-
So since a gameplay patch was released relatively recently for Devil of Decline, I decided to give it a go.
The only DoD topic I was able to find via search in HME is:
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,11701.msg768236.html#msg768236
and you can snag the gameplay patch (and read up on its progress) at:
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,18295.0.html
Thank you to everyone who made this patch possible. Not just the current workers like Validon98, but everyone who invested time and effort into getting to that point previously too!
Anyway... I'm playing this game now, and I'm enjoying it, though so far I think genius of sappheiros was better. Here are my observations, I'm curious what other fans think.
1: I rather liked those 25 point skill charts in GoS where you could spend, reset, and resend on demand to suit your current needs, boss fights. etc. It was strong character customization that was also flexible and interesting. I've rarely seen customization options in a game that was interesting AND flexible, normally if they're flexible, they're pretty basic. DoD seems to have lost that system completely. I IMAGINE that choosing who is 'wearing' which 3 shikigamis is supposed to be the replacement, and that's an interesting system too. But there's just no way that assigning 3 characters to your 'masters' is as deep. Not to mention there are some obvious bad choices there like trying to put ailment-inducing characters on reimu or something.
2: The 'masters' themselves don't really seem that interesting themselves. They have their unique stat growths and last words...But as far as I can tell, that's IT. They don't have their own spells. No fantasy seal for reimu, or persuasion needle, no magic missle for marisa, remilia doesn't have spear the gungnir, madness!
3: Probably an issue because early game is mostly outdoors in woods and swamps and whatnot, but so far I'm noticing more tedious to navigate dungeons where the difficulty lies in you figuring out the correct path from point A to B by traveling unseen behind giant tree/cliff/whatever terrain blocking your view of the path.. I'm not talking about the odd secret or whatever hiding like that.
4: I've heard this game is easier until the final dungeon. I've noticed that the first dungeon is indeed much easier than GoS' first dungeon. But after that the trash seems about the same so far. Bosses on the other hand are proving to be complete pushovers so far. (the most recent boss I defeated was some fire demon thing that was with orin, so if they get way harder immediately, eh).
Of course, GoS is a great game, and despite that, I like some of the changes too.
5: Choosing your starting character is cool, having their own starting companions/shikigami/etc is also cool.
6: GoS had some great music, but I think I'm enjoying this game's even more! and no, I don't actually like chinese tea that much (I mean compared to other touhou songs, I like it but not especially so).
7: Having every character (at the time) as either a master or shikigami is great...and finally a touhou rpg with hatate! EEEK... I just hope she doesn't suck =P
I have some questions though...
1: Vitality is supposed to affect defense, and potential is supposed to affect resistance/crit... Why then, despite my vitality and potential growing more and more... my defense/resistance 0 if you take away armor?
2: What is the significance of the different weapon types that belong to the same family? For example, short sword has a pretty standard looking sword icon, but shamshir has a thinner, more eastern looking sword icon. But they both share the same sword skills? I also have a mace, which looks like a mace in the icon, and then the battleshovel has an icon that looks like something you'd see a brutish ogre to lug around or something. I'm not talking about their graphic which is obviously unique for each item. But I mean the tiny little icon that is more to tell you the family of item something is.
3: so far I'm having no difficulties, so I have yet to craft anything despite having the mats to do so. Are early game crafting mats still useful later in the game? or will they just be useless then. Basically, by saving now, will I be helping myself later if i need something crafted later? Will all the 'stone's and 'steel's and whatnot turn into 'obsidian', and 'mithril' or something? I mean I expect to see new mats for higher end items, but I'm wondering if they'll require stone and stuff still TOO.
-
The basic materials (iron, bamboo, mirrors, elemental shards) can be upgraded to the better ones later in the game but the more eclectic materials (Youkai's Memories) are just irrelevant later. Overall though, as long as you don't go crazy on crafting, full speed ahead. Materials are a lot less limited than in GoS until you get to endgame recipes (which have lots of special materials)
The bosses will slowly scale up in difficulty but apart from like, two exceptions, the game really doesn't get much harder until the final dungeon where it decides to start demanding a sacrifice of your unborn children. That's where it gets, ah, "fun", so as you unlock more shikigami it's important to make sure you're leveling up ones that look like they'll be useful later (which can be hard to tell when their moveset isn't filled out, admittedly!), and not just mostly using shikigami that have nice random battle clearing moves.
The one other difference between characters is weapon skill learning types. Protags and Kogasa, who has a super easily missable recruit scene late in the game
are the special Type 1 which has the best moves and a large variety, most of the magician-type characters are the second best Type 4 (think of it as a consolation prize for the low str, except for utsuho), and everyone else is 2 or 3. Chart of how it works
(http://puu.sh/hQ6xQ.png)
Explanation:Type 1 characters are great at learning type 1 moves, alright at learning type 2 and 3, and have a big penalty when trying to learn type 4 moves.
Another thing about weapon skill learning is there's a lot of skills that you can learn -much- sooner and at a much higher chance if you use a certain other weapon skill. In a few cases it's the only way to learn it at all. (Early example:Falcon Slash can inspire Sonic Blade at a much lower proficiency level than a normal attack, and with a higher proc rate)
anyway I beat the game a week or two ago and I'm also a nerd who knows everything about it even -before- I played it, so <.< >.> if there's any questions
-
To answer the question about the different sword icons and whatnot, from my understanding there's no major difference. There are very specific weapons that help spark very specific skills, but that's about it, and none of those weapons even show up until like... expansion or endgame content.
But yeah, the game is much easier early on, but it starts kicking you in the nads once you get to the final dungeon (which takes up roughly the last third or quarter of the game anyways, so yaaaaaay). Although the game does kick you in the nads much earlier with Xia Zhuli, the boss of the first Clock Tower of the End, who you should save for much later because taking her on first is nigh suicidal, despite her Clock Tower being the easiest of the three in terms of random encounters. So yeah, the start is a bit slow, but it picks up, don't worry.
Oh right, to answer about the vitality thing, the DEF and RES stats only measure what you have based on your equipment and whatnot, not how much VIT and POT affects them. This is sorta eh in my opinion, but at the same time the visible stats from equipment are generally more prominent anyways. So having, say, a 50 MDEF is going to be a lot more effective than having 50 POT, because the equipment stats have a much greater effect.
-
I WISH I could know everything but navigating the japanese wiki is painful for me. I did find new things that make me go huh though.
1: Nitori recently got a lightbulb moment, and did some attack called counter-something (and no she wasn't using any skill that allowed her to counter things) while using a spear, it looked like some kind of computer scan thing then a stab with an explosion...however she didn't learn the actual move after. what gives?
2: I don't really want people to tell me exactly what party to use per say, but I currently am using youmu, mokou, raymoo, patchy, and nitori (dumping marisa for patchy was hard but I'm a remi/patchy fanboy so I had to, and I didn't want 2 squishy mages). I'll have to dump someone for remilia after, and I don't really wanna dump nitori because she's my go-to status character cuz of her high dexterity... plus her defenses aren't bad...heck, nothing about her seems to be bad except her int I guess. I'm thinking of dumping mokou or youmu (probably youmu, she's more useful than mokou for me currently but I imagine mokou's last word is just too damn good endgame, and youmu's will become nothing special I suspect), making reimu or nitori replace them as a tank (for 2 girl tank formations, maybe I should switch to 1 later though). Is it viable end game to have only 1 dedicicated brawler type character who can take a beating? Can raymoo support that role?
3: Do physical/magic attacks noticeably scale better than another late game? Just curious
4: Any advice towards which shikigami are deceptively useful? Like which ones look like crap at first but are really good because they learn some of the best skills later on? Does that early game one in the chest who has a single target nuke of each element get something amazing later? She's super good now just for versatility on my only good mage, but I suspect she'll become pretty lame later on as other characters learn their own elemental nukes if she never learns anything new...Is there a maximum number of spells they can learn? like 5 or something? Cuz if I see a character with 5 and I don't like any of their stuff that much, I'll know to give up on them.
5: In the bestiary, right on the bottom, next to their exp reward, is some kinda area where stars are displayed, what the heck is that?
Thanks again.
More observations
I like how this game doesn't really have a set path for you to go, some areas are harder, but not to the point where it's impossible to do them first or whatever (probably because leveling up is so minor in these games).
Muenzuka is bs =P. I almost had a party wipe (would be my first) like 4 times now from trash encounters... the enemies aren't hard per say.. it's the big packs with like 3 wheels and 3 chips where they can all move faster than my entire party, paralize my whole party, trip half my party, etc... oh, and that these moves seem to be THEIR MOST COMMON CHOICE.. ugh ugh.
-
Okay, going to do my best to answer questions and whatnot.
1- Here's the thing with learning skills: If you already have four skills and then learn a fifth, then you have to swap out one of your existing skills in order to have it equipped. As well, if you learn a skill, but get wiped out, you lose the skill you learned and have to relearn it.
2- In terms of someone being a "tank" character, I've used Yuuka, Reimu, Mokou, Yukari, and Byakuren in my different runs. Really, ANYONE can tank as long as you throw enough defensive shikigami and items on them, and it's a good idea to make sure you get monster shikigami for that role, because having a dedicated tank is going to be crucial for later boss fights in order to soak up the big fuckoff attacks bosses will have (much like Alice in GoS). And don't worry too much about character choice, as you can see in my signature I describe the run of DoD that I'm actually on hiatus from as "team underused", because these are characters I haven't used extensively on my Reimu (my "I'm learning how to play" run), Meiling (my "I'm LPing so I'm min-maxing with my masters" run), or Yukari (my "I'm going to start working on this English patch so I should just try other characters" run) runs of the game, so I'm giving them some limelight. You really can go with ANY combination of masters and as long as you make sure that characters that join later can catch up in terms of levels and element levels, you'll be fine. There are some that are more suited to certain roles than others (and then there's Sunny, who just plain sucks and I'm just using her for my backup mage and support), but do whatever.
3- Scaling for physical and magical damage is very weird. Both actually stay fairly relevant throughout the entire game, although magic generally is better for clearing the easier random encounters and affecting the land during boss fights, while physicals are better for boss fights in general and for taking down tougher random encounters. Within physicals, the four major weapon types have their own scaling. Swords start off slightly weak due to a general lack of random clearing potential, but they become the best weapon type bar none for boss killing and single-target damage, as well as slayers. Spears start off okay since they can kill off some of the more dangerous monsters like Mind Flayers and whatnot, but they fall flat later in the game, and become the worst weapon type in general because they are so weak AND prevent shield usage. Blunt type weapons are in this strange limbo in which they are rather decent all game for physical damage and random clearing since they get a LOT of AoE attacks, but otherwise are rather average in terms of dealing damage. You might as well keep one around in case, given some of them ignore defense, but otherwise they are just barely worse than swords. Staves are useful all game given the fact they always boost magic damage, which is obviously good for your mages. They can't learn any weapon skills since they boost magic, but you don't really need weapon skills on your mages anyways. Much like with masters, use what you want, but I do recommend having at least two sword users, a blunt user, a mage with a staff, and maybe a spear user (although it's usually better to have two mages or a mage and a support using the staff that boosts casting speed and recovery magic power).
