Labyrinth of Touhou 9F

[Raikaria]

Beat up St.Elmo's Fire for the first time, which was basically 'Throw things at it while Youmu charges and uses Eternity because that's my only way to actually hurt this thing other than Cat's Walk'. I won pretty quickly, but Rumia got OHKO'ed by a Wind of Souls, and I recall someone else did too, but can't recall who it was. I got the drop first try.

I don't understand how Hourai Barrage only hit 900. Guess it has a very high resistance to it's element, but for a skill that was hitting 6.5k's before all the recent level ups to only hit 900... how high is St.Elmo's resists ._.

On Floor 6 now, and I've hit Reimu Lv 25. Even though Aya and Komachi's trashclearing is starting to weaken, Rin and Reimu are picking up, as is Reisen, and, surprisingly, Kaguya, who can now use FRR multiple times before a break. I can easily kill Pressures in one round. Except that one time when I had Reimu/Renko/Rumia/Reisen. In which case I just Galaxy Stopped it.

Also Komachi has almost 2.5k HP already, despite me not even going full HP.

[Kanoe]

St. Elmo's Fire has 500 resist to all elements. Yeah, I fumbled a bit in that fight trying to think of non elemental attacks to use on it.

Finished Floor 13. Usually, I grind on this floor a bit but without Chen or Aya to take out the faster enemies, it was too annoying. So now I am on Floor 14 which is painful to say the least. Flandre can clear most of it but it usually takes more than just Lavaetein at this point.

Just took out Evil Forge at around 54-55. Was a pure caster boss against my Mind tanks, easy peasy.  :3

Sunday, I will upload a few videos of my battles. Will do a few videos every Sunday until I finish. My first video will have commentary about the draft but the rest of the fights are without me speaking.

[RegalStar]

Yuugi and Tam's Foe down. Yuugi gave me no trouble at all since Maribel just buffed up and demolished her (CQB did 8k on first hit!), but Tam's foe was, predictably, very painful, since Sanae simply can't heal fast enough to keep up, and Keine (one of my designated tanks) died after a tackle on 5th turn. I had to take a risk after the 3rd hellfire and let only two party members stand for the next turn because only Remi survived it, but Suika's SPD debuff earlier and Mystia's PAR later bought me enough time to bring it down with the combined effort of poison, Chen, Maribel, and a Master Spark.

So far, all the bosses I've brought down were done so by swtiching around everyone to preserve health while DPSing, and rather than fighting wars of attrition (like I'm used to) they were all battles of "kill before party wiped first", since Sanae has so much trouble keeping up with healing (I threw a lot of SKP on her so she has no problem healing away most of the damage right now, but she just can't heal fast enough with 25% post-use delay instead of 50%). This shouldn't work too badly for most bosses, but the foes, Nitori, Flandre, Rinnosuke, and probably Great Press too will likely give me a lot of trouble.

[Serela]

So far, all the bosses I've brought down were done so by swtiching around everyone to preserve health while DPSing, and rather than fighting wars of attrition (like I'm used to) they were all battles of "kill before party wiped first"

Back when the english patch was recently released for Plus Disk, people doing stuff like this normally was pretty common, so it does work out! (At first, using mostly ATK or MAG based growths on just about everyone minus Meiling/Tenshi was about par for the course, Iku was considered useless, and Minoriko was seen as far inferior to Sanae, etc. Tanking is hard, yo D:)

It's different, but still fun in a different way. Ooop, downhill battles...

You'll start having to grind a good bit for the required bosses later in if you can't build up some kind of defensive front, though. There's a reason recommended levels on the wikia (not wiki) are drastically higher then what anyone would recommend these days.

[Kanoe]

Danmaku is about power...  :3

Just defeated Hill Gigas. Suwako para lock for the win.

I find Floor 15 randoms much easier to deal with than Floor 14. Cirno makes up for Patch's lack of speed by paralyzing everyone then finishing things up with Royal Flare. *nods nods*

Yuyuko has been pulling her weight as well with her instant death attacks.

Will need to grind for BP soons. Oh well, gives me an excuse to grind some extra exp. Having so many slow levelers does hinder me a bit.

Edit: Triomagen down. Had to fight them twice to get the Star to drop. Rather easy. Sakuya speed buffs plus Ran and Yukari buffs with Patch in fourth slot equals win. Also some swapping in of Shikieiki, Flandre, and Suwako of course with the occasional Minoriko heal.

