Genius of Sappherios Zansyo/Weekend

[Sungho]

I, myself, haven't synthesized anything before beating Lithos.

Did I mention anything about Sakuya + Ten Dice Sword?
25 Points to Illusion, 25 Points to Murder, 5 Points to Sword, boost her IND and ACC,
and watch everything that can be instadeathed be instadeathed. Hopefully.
For maximum effect, add Hypnotic Bullet and/or Byakuren's Hyper Trigger.
It helps a lot when grinding for material.

Maybe Youmu's Touhou Fuhai + One-Woman Army works better?

[homing curvy laser]

So I've been playing this off and on when I wake up in the morning for the past month or so.  Have the final boss opened up, but I'm grinding for equip drops mostly (Working on getting equip/accessory drops from stage 20 right now).

I found it hilarious that the very first Hydra I killed in stage 20 forked over an Obsidian.  That went straight towards the creation of an Aegis Shield.

On another session one morning, I got TWO Obsidian drops in a row from two Hydra kills.  I was slightly shocked by that cause the drop rate on them is like...4% I believe.

It's actually less than that, because monsters can't drop two items at once and their drop rate for Trapezohedron is 33% in Weekend.

I, myself, haven't synthesized anything before beating Lithos.

Did I mention anything about Sakuya + Ten Dice Sword?
25 Points to Illusion, 25 Points to Murder, 5 Points to Sword, boost her IND and ACC,
and watch everything that can be instadeathed be instadeathed. Hopefully.
For maximum effect, add Hypnotic Bullet and/or Byakuren's Hyper Trigger.
It helps a lot when grinding for material.

Maybe Youmu's Touhou Fuhai + One-Woman Army works better?

Oh wow that seems amazing.
One of the things I like about this game is that if something can cause some status effect, it will try to cause it every single time it's used (with success rate being affected by IND and RES obviously), instead of just having a chance to cause that effect and then having a chance to work or not. I found out about this when I was grinding for Youmu's formation which you get after some instant kills -- I just put a Golden Mattock or something like that on her, maximized the axe skill tree, +a billion IND, Byakuren's buff and a IND formation and then every time Youmu hit something, that thing died. It's a shame that for it to be 100% I need a lot of setup, but I guess just having Launch Earrings IV and V on someone would be enough most of the time. Or something blabber blabber everyone knows about this already

Ah yeah, Large Dakimakura (drop from Admiral) is written as "Large Dakimura" in the game.

[Serela]

I think the rare drop takes precedence over the common drop, so obsidian would still be 4%. I think those Resentment Level elemental "king" enemies have 100% shard drop rate and then some chance to drop crystals, for example.

Speaking of the Large Dakimkura, I never got one while getting my characters back, and never found a good area to farm Admirals :T Guess I'll have to farm the bottom of stage 21. If there's any tips on where in that they spawn, it'd be nifty.

[Sungho]

The Admirals are in Stage 22, area N.
Enter the dungeon, step on the teleport, go South two times, then go West->North or North->West.
If you see Undine Queens(or was it Queen Undines?), you've come to the right place.

[RegalStar]

I think the rare drop takes precedence over the common drop, so obsidian would still be 4%. I think those Resentment Level elemental "king" enemies have 100% shard drop rate and then some chance to drop crystals, for example.

Speaking of the Large Dakimkura, I never got one while getting my characters back, and never found a good area to farm Admirals :T Guess I'll have to farm the bottom of stage 21. If there's any tips on where in that they spawn, it'd be nifty.

On the japanese wiki they're listed as "95% chance to drop shard, 100% chance to drop crystal", so it's the first drop that gets priority. Hydra has trapezehedron as first drop, so indeed the chance to drop Black Obsidian is only 2.66~%.

[homing curvy laser]

So I got late to Akyu's congratulatory 100 hours party, and now she won't give me her formation. Is there any other way to get it or did I screw myself up?

By the way, wow, are all expansion dungeons going to be just a billion enemies on some annoying place?

[Cor]

By the way, wow, are all expansion dungeons going to be just a billion enemies on some annoying, reused place?