4- Shikigami learn no more than 5 skills, but that does not mean that they stop learning passives. As a general rule, most early shikigami will end up being useless later on, but there are some that do stay semi-relevant (I'm still using Parsee in the expansion, although I'm probably going to replace her with the Unseelie Court that IIRC I just picked up). There are too many shikigami in the game that I can't really recommend any off the top of my head, but on the subject of Isohime, there will be later shikigami that will outclass her in terms of being multi-element magic shikigami.
5- Sorry about the bestiary being untranslated right now, I have no idea how to clean it myself, and I'm still hoping someone will be able to do something with it, but those stars aren't going to be relevant until you finish one of the Clock Towers of the End. Once you beat one and recruit Satori, you will be able to recruit certain monsters as shikigami. The stars represent the difficulty of recruitment (the more stars, the less chance the monster will join), and if an enemy has no stars, then it cannot be recruited at all.
Sorry for the longwindedness, I'm just trying to explain as best as I can. I've beaten the main game with all four main characters, so I would like to think I'm somewhat knowledgable. :V
-
PFFFT... someone apologizing to ME for long-windedness. Nah, I appreciate massive amounts of detail in pretty much every topic, so I refuse to excuse an apology, and thank it instead.
no worries about the star thing, it's pretty simple to figure out what is what in the bestiary...except the star thing =P. But now I know thanks.
I had a feeling early shikigami would be less useful but I have a feeling aya may remain pretty darn good for awhile... double action can't ever be bad I reckon! I'm also curious as to why orin is taking so much longer to learn a 3rd spell than letty or yamame (or aya but her 3rd spell is actually her first, and it's not a nuke).
I thought hina would be good, or any stat debuffer really. But I've noticed this game seems to make it so status reductions rarely land. I'm not talking mute, petrify, poison, etc. But strength-down, agility down, defense-down, etc. I have hina and some other stat reducer (a prismriver iirc) on nitori, whose dex is really quite impressive, but I have yet to see any stat down land once after attempting it only like a dozen enemies, how lame.
-
Variety effects seem to honestly land more off of weapon skills in my experience than off specific skills that are designed for inflicting said status effects. I don't know why this is the case, but one thing I have noticed is that shikigami focused on status effects tend to, other than Koruri for some reason, tend to have larger stat bonuses, so there is that. You'll probably want to use status effects moreso on bosses anyways, and Mystia can help out with that once she gets Mysterious Song (it lowers enemy RES for a couple turns and has a pretty high chance of working, which can help land a few more effects).
Also, I nearly forgot about Aya, she is definitely useful all game because she not only gets you a nice Electric attack that'll last you for at least the majority of the second stratum and part of the third, but she has Thunderclap Gale and First Strike, two skills that are extremely good for boss fights or for fighting against some of the tougher enemies.
-
You dirty rotten knowledge hoarders! I was browsing on my phone today and didn't have motk loaded up so rather than entering the url and clicking this link, I just googled motk devil of decline... it took me to some lets play in akyu's arcade, at which point both Serela and Validon mentioned some mysterious "blog that has everything technical about the game"... what is this blog! Must have! It isn't linked on the wiki! qq... pleeeeaseee *clutches ankle* pleeeeaaassseee!
Also, I imagine this is a bug with the game, not the translation patch, since I imagine the translation patch doesn't even touch the files that would cause this with a 10 foot pole.. but uhh.. whenever I kill enemies with canyon clap, which isn't supposed to cause petrify or anything...the enemies killed kinda turn dark like they were turned to stone, and do not get removed from the battlefield (though they are considered dead in that you can no longer target them, and they no longer perform any actions).. Also, the same spell for whatever reason always makes patchy and marisa perform the run away animation for like a second (only the squishy mages for whatever reason.. It could be people in particular formation slots though, I didn't try moving them and seeing).
-
The blog of which you speak of is a Japanese blog that's linked on the Japanese wiki for the game, and it really does have a lot of technical information. So hereeeeeeeee you goooooooo!
http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/
It has stuff for other Strawberry Bose games too, but since you want Devil of Decline, well... pick the one that has stuff on Devil of Decline. :V
Hilariously, that chart Serela linked to in his post earlier? That's on this blog too.
And the Canyon Clap thing is always present, it apparently messes up the coordinates and such since lel screen shake, so things that are out of place move back (including enemies killed by it). Don't worry about the dark versions of enemies, they're not actually there, it's a graphical glitch thing that's always present with spells like that.
-
yay thanks... this site is much more manageable to understand than the wiki using google translate...though first place I looked at is the damage formulas.. base attack force and such.. I don't see strength or vit mentioned in there AT ALL. Many confuses.
edit: oh wait, strength is mentioned once in some magic correction formula. didn't bother looking in the magic section.. must be a typo swap thing.
-
Most likely it'll refer to those stats by their Japanese names (force is usually STR), so there might be some confusion there. It's not like in the English version where they're STR, VIT, etc.
-
Thanks but I considered that annd... well... uhh. let's just focus on vit for defense for now.
○ basic defense force
Physical: defense of the target * (100- defense ignored effect) / 100 + shield defense force of the target
○ base damage
Damage
Physical: (basic attack force - basic defense force) * (weapon magnification + skill magnification -100) / 100
For basic defense force, I'm assuing 'defense of the target' is the 'def' stat, if you think it's vit, than that only makes me question if defense is the useless stat (the one wearing armor I mean), which I don't think is the case. defense ignored effect is an offensive trait, most likely something along the lines on if it's a mace or a spear or mirage cut or whatever... and shield defense isn't what I'm talking about... maybe vit is facotred in the damage formula?
note basic attack force isn't strength per say, that's a formula on its own, one devoid of any target defenses (or anything from the target really). weapon magnification is what I assume to be again, spear, mace thing.. and skill is probably skill power... no vit. and if it is defense of target, then no defense... that's why I'm confused.
I'm really sorry to pester on a point if you wish not to talk about it. I don't want people to try and figure it out for me or anything but if they have a fast easy answer that will give me a lightbulb, that's what I'd like =) But please don't waste time on my needless obsession.
-
I actually have no idea, to be honest. I never studied the formulas carefully enough, and right now it's so late where I am that I don't feel like studying the formulas to see what affects what. Go with what the blog says over what I say, really. :V
Do note that STR does directly affect PATK, but I don't know how VIT affects anything, really.
-
actually, simple question. I got the hookshot, and forgot all the areas that need it. I got sunny and her pals, and uhh. I went to the northeast area of heaven's falls, which led to a cave which as far as I can tell was a dead-end without any significant treasure (hint hint, did I miss something?)...but thought there was more that I forgot about that I seem unable to find atm.
-
You missed Momiji, simple as that. :V
-
nono.. she was at the very door in that cave I mentioned. So I got her right away, found some cave, explored it, and found it holding nothing of value... now you may argue momiji was of value, but why wasn't hte cave empty except for her like so many other areas are like for parsee, mystia, orin, etc... the fact she was in a cave with some size, and enemies...and seemingly nothing else made me think maybe I missed something that wasn't something I'd literally walk into upon entering.
I was more asking if I missed other hookshot locations, I'm convinced I did at least one.. reading your lets play I mentioned earlier, there's some secret area YOU missed on your first play featuring every chest you previously missed or something, I can't find that one =P
-
Ohhh... huh. I forget if there's anything else in Momiji's cave. You can fight enemies there and yukkuri'll pop up every so often, but other than that, I don't thiiink there's anything else?
And I know what you're talking about, and I don't think I missed it (maybe on that one run, but I know it exists). That's in Chaos Plains 3, by the way.
-
Anyone know a good place to level grind pre castle of chaos?
I've been doing it in the cave where I got Momiji but I was wondering if there was anywhere better to do so......
I know there's a similar place in the final area but I haven't gotten that far yet......
-
I'm really sorry to pester on a point if you wish not to talk about it. I don't want people to try and figure it out for me or anything but if they have a fast easy answer that will give me a lightbulb, that's what I'd like =) But please don't waste time on my needless obsession.
I am not familiar with this game but I am somewhat familiar with the SaGa games which use the lightbulb mechanic. (Many Touhou fangames are inspired by SaGa games.)
In those games, enemies have a "spark rate", a value which determine the likelyness of sparking a new tech.
The ones with the best rate are usually high ranking monsters or some bosses which mean that you need to progress at least a bit to learn the good stuff.
Also some tech may require you to learn earlier tech to be learned or at least more easily learned.
In Romancing SaGa 2, not every characters can spark every move and they don't have the same sparking rate either.
Also, some weapons in that game can spark weapon related moves.
In the PS2 version of Romancing SaGa, the best move for sparking new stuff is most of the time if not always the basic attack.
So what to get of all this? The specific varies but it starts with finding powerful opponents and bosses and then trying lot of attacks on them.
Because I don't know the specifics, I suggest to start from there and experiment a lot.
-
...I don't think he was talking about the sparking system there, Mewseeker. I think he knows what that is already. :V
-
err yeah, I know what the lightbulbs are for and that's not what I was talking about, thanks anyway!
-
1: I rather liked those 25 point skill charts in GoS where you could spend, reset, and resend on demand to suit your current needs, boss fights. etc. It was strong character customization that was also flexible and interesting. I've rarely seen customization options in a game that was interesting AND flexible, normally if they're flexible, they're pretty basic. DoD seems to have lost that system completely. I IMAGINE that choosing who is 'wearing' which 3 shikigamis is supposed to be the replacement, and that's an interesting system too. But there's just no way that assigning 3 characters to your 'masters' is as deep. Not to mention there are some obvious bad choices there like trying to put ailment-inducing characters on reimu or something.
It's funny, I felt like GoS had a problem where there was far too much customization required; between every boss battle and dungeon exploration, you would have to rearrange your party, your skilltrees, your spells, and your equipment (with three accessories!) and I got kind of tired of switching everything back and forth all the time. In DoD your actual party remains relatively static and all you really end up switching around is equipment and Shikigamis, and there's still a lot of depth in the shikigami choices you have but a lot less actual manual reconfigurating.
