Author Topic: Devil of Decline (Read 30493 times)

Ghaleon · « **Reply #30 on:** May 24, 2015, 07:09:26 AM »

Somehow your last post inspired me to beat the game without wiki or stupid grinding..Thanks alot =P

I DID beat Zhuli with...well...with pretty much what I use on everything else so far, so if I can beat her 5 levels below her without any boss-specific tactis like water shield (though I would have used it if I knew about it lol!), hopefully it can carry me thru the rest.

Kinda unrelated, but somehow the BGM for alice maestra reminds me of a touhou remix song I used to have on my phone that I loved. but I forgot which circle wrote it (I thought it was magnum opus but I can't find it!... I used to play that song side by side with this one though, which is why I'm posting it cuz it reminds me... that and some romantic children remix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHE0busQTI

oh yeah, a fairly specific question.
My reimu has ran on her... my patchy has star sapphire on her. Ran has a 15 mp izuna ~~drop~~ nuke that does 90 power in light damage... star sapphire has light web which does 90 power in light damage for 10mp. Reimu's light nuke skill is 11, patchy's is 6...

However my reimu frequently creams the shit out of light-weak enemies with izuna for 1kish.. patchy, on the SAME enemies, hits for like 600-700 only, despite having a much higher int. Is the difference between 11 and 6 light nuke skill really THAT much? or is there some kind of hidden feature to ran's nuke that makes it so much more powerful (makes sense since it costs way more mp I guess)..

edit: so I'm in the final dungeon, clearing every trash encounter in the first 3 rooms no problem.. wow, over-rated. honest to got, not only isn't it not much harder imo, it's actually LESS hard than the trash in hell and tower #2 imo...

then a single tank with no allies appear.. I hear they suck so I go all out.. it moves before even remilia, and she's pretty effing fast.. main cannon, 1shot my entire party... oh-kayyy...

I can accept very specific baddies in very specific dungeons have death moves...though that's not great, I can accept it.

a you-lose...period.. move that has lightning speed/initiative? wdf?!

edit: Jesus yokai fuck! Do tanks do ANYTHING other than main cannon? no wipes ever...except when a tank.. then they main cannon first turn. I can't 1-shot them with anything I've tried either. so no aya first turn use big nuke 1shot them either... sigh.

MetalStudios · « **Reply #31 on:** May 24, 2015, 12:22:16 PM »

Yeah those tanks freaking suck
They have a single target attack that they sometimes use as well, I think it ignores defense
I just run from them every time they show up XD
The first couple rooms of the castle are pretty good for level grinding, all the enemies have weaknesses and give off some decent exp (I have the Mokou Yukkuri shikigami so I also get an exp bonus as well)
This area has so many good shikigami to recruit as well
The beholders are pretty good, and the sharks have some awesome ice attacks
There's also this green starfish thing, you'll know it when you see it, and it has a field effect that increases all stats for you're whole party for like 6 turns

As far as the element skill levels, it seems they really do make a difference as I've noticed a similar effect with my Reimu's and Marisa's mystic stat
The bosses of the castle really become a battle of attrition if nothing else, after all you can buff all you want but once you run out of MP you're done
At this point it would probably behoove you to equip one shikigami with good attacks on each character and just equip the other slots purely for stat boosts and passives, helps one to be prepared for the BS random encounters I've noticed
But seriously, screw those tanks, and pretty much every mechanical looking enemy in the castle, they all do something stupid

Serela · « **Reply #32 on:** May 24, 2015, 12:32:58 PM »

Tanks are weak to water and should be countered with Mighty Shield Wall. If you run into 3 at once though, unless you've got a ton of water shikigami, welp... 3 main cannons will still wreck you through shield wall unless you're using the Solitude formation and they all target the front.

