Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F

[jester147]

Yep have fun indeed, you go back to your last save if you get a game over, be careful with that, else your exploration and grinding is lost

[dawnbomb]

Getting into LoT1 now and...

ow. Chen. Just...ow. Chen.

She nearly slaughtered my entire party even with Meiling on my side ;-; only marisa survived.

if you are doing LoT1, i need beta testers for a mod im working on. part of its complete, and while i have no real intention of fixing to much of this part because i don't expect many people to be taking /just/ this part of it, your free to use it if it helps you enjoy the game more, and feedback is fine. i just quickly slapped this together so its not even what this part would be normally standalone, but it would be adding a weakness chart for enemies. because im lazy, this also unintensionally includes some Rebirth stuff, some of my HUD recoloring / styleing, and 1F includes new enemies from Part 2 that im working on. this works on both main game and post game.

Labyrinth of touhou Colors mod (alpha)    <link deleted, check post further ahead in the topic for more updated verson>

the end goal is to make the game feel fresh, stylish, and require less searching on the touhou labyrinth wiki to beat the game. i am still actively working on this game, and just added the new 1F enemies today. install instructions are included. soon i should be tackleing new floor entry graphics, and some new sound effects or backround music. (maybe with releaseing this, i'll put abit more priority on styleizing the HUD tho)

(now if only i could get into the games exe and be able to change some more things then i plan on....oooo....i want help with that so badly)

2 AM : spend a few hours making stylish role labels to apply to charagraph mugs, so you can know what everyone does in battle, to really make use of weakness charts. now off to sleep. applied it to a few characters to test and their very small non intrustive and stylish. RIP most of yesterday and 6 hours today on finalizeing their color schemes tho. i took the idea from some charagraph i saw somewhere. if i post a update to my colors mod alpha, it will include them on all characters, along with some options charagraphs also with the labels applied. i also have the option to have them removed already as well. now then, zzzz.

we really need people to start translations for Lot2 plus disk. i think once im done my mod, i'll jump into it.

[elminster1372]

we really need people to start translations for Lot2 plus disk. i think once im done my mod, i'll jump into it.

Onegaishimasu! :-) I already have the Plus Disk, but I am still wary about jumping into the PD content because I wanna be able to enjoy the story... I'd love an English patch so much! Moreover, I don't think there'd be a problem in translating it even if the PD content is not complete yet - at worst, 3peso will add more stuff, but I doubt it'd change anything of what he already made in an extensive way (especially dialogues etc.), so it's not like your work would go to waste once the full PD is released.

EDIT: Oh, and Nyttyn, please make videos of some of the boss fights if you can, they are such a pleasure to watch when the fight is close^^

EDIT2: Just defeated Tenshi on 12F... and Ame no Murakumo as well :-) I REALLY encourage all of you to give the Sealing Club girls a try, they're much stronger than I imagined.

Renko is basically invincible. Thanks to Maintenance, she has tank-worthy stats, on top of a massive evasion score (around 150), letting her dodge nearly everything enemies throw at her (for example, she dodged every single Start of Heavenly Demise from Murakumo). And on top of that, she also get a superb buffing spell in Charge - the HP drain is not nearly as problematic when bosses only target her most of the time (and when you're healing back with Yuuka or Reimu). As a side note, Maintenance also means that it's incredibly easy to buff her resistances when needed - while normally weak to Spirit, for example, one single item lets her Spirit resistance skyrocket to over 250, letting her soak Murakumo's slashes like they were nothing.

Maribel is possibly even more crazy. Thanks to her ability to treat enemy's buffs as debuffs, she absolutely wrecks every single boss who likes to buff itself. For example, she took down Tenshi (12F) with three Chaotic Quadruple Border (at, like, level 60 with 50ish library levels), doing 25-30k damage per hit. On top of that, she has crazy mana regeneration (recovering 2 MP per turn while Renko is out), letting her fire off CQB or Liberated Abilities repeatedly, without any need to Concentrate (and when she does, the follow-up attack is gonna hurt like hell). And as a side note, CQB also does quick work of any SHK-weak boss, like Yuuka or that extra boss in postgame.

