Labyrinth of Touhou 9F

[Ghaleon]

Didn't they take it out because it was broken and bugged as well?

I dunno myself by its broken simply by DESIGN to have straight up full on hits and misses in a game FULL of bosses with "hurr ill one shot you unless you power nuke my last 20% health" desperation phases.

[Nerv-Faktor]

I've never taken Cirno that far into the game, but now I'm planning to keep her in my party for an entire playthrough and I'm wondering:
Is there a way to build Cirno that doesn't make her useless in the later parts of the game?

She has no damage, no survivability and no relevant buffs.
Her multitarget PAR ability coupled with decent speed is good for random encounters, but other characters can do that too in addition to other things.
Her SPD debuff is great for some bosses, but she seems completely useless once you encounter enemies with high DBF resistance.
Just by looking at the numbers she seems terrible. Is there a way to make her viable on the plus disk floors? Or does she only look bad on paper and is actually much better in practice?

[Pesco]

Cirno can be flatout regarded as low-mid tier. Early on her damage is passable. Midgame you want her to be fast enough to PAR or debuff. Endgame and beyond, if her defenses are high enough, her tankbuff can let her be slot 2 (as was the case in my Team (9) run). But basically just from this you can see she takes a different build at the various stages of the game. At best I'd say give build her for speeduntil 18F and then switch to defenses.

[Ghaleon]

I forget but arent most her attacks composite too? Thats another big minus =p

[Serela]

Pesco, Cirno's stats are too low to ever consider her as bulky in a normal game ^^; Team (9) run isn't a very good portrayal of how they work in normal play. Besides, by the endgame you can use buffs to have everyone at high def/mnd buffage all the time in bosses, so it wouldn't make up for her bad stats.

Cirno has been tried out as a serious damage dealer by Parallaxal. Against cld-weak bosses, with proper buffing up, she did... okay-ish damage. Enough to compare to any normal non-great attacker trying to beat up the boss. This only makes her not-useless for damage against the LARGE amount of cld-weak bosses, it doesn't justify actually using her. :T

Icicle Fall is the fastest way to try to repeatedly inflict a high SPD debuff, but that's not anywhere near enough to justify using her. I pulled her out for Agastrobauma as a joke and dumped the 200-ish levels she had in HP so she'd be able to take one hit. It worked out very well for Icicle Fall spamming that battle, but it was still mostly a joke.

Cirno is good until you have better ways to inflict the PAR/SPD-down. I can't seriously recommend to use her past Yukari, although she still has some degree of applicability to paralyzing random enemies quickly.

[Raikaria]

I forget but arent most her attacks composite too? Thats another big minus =p

People always focus on the downside of Composite, it suffers if either defense is high, but they always forget the benefit:

Composite spells benefit from both ATK and MAG boosts *Cough, Stickleback*, and both DEF/MND drops. A composite spell gains more from most offense buffs in the game than normal spells, and a lot more from pretty much every major debuffing spell [Eg: Discarder]

Composite is less reliable, but it has upsides as well as downsides, unless fighting something with absurd MND or DEF. The best-case scenario for Composite is better than the best-case for single type, while the worst-case is also worse.

There's a reason no composite attacker has offensive selfbuffs.

[Nerv-Faktor]

The Team ⑨ run was with only 4 characters, so Cirno ended up with 3 times as many skillpoints as she'll get in my playthrough, right?
If that's the case I doubt that my Cirno will become tanky enough to survive in slot 2 on the plusdisk floors.
I'll probably end up replacing her again once I get to the higher floors. Mystia would be the obvious choice since she basically does the same things better, but I don't want to take her again.

[Serela]

Cirno's attacks being composite isn't exactly a bad thing, but they still just plain don't measure up, either way. Buffing her up just makes them get to the degree of "kind of okay-ish" in a boss fight.

[Pesco]

Given the choice to buff Cirno's attack or another attacker's power, not-Cirno is simply the better choice.

