanks to some affinity items on Minoriko to ensure that she won't have to worry about healing herself too often even as she sits indefinitely in the 3rd slot.

[Shiizendame]

Sorry, it's just that I caven't been able to get the engish patch to the special disk version, could someone help me?

[Mr. Sacchi]

I like how I need to fully explore 9F before beating Suwako and Nitori and my Meiling was taking 2k~ damage from Nitori's Gun and Paral just steamrolls both.

Right now I just reach the 10/11/12F puzzle, I've been periodically changing my party as I get new characters, like I changed Marisa first for Alice and then changed Alice for Ran once I got her, though the core group of Meiling;Remilia/Youmu/Patchy/Reimu/Iku stays as it is.

I came here mainly asking help for a friend who unfortunately speaks no english: Everytime he chooses new game, the simply closes, his should be working considering we're using the same files... What gives?

[Parallaxal]

Beat Reisen and got her drop, and didn't even take a single point of damage that entire fight (well, minus Starbow Break, of course). I let Reisen summon her little minions, killed them all immediately with Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana, then just kept her PAR-locked with Suwako while Flandre and Patchouli pounded on her. Poor thing never got to do anything except use Summon Underlings twice that whole entire fight.

It's okay, Reisen. You're still high tier in my eyes. Incidentally, you're also now my save file portrait. Good thing I picked that cute portrait of hers that I'm rather fond of (same one I used for Team Unappreciated).

Also beat Sanae's Foe, but that was a very uneventful battle. Let's just say Suwako's PAR proc'd 4 times during the fight, which meant Sanae's Foe only ever got 2 turns before dying.

(By the way, does anyone else besides me choose to intentionally not pick up that Frozen Frog near the 7th to 8th floor stairs? I leave that for last because it's the easiest frog to reach, in case I want to retry Suwako's fight. Plus that means no accidentally running into her on the 8th floor when I'm unprepared.)

I came here mainly asking help for a friend who unfortunately speaks no english: Everytime he chooses new game, the simply closes, his should be working considering we're using the same files... What gives?

Are the file paths okay? I think there was an issue about that a while back regarding Japanese characters in the file path, or something of that nature.

Check here if you haven't yet:

http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Touhou/Troubleshooting

[Mr. Sacchi]

I normally do the 7F frog thing, I just forgot this playthrough and went with the frog straight down from the entrance of 8F.

Also, it was the fonts problem, he's playing it now, thanks.

[Parallaxal]

Hey Pesco: the save file you gave us doesn't seem to have enough BP for Chen to get her event on floor 11 for the Yuyuko boss fight.

Just fyi.

[Pesco]

200 BP wasn't enough? I'll fix it later today :ohdear:

Edit: Uploaded a fixed file with 250 BP on Chen.

[Parallaxal]

Don't know why that would be. 200 BP is correct according to the wiki.

[Raikaria]

Ifrit was laughable. Kanako's CLD nuke hit something like 6.5k with no buffs or debuffs on Ifrit.

Ranged from 17 to 20 [Yuka and Kanako being 17, Cirno and Wriggle being 20], I take on Alice. First time I get some awful luck, with Cirno and Orin focused down and killed on the first turn [They both got paralysed and Orin got hit by a weakening, while Cirno got sheild bashed before the magical light KO'ed them], so I retry:

I inflict poision on all 4, and then go to my usual tactic, except with Cirno spamming slows and PAR. Healing Light went down quickly, shortly followed by the other two, because I had been switching Utusho in and out using Uncontained when she could, and she just nuked with Tomahawk.

Then Silence Cloud got Sanae Silenced. At which point I just went 'Forget this' and hit Alice with everything I had. Throwing Atlas, Master Spark, and Blazing Wheel. Seeker Dolls started stacking debuffs so I threw out a Beauty of Nature and it killed her anyway ._.

Finally had enough SP on Tenshi to use State of Enlightenment. Taking 0's from everything Alice throws at you is fun. Sanae's heals are healing ~700 ATM.

Also got the drop.

[Parallaxal]

Beat Tenshi and the Eientei trio.

Tenshi was a joke. Between my multitude of debuffs, the PAR from Suwako, and the fact that I have Shikieiki, she was no threat at all. She died before even using Focus for the first time.