Truly, I first chose to include those two on my team because they looked cute, but in truth, they're amazingly powerful. Give them a try and you won't be disappointed.

[Spiffspoo]

Getting into LoT1 now and...

ow. Chen. Just...ow. Chen.

She nearly slaughtered my entire party even with Meiling on my side ;-; only marisa survived.

Ya I don't get ver 3 Chen.  Her normal attack could 1 shot most of my party members, but her other attacks barely did any damage.

[nyttyn]

Yeah, I don't really have the desire to make videos sorry. Though I have to say, Youmu can outright go screw herself.  Two attempts and I still nearly ran out of gas at the end. I'm getting the impression from this that LoT1 is a lot more damage race-y than LoT2 is, it's a *lot* harder so far to keep people going.

As for the mod...

Well, I don't like the change on the load from whatever it was to Color, but I understand that's a stylistic choice. I have no feedback beyond that as the mod doesn't actually work - the game will simply black screen when you attempt to load a save file or start a new game.

[Krhinji]

I have a small question related to Marisa's corridor skills in LoT2 that I don't think I've seen anyone mention, looking back at the rest of this thread, but the Hakkero Charge counter is only increasing while Marisa takes turns on the front row, and not while she's in reserve. Everything I've read says that she should also be getting an increase to the counter while in the reserve. Is it bugged, or am I just mistaken and it doesn't work unless she takes turns on the front row?

[ZoomyTsugumi]

The further on in LoT1 that you get the more strategy can get involved in your fights since you start to gain the SP required to use new things and be sustainable.

[RegalStar]

I have a small question related to Marisa's corridor skills in LoT2 that I don't think I've seen anyone mention, looking back at the rest of this thread, but the Hakkero Charge counter is only increasing while Marisa takes turns on the front row, and not while she's in reserve. Everything I've read says that she should also be getting an increase to the counter while in the reserve. Is it bugged, or am I just mistaken and it doesn't work unless she takes turns on the front row?

If that happens then it's bugged.

[Myosotis]

3 more days, according to my timezone, until it's been a whole month since there has been any activity on the devs twitter.
Makes me wonder if something serious happened. 

[Ghaleon]

3 more days, according to my timezone, until it's been a whole month since there has been any activity on the devs twitter.
Makes me wonder if something serious happened. 

Given he had radio silence on for like a year if not more beforehand. I wouldn't go that far.

[jaxter0987]

Yeah, I don't really have the desire to make videos sorry. Though I have to say, Youmu can outright go screw herself.  Two attempts and I still nearly ran out of gas at the end. I'm getting the impression from this that LoT1 is a lot more damage race-y than LoT2 is, it's a *lot* harder so far to keep people going.

It gets better the further you get into the game, but LoT2 is better designed even if the boss fights were less interesting for the most part. That said though, LoT2 doesn't really have "unfair" bosses while in LoT1 after you reach a certain point you're doing yourself a disservice if you want to trial and error through boss fights to figure stuff out. Or I guess you could just brute force it by over grinding but that's not much fun either.

I really should play through LoT1 again though. I couldn't bring myself to do it before since I still haven't cleared 30F. But knowing what I know about the game now should make the beginnings of the game so much more enjoyable so I reconsidered that choice.

Also, wow that fight must have been super messy, seeing Remilia in the fourth slot...

[dawnbomb]

Yeah, I don't really have the desire to make videos sorry. Though I have to say, Youmu can outright go screw herself.  Two attempts and I still nearly ran out of gas at the end. I'm getting the impression from this that LoT1 is a lot more damage race-y than LoT2 is, it's a *lot* harder so far to keep people going.

As for the mod...