[RegalStar]

Suwako down. Wow, that was hard. Her spells are really weak and have like next to no DEF/MND piercing, but with her 1280ATK/1300MAG and my lack of ability to buff she still just demolishes me. My roster barley sit through one cycle of two forms, and starting from that Mishaguji-sama they just started dropping left and right. It doesn't help that she has rather good status resist either; Luckily her physical form is all single target attacks so I ended up just throwing a sacrifice for Croaking Frog, and killed her before she can take a turn in her second magic phase (which would've just wiped me in one non magic-drain move I'm sure).

Nitori I'll just wait until after Reisen.

[Starxsword]

From the way it sounds, your teams looks like it is made of paper or something.

Will need to grind for BP soons. Oh well, gives me an excuse to grind some extra exp. Having so many slow levelers does hinder me a bit.

The good news is that some of them can take a hit.

[RegalStar]

Well, my team doesn't have a primary tank, and outside of Sanae (who's my only healer) no one is capable of buffing teammate's MND. I do have a whole bunch of generally bulky characters, but without defensive buffs it's more that "they can take a hit or two before dying" as "they can sit out there and comfortably tank for a while".

[Serela]

Remi with all DEF levelups should be your best tank option statwise... and ontop of that, she can buff herself (including her MND) so that makes her far and away the golden choice for the Meiling stand-in.

Of course, the rest of your party will still have survival issues, ESPECIALLY due to the difficulty buffing :T At least you have Keine's def buff for -something- (And she's a great slot 2 candidate), but...

[RegalStar]

Reisen and Nitori down. A couple of people died to Reisen's summons near the end because I want the getitup V, so I couldn't use poison moth more than three times (because of the PSN effect), but Reisen herself didn't kill anyone. Seriously. I didn't even change anyone's equip for this boss fight and her Mind Starmine didn't even kill a single character. Nitori was also going swimmingly until I mistimed and Remi died to a railgun, but at that point her health is really low so I just started switching in attackers and nuke and she died before my party got wiped. Oh and I'm saving Sanae's Foe for after Tenshi, and before Eientei.

[Rukoto]

After an absurd amount of procrastinating and putting this task off, I finally did it. I beat the last obstacle on 30F that was standing between me and starting a NG+.

Spoiler:

I'm winner. Props to Suwako for the finishing nuke at 2 TP and ***WINNER*** for not using his medicine of life or time stop; cleared at Reimu 567.

And did I really take two years to beat this game? Wow! Now to figure out what I can do to spice up a NG+ run. I definitely didn't have a concrete party of 12 in my play-through. Actually, what would a party of the 12 generally least effective characters in this game look like?

[Serela]

Actually, what would a party of the 12 generally least effective characters in this game look like?

While there's some characters that can be agreed on as lower tier (Utsuho hands down, for example, and Mokou isn't that bad but SO many people do her job better), a lot of it is a matter of whether or not they synergize together. Almost all the characters are at least good enough to be realistically viable; how much your team can work with eachother is a bigger factor. Also whether or not you have core defensive features like how much you're able to buff, what debuffs/par skills you have avaliable, etc.

[Kanoe]

Alright, I BP farmed for all the characters that needed them. I just used three of them and Flandre and just kept Lavaetein twice then leaving and coming back on Floor 15. It took a bit but it did get me some much needed exp and skill points (Plus alot of item drops).

Yuyuko down. Reimu level 74 (with only 80% exp due to her not being in party). Did a bit of Paralyze but I did not really need it when Flandre, Patch, Eiki, and Suwako hit for 50k each.

Took down Mokou after that. Not much to say, I have alot of Mind tanks so soaking even the composite attacks was not too bad. When she did Resurection, I did Yukari's Spiriting Away and immediately finished the battle.

Then I went right into fighting Kaguya's Foe. This was a bit rougher cause I decided to not bother equiping Fire Affinity gear. Barely survived the Hellfire but I managed to paralyze it twice. I just DPS raced him and won. Sakuya went down towards the end so I just left Cirno in the first slot while I kept swapping in more damage dealers.

Will either do Orin or Great Stamp next.

Edit: Took care of Orin and Great Stamp. Orin was pretty straight forward but Great Stamp was a bit rough. Luckily I managed to Paralock it towards the end.

