Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 15F

[Serela]

I wonder how metal slimes became the standard for that type of enemy anyway. I'm pretty sure dragon warrior is one of the least played big-name RPGs (to english speaking audiences anyway), and it certainly isn't the only to have such an enemy with that function.

"To english speaking audiences" is the thing, there. In Japan the game has ungodly levels of popularity, from what I've heard. (It doesn't hurt that the metal slime has a bit more iconic potential than other rare enemies might, imo; it's not just some tough or uncommon enemy, it's fairly special and leaves a little more of a lasting impression, and also sorta cute)

And, hah, I remember when I got two Gurthangs at once in LoT1. And that's a less-than-1% drop iirc. Hooray 27f grinding!

[RegalStar]

I don't remember getting two notable drops in the same battle, but in this run I have found five Blade Cuisinart and like six or seven Blue Sabers over the trek, two Elendils on 17F and two Eggs of Life on 18F, so I guess I can't complain about bad drops over the run Still missing a Divine Barrier for the 3rd star though, and Minoriko is already level 178. I do hope I don't have to hit something like level 230 before getting it...

EDIT: Got it. Still had to fight about 60 battles for it though.

[Ghaleon]

Two ellendils?! Me jealous.

Its ok though. Imma eventually get 2 gold cloths to drop in 28f in one battle!... Or not.

[Serela]

So does anyone know of a remotely realistic way to kill the extra Tenshi fight on 9F in LoT2? 6F and 12F's "unwinnable" fights can be done in totally realistic ways (you don't have to grind to do 6F tenshi although she'll be a pain in the neck and you'll probably godmode up someone (Yuugi?) to tome of reincarnation afterwards, and 12F can be reisen+yuyuko for instant death which isn't so bad as the normal portion of the 12f fight can be ultra cheesed very easily and quickly) but the 9F fight just makes me draw a blank. Unless she too harbors a secret instant death weakness to hit with Reisen and a Toxicologist with Sheer Force? Or maybe Nitori can be geared up into a stupid enough tank via godtweaking strats to just tank out her debuff killer swords??

This isn't that pressing since I'm already at 12f on my current run anyway, but I'm curious, since that Lilium's Panties would be preeeetty awesome to have.

[RegalStar]

Something that was posted on atwiki: Monk Momiji with very high HP (4k is apparently safe, obviously use First Aid Kit, likely godmodeing required regardless) and 300 SPI affinity (100+100+50+50) and Chen in the backlines, use Instant Attack looping (Momiji switch self with Chen, Chen switch self with Momiji, rinse lather repeat) to passively buff up (draws Sword of Rapture) and heal HP; Reimu with Armored Yin-Yang orb do whatever she likes (buff defense of Momiji maybe?), Magician Wriggle with Misterepulsion and whatever use MP filling on everyone except Momiji then attempt to poison, Eiki fire away. When Tenshi Focuses switch out everyone, eat the Wild Dance and switch people back in (Mokou with Resurrection might help make this less hectic?).

[Ghaleon]

At Cootie-suke at reimu 91, didn't attempt yet, don't want to yet cuz my HD is near full and I don't have enough space to record it. blah...even though I likely wont be unlazy enough to upload the recording lawls....anyway, time to compress various other videos I have, I can prob make like 200gb like that but I'll settle for like 50

[jaxter0987]

Finally got around to playing again. I keep forgetting how strong Minoriko's Nature spells are. Looking back, I really should have used her for a larger portion of the Komachi fight. I also should have used Wriggle way earlier.

Speaking of which, here be the Komachi fight. As I've said before, my settings were off and the video quality is thus terrible. The random pause when it was Alice's turn in the middle of the video was due to me being called away mid recording. I ended up splitting it into two recordings and just rejoined them as you can tell.

Floor 4 caused me to remember how strong Minoriko's spells are, due to having to use her as a trash clearer through my long treks into the floor. Mokou fight could have been slightly more efficient if I didn't just start hammering away at her from the very beginning. Also would have been more efficient if I remembered to use Wriggle earlier yet again.

