Genius of Sappherios Zansyo/Weekend

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

HOORAY GUYS!! I FINALLY BEATED IT~!

It was surprisingly easy, and I used kusanagi in the place of katana... with the buffs, dark sword and stuff, she was delivering over 20k damage in a single hit of Paschal Moon Slash (but that was probably a crit) Well... gonna try the katana later and see which one is better.

And I made some equipment modifications:

Youmu = Makai Ring, Strength Ring IV, High Ribbon (I noticed some damage difference when Youmu was taking damage from the boss' fire/ice attacks and stuff with the Ribbon equiped, but that's just me. And I gave her Makai Ring because the stupid boss for some reason used Minus on her instead of Alice once. And naturally, Youmu was killed in one hit)

Alice = Cumula Amulet, World Olympics Flyer, Hakutaku's Ribboned Horn (Cumula Amulet because it was the best replacement of Makai Ring I had, and I had to keep WOF because without it, alice would get a Triangle in Slash due to the Amulet, and that'd really not be good due to Samidare Slash. The third one is for full protection against petrification)

at the least not with what he's using and his level

It's sheeeeee!! SHEEEEEEE!! Why does everyone keep calling me a "he" here...? ?-?

Those points aren't doing a thing in DEX anyway.

No no no no! Those 4 points in DEX are there for a purpose. My byakuren got 88 IND with Launch Earrings IV equipped, but for each 2 points in DEX, you get 1 point in IND in return... so, with those 4 points, I can achieve 90, which is going to give me a 135%+ buff enchancement for weapon bless, given that according to my calculations, you get a 15% PATK buff boost for every 10 points in IND. So... if I left it as 88, I'd only get a 120% buff enchancement.

You should really consider crafting the Autobarrier shield for Alice if you still have an orichalcon left over. In expansion, orichalcons are super easy to get, so don't worry about that.

Well, I used the only Orichalcon I had to craft Magus Suit for Sanae due to Mystic Resistance... but gonna get this Autobarrier along with Yata no Kagami and Yasakani no Magatama when I start playing expansion.

You want, 13 Manussya, 16 Asura, 7 Half Ghost, 20 Sword, 9 STR. You don't need ranks in Katana, I don't think you can use Law of Spirit Calming without a Katana.

I hope one of your party members is Reimu, because she and Alice alternate protecting your team members. Reimu can use Super Duplex barrier and prevent Magic damage, so for that turn all magic damage is negated. This is one of the ways to negate Void Gravitation. For your last party member, if you can, have someone who can use dark element attacks to turn the field dark. Satori is also a good choice here if you want another user that can deflect things. Her magic reflect is useful in this fight and I believe it can reflect Void Gravitation. She also has Starlight Barrier, which is kind of useful and she can heal.

Alright, I modified the ranks distribution accordingly. And yeah, there's no way to use the "self" spells without a katana.

I left Reimu and Satori on the 1st party. I think alice can protect the party better on the 3rd phase than reimu, since Little Legion has a lower cooldown than Super Duplex Barrier, and while it's cooldowning, I can simply use Nitori's Hyper Camouflage support skill for some protection.

...I think you ground a bit too much  :V

It wasn't that hard to reach this level while you're grinding with stage 21 mooks with a Yukkuri Crown and Yukkuri Medal equipped. :V (Yes, somehow I was able to get them. Seems like lady luck likes me)

Just by fighting everything (except for the Two-Headed Dragon because dear god that thing is like a pile of trucks) on stage 21, I got half of my party to level 70 (on Weekend, obviously). I feel that grinding for levels is completely unnecessary in that version, especially since everyone left stage 20 at around level 55 too.

Oh god... don't get me started on that Dragon. I was never able to defeat it. Although, it's mostly because I wasn't using my party properly. On stage 21, I was using a party to kill most of the possible enemy formations from the stage in general, and not a team to specifically kill that dragon. (Nor that giant with multiple arms for that matter)

My team consisted of Hyper Library Formation with Youmu, Byakuren, Patchouli, Marisa and Reimu (To prevent the stupid mindflayers mind blast or that breath attack from Machine Dragon/Enemies with store power)

By the way, I like how the game used some recurring Final Fantasy enemies along with other stuff. We have: Malboro, Mindflayers, Chimera, Adamantoise, Abyss Worm, Hydra, Catoplebas, Cockatrice, 2-Headed Dragon (Complete with the ridiculously powerful physical attacks), the puddings with high physical resistance and weakness to magic... etc.