[Rukoto]

I used a pure ATK Cirno in Team Mino, which has explored up to 30F. She's been useful in clearing randoms, and I haven't noticed her requiring any level up bonuses in speed to outpace some of the faster randoms you could reasonably expect to outspeed when exploring (her SKP cost in speed isn't too expensive either).  That being said, I imagine Mystia does this job better overall. In terms of bosses, I found her falling out in usefulness during the Plus Disc bosses, although she was pretty nice during the maingame boss fights for her speed debuffing capacity.

[Ghaleon]

People always focus on the downside of Composite, it suffers if either defense is high, but they always forget the benefit:

Composite spells benefit from both ATK and MAG boosts *Cough, Stickleback*, and both DEF/MND drops. A composite spell gains more from most offense buffs in the game than normal spells, and a lot more from pretty much every major debuffing spell [Eg: Discarder]

Composite is less reliable, but it has upsides as well as downsides, unless fighting something with absurd MND or DEF. The best-case scenario for Composite is better than the best-case for single type, while the worst-case is also worse.

There's a reason no composite attacker has offensive selfbuffs.

Not really sure what kinda logic you use to determine this.
1: composite spells benefit from buffs LESS than non composite attacks, because you need to buff BOTH atk, AND mag to gain the same amount of benefit an equally powerful non-composite spell would have gotten.
I mean compare a spell that gets 200% magic power and 200% physical power, and one that's just 400% magic power. buffing both stats equally will benefit both spells equally, the composite spell does NOT gain more benefit.

2: composite spells benefit from debuffs more, therefore it's better in that situation? err...
Think of it like a scale where one extreme is defense ignore (ignores both defenses), the middle is a regular spell which is defended by one stat.. on the far end is composite, which is mitigated by 2 diff stats.

That said, when you debuff a target's defense, do regular spells suddenly become *better* than equally powerful defense ignore spells? No they do not, debuffing their defense merely makes the NEGATIVE aspect of a regular spell (negative compared to a defense ignore) suck less. Composite spells simply have 2 different "flaws" that can potentially suck less.
Composite, in of itself, is simply a bad thing. Though they can be made good as a spell overall still by having a kickass formula/stats.. Cirno's stats and formulas on the other hand, are not kick ass, and even if they were, her spells would STILL be better as non composite than composite.

[ExPorygon]

Just found out that there's a demo that was just released for Labyrinth of Touhou 2!!

Edit: I see that you guys already know, I'm an idiot.

My first thoughts:

Finally a visible health bar!!
Party members apparently don't leave the party when knocked out?
Graphics look amazing! Way better than the previous game.

[Shoryu Reppa]

So I'm playing through the game right now and having trouble with the final boss. My team is Komachi/Meiling/Tenshi/Ran/Reimu/Kaguya/Patchouli/Nitori/Suwako/Marisa/Kourin/Youmu

I can get past the minions fine with my damage dealers dealing at least 120K a shot after being buffed by Ran but then she uses overflowing unnatural power and slaughters me. How do I get past this?

[Ghaleon]

Theres no real way around it. I assume you are keeping defense buffs up with reimu? On a freshly def buffed party without squishies out, only hyperactive flying object should really rape after her buff. Her other spells may hurt but they shouldnt be absolutely overwhelming. I forget what level appropriate was for that point. Reimu 130-140ish i think?

[Rukoto]

As Ghaleon already said, there's no defined pattern for her final phase: the only thing that's guaranteed when you fell all of her minions is that she will immediately cast her self-buff on her next turn. Everything that follows from her is randomly selected from her vast pool of moves she can use in her final form. Looking at your party, you could try using Tenshi's Sword of Rapture, which has a 40% chance of removing any buffs on the target (the chance is calculated on each boosted stat individually). If you get lucky enough with it, you can remove the most dangerous effects of her self-buffing efforts in one turn. It's no guarantee, but it does increase your chances of survival. Saving Kourin's self-buff for a well-timed use in the final phase might also be useful as well, as WSMR can be used to renew both offensive buffs on nukers and Reimu's heals, as well as the defensive buffs on your main tanks, especially the ones who can't buff their defence on their own, like Meiling and Kourin if you use him like that. Ultimately, the more time you spend in her final phase, the more chances she'll get to pull off a devastating string of attacks that you won't be able to recover from.

