Labyrinth of Touhou 2 -13F

[Yookie]

Its speed becomes rather silly in such a way that later on you can't even switch people in (expect maybe with Kourin) to deliver the finishing blow and with it having rather high defense it is somewhat difficult to find someone who is able to consistently deal damage to it and survive its hits.  Debuffing is also rather meh since it is so fast and just shakes them off. (And it resists the element types I tend to use most but that is just my own fault.)

The Magatama is the best boss in the game handsdown.

[ZXNova]

When I was playing 12th floor the bosses I had the hardest time with was High Mirror (And Tenshi, though not as bad as high mirror). High Mirror is ridiculous. Oh my god. He isn't as bad in the later floors (cause more money items, and stuff) but oh my god did I have a hard time with High Mirror. Magatama wasn't as bad. It was a lot easier than High Mirror despite being faster imo.

[Garlyle]

Much to my surprise, Tenshi was actually really easy?

It was just a matter of figuring out which characters could actually damage her (Rumia and Utsuho's defense piercing was big, but Reisen (in addition to debuffs), Sakuya, and Patchouli were able to hurt her); after that, it was surprisingly easy to get Momiji/Yuugi/Komachi tanking everything she could do like it was no big deal (when her attack is debuffed even the attack that's supposed to punish you for buffing can be shrugged off) and then just swapping people in and out between her attacks.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah 12f tenshi was complete cake for me too.

As for bosses with stupid def/mnd... Sadly there are more, frankly i think the bosses in lot1 were more fun because they didnt absolutely require glass cannons or super op characters like nitori to hit for more than 0.

[Serela]

I think on the later bosses you're just expected to use def/mnd debuffs (Reisen/Hina and/or armtwisting hexers help get the job done- best choice being Kogasa who also just happens to carry a strong mnd debuff) or make a lot of use of the people who can ignore it, like Rumia/Utsuho/Shikieiki and the entire Eientei team. There's a lot of it, yeah, but the game has a lot of options to deal with it this time.

Also a lot of the postgame bosses really require using debuffs on their other stats too if you're going to beat them at challenge level and/or without cheesing.

[Ghaleon]

problem is they expect you to debuff them or do nothing... you say tehre's alot of options but the problem is most of the bosses have high debuff resistance too, so unless you have armtwisting, or something character-unique that either has an easy time landing debuffs anyway despite the resistance or something (dunno other than armtwisting but my non-arm-twisting hexer would fail to land a debuff on such bosses like 19 times outta 20, so I imagine your examples other than arm-twisters have something that lets them land more often), it's still quite limiting IMO. Yeah there are more than one option, and it's better than the number of viable tanks in lot1 but... it's still  a downer IMO.

[Serela]

so I imagine your examples other than arm-twisters have something that lets them land more often

Someone said Hina's move seemed to land on debuff-resistant enemies pretty decently regardless. I wouldn't know, but I figure that even if it's a bit awkward it's probably strong enough at max level w/Hexer to still be worth spamming (since she loves hexer's conversion and debuffed Hina isn't even inconvenient once Byakuren-buffer is online- you can even debuff-proof your tanks fairly well by then with little sacrifice) ESPECIALLY if she's your tank sitting around with turns anyway, and Reisen has the resistance lower thing along with Discarder. I don't know how effective Intense Vertigo is but it basically is a weaker Arm Twisting for the whole front line.

Anyway, I think the bottom line is... they wanted to make the game more challenging, but then they threw in things like Arm Twisting, subclasses, enough def/mnd ignoring attacks to fill an entire team roster's worth of attackers... this end result kind of sucks for people who DON'T take big advantage of those things, but in the end, it more or less just means you don't beat the postbosses at challenge level unless you cheese by using some lv1/empty party member slots. One person said they just did debuff wrecking ball strats with every boss, so it should be viable.