In any case, the fight went pretty much as planned except for that last Discarder that triggered Resurrection. I thought she had enough HP for one more hit of Discarder before the Fujiwara Volcano spam but I buffed up Momiji and debuffed Mokou earlier anyway so it wasn't a problem.

Also for future reference unless otherwise stated, tanks and supports are given level up bonuses towards maintaining a balance between their defensive stats and attackers are given level up bonuses towards their primary offensive stat. I realized I probably should have included the level up bonuses in the video, but since they'll follow a same general pattern each time, I might as well state this once and cut some time out of the videos.

[Serela]

Something that was posted on atwiki: Monk Momiji with very high HP (4k is app-SNIP FOR SPACE

Ooooh, nice. That sounds pretty good. Wild Dance has meh accuracy IIRC, so surviving that shouldn't be too bad either, as much as I'd feel squirmy leaving Chen out when she's so important. (Maybe bring Mystia along as backup instant attacker...) Kaguya probably beats out Shikieiki too if you picked her over Mokou, given that Shiki has no library/lvbonus/equipment and is heavily resisted by Tenshi. Actually, Sorcerer Iku might do comparable enough damage to work since she'd rarely have to Concentrate and can self-buff her own ATK very well (Tenshi always goes for the farthest left; heck, that'd probably put Iku ahead in damage even past the convenience)

By the way, on my current run, Sorceror Iku and atk-based Meiling are godlike for high, defense-piercing dps (and meiling still tanks like a boss and can fullheal herself). <3 On the rebal patch they heavily buffed Meiling's base atk so all that stuff both ingame and on engwiki about her low attack power are sooo outdated, she's incredible. Iku's only going to get sweeter when I pick up Tenshi full-time-tank in a second and let Iku enjoy +30% def/mnd to become a tanky attacker; with 70% atb after a normal attack she can take heavy advantage.

Also for future reference unless otherwise stated, tanks and supports are given level up bonuses towards maintaining a balance between their defensive stats and attackers are given level up bonuses towards their primary offensive stat. I realized I probably should have included the level up bonuses in the video, but since they'll follow a same general pattern each time, I might as well state this once and cut some time out of the videos.

Whilst this is a good in-general tactic, a large portion of the bosses do have more or less entirely-physical or entirely-magical movesets (with like one exception that often isn't very strong), so keep that in mind as the heat turns up.

[Ryin]

Also for future reference unless otherwise stated, tanks and supports are given level up bonuses towards maintaining a balance between their defensive stats and attackers are given level up bonuses towards their primary offensive stat. I realized I probably should have included the level up bonuses in the video, but since they'll follow a same general pattern each time, I might as well state this once and cut some time out of the videos.

You can just go faster through the screens. No way anybody can actually read everything without pausing, so you only need to leave a decent amount of time for people to pause if they want detailed information. If they just want a quick glance, enough time to pause covers that. And leaving the stats part for the end of the video, after the boss is down, makes it a lot more bearable to do because if you happen to change your strategy, you won't need to redo the intro.

Also: I'm done with finals, so I'll finally be able to do decent progress now.

Edit: did you have any special reason not to use Kogasa against Mokou? She has 0 TRR resist which means Kogasa keeps getting buffs for free and harassing her with her CLD attack.

[Monothemeerp]

Beat Yuyuko handily with average level 49. :'D

It was amusing to see MND Yuyuko take zeroes from her own attacks and Chen dealing 50k with every Phoenix Spread Wings. Now give me the same amount of damage against the Giant and I'll be pleased.

[jaxter0987]

*good advice*
Edit: did you have any special reason not to use Kogasa against Mokou? She has 0 TRR resist which means Kogasa keeps getting buffs for free and harassing her with her CLD attack.

I'll remember to do that for the other fights.

