Devil of Decline

[Serela]

Magic wrecks encounters early in the game. Wreeeecks. The mp cost isn't problematic since you get warp points so often, too.

[notverycreative]

Letty and Rumia are the only shikigami I have with AoE magic at this point, and I haven't seen an enemy that Dark works on in a while.

[Serela]

Dark mostly works on more generic human/fairy enemies, which are fairly abundant in many areas. And since it's also obscure, earth works on giants, crawly insects, and already-earthy things like golems or structure-y type enemies.

[Cjd2524]

Impressions so far, still no real Bosses in sight.

+ Respawning is a improvement over GoS (carried over to NoR).

+ Youmu Last Word is now useful (GoS Last Word should be a 2-Bomb Skill).

+ No Instant Death or Removal at all at the beginning (I may regret this later).

ALV (Ability Level) works different than NoR, not sure if scaling is different or if there is no scaling (need to test this but much later).

Any idea if Equipment dropped from monsters that are also synthesis materials will be dropped again after being consumed via synthesis (when no longer in inventory) ?, this was possible in GoS but not in NoR.

[Serela]

They should be dropped again, but that won't happen until really late in the game. You can definitely reforge old equipments if you really wanted to after upgrading it, but the upgrades generally come so much later that, well...

There's some other questionable last words instead of Youmu's being bad, and most of the magic damage ones are only kinda so-so later in the game. Good for a free attack, but not actually much stronger than normal moves you can use, if even. Then you have stuff like Mokou reviving everyone and casting reraise on everyone who's alive, holy crap what?

How ALVing works is explained in depth here, including a chart of how much AEXP each enemy gives. At levels 9, 19, 24, the AEXP required to level up jumps by about 50% compared to the last level (so they're the breakpoints) 30 being about 33% jump and 40 being literally double, max is 50. After 24 it'll start taking hours of fighting to level up no matter what you're fighting (aka, even postgame enemies), and 19~23 is where you can expect to be when you beat the main game depending on how much you grind. ...my party went from 23~24 to 27~28 over the entirety of expansion, so, the scaling after 24 is just murderous. x.x Final skills are available at 34~36 (not counting ones of the most incompatible learning types) but even final area postgame grind takes hours to level up once in the late twenties, it's just dumb.

[notverycreative]

What does ALv affect? Is it just weapon skill damage, or is magic damage, accuracy and/or additional effect rate increased?

[theshirn]

Then you have stuff like Mokou reviving everyone and casting reraise on everyone who's alive, holy crap what?

And reviving them at full health, no less! :V

[Serela]

What does ALv affect? Is it just weapon skill damage, or is magic damage, accuracy and/or additional effect rate increased?

It's a minor damage increase to attacks of the appropriate element, whether physical or magical, and it's the core of learning new weapon skills.

[Cjd2524]

If it's like NoR is something like 1% extra damage per level, e.g. +50% DMG when Maxed. The damage increase is very easy to notice once you get Acala Sword.

Took a while to get the Mist Robe because I failed to notice the Takirei-o always spawns on Makai 3 Side Entry warp point.

There's some other questionable last words instead of Youmu's being bad, and most of the magic damage ones are only kinda so-so later in the game. Good for a free attack, but not actually much stronger than normal moves you can use, if even. Then you have stuff like Mokou reviving everyone and casting reraise on everyone who's alive, holy crap what?

In GoS her Last Word was free healing so it was useful, even in situations where you didn't want to have a healer in the party and it was enough, her entire skill set was just too good. Terrible Doppel in NoR though.

I know the worst LW from the previous game is still in this game...

[Ghaleon]

Yeah, If I did a 2nd playthru I would want to try yuka instead of mokou because mokou's tankiness just doesn't seem to really make her that much better than average tanky characters...but then It hoguht about her last word and I was like... nope. mokou.

[Validon98]

Mokou is literally only the best "tank" character because of her Last Word. Yuuka is the best "tank" stat wise, but her Last Word (null all physical attacks against you for the turn, or was it null the next physical attack against you?) is so-so.

[Cjd2524]

Best tank character in GoS too

Spoiler:

(Alice was cannon fodder)

.

So the possible first 3 Bosses are:

Spoiler:

Yuuka

or

Spoiler:

Ansuitei (?)

or

Spoiler:

Heinen Kuhn

Loss of Auto-Attack, Pause Option in Menu and % of Treasures Collected was carried to NoR sadly, miss these features.

Sprite effects like rotation and knockback are still present here for certain skills (this is gone in NoR), it was amazing to see dragons do that rotating rebound in GoS.

I only found two chests that were more or less hidden, I have no idea if I missed something, not wanting to give a look at the JP wiki because is likely going to contain spoilers.

edit: in regards of ALV what the blog mentions it modifies ACC (or Hit Rate).

[Ghaleon]

Mokou is literally only the best "tank" character because of her Last Word. Yuuka is the best "tank" stat wise, but her Last Word (null all physical attacks against you for the turn, or was it null the next physical attack against you?) is so-so.

That's kind of my point, though I suspect yuuka's better defensive stats other than hp don't really make her any better than mokou either since as far as I can tell defensive stats other than the ones granted by armor not only seem to do nothing based on that stat page thing, but it doesn't seem to do %#@%@ in practice either. I mean I've seen patchy take 0s from enemies mokou takes damage from (physical) just because patchy was wearing maximillion and mokou was wearing something with only 80ish defense. So given that those base stats (other than hp) don't seem to do @#%@#%, I figure mokou's last word simply makes her the better choice..

I strongly disagree about the alice part though in GoS.. I thought Alice was the uber tank of ownage. The only thing she can't seem to tank as well as someone else is the final boss being tanked by aya of all people.

