Touhou Score Thread V: The Revival

[CyberAngel]

Many thanks for pointing out that cancelled bullets give time orbs too - somehow, it slipped my notice for all the time I was playing, haha ^^; And here I was wondering why the same cancels were giving more orbs sometimes. I mean, I'd try to do this for survival anyway, but it does add one more thing to keep in mind for some places.

It might be okay to bomb This section for the point items on solo human characters (I don't believe teams or solo youkai should have any issues with killing things, aside from perhaps Magic/Solo Alice, because her shot is questionably useful for stages).

Yep, just the place I had in mind. Another one I want to bomb sometimes is stage 6B if the game decides it hates me and spawns fairies on different sides so I can't PoC before next set appears.

supergraze on the 4th last spell

Ugh, is it as pixel-precise as Apollo 13 one? Because I tried the latter, and my impression is "lolnope".

Those fairies you have to be careful on. The maximum they should spawn is 4 familiars, otherwise you will lose the next fairy, which loses score.

Oh wow, so there is a point to speedkill those? Would be fun to try that, actually.

those fairies that spawn familiar after familiar also exist in stage 3

I don't quite get the benefit of stalling after familiars start leaving the screen. Is it the total amount of familiars released by fairy, or the amount of familiars on screen from ALL fairies? Does that give more orbs or something?

By the way, is Spell Practice useful for scoring? I imagine it is good for working on scoring-specific strategies like supergrazes, but is the score you get there a good gauge? If I get it right, the score it saves is spellcard bonus. It would have been useful to see how many orbs you can get with different strategies, and how they influence spellcard bonus, but you start with 0 human/youkai gauge, so I'm afraid its usefulness isn't adequate.

For WR runs, I might refer to them for a few things, but I want to try to figure out stuff on my own at first, then check them out for how things can be optimized. Understanding all the nuances is half the fun for me.

Anyway, thanks again for the responses, I got a lot of interesting and useful information to work with.

[Sakurei]

Don't ever bomb the stage 6b fairies with a human character. Each familiar drops I think 4 items and they're worth a lot at this point and if you bomb them with Youmu let's say, you'll lose up to 72 items. If you played Youmu each item is worth around a million points. There goes your PB, I'm sure. If you play a team or solo youkai, it should be fine in the beginning, but I strongly suggest you learn how to deal with bad RNG.

No. The supergraze on Kaguya's 4th last spell is quite lenient. It's about 150% as big as your hitbox I think. You might miss it at first and die immediately, but once you roughly know where it is, you probably won't be failing it ever again due to missing the spot. If it was pixel-precise bullshit, I'm not sure how many people would have gone for it in a full run. However, you will need a few hundred of resets in spellpractice before you'll be comfortable with it, since you have to get out of it too in the middle of her just shooting more crap.

Yeah, you can speedkill those fairies, but letting them spawn a familiar or two first is what I suggest for you right now. Depending on your shot, you can even sit on one side of the screen and kill the ones on the other side no problem so you don't have to rush back and forth.

As for the fairies in stage 3: You gain more time per familiar, the more familiar and enemy (or boss) has spawned. Again, I don't have any exact numbers, but I'll give you an example:

Let's assume that killing those fairies with the minimum amount of familiars spawned (which is 6) give you 500 time orbs. Now, the maximum numbers of familiars they can have on the screen is 8, let's assume that if they have spawned that many familiars, you get 600 time orbs. But if you let them spawn more and more, each familiar's worth will rise. Iirc I killed one of them with 20 familiars spawned, so that one would give me more than 600, like idk, 1000. It doesn't scale that drastically, of course, but you do gain extra time with each extra familiar. This is more important on bosses. Mokou isn't in the main game, but she's a fantastic example of it because she spawns a bazillion familiars over the course of the fight. After you finish off Hourai Doll, which is her last attack, you can see that the 2 familiars from the attack give you humungous amounts of time. Why is that? It's not because you cancels a lot of bullets with them, but rather because Mokou has some attacks where she spawns a _lot_ of familiars and those add up over the fight making each familiar in the fight worth more. I'm sure you've noticed the yellow number below the boss name, right? The +x (x) thing. The +x is obviously the number of familiars on the screen, but the (x) is the numbers spawned in the whole fight. I guess it's the formula? +4*(28) or some shit? Which would mean each familiar gives 112 timeorbs more than if they were the only ones in the fight? Probably not the right formula to calculate with, but you get the idea. Stalling those fairies is importable for a small gain, but that small gain adds up over the rest of the time because each item is worth that much more.