As for Kogasa, I kind of just forgot about her CLD attack until after Fujiwara Volcano. Her CLD attack doesn't inflict Terror unless I invested in Ability to Surprise Humans, but if I did that, I'd only get one level in Troubled Forgotten Item which makes the whole Terror synergy thing less enticing, especially since I sacrifice raw stats, with the EVA boost being more crucial than normal if I wanted to have more people survive Fujiwara Volcano. I realized early on that Mokou resisted Dark so Kogasa and A Rainy Night's Ghost Story (her godly Dark attack), stayed at the back of my mind until I scrambled for damage towards the end.

I've always gotten far too comfortable with alternating between a few choice attackers in all my other runs, so this is actually not that surprising for me. In my synergy run (Eientei, SDM, Moriya, MAlice) Patchouli, Remilia, Kanako, and Suwako were given almost no time to shine as I regularly alternated between MAlice, Reisen and Kaguya for my damage, Eirin and Meiling were my tanks and Sanae was dedicated Miracle Fruit spammer. In this run, its likely going to be Reisen, Eiki, and Alice that are my go to source for damage when Alice isn't spamming Trip Wire.

Hopefully, I'll be able to try to use Kogasa and Youmu more, as I've never used either towards the end game. Youmu was dropped almost immediately in my first playthrough because of her high mana costs and meh power in those spells. Kogasa stuck around for quite awhile until I realized I wanted more MAG based attackers. Maybe I'll also remember that ATK based Sakuya thats buffed up can wreck faces with Killing Doll and Extra Attack but there's already two really good Dark attacks that she's competing with....

Whilst this is a good in-general tactic, a large portion of the bosses do have more or less entirely-physical or entirely-magical movesets (with like one exception that often isn't very strong), so keep that in mind as the heat turns up.

I know this all too well but I still tend to prefer balanced defensive stats vs like a MND Minoriko and a DEF Momiji for example. I'll probably re spec the team if I'm having trouble with a boss but I don't think thats going to happen anytime soon. If there was a way to tell what type of attack the boss uses (there really shouldn't be a way, since that takes out some of the fun in my opinion) then I'd totally be all for focused defensive stats. But until then, for example I'd rather not have Minoriko die to a pathetic AoE DEF targetting attack that the boss randomly has. I'd also want Minoriko to be more useful in ATK based boss fights in general anyway, so specializing in MND tanking isn't appealing to me. The same thing applies to Momiji.

[RegalStar]

Ooooh, nice. That sounds pretty good. Wild Dance has meh accuracy IIRC, so surviving that shouldn't be too bad either, as much as I'd feel squirmy leaving Chen out when she's so important. (Maybe bring Mystia along as backup instant attacker...) Kaguya probably beats out Shikieiki too if you picked her over Mokou, given that Shiki has no library/lvbonus/equipment and is heavily resisted by Tenshi. Actually, Sorcerer Iku might do comparable enough damage to work since she'd rarely have to Concentrate and can self-buff her own ATK very well (Tenshi always goes for the farthest left; heck, that'd probably put Iku ahead in damage even past the convenience)

If you're using the instant attack loop Chen will never expose herself to Tenshi. And I don't think Kaguya and Iku will even do any damage considering we're talking about an overpowered Tenshi with a high defense buff on... ignoring 90% MND still leaves 10% of it out there. You could try Rumia though.

[Serela]

If you're using the instant attack loop Chen will never expose herself to Tenshi. And I don't think Kaguya and Iku will even do any damage considering we're talking about an overpowered Tenshi with a high defense buff on... ignoring 90% MND still leaves 10% of it out there. You could try Rumia though.

Most of the fight, her defense buff is pretty insignificant. Iku hits for plenty on the normal version even at 100% MND buff, even despite being resisted (more or comparable amounts if HVY is still on at 100% mnd than she will after it's entirely gone iirc!), so I figure she'd do fine against the super version after the mnd buff ticks down a bit. Rumia's damage is vastly worse on the normal level of the fight but it -might- be better on the super version just due to being harder to scratch her...

