Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 15F

[RegalStar]

Finished the switch puzzles and beat up Tenshi. It was basically a debuff and attack battle, though I misjudged her HP and she sniped Kanako with a Steel Clasher so the only effective damage dealer I had was Youmu (who had severe SP issues) , and I was forced to eat a Violent Motherland on the second focus, which led to hilarity as Komachi (who I admittedly did not particularly outfit for suviving it) died while Yuuka (who I was totally just throwing out as a sacrifice) actually survived with 300 or so HP. She immediately Focused after that and did not get her third Violent Motherland off before Youmu demolished her with one final blow.

Just an extra area, two Flandre events and Sanae's Foe to go, then it's the long awaited showdown with the Eientei Trio!

[Ghaleon]

I literally calculated using the data you provided.

Bwuh?
Yuugi has 950 atk
ubernatural phenominon formula's would be
(atk*1.25 - 0.5Def) * 1.5
Yuugi's attack 950 and wriggle's def is 600
so
(1187.5 - 300) * 1.5 = 1331.
With haku barrior buffing def by 50

1187.5 - 450 = 737.5 * 1.5 = 1106.

or do you expect me to reimu buff her 2 times in a row for +100% defense? and wriggle not get a turn for some to dissapate? Reimu doesn't even have the mp pool to do it twice and heal let alone 3 times (at all).. plus there's the whole +- 10% thing.

yuugi's speed is also 170. My absolute fastest character (mystia) is at 120. Pretty sure I'll spend 2/3 of my actions switching fresh meat from corpses when I can't take a single hit with my beefiest tank.

edit: So yeah, after buffing wriggle AND debuffing yuugi with 1 discarder she still got smacked for 1.1k... after I sold some items and used ksillpoints to buff her hp to 1200, so she lived, then managed to debuff her (and haku buff again) so that ran could take a hit. killed her with 2 casualties. Oh yeah. one of which was marisa who I started the battle in the front with since she was my dedicated suicide vanguard, she did as she was meant to, so I had the time to buff/debuff before wriggle got in there. My 2nd casualty was koi3.

[RegalStar]

Supernatural Phenomenon has a postuse gauge of 30% and Knockout in Three steps 20%. Switching is 75%. She might also waste her turns using normal attacks or Irremovable Shackles which are perfectly survivable (though Shackles might pin you in place with its PAR effect) by many characters.

[Ghaleon]

Supernatural Phenomenon has a postuse gauge of 30% and Knockout in Three steps 20%. Switching is 75%. She might also waste her turns using normal attacks or Irremovable Shackles which are perfectly survivable (though Shackles might pin you in place with its PAR effect) by many characters.

She never attacked once =P. I never count on enemies being nice, cuz they never are if I need em to be =)
That said my yuyu now has enough sp to cast SFN once. mnd-build yuyu's SFN barely hits harder than something like a mnd-patchy royal flare or kanako suiga vs an enemy who is NOT weak to water.... now it makes nitori's gun look like a peashooter. very pleased with it =P

edit: at floor 8 now. blah, I hate floor 8... such a boring ass floor.

[RegalStar]

Took me two tries because Astronomical Entombing back-to-back spam. Second try I had slightly better luck paralyzing Eirin (I thought she had 10 resistance but apparently she had 20), and she spent her only post-Kaguya turn on using Focus, which barely gave me enough time to drop her before her next turn. I actually decided to mostly disregard Reisen (not even bothering to paralyzing her) and she still contributed basically nothing.

Oh yeah I also killed Sanae's Foe right before this, mostly because I don't like foe fights at all for some reason. Obviously at Minoriko 50 the fight is a complete joke.

[Ghaleon]

Got to 10f for today. No issues with tam, suwako, or reisen. Rirnt attempt nitori yet. I JUUST beat reisen and normally do nitori after.

Glad to leave 10-12f tomorrow, its one of my fave parts in the game. That said I knew in advance my party was really damn good at trash clearing but now Im even more convinced.

So far however I havent had much luck debuffing bosses with reisen. Only yuugi got any meaningful debuffs. Most other bosses only lost defenses after multiple attempts.

[RegalStar]

13F battles sure are fun, what with Orin being the only character who can actually deal with the encounters (Cirno is too weak to kill dangerous things in one hit and the enemies have generally strong PAR resists, and everyone else are slower than Rail Insects and the Sniping rabbits), and Slash Divers 2HKOing anyone not named Meiling with their Slash Dives. I ended up using a basically permanent party of Meiling/Youmu/Yuuka/Orin, switching out to Minoriko to stall with heals when there are Amethyst Knights present to refill Orin's SP again. Oh well, at least that's over now... I'm sure 14F will be just as fun too.

EDIT: Yup, the encounters on 14F are just as fun. Funny thing is though I just walked right into Evil Forge by accident and killed it without losing anyone.