As for level recommendation, I got a bit lucky with team Mino, clearing the final boss at Mino 126 (which is about Reimu 125). You'd have to be somewhat lucky to take her out before level 130, but I can't imagine anything beyond bad luck stopping you from taking her out by level 140.

[Shoryu Reppa]

So it looks like i'm gonna have to grind more. I'm at Reimu 121. And should I change up my team or is it fine, I have everyone but Suika (I really don't feel like doing this fetch quest to get her right now)

[I have no name]

I wish I was recording that fight...
Anyway, I just beat ***WINNER*** with a party of Rinnosuke, Yukari, Ran, Reimu, Youmu, Meiling, Komachi, Shikieiki, Nitori, Kaguya, Flandre and Marisa.  I lost Rinnosuke, Shikieiki and Youmu first phase; Shikieiki was a bad switch into Dragons Flame, Youmu was either her or Reimu going to die and Rinnosuke is a sacrifice after firing off a WSMR.
I lost Marisa to a bad switch a bit later, as my only loss of the second phase.
He then opened up his third phase with his 30,000,000 HP heal, then healed another 8,000,000 immediately after.  This meant I had about 66 million HP to plow through in his final phase-a daunting task.  I thought I had lost, but obviously against this guy you don't give up.  Yukari did fall to 130 HP at one point though, which scared me a lot to see.
Komachi got destroyed by a 450,000 damage attack a bit later, I thought 440,000 HP was enough to survive anything in the second slot but he has a move powerful enough.
Yukari got sniped, then Ran got sniped, but I kept on with my stall strats utilizing Meiling and her self-heal.  Reimu got killed by a Light Arrow with bad damage luck but it wasn't an issue, I was past the point of needing area heals anyway (though she kept Meiling alive at one point)
That left me with Meiling for tanking, and Kaguya Flandre and Nitori in reserve.  I took a risk switching Flan in before the Reimusnipe happened (literally right before, but Reimu was at full health so I thought nothing could kill her), and he used Wand of Dragons Flame which obviously Flan can tank.
My strategy for the rest of the fight was Meiling stall, switching in Nitori every chance I got and attacking.  After a while,he just randomly died, without ever using Time Stop, with 1 HP Restoring Medicine left, and only 1 Lightspeed Movement used.
The best part is, I GOT HIS DROP TOO!  That means I got every single Plus Disc drop first try except for the first one, which I got second fight.

Clear time is 87:52.  a half a week of playing LoT, literally, got me to this point.  Of course, there's 2 other savefiles with about 6 hours on them, the time I spent on game over runs (including a 40 minute ***WINNER*** attempt I streamed), the time I spent mapping...so I'll just call it 4 days.
That was a game well spent.  Now back to taking detailed notes on the game for that segmented speedrun  :V

[Ghaleon]

Dont forget you have to grind 20f anyway to complete item listing for a star to proceed.

edit: people who are playing the belpha demo thing for labyrinth 2, does it have music? How is it so far? And also, does it look like there are more or less special spells that do more than just affect stats or dish/heal damage. For example, yuyu's action gauge reduction effect, Tenshi's sword of rapture, kaggy/yukari/cootie-suke's action bar filler, flan's awful side effects, etc.

[Rukoto]

I finally progress further with Team Wriggle, clearing the entire Iron Maze! I took out Sanae's Foe at Wriggle 49 without issue, and thrashed Eientei at Wriggle 51. With Moreya's Iron Rings Reisen was a non-issue, and with the extra SKP investments in MND, Tenshi was taking 0's from all of their attacks unbuffed. Anyone else I relied on taking hits didn't take much damage either, so the fight was quite bearable given I have no MND buffs outside of WSMR. Also took out Tenshi at Wriggle 52, Wriggle's PSN cuts down this fight rather well.

[Nerv-Faktor]

So it looks like i'm gonna have to grind more. I'm at Reimu 121. And should I change up my team or is it fine, I have everyone but Suika (I really don't feel like doing this fetch quest to get her right now)

You will have to do Suika's quest if you want to continue to the plus disk floors.
Your team looks fine, that's mostly a matter of preference anyway, as long as you have characters to fulfill the basic roles, like at least one character who can survive and slot 1, etc.

cootie-suke's action bar filler

I haven't used him in quite some time, but I'm pretty sure only Yukari and Kaguya can do that. Is there something I don't know about his skills?