Eientei was the toughest fight yet, but still not too bad. I started off with Sakuya and Keine swapping in and out of slot 1 and casting their buffs alongside Minoriko, with Ran and Patchouli spamming their multi-target spells to great effect thanks to said buffs. My secret weapon, though, was Yuyuko, whose enormous natural SPI affinity combined with a Zodiac Stone meant that she could easily tank Astronomical Entombing or Hourai Barrage. Suwako also came in from time to time to paralyze Reisen. Kaguya died first, and I was fully prepared to eat Astronomical Entombing, but thanks to Yuyuko using her spells to lower Eirin's active gauge I was able to just finish off Eirin right after with a Starbow Break for 25k damage. Reisen went down soon after, of course. Won without losing anyone, which was nice.

[Mr. Sacchi]

I finally did it.

I finally beat the Eientei Trio, second try too!

Plus, I got the sunglasses and the Star of Erendil, I'm aware that none of them is as good as the Getitup V (Which is kinda weird for it to not have dropped, seeing as these two seem to have an abysmally low drop rate while Getitup has like 50%  :wat:) but hell, maybe the game is just trying to compliment me saying "Hey, you finally did it! Here's the rarest drops of the fight."  :3

I still haven't left that exact screen, since I'm just so euphoric listening to the battle theme, but what I can say is:

Cirno got sniped at the very beginning, but she did an amazing job of both debuffing Kaguya and keeping all three in constant PAR-Lock until her SP ran out, but then they got to act and just sniped the poor girl.

Ran also didn't last too long in the fight, so she didn't do anything, really.

However, Iku is absurdly overpowered, both distributing amazing offensive buffs to all my high damage dealers and taking no more than 200 damage all fight long. Iku's HP never got below 1k, and as you can see, Meiling died, Meiling died while Iku didn't, holy shit.

Remilia didn't do much until the end of the fight, where I just used her to finish Reisen off, though the last hit was admittedly, Yuugi's, Reisen did get off a Mind Starmine, but it was barely a problem. I also think I invested a bit too much into Reimu's MND since she was taking very little damage (though more than Iku). Minoriko, unfortunately, got sniped about halfway through, ):

Aside from Iku's OPness though, the MVP of this fight was undoubtedly, Patchy, with Nitori sitting closely in third place, Royal Flare deals way too much damage when buffed. And so does the gun, by the way. (The gun was dealing almost 40k damage at full buffs!)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm go bask in my victory for a little while longer.

[Parallaxal]

However, Iku is absurdly overpowered, both distributing amazing offensive buffs to all my high damage dealers and taking no more than 200 damage all fight long. Iku's HP never got below 1k, and as you can see, Meiling died, Meiling died while Iku didn't, holy shit.

Would you believe that for a whole year, the wiki article used to say that Iku's survivability was "nothing special"? Yeah...we've really come a long way in our knowledge of the game.

Meanwhile, I've been messing around on floor 13 and am reminded of just how much of a difficulty spike this floor's trash is. Spiral Divers do insane damage with Slash Dive and can outrun anyone on my team with ease; Rabbit Snipers and Rail Insects are quite speedy as well, plus the former has a nasty habit of literally Sniping your 4th slot. Even those Verdant Dryads are fast enough to outspeed Patchy normally, thus making it hard to just sweep them with Royal Flare.

After some deliberation, I was able to set up my party to survive and beat the new threats on this floor. Keine goes in slot 1, packed with tons of defensive gear for the sole purpose of tanking Spiral Divers. Even then, it still took her a few more levels to be able to survive double Slash Dive regularly. Slots 2 and 3 are for Ran and Reisen, each with a Getitup V, some more SPD gear, and some extra SKPs to get their SPD to 152 so that they can outpace both the Rabbit Snipers and Rail Insects. Together, they can easily sweep them reliably. Finally, Patchouli sat in the 4th slot with all the best SPD boosting gear I had on hand just so she could hit 128 SPD for taking out Verdant Dryads. Together, this group of four was able to handle everything the floor could throw at them (unless I got really unlucky with those Spiral Divers).

While exploring floor 13 with this team, I was able to appreciate for the first time just how well-designed this floor is. Don't get me wrong; it's still a nightmare of a floor compared to everything else in the game thus far, but I think that was the point of it. The game developers wanted this floor to be a huge jump in difficulty, following the climactic Eientei battle and all. They wanted the floor itself to be the menace, so I think it was intentional that they didn't put a boss fight here. That puts all the focus onto the really difficult enemies, and the preparation that you have to use to overcome them without losing too many characters to Slash Dive or Snipe. But as hard as they made it, the developers also showed quite a bit of mercy. The enemies are very tough, true, but the layout of the floor is such that you don't lose much if you recall back to Gensokyo often. Each trek to explore one corner of the floor is fairly short, and so you only have to go a few battles before recalling without missing out on much. This turns the difficult fights into a totally surmountable challenge rather than a hair-pullingly frustrating ordeal. I mean, can you imagine what floor 13 would have been like if you had to make enormously long treks without any breaks in between, like with the multi-switch puzzle on floor 12? That could have dissuaded more players from finishing the game than any of the main game bosses, I bet.