I figure it makes sense that it's a B to do postgame fights at challenge level if you aren't going to use useful options available to you. I do agree that some of them seem a bit crazy though if you just have an OTHERWISE great party. The first Deformed Boss is like, WHAT?! Whenever I do a second run and utilize Hina/Kogasa Hexer and some of those irresistable nukers I imagine it's going to be a world of difference.

[Yookie]

Hina does not care at all about enemy resistance to debuffs.
And she's still perfectly usable without having Byakuren if you gear a proper amount of people with debuff resist (or have some that are innately nigh immune) and have Rumia and/or Sanae to shrug them off.
I actually never found Byakuren to be all that useful in my parties. Most people who needed buffs got them by themselves and for everybody else there is Sanae or they just didn't get any :V.

[Hawk]

I think part of the issue is that the first game didn't have any finite methods of character growth.  If you wanted to switch up your party, you may need to farm some skill points, but those characters will be at their best once you catch up.  In the second game, there are finite gems (until the final boss), and finite tomes of reincarnation.  This means you either use them and feel like you can't switch those characters out of your party, or you never use them and you're not at peak efficiency.

I'm reasonably convinced that requiring a tome of reincarnation to recoup gems and training manuals is the single worst design decision in the game.

[ZXNova]

Tenshi was somewhat of an issue for me at first, but I eventually figured out how to beat her. I simply had to give everyone nature resistance. I wasn't giving it to enough people, just my tanks. Then from there I simply had to debuff with Hina and apply heavy/silence and deal damage with Kasen and uh... Reisen? Yeah. But Tenshi constantly spamming Violent Motherland was really really annoying.

[Serela]

I think part of the issue is that the first game didn't have any finite methods of character growth.  If you wanted to switch up your party, you may need to farm some skill points, but those characters will be at their best once you catch up.  In the second game, there are finite gems (until the final boss), and finite tomes of reincarnation.  This means you either use them and feel like you can't switch those characters out of your party, or you never use them and you're not at peak efficiency.

Overstatement. Gems don't do much and should be spent very carefully anyway to ensure it's a character you KNOW you're keeping, especially since they do little enough that you don't need to feel like you're missing out by not using them right away. And by little I mean when you're using the max of 10, which you probably won't even have for def/mnd by the time you beat the final boss.

Characters with good atk/mag will only get like a 1/12th increase in their stat from ten gems, which you might have nearly 20 of at final boss time. DEF/MND increases are bigger (and more imporant!) but the gems seem to be rarer. By then you should have a pretty good idea on where you want to put them.

And, the other uses for tomes of reincarnation (library costs returned) matters so little after the break between pre-20f-depths-enemies and post-20f that you basically only need them for gem recouping, which you should NOT need to do anywhere near enough to dwindle reincarnation supplies. Even if you carelessly spend some gems or rethink a decision, you should have more than enough books of reincarnation lying around. You find a ton more in postgame, as well.

First game was much worse about switching out your party IMO. Skill point gap was not quite as kind IMO, and the biggest offender is... people not in your party gain 20% less exp. The difference is lower now even if you're using EXP bonus skills, which you're likely not until pretty late in the game. Gems and Reincarnation Tomes are more like an OCD complaint than a legit game issue- they make a very small difference on characters other than Nitori/Renko (one being at the very, very end of the game) so hardly hurts efficiency and if you're going through tomes of reincarnation that much you're being really unsmart about gem usage.

With stat scaling on level ups, I'm pretty sure even if you wanted to use a lot of gems on the person you just switched in but couldn't for some reason, you're still better off than you were switching people in in LoT1. Eventually the exp difference smoothes out, but it takes a long time. Library levels were imo more restrictive in LoT1 too but w/e

MP Gems make the biggest difference since 10 mp is actually a helluva lot of mp, but they're also the most common one and only a few characters -really- get a big boost from it. Like Nitori. Geez, why does she have to be worth sinking every gem (minus magic) and all your best gear on. TOO GOOD.

[Hawk]

My point was that I think people feel worse about switching in characters because of the mechanic, but I mixed in a purist gripe that didn't really belong.  Even if the gems are subtle mechanical differences, I think they have a much more profound effect on player behavior.