Anyways, DoD/Festival is probably tied with the Labyrinth games for my favorite Touhou RPG (I wrote a bunch of the boss strategy on the wiki), so it's really nice to see it getting a translation. And yeah, the soundtrack is fantastic. I didn't like Nightmare of Rebellion nearly as much from the bit of it that I've played, but that's neither here nor there.
-
I kept my builds in gos static except for bosses... And those super rare encounters in stage 21 or 22 or whatever it is... I admit having to need very specific builds for rare random encounters was bs... But at the same time it was cool having trash that nasty.
Anyway. I am almost done the 2nd stratum in dod now. I cleared everything in it except the hell area, the boundary by entei, and the long range hookshot thing in heaven. The tower boss really was a joke compared to the first stratum. I thought that when people said the first stratum tower boss was hard, they meant because she rewuires advanced tactics, or that she can be cheap like mindflayers. I didnt expect that her stats are simply out of this world.
Im still finding nitori's spear use to be pretty darn good, and i have yet to get a good overall sword skill. The slayer skills are nice but for bosses they stink since every remotely big boss is unknown type.
-
Oh, I forget about this thread. Weapons~
Swords tend to get the best skills, especially once you get a better variety of slayers. Even against bosses, swords learn some realllly good damage skills in time, and there's some really good swords to go with it. (+elemental damage weapons are awesome against anything that doesn't heavily resist them) Spears don't fall off as hard as suggested earlier, but you -do- need to actually build for p.atk (and have a decent str stat) to make them work the farther in you get, since they don't pierce DEF at -all-, and honestly the type 1 spear attacks vastly outclass all the other spear skills until the end-postgame in terms of damage, much harder than the other weapon trees do; I had my protag use spears so I'm used to having them around :V
Even when spears do fall off though (this doesn't really happen until postgame even without special atk builds, in any case, although they don't have cool sword slayers) you start getting skills with more relevant Quick effects like All Stats Down, Physical Defense Down, Atk Down, etc, and since these are quick and only last one turn they have pretty strong effects (like 50% more physical damage dealt for that turn).
Blunt weapon variety effects may seem easier to land, but until the later blunt weapon skills (like skill lv. 24+) they're going to be notably weaker in effect than a dedicated debuff. Of course, since they also deal damage, they're still good~
The tower boss really was a joke compared to the first stratum. I thought that when people said the first stratum tower boss was hard, they meant because she rewuires advanced tactics, or that she can be cheap like mindflayers. I didnt expect that her stats are simply out of this world.
Yeah, she's vastly more powerful than the other tower bosses. The only reason it wouldn't be surprising for some to do her before the third tower boss (who is again, much easier) is because the third tower is literally the last area you get to before the final dungeon anyway.
More importantly, something worth noting since the dialogue isn't translated; once you kill a tower boss, you can now recruit certain random battle enemies as shikigami. It's a random chance, but there's very few with a recruit rate worse than 1/8 until the final dungeon, and a large amount of those are 1/4. Anything with stars in the bestiary is recruitable (although you have to kill a lot before the stars even show up there, so) but I'd moreso recommend just using a machine translator on that page of the jp wiki to see which ones are. There's a lot. Also, any touhou characters you may have run into in random battles have a 100% recruit rate on defeat.
...anyway, about hookshot, in terms of first stratum, there's three. The other one is on the upper left of the world map somewhere in a Chaos Plains? The only thing behind it is non-prorated-exp generic fairies and chests containing any items you missed in the tutorial, though. And yes, momiji's cave only has a similar thing as that, except with a better yukkuri encounter rate and no chests or save point. I'm not sure if you'd have run into any of the ones in stratum 2 yet... unless you did a lot of the stratum before going to the area with the hookshot, probably not.
-
Yeah I replaced hina with satori, I really didn't want to because I like hina, and because I really like stat debuff spells in most rpgs ever. But hina's never lands ever (on bosses)...even though I was wearing launch goggles with her.
Also, the hell stage is even cheaper than mindflayers. I got party killed my 2nd and 3rd time now from groups of two mages and 3 caviars.. mage casts "everyone on our team goes first", caviars spam HDD crash.. full party wipe before even my fastest characters can possibly move.. can't even get a CHANCE to run away ffs.
-
Bosses can specifically resist each category of variety effect seperately, so even if thorn bind/melt weapon/etc doesn't work well, there's a good chance the basic Stat Decrease skill is fine (I don't think it's resisted much at all). All Down is also another category on it's own I think? Been awhile since I checked. A lot of shikigami/skills have Decrease-type things though. DEX significantly influences hit chance (although you probably know that) and POT is the status resist stat and also has a significant effect (earlygame a POT buff has a pretty large effect on mitigation, not as much later)
Those mages have Rapid Stream? Wow, I guess I was lucky for never seeing that? <.< I was speedkilling that area with ice/elec/fire spells tbh
-
Lucky is right. I thought they were hard coded to cast it every time there are at least 2 others who would benefit...
Speaking of which, i noticed the enemies in this game seem PARTIALLY intelligent. like when I was leveling remi up still. She could hit about as hard as everyone else, but was even squishier than patchy for awhile. And these enemies (angrls i think) would 1 shot her with plasma ball every time. I mean every encounter with them, one WOULD nuke her with that spell on the first turn every time. Not only was she supposed to be a rare target via formation, but plasma ball was rarely cast otherwise by that enemy. It was like they intentionally did it just for her asap every time.
Those mages never cast rapid stream when their party is small, or they alone, etc.
I kinda like it how the computer seems to try a little rather than be random, and not predictable per say.
Good to know about ebuffs, thanks. Im opting to use kisume now since she has atk and mag debuffs.
edit: in late stratum 3, new questions.
1: Kanako seems to grant spells that do medium damage in areas at relatively high mp costs... do they do more damage than stuff like razor wind or something? because it doesn't seem all that great otherwise..
2: Spells that say "do damage based on user's level"... is that the level of the shikigami, or the master, or both?
3: Where the @%#@#%ing @#%#% do I get the longer hookshot? Or did I without realizing it?
4: As mentioned, it's kinda hard to know what shikigami's are good late game because you can't really see what skills they get without leveling em first. I COULD look at the blog for each one but kinda don't want to for that reason (it's good for other things though). But I will if by end game there is virtually no good way to level em up reasonably high fast.
5: I haven't bothered looking yet, so just say "google it" if it's easy, but in case it's not, is there a handy youtube channel or something with all the DoD music that only features music from the expansions NOT included with the english patch? I wanna hear what I'm missing... Alice maestra is really good btw, wish there were more good rearrangements for that song.
Seems like Makai always has the best bgm IMO, which is good because makai is like half the game so far =P
edit: Done everything I can but zhuli now...she can still 1shot anyone she pleases with hard hit or frost hand (oddly enough her ultimate spellcard nuke can't 1shot anyone), and my hits typically only hit for like 100... heck, on turn one I use eruption and disintegrate, and on turn 2 she somehow has the water guage healing her by 176 per turn already. lbhalfjk. I did take her down to 1k once but everyone was out of mp then.
moar edit: yay got her at 30. I figured out she doesn't seem to resist def down as much as other status downs, then I'd put atk up on remi, and have her spam speed blade or whatever it's called.. some high- sword skill with 8 mp and 0 cd.. she'd hit for like 500 each time after buff/debuffs.. Despite this I'm hating remilia.. I see her last word more often than every other characters' last word combined during boss fights. yarg.
-
Where the @%#@#%ing @#%#% do I get the longer hookshot? Or did I without realizing it?
It's in the Demon Castle of Chaos, the final level of the main game
Specifically it's in the Middle tier of the castle, which looks like a middle eastern city, you'll find it in a white chest in a room with a couple enemies that looks like the first portion of the castle
Speaking of the longshot, besides the one in Heaven, where are the other longshot areas? I can't remember where they are for the life of me..... Isn't there one in Muenzuka?
-
The other L. Hookshot areas are in the Forest of Magic and the Nameless Hill, but I think besides those, that's it (you get another one of those mini farming areas in the Forest of Magic, and Koishi in Nameless Hill).
1: Kanako seems to grant spells that do medium damage in areas at relatively high mp costs... do they do more damage than stuff like razor wind or something? because it doesn't seem all that great otherwise..
2: Spells that say "do damage based on user's level"... is that the level of the shikigami, or the master, or both?
3: Where the @%#@#%ing @#%#% do I get the longer hookshot? Or did I without realizing it?
Kanako's stuff for the most part is usually just for higher power multi-target stuff (her passives also boost the power of those kinds of attacks), but usually I just use Ichirin with Gale Sword for my multi-target needs, particularly since Youmu has low MP and Gale Sword is a nice high-speed and decent damage dealing attack.
Spells that do damage based on the user's level are the master if it's specifically a Last Word or other weapon skill, or the shikigami if it's a shikigami skill.
In terms of the music thing, I think there's literally nothing else added in the Banquet version. I have heard there is one new song or something that was added, but I forget where I saw that, so I can't confirm it. Otherwise you'll be able to experience the full OST.
Also, advice for Zhuli: GET THE SHIVERS SHIKIGAMI (the area behind the Hakurei Shrine lets you fight all the "tutorial" enemies again, and the Shivers is one of them). That will immensely help because it has the skill Water Wall, which blocks all Water damage for a turn (although it won't block the Instant Death effect from her spellcard). For that, also try getting the Fairy Maid shikigami from off the second Clock Tower of the End, because it gets Control Land, and the Instant Death from her spell card has an extremely low chance to proc when the land is shifted towards Fire.
-
I think a good chunk of skills that are based on user level even from shikigami, are actually based on the master's level, but I'm not sure. Kanako's specialty skill is pretty strong due to this modifier, in any case, and she gives pretty high stat bonuses. (Also, Koruri's poison skill is not only the strongest+most accurate in the game, but it powers up based on her level as well, even though that's not in the description. Also, you can stack poison procs for more damage.)
Ichirin is nice, but unless your protag is Byakuren you won't have her for a long time. And yeah, Banquet has no extra music; it's just some rebalancing to stat gains, the levels shikigami learn things, equipment power, and now you can also see what levels shikigami learn their moves at. And the third tower boss has vastly more HP the first time you fight her in Banquet, which she needed.
Zhu Li is still really hard even with water wall, but that only increases it's necessity. Giving blunt resistance to a tank in a luring formation slot is also critical, as is the fire land manipulation as stated, and a dose of luck. Tough boss.
It's not easy to get shikigami to a decent level until literally the final area of the end of the postgame. When you want a shikigami leveled up for support skills in bosses or whatnot, it's a priority to put them in the party for randoms far ahead of time. The game's tough if you don't use a wiki! Not that that is necessarily a bad thing.