About Ran; some of the character-specific skills feel like they have the level-dependent bonus even though they don't SAY they do. I never tested though; I looked at Ran's skill, saw it took forever to learn for a skill of it's power, and just kinda dropped her after the second tower boss. Good to hear it's actually a lot stronger than that. HOWEVER, if Reimu has significantly better INT, or a staff/magic boost robe, well. :P (edit:oh, you said patch has way more)

The one other thing is that, since we aren't exactly running around reading the manual, it's very easy not to know Heavy Armor decreases your magic power by 10~20% depending on the armor. (light armor, as in not robes, does by a little bit, but only like 1~4% so it doesn't matter much)

Although, one thing that'd really seal the deal about Ran is if you swapped her and Star on Reimu/Patch (or put both on the same one, for a battle) and compared the damage. I'm curious, too.

Validon98 · « **Reply #33 on:** May 24, 2015, 12:36:53 PM »

Another difference between Ran's skill and Star Sapphire's is that Ran's is her unique skill, and skills unique to a shikigami often scale often level (I forget if it does in the case of Descent of Gongen-Izuna), while Star's is Starlight Web, which is a general skill with no scaling based on level. The light element level helps a little, but only boosts damage by roughly a percent or so, I forget.

The tank enemies don't ALWAYS Main Cannon... but will Main Cannon 99% of the time. They're assholes, you see one, you run unless you think you can clear them super fast. Some enemies aren't too bad, but the tanks are the first of the "enemies that are a pain" that make the Demon Castle of Chaos a major difficulty spike.

I didn't know that heavy armor and light armor reduced magic power, though. Huh. That's interesting to know, though.

Serela · « **Reply #34 on:** May 24, 2015, 12:38:50 PM »

Validon:I suspect so, yeah, but the issue is it doesn't say that it powers up via level. Which is annoying, if they still do anyway. At least it means a lot of shikigami just got somewhat more relevant long-term.

edit:I just tested 5 touhou-character-specific magic attacks against similar power plain attacks of the same element with lv99 characters+shikigami with assistance from Sairaan's save file. The specific attacks do NOT have any extra damage bonus, apart from likely eventually obtaining a +X% power passive skill on the shikigami at some point (although those are usually so late, the attack is already nearly useless by then. Why does Letty even bother learning one?) The damage difference experienced by Ghaleon is probably due to heavy armor shenanigans, a light damage increase passive, or something else like that.

Spoiler:

Most (or all) of the overly expensive character-specific attack shenanigans are fixed in Banquet's rebalance, but the attacks themselves aren't any stronger, just a little cheaper.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #35 on:** May 25, 2015, 10:24:23 AM »

I didn't know heavy armor lowers magic damage... I'm not sure if that's a factor or not. Both reimu and patchy have armor with the heavy armor icon, but reimu's is "magic plate mail" (I think.. magic something.. kinda has a chance of being heavy armor for magic users, or it just might say magic cuz it has high magic resistance too, who knows)..and Patchy is probably wearing the epitome of really heavy ordinary armor: Maximillion.

They also both are wearing +10% magic weapons. (Reimu a bardiche, patchy a rune staff.. some kinda staff with 10% magic attack and 20%mp. I think it was rune staff).

HOWEVER, do shields count too? Reimu has a little bitty shield called topaz guarder or something, and patchy has... I forget, but it's a big looking shield with the big shield icon. Speaking of shields, what's up with that early game shield that says "only uses 1 hand".. I've never seen a 2 handed shield, and as far as I can tell, they seem 1-handed in the game anyway =P. Is that by chance saying it doesn't lower magic attack like other heavy shields? no clue.

ANYWAY, bottom line is shield size is the only possible factor that could explain my issue with ran/star light nukes. Howeve rpatchy's int isn'ta ctually way more like I thought, I just assumed it was because I wasn't deliberately pumping reimu's int or anything. Patchy's IS higher (patchy has 110, reimu has 95), but probably not 'way' so.

Anyway, despite that, I did more testing, and ran's nuke is most definitely more powerful still. I swapped shikigami between reimu and patchy like you suggested, and patchy does more damage using ran as well.

some number comparisons.
Reimu with ran hitting goblin does 700-800 damage.
patchy hitting goblin with light web does ~480 damage.
Reimu hitting goblin with light web does ~540 damage
patchy hitting goblin with izuna does ~580 damage

I didn't retest on goblins like 100 times or anything, but fact is I did notice this before testing thru numerous uses to begin with so it's not like a freak occurrence what I got.
I made a fraps video too if anyone wants to see. I don't really wanna bother uploading it to youtube unless someone asks for it though.