I'm surprised that with so many of them in the bestiary, there is no Tonberry, Coeurl, Ahriman and of course... the classic Behemoth (How could they forget him?) and many others could be included as well.

Anyway, this game was quite much THE GAME for me. It's been a while since I last played a fresh old-school RPG and felt so nostalgic. But there's still stuff to do on expansion, and I'm aiming towards it. However, first I'm gonna play the game from start again till Muenzuka because I only started recording my boss battles from Garden of Sun and above. (Didn't bother with it at first because I thought the game would be too hard for me to finish). And once I'm done with that, I'll have a complete video collection from the main game's bosses to post on youtube.

[Serela]

she'd be completely useless in the first party, since nobody ever dies or needs any fix in there because of Aya and Reimu.

Hrm? She can always be used as a damage dealer. Her magic attacks work fine. Actually, if you got Mad Thunder, she can probably do great damage to Anastasis.

Nitori's commander spell -is- good for the final boss, the other use she'd have here is if you got her to level 65 so she gets her commander spell in non-commander form.

She actually probably DOES have other use in either using her elemental attacks/spellcards in stage 1 to hit weaknesses, which is actually probably fairly strong damage if you take a gun so she can buff herself with an element. Although the issue is you'd only really be able to smash one sister in the cycle real hard, maybe two if juggling elements to spam spellcards feels worth it to you. Chasers are boring here though, even if you have marisa/patch both on this stage, it negates their doublecasting chances which probably add up to more damage themselves. Or she could be whacking the last phase with Kusanagi for minor extra damage while she uses her lv65 Camo.

In my experience, you really don't need patch in the second party unless you're also using it to handle Phase 2. If it's doing phase two, it means she can drain the land and then manipulate for Dark with her spellcard. If she's in your first party and they're doing phase 2, then as long as the land is wiped before the second party enters, you shouldn't have an issue. (Hell, my party one was made to soak a Void Gravitation via mokou reraise) The last boss should die fast enough to Youmu that it doesn't matter, and in a worst-case scenario, that 10000 heal doesn't mean much in comparison to Youmu's damage and you can try to soak Void Gravitation with Reflect Wall/Magic Super Duplex/Nitori Camo/temp measure in Little Legion, etc.

As well, people usually use Sanae in the first party, so as long as you're prepared, I wouldn't worry about whether or not Sanae is in the second. Honestly; she doesn't have room to use more then one buff without getting in the way of Youmu, who will have 1.Stance 2.Amp-Scroll 3.Dark Sword 4.Atk up, and optionally even 5.Crit Boost, which you'd be taking off for a Sanae buff. She's probably better off in the first party. (If you really want revives, you can try to teach Satori Raise Dead off of a phoenix in Stage... 20, right?, but I think it's a bit of a doozy :V I haven't tried it though, I will once I get there in my new playthrough)

With Poison Shield and Alice, and proper preparation for status effects, I don't think you need to worry about unlucky shots anyway. Also, on the offshot Alice DID get Petrified off the boss' spellcard or minus or something (Does she have instant death like that one person suggested? Does anyone really know? In the videos I've seen and my personal experience, if she does, I've never seen it work, at the least) Satori could use Refresh to take it off. Or clearance, but refresh isn't that hard to get and also fullheals.

Satori's use in third phase, lesse here. Dark Manipulation, Healing, Status Cure in emergency, Raise Dead if you somehow actually got it, and... actually I think I managed to land a debuff on her once when I tried for lolz, and all that support doesn't need any stats behind it, so you could spec her out for varieties and take a matk debuff like Psycho Blast or somethin'. With Alice her physicals should be useless already. Then Reflect Wall (not starlight barrier with it's 8 turn cooldown that can wear off if she uses some other move first), Leaf Shield. That would be 7 moves assuming there was a status cure heal -and- an AOE heal, but that would also assume you have Raise Dead which you really probably won't, and you could just drop the debuff slot or Leaf Shield if you did. Actually seems like a pretty useful gal to have around, and between her and Reimu and Alice you'd be able to stop almost all of the boss' attacks.