And spell practice is always useful. I don't quite get what you mean when you ask whether it works as a gauge. Don't look at the spellcard value but the timeorbs. You will inevitably lose some spellcard value, because you start at 0 and not the desired -80% or 80%. But the amount of timeorbs you lose is very insignificant. Of course that carries the problem that if the attack has familiars, it's possible you get less time from them after the spell than you'd in a run, but that is fine. It doesn't matter. Spell practice is always useful. It helps you gain consistency on difficult attacks and on the supergrazes. Abuse the hell out of it.

[Inadequate]

I'd like to point out that due to how Sakuya's bomb works, you can bomb with her to ensure item gathering without breaking familiars in 6B. You can also use some of the youkai bombs, but you'll lose lots of time when bombing a wave and timing the bomb so that you can still collect as human is timid, so I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you were about to die.

I wouldn't do the trick on the fourth last spell until reaching way higher scores than were you currently are standing at, and I wouldn't do it at all on any solo human barring Youmu, since they benefit less from the graze.

For the stage two early portion fairies, I'd just attempt to kill them off as fast as possible on certain shot-types. (Alice, most humans that some of might still have trouble killing them off.) The extra cancel isn't very large and it's more important to just gather the items for now. It should be also mentioned that the first one has more health/invulnerability than the others. I'm not sure whether Sakurei mentioned this or not.

The IN Wiki article is rather informative on the game mechanics, especially on how time-points and familiars act. Reading it would probably do some good for the both of you.

[CyberAngel]

Again, thanks for the responses. Lots of good information to consider.

For stage 2 fairies, I just was afraid I'd have to let them spawn as many familiars as possible instead, which looked like a pain, especially for solo humans. I much prefer the idea of killing them with only a few familiars out, I had some success doing that earlier IIRC, so I'll see about pulling that off. Timing for 4 familiars per fairy does look pretty tight, though, so I'll try to go for 3 per fairy for a start.

About my stage 3 fairies confusion. I did look through the wiki and took note of the formulas how the number of familiars on screen and total number of familiars released influence the time orb bonus. However, it said that it was different for stages, and I got the impression that only familiars on screen mattered. If this mechanic actually stays the same on stages instead, then I understand why stalling on those fairies is useful, but in that case the wiki is either needlessly confusing or outright misleading there.

[CyberAngel]

A thing that should be pointed out about why speedkill is a go-to strategy for spellcards in IN. For capturing them, you get a straight-up time orb bonus that decreases with time. Unless there's a supergraze or a huge milking opportunity (or A LOT of familiars to farm, maybe?), speedkill is better, for points and for time orbs. (Except stalling just a little bit for a better familiar cancel in some cases.)

Anyway, I've finally started. Here's what I can do in stage 2. (

Spoiler:

Yeah, I start with Yuyuko, because I'm lazy. Though her wide shot requires some extra control.

) Far from perfect, but it's almost 10 mil above my non-scoring attempt, so there's progress. I have no problem to get the idea behind things so far (especially THE PLACE), but pulling them off is another thing, of course. Really, stage 2 seems like a hard and unthankful thing to perfect. Even WRs for this category are somewhat sloppy here (but that may be because it's not as popular as some).

[CyberAngel]

Well what do you know. I'm not consistent enough with it yet, so I won't use it in full runs for now. Don't feel like risking 70 mil for additional 30 mil I'm not sure I can get.

EDIT: First actual scorerun. That's barely any better than my previous run :colonveeplusalpha: In my defence, Yuyuko's was my best survival run. Oh well. It's more important that I learn the tricks, I'm not going for high scores yet anyway. I generally know the places where I failed or wasn't even trying to score, but anyone who's interested are free to overview the run.

[Sakurei]

Is suiciding at the beginning on PCB stage 1 on easy mode a viable strategy to gain more power without losing score? Because proper item collection is really hard and I thought that would make it easier. You should be able to have enough lives at the end of the game for that to not matter anymore?

