Labyrinth of Touhou 9F

[DarkAtma]

Whatever i kill Rinnosuke,eientei,yuuka,nitori or yukari V3 and dont get their drop, my motivation drops, and i dont wanna use cheat engine to get drops, i have only used it so far to prevent random encounters and explore floors  :V, Replaced some party members, hopefully this will be my last definite team

Meiling
Remilia
Flandre
Sakuya
Patchouli
Renko
Yukari
Reimu
Marisa
Yuugi
Utsuho
Orin

[I have no name]

I'm a little surprised to not see Nitori on that list.  Endgame she hits the hardest of everyone.  I'd probably remove Renko actually-you're past the point where debuffs/PAR are really that effective.  Debilitate would only have about a 53% chance to do anything at all to WINNER, Galaxy Stop a mere 15%.  Charge! is flat out ineffective since you need your turns ASAP, Ran can buff the team a lot faster.

Also as much as I love Utsuho as a character and did use her with moderate success...there's better characters to fill that slot.

[DarkAtma]

I'm a little surprised to not see Nitori on that list.  Endgame she hits the hardest of everyone.  I'd probably remove Renko actually-you're past the point where debuffs/PAR are really that effective.  Debilitate would only have about a 53% chance to do anything at all to WINNER, Galaxy Stop a mere 15%.  Charge! is flat out ineffective since you need your turns ASAP, Ran can buff the team a lot faster.

Also as much as I love Utsuho as a character and did use her with moderate success...there's better characters to fill that slot.

I honestly prefer to use characters i like and not for how Op they are, but thats just my opinion, Yes maybe iku and nitori be staple in any team, but i dont like them at all...
Could probably replace yukari back with kaguya.....because patchouli already fills the MND tanker role

[I have no name]

I honestly prefer to use characters i like and not for how Op they are, but thats just my opinion, Yes maybe iku and nitori be staple in any team, but i dont like them at all...

There's a reason Youmu has never left my party  :V
and honestly as good as Iku is I've never really used her.  But the thing is against WINNER you need damage fast and Nitori for me was doing a million more than the next highest nuke in Flandre.  A million extra damage a hit. (4.2 vs 3.4, but it's around a million).

[Serela]

IHNN:Actually, spamming Galaxy Stop hoping to do something isn't as terrible as you might think. The PAR lasts for so long that you can just go nuts attacking for awhile. This is pretty great when you have low-delay nukers around. (If you were insane and wanted to do really high WINNER kill counts, proccing it would probably be an "I win" button as the length of PAR is extended further from speed proration. But the WINNER fight is waaaaay too boring.)

It's probably way better to try for it by spamming an actual decent attack with PAR, though, like Mystia.

[qazmlpok]

Whatever i kill Rinnosuke,eientei,yuuka,nitori or yukari V3 and dont get their drop, my motivation drops, and i dont wanna use cheat engine to get drops, i have only used it so far to prevent random encounters and explore floors  :V, Replaced some party members, hopefully this will be my last definite team

Meiling
Remilia
Flandre
Sakuya
Patchouli
Renko
Yukari
Reimu
Marisa
Yuugi
Utsuho
Orin

Really? Rinnosuke, Yuuka, and Eientei are really easy in my experience. Yuuka is barely even stronger than her initial appearance, and Rinnosuke is practically bugged and can be easily taken out on his second or third form. Yukari can be taken out in her first form if you paralyze her or just hit hard enough as well - and yes, you can get the drops if you beat them before the final form.

For your party, I'd personally recommend ditching Sakuya unless you like her. If you're using her to buff speed, you're at the point in the game where speed buffs matter very little. I ran the numbers for this a while back, and you can find them here: http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Talk:Labyrinth_of_Touhou/Gameplay . The greatly diminishing returns from the speed stat make increasing your speed have very little impact, unless you exceed a threshold.

For example, if you have a speed stat of 300, it will take you 40 ticks to fill up at atb bar completely. A +100% speed buff would give 600 speed, which would take 28 ticks to fill up the bar. That's getting a turn in 70% of the time, rather than the expected 50% of the time.

Flandre is great for grinding, but since she can't really oneshot anything on 30F, she isn't very practical. She's amazing if you want to get a lot of skillpoints on 27F, but I find her to be too impractical to use on 30F.

Personally, I'd take those 2 slots and switch in Youmu and Nitori. Both can do very good non-elemental damage.