Was going to give Flandre a shot but forgot I need more BP with Patch and Sakuya. T.T

[Rukoto]

I decided to go with a random list of 12 characters from a random number generator, although I went and banned Meiling, Nitori, Renko and Iku from the list first. I got these characters in this order:
Minoriko, Remilia, Kanako, Marisa, Maribel, Eirin, Tenshi, Cirno, Rinnousuke, Orin, Ran, and Sanae. It looks like I've got a manageable party to roll with; Minoriko, Sanae, and Eirin can all pass out some form of healing to an extent, Ran and Sanae can hand out buffs (so can Kourin, but only once), and Marisa and Kanako have some nuking utility. I know too well that Remi can be a great tank, and Tenshi was pretty solid in handling Baal Avatar, so I'm sure she'll be fine too. I've never used Maribel before though :V

[Serela]

Actually a really solid team. Sanae can cure status effects when you still actually need that and has some degree of buffing, but really, Minoriko takes the cake as the support unit, as her support with careful use can carry the team through even without Reimu. But thankfully, your best two tanks have self-buffs, which is very good. Then you have Cirno for speed debuff, Maribel with offense debuffs, Ran to be overall great, etc.

Eirin is tanky with terrible damage and a terrible heal and she's slow, but, at least she's tanky.

Offense is actually a little more of a worry. Maribel has self-buff for offense which is good, because you won't be able to get offensive buffs well in this party; and she can try to land debuffs at the same time. Kanako can hit the multitudes of CLD-weak bosses that you normally can't do a lot against, though. This is a party that's going to have some issues in midgame because it's half characters that are really for supporting, and you don't normally start using that much for support until late in. Not only that, but your offense characters mostly use a lot of SP for their not-weak skills...

It's a solid team that covers all the bases of what you want (apart from not being as solid on the buffing front as you'd like, and strange offense layout), but it'll have some speed bumps. Getting through random battles for long excursions will be problematic at some points!

[Rukoto]

So I've explored all of 1F (except for fighting malice). Clearing out trash on this floor has been pretty easy if I rotate out my attackers as I explore. Meiling wasn't an interesting battle, but Chen killed off Tenshi after self buffing with kimontokou. At least with Sanae, Remi can do a curse without getting herself neutered on the spot. I've noticed that Kanako and Eirin have very similar stat growths as well. And yeah, I'm gonna dread those fights where I can't master spark or blazing wheel my way through.

EDIT since nobody else has posted yet: While exploring 2F I came across that gap that you need Cirno to cross. I managed to get across even though I haven't fought Cirno yet :V (probably because she's in my party)

[Raikaria]

Eirin is tanky with terrible damage and a terrible heal and she's slow, but, at least she's tanky.

That's something I really don't get, why people bash on Eirin so much. With a MAG build, she's a very effective trashcleaner, with two all target    306.25% MAG - 87.5% T.MND  formula spells, only costing 60 SP. One of them is also CLD element, which is one of the better ones in the game, in general, due to a large number of fire-based enemies.

And Eirin's heal isn't bad on any character with a high HP stat, and allows you to focus your points on these characters into their HP instead of their DEF and MND. For example, Sakuya has an A rank in HP, but only a B and C in DEF and MND, so if you're going for a tanky, supportive Sakuya, building HP and having Eirin as a healer is the best course. Meiling actually makes a good HP-based tank too, especially with her low MND stat.

In fact, many characters have a good HP stat and one defense, but a poor second defense. All of these characters are candidates for a Slot 2 tank with a build focusing on their HP, which Eirin is the best character suited for healing.

Maybe after this draft run I'll do a run based around getting the most out of Eirin.

EDIT: Stumbled upon St.Elmo's Round 2, and beat it up effortlessly.

[Serela]

It's because in practice, a MAG build Eirin actually does abominably bad damage in comparison to everyone else. 300% is actually really low. Notice how most others gets 400~500% on their trashclearing skills? Her MAG stat isn't as high as it might seem by her growth either, due to her sluggish level rate.

And no, you can't try to logic me out of this, because this isn't from numbercrunching alone, it's from actual use of her.

She'll be able to stand up to other character's NORMAL trashclearing damage if she's hitting a WEAKNESS, which is a testament to how bleh her damage is. The main appeal of them is supposed to be their offense stat debuffs, but of course, these don't usually land on things you want them to, and since she's so slow she's not exactly the best for a debuff tactic on a boss (Although since she's kinda tanky it'd work okay I guess; probably the best way to use her, albiet still bleh)

She gets better after she can spam Astronomical Entombing, but that's late plus disk, and then she's just a worse version of Yuyuko, who is much better for spamming an expensive SPI nuke.

As well, with her lvlup rate, her defensive stats aren't quite as good as they might look at first glance (Although a defensive build makes her a decent tank, for sure). But, her heal is incredibly slow, and very lackluster because Minoriko can fullheal, Sanae should be able to at least mostly heal most characters, and later in the game even Reimu can nearly fullheal; while Eirin's will never get better.