I felt perfectly fine switching out my characters in LoT 1, and less-so in 2.  Of course I'm not necessarily representative, but it does make me think there's something there.

[Serela]

In LoT1, switching characters on a regular basis barely even seemable viable to me imo- in LoT2 on the other hand, it almost seems encouraged. Everyone will likely have the same EXP until late in the game, and same goes for how much the library matters. In LoT1 you're losing significant amounts of exp on the characters you need for bosses by not using them ;_;

[jaxter0987]

Insanely large post incoming: Not quite as big as I thought it'd be. I've done this before where I leave a thread for a month or two and come back, quoting posts of interest that I missed and its usually a lot larger.

https://www.mediafire.com/?t1v567p5sced1zl

I've updated the English patch for LoT1 Special Disk.

Fixes:
-The level goddess no longer calls Rinnosuke a lady
-Re-added the image for Meiling's mountain breaker and Youmu's slash of eternity. Youmu's graphic is also used in Alice's boss fight (IIRC), so that's incidentally fixed, as well as Sanae's miracle fruits and Kanako's Virtue of Wind God, which use the same graphic as Mountain Breaker.
-Changed the names of 'Magic Sword "Chaos"' and 'Holy Sword "Sunlight"' to 'Demonic Sword Chaos' and 'Holy Sword Nikkou'. "Nikkou" is her name, so it shouldn't be translated. Also updated the translation note with some more information. All that Sengoku Rance has been paying off.
-Changed Rinnosuke's out-of-TP message
-Changed Mary's name to "Maribel Hearn"
-I think there were a few untranslated names, like Shikieiki v3 or something.
-Changed all "(u)huhu" to the vastly superior "(u)fufu"
-Fixed the Arturos Gem/King Arthur mixup - the "Found treasure!" line uses Arturos Gem now.
-Probably a couple of other things I can't remember.

Did not fix:
-The missing sound effects on enemy plus-disk character bosses. Can't figure that crap out.

Dunno how many people still play 1, but here it is. Only took four years. This seems to work perfectly fine, but fixing the Lady/Lord issue on levelup involved more assembly than I like, so it's possible I broke something.

You will need the .orig files for img.dxa, img1.dxa, and thLabyrinth_ver3.exe for the patch to work. If there are any issues, running the old patch ( http://www.mediafire.com/?c0ic698csyvwfcb ) will undo everything... again, as long as you have the .orig files.

Awesome. I still play LoT1 from time to time. Floor 30 is ridiculous. I can handle almost all the "trash" encounters, with Chen giving me trouble if I'm crazy unlucky, but I still need to grind an absurd amount to take on the bosses on the floor. I'm probably going to need help with patching since I acquired the Special Disk prepatched from a friend. Haven't read the readme yet though, so I won't be asking for help just yet (busy catching up on the thread after a several month leave due to school work).

Pharmacologist is a good subclass for tanks with spare turns. Use Herb of Excitement on whoever's about to attack (It lasts for two of their turns for 36% extra damage at max) or use Placebo Effect on people with like 50~70% buffs to keep them high up. Incense Treatment isn't much good- it's highly situational and even then it costs 5 points instead of 3 to level, and is really costly to use until maxed.

Can't agree with you enough. Making Wriggle a Pharmacologist was the best thing I could have done with her, with my setup.

It's probably better to make your own opinions than go off the descriptions anyway- some of them are outdated due to character rebalancing, some of them I just don't really agree with, and in several cases you can make other effective ways to creatively use people.

What the descriptions SHOULD be is a general idea of what the character is capable of and what their strengths and weaknesses are. They never were meant as the "be all end all" build for said character. That said, everything you've stated is true. I REALLY didn't agree with some of them, but since I never wanted to sit down and rewrite them, I just edited the descriptions enough for me to bear with them.