[DarkAtma]

Yes i admit those 3 are easy as pie, However just now i had a bad experience with yukari spaming dual colorfull light and almost wiping me, Okuu almost killed me and meiling had to solo her, and mokou its just stupid with the 800k heal per turn, alice is bearable but long, Eientei is only easy because kaguya is missing rainbow danamaku and their spells their low damage overrall now

[qazmlpok]

Another update on 3peso's blog. No new trial, just a new feature.

It would appear that LoT2 is going to have FOEs.

EDIT - and Cirno is in the screenshot, so she's confirmed as playable.

[Ghaleon]

Nice! I love it when rpg games have a stable form of "elite" monsters. By stable i mean something you can reliably fight more than once (assuming they eventually respawn).

[Sakurei]

Flandre is amazing on f30, what are you talking about. manipulate equipment her so she's the slowest, I lead with Youmu/Nitori/Eiki/Flandre and they kill everything outside of bosses on the floor before they even get a turn (bar those that outspeed me anyway like chen or that have some phases you have to go through first like mokou or rinnosuke) don't spread lies like that.

with that said, there is no "bad party" there are only unoptimized parties and the ones that have everything in mind you need. I did several testruns with fucked up parties (I have too much freetime :V) all over the place. such as nukers only-party, 4-tank party-party, no buffs-party. Hell, I even once had a party without any healers or massive damage dealers (I had people like okuu, mokou and cirno as damage dealers) and shit like that. all of them beat the maingame without many problems. of course, plus game is a different story, but nobody is doing parties like that. everyone will have a mix of tanks, buffers, healers and nukers/trashcleaners.
now, to DarkAtma's party: my personal opinion is that you don't need a tank outside of special fights (Flandre, Rinnosuke, Okuu, Eiki), but everyone is always like "NEED TWO TANKS :V" and I don't understand why. I agree that meiling is a fantastic character, but if people decide against her, why use a tank at all? I've beaten the winner 14 times now, and all of them were done with Youmu as my damage soaker, with Reimu in second slot. neither of those are actual tanks like Komachi, Meiling or Tenshi. please someone explain to me why you're all over the characters that are tanks before anything else (outside of meiling). My optimal party would have like half nukers to cover every element :V i'd say my ideal party goes something along the lines of

1. Reimu
2. Youmu
3. Nitori
4. Eiki
5. Iku
6. Suwako
7. Minoriko
8. Kaguya
9. Rumia
10. Renko
11. Suika
12. -any powerful fire nuker- I usually choose alice or patchouli. Flandre is really hard to use, but definitely the strongest girl there is.

I like to have coverage. the only reall powerful CLD nuke is kanako's CLD attack, but kanako is so average in everything else, so I like to replace her with any other character. coverage is something you don't need against the winner (powerful non-elemental attacks are the best for him), but certainly while you grind! and you just have too much fire in your team. Flandre, Orin, Yuugi, (okuu and patchouli), and you basically have no coverage outside of it, aside from patchouli's other spells, giga flare and marisa (who is, by the way, completely useless against anything not weak to MYS). I know you chose your team according to how much you like the characters, but a team like that would require more grinding than actually necessary to defeat the final bosses. especially the serpent of chaos is going to be a pain in the ass on every not-fire-weak turn. it's gonna kick your butt badly.think about who feels most useless (or who you like least, really) and replace them with someone who can give you extra coverage or someone with a powerful non-elemental nuke (youmu, nitori, eiki)

[Validon98]

Another update on 3peso's blog. No new trial, just a new feature.

It would appear that LoT2 is going to have FOEs.

Oh god. I can already see the mass party wipes.

[DarkAtma]

Smart and 100% accurate

Thats my problem, i like every one of them as much as the other, i cant just replace a character i like  :V

EDIT

Finally i am starting to get drops: Got a Rhino dress from yuuka and a extinction cannon from mokou

[Ghaleon]

Preeeeetttyy sure winner's flame wand attack or whatever should wtfbbq 1shot youmu unless youre way overlevel.

And flan cant come close to doing enough damage to burst down v3s unless you're pretty much done needing to even grind anyway.

[I have no name]

Preeeeetttyy sure winner's flame wand attack or whatever should wtfbbq 1shot youmu unless youre way overlevel.

A good 400 fire affinity has her surviving it handily.

Well, probably helped that Youmu was in my party the entire game and I used her as a Flowing Hellfire tank so she already had boosted FIR/HP...but even still she took Wand of Dragon's Flame just as well as Keine did.

[Sakurei]

preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttyyyyyy sure that my 800 affinity makes her survive that thing twice. since I defeated winner 14 times, he's twice as strong as he started out, so as IHNN said, 400 makes her tank it quite well. if you buff up reimu well enough now, you won't need to swap out either of them ever. (unless you're unlucky and reimu gets hit by that super powerful single target attack he has. zang-something. I think your average reimu wouldn't survive it)

[Parallaxal]

FOE! FOE! FOE!