[homing curvy laser]

Her instant death attack is Chysaor Golden Slash, or something that sounds like that. The first time I fought her (and was doing well enough to have hopes of winning), she used that one Youmu away from dying, and IK'd my Alice :V At least I somehow managed to win after that because of Youmu's beautiful cast speed.

I think I'll try swapping Sanae for Satori in the second party. I don't think I'll need to worry about RES too much because I'll try to keep Youmu covered every turn (which means no surprise Vortexes for her) and I guess everyone would appreciate the extra Leaf Shields and other barriers. Refresh should be enough for Sanae-ish things (as well as Byakuren's Goddess Breath) and save to random lucky shots, I don't think anyone is going to die. Unless her random Goddess Danmaku snipes Patchouli or something.

[Starxsword]

If you are really that worried about RES, use Byakuren's RES. But you can only really have 4 buffs on Youmu, because Super Duplex Barrier counts as a buff, so unless you don't mind removing a buff, only put 4 buffs on Youmu. Stance, Attack Up, All Up, and Dark Sword are really all you can put on Youmu. That or do not even cast All Up and use Res Up.

In either cast, between Super Duplex Barrier, Satori's Magic Reflect, Alice's shields, and Nitori's commander bomb, you should be able to negate several turns of the boss' damage.

[Serela]

Chrysaor Golden Slash is also a spellcard anyway; in that case, Alice is really the only one who needs RES.

Er, at least, I'm fairly sure the final boss version is still only a spellcard.

[homing curvy laser]

Looks like there's been another change in Weekend: instead of needing 25 and 100 party wipes for Komachi's and Tenshi's formations, respectively, you now only need 15 (possibly lower) and 30 wipes.

And yes, that skill I mentioned is indeed a spell card. Forgot to mention that because I am stupid.

[Serela]

Sadly, you still need 50 oarfish kills for the Thunder Line formation from Iku, which is actually useful for a couple bosses due to high parrarability and significant lightning damage boost. (Notably, the terminator postgame, which will be farmed often, whether to gain Super Ajas, or for exp/quest resets in grinding for levels/materials.)

Oh well,  need lots of monster kills to unlock that 15k youkai kill recipe set of killer awesome stuff. My 100%-goal run is currently just finished up with Forest of Magic 2.

[Kanoe]

Looks like there's been another change in Weekend: instead of needing 25 and 100 party wipes for Komachi's and Tenshi's formations, respectively, you now only need 15 (possibly lower) and 30 wipes.

And yes, that skill I mentioned is indeed a spell card. Forgot to mention that because I am stupid.

What about the formation that requires Patchouli to die 101 times? 

I already killed myself 100+ times for the formations  so I guess it does not matter much at this point.  XD

[achicken]

What about the formation that requires Patchouli to die 101 times? 

Still the same I'm afraid, but fortunately Patchy dying != party wipe. In the same vein, Last Moriya, Neo Hakurei, Final Burst still retains its requirements.

I didn't know Keystone and Shinigami Formation's requirements were reduced; getting to Komachi and Tenshi gave me enough deaths to make up for the old limits. <_<

[RegalStar]

So yeah, now that a re-release that's overall much less RNG rage came out, I'm going to try to play through this legitimately again.

I remember asking this question before, but I forgot the answers, so I'll ask again: what are good skills for Satori to learn? I know Area Heal (and to some extent other healing spells), Enervate, Time Stop and Starlight Barrier are great, but that's about it. I don't know how to use her to attack at all.

[Starxsword]

She doesn't have any real attacks, so use her as a support character. Her Poison Art is really her only source of damage for pretty much most of the main game, if you want damage. She does combo with Nitori to do chasers, which is devastating at early and mid game. You can also give her a staff, which is normally my weapon of choice for her.

edit: somehow I missed the doesn't.