Serela · « **Reply #36 on:** May 25, 2015, 11:01:17 AM »

The magic penalty is different per armor; magic plate mail might be towards the 10% whilst maximillian might be towards the 20%. And in practice, it didn't feel like a -10% final damage modifier; it felt like 10% off the initial power of the attack before calculating it against enemy stats, aka more significant. Also, man, I used the magic plate mail for so long, it's mdef is just too good XD

When I tested Ran's nuke and Starlight Web with them equipped on the same character at the same time, they did the exact same damage. (the variance was single digit with it doing several hundred damage)

I don't know if heavy shields have a penalty although I highly doubt it due to the nature of shields; they just tend to have higher def stats and lower activation rates, where the small ones often have 40~50% activation and lower def. The one-handed shield means you can use it even when attacking with a spear or whilst casting magic. I think it's the only one in the game.

There's also the possibility of your formation being the one with Matk boosts? Or accessory slots? Or other shikigami interfering? I'm only being a stickler like this since my results were clearly "they're the exact same".

EDIT:Looked it up. Magic Plate Armor is -15%, Maximillian is -20%. Heavy armors are between -14 and -20, light armors are just between -1% and -5%. They're mostly on the high ends of the spectrum in both cases, though.

Edit Again:Also, if you're using it on a goblin and hitting weakness, Reimu probably does more damage in general due to a superior STR stat; str boosts weakness damage. INT also increases slayer damage whilst I'm at it. And maaaaaybe crit but inconsistent sources and no will to test it myself.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #37 on:** May 26, 2015, 08:26:45 AM »

didn't realize str did that too, or I did and forgot.

So I just beat up tenshi, she was complete cake, her biggest spells would only hit one person for like 150 (super gravity iirc).. pretty dumb since like 6 different trash enemies before her could hit my entire party for 200 before remilia can move unless aya first strike.

Anyway, I felt pretty sloppy clearing that outdoor/town thing part of the dungoen, but now with all these new recipes, I removed patchy's maximillion armor for some robes with +8% magic damage and fast cast and meditation. I also gave her that craftable staff for the magic piercing, which I'm hoping means enemies with circle defense act like they have - defense, and enemies with - defense act like they have triangle defense, etc. I just hope adamantine and orhalicum aren't as stupid impossible to get as they were in GoS, because that ultimate sword requiring one of each needs remi, but I decided the staff should come first because it didn't need adamantine.

edit: I just went off to the forest of magic to explore longshot area, bumped across some weird enemy named star platinum. It got satori'd... hopefully it's a spiffy get =P

Serela · « **Reply #38 on:** May 26, 2015, 12:29:39 PM »

It took me a long heft of grinding to get Star Plat to join XD C rank (1/16) and an uncommon encounter that only appears in the longshot areas. Don't forget Cloudy Heavens longshot and Hill of the Nameless longshot, or whatever that purple place is called.

Did Tenshi never use her scary moves like Ectoplasm Net? (large spread physical with significant instant death chance <.< Counterable but it sounds like you never even had to worry about it) And she's got the spread attack Land Impact which is no joke (upgraded earth hand with spread aoe) and I think Kaname Funnel. She's pretty easy to quick kill if you use

Spoiler:

in any case, though.

The piercing staff won't make enemies weak, but it does ignore a level of resistance, which becomes increasingly relevant as the random battles get tougher. You'll get more orichalcon/adamantite, so don't worry about it if it makes you regret your purchase; there's 3 or 4 full chunks before final boss.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #39 on:** May 26, 2015, 03:27:01 PM »

Yeah tenshi never used ectoplasm net for me. I dont knkw how lucky that was though since she only lasted like 5 turns. Mokou and remi could both demonbane her for like 500 and she didnt really seem to have good defenses against dark and mystic magic either.