Well, I don't like the change on the load from whatever it was to Color, but I understand that's a stylistic choice. I have no feedback beyond that as the mod doesn't actually work - the game will simply black screen when you attempt to load a save file or start a new game.

are you sure you did it correctly? it shouldnt have any problems and i just tried it with another pc, worked fine. did you rename your dxa?
maybe i uploaded the wrong thing...  and i see you like the lebeled character graphs (NLM BFF FIR ect) im actually making better ones of those for my mod and applying it to many charagraphs. if you have any preferences for character graphics (im assuming no as your using defaults) let me know and il add those labels to them and release them as charagraphs

if it wasnt clear you put the unzipped IMG and IMG2 folders where your games exe is, and then rename / backup / delete your img.dxa and img2.dxa files (i recommend backing these up)

[nyttyn]

are you sure you did it correctly? it shouldnt have any problems and i just tried it with another pc, worked fine. did you rename your dxa?
maybe i uploaded the wrong thing...  and i see you like the lebeled character graphs (NLM BFF FIR ect) im actually making better ones of those for my mod and applying it to many charagraphs. if you have any preferences for character graphics (im assuming no as your using defaults) let me know and il add those labels to them and release them as charagraphs

if it wasnt clear you put the unzipped IMG and IMG2 folders where your games exe is, and then rename / backup / delete your img.dxa and img2.dxa files (i recommend backing these up)

Yeah, I did exactly that. The game just black screens on load w/ no sound (though it does show different colors for the load game text as well).

Edit: I've also tried JP locale, english locale, deleting/renaming both img.dxa/img2.dxa and the openoffice file, and leaving the openoffice file be. Noone of it works.

[elminster1372]

Yeah, I don't really have the desire to make videos sorry. Though I have to say, Youmu can outright go screw herself.  Two attempts and I still nearly ran out of gas at the end. I'm getting the impression from this that LoT1 is a lot more damage race-y than LoT2 is, it's a *lot* harder so far to keep people going.

Pity for the videos^^ Anyway, if I were to say, it's not that LoT1 is more damage race-y than LoT2, but rather that in LoT1, your damage output is generally much smaller compared to the boss's HP pools than in LoT2. Moreover, frail characters like Suwako are REALLY frail in LoT1. In LoT1 you might get lucky and have them survive an AoE... or maybe they'll dodge. In LoT1, unless you overlevel, AoE nukes are LETHAL. Not even your tanks are granted to survive without resistances or defensive buffs.

The overall result is that, generally, endgames are much more tight and closer, and so it does feel more like a damage race. But at the same time, it's a hell of a lot more rewarding. For example, here is a video of my newgame+ fight vs Alice (which I posted a few pages ago):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J90aIV2EYhw

As you can see if you watch it all, all the AoE (especially Little Legion) are outright murderous... and your damage output is quite lame in comparison. As a result, most of your victories will be of the "one more turn and I'd have lost" kind... like in this video^^

But that's what makes LoT1 fun! LoT2 might have less useless chars, better graphics, more choices... but LoT1 has far more fun boss battles. The 18F boss in LoT1 will easily go down as one of the most epic fights in RPG history IMO, strategy-wise^^

[Serela]

LoT1 and LoT2 flow a bit different in general. I find in LoT2 it's rather difficult to use glass cannons and often want to leave my characters in a lot, but in LoT1 it seemed like the most efficient strategies often involved heavy swapping with a good dose of glass nukers. That'll change in LoT2 as stuff like Keine's 9999atb swap becomes more common (or at least rinno/nazrin's swap, 9300?) as postgame is expanded and you get more awakenings/time to use them, but yeah.

In Plus Disk Lot1 everyone gets steadily more durable (apart from the total glass ones) but in maingame, it's a thing.

[Libra]

 In particular, I find that fragile speedster (characters that focus on low dmg-low delay attacks coupled with average ATK/MAG, high SPD and low DEF/MND/HP) like Chen, Rin , Nazrin or Mystia are much less viable in LoT2 than in LoT1 simply because most stay-in attackers (Meiling, the onis, Yuuka, Maribel, Kanako) are so good in LoT2. They can deal very high amounts of dmg at very reasonable delays, can take several hits and some also have passives or spellcards that allow them to keep themselves buffed and/or recover HP and MP efficiently, so overall there's literally no reason to switch them out once they get going.