Yeah, Tenshi has a lot of defense, but only factoring 10~20% with Kaguya/Iku makes a preeeetty big difference compared to the 100% everyone else deals with. Even Reisen, Eirin, and Meiling have to deal with 50%. (Meiling is a godsend on the normal fight, her and Momiji can nearly solo it even without cheesestrats, they just need a bit of support.) Edit:I checked, and Tenshi has 2.5x the def/mnd in her second form; so Kaguya should be totally fine (still a quarter of the def/mnd a normal character faces in the original fight) and Iku after self-buffing would be... possibly still fine.

Also I meant leaving Chen out for Wild Dance because of it's meh accuracy. I noticed it casually missed Momiji and Meiling a lot in my fight and I'd assume super Tenshi's doesn't have increased accuracy, as that'd just be weird.

[jaxter0987]

Made some more progress. Hina Fight gave me a bit more trouble than I thought she would, so on this run, I respec'd the tanks' and supports' level up bonuses to MND. I also took awhile to realize I should inflict Heavy, Terror, or Silence right after she uses Misfortune God's Biorhythm. You can see when this realization occurs in the video itself.

Looking forward to fighting Yuugi at as low level as possible.

[Shadowlupus]

So, I'm back to make some more progress. 7F and 8F aren't really bad except when multiple Flower Divers show up. I once got in a lockdown where I couldn't even move a single person and got killed one by one.

Now I have cleared 9F but I haven't fought Ran or Tenshi. I tried to fight Ran without triggering any events that reduce her shikigami's stats. I thought it would be challenging even with Patchouli. I was so wrong, the battle was nearly impossible and cheap if you didn't trigger the events.

After losing several battles with Ran, I was wondering why Ran moves so fast after she summoned her shikigami. So I looked up the Enemy AI and found out that Ran will gain ATK, MAG and SPD per shikigami on the field. That's one problem. When all of her shikigamis are out, she becomes so freaking FAST while she also hits like a truck. Another problem is if Ran's health is above 50%, she will stick to Magical mode, which has Destroy Magic and she LOVES to spam on Patchouli every single time I'm prepared to fire off Princess Undine. If her health is below 50%, she will change to Physical mode.

The last problem lies in the shikigamis themselves. If you haven't triggered any of the events. They will each have 26400 HP, which makes Grand Incantation!Patchouli the only one who can one-shot them but due to RNG, they might survive with some HP left.

Of course, if you trigger all of the events, Ran becomes a cakewalk since she will be locked down with summoning and you will not notice any changes in her Speed and Attack/Magic at all. However, if you didn't trigger any, the battle becomes an absolute hell.

EDIT: Looks like triggering the event that makes Ran appears as a boss icon is already counted as 1 event triggered.

[Serela]

IMO Ran becomes really scary if you don't have a few people good at slamming out her shikigami. >_> Even if you take them out fast enough to prevent them from buffing her, her turns unbuffed are still intimidating when she's getting them regularly... It does get pretty easy once you do, though, so it's just a matter of being a battle where you bring in a temp character. Like I had to do for 12F Magatama because dear lord that fight is a nightmare, Kasen simultaneously being a good bulky attacker, one of the best nukes for the fight, and debuffing it's main attacking stat with her nuke... yep.

[Monothemeerp]

Yukari beaten at 55, and first try, too. It was messy, but it felt good not having to do that fight a ton of times over like in Calamity Four and my first run. Yuuka is a godsend.

[Shadowlupus]

After several attempts, I finally beat Ran (with 2 events triggered, 1 of which is mandatory.)

This battle is seriously one of the most frustrating boss fight ever. I have to maxed out some of the characters' spells to make the status effect land consistently, like Maribel's Chaotic for SHK and Mystia for SIL.

