Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 17F

[Arcvasti]

According to the passive skill dump linked in the first post:

   Piercing Attack
   After defense calculations are applied, 20% of the pre-defense damage is
   re-added to the current damage being caused.

So that's a decent damage boost even against enemies without high defenses. Great Piercing Attack is probably even better. Combine that with Youkai's Knowledge, which is useful against a lot of bosses, and Rumia becomes a pretty good damage dealer. Dark Side of the Moon is only really good for murdering 12F Tenshi and a few other annoyingly resilient DRK-weak enemies, although Awakening turns it into a decent debuff engine.

[IRUN]

It seems that Cirno's Awakening is the least powerful out of the Team 9 characters. Unavoidable SPD debuffs are good and all, but Yukari's Mesh of Light and Darkness has higher efficacy.

Also realised that Yuuka is better suited for Archmage rather than subbing Sorceror. Majesty and Encounter with a Strong Foe provide her with enough buffs to make her relatively self-sufficient, and Archmage provides her with a Cold and Dark nuke to use (though the delays are still painfully long.) Her Awakening is also strange, since getting Protection of Plants to allow overhealing of her HP makes it harder for Gensokyo's Eternal Flower to restore MP. Dangerous Paradise is nice though, with the Concentrating guaranteeing that Extra Attack to proc.

[LonelyGaruga]

According to the passive skill dump linked in the first post:

   Piercing Attack
   After defense calculations are applied, 20% of the pre-defense damage is
   re-added to the current damage being caused.

So that's a decent damage boost even against enemies without high defenses. Great Piercing Attack is probably even better. Combine that with Youkai's Knowledge, which is useful against a lot of bosses, and Rumia becomes a pretty good damage dealer. Dark Side of the Moon is only really good for murdering 12F Tenshi and a few other annoyingly resilient DRK-weak enemies, although Awakening turns it into a decent debuff engine.

Although that's what it says, when I ran damage tests in-game with Piercing Attack I saw no damage increase on the 1f mobs from without it, which doesn't add up to the description here. So I'm not sure if that's actually how it works.

[Phen]

I assume it means 20%(per skill level) of the damage negated by their defense is re-added. I can't think of any but finding an enemy with really high magic defense would make it easy to confirm. I think it's notable that this is different from "people of the moon"-like skills. With those skills, it's still possible for enemies with extremely high defense to negate your damage. With piercing attack, I take it to mean you will always deal at least some damage and it becomes a stronger relative damage increase the more defense the enemy has. Considering the damage multiplier on moonlight ray, it's probably always better to use moonlight ray on single target enemies regardless of their mind stat unless they resist mystic or are weak to dark(like 12f tenshi as mentioned earlier). Even more so after awakening, with valuable status effects and increased piercing, though I don't know how much more piercing.

[LonelyGaruga]

Oh, that makes sense. That's probably how it works, yeah. Sounds like a bit of a pain to manually calculate, but that's a pretty decent effect if that's how it works.

[IRUN]

By the way, has anyone tried fielding the Oni trio together?

[elminster1372]

It seems that Cirno's Awakening is the least powerful out of the Team 9 characters. Unavoidable SPD debuffs are good and all, but Yukari's Mesh of Light and Darkness has higher efficacy.

Tbh, I'm not convinced in general by the T9 team in the Plus Disk - their awakenings are not exactly eye-catching, comparing to most others. I may be found wrong, ofc, and eventually I'll test them, but atm I feel like there're better options - both for clearing random encounters (Earth Palace and Eientei in particular) and for boss fights (Moriya Shrine and Sealing Club especially).

Also realised that Yuuka is better suited for Archmage rather than subbing Sorceror. Majesty and Encounter with a Strong Foe provide her with enough buffs to make her relatively self-sufficient, and Archmage provides her with a Cold and Dark nuke to use (though the delays are still painfully long.) Her Awakening is also strange, since getting Protection of Plants to allow overhealing of her HP makes it harder for Gensokyo's Eternal Flower to restore MP. Dangerous Paradise is nice though, with the Concentrating guaranteeing that Extra Attack to proc.