-
Somehow your last post inspired me to beat the game without wiki or stupid grinding..Thanks alot =P
I DID beat Zhuli with...well...with pretty much what I use on everything else so far, so if I can beat her 5 levels below her without any boss-specific tactis like water shield (though I would have used it if I knew about it lol!), hopefully it can carry me thru the rest.
Kinda unrelated, but somehow the BGM for alice maestra reminds me of a touhou remix song I used to have on my phone that I loved. but I forgot which circle wrote it (I thought it was magnum opus but I can't find it!... I used to play that song side by side with this one though, which is why I'm posting it cuz it reminds me... that and some romantic children remix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHE0busQTI
oh yeah, a fairly specific question.
My reimu has ran on her... my patchy has star sapphire on her. Ran has a 15 mp izuna drop nuke that does 90 power in light damage... star sapphire has light web which does 90 power in light damage for 10mp. Reimu's light nuke skill is 11, patchy's is 6...
However my reimu frequently creams the shit out of light-weak enemies with izuna for 1kish.. patchy, on the SAME enemies, hits for like 600-700 only, despite having a much higher int. Is the difference between 11 and 6 light nuke skill really THAT much? or is there some kind of hidden feature to ran's nuke that makes it so much more powerful (makes sense since it costs way more mp I guess)..
edit: so I'm in the final dungeon, clearing every trash encounter in the first 3 rooms no problem.. wow, over-rated. honest to got, not only isn't it not much harder imo, it's actually LESS hard than the trash in hell and tower #2 imo...
then a single tank with no allies appear.. I hear they suck so I go all out.. it moves before even remilia, and she's pretty effing fast.. main cannon, 1shot my entire party... oh-kayyy...
I can accept very specific baddies in very specific dungeons have death moves...though that's not great, I can accept it.
a you-lose...period.. move that has lightning speed/initiative? wdf?!
edit: Jesus yokai fuck! Do tanks do ANYTHING other than main cannon? no wipes ever...except when a tank.. then they main cannon first turn. I can't 1-shot them with anything I've tried either. so no aya first turn use big nuke 1shot them either... sigh.
-
Yeah those tanks freaking suck
They have a single target attack that they sometimes use as well, I think it ignores defense
I just run from them every time they show up XD
The first couple rooms of the castle are pretty good for level grinding, all the enemies have weaknesses and give off some decent exp (I have the Mokou Yukkuri shikigami so I also get an exp bonus as well)
This area has so many good shikigami to recruit as well
The beholders are pretty good, and the sharks have some awesome ice attacks
There's also this green starfish thing, you'll know it when you see it, and it has a field effect that increases all stats for you're whole party for like 6 turns
As far as the element skill levels, it seems they really do make a difference as I've noticed a similar effect with my Reimu's and Marisa's mystic stat
The bosses of the castle really become a battle of attrition if nothing else, after all you can buff all you want but once you run out of MP you're done
At this point it would probably behoove you to equip one shikigami with good attacks on each character and just equip the other slots purely for stat boosts and passives, helps one to be prepared for the BS random encounters I've noticed
But seriously, screw those tanks, and pretty much every mechanical looking enemy in the castle, they all do something stupid
-
Tanks are weak to water and should be countered with Mighty Shield Wall. If you run into 3 at once though, unless you've got a ton of water shikigami, welp... 3 main cannons will still wreck you through shield wall unless you're using the Solitude formation and they all target the front.
About Ran; some of the character-specific skills feel like they have the level-dependent bonus even though they don't SAY they do. I never tested though; I looked at Ran's skill, saw it took forever to learn for a skill of it's power, and just kinda dropped her after the second tower boss. Good to hear it's actually a lot stronger than that. HOWEVER, if Reimu has significantly better INT, or a staff/magic boost robe, well. :P (edit:oh, you said patch has way more)
The one other thing is that, since we aren't exactly running around reading the manual, it's very easy not to know Heavy Armor decreases your magic power by 10~20% depending on the armor. (light armor, as in not robes, does by a little bit, but only like 1~4% so it doesn't matter much)
Although, one thing that'd really seal the deal about Ran is if you swapped her and Star on Reimu/Patch (or put both on the same one, for a battle) and compared the damage. I'm curious, too.
-
Another difference between Ran's skill and Star Sapphire's is that Ran's is her unique skill, and skills unique to a shikigami often scale often level (I forget if it does in the case of Descent of Gongen-Izuna), while Star's is Starlight Web, which is a general skill with no scaling based on level. The light element level helps a little, but only boosts damage by roughly a percent or so, I forget.
The tank enemies don't ALWAYS Main Cannon... but will Main Cannon 99% of the time. They're assholes, you see one, you run unless you think you can clear them super fast. Some enemies aren't too bad, but the tanks are the first of the "enemies that are a pain" that make the Demon Castle of Chaos a major difficulty spike.
I didn't know that heavy armor and light armor reduced magic power, though. Huh. That's interesting to know, though.
-
Validon:I suspect so, yeah, but the issue is it doesn't say that it powers up via level. Which is annoying, if they still do anyway. At least it means a lot of shikigami just got somewhat more relevant long-term.
edit:I just tested 5 touhou-character-specific magic attacks against similar power plain attacks of the same element with lv99 characters+shikigami with assistance from Sairaan's save file. The specific attacks do NOT have any extra damage bonus, apart from likely eventually obtaining a +X% power passive skill on the shikigami at some point (although those are usually so late, the attack is already nearly useless by then. Why does Letty even bother learning one?) The damage difference experienced by Ghaleon is probably due to heavy armor shenanigans, a light damage increase passive, or something else like that.
There's some certain attacks in postgame with LW-style cut ins that do, however, have level increased damage even though they don't say so. Also, it's easy to miss these shikigami because jp dialogue, but I'll comment when you're there :V
Most (or all) of the overly expensive character-specific attack shenanigans are fixed in Banquet's rebalance, but the attacks themselves aren't any stronger, just a little cheaper.
-
I didn't know heavy armor lowers magic damage... I'm not sure if that's a factor or not. Both reimu and patchy have armor with the heavy armor icon, but reimu's is "magic plate mail" (I think.. magic something.. kinda has a chance of being heavy armor for magic users, or it just might say magic cuz it has high magic resistance too, who knows)..and Patchy is probably wearing the epitome of really heavy ordinary armor: Maximillion.
They also both are wearing +10% magic weapons. (Reimu a bardiche, patchy a rune staff.. some kinda staff with 10% magic attack and 20%mp. I think it was rune staff).
HOWEVER, do shields count too? Reimu has a little bitty shield called topaz guarder or something, and patchy has... I forget, but it's a big looking shield with the big shield icon. Speaking of shields, what's up with that early game shield that says "only uses 1 hand".. I've never seen a 2 handed shield, and as far as I can tell, they seem 1-handed in the game anyway =P. Is that by chance saying it doesn't lower magic attack like other heavy shields? no clue.
ANYWAY, bottom line is shield size is the only possible factor that could explain my issue with ran/star light nukes. Howeve rpatchy's int isn'ta ctually way more like I thought, I just assumed it was because I wasn't deliberately pumping reimu's int or anything. Patchy's IS higher (patchy has 110, reimu has 95), but probably not 'way' so.
Anyway, despite that, I did more testing, and ran's nuke is most definitely more powerful still. I swapped shikigami between reimu and patchy like you suggested, and patchy does more damage using ran as well.
some number comparisons.
Reimu with ran hitting goblin does 700-800 damage.
patchy hitting goblin with light web does ~480 damage.
Reimu hitting goblin with light web does ~540 damage
patchy hitting goblin with izuna does ~580 damage
I didn't retest on goblins like 100 times or anything, but fact is I did notice this before testing thru numerous uses to begin with so it's not like a freak occurrence what I got.
I made a fraps video too if anyone wants to see. I don't really wanna bother uploading it to youtube unless someone asks for it though.
-
The magic penalty is different per armor; magic plate mail might be towards the 10% whilst maximillian might be towards the 20%. And in practice, it didn't feel like a -10% final damage modifier; it felt like 10% off the initial power of the attack before calculating it against enemy stats, aka more significant. Also, man, I used the magic plate mail for so long, it's mdef is just too good XD
When I tested Ran's nuke and Starlight Web with them equipped on the same character at the same time, they did the exact same damage. (the variance was single digit with it doing several hundred damage)
I don't know if heavy shields have a penalty although I highly doubt it due to the nature of shields; they just tend to have higher def stats and lower activation rates, where the small ones often have 40~50% activation and lower def. The one-handed shield means you can use it even when attacking with a spear or whilst casting magic. I think it's the only one in the game.
There's also the possibility of your formation being the one with Matk boosts? Or accessory slots? Or other shikigami interfering? I'm only being a stickler like this since my results were clearly "they're the exact same".
EDIT:Looked it up. Magic Plate Armor is -15%, Maximillian is -20%. Heavy armors are between -14 and -20, light armors are just between -1% and -5%. They're mostly on the high ends of the spectrum in both cases, though.
Edit Again:Also, if you're using it on a goblin and hitting weakness, Reimu probably does more damage in general due to a superior STR stat; str boosts weakness damage. INT also increases slayer damage whilst I'm at it. And maaaaaybe crit but inconsistent sources and no will to test it myself.
-
didn't realize str did that too, or I did and forgot.
So I just beat up tenshi, she was complete cake, her biggest spells would only hit one person for like 150 (super gravity iirc).. pretty dumb since like 6 different trash enemies before her could hit my entire party for 200 before remilia can move unless aya first strike.
Anyway, I felt pretty sloppy clearing that outdoor/town thing part of the dungoen, but now with all these new recipes, I removed patchy's maximillion armor for some robes with +8% magic damage and fast cast and meditation. I also gave her that craftable staff for the magic piercing, which I'm hoping means enemies with circle defense act like they have - defense, and enemies with - defense act like they have triangle defense, etc. I just hope adamantine and orhalicum aren't as stupid impossible to get as they were in GoS, because that ultimate sword requiring one of each needs remi, but I decided the staff should come first because it didn't need adamantine.
edit: I just went off to the forest of magic to explore longshot area, bumped across some weird enemy named star platinum. It got satori'd... hopefully it's a spiffy get =P
-
It took me a long heft of grinding to get Star Plat to join XD C rank (1/16) and an uncommon encounter that only appears in the longshot areas. Don't forget Cloudy Heavens longshot and Hill of the Nameless longshot, or whatever that purple place is called.
