Genius of Sappherios Zansyo/Weekend

[Serela]

Stage 18, Party 2, a room that has a switch in it (not sure if they can actually reach it in this party or not)

I think that's where I found Cyclops.

And, yeek, Zera Beetles. I feel sorry for you there D: Grinding for every equipment drop in stage 21 without using the insta-save trick because I'm weird took like 30+ hours, and I only saw... 5? I accidentally ran from two, even, because running from stage 21 enemies was generally the norm and WHOOPS. I got the drop, at least.

It's funny though, because after running from one the second time, I found another in the one of the next few encounters, which made me feel less bad about running by accident. In general, my encounter rate for them was far higher the longer I stayed; although it was most likely just random chance (unless it's more likely for them to appear in certain maps due to encounter layouts). Like, my first was over halfway through my stage 21 grinding, and the second wasn't until a good bit later, meaning almost all of them were in the home stretch where I only had a few drops left.

Unrelated:SirBlueberry, your GoS avatar thing is nifty.  :3

[Eigerblade]

Ah, found them at last, thanks man!
Now, to find those Zeras.. *sigh*

Anyway, is it possible to learn Elixir from Dragons by using Reimu's Decoy Barrier?
I never really understood how the decoy works, but it could be used for raise dead, right? Maybe other support skills can be learned using decoy as well?
I was about to test it, but then Satori accidentally landed a control on the dragon, so I learned it without testing if decoy barrier could be used to get elixir. No complaints here, though..

[homing curvy laser]

I don't even know what these things look like. Are they even rarer than the chest frogs?

[Serela]

They're like chest frogs in how they appear (aka in certain enemy formations they'll randomly pop up as well), but they're FAR rarer.

Notice how I said it took like 15 hours of grinding in stage 21 for drops before I ever saw one?

This is what they look like: http://puu.sh/1uwvs Don't worry about actually killing it, they're easy. As long as you aren't, like, running out of MP or get wrecked by the random enemies they happened to appear with, you're fine.

[qazmlpok]

To give a number for zera beetles, there's a bunch of formations where they have a 1% chance of appearing.  Then there's Lightning Baron; it looks like there's a 10% chance each for two zera beetles to appear with him in one formation. Sadly, I have no idea where that specific formation could occur (if anywhere), as I never figured out that part of the csvs. That really does seem like the best chance of finding a zera beetle.

[Sungho]

The Zera Beetle with the Lightning Baron would be in the Final Room in the Bonus Dungeon.

[Eigerblade]

Yep, the lightning Baron in extra dungeon last map is the best place to farm Zera Beetles.

Using the save-anywhere trick, I found 2 Zera Beetles in 8 encounters with a Lightning Baron.
Thanks for the tip, man. I have finally completed my 100% save!

......and I don't know what I should do to pass my time

'know what? I'll just start a new game, and hope I can play DoD soon.

[Sakurei]

okay, been a while since I played, but during my week without internet, I did a lot of shit. first thing was beating the final boss.

I had no idea what I was doing :V all I remembered was "use youmu against final boss" which was, as I assumed, the final phase.

after beating the gorgon sisters, I continued with the post-game stuff. reimu was 72, lithos 68. my team still isn't very even with their levels :V aya, for instance, is level 53. sanae is 91 :'D

obviously, I also did a bunch of item farming side-quests. and found out that lithos' is great if you want random stuff. with 12 kedama, you're bound to get a few drops. something along those lines.