They were quite possibly the defining mechanic of Etrian Odyssey, so I'm excited to see them announced for LoT2. They serve as meat walls, puzzles, battle challenges, rare loot sources, and grinding fodder all wrapped up in one package.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind seeing some form of EO's conditional drop mechanic too. It'll make elemental and status coverage a more relevant thing to have on your team, and if implemented well it can justify raising certain drop rates so that you're not quite as at the mercy of the RNG.

[Ghaleon]

I'm pretty sure I've had everyone at 400+ aff by that point but even if I didn't, that still doesn't explain how non-tank characters can possibly survive non-elemental power nukes without being overlevel...and I don't mean the ones that even tanks aren't meant to survive like last judgement (komachi is really the only one who could there, China... I've tried pounding ALL MY SKP from floors 21+ into JUST her hp and she STILL croaked to it). Heck, even the elemental ones are going to get you unless you overspend sp on ALL your affinities, which I doubt. I mean the points come from somewhere, and you just can't have them ALL at like twice as high as what is normal without severely gimping virtually everything else.

I always wondered if you beat the game 14 times, or if you just did it once or twice and did the winner repeat 14 times...the latter does not represent normal playthru of the rest of the game at all. Of COURSE flan is going to be way more useful grinding 30f trash if you're grinding POST winner. But if you're still not even at that point yet, she really can't 1roundko the trash there.

[I have no name]

I'm pretty sure I've had everyone at 400+ aff by that point but even if I didn't, that still doesn't explain how non-tank characters can possibly survive non-elemental power nukes without being overlevel...and I don't mean the ones that even tanks aren't meant to survive like last judgement (komachi is really the only one who could there, China... I've tried pounding ALL MY SKP from floors 21+ into JUST her hp and she STILL croaked to it).

My Meiling easily survived Last Judgment.  I tried Komachi tanking it at first but couldn't keep her health up.  Just pile on Arturos Gems/other HP items to make up the difference.

Heck, even the elemental ones are going to get you unless you overspend sp on ALL your affinities, which I doubt. I mean the points come from somewhere, and you just can't have them ALL at like twice as high as what is normal without severely gimping virtually everything else.

Items that boost affinities for the win.  Buff everyone to 200-300ish and use items to cover the rest.  Komachi will have naturally high affinities from getting SKP to that instead of defenses.

I always wondered if you beat the game 14 times, or if you just did it once or twice and did the winner repeat 14 times...the latter does not represent normal playthru of the rest of the game at all. Of COURSE flan is going to be way more useful grinding 30f trash if you're grinding POST winner. But if you're still not even at that point yet, she really can't 1roundko the trash there.

Nitori+Flan+Youmu+Yukari=1 round on every encounter pretty much after dual Hibachi/Serpent of Chaos.


Endgame HP  becomes more important-any character with a lot of HP can take any of WINNER's hits except Zantetsuken on Komachi for it's defense factoring.  WINNER has no non-elemental magic attacks IIRC, so MND becomes less important than the corresponding affinities.  That's why Youmu is an effective tank here, because she has a lot of HP.  Tenshi falls flat on her face here due to lack of HP, and Komachi really shines because WINNER cares not about your defenses.

[Sakurei]

I beat the winner 14 times on one save, but I beat the games several times on other saves, so uhh, yeah. I have been doing the Youmu/eiki/nitori/Flandre setup for a LONG time now.

for winner: what IHNN said about the winner fight.

[DarkAtma]

Defeated serpent of chaos, Should i Reload save to get its drop or kill winner first so it respawns and get a stronger party to make the farming easier?

[I have no name]

In that case I would cheat engine in what it drops-finding the memory address isn't too hard at all.
Though it was a cool fight and a re-fight isn't a terrible idea, WINNER is still a long way off.

edit: though I got a 1 in a billion run of good RNG in the Plus Disc and got every boss drop first fight except for one of the early ones.  Utsuho, Yuuka, Shikieiki, Kedamagrammton, Flame Tyrant, Agastobrauma, Baal Avatar, Celestial Bright Demon, Serpent of Chaos, Dual Hibachi V2, and best of all WINNER's drop after a 45 minute fight.  (missed on of the struckthrough drops, don't remember which)

[DarkAtma]

I will just put a machine god lucifer in my inventory and keep looking for rinnosuke V3 exoskeleton, Alice Necronomicon,Okuu cannon, Yuuka dress and eientei trio Egg drop, finally got 1 inmortal school badge

IMO those 3 final bosses drop should be 100%, they arent exactly easy or short the first time  :V

EDIT

Just buffed marisa spark to the trillions and Kill negative healed it, AND IT DROPPED THE THING =.=

[Parallaxal]

See, random drops like that are exactly why I'd love to see conditional drops as a mechanic for LoT2, just like they were in Etrian Odyssey.