Star platinum really helps with killing yukkuri though. Before tenshi i never kill3d a single yukkuri sister, not even after running into like 5 of those 3 packs. But between tensi, hatate, and star plat, stray yukkuri get rolled. One time my remi hit one for 2 even.. Like not 1.0.1.0.0. But 1.0.2.1.0. Not sure if that is normal or not.

Serela · « **Reply #40 on:** May 31, 2015, 02:44:05 PM »

Was trying to find the flag via cheat engine for being able to recruit monsters as shikigami, so that I could start a run and trigger it for a Monster Shikigami Only playthrough. After awhile, I narrowed it down to... 0 addresses. >_> I might have messed up but I'm not sure if I was even doing it right, welp.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #41 on:** May 31, 2015, 05:19:55 PM »

With GoS, finding thr address for certain things was heaps harder than LoT. I imagine DoD is the same way.

Eirin and kaggy beat. I have a feeling im pretty low level (36 my highest). I wsnt to grind a bit so every trash enemy in the game cant 1shot my entire party somehow. But ive opted to do it after I get those adamantine and orhalcium pieces.

Ive also been looking at validons lets play and game seems to hate me more with trash. Many enemies mentioned in later dungeons i seem to encounter sooner. Oarfish and those other electric demon things for example I bumped into many way back at the town area. And those darn holy spirit things dont just cast holy zapper, star blaze (I WISH they cast that!) holy web... I had thr joys of them using holy and testament every time... Oh. And I also have them spawn in groups, sometimed with another enemy namef testament that Has 2k health and likes to main cannon the party for 200 before I can blink.

Somehow the bosses seem more manageable though. Kaggy and eirin didnt play nice either. Its just that kaggy cant 1 shot my entire party. Dark web did kinda come close though. Eirin paralized me fairly often too.

Anyway... Hoping to get my uber zord soon.

Serela · « **Reply #42 on:** June 01, 2015, 03:28:57 PM »

Uber zord? You should be able to make several of the weapons and/or armors by now. Don't forget to craft the ada/ori pieces into full chunks~

36 is pretty expected around there. Leveling up doesn't do a whole lot at this point anyway, since it's just a couple stat points (unless it means a shikigami learned an awesome nuke or somethin').

Testament is a pain if you don't have any strong dark skill, but is pretty simple if you do. The real awful enemies are the lightning ones in otoha's tower. Those are a stupid, awful nightmare and the upgraded versions of them always made me just go "nope, running" plus they even have main cannon so I can't just use element shield wall :T AND THEY'RE SO COMMON, and they'll come in groups so even with the 250 pwr water nuke you can't just kill them first. Everything else is fine though. Otoha surprisingly gave me the most trouble, too...

Also, I'm just curious what your party is at this point c: In terms of character+weapon-type choice and the shikigami you're using

Ghaleon · « **Reply #43 on:** June 01, 2015, 04:08:57 PM »

I already made that staff. And some armor. I forgot what exactly its been awhile and im not on my pc atm. But yeah I only got 2 pieces of orhalcium acter using 4 out of 5 shards. Im still at 1 2\4 for adamantine. So i used one orhalcium on my staff. Anf the other 2 will go on my slay everything that never hae a slayer for it sword.

I made some armor too but forgot what. Not on my pc.

My team comp is probably horrid in terms of shikigami because like I said, you kotivat3d me to try without looking at em. I basically have not a single one with something great for endgame I rekon in terms of survival. No good tank abilities minus the soso absorb 1 physical hit for the whole party thing with a cd of 3 on koakuma.. You keep mentioning rumias slurp but it never hits for me. And when it does all it does is hit for 0 and fail to land a debuff =\...

Trash is really proving harder than bosses still though so meh... And leveling up is more just so my hp will be high enough to be 2shot by many attacks instead of 1shot.

Oh yeah... Anyway im using reimu, patchy, remi, mokou, and nitori. With zords on remi and mokou. Staff on patchy, bardiche on reimu, and spears on nitori.