 In LoT1 I remember having Chen as one of my best physical attackers during most of the game, both against random battles and against bosses where she would just shred them with repeated Flights of Idaten, meanwhile in LoT2 I had both Meiling and Chen in my team and Mountain Breaker at +50%ATK would sometimes deal as much as 10 times more dmg than Flight of Idaten at +80%ATK ( of course this is also because Mountain Breaker's formula is completely bonkers, but still), so there was no real point in bothering to switch Chen in if I could just focus on buffing and healing Meiling instead, this gets even worse in postgame since every boss has so much DEF that Chen would pretty much never get to deal more than 1 dmg. This does seem to be less of a problem in plus disc ( against Kasen's shadow Chen was actually able to keep up much better with Meiling).

 Granted, these characters also became even better at clearing random encounters in LoT2 thanks to their passives.

[Myosotis]

Speaking about game balance. I've adjusted the exp and money gain rates in a playtrough I did once because I like my LoT2 to be more grindy.
I turned out the general pacing was still the same, as in, you grind a while to beat a boss and you are ready to sometimes even beat the next one as well.

If anyone happens to know where or how to find enemy stats, please do tell me. Or if you have a better idea on how to change the games pace to be less fluid.

[RegalStar]

Wouldn't it be easier to mess with characters' experience requirements instead of every monster's reward individually?

[Krhinji]

I think I found another possible bug as well with a corridor skill, but I'm not sure.

Rinnosuke, with his corridor skill maxed that gives him buffs on all auxillary actions and debuffs on all offensive actions, is working correctly with First Aid to give a 15% all stats buff to whomever it is used on. However, with maxed Battle Command I'm only getting 18% all stats buff before buff decay.

[elminster1372]

LoT1 and LoT2 flow a bit different in general. I find in LoT2 it's rather difficult to use glass cannons and often want to leave my characters in a lot, but in LoT1 it seemed like the most efficient strategies often involved heavy swapping with a good dose of glass nukers. That'll change in LoT2 as stuff like Keine's 9999atb swap becomes more common (or at least rinno/nazrin's swap, 9300?) as postgame is expanded and you get more awakenings/time to use them, but yeah.

In Plus Disk Lot1 everyone gets steadily more durable (apart from the total glass ones) but in maingame, it's a thing.

I think that part of the reason why LoT1 is more favourable towards hit-and-switch is because delays are generally larger, both for the player and the enemies, so you have ample time to switch in and out. In LoT2, on the other hand, you're generally better off staying (also because many chars have several useful periodic passives you want to abuse, especially in the lategame)

[Libra]

I think I found another possible bug as well with a corridor skill, but I'm not sure.

Rinnosuke, with his corridor skill maxed that gives him buffs on all auxillary actions and debuffs on all offensive actions, is working correctly with First Aid to give a 15% all stats buff to whomever it is used on. However, with maxed Battle Command I'm only getting 18% all stats buff before buff decay.

 Actually, I believe in the japanese wiki it says the skill provides buffs on healing  actions , not auxiliary actions.

[Krhinji]

Actually, I believe in the japanese wiki it says the skill provides buffs on healing  actions , not auxiliary actions.

Well, that would solve that. That's pretty annoying but I guess it is good to know.

[Ghaleon]

LoT1 and LoT2 flow a bit different in general. I find in LoT2 it's rather difficult to use glass cannons and often want to leave my characters in a lot, but in LoT1 it seemed like the most efficient strategies often involved heavy swapping with a good dose of glass nukers. That'll change in LoT2 as stuff like Keine's 9999atb swap becomes more common (or at least rinno/nazrin's swap, 9300?) as postgame is expanded and you get more awakenings/time to use them, but yeah.

In Plus Disk Lot1 everyone gets steadily more durable (apart from the total glass ones) but in maingame, it's a thing.

I still haven't played lot2 terribly much even though I like it cuz waiting for patch for +disc (and I stopped playing when +disc was announced because I didn't think it would take so long to get here). So I'm probably one of the least enlightened people regarding lot2. particularly since the wiki had no formulas or anything last I played.