[Validon98]

Since people have been reporting on their various runs of LoT, might as well share mine. I've been doing my own run with a fixed party, not a draft persay, but I tried to just pick a relatively balanced team without picking any of the truly overpowered nukers like Nitori, which led to a party of Iku, Yuyuko, Wriggle, Cirno, Alice, Suika, Rumia, Sanae, Komachi, Aya, Mystia, and Orin.

I made it to 18F last night, Yukari having been a rather tense battle wherein I realized my lack of defense buffs beyond what Sanae can do has been hurting me pretty bad this run, and while I've been making up for it by investing quite a few skill points into everyone's HP, DEF, and MND (something I've been doing all game as well, making sure everyone got a good balance of offensive and defensive library levels), it's still not been enough for Rinnosuke so far. I never really in the past underestimated the importance of defensive buffs in this game, but I think so far this run, where I've lacked major defensive buffs, has really sold how important they really are, and now I'm suffering for it by being forced to overlevel just so I don't get wiped by a stray Start of Heavenly Demise or Iai Slash right from the word go.

[Serela]

now I'm suffering for it by being forced to overlevel just so I don't get wiped by a stray Start of Heavenly Demise or Iai Slash right from the word go.

Oof, yeah. It's the difference between being able to get by at R.Lv90 or having to go up to lv110. (Ah, that painful first run of LoT1 soon after the english patch release where I built everyone but Meiling and Tenshi in atk or mag... yeah, Minoriko's spell still does pathetic damage even if it nearly ignores mnd. I didn't know any better yet.)

[Validon98]

Much grinding later... and also some RNG luck because he sorta didn't use Start of Heavenly Demise much and he didn't use World Shaking Military Rule at all, which confused me...

[Ryin]

[calculations]

I must have typed something wrong and didn't bother checking. Welp.

I never really in the past underestimated the importance of defensive buffs in this game, but I think so far this run, where I've lacked major defensive buffs, has really sold how important they really are, and now I'm suffering for it by being forced to overlevel just so I don't get wiped by a stray Start of Heavenly Demise or Iai Slash right from the word go.

I had the opposite reaction in my last run. I always thought defensive buffs were extremely important since the beginning, but Rinnosuke is the first time in which they're actually important. Rinnosuke, Maribel and Maribel ver 2 were the only bosses I felt the need to have defense buffs up before recruiting Renko. After that I was using Charge all the time so I don't know what to say about their importance.

and he didn't use World Shaking Military Rule at all, which confused me...

It means he didn't reach a turn that was a multiple of 4 in his last phase.

[RegalStar]

Finished exploring 14F and beat up Triomagen and Mokou. Triomagen put up quite a fight but it only used Healing Prayer twice (and one of them was on the second turn, which means it was wasted as I was still buffing up at that point), and Cirno landed SPD debuff twice which helped. Mokou I approached without using speed debuffs and didn't put up nearly as much of a fight; she did use Curse once which did a lot of damage but otherwise she just isn't that fast even without speed debuffs and most of her other attacks bar Slash Dive pretty much bounce off my characters. I had Kanako and Yuuka buffed up beforehand to prepare for her Resurrection phase but Youmu managed to catch a turn almost right after she used Resurrection, so only Kanako was used to land the finishing blow.

Yuyuko I think I will leave until a bit later though. I don't have many fire attackers and my physical attackers are all pretty weak to magic, so I might to survive for a bit longer than I'm used to.

[Ghaleon]

Eye of twilight's stygian ferry: 5, Characters that had it casted on them with over 24 dth resist: 0.
argh.

edit: oh. 300%. nm. that makes sense now. and yes I know it's (100% - 24*3) *3.

That said in every playthru I've had I've always felt 13f is the most annoying floor (8 the most boring). I never really had too many issues with 14f. I even kinda like the trash in that floor IMO.. it's noticeably tougher than the ones before it (cept 13f), without being complete cheese.

edit: The rumia event on 9f and the chen event on 10f aren't triggering like I lack bp, this means flan/orin wont appear for me right? Or is there some kind of ng+ magic that will save me?

edit edit: nm I just cheated some bp to rumia/youmu/ and chen. I though there were a lot more bp requirements but that was lot2.

[Monothemeerp]

I literally just had the worst luck on Giant Tree ever. Every time I finally dealt about 25k total to him, he healed it back up. Every. Time. He healed for 5 turns straight. What the hell.

On the bright side, I beat up Alice pretty handily. Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana kind of made that one a bit easy...

[Ghaleon]

Entei Beatenenen at reimu 47. no casualties, not particularly surprised, they're kinda like rinnosuke for me, never had much of a problem with that boss.. it's always the physical brutes that cause me troubles.