My front liners were Byakuren, Satori, Suwako and Patchouli. The battle started with Ran summoned her shikigamis and she was so freaking fast that she reached 7000 ATB before I could get a turn. Suwako went first and I used her to lower Ran's and her shikigamis'' Mind with her CLD move, which Ran was weak to. Then, Byakuren went second and I used her to switch Suwako in for Mystia to instantly inflict the shikigamis' with Silence. If Byakuren had a spare turn, I would have her spamming Magic Milky Way to cripple the enemies. If she was heavily injured, I would switch her out for Ran for buffing. Patchouli alternated between concentrating and firing off her Princess Undine, which could one-shot those shikigamis with both Mind debuff from Suwako and Silence from Mystia, dealing 20k each. Satori was just there, waiting for the right opportunity for an important person to be switched in. Other than that, Ran's spells are pretty straightforward (except for Destroy Magic) but with her limited movesets, she could spam them indefinitely. Even then, with her shikigamis present, Ran's spells were quite deadly even without buffs, capable of one-shotting any fragile characters,

After firing off the first Princess Undine, I switched in Mystia for Maribel, Satori and Maribel then kept casting Chaotic spell to lock Ran down with a Shock effect. Luckily, it landed consistently, buying Patchouli enough time to concentrate and fire 2 more Princess Undine. Then Ran suddenly turned serious, firing off her Soaring En no Onzuno, killing Satori and Maribel. So, I switched in Yuugi, Marisa and Utsuho to blast everything until Ran died. Patchouli then ended the battle with the last Princess Undine.

It took about 10 retries before I finally won the battle, somehow.

So, I was able to take Ran down with only 2 events triggered but I wonder if it is possible to beat Ran with only 1 event triggered.

[Otaku]

Still stuck on 12F, i managed to beat the mirror, however i'm having still having trouble with the magatama,*sigh* however i have been close a couple of times (can't wait till i'm gonna deal with Tenshi)  :ohdear:

[RegalStar]

Isn't agastrowhateverhisnameis supposed to use Djinn Storm on turn 1? 

[Serela]

The database says that but in practice I've never seen or heard of it actually occuring. *Shrug*

[jester147]

Agastobrauma. Yeah this seems kind of misleading. Either it was an oversight or a leftover code from previous versions or I don't know what. It's just it never used Djinn Storm on turn 1 or any turns at all.

[Ghaleon]

yeah gets me every time too.. agastro-thanks-obama right? I think it ACTUALLY uses magic jitsu on turn 1 every time.

In any case, still didn't even attempt cootie-suke. sorry. Last week dungeon travelers 2 was finally on sale on the psn and I pretty much got a vita FOR that game half a year ago so I've been playing it to death, worth it. would have been worth full price. It might even be better than etrian odyssey! The shopping mechanics are the only real issue imo. but the customization, challenge, etc are more fun to me...slightly.. it's a damn fine game (they both are)

[jaxter0987]

I REALLY should get an Etrian Odyssey game, since apparently LoT is inspired by Etrian Odyssey and I just LOVE playing LoT. Maybe I'll get the 3DS Etrian Odyssey as a Christmas present to myself.

I haven't touched LoT2 since my last post due to finals, but soon, I'll get right back to making progress and hopefully catch up to Monothemeerp.

[Monothemeerp]

Yeah, I've been itching to play an EO game myself. I wanna get around to that some time.

Also, my progress is probably gonna slow down a bit because 16-18F are coming up and those are gonna be reaaally annoying to navigate. Probably my second least favorite stratum other than 7-9F, the fact that it's purple and the music is nice give it some saving grace.

[Deranged]

I REALLY should get an Etrian Odyssey game, since apparently LoT is inspired by Etrian Odyssey and I just LOVE playing LoT. Maybe I'll get the 3DS Etrian Odyssey as a Christmas present to myself.

I haven't touched LoT2 since my last post due to finals, but soon, I'll get right back to making progress and hopefully catch up to Monothemeerp.

Yeah, I've been itching to play an EO game myself. I wanna get around to that some time.

Also, my progress is probably gonna slow down a bit because 16-18F are coming up and those are gonna be reaaally annoying to navigate. Probably my second least favorite stratum other than 7-9F, the fact that it's purple and the music is nice give it some saving grace.