[Inadequate]

Unless you plan on doing a condition run (no miss/bomb/border break), there's no real reason not doing the suicides and bombs for external borders on Easy, since you'll be hardly dying at other places, and the lives aren't worth that much anyway.

The bomb at the opening of stage 1 costs you nothing (other than the ability to expend that resource elsewhere), as you have no Cherry to lose from it, and the extends gained (You have 13 lives to play with, assuming you get all extends up to the 1400 one, and start with three lives.) far outweigh the maximum lives (eight).

I wouldn't say it's really worth much only for the item collection, though. You can gain maybe a few hundred thousand out of it, but the main reason it's done is for the 3-border stage 1 route.

[CyberAngel]

*watches human solo WR runs*
*familiars destroyed on purpose*

...why. Just... why...

I'm afraid I don't have what it takes to play IN for score after all. I wanted to at least do my best for IN Easy and leave it at that, but even this task is too time-consuming for me, and IN scoring requires the level of optimization I'm not willing to spend my time reaching. I'm sorry. Still, looking into a scoring system in-depth was fun. Maybe I can find one I'd enjoy in other STGs someday.


One last thing I wonder about. From what I understood, for scoring with humans destroying familiars is actually preferable, as long as they won't be a part of the cancel and won't push you out of the last 20% of the gauge. Did I get it right?

[Sakurei]

Solo human scoring milk familiars on mid/bosses for time in case they respawn or are very durable. In case they respawn, it tends to be the case that you shoot and destroy them until a certain point. Let's take Midboss Marisa for example: The first non has not very durable familiars that respawn after destroying one until up to 5 of them. Because of that you shoot and destroy them until around...uhhh, I think it was until around the 10 second mark and let Marisa spawn the maximum amount of familiars before you finish the attack off. And naturally, you have to be careful with regards to your gauge. You could shoot Eirin's nonspell in stage 6 a lot since there are a tons of familiars, but it's very easy to get pushed above -80% (-30% for Youmu).
The other case where you milk familiars is when the familiars are very durable. Again, Marisa is a good example. Her first boss non has very strong familiars you can milk for a very long time for more time. In this case however you don't want to destroy them (which I believe Reimu and Sakuya can't even do, I'm not sure if Marisa is powerful enough though), but finish off the attack just before the breaking point, if possible.

I don't think there is ever any case of familiar milking like that in stage potions since you want to have as many familiars on the screen for cancelling as possible.

To regards with your what seems to be a ragequit: Please, don't compare your own runs to the WRs. If you watch a world record, don't use it as a means of comparison, but learn from it to improve your own play. Hardly anybody starts a category, watches the WR and then goes "well, that's pretty bad". And in regards to scoring, it should also only be means to see what you could improve, so you can add one thing at a time. Of course IN is a big time investment (alas, not necessarily much more than any other shmup, really), but I don't know if you thought that you could reach top tier play within 30 hours. I know I am the wrong person to lecture you here, but let me tell you an old, old story of when I started playing Imperishable Night for score:

It was when I invested time that I thought was really a lot (like 60 hours, which I now know isn't that much for scoring) that I complained about every run being bad everywhere and that I was not improving at all (When my PB was maybe a week old). That's when a wise old man with a long, white beard came down upon me, slapped me in the face and told me to shut my whoremouth up about my complaining until I've invested 150 hours into the category, which is what the old men seemed a good benchmark for my goal at the time. Now, I don't know what your goal was and don't want to throw out numbers that are different for everyone, but what I mean to tell you is that the time investment and the frustration are something everyone feels. You can ask anyone who plays for score. Of course, the reason for the frustration might be a different one for you then it is for me. Maybe you're mad jealous because of the 420grazeit skill from someone else playing the same game (e.g WR) or maybe because there's just a trick or two that just don't seem to go well not matter how often try.
I'm personally a bit sad to see you quitting like that, because I had hoped you'd stick with the game and it was nice seeing someone learn IN. But of course I can see that the time investment may be too big for someone who doesn't have the time or is not willing to play that much. I'll silently hope that you'll come back once you've improved with some more clears under your belt and became much better.  Though I don't think there is a "I'm not good enough to play for score". That's a general misconception! Maybe not good enough for a really really good run, but one would improve as they go.