I must use patchy and remi cuz they are 2 of my fave taohaos but recognize remi is kinda awful in this game due to winning the shittiest last word award. Snd NOT having the stats to make up for it.

I also have yet to learn one of these fabled multi hit zord attacks =(.

Serela · « **Reply #44 on:** June 01, 2015, 05:02:36 PM »

Remi's STR and AGI are very high, which is enough to make her a pretty good physical attacker. And I've gotta be honest here, most of the LWs are pretty meh. All the damage ones mostly become really so-so by the point you're at now, and several of the support ones are eh. Nitori/Mokou/Reimu are up there at the best LWs in the entire cast so your view is a bit skewed :V Slurp is based on your weapon so if someone with a low acc weapon is using it, well. And yeah, most big targets have some resist to the status (and some bosses will be immune) but anything that can get hit even 1/5 times will start dropping like wet tissue paper to elemental skills afterwords, so it's got it's uses. It's annoying to test though.

Weapon skills. If Reimu doesn't have Magical Hammer (a more accessible version of Slurp that also debuffs light/dark resist, but lower duration), use stun blow. Full Strength Blow (or whole body or something), use Hard Hit. At skill 20 you definitely want to learn Manko Blow or whatnot from Full/Whole BodyStrengthIdunno. I DIDN'T HAVE A TYPE 1 BLUNT USER. There's a lot of others but they're just meh spread attacks with different variety effects.

Swords. You'll learn Chain Slash from mirage blade, although it's type 1 so it may be tough to inspire, it shouldn't be too hard though. Remi can learn Quick Break (ignores a tier of slash resistance, quite nifty) from Sonic Blade, Mokou can learn Cyclone Zapper from Meteor Zapper (although it's just another plain alltarget), and at 19 they can both learn Iai Slash from Vacuum Sword (from sonic blade), a strong aoe with giant/transcendent slayer.

Not sure how much to care about spear skills (not that they're bad, but it's type 1 or bust and most of the strong ones w/good quicks are "normal attack"). Reckless Rush(19) from Splash Charge(15) from Impale Charge? Nitori should already have Critical Thrust (which if not, is easier from sharp skewer)

Ghaleon · « **Reply #45 on:** June 01, 2015, 07:57:42 PM »

I do have magical hammet on raymoo. But like slurp, it never debuffs... Not even on the trash i try using it on. (Testaments, mushushushushu dragons or whatever, divina princess or whatever they are called, etc)... I never got rid of it though lol.

Remi already has quick slasb (it is basically how I defeated ms faceplant), and iai slash. Ill try spamming some mirage blade though.

Nitori has some decent spear skills already too. She knowd an all down debuff which actually lands on even bosses sometimes. And a variety effect dispell attack.. Abd critical break too... And I still find that her actual damage is acceptable.

As for remi being fast and strong. That is true. But she still seems less quick than All the nasty 1 shot my party trash.. And she certainly isnt strong enough to oneshot THEM.. she certainly dies easy though. Most trash she can outspeed and possibly cripple in a blow are group trash, and i find physical doednt have much vs groups except hammer attacks. Do breath attacks use strength? I dunno. But she really cant use groul sword attacks for long before mp becomes an issue.

As for last words, i imaginr all damage ones lose their appeal eventually, but hers is a slap on the face. I kid you not, hers pops up more often than all the others combined, SO ANNOYING. Plus damage ones are decent for cooldown issues. My patchy for example sometimes has all 3 of her shikigami on cooldown, and a philosiphers stone in between is not too shabby.

Remi's doesnt even work at all when I need it to survive qq, not to mention rvrn when it does work the yukkuri and bakebake can still use crazy shit like stomic breath with high stats to bake it up since her lw only seems to modify the enemy defenses instead of offenses for whstever reason.

Cjd2524 · « **Reply #46 on:** June 01, 2015, 08:22:38 PM »

Any idea if all characters are able to learn every single weapon skill like in NoR ?, the info was added to the blog with the expansion (Ran) where using certain Doppels made it viable, the same list I had before the expansion.