You're absolutely right - though, the lack of kinship multipliers, Maintenance, or other multipliers of some kind makes Yuuka a bit more underwhelming than she looks on paper, even in the Plus Disk. I tried Murakumo's Blessing on her and, even with Sanae's +30% SPI damage, her Start of Heavenly Demise doesn't hit especially hard (it hits about as hard as Sanae's own Night of Bright Guest Stars). Sure, Extra attack is nice and all, but you can't rely on that too much, and it doesn't change the fact that Yuuka is painfully slow. I guess she does have a place in boss battles, but that's about it.

[IRUN]

Tbh, I'm not convinced in general by the T9 team in the Plus Disk - their awakenings are not exactly eye-catching, comparing to most others.

Yeah, Team 9?s awakenings seem somewhat underwhelming; Wriggle still has to rely on inflicting poison, and Mystia is still geared towards silencing and evading.

In other news, decided to Awaken Rinnosuke out of curiosity. Battle Command has become somewhat decent low cost and delay spell card  with 33% all buff, and all his attacks (including normal ones) debuff by 10%, which is slightly better than the Avoid Ring). Precise information is a somewhat expensive AoE heal + buff, so it?s more of a last resort thing.
Overall, his ability as support is improved, but it?s hardly enough for him to replace main buffers like Keine or Sanae.

Edit: As a side note, as anyone tried out Murakumo Rinnosuke? And how viable is clearing main game using only plus disc characters?

[elminster1372]

Edit: As a side note, as anyone tried out Murakumo Rinnosuke? And how viable is clearing main game using only plus disc characters?

There're better choices than Rinnosuke for... just about everything. Maybe, once you get into lvl 2000+ and can make use of those Giga Boosts, but until then...

As for PD characters and main game... I'd say no. You need nukes and defense piercing characters for main game, and furthermore, PD chars tend to take too long to be "unlocked". I used some of them, and they started becoming truly competitive only past lvl 100.

[RegalStar]

Yeah, Team 9?s awakenings seem somewhat underwhelming; Wriggle still has to rely on inflicting poison, and Mystia is still geared towards silencing and evading.

In other news, decided to Awaken Rinnosuke out of curiosity. Battle Command has become somewhat decent low cost and delay spell card  with 33% all buff, and all his attacks (including normal ones) debuff by 10%, which is slightly better than the Avoid Ring). Precise information is a somewhat expensive AoE heal + buff, so it?s more of a last resort thing.
Overall, his ability as support is improved, but it?s hardly enough for him to replace main buffers like Keine or Sanae.

Edit: As a side note, as anyone tried out Murakumo Rinnosuke? And how viable is clearing main game using only plus disc characters?

I tried clearing the main game with plus disc characters, Renko and Maribel, Rinnosuke and Nazrin once.

Renko and Maribel basically carried the game for me on that one.

[LonelyGaruga]

There're better choices than Rinnosuke for... just about everything. Maybe, once you get into lvl 2000+ and can make use of those Giga Boosts, but until then...

Checked MAG Giga Boost on Rinnosuke, ends up with 580,270 MAG at level 537 with all of the same things as the prior MAG tests. ATK is the same. For comparison, Rumia with Mega Boost is 594,838 MAG (merely a 5% stat increase from Second Boost, lol).

When he can get every Giga Boost, Rinnosuke has high overall stats (maybe the highest overall), but he lacks skills to back them up effectively, at least as an attacker, and his offensive stats, while high, are surpassed by plenty of characters, some of which do have skills that boost their damage effectively. Still best as a support character.