As far as game design goes, I can admire the effort, which I assume is intentional. It eases the players into the next level of tough floor mobs, yet doesn't overwhelm them with too much at a time. So yes, it's still a difficulty spike, but it's a deliberate one that serves a purpose.

In fact, it's rather Etrian Odyssey-ish. And that's a good thing in my eyes.

[Nerv-Faktor]

I got the sunglasses and the Star of Erendil, I'm aware that none of them is as good as the Getitup V

Not necessarily. +8 in all resistances can be great and is often worth far more than just +10% in all stats, especially since most characters only really benefit from 3 or so stats.
If you equip Remilia with a Star of Elendil, a para resistance ring and a poison resistance ring for example, she will have 34+ in both PSN and PAR resistance and can use her selfbuff without ever being in danger of poisoning or paralyzing herself.
Only +20% on everything from all 3 items is pretty low though, so if no one else really needs it it's probably better to just give her the ribbon you'll soon find on 13F instead.
Since you're using Iku the Star of Elendil is generally quite useful, if you can bring a character from something like 24 to 32 PAR with it that character will be far less likely to be paralyzed by thundercloud stickleback.

[Mr. Sacchi]

Personally I just gave her a Para/Poison resist ring and a Phial of Galadrial before coming to floor 13, so the Star wasn't really necessary. Especially now that I have the ribbon Remilia doesn't really need nor the phial nor the star anyway, though something tells me I'm better off giving the ribbon to Patchy and sticking the star to remilia instead.

Regardless, Floor 13 is a major pain in the ass to deal with, I actually tried to hack the value i nthe teleporter just so that I don't have to keep changing the crystals all the damn time, didn't work.

[Pesco]

Each switch on 13F is set to hex 1 or 0 depending if it's on or off. Once you find on switch, the rest are right after it in sequence. All it does is save you running between them setting them on or off.

The coloured switches on 10-12F are the same.

[Zil]

I found that any item that increased ailment resistence was far more useful in the long run, since the boosts from other items start giving you a smaller and smaller percentage of the stat's unboosted value, and I found myself wanting everyone to be pretty much immune to everything.

Now I've finally got around to starting the game, after taking forever to choose the charagraphs I want. As before, I'm kinda dissapointed with some of them (I wish I had more good pervy ones). I'm also going with the other bgm this time. So far I think it's better than the newer version bgm.

[Pesco]

Rumia almost wiped my team because I walked in a little overconfident. Finished with all my meatshields alive only. My damage dealers were all caught out of position with Demarcation.

I was slightly overlevelled for Alice. Healing Light went down to poison first. Then I kept Alice and Shielding Light PAR-locked while Magical Light got heavily debuffed. Stall it out and let the poison put them all low enough for me to finish with a party-wide attack. Alice somehow survived and took out a few of my back rows with Little Legion though. Again only my meatshields lasted till the end. Didn't get the drop right away so I suffered a few more retries to get it.

I didn't overlevel for Yuugi but I still explored half of 6F and all of 5F before taking her on. This time I went straight for debuffing her attack with Alice and Mokou while Rumia did the damage. My Yuugi threw on the occasional Shackles for the procs. Also didn't get the drop on the first run but Yuugi is an easy enough fight to redo until I got it.

[Fayrea]

Dammit, what the hell is up with the mobs at 14F!?
It's like, "Oh, you're finally here? Let's start you off with someone who can kill your team in one shot!" Damn.

[Mr. Sacchi]

I can't handle both the Bronze Golems and the Knowledge enemies of floor 14F, the swordfishes and rabbits of 13F still snipe my back row characters, and 15F rapes me to no end, Reisen also fails to kill the Obsidian Sorceress, which are no less common than the absurd-resist enemies of 15F or the Bronze Golems of 14F. And Mokou rapes me, I haven't tried either the Triomegon (or w/e) nor Yuyuko.

So... Help?  :ohdear:

(Party composition is currently: Meiling, Reisen, Ran, Patchy, Nitori, Remilia, Reimu, Suika, Iku, Suwako, Minoriko and Aya, though I'm willing to change.)

[I have no name]

Mokou has a very easy strategy for her-Weld Tenshi into your first slot and keep Mokou speed debuffed.  Make sure your active party is debuff-immune.  She'll spam Tsuki no Iwasaka's curse, which Tenshi will likely take 0 from.  Meiling should be in slot 2 with boosted FIR affinity, Ran can max buff everyone, and Marisa should Master Spark the Fujiyama Volcano phase.