Also, yeah, Nitori is just crazy, given she'll become as tanky as your tanks in a FULL ATTACK BUILD and has one of the strongest attacks in the entire game, with the gigantic mp recovery potential to spam it despite cost and delay. I wouldn't say Renko exactly makes other tanks obsolete since lots of other tanks have special qualities and her moveset is limited and begs for certain subclasses unless you just ditched it for Pharmacologist (viable but lol) and, quite honestly, you get Renko SO LATE IN THE GAME that I'm kind of glad she's got enough of an edge to shine a little. Maribel is kind of meh other than her passive to treat enemy buffs as debuffs, but she's quite versatile at least and many late postgame bosses buff themselves sometimes so I didn't feel like I wasted the slot... but yeah she's generally pretty eh.

Yeah, Tank Byakuren Strategist is just too good. That said, I still use Renko for an instantaneous buff to everyone at the start of a battle when used in conjunction with Aya and also to refresh buffs when they get dispelled. I also have Byakuren on the frontline as well when I do this, to get a jump start on her buffing spree. Dodging_Rain beat me to it.

Is Maribel's non elemental attack meh as well? I was actually looking forward to trying it out once I got through post game with my first playthrough (which I did, kept saves before the final boss though since I'd rather keep farming for gems with the weaker version before a Plus Disk of sorts comes out) and once I be the final boss for the first time on my synergy run (which I REALLY need to get back into).

I stilll use Renko's charge even with Byakuren on the field because

Spoiler:

Culex

and strengthened Ame-no-Murakumo has a minion with a skill that will dispel your buffs (including Overheat) until I eliminate it first (which are the times when I use Renko as enhancers) but against anything else I just need a charge for the initial phase to hand buffs to Byakuren to pass around which leaves Renko open for other tasks, plus a fully buffed Nitori with herb of excitement and stacks of overheat is scary. Admittedly I still have Renko as enhancer but I will see if I can move her to pharmacist later on although it may not be the case if there are more dispel users in future contents.

It doesn't seem to have any benefit from leveling, for some reason. No reduction in MP cost, the post-use gauge doesn't change, and the healing doesn't change either.
As for Hourai Elixir, it is named after Mt Penglai (Hourai in japanese mythology), that was said to be a place where immortals lived. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Penglai

Speaking of cards that have no apparent benefits to leveling, Magic Filling annoys me the most. My Magicians have all these extra skill points and Magic Filling does nothing more when leveled (as far as I know). I first thought it would decrease the rate at which the buff decays but alas, it was not the case.

@ Serela That's not why the IN incident happened. After the Lunarians had tried to continually tried to execute Kaguya and she just would not stay dead... They sent her to Earth as punishment. Kaguya actually didn't take it as punishment, and enjoyed Earth. The Lunarians sent may emmissaries to bring Kaguya back, but she refused each time because she loved the new place she was living. The lunarians didn't stop sending people to bring her back though. One the emmissaries was Eirin, and rather then trying to bring her back, she asked for her forgiveness and to work up under her. Eirin sealed off most of her power and became her servant (Eirin was one of the first people to move to the moon from Earth and is thought to be Lord Omoikane). Any other emmissary that came to bring Kaguya back was killed by Eirin. They had to go into hiding cause of that. Thousands of years later (They probably would have forgiven them by now), Reisen came to Earth to escape the Lunar-Earth War, Kaguya and Eirin took her in. Eventually the Lunarians got in contact with Kaguya and Eirin and told her that they were gonna bring Reisen back without any exceptions. This is what lead to the IN incident. It was for Reisen's sake. Hiding the full moon blah blah, it ended being pointless cause the Gensokyo barrier would have kept the lunarians from entering. Nice story huh? (Thus is why Kaguya is best character)

That just made my day. I was always tired of the crap Reisen gets as far as fandom goes (she gets crap even in "Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth" which despite being a 4-koma, is technically canon to the universe) and reading that the entire IN incident was for her sake made me really happy. (If it wasn't obvious by now, Reisen is one of my favorite Touhous).