[Serela]

Yeah, even if Rinnosuke can hit decent stats, the total lack of offensive passives beyond "applies a debuff" makes him a pretty poor attacker, even without considering subclass limitation for offense. The bulk doesn't make up for it as many other attackers do that great with better damage. Yuyuko completely disappointed me offensively for the same reason; nice stats, great attacks... but no offensive passives and expensive library made her actually kinda weak.

[Xarizzar]

Is Rumia a remotely viable healer? At least compared to Reimu? Demarcation doesn't seem to be half as good as Exorcising Border.

I've started a NG+ file and I seem to be stuck on Alice. Here's my team: https://i.imgur.com/i7UoK80.png

And Mokou, who I usually replace someone with, usually Byakuren, for the early game. Basically, I'm trying to use characters that I didn't use in my main save file. Reimu is one of those characters, and I wanted a multi target healer, too, so I went with Rumia, but it seems that Demarcation is just not as good.

Basically, my strat for Alice is to make her end up somehow with 4 support dolls, who only seem to attack the left most character (In my case, a def buffed Tenshi) with weak attacks, while I DPS Alice. My main source of damage is Meiling's Mountain Breaker and Kasen's Diving Waltz of the Raijuu, and maybe Nitori's Super Scope 3D and Reisen's Discarder. There are two problems though:

• Her multi-targeting attacks are a bit much, so I can't have my healers out for too long.
• I seem to be lacking DPS, so I'm more likely than not doing something wrong.

This is the first boss I've had a problem with, though. I'm pretty okay with this team, aside from that, but the hard part of the game is only just beginning, so...

[IRUN]

. Yuyuko completely disappointed me offensively for the same reason; nice stats, great attacks... but no offensive passives and expensive library made her actually kinda weak.

Yeah, she falls to the side damage wise, the most use I had for Yuyuko was clearing floor trash and maybe using her ATB reducing spell cards if Diva Aya is unavailable.

Demarcation?s formula is 33% MAG in contrast to Exocising Border?s 66% MAG;  so pump up Rumia?s MAG for it to be effective, if not, then she?s basically a poor man?s Reimu if your using her as support.

[Libra]

 Rumia's heal is on the weaker side but as long as you're willing to invest a bit in her MAG, it still patches up your team decently enough.

 Against Alice, I think your best bet is to use Nitori's as your main attacker, give her Maintenance and Ability to Manipulate Water (along with your best ATK increasing equipment) and just keep spamming Kappa's Illusionary Waterfall; Alice is slightly weak to CLD so she should take decent damage, and the dolls should die in a few hits, forcing Alice to waste her turns re-summoning them. Otherwise just have Keine buff, Reisen debuff Alice as much as she can and Meiling and Kasen pitch in whenever they can to defeat Alice faster, Kaguya and Eiki can also help kill the dolls faster with their AoE's.

[Arcvasti]

Is Rumia a remotely viable healer? At least compared to Reimu? Demarcation doesn't seem to be half as good as Exorcising Border.

Definitely, although her numbers early game are pretty weak, her MAG scales up faster then the party's health does. Debuff clearing is also situationally useful, although its not the main point of the ability.

As for Alice, the difficulty of that fight comes from trying to balance clearing her dolls so fast she can't murder you with Artful Sacrifice/Hanged Hourai Dolls and not leaving your squishy damage dealers out in front when she uses her guaranteed Trip Wire/Little Legion. It might be worth giving Nitori a +100 PHY item so she can tank Alice's desperation attacks along with the tanks.

[Serela]

Rumia is a great healer, but she's more of an attacker who can also heal, than someone you would build defensively and use mainly for heals; she's a great backup heal option if you're healing mainly with one of Reimu/Maribel/Eirin etc. Her MND is -very- good but HP is poor and you might consider a first aid kit (although you're likely to have higher priority choices for those, and the huge HP sub equips can work instead).

Don't run Rumia if you want to just build her defensively and mainly for Demarcation, because Reimu would greatly outclass her. She kind of needs the MAG investment a more offensive build will have anyway.