Yes, with an 'abyss' version of a normal monster as a boss.

[Sungho]

So I got late to Akyu's congratulatory 100 hours party, and now she won't give me her formation. Is there any other way to get it or did I screw myself up?

If you're talking about the 'Wall of Gensokyo',
you have to be in Heida Household when the in-game clock hits 00 minutes 00 seconds.(Even something like 2:00:00 works)
Talk to Akyu after that, and Keine will appear and give you the formation.

Rather misleading explanation, it is.

[Serela]

...congratulatory 100 hours party?

I've played well over 100 hours in two separate playthroughs and never gotten that... :c

[homing curvy laser]

If you're talking about the 'Wall of Gensokyo',
you have to be in Heida Household when the in-game clock hits 00 minutes 00 seconds.(Even something like 2:00:00 works)
Talk to Akyu after that, and Keine will appear and give you the formation.

Rather misleading explanation, it is.

...oh wow. And all this time I thought that "xxx:00:00" in the wiki meant you had to be in her house when the gameplay clock reached three digits (which actually would mean 99 hours, since the game starts saying "099:whatever" then).
 :colonveeplusalpha:

[Anima Zero]

Pulled an extended morning session today in order to get the last 4 equip drops from stage 20 enemies, even getting a couple Trapezohedrons from some random Hydra kills in the process.

Took a quick jump into stage 21 for kicks and ended up getting Aya's 2nd character crafting item.  Yay I guess?

Really just want to get a High Ribbon & Drake Scale, then I think I'll go take on the final boss.

[Eilaris]

Whee, I'm stuck on Marisa/Alice in the postgame.  Specifically, on how to deal with Modified Straw Dolls Kamikaze's outspeeding nonsense.

[Serela]

Either Marisa or Alice solo is scary, once you take out one (Alternatively, if you let it drag on 12+ turns, they'll go batshit with each still alive!)

Alice is arguably harder because she starts using Alice Guard, her LW that makes her invincible for three turns. And she tends to use it every three turns, along with modified straw dolls spam that will likely take out any non-tank, making it not-easy to dispel.  Marisa gets Final Master Spark though, and counters all physicals with Master Spark (although she always does that), so she's scary too...

On the upside, a single good tank with regen or drain ability (Just pump the land for some element and put on armor or a boost amulet for it; land regen for Mokou or Lithos tanks! Mokou's Xu Fu Dimension, NOT Possessed by Phoenix, grants regen too) can just tough out Berserk Alice and nuke her as soon as she fails to put up Alice Guard.

Sakuya and Nitori's trapezohedron weapons slay both of them, although Nitori might have trouble hurting Alice significantly. Alternatively, Alice doesn't have huge mdef to make magic useless unlike physicals, and Marisa can't dodge/counter magic (She has significant EVA and Perfect Dodge). If you bring the Vyse Sword (Ice Sword works out too from sheer power) on Sakuya and use Private Square+Weapon Bless, you can probably take out (or mostly kill) Marisa in two Private Squares, while magic attackers wail on Alice with the best they've got. You do want to get her HP as low as you can, even if you're gonna have someone tank her out.

...if you can take Marisa's attacks (She's vulnerable to Silence! Still has decent physicals.) you probably should get Alice almost dead first, or just outright kill her first.

[Eilaris]

Yeah, I'm not having any trouble taking Alice down now (shifted party a bit, used Sanae's HP buffs), but I get one-shotted by Final Master Spark regardless of what I throw up defensively. :/

[Kanoe]

I had alot of trouble with the fight as well. I do not use magic attackers often anymore and both Lithos and Youmu's multihit attacks had a tendency to hit Marisa as well (triggering a Master Spark). I used to just kill Marisa first and duke it out with Alice but I always just barely lose (stupid Sacrifice and Alice Guard spam).

So what I did instead was used Sakuya's Private Square to almost kill Marisa then slowly worked on Alice. My only magical attacker was Byakuren so I used her spells on Alice (White hole did like over 1500 each time, hey every bit helps). I think I managed to get both to critical before just killing them both outright. Thankfully, they can't block or dodge during Private Square.