I have all character by now, missing only a few formations (I am somewhere at 94%) and I do not intend to get all the equipment because that requires bullshit luck and stuff. I used it all up today. getting sharpened blades, millemium mushrooms, legendary donation boxes etc from regular stage 21 enemies was really crazy.
I also got the yukkuri crown from the first yukkuri king I defeated. lol @30k base experience.

the bosses have tons of HP. the dragon and demon in stage 23 and 24 respectively were bullshit HP wise. but you know what's really bullshit? the 2 headed dragon. 1400 damage against alice? she has like 600 DEF. fuck you. I ought it twice, and the best I managed was half its HP. am I not supposed to ever fight it or what?
similar issues with everything in kourindou. I assumed my team being 90 or 91 was enough to give it a try. I fought that huge robot sphere. it destroyed everyone but alice in one hit. alice survived because stab damaged is 1/4'd for her. well, that was a failure

I am forced to assume that I am not supposed to do the kourindou quests until I have best equipment + max level on all my characters in the team. speaking of best equipment, when the fuck to I get the recipes for them? after beating every stage? that'd suck :< or I am dying because strategy is still not a word within my dictionary when playing :V

[Serela]

Nah, you can take em on just fine at pretty much any level you can hit that part of the game at, including the 2-head dragon.

It's just that you have to be specifically prepared to take on THAT boss. For example, for the 2-head dragon, you need it set up so Alice takes just about all the hits (hourai doll and a luring slot) and has Slash resistance. Or you can spam her -90% physical damage skill. For the Terminator Mk.II, it has 0 resistance, so you use debuffs to either make it's Patk or Acc (with eva buffs on your party) very low so it does no damage or always misses. It does have Vortex, though, but you can buff/debuff specifically to take care of that issue.

Most of them are actually really easy if you're prepared, regardless of level.

Okay, there's two exceptions. The demon thing with a girl riding on it (quest for Devil Hearts) and the Elder Dragon (Dragon Fang sidequest) are actually really hard without the final tier of weapons/certain skills.

Stage 23/24 bosses? They aren't that bad HP wise, you just need to bring out Light nukes. Reimu tears them apart with Fantasy Heaven or Hell spam after being Byaku-buffed and the like, for example (Assuming light land is high). I'm not sure about the Stage 24 boss, but the dragon in stage 23 is actually completely vulnerable to HP % attacks... I'm not sure if Byakuren's 3-bomb commander skill actually halves it's HP, but stuff like Star of David from Remi should work, and that's just, holy shit.

[Sakurei]

yeah, shame that my team is alice, youmu, patchouli, lithos and sanae :V the best light nuke I have i andromeda nebula. perhaps patchy could, too, but man. just no. I kinda don't like the idea of using her for light/dark attacks, but that's just me being fucking weird :V

well, I have no need to defeat the 2-headed dragon. it's just that I was all "wtf" when it just effortlesslly wiped out my party. for the termiator, alright. will actually prepare something next time :'D but knowing I COULD certainly reassured me.
the last time I used reimu was against Flandre in the sakuya sidequest. holy shit, 30k damage. what did she eat that day? though, light land was already at max :V so that probably helped.

okay, never fighting elder dragon and demon thing :V it's not like I need them *cough*

actually, the hydra probably just vomits breaths at you, so with aya (I never thought aya would be my MVP for any fight ever), I could probably cheese it via breath reflexion, but I can't think of another distinct weakness for the mind flayer, for example. pathetic resistance against petrify, death or paralysis, maybe?
my satori is also pathetically weak. her only decent attacking spells are thunder based, so she can't do shit against enemies strong against thunder. or magic at all. I need to get her up to the front lines soonish.

[Serela]

Yes, that's just you being weird. Patch is fine for nuking light-dark, even if her cooldowns make her not ideal for it. XD Besides, um... you could always switch other people into the party? XD 20 levels doesn't make that huge of a difference, really. And people level 70ish still gain levels really fast with kourindou bosses.

Hydra is cheesed with Aya, yes. But you also need to be prepared for it to use normal attacks more often as it's health gets lower (It's normal accuracy is still pretty bad though, so, oh look, hi Ayaaaaa). If you want to actually beat it QUICKLY, though, you'll need to take advantage of some kind of Dragon-slayer-boosted nuke, or Reisen's special slayer.