In EO, they could get away with really high drop rates on certain rare items because you needed to kill enemies in specific ways. For example, there could be an enemy with very high fire resistance, but if you managed to kill it with a fire-elemental attack, then it'll drop something with a really high drop rate. Most regular enemies had conditional drop rates around 50-90%, while bosses had 100% conditional drop rates. Making additional hoops to jump through justified the higher drop rates, because some of those hoops were pretty tough to jump through. It also rewarded you for diversifying your party to satisfy the many different conditional drop requirements, such as using specific elements, status effects (kill when poisoned/paralyzed/whatever), speeds (kill before enemy gets a turn), and more.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah rare drop rates is always stupid unless the rare drop is from something relatively common, and even then it shouldn't be something absolutely "omg I must have", but just a treat like an elixir or some kinda consumable (the non perm stat raising kind) IMO.

As for SoC... I thought it's a kinda fun boss too but I don't know why everyone says WINNER is boring...SoC is like a watered down WINNER to me.  Problem with SoC is that it has 3 phases, but the first phase is really just pointless because it's so weak and feeble that it's just a timesink more than an actual threat. Phase 2 IIRC was also a culprit like that. I think it had one or two threatening nukes that you had to watch out for (arrow rain?) but aside from that, it was just a worse time sink cuz you basically just had to not have patchy/kaggy out for that phase in case arrow rain and that just makes it longer. Then the real fight happens in phase 3 only.

At least with Winner, the gaps in power between each phase were way smaller, mostly because he still used phase 1 and 2 attacks during 3. Plus he has a larger variety of spells with different effects and stuff that alone were kinda interesting. As for his heals, he has a finite amount of them, (only 1 of the mega heals on a first clear iirc), and even if he uses a couple small heals, and a mega heal, the fight doesn't last THAT much longer than SoC because by then you're like 200 levels higher and your damage output more than makes up for the extra health! I just don't get it. WINNER was at least a threat for me from start to finish.

[Serela]

By the time you decide to stop grinding and fight WINNER, he's probably just an endurance fight with little actual threat apart from some of the final phase skills.

That, or he murders you, obviously, but.

If you're smart you've pumped up your tanks (and probably a tanky nuker or two) enough that when you're managing to survive against him he isn't a big threat. The fight is too long (And not wimpy for most of it like SoC is) to be able to win if you're actually in danger, and if you aren't, it's just a long endurance run that isn't very interesting. You have the SP and durability to just drag it out and that's what you do.

In SoC you're probably fighting where the late phases are -really scary- and you aren't godly pumped up on key characters.

[Ghaleon]

I dunno, when I did winner last he was an actual threat from start to finish so was entertaining the entire way thru. I think I was reimu 550?

[Serela]

At Reimu 550 with proper affinities and Ran spamming DEF/MND buff for literally every single turn she can in the battle it should be an easy, practically risk-less win (Aside from phase 3 shenanigans with the scarier moves, but there's a decent chance to finish the fight without ever seeing the scarier third phase moves)

I imagine if you don't do that with Ran though (Keeps party perpetually at like 70%+ def/mnd, usually a good chunk higher) it's a lot different of a story, plus the matter of affinities.

[DarkAtma]

The instant magic hibachi used dual funeral machine once and killed everyone cept meiling ( did 200k to her) i started to panic and spam flandre praying for it to not use it again and got the item first time to boot  :3 Now for the final grinding agaisnt WINNER

[Serela]

That's lucky, Physical Reactor is a crazy good item. Almost 300 bonus to all affinities can let you get like 800-ish on all affinities for someone, turning them into a magic tank even if their mind is rock bottom.

[LadyScarlet]

In addition to reviving the thread, Version 2 of my Alphes CharaGraph set has been released! I found out the artist for most of my portraits, kaoru, has a website where you can download variations of his/her images. Naturally, I took the chance to revamp the old portraits with better-looking ones. Since kaoru also drew lots of alternate outfits for characters, I added some of those too. Here's a preview:

In short, this version has better-rendered portraits and lots of alternate portraits to choose from.
Here's the DL link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?r78b57svfizbe1q

I'm kind of ashamed for contributing character portraits so late into the game's lifespan. But you know what? It doesn't really matter.  :V