[Eilaris]

I had alot of trouble with the fight as well. I do not use magic attackers often anymore and both Lithos and Youmu's multihit attacks had a tendency to hit Marisa as well (triggering a Master Spark). I used to just kill Marisa first and duke it out with Alice but I always just barely lose (stupid Sacrifice and Alice Guard spam).

So what I did instead was used Sakuya's Private Square to almost kill Marisa then slowly worked on Alice. My only magical attacker was Byakuren so I used her spells on Alice (White hole did like over 1500 each time, hey every bit helps). I think I managed to get both to critical before just killing them both outright. Thankfully, they can't block or dodge during Private Square.

This worked, thanks to you and Serela.  Now I can move on to stage 22~

[Anima Zero]

Got my High Ribbon in this morning's session.  Came rather damn quickly too as the 3rd Machine Dragon I killed this morning dropped it.  Sure surprised me.

Also pocketed a Strength Ring III (Immediately turned that sucker into a Strength Ring IV) and a spear that dropped from a Druid.

Also got two 2nd tier character crafting items...BOTH for Aya.

I guess I could make a high end armor for her with that crap, heh.

[Kanoe]

I am still trying to get the High Ribbon. I have killed over 100 Machine Dragons. 

I got the Drake Scale but that is far less useful.

Been taking a break for a bit while I let my backlog of videos catch up. Also tired of cycling through the same quests over and over.

Edit: So I decided to go clear out stage 21 for good ol sake. First machine dragon drops the accessory. So remember kids, if you not getting the drop, post about it and the game will listen!

[Starxsword]

Cool. I had to kill who knows how many lesser dragons to get the scale.

[Kanoe]

The game decided to mock me further. I upgraded the High Ribbon and went to see if I could get another. Sure enough, got another. Now I never need to grind at level 21 ever again.

Well, unless I want another drake scale. Meh

[RegalStar]

I just use the instant reload trick to farm. Farming anything is so much easier with it.

[Pandaology]

I just started playing this a bit ago, after a lot of trouble shooting, and I have a few questions. (Don't want to read stuff, lest there be spoilers)
1. Should I be synthesizing stuff a lot? I haven't really used it that much.
2. How do you use Alice? It seems like she's defensive but I'm can't really get it to work right...
3. Is it better to focus on the character specific weapons?

Gah, this game is fun, but some of the enemies... Game Over

[Serela]

1.Mostly, no, you don't need to. Some of the weapons have nifty features, though. Even for all I might make them sound cool here, though, you can easily get all you need out of them with only a couple weapon forges total in the main game.

-Marisa's brooms can get you 6 mp regen per turn, and mp drain on physical. Infinite magic! The matk boost isn't too high per broom upgrade, so you don't need to make new ones often.
-Sanae has MP drain on physical, and decent attack power on her snakes, helping her spam buffs in randoms or just plain attack. Some of them have nice poison, too...
-Nitori's gun slayers (or Elemental Bullet) come in handy sometimes, plus Rage Eight is pretty strong. The third gun, that also carries Transcendent Slayer, is a pretty good make, it comes up for a few bosses with that slayer type... and murders mindflayers.
-Sakuya's weapons are all powerful and have cool slayers, but you don't want to make them all- you'll run low on her specific material. Definitely want to make the Vyse Sword, though.
-Alice's Rainbow Greaves give a wonderful resist set.
-Byakuren's Deva Scroll is one of the very few weapons in the game that boosts IND. Definitely worth making. (For that matter, beneficial buffs get increases in power every 10 IND up to 100)
-Some of Mokou's fists inflict status effects. Since the fist tree has a bonus that doubles the chance to inflict them, they have a very good hit rate, even if Mokou's IND is terrible. It's good to disable some pesky enemies...!

Alice... her Marionette Parrar skill is her staple skill to spam forever, even in randoms; it's drastically powered up by one of her Growth trees, and once you get 25 points in said tree, it's simply incredible. Even if stronger when in the same column, it's still very powerful if Alice is separate. She also has skills specifically for defending against certain elements, which are useful when you have to face a lot of scary attacks from said elements; and London Doll is cool.