I am interested in giving a look at DoD's Condition Success formula (e.g. Instant Death success) but is impossible without proper testing, it is more complex than NoR at least which is a good thing.

In NoR -> Target's RES = 100 + User's IND = Status Immunity, this applies to all Conditions regardless of Success Rate (supposing the Condition doesn't ignores RES), the system is there but is super simplified in comparison to GoS & DoD, it basically has no immunity scaling due to this. The Livedoor blog has a notation that would indicate this being impossible.

edit: nvm, the blog is right, what it points to is that is impossible to raise Condition Basic Probability via IND in NoR, is IND what was gimped.

Serela · « **Reply #47 on:** June 02, 2015, 02:44:10 AM »

Quote from: Cjd2524 on June 01, 2015, 08:22:38 PM

I am interested in giving a look at DoD's Condition Success formula (e.g. Instant Death success) but is impossible without proper testing, it is more complex than NoR at least which is a good thing.

It's in here somewhere! http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/ edit: Okay it's here. http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/archives/10893720.html

Also, everyone can learn every skill, but you have to grind stupid amounts because it takes retarded amounts of weapon exp to level up past like 26. I gained like 2 weapon proficiency levels in the entirety of expansion before the final area grind, and even after hours and hours of final area grind (where I had kogasa set up to be able to attack with her weapon in most battles) she still was only at 31. You can't learn the final tier weapon skill of your appropriate learning type until 34, much less the others, and 36 is for the weapon-specific ones if you have the right weapon on.

tl;dr Proficiency levels up so slow you most likely won't even get to learn the last skill of your character's own learning type.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #48 on:** June 02, 2015, 03:26:09 AM »

any idea if multi hit attacks speed it up?

Serela · « **Reply #49 on:** June 02, 2015, 04:13:40 AM »

No, they don't. It works off of number of rounds you performed an attack of that element. You can train magics at the same time by using elemental weapons or stuff like Heat Hand (or both at once), but those don't matter a whole lot to start with.

In round one, it gives you exp if you queue up the action at all; so even if the battle ends before everyone moves, everyone gets their exp. In further rounds, you have to actually perform the action for it to count.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #50 on:** June 02, 2015, 04:55:29 AM »

I promised not to use the wiki for researching shikigami, but uhh I wanna cheat a bit... Is there a particularly good shikigami for a really high power single target (or multi, but single is what I need, and multi would just be a bonus) dark nuke? For testaments and dominus and such. Seems that I have at least one 150+ish power nuke of every 'normal' element but dark...

Serela · « **Reply #51 on:** June 02, 2015, 02:36:31 PM »

Koakuma and Lesser Vampire both learn Abyss, which is 200 power, but it's not until lv32~33. You've said you've been using Koakuma, so hopefully she's a good portion of the way there? Lesser Demon and Good Night Remilia (promo shikigami from having the soundtrack in your cd drive) both learn Dark Zapper at about lv20, and Dark/Holy Zapper are actually pretty worthwhile. Oh yeah, I somehow skipped over Parsee for most of my playthrough, but her Dark attack I hear is pretty good too (although, you're a bit late in, and it powers up based on having lower hp)

Lesser Demon learns other stuff but it either takes a pretty high level or land power manip, and Greater Demon is such a PITA to recruit that I couldn't possibly recommend it.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #52 on:** June 02, 2015, 03:34:46 PM »

Koakuma eh? I think she is 27ish atm. Cool

Cjd2524 · « **Reply #53 on:** June 02, 2015, 08:47:18 PM »

Quote from: Selery on June 02, 2015, 02:44:10 AM

It's in here somewhere! http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/ edit: Okay it's here. http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/archives/10893720.html
Also, everyone can learn every skill, but you have to grind stupid amounts because it takes retarded amounts of weapon exp to level up past like 26. I gained like 2 weapon proficiency levels in the entirety of expansion before the final area grind, and even after hours and hours of final area grind (where I had kogasa set up to be able to attack with her weapon in most battles) she still was only at 31. You can't learn the final tier weapon skill of your appropriate learning type until 34, much less the others, and 36 is for the weapon-specific ones if you have the right weapon on.

tl;dr Proficiency levels up so slow you most likely won't even get to learn the last skill of your character's own learning type.