[Xarizzar]

Beat Alice, lucky win again.

https://youtu.be/4AOcmNfSTxo

[dawnbomb]

So, question. what all happens when a character uh, awakens or whatever is in the demo. do they get more then 5 levels in their spell cards? new spell calds? new passives? ect? can anyone give me some decently informed info on what it entails, sense noones allowed to post expansion info on the wiki :/

[Libra]

 A character awakens by obtaining their first awakening item (through exchanging Jewels of Greater Awakening you get from defeating bosses in the Infinite Corridor); they get new passives and some of them get new spellcards. They also get +1% damage dealt and -0.5% damage received (this bonus can be stacked up to 50 times by obtaining more copies of each character's item).

 The new passives and spellcards they get can be found on the "character" section of the wiki.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

So who's a good first character to Awaken? My party staples are Meiling, Sakuya, Kasen, Reimu (though she's a staple in the back except on bosses), Nitori and Kanako. But I'm open to hearing suggestions on anyone else. I'm absolutely not ever replacing Meiling since she's mega OP in my party, but otherwise everything is still somewhat subject to changing up.

[IRUN]

So who's a good first character to Awaken? My party staples are Meiling, Sakuya, Kasen, Reimu (though she's a staple in the back except on bosses), Nitori and Kanako.

By awakening Reimu, she can become a tanky support who can stand on the frontline more often, while simultaneously buffing her SPD as well as that of the entire front line every time she receives a turn. Another passive adds medium chance, medium power PAR to all attacks, which stacks with spell or equipment effects.Youkai Buster will give higher damage bonus.

Meiling?s awakening passives are simple but effective, with a 10% damage reduction, and a 20% damage increase to attacks as well as the ability to occasionally counter enemy attacks with a irresistable PAR. (Activation rate is increased commensurate with number of SDM residents on the frontline.)

As for Sakuya, Private World?s PAR is increased, and a counter based damage boost, where for every turn received, the countersink increased by 1. When attacking, the damage is increased by (counter * 5)%. When Sakuya is attacked, the existing counter is halved. The counter maxes at 20.

Kasen gains a temporary self buff that lets her do 25% more damage and take 25% less damage, and although they are not permanent they can keep working for a while. Combined with Fighting Spirit Kasen can achieve quite a lot of damage increase and reduction, although the MP cost is expensive, especially if the effects run out quickly. Besides that, Adversity+ and Healthy Mind and Body work in tandem to give Kasen a boost depends on her current condition; Healthy Mind and Body gives her a small offensive and defensive boost, while Adversity greatly increases her damage output.

Nitori's awakened skills are more support-oriented, though that makes sense since she already has maintenance. Improved Versatile Machine allows Nitori to maintain her self-buff a lot better, which indirectly increases her firepower as well, and makes it easier to pass her turn just a moment whilst waiting for a support character to do their job. Kappa's Material Aesthetica doesn't directly contribute to combat at all, but it allows the player to obtain more equipment and materials to craft equipment with, which combined with Maintenance allows her to obtain powerful stat boosts as well.

Kanako gets damage and stat boosts, Divine Authority works like a Fighting Spirit that doesn't disappear upon switching out and gives more damage bonus, giving Kanako an easy-to-get, and no-maintenance -required 50% damage boost, and reduces damage received to 75%. Majesty+ increases her passive self-buff from 6% to 9%, definitely welcome for a bulky attacker.

Oh, and does anyone know where Ironman?s headband drops? Since I searched every floor, it must be an Infinity Item?? And if so, how rare is it?

[LonelyGaruga]

Ironman's Headband is indeed an Infinite Corridor treasure. It's fairly rare. Got 18 in something like 60 hours of Corridor grinding (so about 1 every 3 hours or so on average). You can get most of the items made from it as a treasure as well though, which helps out. They're a bit more rare (got 7 Power Dragon Scale Mails, 9 Scourge, 5 Medicine of Life, 6 Long Sword "Ringil", and 10 Tupsimati).