[Ryin]

Got through 7F. Chose Alice and Tenshi as my sacrifices for Flowing Hellfire and Yuugi and Remilia to survive them. Alice was bad in this fight because her best move is FIR and you can't count on unbuffed Tenshi to tank anything that hits harder than wet noodles. Yuugi with her stupidly low MND was better at taking Flowing Hellfire with affinity and HP than Tenshi and both are equally good at taking the physical hits (except Yuugi has HP). And using her self buff is suicide because you need to switch people in quickly after a Flowing Hellfire.
In 8F I bumped into a Calamitous Soul which spammed Flux of Yomotsu Hirasaka every single turn and Sanae's Foe. Both of which resulted in a game over and some lost progress...
I thought Reisen would be obnoxious as hell because I lack AoE paralysis but things were actually ok. Because I'd have to take hits from the minions, the strateg was to pray for physical summons and use Tenshi's self paralysis to draw their hits while the back row killed Reisen as quickly as possible. In the turn after she used Elixir, I killed all of her minions in a desperate attempt to rush down her last few HP and it worked. Gettitup V gotcha!
Suwako decided to stop being a jerk and sniping the back row in her physical phase and exclusively using Froggy Braves the element in the magical phase after I beat Reisen, so the battle was ok.
I completely forgot about Yuugi so the battle was kind of ridiculous. I wasn't overleveled enough to survive Knock Out in Three Steps but I was strong enough to beat her before the second one.

[RegalStar]

15F explored (which was much easier than the two previous floors) and beat up Yuyuko, Hill Gigas, Great Stamp and Orin. Yuyuko was, as I had thought, a very long fight, no thanks to Wind of Souls killing Suwako in one hit after just one Iron Ring (I calculated that it actually would miss the KO by 100 HP or so, but I forgot about variance). Youmu with a bit of buffs could hit 25k with Slash of Eternity but everyone else could hit for maybe 15k at most. Regardless though even SFN only hits unbuffed Meiling for 1.5kish (and Yukari was taking 0 with just a tiny bit of MND buff) so while it was long, most of my tanks were never in danger of being KO'd. Hill Gigas of course just ate Iron Rings.

Great Stamp I also ended up trying twice. The first time I tried to fight it without speed debuff (like I did with Mokou) but found that it was way too hard to fight that way. (I also found out for the first time that Rasetsu Fist has PAR-200. Seriously. Or maybe I knew it from before but totally forgot.) I approached it again with full debuffs and it was much easier; at -40% its attacks were doing basically 1k to Meiling and Keine even with minimal buffs, and with 100% DEF buff Meiling took less than 100 damage from it. Made for a really long fight though but it was much safer.

Orin went kind of OK. It would've been better if she didn't insist on Cat's Walking my third and fourth slot every other turn, and in the end I lost Minoriko to Cat's Walk + Needle combo, but she died on the next hit.

[Serela]

(I also found out for the first time that Rasetsu Fist has PAR-200. Seriously. Or maybe I knew it from before but totally forgot.)

holy crap I don't recall knowing that either

Of course, by the time you're that far in the game you generally have really high PAR resist on anyone who could actually survive rasetsu fist, which is why I didn't know after 3 playthroughs... but hah, welp

[Ghaleon]

Yeah that move pars me occasionally. It doesnt seem to last terribly long though. Like when it nails china and shes my only par cleanser she isnt useless for a painful long time, but just an attack or so.

[RegalStar]

It lasted a very long time for me, and the database did list it as PAR-200. I didn't have any status resist gears going into that fight though because I didn't even know that I would get hit by any.

Also 16F encounters are like 13F encounters ver 2: Electric Boogaloo, except I need an entire permanent stamem. instead of just one single character. Well, at least there are no slash divers (though I have a feeling that I should not stick around to fight three Gold Sorceresses if I ever see them). Slow and steady wins the race and gives me more exp and skill points for Yukari, right?

[Serela]

16F and 17F aren't that bad if you have physical AOE, but can really wreck you up if you don't. Gold Sorceresses will indeed wipe you if you don't have moves to take them out in a timely fashion.

[Ghaleon]

I've never had much issue with gold sorceresses tbh.. are they really that deadly for mnd-heavy parties? like even a mnd patchy and kaggy get nuked? I don't remember... Seriously though I never recall them wiping me once, and I most certainly doubt I kill them fast enough every time if other people have problems since I tend to have slower dps parties (though this run my party is a trash owning machine.. seriously)

I'm at 13f now, so time to make a decision.. should I snag that ribbon now? or NOT snag it, farm 20f for a ribbon (since you have to farm it for every other drop anyway) so it has a 5% drop, get one like that, THEN snag it on 13f... I think I should wait because I don't particularly recall needing the ribbon for flan, yukari, cootiesuke, or the 19f sigil bosses...that and the norns are always the most common trash enemy on 20f for me, I get htem like 2x more than eveyrthing else.