Did Tenshi never use her scary moves like Ectoplasm Net? (large spread physical with significant instant death chance <.< Counterable but it sounds like you never even had to worry about it) And she's got the spread attack Land Impact which is no joke (upgraded earth hand with spread aoe) and I think Kaname Funnel. She's pretty easy to quick kill if you use Osendaku from the scarecrow shikigami Oshirasama to prevent her from jamming elec land,
in any case, though.
The piercing staff won't make enemies weak, but it does ignore a level of resistance, which becomes increasingly relevant as the random battles get tougher. You'll get more orichalcon/adamantite, so don't worry about it if it makes you regret your purchase; there's 3 or 4 full chunks before final boss.
-
Yeah tenshi never used ectoplasm net for me. I dont knkw how lucky that was though since she only lasted like 5 turns. Mokou and remi could both demonbane her for like 500 and she didnt really seem to have good defenses against dark and mystic magic either.
Star platinum really helps with killing yukkuri though. Before tenshi i never kill3d a single yukkuri sister, not even after running into like 5 of those 3 packs. But between tensi, hatate, and star plat, stray yukkuri get rolled. One time my remi hit one for 2 even.. Like not 1.0.1.0.0. But 1.0.2.1.0. Not sure if that is normal or not.
-
Was trying to find the flag via cheat engine for being able to recruit monsters as shikigami, so that I could start a run and trigger it for a Monster Shikigami Only playthrough. After awhile, I narrowed it down to... 0 addresses. >_> I might have messed up but I'm not sure if I was even doing it right, welp.
-
With GoS, finding thr address for certain things was heaps harder than LoT. I imagine DoD is the same way.
Eirin and kaggy beat. I have a feeling im pretty low level (36 my highest). I wsnt to grind a bit so every trash enemy in the game cant 1shot my entire party somehow. But ive opted to do it after I get those adamantine and orhalcium pieces.
Ive also been looking at validons lets play and game seems to hate me more with trash. Many enemies mentioned in later dungeons i seem to encounter sooner. Oarfish and those other electric demon things for example I bumped into many way back at the town area. And those darn holy spirit things dont just cast holy zapper, star blaze (I WISH they cast that!) holy web... I had thr joys of them using holy and testament every time... Oh. And I also have them spawn in groups, sometimed with another enemy namef testament that Has 2k health and likes to main cannon the party for 200 before I can blink.
Somehow the bosses seem more manageable though. Kaggy and eirin didnt play nice either. Its just that kaggy cant 1 shot my entire party. Dark web did kinda come close though. Eirin paralized me fairly often too.
Anyway... Hoping to get my uber zord soon.
-
Uber zord? You should be able to make several of the weapons and/or armors by now. Don't forget to craft the ada/ori pieces into full chunks~
36 is pretty expected around there. Leveling up doesn't do a whole lot at this point anyway, since it's just a couple stat points (unless it means a shikigami learned an awesome nuke or somethin').
Testament is a pain if you don't have any strong dark skill, but is pretty simple if you do. The real awful enemies are the lightning ones in otoha's tower. Those are a stupid, awful nightmare and the upgraded versions of them always made me just go "nope, running" plus they even have main cannon so I can't just use element shield wall :T AND THEY'RE SO COMMON, and they'll come in groups so even with the 250 pwr water nuke you can't just kill them first. Everything else is fine though. Otoha surprisingly gave me the most trouble, too...
Also, I'm just curious what your party is at this point c: In terms of character+weapon-type choice and the shikigami you're using
-
I already made that staff. And some armor. I forgot what exactly its been awhile and im not on my pc atm. But yeah I only got 2 pieces of orhalcium acter using 4 out of 5 shards. Im still at 1 2\4 for adamantine. So i used one orhalcium on my staff. Anf the other 2 will go on my slay everything that never hae a slayer for it sword.
I made some armor too but forgot what. Not on my pc.
My team comp is probably horrid in terms of shikigami because like I said, you kotivat3d me to try without looking at em. I basically have not a single one with something great for endgame I rekon in terms of survival. No good tank abilities minus the soso absorb 1 physical hit for the whole party thing with a cd of 3 on koakuma.. You keep mentioning rumias slurp but it never hits for me. And when it does all it does is hit for 0 and fail to land a debuff =\...
Trash is really proving harder than bosses still though so meh... And leveling up is more just so my hp will be high enough to be 2shot by many attacks instead of 1shot.
Oh yeah... Anyway im using reimu, patchy, remi, mokou, and nitori. With zords on remi and mokou. Staff on patchy, bardiche on reimu, and spears on nitori.
I must use patchy and remi cuz they are 2 of my fave taohaos but recognize remi is kinda awful in this game due to winning the shittiest last word award. Snd NOT having the stats to make up for it.
I also have yet to learn one of these fabled multi hit zord attacks =(.
-
Remi's STR and AGI are very high, which is enough to make her a pretty good physical attacker. And I've gotta be honest here, most of the LWs are pretty meh. All the damage ones mostly become really so-so by the point you're at now, and several of the support ones are eh. Nitori/Mokou/Reimu are up there at the best LWs in the entire cast so your view is a bit skewed :V Slurp is based on your weapon so if someone with a low acc weapon is using it, well. And yeah, most big targets have some resist to the status (and some bosses will be immune) but anything that can get hit even 1/5 times will start dropping like wet tissue paper to elemental skills afterwords, so it's got it's uses. It's annoying to test though.
Weapon skills. If Reimu doesn't have Magical Hammer (a more accessible version of Slurp that also debuffs light/dark resist, but lower duration), use stun blow. Full Strength Blow (or whole body or something), use Hard Hit. At skill 20 you definitely want to learn Manko Blow or whatnot from Full/Whole BodyStrengthIdunno. I DIDN'T HAVE A TYPE 1 BLUNT USER. There's a lot of others but they're just meh spread attacks with different variety effects.
Swords. You'll learn Chain Slash from mirage blade, although it's type 1 so it may be tough to inspire, it shouldn't be too hard though. Remi can learn Quick Break (ignores a tier of slash resistance, quite nifty) from Sonic Blade, Mokou can learn Cyclone Zapper from Meteor Zapper (although it's just another plain alltarget), and at 19 they can both learn Iai Slash from Vacuum Sword (from sonic blade), a strong aoe with giant/transcendent slayer.
Not sure how much to care about spear skills (not that they're bad, but it's type 1 or bust and most of the strong ones w/good quicks are "normal attack"). Reckless Rush(19) from Splash Charge(15) from Impale Charge? Nitori should already have Critical Thrust (which if not, is easier from sharp skewer)
-
I do have magical hammet on raymoo. But like slurp, it never debuffs... Not even on the trash i try using it on. (Testaments, mushushushushu dragons or whatever, divina princess or whatever they are called, etc)... I never got rid of it though lol.
Remi already has quick slasb (it is basically how I defeated ms faceplant), and iai slash. Ill try spamming some mirage blade though.
Nitori has some decent spear skills already too. She knowd an all down debuff which actually lands on even bosses sometimes. And a variety effect dispell attack.. Abd critical break too... And I still find that her actual damage is acceptable.
As for remi being fast and strong. That is true. But she still seems less quick than All the nasty 1 shot my party trash.. And she certainly isnt strong enough to oneshot THEM.. she certainly dies easy though. Most trash she can outspeed and possibly cripple in a blow are group trash, and i find physical doednt have much vs groups except hammer attacks. Do breath attacks use strength? I dunno. But she really cant use groul sword attacks for long before mp becomes an issue.
As for last words, i imaginr all damage ones lose their appeal eventually, but hers is a slap on the face. I kid you not, hers pops up more often than all the others combined, SO ANNOYING. Plus damage ones are decent for cooldown issues. My patchy for example sometimes has all 3 of her shikigami on cooldown, and a philosiphers stone in between is not too shabby.
Remi's doesnt even work at all when I need it to survive qq, not to mention rvrn when it does work the yukkuri and bakebake can still use crazy shit like stomic breath with high stats to bake it up since her lw only seems to modify the enemy defenses instead of offenses for whstever reason.
-
Any idea if all characters are able to learn every single weapon skill like in NoR ?, the info was added to the blog with the expansion (Ran) where using certain Doppels made it viable, the same list I had before the expansion.
I am interested in giving a look at DoD's Condition Success formula (e.g. Instant Death success) but is impossible without proper testing, it is more complex than NoR at least which is a good thing.
In NoR -> Target's RES = 100 + User's IND = Status Immunity, this applies to all Conditions regardless of Success Rate (supposing the Condition doesn't ignores RES), the system is there but is super simplified in comparison to GoS & DoD, it basically has no immunity scaling due to this. The Livedoor blog has a notation that would indicate this being impossible.
edit: nvm, the blog is right, what it points to is that is impossible to raise Condition Basic Probability via IND in NoR, is IND what was gimped.
-
I am interested in giving a look at DoD's Condition Success formula (e.g. Instant Death success) but is impossible without proper testing, it is more complex than NoR at least which is a good thing.
It's in here somewhere! http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/ edit: Okay it's here. http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/archives/10893720.html
Also, everyone can learn every skill, but you have to grind stupid amounts because it takes retarded amounts of weapon exp to level up past like 26. I gained like 2 weapon proficiency levels in the entirety of expansion before the final area grind, and even after hours and hours of final area grind (where I had kogasa set up to be able to attack with her weapon in most battles) she still was only at 31. You can't learn the final tier weapon skill of your appropriate learning type until 34, much less the others, and 36 is for the weapon-specific ones if you have the right weapon on.
tl;dr Proficiency levels up so slow you most likely won't even get to learn the last skill of your character's own learning type.
-
any idea if multi hit attacks speed it up?
-
No, they don't. It works off of number of rounds you performed an attack of that element. You can train magics at the same time by using elemental weapons or stuff like Heat Hand (or both at once), but those don't matter a whole lot to start with.
In round one, it gives you exp if you queue up the action at all; so even if the battle ends before everyone moves, everyone gets their exp. In further rounds, you have to actually perform the action for it to count.
-
I promised not to use the wiki for researching shikigami, but uhh I wanna cheat a bit... Is there a particularly good shikigami for a really high power single target (or multi, but single is what I need, and multi would just be a bonus) dark nuke? For testaments and dominus and such. Seems that I have at least one 150+ish power nuke of every 'normal' element but dark...
-
Koakuma and Lesser Vampire both learn Abyss, which is 200 power, but it's not until lv32~33. You've said you've been using Koakuma, so hopefully she's a good portion of the way there? Lesser Demon and Good Night Remilia (promo shikigami from having the soundtrack in your cd drive) both learn Dark Zapper at about lv20, and Dark/Holy Zapper are actually pretty worthwhile. Oh yeah, I somehow skipped over Parsee for most of my playthrough, but her Dark attack I hear is pretty good too (although, you're a bit late in, and it powers up based on having lower hp)
Lesser Demon learns other stuff but it either takes a pretty high level or land power manip, and Greater Demon is such a PITA to recruit that I couldn't possibly recommend it.