[Ghaleon]

Isnt his one time use megabuff a bar filler too?

[Nerv-Faktor]

Isnt his one time use megabuff a bar filler too?

No, it only buffs stats. Imagine what kind of stuff you could do with Yukari, Kaguya and Rinnosuke in the same team if it filled up all bars.
WSMR is kind of gimmicky anyway, in my opinion. I rarely found a situation where it's truly useful. When a boss enters his final desperation phase after a long battle, all of my characters are usually buffed up anyway, so I don't need it then. And if I use it on the first turn to immediately get up my defenses his TP instantly drop to 0 and I have him locked in his slot until he dies or the battle ends, that's a pretty big drawback for my playstyle.
It's very useful for some bosses that can be brought down in a single turn with special tactics, like Bloody Papa, but otherwise I prefer Remilia over him in 95% of the games bossfights, at least she can actually be switched and also deals a bit more damage and is a bit tankier.

[Gesh86]

Does it have music?

Nope. But that's not really a problem. The fascination for me right now comes from experimenting with it, feeling a bit like a pioneer. It feels very incomplete so far

How is it so far?

Despite the incompleteness and the occasional oddity (the dryad-thingies hurting their own allies?), the two boss battles available feel right. I love everything about the graphics. They're sooooo much nicer. Of course those don't make a game, but it's still a plus if it makes the predecessor look comparably primitive.

And also, does it look like there are more or less special spells that do more than just affect stats or dish/heal damage. For example, yuyu's action gauge reduction effect[...]

Not really. At the end of 1F in LoT1, you only had characters that you could consider more generic in their abilities, too. But if you look at the translation for the character's perks on thread page 14, it does seem like most characters will have something unusual going for them. Reimu randomly healing on loss of a character, Momiji's presence alone boosting accuracy. I think it's aiming for a lot of depth.
There actually seems to be an ailment now that acts a little bit like the ATB-reducing skills. In the first real boss fight, I noticed my Momiji constantly having her ATB halved, so often that she would be almost stun-locked. I think she was afflicted by something. It was hard to tell because I still have to get used to the game's interface. So many little symbols, showing buffs and debuffs, the attack names  (that I can't read) and elements popping up in the upper left corner rather than at whoever uses them, it's not easy.

[Ghaleon]

No, it only buffs stats. Imagine what kind of stuff you could do with Yukari, Kaguya and Rinnosuke in the same team if it filled up all bars.
WSMR is kind of gimmicky anyway, in my opinion. I rarely found a situation where it's truly useful. When a boss enters his final desperation phase after a long battle, all of my characters are usually buffed up anyway, so I don't need it then. And if I use it on the first turn to immediately get up my defenses his TP instantly drop to 0 and I have him locked in his slot until he dies or the battle ends, that's a pretty big drawback for my playstyle.
It's very useful for some bosses that can be brought down in a single turn with special tactics, like Bloody Papa, but otherwise I prefer Remilia over him in 95% of the games bossfights, at least she can actually be switched and also deals a bit more damage and is a bit tankier.

Well 3 bar fillers at once would probably do less than youd think since neither yukari or rinnosuke can really do anything significant other than the spells mentioned. Kaggy and the 4th would be the only contribution, and that 4th is probably a tank more than a nuke.

As for the use of thy spell, youre talking to the choir, i never liked cootiesuke myself but i know many others swear by him. Indeed, remilia is one of my fave chars. Spear dps is actually very potent given her speed, its non element nature, and her constant buffs, which also buffs her defenses, so shes actually tankier than china most of the time except for lack of self heal. To me remilia is almost as no brainer a slot 2 tank as china is slot 1.

Thanks for the input gesh, i beard about the passive things and forgot, but yeah that aline suggests extra effects will be more common =)

[I have no name]

My opening move in my ***WINNER*** attempts was WSMR to get max buffs instantly.