[RegalStar]

Does that ribbon trick even work? I mean the database specifically describes that routine for the four only-source-of-their-item monsters, but it doesn't for the Norns. If it does work, I wonder what other items do it extend to.

Anyway for the gold sorceresses, it kind of depends on what spells they use, but Ether Flare is 200% MAG - 50% MND so it will probably hurt even high MND characters who don't heavily resist MYS, Also they have 16000 MND, and most high MND characters are also mages that can't really do much back against that. I'm sure any party can still beat three of them handily, but without status luck it would be difficult to not either turn it into a long fight or lose a couple of characters, both not exactly great things to happen in random encounters.

[Ghaleon]

oh yeah the database does fail to mention it.. nm. I remember before the database was out and the patch notes were released I read that simply all the 20f bosses had 5% drop unless you have the drop already.

Sweet mother of god... 13f trash was always bad.. but no china/remi makes it even worse.. guess how many slash dives my tanks can survive? 0... effing 0. So far I'm NOT seeing wriggle as a viable slot 1 tank.

[RegalStar]

Sweet mother of god... 13f trash was always bad.. but no china/remi makes it even worse.. guess how many slash dives my tanks can survive? 0... effing 0. So far I'm NOT seeing wriggle as a viable slot 1 tank.

Hmm I can't really imagine why... I remember that when I was on the floor both Keine and Youmu could survive a single Slash Dive, and a defensively built Wriggle should have better defenses than them both. Maybe you're slightly underlevelled?

Then again I doubt any amount of build will let her survive two consecutive Slash Dives. Does your Mystia come anywhere close to outspeeding them? If you can manage to accomplish that it would make things easier for you probably.

Anyways I'm done with exploring 16F - once I got some experience fighting things and figure out the scenarios I can use to stall and recharge SP things became a lot easier. Too tired to try and figure out how to fight the bosses though, since I still have three of them to go (Kaguya's Foe, Flandre and Yukari). I'll fight them tomorrow when I have time.

[Ghaleon]

Not gonna outspeed em. mystia is at 153, and she's using a getitup 5 and a zero shift program, so it's not like I can put on a lot of speed gear to move it up. Wriggle spent all level ups in defense, sef skillups cost 1200 (higher/tied with anything else on any character), hp the same, and she's wearing dakimaki-whatever armor, holy mist robes, and black onyx...that said I seemed to have been on the threshold of surviving a single hit, now she can survive 1 barely. absolutely cannot take anything else after one though. Another reason why 13f sucks... damn encounter% goes up like 500% each step (exageration... but seriously it's cranked up way more than other floors).

edit: 13f done *gasp*. by the end wriggle could survive a slash dive and a slash, but not 2 slash dives. Dat floor. ugh.

[RegalStar]

I forgot to take a sreenshot on the victory screen so here's one of the post-victory dialogue instead. Considering I have both Youmu and Suwako it's pretty much impossible I would have any sort of struggle here anyways; one Flashing Cherry Blossom and one (heavily buffed) Croaking Frog killed her before she could even use her second Barrier Release. Having good Rec% on attackers really help in this fight.

Oh yeah and there were two other bosses I beat earlier too. Kaguya's Foe was the same as the other two foes, and Flandre... Ugh, Flandre. I had geared both Meiling and Keine to survive a Levatein (Meiling could actually survive three at full HP I think), but on first turn Flandre used Starbow Break on Keine - OHKO. It ended up turning into a variation of Yuugi fight where all I could do was pull new characters in as others get KO'd. Near the end I tried to use Spiriting away to pile up enough damage to kill her before she uses Levatein, though I still ended up eating one, but then the next Suiga ended the fight. I really don't like messy fights like this...

EDIT: 17F cleared. About the only good thing I can say about this floor is that I got a Star of Elendil and a Blue Saber.

[qazmlpok]

oh yeah the database does fail to mention it.. nm. I remember before the database was out and the patch notes were released I read that simply all the 20f bosses had 5% drop unless you have the drop already.

It's not all bosses, just the ones that drop items you can't get anywhere else. The norns have a 0.7% drop rate for a ribbon. Hellfire Demonsky has a 5% drop rate of Divine Spirit Barrier, unless you already have one, in which case it's lowered to 1.5%

[Ghaleon]

I meant trash. Not sure why I said bosses.

[Shadowlupus]

Just have a hilarious moment at Iku's fight on 8F. MND-built Patchy take 0 damage from all of Iku's attacks (save for Razor Wind.) Even more, She can easily survive max-buffed Light's Dragon Sigh! With that, I can easily stall until Iku's buff wear down to a manageable level.