BUT...

My experience wasn't just that glass cannons were harder to keep out in lot2 'just because', but rather lot1's 'glass cannons' that had low hp and/or defense, but good mnd could take a hit or two (or even more sometimes) from many bosses because lots would use magic formulas, and a lot of the physical ones were single target that rarely targeted the rear, or were row-targeting, which barely touched the read. needle parade, snipe, and uhh.. uhh... what was it... arrow rain...These were REALLY rare abilities from bosses until the post game, at which point they were still fairly uncommon.

But in lot2, I felt like a character with great mnd but abysmal hp and/or def was never truly 'safe' for the vast majority of bosses, and not just during postgame.

[Myosotis]

Wouldn't it be easier to mess with characters' experience requirements instead of every monster's reward individually?

Yep, but there's less control that way. Adjusting exp gains is even easier and disabling drop bonus skills, but the thing is as I tried to say, even if your party needs some grinding to tackle the next boss, by the time you are ready for said boss, there's not much of a gap between this boss and the next floor and it's enemies.
Basically what I'm going to try is create a bigger gap between floors, like it was in LoT1 if my memory doesn't fail me.

My first though was, the best way to do this is to 1.lower global exp and money gains by simply dividing all earnings and 2. to raise some enemy stats until it doesn't happen anymore that after you beat a boss, the next floors monsters will be a cakewalk and you essentially skip a whole floors grind simply because the last floor was enough to prepare you for the next one
Granted doing step 2 would require a good amount of time, thinking and testing and I'm honestly not sure if I'd ever want to bother with it, if the tables are too hard to read without manually written tools since I know nothing about programming. On second though, I'm pretty sure that idea will never be realized, given the amount of enemies. Maybe making bosses more manageable but applying additional penalties would be the better option, since there is a gap between enemies from one to the next floor and the problem is usually having to grind a lot to beat the boss, after which you will have an easy time to deal with the next floor due to the grind involved...I said this based on my experiences with lowered battle rewards. Sorry, rambling too much about things only I care about.   

[dawnbomb]

Yeah, I did exactly that. The game just black screens on load w/ no sound (though it does show different colors for the load game text as well).

Edit: I've also tried JP locale, english locale, deleting/renaming both img.dxa/img2.dxa and the openoffice file, and leaving the openoffice file be. Noone of it works.

Whoa!      i dont know what those img.dxa3 and img2.dxa3 files are or what their doing there but i dont have them. maybe related?
i believe i fixed the problem anyway, altho i only had it happen once and then never agin, so if it is a 'real' problem, i guess i fixed it? closest i got to 'the problem' (for sure) other then getting it once on a fluke, was trying to load the game via USB to a new laptop i have, but it was a simple case of 'don't try and load via USB' as all i had to do was wait forever and the black screen went away and the game proceeded with sound and video.

now includes finished new character graphics and all labeled!  took me forever to finalize the design of the new graphical style for the labels. heres a example of the finished thing ingame with the games new default graphics (attached to post as image) 

  and heres the new link for alpha 0.2: <removed> check later post

now includes some new 2F enemies as well. my time to work on this has been very limited, but i'll get some more tomorrow. been REALLY playing through persona 5 on merciless difficulty, im 75 hours in and i think im 50% done the game    but this weekend im letting my friend borrow my PS4 so TO MOD WORK I GO~!

also attached is the exact files to rename / delete / move so they arn't in the games directory. as of now on 3 different PC's, the mod always works. and i can't really think of why it wouldn't work. again, its still early into it, im going to be changing menus more, and a bunch of other stuff. i'll probably tackle changing the rest of the enemies first tho, but i got sidetracked on finishing up the new character portraits / labels so the player can easily see what characters use what elements, to really use the in battle charts.

final note: im aware some enemies charts may overlap. in the default game, enemies were already very close and overlapping somewhat, you just didn't notice as much or care because it wasn't important text like a chart being blocked because of it. as i update the enemies that are in the game with new sprites, i'll adjust things so the overlap doesn't happen anymore. (except for the intentional ones of 6 enemies on the exact same location) but for the time being, some charts in random battles may be hard to read due to enemy overlap i'll fix it i promise! and again, feedback is welcome, and i guess, anything not really feedback wise, but simply something you would like to see changed period, is also welcome! i'm probably going to look into having the colored gates be significantly more different between their 'open' and 'close' states, so their easier to tell if the games are open or closed just by looking. i felt when i first played it wasn't clear enough. thats a example of 'general suggestions' you could ask for me to hit as i pass over the games graphics.