[Serela]

Satori does have real attacks :V Her magic is fine as soon as she's got enough points to have 20 in Satori and 13 in Third Eye (with the rest into Staff). In that case, it's basically any of her magic. Since she's the only one with Dark nonspells apart from Byakuren, picking up the now not-that-hard-to-learn Demon series of spells is nifty since lots of enemies (namely the mook fairies in each stage) are weak to Dark and Demon skills are stronger, but all the other elements also apply. The main thing helping keep her damage up is her ability to hit all weaknesses with her ability to access multiple single and multitarget moves of every element.

If you learn Mad Thunder from Iku (which is not that hard due to multihit and 100% learn rate at max Satori tree, unless you have bad luck with her using Thunderclap first instead, which doesn't seem to happen much), then Mad Thunder is also a very powerful attack in general. At least on a single target. It does 2~3 hits, and each hit by itself rivals the damage of a hit from Marisa or Patch for me.

Poison Art is alright until around Stage 13, and you should have 33 POW by/around then. Having her and Patchouli combine their multi-target magic for chaser abuse is highly effective as well, yeah.

Also does well as a support character for bosses, or for Permanent Status support (as in more then just Poison Art) in randoms. Her default skills work fine for permanents as long as you equip Squall Hairpins and pump the Trauma tree to speed her up, because some of those are slow as shit. It's actually a pretty good idea to have Silence or Great Confusion along for some dungeons (MOOON WRAAAAITH), and Sleep/Paralysis doesn't hurt either.

In expansion though, the damage of all but her most powerful spells is sucky (Stuff like Mad Thunder and her nukes can still be good), as well as chasers that aren't actually hitting a weakness. However, she can still find much use in her status effect moves like Time Stop, Mind Blast, etc, plus with her last two Eyes her physical damage actually becomes competent, opening up her physical skills for use. Even better, her last two weapons inflict Charm and/or Control on physical hits, making her physical skills more exciting there as well. Woo, Death Zapper; you get good damage, and either Instant Death or Charm! At that point you can consider using a Knife too for the knife's status, and the Knife Tree's +20% chance to inflict status on physical hits, although Satori won't be doing much pure damage unlike with an eye. Upside is there's two decent lategame daggers with MP drain (one of which also inflicts Silence), which combined with the status chance perk and speed, actually makes them a quite considerable choice.

[Starxsword]

Her elemental hit all attacks aren't all that exciting. Mad Thunder, I did not get, so I don't know how good that is. Using her with Nitori makes her useful, especially if you can have Patchouli in the party for double hit all element attacks. Her dark element attacks are decent, but I don't remember it being that impressive either, but she is one of the few that can use it, so there's that.

[Serela]

Well there's no kill like overkill! With Mad Thunder, you can kill Matsuba Kurenai (Stage 16 Genbu's Swamp boss) in a single turn. What a wimp

I even bothered to record it (at 5:25, also derp at forgetting to change Marisa's growth tree until around 3ish minutes in), although the quality is kind of terrible because I recorded via livestreaming and my internet isn't too good at such. If I bothered using youtube or something I probably would bother to get some actual recording program.

At first I was aiming for two turns but soon went "...oh dear..." when I saw how close to death she was in turn 2.

Also, power of Mad Thunder seen inside, with a comparison to Patchouli and Marisa's elec power. There's even a comparison of Mad Thunder with 0 matk/elec boosting accessories and then with my best ones since at first my setup was different.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

So guys... I'm going to start expansion mode soon. As for now, I've only watched the intro, took a look at the first side-quests and tried to develop some strategy on how to use Lithos (which didn't go very well).

So, any tips on how to use her properly? (like, how to distribute the power points adequately and stuff). Also, same thing for the other expansion characters: Remilia, Reisen, Yuugi and Cirno. When I get them, how should I use each of them wisely?