------------------------------

Going for HP builds over def/mnd builds on characters is a REALLY bad idea. They'll take far more damage from attacks, and the result will not be anywhere near helpful ever, apart from trying to make Meiling able to take Last Judgment. This game uses subtraction formulas, so on tanks, DEF/MND is the way to go. Even Komachi is much better off going for an offense build, because there's not a lot to gain from doing HP growth on her (And she's actually a decent attacker)

Not only that, but Minoriko should be able to heal far more then Eirin even on HP-build Komachi. So. You'd be way better off not using Eirin even for HP build tanks (which are still a very bad idea), not to mention that Minoriko's heal is far faster and she's much tankier MND-wise, and possesses a useful buff as well, and is very cheap (Comes in great handiness for the couple Djinn Storm using bosses)

[Raikaria]

Aw, well, that's a downer, although for Minoriko/Sanae/Reimu to be healing that much they need a MAG build, which reduces their own durability. All three of them also have other things they want to be doing. Minoriko wants to throw out defense buffs, Sanae wants to throw out buffs, and Reimu wants to use GHB. Eirin... doesn't have much else she has to do.

The overheal from HE is also pretty nice, albeit situational, as Eirin doesn't 'waste' healing. Also I don't recall Minoriko being able to heal anywhere near 1,250 at this point, which is what Eirin can manage on Komachi.

I was just plain wrong about the trashclearing.

Eirin's healing doesn't improve, percentage-wise, but all the characters get more HP, so she heals more as the game goes on, like the others. In addition, Eirin doesn't have to invest in her own magic stat to heal at maximum potential. Eirin can build purely tanky and heals just as well as she would otherwise, unlike Minoriko, who has to chose between being able to actually take a hit, and being able to heal.

[Pesco]

I'm sure Minoriko heals just fine and dandy without any effort in her MAG. Which means she can be full built MND tank and still do her job.

Eirin's healing doesn't improve, percentage-wise, but all the characters get more HP, so she heals more as the game goes on

Spot the logic error here. No, seriously there is something wrong with your understanding of maths if you don't realise how wrong this claim is.

[Sakurei]

I think he mean it in absolute numbers. she'll also heal 50% of the max HP, but she heals more in numbers for a youmu with 500k HP than for a patchy with 5000. of course, that said eirin is fucking terrible for anything that doesn't have high HP like meiling, komachi, youmu or yuugi. _absolutely_terrible_. which also means she won't find much use in healing in general. because only few charactes have high enough HP for eirin's heal to matter

I never had any problems with minoriko's heal. even my meiling would be near-full again after getting downed to <10% with just one heal, and she was my character with most HP at the time. if yours isn't satisfactory, you're doing something so wrong, I can't even tell you what it is.

[Serela]

Aw, well, that's a downer, although for Minoriko/Sanae/Reimu to be healing that much they need a MAG build, which reduces their own durability. All three of them also have other things they want to be doing. Minoriko wants to throw out defense buffs, Sanae wants to throw out buffs, and Reimu wants to use GHB. Eirin... doesn't have much else she has to do.

Sanae might because I honestly haven't tested her, but Minoriko definitely doesn't, and Reimu either catches up in Plus or gets MAG buffed in the maingame to fullheal since she can't spam her heal yet anyway.

Yeah, they have other things they want to do... because they're actually good for other things too. Eirin isn't. That's a big downside for EIRIN, not them. (Eirin can debuff offenses, so this isn't entirely true, but plenty of other characters can too, without being useless for anything else)

The overheal from HE is also pretty nice, albeit situational, as Eirin doesn't 'waste' healing.

It goes away the moment you use a multi-target heal or get tinked by any move (even if it does 0 damage), so the overheal almost never really ends up being helpful.

Eirin's healing doesn't improve, percentage-wise, but all the characters get more HP, so she heals more as the game goes on, like the others. In addition, Eirin doesn't have to invest in her own magic stat to heal at maximum potential. Eirin can build purely tanky and heals just as well as she would otherwise, unlike Minoriko, who has to chose between being able to actually take a hit, and being able to heal.

As Pesco said, this is just wrong. Your MAG growth will outpace HP growth. This is why Rumia becomes a good healer in plus; her heal is pathetic in the normal game, but due to scaling, it gets waaaaay better later. As well, I've done full playthroughs with Minoriko from the moment I got her into late plus (where I just didn't need another healer anymore), and with a full MND build she easily fullhealed pretty much everyone for the whole game, and even on Komachi, while it might not've fullhealed without a buff, it's close enough that it really doesn't matter. Eirin's heal will heal "more", but only in direct numbers; it will still be only 50%, and everyone elses heals will be growing more and more in their percentage healing amount. A percentage amount that, even for MND build Sanae, should be higher then 50% for anyone without very high HP as soon as you can get her. (Although quite honestly, a MND build Sanae will probably need MAG buffs to heal adequately)

About the cut by Sakurei: as shown by his example, even on characters like Meiling/Youmu/Yuugi a mnd-build minoriko will pretty much full heal. Even on an HP build Komachi (an ATK build is much better anyway), you should be able to easily heal more then 50% with someone else.