[ZoomyTsugumi]

By awakening Reimu, she can become a tanky support who can stand on the frontline more often, while simultaneously buffing her SPD as well as that of the entire front line every time she receives a turn. Another passive adds medium chance, medium power PAR to all attacks, which stacks with spell or equipment effects.Youkai Buster will give higher damage bonus.

Meiling?s awakening passives are simple but effective, with a 10% damage reduction, and a 20% damage increase to attacks as well as the ability to occasionally counter enemy attacks with a irresistable PAR. (Activation rate is increased commensurate with number of SDM residents on the frontline.)

As for Sakuya, Private World?s PAR is increased, and a counter based damage boost, where for every turn received, the countersink increased by 1. When attacking, the damage is increased by (counter * 5)%. When Sakuya is attacked, the existing counter is halved. The counter maxes at 20.

Kasen gains a temporary self buff that lets her do 25% more damage and take 25% less damage, and although they are not permanent they can keep working for a while. Combined with Fighting Spirit Kasen can achieve quite a lot of damage increase and reduction, although the MP cost is expensive, especially if the effects run out quickly. Besides that, Adversity+ and Healthy Mind and Body work in tandem to give Kasen a boost depends on her current condition; Healthy Mind and Body gives her a small offensive and defensive boost, while Adversity greatly increases her damage output.

Nitori's awakened skills are more support-oriented, though that makes sense since she already has maintenance. Improved Versatile Machine allows Nitori to maintain her self-buff a lot better, which indirectly increases her firepower as well, and makes it easier to pass her turn just a moment whilst waiting for a support character to do their job. Kappa's Material Aesthetica doesn't directly contribute to combat at all, but it allows the player to obtain more equipment and materials to craft equipment with, which combined with Maintenance allows her to obtain powerful stat boosts as well.

Kanako gets damage and stat boosts, Divine Authority works like a Fighting Spirit that doesn't disappear upon switching out and gives more damage bonus, giving Kanako an easy-to-get, and no-maintenance -required 50% damage boost, and reduces damage received to 75%. Majesty+ increases her passive self-buff from 6% to 9%, definitely welcome for a bulky attacker.

Hmm, so it sounds like I should choose between Meiling, Kasen or Kanako for this. I'm running a heavy firepower investment build on everyone here but Meiling and Reimu, and even then, my Meiling is so pumped up that she's tanky enough to just get ATK level bonuses from here on out to increase her effectiveness with Mountain Breaker. Increased damage dealt by her could be very valuable in a pinch as in particularly destructive fights she's often the only one standing (and still going strong with most of her HP).
My frontline for bosses is usually Meiling/Byaku/Sakuya/Kasen now but Sakuya is probably the weakest of the 4 in terms of tankiness so using the Awakening on her would probably be a waste since she'll fall relatively fast.

Kanako is good at hitting damage where a lot of others can't penetrate defenses well enough so it might be valuable on her, but either way its a huge damage increase and damage reduction so that sounds pretty lovely. I'll have to think about it, thanks though!

[IRUN]

Kanako is good at hitting damage where a lot of others can't penetrate defenses well enough so it might be valuable on her, but either way its a huge damage increase and damage reduction so that sounds pretty lovely. I'll have to think about it, thanks though!

When the user uses Mad Dance on Medoteko, increase Onibashira counter by 1. Increase user's damage output by (counter * 10)% and decrease user's damage intake by (counter * 5)%. The counter maxes at 5.

Welp, time to continue farming the corridor

[Libra]

@ZoomyTsugumi: Something you should also take into account is that awakening skills are very expensive (generally about 200-300 to learn all of them), so you should awaken first the characters who either have realtively cheap awakening skills or have an abundance of leftover skillpoints. Not taking into account Proof of Kinship and some weaker support oriented or situational passives, Kasen needs about 95 skillpoints, Meiling 115, Sakuya 60, Reimu oscillates between 56-200 and Kanako between 45-185.