[achicken]

Well there's no kill like overkill! With Mad Thunder, you can kill Matsuba Kurenai (Stage 16 Genbu's Swamp boss) in a single turn. What a wimp

Heh, I spent longer killing Matsuba, but the jump in Mad Thunder's damage as the Lightning Land level increases is crazy. 
I had to kill Matsuba and the Combined Boss the old fashioned way tho, those 2 kept on OHKOing Patchy in Turn 1 =.=

[Starxsword]

@Mad Thunder: That's very good damage. It does about 3 times more damage than Patchouli's lightning magic, which means it is the strongest lightning attack in the game against single targets.

I don't think the other two have their full skill tree yet, so they can still catch up with Satori in lightning damage. They would do similar damage to that later on.

@Remilia, Yuugi, and Reisen: These guys are fairly easy to use. Yuugi is just pure attack. Remilia has some funny stuff if you use staff. Reisen, you just stack statuses on the enemy and the special slayer bonus will stack. She should be able to hit 99,999 damage fairly quickly.
Cirno's ice magic does full damage to pretty much every enemy. She is a pretty gimmicky character. You can also use her for some special enemies, like any enemies that you need magic reflect to win. She has a spell reflect that lasts several turns, so she will auto reflect magic. Use her against one of the bosses that pretty much auto kill you if you don't reflect the spell. She also has counter attack whenever she's hit. She is best if you give her a staff.

[Serela]

So, any tips on how to use her properly? (like, how to distribute the power points adequately and stuff). Also, same thing for the other expansion characters: Remilia, Reisen, Yuugi and Cirno. When I get them, how should I use each of them wisely?

Lithos:She can realistically be set up for Magic -or- Physical damage, but you really need to go all out for magic to work out, so you can't do both. At first you'll have trouble in randoms, so you'll probably want to take advantage of her petrification; she gets a natural increase early in some POW tree, and her skills naturally have VERY high petrification rates, along with Minus being decent for damage in randoms at first.

For boss damage, use Pegasus Meteor Attack (or the punch if you don't have Pegasus yet), and if you already have her higher level fixed damage Last Spell that works too. Aging Drizzle is GREAT for randoms but it'll go last if you aren't using, like, Aya to speed Lithos up, and obviously takes up a lot of mp/bombs. One thing worth noting for later is her magic tree's Rainbow Wings boosts elemental damage by 50%; and this applies to physicals. That turns Pegasus Meteor into a powerful fir/wtr/eth/ele nuke with Byakuren. Keep in mind you can get Pegasus Meteor's cooldown to 0.

Remi:Speedy, eva-high, and powerful physical attacks. She's like Aya, except a good attacker. Fairly straightforward, although she carries some other uses as well, such as HP drain (her javelin move Vampire Drill notably has decent power+drain), HP% damage in Star of David, and a high hit chance Charm in Red Magic. Her MP is an issue, but if you hand her off a staff for 3% mp drain on hit and combine it with her +150 patk tree, she can take a battle to soak up mp from the enemies. (One of her low-tier javelins also has MP drain). Can be effectively used as a blinktank with HP drain to keep her up from magic hits, in some bosses.

Yuugi:Get Knockout in Three Steps, and then kill things with it. That's about it. She's a one-trick pony, but her damage potential is also very high, and combined with her special weapon's slayers and maybe even Youmu's three bomb commander to induce KO3S to crit... damn. Like, damn.

Reisen:She gets lots and lots of bombs, slayers on (some of?) her Suppositories, and tons of slayers from one of her POW trees. Her spellcards can inflict a variety of statuses in one move via a choice menu. But her real specialty is her Special Slayer skills, that have a slayer effect on enemies with variety and/or permanent status effects. With 5 varieties and/or a permanent on the enemy, she deals insane damage, and you can realistically get her to hit 99999.

Cirno:Well... her main use is inflicting the Freeze status to stop enemies in their tracks, or sometimes instant death. She also has a niche debuff, the ability to reflect magic from herself, and counter enemy attacks with ice, which are a bunch of niche skills that can be useful sometimes.  She can also pierce a good amount of water resistance on enemies, making her WTR-element moveset able to reliably damage even resistant enemies in randoms.