[Kanoe]

Well I ended up grinding BP using Patch and Sakuya until Flandre decided to fight me. This made me a bit overleveled for the fight. Also explored Floor 16 while trying to get BP.

Sakuya, Yukari, Ran, and Yuugi easily took Flandre's attacks. She got off one Forbidden Fruit then Suwako got a lucky Paralyze and I immediately finished her off before she could get off another attack.

Congrats go to Yuyuko for breaking 100k damage on a boss fight with her Flawless Nirvana.


Edit: As promised, I uploaded the first batch of videos for today. Will do more every Sunday. You can see how sloppy I was for most of the bosses. Also, I only speak in the first video so don't worry about hearing my voice.  :blush:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MticweBtOE&list=PL8WLbOJxSgUXFZgln8tcP38uiHqAPN5MU

[Rukoto]

I managed to clear all of 2F. I almost got swept by the first Peg Insect fight; paralysis power actually OHKO'd Marisa who I was planning to have use master spark (good thing it only has 2k hp). Cirno was a pretty basic battle of attrition, although Youmu was a different story entirely. I got killed on my first attempt, but then I realized she has almost no DBF resistance, so I beat her the second time pretty handily by making good use of Cirno / Maribel / Eirin. Unfortunately when I re-recruited Cirno she got reset to level 1 and lost all of her skillpoints.

[Eilaris]

Sanae might because I honestly haven't tested her, but Minoriko definitely doesn't, and Reimu either catches up in Plus or gets MAG buffed in the maingame to fullheal since she can't spam her heal yet anyway.

Sanae needs some MAG investment for full heals, yeah.  Probably not full, but she's an okay trash cleaner anyway, so might as well IMO.

(Though really, I could do to learn a lot more about effective stat building in this game.)

[Raikaria]

Beat up Tam's Foe with a surprising amount of difficulty, since I didn't have enough characters who could comfortably take Flowing Hellfires. Half my party was KO'ed by the end [Oddly enough Renko of all characters took a Flowing Hellfire, when I've been investing her pure SPD for quick debuffing and switching, because Renko will never be a tank, she then used Charge, and got hit by a Tackle... or was it Slash, right afterwards.]

Still, Kanako basically got off enough CLD nukes to win the fight. Especially when Renko gave her a buff.

What made the fight hard is that I thought Kaguya, with her high MND and natural resistance, could take the first F.H.

I was wrong, and lost access to Hourai Barrage from the word go, giving me one less precious nuke to use. [I have few nukers]

I'm Reimu Lv 31 now, and tottering around Floor 8. I seem to recall everything I see saying the randoms spike here, but I'm still clearing them instantly.

Speaking of, Reimu/Youmu/Rin/Kaguya is awesome at trashsweeping. All of them have enough SP, or recovery, and speed, to sweep the trash. I've managed to grab two ATK/Rec blades for Youmu as well from Floor 7 drops. All four also have rather high TP, although Kaguya does have the White Immortal's Sake to give her a small boost in that department.

Also bumped into Nitori. She only got two moves, as she happened to show up when I had a almost full SP Reimu, Kaguya and Youmu, who promptly tore her apart.

[Parallaxal]

I actually thought floor 8 was one of the easiest floors, as far as trash mobs go. There are no speedy enemies on that floor (pretty rare by this point in the game), and most things still die in one spell. The only possible exceptions are the uber-slow and vulnerable fat zombie thingies (so they just take two hits, big deal), and the magic orbs with really high MND (but terrible DEF).

[Raikaria]

I can't seem to find anything suitiable for recording/uploading videos, everything I find that's free is choppy.

That said, if there's enough interest, I might stream some random exploration, and, of course, bosses. In fact, if I recall, you can save your streams on Livestream too, so that could make up for my Youtube deficiency.

[I have no name]

I can't seem to find anything suitiable for recording/uploading videos, everything I find that's free is choppy.

That said, if there's enough interest, I might stream some random exploration, and, of course, bosses. In fact, if I recall, you can save your streams on Livestream too, so that could make up for my Youtube deficiency.

=D
SCFH DSF to set the target and VirtualDub for recording works perfectly fine and is 100% free.  It's what I use because nothing else could record stably.

[Hanzo K.]

I've actually found that Camstudio works pretty well for me. There's a smidge of choppiness, but it's entirely game-dependant.