Mindflayer is pretty vulnerable to instant death as long as you have the IND to get past it's RES (Not that hard). They're called grindflayers for a reason; easy exp, just throw a party in there with at least one person set up to Death it and it doesn't matter if everyone else is unequipped entirely. It misses? Go back in and try again, takes a couple seconds :D

If Satori has Mad Thunder, she's probably about fine for now (Great for attacking the Terminator, she can also debuff it, with her +success rate passives she's really accurate against it compared to, say, Byakuren). In expansion, Satori gets to the point where only NUKES are good attacks for her. She doesn't get much that does high damage in randoms; she gets more about spamming debilitating status effects like Death and Paralysis and Evervation. Her Lolicon Eye secretly inflicts Charm on physical hits. (Her better nukes apart from Mad Thunder you can't get quite yet, but oh man, Punish the Judgment)

[RegalStar]

You can pick up Dark Giga Flare from the Spirit World Challenger though. It's like Punishment the Judgment, except it's Mystic (so, less weakness but a lot more reliable). Spirit World Challenger is not that hard anyways.

[Serela]

He's not that hard, but it's kind of hard to win the damage race (Where you have to endure DGF spam until you win) without the end weapons and/or Punish the Judgment. (Not very hard afterwords, though)

Dark Giga Flare also loses a lot of power by not getting a big bonus from land. It's also much harder to get gear to boost it; with Light, you can get a whole lot of equipment to boost LGT damage drastically. Plus, many things -are- weak to Light. (not sure if DGF can be used every turn by Satori)

[RegalStar]

As long as you have Little Legion (and an Alice heavily geared to resist mystic and magic attacks, and dark too), Reflect Wall (and about 280+ speed on Satori), and optionally Reimu (you'll need her if you want to learn DGF, and she just gives you extra turns or can deal good damage in general), you can easily buy 10+ turns to finish it off after it goes in DGF spam phase. Youmu with Doujigiri and lots of bombs, and Byakuren with Light Sword is more than enough to take him out.

[Sakurei]

a short summary why I think hina fight is bullshit:

barriers that reflect physical and nulls magic or vice versa. aka, she's invincible.
dispel doesn't work. on her. sanae's RES buff does shit.
she fucking heals herself (presumably due to land, but fuck, I don't know)
and she has a OHKO move that does 10k-65k damage.

reimu is like the only character that can do damage even with the barriers up. fuck this fight. this isn't about challenge. if she uses the wrong attacks on the wrong turn, you're screwed (i.e, youmu's stance gets dispelled just when the barrier wears off, thus she can't attack. Or you get inflicted with curse. you either die or don't attack. etc etc)

the spirit world challenger OHKO'd me when I first met it :V if it's the enemy I am thinking of (the other boss that's on the floor with the 2-head dragon)

aside from that: yeah, beat the terminator. it was a long fight even though I used mokou and youmu with enthunder, massive ATK buff etc. 210000 is too much for the poor me :<
and yeah, the grindflayer is easy prey. sakuya killed it 2 times and she's level 58 now :V also defeated the hydra. giving aya that item that reduces hysical damage to 13% was a golden decision. she got hit like 2 times out of the 20 time she was attacked. she could eat the 30 damage pretty well :V

[RegalStar]

Dispelling enemies require you to have good IND. Give Sanae Launch Earrings.

You kind of need Reimu for this fight anyhow, because uh, good luck getting through her last phase without her. (Basically you NEED attacks that penetrate barriers, because dispelling doesn't work in the last phase. Satori, Marisa, and Patchouli have attacks that ignore reflect, but Reimu is just easiest.) And yeah, she regenerate in Dark land, so you need to veer it towards Light (Reimu helps here again).

[Sakurei]

I used sator's vortex and she has an IND stat of over 150. it dispelled my shit through byakuren's perfect resist. but it didn't do shit to hina at all. you can't tell me that's not enough. she poisons enemies with toxic, for fucks sake.

alright, throwing out youmu because she's actually fucking useless in this fight. this will take forever with reimu doing (approximately) 2000, possibly 3000 with max light levels per hit when it's not a spellcard. same goes to marisa, of course. but my opinion stands, this fight is absolute bullshit and more about luck than anything. if she uses the OHKO often enough, you WILL lose, no matter what you do.