Thanks for the response, note that if it is like NoR ALV, Ability is actually a Damage Multiplier, in NoR max ALV is 40 (50 in Ran) at which point all Element "X" attacks do +50% Damage, and this stacks for Dual and Tri-Elemental attacks. The game only counts a +1 ALV "Element Exp" max for each element selected in battle, even if the skill was selected but not casted (due to the battle ending prior), you can't just stack ALV Exp by doing 50 Slashes in fifty turns but have to do fifty battles instead.

Any idea if encounters are fixed like in GoS (Weekend only I think) or are they completely random (like in NoR), e.g. every time you start the game and enter an encounter in the very same area/screen your party battles always the same combination of enemies.

Banquet encounters are likely random, but maybe Matsuri uses fixed encounters in which case the game wouldn't be a chore to grind through (e.g. fixed Drops, fixed Shikigami captures).

theshirn · « **Reply #54 on:** June 04, 2015, 11:20:51 PM »

I'm still hacking my way through the refights and grinding in the final area. The game's a ton more fun when you can actually read what you're doing! :V

Also how the hell do I actually get any decent amount of experience at this point, nothing's worth more than like 3k except king yukkuris and those things never show up

Serela · « **Reply #55 on:** June 04, 2015, 11:47:23 PM »

Yeahhh it's not easy to get new shikigami past low 30s, and ones you have on all the time can't expect to get more than low 40s without silly amounts of grind. In the final area, that is.

For most of the game, the rule is "low exp, but they're high level so you'll rubberband up to a decent place". This also puts a pretty big limit on your level since once you catch up to monster levels, you get piddly nothin'; rather than once you've outleveled the monsters too much.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #56 on:** June 05, 2015, 04:12:47 AM »

Quote from: theshim on June 04, 2015, 11:20:51 PM

I'm still hacking my way through the refights and grinding in the final area. The game's a ton more fun when you can actually read what you're doing! :V

I never played it without the patch but I know. I remember when Fushigi no gensokyou (touhou roguelike) was more of a headline, people would swear up and down you didn't need a translation patch, that you could figure it out, blah blah whatever. I'm sorry but no... It's nowhere *NEAR* as fun, and I can tell that game needs one FAR more than this one (That isn't a hint hint or guilt trip, I fully accept the technical reasons for its end of efforts is something that can't be worked around). I mean roguelikes are by nature extremely demanding on the player to be very familiar with what each item and consumeable does, exactly, and player resourcefulness in terms of utilizing them, and when I can't tell what items do beyond the extremely basic stats on equipment being attackpower and such, the game's fun-factor is really quite murdered IMO... I think people just dabble with un-translated games without understanding them, actually enjoy them to a certain point, and assume just because they are having fun with it, that the game is no more fun than that, instead of realizing it can yet be better still, and that includes other people who do NOT have "enough" fun with it currently...particularly so for people like me who enjoy the personal growth and satisfaction of my progress in a game rather than arbitrary achievements and trophies or the 'I beat it now I'm done' mentality'.

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Also how the hell do I actually get any decent amount of experience at this point, nothing's worth more than like 3k except king yukkuris and those things never show up

You're further than me since I've never seen a king yukkuri.. but uhh. I thought kings give 13k not 3k.. 'stray' gave me like 6k iirc, and I think yukkuri sisters give 3k. But anyway, When I was reading validon's lets play, he mentioned a king yukkuri spawn point that is relatively reliable to 'farm', so you can try that. It's in akyu's arcade, not HME (I have it on my phone not my pc so no link handy). I imagine it's about the same as trying to 'farm' one of those super elite miniboss not actually a boss trash monsters in GoS like two headed dragon and...I forgot the rest.

edit, Serela:

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Levels don't mean @%#@#% git gud nubtard

(This quote is made out of 10% accuracy!)