Alice is more of a boss character at first, but if you're having troubles living in random battles, switching her in to tank your party usually makes a world of difference.

[Pandaology]

Cool, thanks.
I'm using Marisa, Sakuya, Nitori, Mokou, and Patchouli. With Sanae as the leader at the moment.
Dang, though. 6mp Regen is cool, is there anyway to buff Patchouli's regen?

[Eilaris]

I just started playing this a bit ago, after a lot of trouble shooting, and I have a few questions. (Don't want to read stuff, lest there be spoilers)
1. Should I be synthesizing stuff a lot? I haven't really used it that much.
2. How do you use Alice? It seems like she's defensive but I'm can't really get it to work right...
3. Is it better to focus on the character specific weapons?

Gah, this game is fun, but some of the enemies... Game Over

Alice is very much defensive yes.  Generally the best way to use her is to choose a baiting type of formation (Hakurei Type, Hinotori Skydance, and Poison Shield tend to be the common ones here) and then she spends most of her time spamming Marionette Parrar on whatever part of your formation is the most important to keep alive.  This can also be augmented with London Doll to further increase the chance she's targeted over other party members, and occasionally Little Legion to eat some threatening boss attack you don't want hitting everyone. 

As for the other two questions, they go hand in hand with each other.  In my opinion, it depends very much on the character and the specific weapon tier involved.  Not every character-specific weapon is worth synthesizing, or even necessarily worth using.  However, the armors generally are worth it.  As for the weapons, in the main game:

• Reimu can generally get away with using generic weapons (likely staves) until her trapezohedron weapon becomes available.  She definitely wants that one, however.
• Marisa can also generally get away with using generic staves for a long time.  She ultimately wants either her meteorite weapon or her trapezohedron one; the trapezohedron one gives her a significant casting speed boost and has slightly higher MATK, while the meteorite one gives her 3 extra bombs.  The 2x MP regain on brooms definitely is nice, but Marisa tends to be one of the most MP-economical characters in the game anyway, so it may not be that needed depending on your playstyle.
• It's probably worth making Sanae's Rat Snake just for the paralysis resistance, but beyond that she won't really NEED another snake upgrade until Sidewinder or Yamata no Orochi.  In the interim, if you really want to use Sanae for offense, she's probably best with daggers, but generally speaking Sanae is better used for her support.  Sidewinder's paralysis infliction may be more useful than Yamata no Orochi's multistrike, but you might have a meteorite shortage.  That all said, Sanae's snakes are really not terrible.
• Aya's fans are pretty bad in general.  You may as well make the Stardust Fan to augment her blinktanking, but if you're actually using Aya for offense she's always better off with a generic weapon IMO.
• All of Sakuya's weapons are worth making, though they vary a bit in how worth making they are.  If you need to skip any, Nagerling is probably the one to skip (there are other ways of slaying dragons if you need them).  Assuming you pick up every treasure chest in the game, you'll have enough Silver Trays to make all of them, though often late.
• Patchy's pretty much better off with a generic weapon regardless of whether you're using her physically (I favor daggers here, her high innate PATK offsets their low values and she needs all the ACC/SPD she can get) or magically (staves).  If you're dead set on giving her a book, it's not worth bothering with anything other than the Comiket Catalog, but Rocks tend to be the scarcest of the nonspecific materials in my experience.
• For Nitori, make the Carbine and Autocannon, other weapons for her are a waste of materials. 
• Rainbow Greaves are the only weapon you should make for Alice.  They will, in fact, remain her best weapon all the way until you can make her Super Aja weapon near the end of Lingering Summer Heat.
• Satori is another one in the "probably better with staves" boat.  However, The Green Eyes are probably worthwhile in the early game for the poison enhance, as in the early game her poison damage often outperforms anything else she can do.  Force Eye might be worthwhile late-game if only for the MYS protection.
• Youmu's katanas aren't particularly bad, but neither are they exceptionally great.  You can get by just fine making only the Doujigiri Yasutsuna and using generic weapons on her until then, but if you make the Kusanagi, you probably won't even need that.  If you are going to make other katanas, Kashasetsu has Undead/Youkai Slayer at a point of the game where neither type is terribly uncommon, and Shichitei Nenbutsu's CRT+5 isn't bad.
• For Mokou, it's probably worth making the Damascus Knuckle, Magnum Steel and Invincible Glove for their status effects alone.  One-Shot Punch isn't really necessary, stick with the Invincible Glove.
• Byakuren's Deva Scroll and Vidhya Scroll are both good options.  She can use generic weapons until she gets one of those.  Deva Scroll's better for when you're using Byakuren as a debuffer/negative status applier, and Vidhya's better otherwise.  Byakuren's offense sucks regardless of her weapon, so it's better to focus on the defensive aspects of her weapons IMO, and Vidhya Scroll has 20% Divine Barrier.