You're at the point in the game where I started finding Minoriko and Aya less useful-I'd suggest switching them out for someone else for exploration at the very least.

Triomagen...you really have to get lucky with its every third turn-either it heals 70k, or debuffs 1 party member.

Yuyuko isn't hard if you have SPI and DTH resist items.

[Zil]

I also find Suika to be kind of lackluster. The real problem there seems to be a lack a fast characters though. I'd like to say break out Cirno, make her as fast as possible, then paralyze stuff, though I don't recall how effective that is on those floors. Get someone fast at least.

Also, I think you may as well put Remilia in the first slot for the random battles, seeing as she actually has some speed and damage potential. Meiling's durability shouldn't really be needed.

[Parallaxal]

On floor 14, you really have to just go all-out with your heavy nukes like Megawatt Linear Gun to deal with the golems and stuff. The floor isn't really THAT big, at least compared to what it looks like, because the paths are wide and straightforward rather than windy and narrow like most other floors. That means you can afford to recall often and still get things done.

Take out Dark Forge first, it's definitely the easiest boss you have access to right now. It's a pretty simple, more-damage boss.

Triomagen is a little tougher, but is thankfully very predictable. Since it'll always use the same attack pattern despite its speed, you can take advantage of the lull in between its abilities to switch in glass cannon nukers like Nitori. For example, it's very rare for Triomagen to hit anyone in the back slots aside from its multi-target elemental spells, which it will only use every 3 turns. So if you see, say, Flame Wind, then you're clear to switch anyone in to the back slots for an attack without too much risk. Try to keep your 1st slot buffed defensively or give them lots of debuff resistances, because that single-target debuff spell the boss uses is very strong.

[Fayrea]

How about Yuyuko? DTH resist is pretty much all I need?
Grinding is still pretty much my priority, still can't kill the mobs at 13F without some form of damage.

(Party is: Meiling, Komachi, Reimu, Patchouli, Sanae, Reisen, Ran, Nitori, Suika, Tenshi, Marisa, Yuugi.)

[Parallaxal]

DTH and SPI resistance. Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana is strong enough to OHKO a lot of characters even without the instant death effect. Aside from that, she favors targeting MND, so take that into account when you choose your front line. Tellina Shell Necklaces and Zodiac Stones work wonders in this fight.

[Fayrea]

Okay, so how do I decrease the damage of Mokou's Tsuki no Iwakasa's Curse?
I have DEF/MND buffs but it still hits me for 3k damage.

[I have no name]

It's a WND attack, so WND affinity.
Additionally if you use Reisen for the debuffing you debuff her attacking stats resulting in less damage.

Tenshi should be taking 0, 2nd slot will likely be taking close to 0, 3rd and 4th slots maybe a little more (I think it's a composite attack).  Just make sure everyone out has defensive buffs (Ran is good for this) and at least 1 good defensive stat.

[Fayrea]

Oh yeah, forgot about this. Is Fujiyama Volcano a single hit or all hit?
Need to prepare myself for that.

[I have no name]

Oh yeah, forgot about this. Is Fujiyama Volcano a single hit or all hit?
Need to prepare myself for that.

Target all-it wiped me out the first time I saw because I didn't know it was target all.

[Parallaxal]

Another thing you should know about the Mokou battle: Nearly all her spells count as physical damage. Yes, really. I know once you get her as a character everything she's got is MAG-based and hits MND, but for some odd reason, every attack she has is physical for her boss form, with the exceptions of Tsuki no Iwakasa's Curse (composite) and Flame Wind (MAG). I have no idea why the game is like this, but that's how it is.

This includes Fujiyama Volcano. Characters with high HP, DEF, and FIR resistance, such as Yuugi, stand a pretty good shot of surviving it if you prepare for it.

[I have no name]

Another thing you should know about the Mokou battle: Nearly all her spells count as physical damage. Yes, really. I know once you get her as a character everything she's got is MAG-based and hits MND, but for some odd reason, every attack she has is physical for her boss form, with the exceptions of Tsuki no Iwakasa's Curse (composite) and Flame Wind (MAG). I have no idea why the game is like this, but that's how it is.

Well, if you're keeping her speed debuffed then aside from the first attack and Fujiyama Volcano/Resurrection, all you'll see is the Curse attack.
When I did this fight that's what I did, and I counted HP too to time Resurrection, and didn't have to survive any Fujiyama Volcanoes at all.