MP Gems make the biggest difference since 10 mp is actually a helluva lot of mp, but they're also the most common one and only a few characters -really- get a big boost from it. Like Nitori. Geez, why does she have to be worth sinking every gem (minus magic) and all your best gear on. TOO GOOD.

However, MP Gems (and TP Gems) are not farmable (with good reason).
Also, I forgot who mentioned it, but I'm also really hesitant about using limited supply items. To this day, I still have not used a single MP / TP Gem. I've also yet to use a Skill Boost Tome since I haven't quite finalized my party yet. Marisa is looking to be the next person I cut for a more flexible and consistent MAG attacker in Yuuka. That said, I haven't tried Yuuka out yet to make the decision.

[Yookie]

I took both Marisa and Alice with me on my first run and was rather disappointed. Marisa's consistent damage was okay-ish even with Alice in the back row for the boost and her Master Spark really lost most of its impact it had in LoT1.
Alice seems to have taken a hit in terms of offensive capabilities as well seeing as she doesn't even deal much damage to fire-weak enemies (of which there are a lot so I thought she'd be useful and kept her for some time after giving Marisa the boot).
The damage formula for Artful Sacrifice seems to factor in a lot of the enemies defense since it always did either nothing or an acceptable amount. (Same goes for her other spells).

The thing with Yuuka is that she starts of rather weak on the defensive side (except for enemies that use only Nature and/or Mystic element attacks).
She needs some investment in her weak resistances and a lot of skillpoints, but once that point is reached she can comfortably take the second-left slot for most encounters.
(My experiences might be biased since she gets favorable treatment from me. :V)

[Kirin no Sora]

However, MP Gems (and TP Gems) are not farmable (with good reason).
Also, I forgot who mentioned it, but I'm also really hesitant about using limited supply items. To this day, I still have not used a single MP / TP Gem. I've also yet to use a Skill Boost Tome since I haven't quite finalized my party yet. Marisa is looking to be the next person I cut for a more flexible and consistent MAG attacker in Yuuka. That said, I haven't tried Yuuka out yet to make the decision.

Wait a second.

Why would MP and TP gems not being farmable be a good thing? I thought that the limit for any gem on a character is 10, so why?

Also, they should make a reusable version of "Tome of Reincarnation", because it makes no damn sense for that item to be limited in usage.

[Serela]

Is Maribel's non elemental attack meh as well? I was actually looking forward to trying it out once I got through post game with my first playthrough

It's alright for randoms. Not super special, but nice. A boss would have to have 200+ affinity across the board to consider using it on one of those, though. Her other attack is also better in randoms since the status effects are pretty strong on it.

Also, they should make a reusable version of "Tome of Reincarnation", because it makes no damn sense for that item to be limited in usage.

I don't really get the hate on tome of reincarnation. It didn't even exist in LoT1, where it would still have been pretty important for library level refunds, as they were more severe in cost in that game imo. I also still don't understand how you're likely to go through them even if you're a bit loose about it.

With Tomes of Reincarnation you can, for example, do things like blow every gem, manual, and yen on someone ideal for a boss and then ABSOLUTELY SLAUGHTER IT, and then tome them back down. Tome of Reincarnation is actually pretty fuggin powerful, and basically removes the concept of having characters that you've invested in more than others, even if you've been devotedly pumping them extra the entire game. (I did that strat a couple times- for killing 6F Tenshi with Yuugi on ZERO GRINDING self-imposed limitation so I was like lv20, and then for 20F Mirror with Suwako. And then kept Suwako for a short time to help with 20f depths grinds. The strat was extremely effective and Suwako was fuggin nuts whilst I kept her)

Like, while the effect WOULD be lessened in postgame where money (and therefore library efficiency) is bloated and the enemies are fearsome enough for your superpumped character to not be so overwhelming, it still basically puts every character in your roster at blank-slate potential. You might think that's cool, but it's like, there's a reason some stuff isn't freely refundable? You already have equal EXP distribution before passives and free levelup bonus reassignment, switching your team about is a million times easier than LoT1, etc. It's just a way so that if you use some of those limited items on a character you think you'll keep and then go "oops, changed my mind" you're fine, and you get plenty of them so you could even change your ENTIRE team in postgame.