[PurpleTheGuy]

To C.Angel: Maybe I can help, even though, at the moment, I have next to no idea on how to score in IN, as I haven't gotten to play it extensively yet. Perhaps a good idea, if you want to eventually score in IN in, say, the easier difficulties, for instance, is to focus on the harder difficulties of the game, start from hard mode (I know you mentioned you 1cc'ed that already, but try to clear it consistently, for I believe there's a difference between merely clearing and getting consistent, and it's something I'm beginning to learn about myself, along with a lot of other things, and suffice to say, my STG outlook underwent some changes), then go to lunatic, practice hard and well, 1cc it for the 1st time, then work to start to clear lunatic consistently, so that you will gain the power of IN lunatic, and you can take that with you to whatever you choose to do next, and thus, make, say, playing for score on the easier difficulties a less of a pain, or so I think. With Imperishable Night having one of the best practice systems in all of the Touhou games (spell practice is too good!) it can be done!

But, like I said, I know nothing about scoring in IN, but I think that could be the best course of action, I believe. Best of luck, don't give up! I've known about you for some time, C.Angel! You're working hard, and I'd sure like to see you succeed one day! ^^ Well, I'm working on that myself as well, haha, so I guess, what am I saying? ^^;

[CyberAngel]

@Sakurei: Thanks for the answer, but what confuses me are the cases when familiars respawn and disappear constantly. Why in some cases it's okay to destroy a bunch of them and in others it's best not to touch any? I'm fine if such things have some easy and logical explanation, but I'm not a fan of "just remember this strat" cases.

About reasons, I actually have no problem with watching WR runs and deciding what to try and what to ignore for now. What makes me drop this game is how time-consuming it is in general, even without having to work on some advanced scoring strats. There are two reasons I'm saying that, and they might sound really stupid. One is that I sort of got addicted to Spell Practice. Using it is pretty justified, though, since I still have a lot of spells I'm not consistent with. But this pretty much adds an extra week of training before doing actual runs. I don't have such troubles with games that only have stage practice. The other reason is that I want to give a spin to all shottypes. Yes, all 12 of them. They all are interesting in their own ways, and I can't just settle for playing only a few of them.

I know the smart thing would be to stop once in a while and do other things I want. But the thing is, I've played IN so much by now that "other things" means every other STG I want to be playing. At the same time, dropping it halfway makes me feel bad, like it hangs over my head, which saps the enjoyment out of whatever I'm playing. And if I were to return to IN after dropping it, it will be "all chars or GTFO" all over again. Might be hard to understand why it has to be like that, but that's how my crazy mind works.

Again, I'm sorry to disappoint, I really liked playing, actually, but it's just not the game I want to play for a long term, while at the same time it's the only way I can play it. I hope my explanation didn't sound too weird, but that's how I feel about things.

@Purple: Playing all difficulties at the same time was my MO even before I joined this site. Was quite a breakthrough for me back when I was new, but I can thank it for gaining skills as fast as I do. Which isn't too fast, frankly, but it would be way slower without it.

[PurpleTheGuy]

Hmm, I see. I just thought it would be a great idea, for I know it worked out pretty well for me so far, and I'm working on improving that formula myself. I was thinking that could help out with some things. Yes, there was some real, incredible stuff I've read recently that helped me learn to practice efficiently, and see that playing for long hours at a time can prove to be an actual detriment (I know it didn't work too well for me, haha), and whatnot (I mentioned the changes on my STG outlook, and me realising that some things were just plain impractical and unrealistic).

Basically, not long ago, I've read from Prometheus' "Full Extent of the Jam" and some of Icarus's tips, and they have helped out a lot in me learning to practice efficiently, to where I picked up some techniques that helped me improve my game some more, and to stick with one game (maybe two) at a time, and try to get as much as you can out of it, so to speak, something around those lines. Maybe you could check those out sometime, see what you can get out of it.

[Oh]

A great way to increase shmup fundamentals is LNBNV.

[Inadequate]

I wouldn't recommend Lunatic no bomb no ufo to people who have difficulty just clearing the games on the highest setting. No bomb runs can be great fun, though, once you get to a certain level of expertise with the games.

what confuses me are the cases when familiars respawn and disappear constantly. Why in some cases it's okay to destroy a bunch of them and in others it's best not to touch any?