-
Koakuma eh? I think she is 27ish atm. Cool
-
It's in here somewhere! http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/ edit: Okay it's here. http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/archives/10893720.html
Also, everyone can learn every skill, but you have to grind stupid amounts because it takes retarded amounts of weapon exp to level up past like 26. I gained like 2 weapon proficiency levels in the entirety of expansion before the final area grind, and even after hours and hours of final area grind (where I had kogasa set up to be able to attack with her weapon in most battles) she still was only at 31. You can't learn the final tier weapon skill of your appropriate learning type until 34, much less the others, and 36 is for the weapon-specific ones if you have the right weapon on.
tl;dr Proficiency levels up so slow you most likely won't even get to learn the last skill of your character's own learning type.
Thanks for the response, note that if it is like NoR ALV, Ability is actually a Damage Multiplier, in NoR max ALV is 40 (50 in Ran) at which point all Element "X" attacks do +50% Damage, and this stacks for Dual and Tri-Elemental attacks. The game only counts a +1 ALV "Element Exp" max for each element selected in battle, even if the skill was selected but not casted (due to the battle ending prior), you can't just stack ALV Exp by doing 50 Slashes in fifty turns but have to do fifty battles instead.
Any idea if encounters are fixed like in GoS (Weekend only I think) or are they completely random (like in NoR), e.g. every time you start the game and enter an encounter in the very same area/screen your party battles always the same combination of enemies.
Banquet encounters are likely random, but maybe Matsuri uses fixed encounters in which case the game wouldn't be a chore to grind through (e.g. fixed Drops, fixed Shikigami captures).
-
I'm still hacking my way through the refights and grinding in the final area. The game's a ton more fun when you can actually read what you're doing! :V
Also how the hell do I actually get any decent amount of experience at this point, nothing's worth more than like 3k except king yukkuris and those things never show up >:(
-
Yeahhh it's not easy to get new shikigami past low 30s, and ones you have on all the time can't expect to get more than low 40s without silly amounts of grind. In the final area, that is.
For most of the game, the rule is "low exp, but they're high level so you'll rubberband up to a decent place". This also puts a pretty big limit on your level since once you catch up to monster levels, you get piddly nothin'; rather than once you've outleveled the monsters too much.
-
I'm still hacking my way through the refights and grinding in the final area. The game's a ton more fun when you can actually read what you're doing! :V
I never played it without the patch but I know. I remember when Fushigi no gensokyou (touhou roguelike) was more of a headline, people would swear up and down you didn't need a translation patch, that you could figure it out, blah blah whatever. I'm sorry but no... It's nowhere *NEAR* as fun, and I can tell that game needs one FAR more than this one (That isn't a hint hint or guilt trip, I fully accept the technical reasons for its end of efforts is something that can't be worked around). I mean roguelikes are by nature extremely demanding on the player to be very familiar with what each item and consumeable does, exactly, and player resourcefulness in terms of utilizing them, and when I can't tell what items do beyond the extremely basic stats on equipment being attackpower and such, the game's fun-factor is really quite murdered IMO... I think people just dabble with un-translated games without understanding them, actually enjoy them to a certain point, and assume just because they are having fun with it, that the game is no more fun than that, instead of realizing it can yet be better still, and that includes other people who do NOT have "enough" fun with it currently...particularly so for people like me who enjoy the personal growth and satisfaction of my progress in a game rather than arbitrary achievements and trophies or the 'I beat it now I'm done' mentality'.
Also how the hell do I actually get any decent amount of experience at this point, nothing's worth more than like 3k except king yukkuris and those things never show up >:(
You're further than me since I've never seen a king yukkuri.. but uhh. I thought kings give 13k not 3k.. 'stray' gave me like 6k iirc, and I think yukkuri sisters give 3k. But anyway, When I was reading validon's lets play, he mentioned a king yukkuri spawn point that is relatively reliable to 'farm', so you can try that. It's in akyu's arcade, not HME (I have it on my phone not my pc so no link handy). I imagine it's about the same as trying to 'farm' one of those super elite miniboss not actually a boss trash monsters in GoS like two headed dragon and...I forgot the rest.
edit, Serela:
Levels don't mean @%#@#% git gud nubtard
(This quote is made out of 10% accuracy!)
I agreed with you before but actually I'm disagreeing now.. Now that I'm all of like.. 3 levels higher than before, I am backtracking to kill certain monsters in the end dungeon XX amount of times to fill their bestiary page (tanks, locamo dragon, whatsherface princess.. dynamis? I forget)...and despite the fact that I really only crafted remi a zord, and uhh.. one armor piece. tanks are chumps now. Now everyone but patchy can survive main cannon twice... let alone fail to survive once.
Leveling up seems minor at face value, but I think this game kind of has a weird threshhold where the difference between slightly under level and slightly over level makes a massive difference. Probably because defense has a subtractive nature, and unlike labyrinth of touhou, the numbers don't really grow in the end that much, they stay in 2-3 digits thoughout, sooo.. it doesn't take much for something to go from fatal 3 digits to manageable 2 digits IMO..
Note this is just based on my current experience...maybe I'm in an exceptional case and don't realize it yet.
edit:
=o...
So like abyss enemies by themselves were full party wipes more often than not prior to my last post. My most advanced dark nuke 'dark web' of 90 power would hit for like 300 power from patchy...now...casting abyss, I wtfbbq'd it for 1200ish. Hue next up is dominu*BLARGARGHAGHAAACK* (kidding, haven't met one since..anticipate it will be such).
-
On the subject of the English patch, trust me, I remember when I was first making the patch months ago, and I had just finished doing all the skills, and just that alone made it a million times easier to remember what did what without having to wiki dive for it (JP wiki, mind you, our ENG wiki for DoD sucks and is horribly incomplete), and then doing the equips made it even more simpler. I will say that with DoD and other RPGs like this, you theoretically caaaaan do it without an English patch, I've played NoR like that and got through it fine, but you're right when it comes to games like, say, Fushigi no Gensokyo. I played Chronicle, couldn't get past the chapter representing the original game because despite the fact I had like a bunch of documents I made that had translated information off the JP wiki, I got so fed up with having to cross check literally every item I got, not to mention my notes were incomplete so I didn't have, say, information on item synergy and what orbs did what, so it pretty much killed any motivation I had to play the game further, which is disappointing.
Also King Yukkuris give 30k XP, not 3k or 13k. In the main game, they're only encounterable in the room before the final save point, and are found most commonly in the two encounters on the left side of the room (I don't know if they are in the encounter pool for the right side, but I have noticed that the left and right sides have different encounter pools for some odd reason).
And on the note of Abyss, beware enemies who have the higher tiers of Light and Dark spells (Holy, Punish the Judgment, Abyss, Pseudoepigraph), because they pretty much at the point of the game you're at will hit for either most of all of your party's HP. They're all roughly 200ish power, maybe a bit more. At best I know some of the later spells in the expansion have like... 300ish or so power, but that's entering overkill territory.
-
(I don't know if they are in the encounter pool for the right side, but I have noticed that the left and right sides have different encounter pools for some odd reason).
Hah, yeah. I guess they wanted to keep everything limited to one map for convenience sake? The first map of final area is super trivial grinding area (at least once you find their weaknesses, but that's not hard), leaving all the tough enemies and rare final shikigami to get compacted into the second map.
And yeah, Greater Demon and Azafel (or whatever the weird eyeball angel thing is on the left side of final map) are pretty brutal. Greater Demon only appears in the last room of Otoha's refight area, though. (Aka, even more impossible to recruit it! Hooray!)
King Yukkuris are impossible, by the way. :T If they don't run, there's a high chance they'll use King Splash instead, which is likely to one-shot pretty much your entire party. That's before worrying about actually doing 10 dmg. I couldn't kill any until far into the expansion.
-
Is king splash not physical? I plan on using koakuma's entire party avoids one physical attack buff to avoid at least one.
-
Oh, yeah, that's a good idea.
-
So I guess that means there is no Damage Net (ダメージネット) in this game right?, Satori wasn't able to learn this skill in GoS, one of the few improvements in NoR.
In DoD the encounters are semi-fixed from a limited pool, based on timing while entering the battle, however the "encounter outcome" is still fixed like in GoS, first battle will always play the same with same Learning, Drop, Join, etc. success or failure rate. e.g. if you manage to load a game and have the first encounter be a Yukkuri then it should be easier to make it join than just by running and killing a million of them until they join at random, note the battle outcome should be static as long as your party is (a single Lv up may modify the battle and its result).
There is a carryover outcome to any subsequent battle supposing you can match the timings, no idea at the moment if different timing but same enemy formation will modify how the battle unfolds.
Above is unconfirmed until it's tested properly. Best place would be one where Yukkuris spawn next to a load point (or any other monster with low % join rate).
-
King Yukkuris are impossible, by the way. :T If they don't run, there's a high chance they'll use King Splash instead, which is likely to one-shot pretty much your entire party. That's before worrying about actually doing 10 dmg. I couldn't kill any until far into the expansion.
Nah, I've killed a few around level 40. The problem is they never show upppppppp
-
If someone provides me a DoD savegame with those conditions, points me to the monster, I'll look in to it.
NoR uses the RTC to choose the Encounter Pool, any encounter can be forced by freezing the OS clock, after that encounter finishes the next will be the same, and the next, and so on, game is vindicated now. This "fixes" NoR join rate (ALV is now the biggest offender), to have the Stray Yukkuri join you had to kill 1000 of them and the encounter rate is almost null (Bose thought this was a sane number), so many hours wasted.
Before anyone ask this doesn't work in DoD, and it makes DoD the one with the most grind of the trilogy.
-
If someone provides me a DoD savegame with those conditions, points me to the monster, I'll look in to it.
NoR uses the RTC to choose the Encounter Pool, any encounter can be forced by freezing the OS clock, after that encounter finishes the next will be the same, and the next, and so on, game is vindicated now. This "fixes" NoR join rate (ALV is now the biggest offender), to have the Stray Yukkuri join you had to kill 1000 of them and the encounter rate is almost null (Bose thought this was a sane number), so many hours wasted.
Before anyone ask this doesn't work in DoD, and it makes DoD the one with the most grind of the trilogy.
What exactly do you need? I've got a file in the final area and it's trivial to run up to the two spawns that can include King Yukkuris.
-
A savegame with a place where a monster with low % join rate spawns in the proximity of a load point, said monster shouldn't have joined your party.