[Serela]

Well, you tank with Alice in GoS moreso for moves like Parrar, Little Legion, etc. Aya tanks the final boss just because you have to have a party without Alice in it, too, but blinktanking and evasion spellcards do come in handy pretty well for that...

Anyway, I've just finished exploring the third stratum on my second playthrough, with a restriction of not being allowed to recruit any battle shikigami. Of course, it doesn't play much different from a normal run until you try to do Zhu Li and then the final dungeon... ho boy. (It doesn't help that my weapon levels are like 5 lower than last time since I've gone through the game much faster, but it shouldn't make a big difference tbh; if anything my weapons are better since I have people with existent STR stats this time) Am I really gonna have to have someone spamming the hell out of Alice's element bulwark buff so that I can resist water? ;_;

[Cjd2524]

I strongly disagree about the alice part though in GoS.. I thought Alice was the uber tank of ownage. The only thing she can't seem to tank as well as someone else is the final boss being tanked by aya of all people.

Even Cirno should be able to do that. In terms of pure tankness Mokou is above Alice in GoS (the Konami code should be a hint of how OP she is).

Great, is impossible to take out Reimu from the party, so if I want to solo a Boss I am stuck with her, why. Anyways beat solo the Boss leading to the Second Stratum (7th Turns only).

Encounters can be manipulated more or less, though I am not sure if is useful to the extent of catching the Stray Yukkuri. There is a room in Muenzuka which usually spawns 2 Metal Yukkuris and they're not too difficult to come by.

Since Pastebin seems to be down attached below is an availability list of everything that can be obtained before fighting any Boss in the first Stratum (no Hookshot or Clock Tower). Spoilers are Masters and Shikigamis, no location spoilers except some Recipe chests, list is incomplete.

[Kei]

https://i.imgur.com/6aIaNOY.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/MZg39Xt.jpg
Just my luck..

[Serela]

Oh god. Shudder. 969. >_>

Of course, with a 1/256 recruit rate... it's not -that- unlikely to kill 1000 and not get it :/

[Kei]

Oh god. Shudder. 969. >_>

Of course, with a 1/256 recruit rate... it's not -that- unlikely to kill 1000 and not get it :/

Well, I did use the revive trick a lot so that's the only reason it's such a big number. I'm still not sure if that helps at all to recruiting them.

[Serela]

The revive trick, ah.

Unless you're playing in Banquet, it doesn't. Whether you kill 1 or 50 in one battle, you get the same chance of it joining at the end of the battle. (From what I could tell from bad translations, in Banquet, which is NOT the english patchable version, each additional one you kill will give you another recruit chance for that battle. Not sure if revive stacking will help there, though.)

[Kei]

The revive trick, ah.

Unless you're playing in Banquet, it doesn't. Whether you kill 1 or 50 in one battle, you get the same chance of it joining at the end of the battle. (From what I could tell from bad translations, in Banquet, which is NOT the english patchable version, each additional one you kill will give you another recruit chance for that battle. Not sure if revive stacking will help there, though.)

So, just being sure here, if there's more than one of the same kind it still counts as one encounter towards recruiting? (Not sure if I'm wording that right.) Anyways, thanks for letting me know. I wouldn't wanna waste my time doing that again unless I want experience.

[Serela]

Unless you're playing Banquet (which has drm, is only available in japanese right now, etc) then yes, even if an encounter has 10 metal yukkuris and you kill them all, at the end you only get a 1/256 chance, same as if 9 ran and you killed one.

[Kei]

Alrighty. My luck has still been pretty bad expect with the yukkuri king. Really thought I'd have a couple more by now. ;-; There isn't like a set location you can be-friend them, right? Any place where you see them works?

Edit: Nevermind I guess.

[Serela]

Unfortunately not. Yukkuris are rather unreasonable to obtain.

[Kei]

Yeah, I pretty much gave up trying to get anymore. I wanted to collect everything the game had to offer but it's too much for me. Either you have amazing luck or you sit there for hours accomplishing nothing.

Sorry for my ranting~

[Moustashe]

Sorry to bother you guys, but when I start my DoD game, it won't let me actually start a game (Crashes), so i'm infinitely stuck in the loading screen Is there a way to get around this? Thank you very much for your time.

[Serela]

The most likely situation is you have the "append disk", which contains the expansion without the base game. IIRC if this is the case you won't have any music on the menu screen either? The game folder should be roughly in the ballpark of 2.75~2.80gb if you have the game+expansion.

If you have only the first or third release of the game (which I think is significantly less likely, but if it's version 1.xx or 3.xx instead of 2.xx) then, it's not that :V

[Moustashe]

After you get teleported to the shrine, when do you get other check points? Do you have to walk from spawn all the way to were you died all the time?

[Serela]

One of the buttons will bring up the world map. From there, you can warp to any area you select. Yellow exits are generally warp points iirc. I think some of the red boss warps are? It's been awhile since I picked the game up.

The only places you can't warp to/from are the insides of towers, but when you reach the bosses you'll get a shortcut to the front.

[Moustashe]

Thanks for all the help, I have one more problem

The translated english patch crashes when i bring up the character menu, i just dragged the game1 and img1,2,& 3 onto the packages. The movement is also screwed up too, everytime i hold onto a movement arrow i only take a small step and stop. Everything works fine the the jap version 

[Serela]

That's strange. Are you running version 2.11? You may need to update the game up to that, as it's the version the patch is made for. Patches can be found here- just remove the english patch before you try to do them. http://www.gensoukyou.org/support/update_2.html