(About tomes of enlightenment, by the time you've got spare skill points for them [the wiki writer clearly has a much higher opinion of boost skills than me] you should be near the final boss or later, so you should know who's staying in your team and who could use them)

[Pesco]

The consumables that my Cheat Engine cannot farm are next to none :V

[Hawk]

I don't really get the hate on tome of reincarnation. It didn't even exist in LoT1, where it would still have been pretty important for library level refunds, as they were more severe in cost in that game imo. I also still don't understand how you're likely to go through them even if you're a bit loose about it.

First of all, I think you're drastically overstating the number of ToRs there are in the game.  I think there're like 13 or something?  That's not a high number at all.

Second, I submit that it's something of a self fulfilling prophecy.  By limiting their supply, you are necessarily going to be much more conscientious of their applications.  You'll form an internal heuristic for when it is "worthwhile", and that heuristic might be strict enough that you feel that you could never run out if you follow it.  If they are farmable, that heuristic changes, and you become proportionally more carefree about their use.  If they're infinitely free, even more so.

In my solo hard run, I've not completed the second stratum yet, and I've used over 50.  Of course it's an esoteric run, and that changes things to some degree, but I would probably have a similarly high count (20-30 or so) if I were doing a normal hard mode run while still having infinite ToRs.

[Axel Ryman]

The consumables that my Cheat Engine cannot farm are next to none :V

I tried that with the 20% Damage Taken/Dealt item just to see if it stacks.


It doesn't

[Serela]

In my solo hard run, I've not completed the second stratum yet, and I've used over 50.  Of course it's an esoteric run, and that changes things to some degree, but I would probably have a similarly high count (20-30 or so) if I were doing a normal hard mode run while still having infinite ToRs.

Well, the solo run is different- you're going to use everything you have on the one person you're using, of course.

But regardless, the point is different. If you had infinite gems you'd be using a ton of those too. Just because having infinite means you use it more doesn't mean you should have more of them. It changes the balance of the game and I don't think in a way that's for the better. Regaining monetary cost from the library and spending gems frivolously is two things. One, it means you can blow all your stuff to power people up and just recoup it for no cost, without worrying about anything and using this to make the game easier. Second, it's also a powerup that's really goddamn tedious.

Anyway, this is a pointless conversation. Of course if you hack the game to give yourself more of a powerful item you're going to use it a lot. That doesn't say anything about the balance of limiting it. If you were limited you'd use them smartly instead of spending gems and manuals so early in the game and so frivolously, so you wouldn't need them. The benefit from using the gems/tomes is fairly low in most cases anyway, especially when spending significantly less than 10 gems, and considering one person getting some gems is only one out of 12. (MP is a little different. And using boost tomes probably isn't even worth it yet because you should spend your points on something else.)

[ZXNova]

Speaking of ToR, decided to use one on Koma and decided to replace guardian with pharmacologist, and it is working lovely. She's a lot more useful now then when she had guardian and is just as tanky. Also, the Herb of Excitement made it possible to kill Ama no Murakumo during his first phase with Kasen, Flandre, Reisen, and Aya. I simply had to take advantage of Aya's Divaness and 937 speed. lolol.

[Hawk]

Speaking of ToR, decided to use one on Koma and decided to replace guardian with pharmacologist, and it is working lovely. She's a lot more useful now then when she had guardian and is just as tanky.

Just to make sure: you can reset subclasses without ToRs.  Doing a skill reset also removes your subclass.

[Serela]

Ouch, yeah, you can reset subclasses without reincarnating XD The tome is for resetting Library levels (including getting the money spent back) and the special Hakurei Shrine consumable items like training manuals, gems, and tomes of enlightenment.