I have no idea how Load Points work in DoD, so if it is possible to load in any screen ignore the request, is just ideal that the monster is on the very same screen as you start, so there is no extra loading, GoS would warp you out of dungeons if you loaded a savegame after quitting the game from a room with no savepoint.
-
A savegame with a place where a monster with low % join rate spawns in the proximity of a load point, said monster shouldn't have joined your party.
I have no idea how Load Points work in DoD, so if it is possible to load in any screen ignore the request, is just ideal that the monster is on the very same screen as you start, so there is no extra loading, GoS would warp you out of dungeons if you loaded a savegame after quitting the game from a room with no savepoint.
The closest I think I can get is two rooms away, sadly. DoD's loadpoints tend to be at the beginning of areas.
-
Is that a Yukkuri ?, the faster the enemy can be defeated the easier it's to test, if enemies can be evaded then it should be more or less the same (maybe the encounter timing gets reset after every screen transition).
Playing is the fastest way to find and determine a proper testing enviroment. How fast, starting from which "Stage" do Yukkuri spawns ?, I mean the number of Bosses counting from the beginning that I would have to defeat first if I want to encounter a Yukkuri ? (in GoS Stage 7
, in NoR the Volcano
before even the first real boss).
-
There is damage net. Captain murasa learns it at like level30ish
-
Is that a Yukkuri ?, the faster the enemy can be defeated the easier it's to test, if enemies can be evaded then it should be more or less the same (maybe the encounter timing gets reset after every screen transition).
Playing is the fastest way to find and determine a proper testing enviroment. How fast, starting from which "Stage" do Yukkuri spawns ?, I mean the number of Bosses counting from the beginning that I would have to defeat first if I want to encounter a Yukkuri ? (in GoS Stage 7
, in NoR the Volcano
before even the first real boss).
The earliest Yukkuris I can think of are in the hookshot areas, which you don't get until the second stratum, so probably at least 4 or 5 hours of playtime? I dunno :ohdear:
-
Actually I think I bumped into a yukkuri in the first tower of the end too, which is kinda reasonable to do before the first hookshot area if enemy levels/difficulty are anything to go by (though certainly not the boss). of course, hookshot areas had them with far greater frequency.
-
Actually beat the maingame earlier! First time doing so. Party levels were 42-45 or so. Gonna tackle the expansion stuff!
-
i was so close (http://i.imgur.com/bKnOrVj.png)(Major expansion spoilers!)
E: was her nuke stronger the more neutral land is or the less neutral is it?
-
E: was her nuke stronger the more neutral land is or the less neutral is it?
It's stronger when land is active. Having dead people might be bad considering the people targetted later took double damage when you had those dead members... but I never looked into it's damage formula too hard.
In other news, I've tried a few times to locate the flag or whatever it is that lets you recruit monsters, so I could try a monster-shikigami-only run by hacking the flag to trigger at game start. I haven't had much luck in cheat engine. :T I thought I found two addresses that controlled it, but either I did something wrong or they weren't it, because triggering them to 1 on a save where they should be 0 (due to not having done that event) didn't let me recruit anything.
-
I may start playing this game later after I'm done with some testing in NoR, I have some questions.
- How enemy respawning works in this game ?, I notice no respawning in the beginning even after using those restoring signs.
- What monsters can be recruited ? (All of them ?, or is this indicated in the Monster Book after a certain amount of Defeats ?)
- Do they have a fixed Recruit Rate ? (same for every monster but is exponentially harder the more rare an encounter is ?)
- Can Monsters be recruited from the beginning of the game, or is this a story element, e.g. only after a certain point in game.
I had the impression I saw Recruit Rate on the Livedoor Blog but I am unable to find it, there are too many pages for DoD alone.
-
I just started playing this. Picked Byakuren 'cause she's in my top 5 Touhous. Anyway, about respawning enemies, en.touhouwiki.net's section for the game says enemies in the first area don't respawn. Doesn't say anything about later.
-
I may start playing this game later after I'm done with some testing in NoR, I have some questions.
- How enemy respawning works in this game ?, I notice no respawning in the beginning even after using those restoring signs.
- What monsters can be recruited ? (All of them ?, or is this indicated in the Monster Book after a certain amount of Defeats ?)
- Do they have a fixed Recruit Rate ? (same for every monster but is exponentially harder the more rare an encounter is ?)
- Can Monsters be recruited from the beginning of the game, or is this a story element, e.g. only after a certain point in game.
I had the impression I saw Recruit Rate on the Livedoor Blog but I am unable to find it, there are too many pages for DoD alone.
To answer the questions in order:
Enemies respawn when you use a magic circle
Monsters that can be recruited have stars in the bestiary after killing them a certain number of times
The recruitment rate is indeed fixed for each monster
Monsters can be recruited once you obtain Satori (she doesn't need to be equipped in your party), which is after you beat a Clock Tower for the first time then leave the tower after.
-
Thanks, I think a Monster needs to defeated 15 times to be able to see the number of stars it has in the Bestiary.
Is Satori in one of the individual Scenarios or after ?
According to the wiki the Metal Yukkuri spawns in a Hookshoot area in Chaos Plains 1, this is right after the individual scenarios are completed, 1st Stratum I believe, however I am not sure how far from that point the Hookshoot becomes available (know where not when).
I could test with any monster, the Yukkuris are just critical tests, I got both the Stray and King in about an hour each or so in NoR whereas an user reported 50 hours just for the Stray, I can believe that number being generous.
-
The stray yukkuri in DoD has similarly little encounter rate and 1/1000 recruit rate in GoS. The hookshot areas have decent chances to encounter a yukkuri and some have a healing circle so it's only one screen transition away from enemies. I never was able to recruit the base yukkuri, so would you like my save to test? They would be trivial to kill with my lv90+ party. ...holy crap, I was going there so my save would already be at the right spot, and I ran into a Stray Yukkuri; I didn't know they could even appear there, I'd done a good chunk of grinding for Star Platinum in this area. Anyway, the goal would be a normal yukkuri, but that's a bonus :V ...and there's another normal one, and another stray, goddamn.
Okay nevermind, it just doesn't seem to want to save there. That kind of ruins the ability to test. :T Better plan, test with the King Yukkuri spawn in the final basegame area. Go down one screen and try either of the two enemies to the left. To ensure the kill;
1.Yuyuko casts Quicktime with Sakuya. If this isn't going first, have Sanae cast Rapid Stream. She has this move on two shikigami in case you want it turn 2 as well.
2.Sunny casts Banzai Attack with Rinnosuke. This is a chasing skill, so if you need rapid stream+quicktime turn 1, use it turn 2 instead for more activations. This skill should make it extra easy to get the kill.
3.Everyone has their three most relevant physical attacks equipped. Don't worry about investigating their shikigami skills imo. Kogasa's attack power is twice as high as the rest of the cast here, by the way.
4.If a turn 2 King Splash is actually worrisome and killing people, you can have Yuyuko cast Dark Illusion with Koakuma turn 1.
...okay nevermind. Somehow tell me how to make your save file ACTUALLY SAVE ON THE SCREEN. I know for a fact you can save on the healing circle/final boss screen at the end of the maingame final dungeon. I know this, I have a friend's save I can load that's on that screen. I've never been able to make my saves actually load on healing circle screens even though my friends do it. FFS.
...anyway.
The hookshot takes some hours to get. Getting Satori takes another couple hours, as you have to beat one of the Tower bosses for her event to appear. (She's recruited as you leave the tower.)
The recruit rate for monsters is fixed per -type- of monster, to be specific; there's 1/1 chance, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/64 (ugh), and 1/256 for yukkuris. 1/1000 is only for stray yukkuri, because jerk developers. There is no increase in chance to recruit enemies as you defeat more of them, just new rng rolls. So, yukkuris are nearly impossible to recruit without just getting incredibly lucky.
-
Alright, got through the tutorial area, I guess, so now I need to make my way through the rest of the game. Is there any kind of obvious sign that you'll be going into the towers? I heard you can't leave until you finish, so I'd like to make sure I've picked up all the treasure chests in the surrounding area before going in.
There is no increase in chance to recruit enemies as you defeat more of them
Dragon Quest 5 did that and it made recruiting stuff that wasn't a metal enemy SO much easier. Even so, you had to kill a LOT of enemies to increase the recruit rate in most cases.
-
Alright, got through the tutorial area, I guess, so now I need to make my way through the rest of the game. Is there any kind of obvious sign that you'll be going into the towers? I heard you can't leave until you finish, so I'd like to make sure I've picked up all the treasure chests in the surrounding area before going in.
That's wrong, you can't leave via the world map when you go into a tower, but you can backtrack out through the entrance. The towers are set up like GoS dungeons in the sense they have a main section, often some shortcuts, and a way back from the end to the beginning. And it is VERY obvious when you are about to enter a tower, there's a boss in front of the entrance to a tower (only one tower is accessible on each stratum, barring the fourth stratum), and there's a whole screen devoted to the entrance of each tower, so it's extremely obvious.
-
Oh, okay. Cool. Hm. Game looks semi-nonlinear. I guess the goal before you handle each tower is to recruit all the optional people and open every treasure chest that you can currently reach. But there's no set order aside from enemy power levels. However, this being an RPG, I imagine you can powerlevel off of stronger enemies with the right setup.
I've already gone through as much of Chaos Plains as I can. You know how you can leave the Hakurei Shrine from the north and it takes you to a place you can't get to since there's a boulder blocking the way? How do you get to the other side of the boulder? Or should I not worry about that?
-
You can go both up and down from the Hakurei Shrine at the start. If you push boulders around, you can make new spots where you can jump off the boulders to get around. (The downwards path is easier and also gives you good gear from chests, though.)
-
The path north of the shrine doesn't open up until you get the hookshot, because you need to use the hookshot in Chaos Plains 2 and then go behind the shrine that way, which will let you push the boulder and get a direct path back to the shrine.
-
Oh oops, I was thinking of how you can go south and north at the first map after leaving the shrine. It's also related to boulders.
-
The recruit rate for monsters is fixed per -type- of monster, to be specific; there's 1/1 chance, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/64 (ugh), and 1/256 for yukkuris. 1/1000 is only for stray yukkuri, because jerk developers. There is no increase in chance to recruit enemies as you defeat more of them, just new rng rolls. So, yukkuris are nearly impossible to recruit without just getting incredibly lucky.
Yes 1/1000 is the same chance of recruitment in NoR for the Stray, it was only an hour with fixed encounters and I wasn't even trying to catch them. I see this game doesn't have Bows, welp.
Monsters are not respawning in my game ATM, this is like GoS all over again, game refuses to let me grind, until I figure the cause.