(remember to click the images below to see them in their full resolution)

[dawnbomb]

welp i cracked the games exe. i can edit character names, ability names, ability descriptions, enemy names, item names, item descriptions, and the plot. from a quick look without to much effort.

enemy names, item names, ability names, and character names all seem really easy. descriptions for items abilities however... for some reason the individual sentences are all over the place so that might be a nightmare.

i can also change the music and sound effects with ease.

i don't know about floor layout or battle lineups yet, or enemy resistances and weaknesses.

i can't believe im saying this but LoT1 code uses the word FUCK as a line break. why? xD

edit: now i have some new enemies on 3F 4F 5F and 6F. all new enemies, previous, and these actually new ones, all have custom names. things proceed smoothly.

edit2: LoT1 colors mod alpha 0.3   <removed>

Edit3: LoT1 colors mod alpha 0.4  http://www.mediafire.com/file/l8smt9wfdfg7odq/Labyrinth+of+Touhou+COLORS+%28Alpha%29+0.4.zip

now includes atleast 1 new enemy on every floor of the main game, with many floors having multiple enemies. i did this so people could see some changes reguardless how far they are, rather then hard focus from the start to end of the game. i didn't touch new enemies in post game yet, altho they do have the charts already. next is either lots more enemies again, or looking over the HUD or maybe music files. (but probably more enemies, altho again, i'll probably do whatever feedback says if i agree)

guess i forgot to say so why the reason i gave the loading screen a logo, is so the player knows the mod is working. i fucking hate modding something, and not knowing if my mod worked or not until later on.

[Krhinji]

Well I managed to beat the last boss available in the LoT2 Plus Disk as it stands right now. ...Well, besides Endless Corridor stuff and the level 760 icon.

The last boss was pretty difficult, it was honestly the only Plus Disk boss that took me more than around twenty minutes. The random encounters of the PD are way more brutal than the bosses.
I will admit I was pretty underleveled though for the fight so that likely didn't help at all. http://puu.sh/vxbMm/953105cc75.jpg

[qazmlpok]

i can't believe im saying this but LoT1 code uses the word FUCK as a line break. why? xD

It doesn't. If you see that, it's a dead string, not referenced by anything.

(It's there because I enjoy cursing)

[dawnbomb]

It doesn't. If you see that, it's a dead string, not referenced by anything.

(It's there because I enjoy cursing)

oh its your fault. i see.

[LonelyGaruga]

I didn't see this specified in the thread, but after doing some more reading on Miko's Awakening skill, Crown Prince's Teaching is a 16/8% multiplicative increase to the original value of buffs and not additive, which is how I thought it worked. In retrospect, the wording on the translation of the skill does suggest that it's multiplicative ("16% more benefit from buffs") but I did not understand it to mean that, and was unsure if it was just me being dumb or if others may have misunderstood it as well.

So (as an example) a 50% buff would become 58% if Miko is in the front and 54% if in the back, as opposed to 66%/58% respectively. I'm a little disappointed because I was thinking it could do things like change the Monk subclass skill Body Revitalization from a 4% buff to all stats per turn to a 20/12% one, or provide a large increase to passive skills that increase stats like Aya's SPD buff or Keine's MND buff. The way it works, if Miko is in the back, there is no increase to any buff that is 12% or lower (it lowers down if there are decimals, 1.08 * 12 = 12.96), which covers pretty much every stat boosting passive skill that activates per turn. And the per turn buffs that do get affected get increased by 1%. Still a great skill, just not what I was thinking it was.