Speaking of training manuals, if you're using Rinnosuke, just dump every single one you ever get onto him. Even at lv200 he thirsts for more skillpoints. Once you hit the final boss area, all your other most skillpoint-thirsty characters like Byakuren should still be basically fine. (That being said, dumping them all on someone like Byakuren until you reach that point and then reincarnating wouldn't be bad)

[jaxter0987]

Wait a second.

Why would MP and TP gems not being farmable be a good thing? I thought that the limit for any gem on a character is 10, so why?

Also, they should make a reusable version of "Tome of Reincarnation", because it makes no damn sense for that item to be limited in usage.

Serela already pointed out how useful MP Gems are to Nitori (and Okuu), though I will say that I think more than just a few characters benefit from additional MP.
Maybe I'm just blowing things out of proportion, but the prospect of being able to get all 12 party members to have +10 MP sounds broken to me. I can only get 3 characters to +10 MP with all the MP gems in the entire game. Some people might be able to get 4 or even 5 characters with +10 MP if they beat bosses at challenge level and were lucky.

TP is a lot less useful, given that few characters actually have interactions with it. Still, 10 extra TP could potentially give Mokou two more Resurrections, gives Kasen and Meiling another shot at activating Guts, and gives characters with Emergency Recovery and Rapid Charge more uses.

[Serela]

I just used TP gems on characters I wanted in my random battles more (especially people who only defaulted at like 10~12 tp) but the actual TP Boost skill does give you like 10 more tp too, albiet 10 skp on that is a postgame thing.

If Mokou dies that much you probably can't handle that boss anyway, and Kasen/Meiling have to get awfully lucky to trigger 3 guts given the 50% chances, but those are definitely still nice uses. Especially on the fights where Mokou is dying that much simply because the boss has some ridiculous nukey attack.

[Kirin no Sora]

Serela already pointed out how useful MP Gems are to Nitori (and Okuu), though I will say that I think more than just a few characters benefit from additional MP.
Maybe I'm just blowing things out of proportion, but the prospect of being able to get all 12 party members to have +10 MP sounds broken to me. I can only get 3 characters to +10 MP with all the MP gems in the entire game. Some people might be able to get 4 or even 5 characters with +10 MP if they beat bosses at challenge level and were lucky.

Well, 10 extra MP would be great for all, yes. But really, I actually can't see that as a actual game breaker, since they put a "10 of any one gem limit" into the system to prevent it from being more than 10 MP.

TP is a lot less useful, given that few characters actually have interactions with it. Still, 10 extra TP could potentially give Mokou two more Resurrections, gives Kasen and Meiling another shot at activating Guts, and gives characters with Emergency Recovery and Rapid Charge more uses.

And that's a good reason to allow for farming TP gems. After all, a few extra activations of said skills wouldn't break the game, would it?

Speaking of training manuals, if you're using Rinnosuke, just dump every single one you ever get onto him. Even at lv200 he thirsts for more skillpoints.

Ah, the price of turning Rinnosuke into MANnosuke is a hefty one, ne?

[ZXNova]

Well I kind of had to use a ToR on Koma anyway, I had some useless gems on her (back when I was starting off playing this... mistakes were made), I'm guessing you can get rid of gems with skill reset (I hope not)

[Kuilfrayt]

I'm guessing you can get rid of gems with skill reset (I hope not)

You can't.
ToR will reset the points spent in the Magic Library, Gems, Training Manuals and Tome of Insight on the character you use it on (Subclass and Skill points included, since you have to perform a reset before having the option of using a ToR). Skill reset will only reset their Skill points and their Subclass. And you can rearrange the LvlUp bonuses at any point without resetting anything else.

[Hawk]

You can't.
ToR will reset the points spent in the Magic Library, Gems, Training Manuals and Tome of Insight on the character you use it on (Subclass and Skill points included, since you have to perform a reset before having the option of using a ToR). Skill reset will only reset their Skill points and their Subclass. And you can rearrange the LvlUp bonuses at any point without resetting anything else.

As a bizarre point of interest: ToRs reset your level up bonuses too, even though it's unnecessary.