 Sakuya's awakening encourages a hit and run playstyle, where you switch her to the frontline to attack/buff and immediatelly switch her back to avoid her getting hit in the first place, so it's probably not very good if you're using her as a stay-in buffer/attacker.

 Reimu's Super Youkai Buster extends the effect of Youkai Buster to the whole frontline which gives a substantial damage boost against youkai bosses. Her counter increases the speed of your whole frontline by up to 30%.


 

[IRUN]

Koishi?s Awakening skill set was kind of underwhelming for me. Sure, successful evasions now mean an extra turn, which is nice and all, but Embryo?s Dream is basically a nerfed Extra Attack that costs MP and procs  through evading.

Still, she serves as a decent evade-mage if fielded alongside the rest of the Earth Spirits Palace family, boosting her stats and MP efficiency. Utsuho?s Blazing will also amp up Embers of Love, while Satori and Rin can inflict SIL and TRR respectively, which powers up All Ancestors Standing on Your Bed into a mystic nuke.

I suppose including Suika in the party to increase Koishi?s evasion, and Parsee and/or Reisen to provide the ailments that let All Ancestors hit hard.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

The extra areas part of the postgame is a neat concept but my god are some of these bosses for the light pillars insanely weird and kind of unenjoyable. Is it me or is boss balance in this game kind of bad? There seems to be a weirdly large amount of bosses that are really difficult to damage even when you have insanely overpowered people on your team (Nitori).

Great C was frustrating but not unbearable, hardest part was making sure that they'd all die in one more hit and that there wouldn't be any stragglers. Second Sun seems really difficult though, and party switching so constantly is just an extremely annoying gimmick. Guardian of the Crystals completely destroyed me though. The level recommendations are way low, I must be doing something wrong? But with some of these bosses I feel like if I sacrifice firepower for better bulkiness I'm not going to be able to damage anything. I don't know, I'm already reaching level 200 with Nitori and Meiling, but maybe i should just grind more. There's so much choice in this game that I'm feeling quite overwhelmed and unsure where to pool my money/skill points.

Also, how to build Renko, statwise? HP or DEF/MND or a hybrid? I've got a significant investment in her SPD currently, but I don't know if she's enough to replace OP Meiling even if I hugely invest in her as well.

[Serela]

The non-plus postgame bosses are reallllly annoying and a big portion is that a lot of them are absurdly hard to damage. I hear that's not a problem in Plus Disk (at least, you know, outside of a few particular bosses which is reasonable and fair) The challenge levels only feel remotely reasonable if you're using parties that are practically tailor-made for the bosses (or at least, Hina or Reisen and a lot of defense piercing damage)

Renko isn't really a Meiling replacement since Meiling is a godly bulky attacker, where Renko is a support tank. I think Renko can work as both HP tank or def/mnd tank or hybrid, since she can get absurd stats in either and has innate HP regen with Maribel out to synergize with max hp builds.

[Libra]

 Postgame is probably the part that has the worst balance in the game: bosses with extremely high defences render any character without extremely high ATK/MAG or the ability to ignore/pierce defences mostly useless offensively, and at the same time, almost all bosses have a few gimmicks that reduce the value of your tanks. As you said, the challenges levels are too low for the most part (though again, this depends a lot on team composition), some of them are still doable if you follow the "Challenge level x1.2 library points". If you're having trouble, overlevelling and then kicking a few party members out to stay in the challenge level may be a good idea. Once you're done withthe postgame, Plus Disk is a significantly better balance wise (though it also has its own problems).

 For Renko, you generally want to invest in her HP, since her MND is pretty bad; plus if you use Maribel their synergy gives her a decent amount of HP regen, which benefits HP tanks greatly.