[Serela]

There's a book skill for Patch that regenerates MP, but it costs a life to use it, and books have less passive mp regen.

The 3 mp regen from Staves at 25 points (and the mp drain on physical from staves) is about all you can get! If you switch Patch into her huge Patk boosting growth tree though, you can probably get decent drain off a staff... but you'd have to switch back to magic build after so your magic doesn't suck.

Byakuren's 1bomb commander skill regens some mp for the party, I suppose. Patch has some large mp pool bonuses, which help with that.

Also, another tip that came to mind; this is the kind of game where you want everyone to get leveled up (Except maybe Aya, who is less important, but still nice in the commander slot and for rare occasions). Just switch out for different people every new stage or so. Also; Nitori's damage output is entirely based around hitting weaknesses or slayer effects, and her massive bonuses to damage on such. Just something to keep in mind; her damage is low otherwise, but very high in the right situations.

cut, mostly fine advice from Reiska. On Reimu though; the thing is, when you get trapezohedron stuff, there's almost no enemies weak to Light left until expansion, where you'll be able to make her orichalcon weapon fairly soon instead. So the Trapezohedron Gohei isn't too important simply because her attacks aren't of much importance during that time.

Satori is another one in the "probably better with staves" boat.

Later in, using a dagger to boost status effect infliction (along with dagger statuses and especially if MP drain comes along) is also pretty viable for Satori, but yes

[Pandaology]

Okay, wow that's a lot of text.
So far I've actually found Nitori deals a fair bit of damage and her Final Word is rather strong, but Sakuya and Patch are way out damaging her. Which kind off makes sense.
One last thing, is it possible to raise Mouku's Mp? Her spells are strong but she just doesn't have enough Mp to use them often.
Thanks for the advice though, I'm currently grinding my way through the netherworld, can't find my way around this place.

[Serela]

Mokou's Bombs will become more of a limiter soon then her MP. She only gets noncards in the form of weapon skills. She has a growth tree that boosts MP, bombs, cooldowns, and eventually MP cost; but you can't really afford it without hurting Mokou's attack power drastically, until later in the game. Not to mention that 20% increase on wimpy mp is still really wimpy mp, because, percentages.

I liked using her with spears since they have a pretty cheap AOE attack skill to use. Or just making her attack power good enough to deal heavy damage on normal attacks. She can also attack very fast due to physical attack speed bonuses in a tree, which is really nifty sometimes, because you rarely want to actually bring out Aya for her rapefast speed.

On that note... using a spear on Mokou endgame is nice. Fujiyama Big Eruption, with 0 cooldown? YES PLEASE.

[Kanoe]

There! Did all the miscellaneous quests at least once. Now just have to farm up more Devil's Hearts then go after the Existence Hater or whatever it is called.

[チソウ タイゼン]

This game is really hard :<

I'm still trying to get a feel for it, but I wouldn't mind getting some advice <3

I'm currently level 4, have just beaten Patchy and Sakuya.
I've picked up what I'd like to believe is all of the treasure in Stage 1. Notable things include a 'Magic Shield' (Sanae) and a 'Short Sword' (Aya).

Is Aya supposed to be my sword nuker?
And is Reimu usually a tank?