[Serela]

You shouldn't need any significant IND to properly dispel her; you just have to use the right kind of dispel. AKA, if she has magic reflect up, you have to use a PHYSICAL dispel (Sweeping on Satori, or Reisen), and for physical reflect you need any of the normal dispels.

I never ever had an issue with ANY dispel move not landing the Dispel quick effect on any enemy ever, and haven't seen anyone have this issue either; I've watched several people fight Hina onstream, onvideo, and done it myself.

Marisa also goes through Magic Reflection along with Reimu, and she's not hard to inflict status effects on if you have good IND, so you can debuff stack (You can also do this to make her deal no damage except via Pain Bond) and have Reisen do insane damage with her special slayer if you like.

She regens in dark land (but isn't weak to light). In order to activate the final phase, she needs 10000 hp, so you need to disable the regen with light land or a Poison status. You'll need a nuke that goes through reflection, and preferably deals 10k+ damage (Little Legion makes that not a requirement, though), but Reimu should do that perfectly fine with Fantasy Heaven or Hell and sufficient buffing.

Reimu and Sanae can also both cure the Curse status. Also, you could equip a empty star curse resist item on an attacker slower then Hina.

Pain Bond hurts, but only hits one person. Easy to fix the death via Sanae or commander Mokou. If the fight lasts anywhere long enough to where running out of bombs is even worth worrying about, something is seriously wrong.

aside from that: yeah, beat the terminator. it was a long fight even though I used mokou and youmu with enthunder, massive ATK buff etc. 210000 is too much for the poor me :<

It has really high Pdef. It's better to use magic. Patch's elec field is also super helpful because it greatly increases elec damage, as well as her being able to get elec land maxed in just a few turns with her normal spells. (Satori's Mad Thunder is hands down best attack on this boss with almost 30k damage every turn. Yuugi with the following strat or Nitori with her ostracon gun for huge tsukumogami slayer might be nice too)

Also, the mech dragon can be super murdered by Yuugi with the Oni's Metal Rod item from stage 22 and an Enwater/Weapon Bless buff. Like, it's easy to get her to hit 99999 with KOi3S+Youmu's commander 3bomb in that situation (And Storm on Mt.Ooe would still be pretty great if you don't have that) (This strat might work nice on the Terminator, didn't try it yet)

[Sakurei]

I beat hina with reimu doing 23k damage during the last phase. I thought I was death, because I had no bombs left (sanae didn't. no mokou in commander slot, either), and alice was dead. I didn't think I'd manage the damage in one hit, but for some reason, hina became weak to light and I am still confused about that. I don't mind, though.

my satori feels really weak, though :V I know mad thunder is a great attack, but she loses out in damage to youmu, mokou and lithos, even when she's hitting a weakness with mad thunder. I did something really wrong when I was raising her :V she's "only" level 67, so that may change, but...yeah. she also needs a few more spells overall. well...soon

[Starxsword]

Satori's nukes can't compare to your other nukers. She is there mainly for support and against stronger defense enemies where you need magical attacks over physical attacks. Until you get stuff like Punish the Judgement and Dark Giga Flare, she won't be able to keep up with Youmu, Reisen, Mokou, etc.

Youmu can force weakness on enemies with one of her stance attacks. I think it is under Devaloka. If you plan to use Youmu against the Terminator, it is best if you use the regular slashes first to decrease its defense and then use your stance skills. Against this boss, raw attack power is important, because you need to overcome that crazy defense first.
Reisen does the highest damage against the Terminator, as she can consistently hit 99,999 damage if you put 4 or 5 status effects on it.

[Serela]

Youmu can force weakness on enemies with one of her stance attacks.

iirc it only reduces resistance, same with Cirno's -1 resist passives (And assumably Satori's physical resist debuff Special Missile which would be insane if it could inflict weakness)

[Starxsword]

As far as I could tell, not so. I am not sure if it further ups the weakness, but I believe it does apply weakness. You could go from Neutral to Slash or whatever element Youmu is using to Weak towards that weapon/element. I believe I have fought an enemy and caused it to go from no glowing colors to glowing colors.