Her special weapon actually -does- improve her, despite being physical on wimpy Cirno and not boosting her magic at all; it has much better freeze infliction rates, ignores a huge amount of WTR resist, carries a good Instant Death move, and actually deals alright damage. You'll pretty much ignore all of her non-weapon moveset apart from her magic-reflecting mirror, if you have it on, but it's weapon moves are worthy, and her normal attacks will still carry Freeze.

You'll not really want to bring her in for most bosses after you have a choice (outside of silly Barrier/Mirror tanking with resistance accessories, or if you feel like it against a water-weak boss), but she can have use in randoms.

Starxsword:Mad Thunder pretty much always greatly outdamages Marisa's elec abilities. Patchouli's final Elec bomb compares, but it also isn't spammable every turn... I don't remember about how Lithos with elec-enchant Pegasus Meteor+Rainbow Wings boost does in comparison, but it's a fearsome thing, I remember that much.

[homing curvy laser]

So guys... I'm going to start expansion mode soon. As for now, I've only watched the intro, took a look at the first side-quests and tried to develop some strategy on how to use Lithos (which didn't go very well).

So, any tips on how to use her properly? (like, how to distribute the power points adequately and stuff). Also, same thing for the other expansion characters: Remilia, Reisen, Yuugi and Cirno. When I get them, how should I use each of them wisely?

1. Kusanagi
2. Mess around with her growth points until you get as many bombs as you can and as much delay reduction as you can
3. Bombs +5 accessory
4. Pegasus Meteor Attack
5. Everything dies.
For added "everything dies"-ness, get Nitori and use Sword/Multi-chaser.

[lightdreamer]

Anyone here got some Cheat Engine codes for the crafting materials? I've tried to hack it myself but the values I've found keep spazzing out for no reason and when I freezed them, the game crashed.

[achicken]

PS and OT: Because of references to China (aka Hong Meiling or Kurenai Misuzu), Kurenai Matsuba shall henceforth be known as Taiwan. <_<
It's a pity I don't see those 2 meeting anytime soon. >_>

[Starxsword]

Her special weapon actually -does- improve her, despite being physical on wimpy Cirno and not boosting her magic at all; it has much better freeze infliction rates, ignores a huge amount of WTR resist, carries a good Instant Death move, and actually deals alright damage. You'll pretty much ignore all of her non-weapon moveset apart from her magic-reflecting mirror, if you have it on, but it's weapon moves are worthy, and her normal attacks will still carry Freeze.

Against most enemies, staff is superior. I have both the Rivalry staff and the Crystal Sword and Rivalry staff(-1 water resist) generally outperforms Crystal Sword(-3 water resist). Cirno does respectable damage and the mana regen from the staff doesn't hurt either. Cirno runs into mana issues when you use the Crystal Sword and her damage isn't any better than when you use the Rivalry staff.
However, I do not have 9 Robe, so I cannot do a full comparison between Crystal Sword and Rivalry staff. The 9 Robe should make her Crystal Sword more effective with its high counter rate.

[Serela]

Huh?

I think the counter is magical, so the sword wouldn't be better, but I don't remember what my testing results got on whether it's magical or physical or some combination of the two so whatever. But in any case, the point of using the Ice weapons is more the far higher rate of Freeze infliction, and the AoE instant death attack with damage+freeze as opposed to the damage/freeze-less one. Also blind I guess.

Crystal Sword has a base 60% freeze success rate. Compared to her magic, which has 30% on Icicle Attack, 20% on the stronger+aoe Ice Beam, and 15% on the multitarget Ice Storm. (Ice Counter is 999% so woo mp regen in freeze, plus can stop multi-moving bosses that aren't freeze-immune)

The mp I suppose is a thing, but whether or not that's an issue depends on the person I suppose, and at the least you can regain mp with normal attack freezing some.