Anyways, I figured out why the "back push events" (Iron Maze, near Yukari) only let you go through walls sometimes-the direction you end up facing must also be a legal move.  So trying to move into a wall means you'll fail, but trying to move backwards will put you on the other side...even if it's through a wall.  It doesn't seem possible to OOB on 12F via this, however, but the switch puzzle can be completely bypassed :V

[Rukoto]

One thing I did with Team Mino for quite a few bosses was to open with Rinno and Ran, kicking off the fight with a WSMR to get an early advantage, and then have Ran buff the offenses of my reserve team in the meantime.  I built him defensively, so he's able to last the entire battle against most bosses.

There actually seems to be an ailment now that acts a little bit like the ATB-reducing skills. In the first real boss fight, I noticed my Momiji constantly having her ATB halved, so often that she would be almost stun-locked. I think she was afflicted by something. It was hard to tell because I still have to get used to the game's interface. So many little symbols, showing buffs and debuffs, the attack names  (that I can't read) and elements popping up in the upper left corner rather than at whoever uses them, it's not easy.

Yeah, there is an ailment , Shock  (as RegalStar has called it), that drops the ATB of the person inflicted with it. I found an equip on the 1F to protect from Shock (but I can't read the name of it at all), and I gave it to Momiji as she didn't have a particularly high resistance to it, and that paid off rather well in that boss fight. Meanwhile, Keine in slot 2 was getting afflicted by Shock a bunch of times when the boss decided to pick on her, which probably was one issue I had with the fight. Admittedly, the flow of attacks in general are pretty darn fast, which makes it hard to get more information on the attacks if you don't understand Japanese well enough (like me).

[Serela]

some other random notes from skimming pooshlmer that I didn't see get noted here

MP increases -very- slowly (like one point after you level up 11 times) and cannot be leveled up by skill points (apart from a character having an Increase MP passive skill)

Evasion seems hard-set, although equipment can probably boost it later. Non-increasing evasion seems like an obvious choice to make if the accuracy system wasn't completely revamped, so that's not surprising.

And oh god it looks so pretty. So hype.

[Fishin]

tbh I'm a little concerned about Rinnosuke's long-term usefulness in 2, his buff spell starts at 8% to all stats on a single character and increases by 1% per skill level with 66% gauge (for reference, both of Keine's support spells buff the entire party for 19% on two stats with 66% gauge, and Reimu's partywide def/mnd buff is 33% with 45% gauge) so it seems pretty useless, and his heal isn't very strong either.  EDIT: those numbers are a little low since the only way to see the numerical value of buffs a character has is when you take their turn, so by that point the buffs have already worn off a bit.  Really hope that'll be fixed by the time the game is out.

though on the upside, with the character reset feature you could respec his skills for increased money/item drops vs battle skills back and forth, so that's cool.  His ability to switch characters in with 83 or 91% gauge instead of the normal 75% might be pretty strong too, I guess it's hard to say at this point.

also as far as the stat boosters on the skills page go, on MP it simply says "boosts maximum MP" but on other stats (which are available varies with the character; Reimu has Magic and HP, Marisa has Magic and Speed, Rinnosuke has everything) it says "Boosts base <stat>", and with some cheat engine testing for extra Skill Points it seems like the Skill Point boosts also increase the boosts you get from the Library, and presumably from equipment too.  Makes sense since Skill Points seem like a very limited resource in this game (Money is what you use now for both upgrading your characters at the Magic Library and buying items from Nitori).

As far as visuals go the art is great but the bloom effect is kind of weird.  At some points it's noticeable but not that bad, like http://i.imgur.com/DEASdVf.jpg, but at others like http://i.imgur.com/hnZViB3.jpg it's really distracting.  Hopefully that gets reduced or removed.

[Gesh86]

As far as visuals go the art is great but the bloom effect is kind of weird.  At some points it's noticeable but not that bad, like http://i.imgur.com/DEASdVf.jpg, but at others like http://i.imgur.com/hnZViB3.jpg it's really distracting.  Hopefully that gets reduced or removed.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean with bloom effect, but if it's that strange brightness-filter that makes everyone's skin shine like a lightbulb, you can turn it off. It works both from the title screen's option menu as well as ingame, and the game really does look better without it. Such a strange decision to have it active as a default...

[Fishin]

Oh, you're right.  I was thinking the selection for it in options was for battle animations.