I agreed with you before but actually I'm disagreeing now.. Now that I'm all of like.. 3 levels higher than before, I am backtracking to kill certain monsters in the end dungeon XX amount of times to fill their bestiary page (tanks, locamo dragon, whatsherface princess.. dynamis? I forget)...and despite the fact that I really only crafted remi a zord, and uhh.. one armor piece. tanks are chumps now. Now everyone but patchy can survive main cannon twice... let alone fail to survive once.

Leveling up seems minor at face value, but I think this game kind of has a weird threshhold where the difference between slightly under level and slightly over level makes a massive difference. Probably because defense has a subtractive nature, and unlike labyrinth of touhou, the numbers don't really grow in the end that much, they stay in 2-3 digits thoughout, sooo.. it doesn't take much for something to go from fatal 3 digits to manageable 2 digits IMO..

Note this is just based on my current experience...maybe I'm in an exceptional case and don't realize it yet.

edit:

=o...
So like abyss enemies by themselves were full party wipes more often than not prior to my last post. My most advanced dark nuke 'dark web' of 90 power would hit for like 300 power from patchy...now...casting abyss, I wtfbbq'd it for 1200ish. Hue next up is dominu*BLARGARGHAGHAAACK* (kidding, haven't met one since..anticipate it will be such).

Validon98 · « **Reply #57 on:** June 05, 2015, 12:09:46 PM »

On the subject of the English patch, trust me, I remember when I was first making the patch months ago, and I had just finished doing all the skills, and just that alone made it a million times easier to remember what did what without having to wiki dive for it (JP wiki, mind you, our ENG wiki for DoD sucks and is horribly incomplete), and then doing the equips made it even more simpler. I will say that with DoD and other RPGs like this, you theoretically caaaaan do it without an English patch, I've played NoR like that and got through it fine, but you're right when it comes to games like, say, Fushigi no Gensokyo. I played Chronicle, couldn't get past the chapter representing the original game because despite the fact I had like a bunch of documents I made that had translated information off the JP wiki, I got so fed up with having to cross check literally every item I got, not to mention my notes were incomplete so I didn't have, say, information on item synergy and what orbs did what, so it pretty much killed any motivation I had to play the game further, which is disappointing.

Also King Yukkuris give 30k XP, not 3k or 13k. In the main game, they're only encounterable in the room before the final save point, and are found most commonly in the two encounters on the left side of the room (I don't know if they are in the encounter pool for the right side, but I have noticed that the left and right sides have different encounter pools for some odd reason).

And on the note of Abyss, beware enemies who have the higher tiers of Light and Dark spells (Holy, Punish the Judgment, Abyss, Pseudoepigraph), because they pretty much at the point of the game you're at will hit for either most of all of your party's HP. They're all roughly 200ish power, maybe a bit more. At best I know some of the later spells in the expansion have like... 300ish or so power, but that's entering overkill territory.

Serela · « **Reply #58 on:** June 05, 2015, 02:14:39 PM »

Quote from: Validon98 on June 05, 2015, 12:09:46 PM

(I don't know if they are in the encounter pool for the right side, but I have noticed that the left and right sides have different encounter pools for some odd reason).

Hah, yeah. I guess they wanted to keep everything limited to one map for convenience sake? The first map of final area is super trivial grinding area (at least once you find their weaknesses, but that's not hard), leaving all the tough enemies and rare final shikigami to get compacted into the second map.

And yeah, Greater Demon and Azafel (or whatever the weird eyeball angel thing is on the left side of final map) are pretty brutal. Greater Demon only appears in the last room of Otoha's refight area, though. (Aka, even more impossible to recruit it! Hooray!)

King Yukkuris are impossible, by the way. :T

Spoiler:

Ghaleon · « **Reply #59 on:** June 05, 2015, 02:47:58 PM »

Is king splash not physical? I plan on using koakuma's entire party avoids one physical attack buff to avoid at least one.