Not quite sure how Satori's Special Missile works, but yeah, Cirno's -1 resist and Remilia -1 resist seems to only apply to resistances.

EDIT: Okay, upon testing, Youmu's Heavenly Halo Dancing Slash does indeed apply weakness. It would also apply FURTHER weakness if the enemy is already weak to the weapon/element. But, it does not look at it is a full stage of weakness if the enemy is already weak to the weapon/element.

[Kaitani]

I'm trying to get Satori to learn Vacuum Wave and/or Acala Sword. Are these skills available in the Control menu of any the enemies that have them, or do I just have to hope that they use it and hope that they use it on Satori? Which one of the skills is actually stronger?

[Eigerblade]

Some enemies have them in the control, IIRC, I just forget which ones.
It's not hard to get, though.

I think Vacuum Wave is preferred, because Acala Sword costs more (again IIRC, I have bad memory)
I prefer to use tentacle than those two anyway, since it costs even less MP and the damage dealt is not so different.

[Kaitani]

You're right, they weren't that hard to get, even without control. I just put Satori in the front of Poison Shield formation and gave her defenses to survive the attacks.
I also did a bit of testing to see which of the three skills is the best one to use. Acala Sword seems to be the weakest, doing the least damage against all the enemies I tried it against (unless Tentacle was hitting for 0 damage), not to mention it's the only one of the three that has a cooldown (2 turns) with the -1 cooldowns in place. So, between Tentacle and Vacuum Wave, the latter wins in MP cost (18 vs. 15), but against low defense targets Tentacle does almost double the damage. So I would say that if you know you'll be hitting low defense enemies, use Tentacle, but if you're up against a mixed bunch, stick with Vacuum Wave to get consistent damage.
Interestingly, Acala Sword does slightly more damage against enemies with very high defense (Terminator mkII) compared to Vacuum Wave. Unbuffed and undebuffed the former was hitting for 700 damage and the latter for 400 damage.

[Sungho]

No, Vacuum Wave should do more damage.
Did you happen to use a spear with the Stab Resistance -1 in the skill tree? Either that, or Acala Sword one was a critical hit.

Vacuum Wave is a fixed [Slash] attack, so you won't get Slayers or Status Effects from the weapon itself.
Byakuren's Elemental Weapon and the [added damage] works, though.

[Kaitani]

Acala Sword one was a critical hit.

That must've been it, I tested again with a few more hits (until the Terminator used Vortex and killed me...) and both skills were now hitting for 350-400 damage. Satori was using a staff (Gambantein) which shouldn't favour either attack.
Oh, about those attack types: does that fixed [slash] type mean even with a stab type weapon you'll do slash damage? Then with [? Element] the game turns to look for the weapon stats to determine the type of attack?

[Serela]

Oh, about those attack types: does that fixed [slash] type mean even with a stab type weapon you'll do slash damage? Then with [? Element] the game turns to look for the weapon stats to determine the type of attack?

Yes. ? Element also means it will use things like slayers and status effects from the weapon.

There are very few fixed-elemental physical attacks, and they usually come on special weapons where you won't notice or on Satori who doesn't USE the attack ANYWAY, 98% of the time. (An exception is Nitori chasers, but her physical chasers aren't terribly popular. Knowing IND increases their damage though, I tested, and it's actually pretty nice in certain setups. Nothing glorious you'd love to abuse, but.)

[RegalStar]

Vacuum Sword does 240% base physical damage and ignores defense. Its base hit rate is 95. (It's also fixed slash elemental as said)

Acala Sword does 200% base physical damage, and ignores defense, reflection, perfect evade, shield, and has base hit rate of 999. It also has 0 damage variance.

Basically if you use Acala Sword, you WILL hit the enemy regardless of what kind of evasive crap they may have. Vacuum Sword still checks for hit rate normally.

[Kaitani]

Thanks for the numbers and other info Regal! I guess the never-miss feature of Acala Sword is the cause for its long cooldown.