Generally, you don't want to break familiars during bossfights unless you get something out of it. The exceptions to this rule are two of Marisa's nonspells (first and fourth) during which new familiars spawn only if you destroy them. On any other nonspell, on human solo it will be more beneficial to shoot the familiars instead of the boss (whether you destroy them or not), since the damage caused will be soothed while the time gained from shooting will be the same as regularly, thus resulting in extra time gain.

As optimization goes, on patterns where you won't be able to deal a majority of the damage via familiars, it's better to just shoot the boss and let the familiars life, maybe shooting at them a bit to gain some extra time. You can see this in some World Records, but it's mostly relevant during the first two stages, and the gain isn't all that large.

On spell cards, it depends on the shot damage. On high damage shots (Youmu, Marisa), it's better to shoot the familiars and not break them if only possible, while for lower damage shot-types (Reimu, Sakuya) it goes something like hitting both familiars and boss > hitting boss > hitting familiars.


Reimu and Marisa can't milk most nonspells since the homing and explosive shot tend to kill off the boss. Marisa and Sakuya don't face Marisa's first boss non, Sakurei, but I think Marisa should be strong enough to kill an familiar or two without bombing.

I don't think it's a good approach to think about the time a game might take, since the Touhou games, while competitive, are the best approached as an entertainment medium. If there is something you like and enjoy, I don't think it's relevant at all to think about how big part of your life you might be committing. Mostly, it is considered a good thing for games to have a lot of content, as time spent doing something that makes you feel good should hardly be thought of as time wasted. This is obviously just my personal take on the matter, but I find the other approach very depressing and dissatisfying.

On top of that, I've found delving deeply into a Touhou game (Imperishable Night, no less) a very enlightening experience.

[CyberAngel]

Prometheus' "Full Extent of the Jam"

Ah yes, I did read it. Funny enough, I was already aware of many tips explained there, but it was reassuring to see them being given by someone like that.

I don't think it's a good approach to think about the time a game might take, since the Touhou games, while competitive, are the best approached as an entertainment medium. If there is something you like and enjoy, I don't think it's relevant at all to think about how big part of your life you might be committing. Mostly, it is considered a good thing for games to have a lot of content, as time spent doing something that makes you feel good should hardly be thought of as time wasted. This is obviously just my personal take on the matter, but I find the other approach very depressing and dissatisfying.

On top of that, I've found delving deeply into a Touhou game (Imperishable Night, no less) a very enlightening experience.

I think I'm just too tired with IN to keep enjoying it. In the past year, I played it for 300 hours, I think. I don't know if it's considered a lot, but it's way more than for any other game I played. I mean, I'm fine with taking my time working on a game if I'm interested enough, but I find juggling games to be most effective for developing my general skills. For IN, the minimum amount of time I need to play to be satisfied is a few months at least due to spell practice and all the characters. For other games it's a week or two, so I find it easier to stop playing when I'm tired with them and not feel bad about dropping stuff halfway done. I thought about it, and IN just doesn't fit my approach to playing.

Thanks for the explanation on familiars. It looks like the system IS too complicated for my tastes. I guess I'm just not as good with systems that aren't "destroy everything in sight".

[Inadequate]

https://twitter.com/naya_exe/status/498464739324747776

Naya gets PCB 3.623B. Everyone is going crazy, losing it. The sale of sedatives in Japan has gone up by 1000%, people are marking this day in their calendars as the pinnacle of Touhou. This is as good as it gets, it's only downhill from here on.


Obviously over-exaggerated to the point of silliness, but man. This is insane.

[Mino ☆]

Wow. That's pretty great!

I wonder if Yu-suke could even catch up. I hope Naya releases a replay soon if he hasn't already.

[I have no name]

In the past year, I played it for 300 hours, I think.

As someone who's done a lot of speedruns, I'd say that that's not a lot,  There were periods of time where I would clock 300 hours on one game in a month just trying for improvements, looking for strategies, etc.  In the past 6 months since I got back into Chip's Challenge I have probably 1,000 hours of stuff relating to the game-level design, testing, just playing, and optimizing.  Maybe I'm just obsessive, but obsessive gets results  :V