Crystal Sword is pretty much better against bosses at least,  unless the point is countering 100 times against a boss and getting damage that way (if it gets a significant damage boost from a rod), since the weapon skills just plain beat out the others in sheer single target damage, along with the better freeze (which does occasionally hit on some bosses). In my original playthrough I'd use her when grinding the Machine Dragon quest as a sillytank (If she has slash/mystic resist she's invincible for that boss, so lol barrier counters, and then her weapon attacks for good damage and multihit for nitori to chase along with Sakuya ice sword multihits)

Of course, I've never actually gotten to use her Ice Counter thing, so if it's -not- the same as the ice barrier counter, then I'm silly. (Because jeez, in the previous version, the final character specific armors were hard as fuc to make, and Cirno isn't -that- useful plus her armor looks shitty. It only has pdef... but it's a small armor, which would normally carry several other stats. :T There's WTR damage boost armors to give her instead. Or a fire one for resistance purposes.)

[Starxsword]

I have not gotten her Ice Counter armor, since it sucks, and back then end game tier items are super hard to make, so I don't know if the counter from the armor is physical or magical. I just assumed it is physical, because all the other counters are physical.

[Serela]

I assumed it was the same as her Ice Barrier counter, which is magical, but now that I think about it, it could be something completely different, so I don't know.

I also wasn't sure whether it'd be that or just a 40% power boost to said barrier, which actually sounds kind of nifty except that the barrier is only significantly powerful when you're counterattacking the shit out of everything (lol now I'm questioning actually using a poison shield cirno tank in ex stage randoms via getting her to star/double circle resist in everything but fire)

but it really doesn't sound like a power boost, so.

[Starxsword]

Cirno's a gimmicky character, kind of fun to use at times. Her advantage is that she has good consistent damage, as long as everything is hitting her. Unfortunately, her defenses and HP aren't on par with trying to get her to have good consistent damage.

[RegalStar]

For crafting, which items do you think are high priorities? I know that Sakuya needs nearly every one of her swords (because of slayer on different things), and Alice doesn't need most of her weapons, but beyond that I'm less sure. Are the generic weapon/armor/shields worth it or should I save my elemental shards for other things?

[Serela]

For crafting, the vast majority of the items don't make a big difference. It's best to try and save a lot of your character-specific crafting materials for the later items, so that you don't have to farm subquests as much.

I actually liked using Sakuya with daggers, for the boosted infliction rate on Instant Death from her Murder Tree, and the status effects that come on them by themselves. And, if you don't use Sakuya much until later, then it doesn't matter if her latest 2H-sword isn't crafted. I definitely recommend crafting her Trapezohedron-tier sword though, it comes in super handy in expansion. (Same with Youmu's trapezohedron Katana for the final boss)

One decent snake or broom isn't a bad idea for the mp regeneration abilities, and there's a boss or two where having a good Gun for nitori can be helpful. The Rainbow Greaves are also great. Deva Scroll is nice for being the only scroll with IND boost. Apart from that, most of the character-specific weapons aren't super exciting, although they're generally slightly better then what you could use otherwise.

In expansion, you'll be able to craft everyone's best weapons and armors to your hearts delight (especially if you have a bunch of materials saved up to make it super easy), and at that point they're generally pretty great since their bonuses have gone up to a pretty high amount.

[Starxsword]

If you are playing Weekend, then you can afford to craft much more stuff, so you don't really need to be stingy on crafting materials. However, with that said, character specific weapons aren't all that much better than regular weapons. I do suggest crafting at least a broom just to get the x2 mana regen that your basic starter broom does not give. Youmu's Foreign God slaying katana is a good one to get.
For shields, the heavy shields are pretty good for Alice.
Mokou's gloves that inflict status effects, like Great Confusion or Blind are good to craft. Death Resistance items are also good to craft.
Quite a bit of Sakuya's weapons are good to craft. They have some cool effects. The ones that give immunity to light/dark, immunity to breath, and immunity to Quick are nice.
Nitori's weapons are also good, if you plan to use her.

[GuyYouMetOnline]

In Weekend, you'll get enough unique materials to make pretty much all but one of a character's unique items, thanks to reduced crafting requirements. You find 10 of each in the main game, and in Weekend, you need I believe 11 to make all of a character's unique weapons/armor (aside from the ultimates, which need different character-specific items anyways). Since unique items are much easier to get in the expansion, you don't have to worry as much about saving up for those recipies.