I'm a big fan of the EO games as well - they're similar in the sense that both are dungeon crawling RPGs with a heavy emphasis on exploring and hard randoms/bosses, but for LoT1 at least, the similarities pretty much end there. (...If you discount the game's title and SoC's theme at least) There's no in-battle switch mechanic in EO (or at least, not one like LoT's) meaning smaller parties, there's a lot more focus on drawing your own map, and customizing your characters is a huge part of the allure of the game.

LoT2, on the other hand, takes its skill and subclass system right from EO, and some of the story bits wouldn't look out of place at all in an EO game either - so if you prefer LoT2 to LoT1 for those reasons, you'll probably like EO more.

Spoiler:

My biggest regret when translating the original was that I didn't localize the title to Gensokyian/Eastern Odyssey.

[Ryin]

yeah gets me every time too.. agastro-thanks-obama right? I think it ACTUALLY uses magic jitsu on turn 1 every time.

It doesn't. Strengthen Jutsu is a 10% chance random action and his opener is random. I used to think it was something that was removed in a later patch but the oldest footage we have of Agastobrauma still doesn't have Djinn Storm. It was probably planned but never made it to a released version.

I REALLY should get an Etrian Odyssey game, since apparently LoT is inspired by Etrian Odyssey and I just LOVE playing LoT. Maybe I'll get the 3DS Etrian Odyssey as a Christmas present to myself.

Yeah, I've been itching to play an EO game myself. I wanna get around to that some time.

I love Etrian Odyssey games so much that my youtube channel is practically dedicated to challenge runs of the games. I highly recommend that you guys do play it sometime. Like Deranged said, the similarities between the two games are actually only in genre and general atmosphere, but I bet you'd enjoy it.

I advise that you guys try one of the first four games and stay away from the damage creep mess that is the Untold games, though. The first four were like LoT2 in which there are some broken things but the game is mostly well balanced. In the Untold games you can choose to kill literally any boss in less than 5 turns or slog through their incredibly bloated HP numbers with a sub optimal burst team.

LoT2, on the other hand, takes its skill and subclass system right from EO, and some of the story bits wouldn't look out of place at all in an EO game either - so if you prefer LoT2 to LoT1 for those reasons, you'll probably like EO more.

I'd say people who prefer LoT1 over LoT2 are more prone to prefer EO and EOII over the others and people who prefer LoT2 over LoT1 will probably like EOIII and EOIV more. You can draw quite a few parallels in the game design choices in those groups, actually.

Spoiler:

My biggest regret when translating the original was that I didn't localize the title to Gensokyian/Eastern Odyssey.

Spoiler:

Oh gosh.

Anyway, I finished 14F and 15F.
Evil Forge was still that thing you ask yourself if it's even a boss.
Triomagen I thought would be annoying but Aya and Suika had great SP recovery and both could take any Wind easily, so there was always one of them hitting the boss. They also didn't use Healing Prayer woo!
I actually almost wiped against Hill Gigas lmao. I had almost no SP on Yuugi, my only source of paralysis, and accidentally walked in into his battle. I used Aya and Sanae to keep her speed up at all times to allow her to Focus and still keep the paralysis up.
I'm seriously afraid of fighting Yuyuko with my team that can't paralyze or buff defenses, so I'm delaying the fight a bit.

[Ghaleon]

IMO EO2>EO4>EO1>EO3 =P
EO3's post-game dungeon has best music though. It's a really cool song that kinda has a feeling games don't often feel for more than moments or events, but rarely dungeons/battles.

ahh found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GtGLNPJqrA

[Ryin]

EOII > EOI > EOIII > EOIV, for me.
And EOIV might be the lowest but I still freaking love that game. It's a -very- close ranking.

[Deranged]

4 > 3 = U2 > 2 = U1 > 1.

My ranking is a little biased due to being a huge fan of Yuzo Koshiro (and thinking U2 and 4 are some of his best works) and assuming that broken Immunize in 1 was normal for the series, thus spamming it all the way through and trivializing the game.

At least the gamebreakers in the other games are more focused on outputting unbelievable numbers instead of taking single-digit damage from enemy attacks. The former is always somehow more satisfying (and quicker).