-
Monsters will all respawn if you use any healing circle. They will not respawn in the tutorial, however. It's not worth fighting that early in the game anyway, though.
-
Done with NoR for good now, can now begin properly with DoD.
The Tuturial is all of the individual scenarios ?
I usually clear every enemy in all the areas I pass by just to see the spawning pool, I think the DoD wiki is more or less complete I believe, it has detailed per area monster spawning, but not per screen section, unless I'm wrong, this is usually crucial to find rare spawns.
-
The tutorial is from the beginning up to where you get dropped off at the Hakurei Shrine after Gensokyo gets ripped apart and turned into the Chaos World.
-
While I appreciate that enemies respawn faster than they did in GoS, the fact that it happens every time you hit a healing spot means it's much harder to chip through an area. Especially at the beginning, because like in every other RPG, you have jackshit for offensive options starting out.
-
Magic wrecks encounters early in the game. Wreeeecks. The mp cost isn't problematic since you get warp points so often, too.
-
Letty and Rumia are the only shikigami I have with AoE magic at this point, and I haven't seen an enemy that Dark works on in a while.
-
Dark mostly works on more generic human/fairy enemies, which are fairly abundant in many areas. And since it's also obscure, earth works on giants, crawly insects, and already-earthy things like golems or structure-y type enemies.
-
Impressions so far, still no real Bosses in sight.
+ Respawning is a improvement over GoS (carried over to NoR).
+ Youmu Last Word is now useful (GoS Last Word should be a 2-Bomb Skill).
+ No Instant Death or Removal at all at the beginning (I may regret this later).
ALV (Ability Level) works different than NoR, not sure if scaling is different or if there is no scaling (need to test this but much later).
Any idea if Equipment dropped from monsters that are also synthesis materials will be dropped again after being consumed via synthesis (when no longer in inventory) ?, this was possible in GoS but not in NoR.
-
They should be dropped again, but that won't happen until really late in the game. You can definitely reforge old equipments if you really wanted to after upgrading it, but the upgrades generally come so much later that, well...
There's some other questionable last words instead of Youmu's being bad, and most of the magic damage ones are only kinda so-so later in the game. Good for a free attack, but not actually much stronger than normal moves you can use, if even. Then you have stuff like Mokou reviving everyone and casting reraise on everyone who's alive, holy crap what?
How ALVing works is explained in depth here, including a chart of how much AEXP each enemy gives. At levels 9, 19, 24, the AEXP required to level up jumps by about 50% compared to the last level (so they're the breakpoints) 30 being about 33% jump and 40 being literally double, max is 50. After 24 it'll start taking hours of fighting to level up no matter what you're fighting (aka, even postgame enemies), and 19~23 is where you can expect to be when you beat the main game depending on how much you grind. ...my party went from 23~24 to 27~28 over the entirety of expansion, so, the scaling after 24 is just murderous. x.x Final skills are available at 34~36 (not counting ones of the most incompatible learning types) but even final area postgame grind takes hours to level up once in the late twenties, it's just dumb.
-
What does ALv affect? Is it just weapon skill damage, or is magic damage, accuracy and/or additional effect rate increased?
-
Then you have stuff like Mokou reviving everyone and casting reraise on everyone who's alive, holy crap what?
And reviving them at full health, no less! :V
-
What does ALv affect? Is it just weapon skill damage, or is magic damage, accuracy and/or additional effect rate increased?
It's a minor damage increase to attacks of the appropriate element, whether physical or magical, and it's the core of learning new weapon skills.
-
If it's like NoR is something like 1% extra damage per level, e.g. +50% DMG when Maxed. The damage increase is very easy to notice once you get Acala Sword.
Took a while to get the Mist Robe because I failed to notice the Takirei-o always spawns on Makai 3 Side Entry warp point.
There's some other questionable last words instead of Youmu's being bad, and most of the magic damage ones are only kinda so-so later in the game. Good for a free attack, but not actually much stronger than normal moves you can use, if even. Then you have stuff like Mokou reviving everyone and casting reraise on everyone who's alive, holy crap what?
In GoS her Last Word was free healing so it was useful, even in situations where you didn't want to have a healer in the party and it was enough, her entire skill set was just too good. Terrible Doppel in NoR though.
I know the worst LW from the previous game is still in this game...
-
Yeah, If I did a 2nd playthru I would want to try yuka instead of mokou because mokou's tankiness just doesn't seem to really make her that much better than average tanky characters...but then It hoguht about her last word and I was like... nope. mokou.
-
Mokou is literally only the best "tank" character because of her Last Word. Yuuka is the best "tank" stat wise, but her Last Word (null all physical attacks against you for the turn, or was it null the next physical attack against you?) is so-so.
-
Best tank character in GoS too
(Alice was cannon fodder)
.
So the possible first 3 Bosses are: Yuuka
or Ansuitei (?)
or Heinen Kuhn
Loss of Auto-Attack, Pause Option in Menu and % of Treasures Collected was carried to NoR sadly, miss these features.
Sprite effects like rotation and knockback are still present here for certain skills (this is gone in NoR), it was amazing to see dragons do that rotating rebound in GoS.
I only found two chests that were more or less hidden, I have no idea if I missed something, not wanting to give a look at the JP wiki because is likely going to contain spoilers.
edit: in regards of ALV what the blog mentions it modifies ACC (or Hit Rate).
-
Mokou is literally only the best "tank" character because of her Last Word. Yuuka is the best "tank" stat wise, but her Last Word (null all physical attacks against you for the turn, or was it null the next physical attack against you?) is so-so.
That's kind of my point, though I suspect yuuka's better defensive stats other than hp don't really make her any better than mokou either since as far as I can tell defensive stats other than the ones granted by armor not only seem to do nothing based on that stat page thing, but it doesn't seem to do %#@%@ in practice either. I mean I've seen patchy take 0s from enemies mokou takes damage from (physical) just because patchy was wearing maximillion and mokou was wearing something with only 80ish defense. So given that those base stats (other than hp) don't seem to do @#%@#%, I figure mokou's last word simply makes her the better choice..
I strongly disagree about the alice part though in GoS.. I thought Alice was the uber tank of ownage. The only thing she can't seem to tank as well as someone else is the final boss being tanked by aya of all people.
-
Well, you tank with Alice in GoS moreso for moves like Parrar, Little Legion, etc. Aya tanks the final boss just because you have to have a party without Alice in it, too, but blinktanking and evasion spellcards do come in handy pretty well for that...
Anyway, I've just finished exploring the third stratum on my second playthrough, with a restriction of not being allowed to recruit any battle shikigami. Of course, it doesn't play much different from a normal run until you try to do Zhu Li and then the final dungeon... ho boy. (It doesn't help that my weapon levels are like 5 lower than last time since I've gone through the game much faster, but it shouldn't make a big difference tbh; if anything my weapons are better since I have people with existent STR stats this time) Am I really gonna have to have someone spamming the hell out of Alice's element bulwark buff so that I can resist water? ;_;
-
I strongly disagree about the alice part though in GoS.. I thought Alice was the uber tank of ownage. The only thing she can't seem to tank as well as someone else is the final boss being tanked by aya of all people.
Even Cirno should be able to do that. In terms of pure tankness Mokou is above Alice in GoS (the Konami code should be a hint of how OP she is).
Great, is impossible to take out Reimu from the party, so if I want to solo a Boss I am stuck with her, why. Anyways beat solo the Boss leading to the Second Stratum (http://i.imgur.com/EwMVwcf.png) (7th Turns only).
Encounters can be manipulated more or less, though I am not sure if is useful to the extent of catching the Stray Yukkuri. There is a room in Muenzuka which usually spawns 2 Metal Yukkuris and they're not too difficult to come by.
Since Pastebin seems to be down attached below is an availability list of everything that can be obtained before fighting any Boss in the first Stratum (no Hookshot or Clock Tower). Spoilers are Masters and Shikigamis, no location spoilers except some Recipe chests, list is incomplete.
-
https://i.imgur.com/6aIaNOY.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/MZg39Xt.jpg
Just my luck..
-
Oh god. Shudder. 969. >_>
Of course, with a 1/256 recruit rate... it's not -that- unlikely to kill 1000 and not get it :/
-
Oh god. Shudder. 969. >_>
Of course, with a 1/256 recruit rate... it's not -that- unlikely to kill 1000 and not get it :/
Well, I did use the revive trick a lot so that's the only reason it's such a big number. I'm still not sure if that helps at all to recruiting them.
-
The revive trick, ah.
Unless you're playing in Banquet, it doesn't. Whether you kill 1 or 50 in one battle, you get the same chance of it joining at the end of the battle. (From what I could tell from bad translations, in Banquet, which is NOT the english patchable version, each additional one you kill will give you another recruit chance for that battle. Not sure if revive stacking will help there, though.)
-
The revive trick, ah.
Unless you're playing in Banquet, it doesn't. Whether you kill 1 or 50 in one battle, you get the same chance of it joining at the end of the battle. (From what I could tell from bad translations, in Banquet, which is NOT the english patchable version, each additional one you kill will give you another recruit chance for that battle. Not sure if revive stacking will help there, though.)
So, just being sure here, if there's more than one of the same kind it still counts as one encounter towards recruiting? (Not sure if I'm wording that right.) Anyways, thanks for letting me know. I wouldn't wanna waste my time doing that again unless I want experience.
-
Unless you're playing Banquet (which has drm, is only available in japanese right now, etc) then yes, even if an encounter has 10 metal yukkuris and you kill them all, at the end you only get a 1/256 chance, same as if 9 ran and you killed one.
-
Alrighty. My luck has still been pretty bad
expect with the yukkuri king. Really thought I'd have a couple more by now. ;-; There isn't like a set location you can be-friend them, right? Any place where you see them works?
Edit: Nevermind I guess.
-
Unfortunately not. Yukkuris are rather unreasonable to obtain.
-
Yeah, I pretty much gave up trying to get anymore. I wanted to collect everything the game had to offer but it's too much for me. Either you have amazing luck or you sit there for hours accomplishing nothing.
Sorry for my ranting~
-
Sorry to bother you guys, but when I start my DoD game, it won't let me actually start a game (Crashes), so i'm infinitely stuck in the loading screen :( Is there a way to get around this? Thank you very much for your time.
-
The most likely situation is you have the "append disk", which contains the expansion without the base game. IIRC if this is the case you won't have any music on the menu screen either? The game folder should be roughly in the ballpark of 2.75~2.80gb if you have the game+expansion.
If you have only the first or third release of the game (which I think is significantly less likely, but if it's version 1.xx or 3.xx instead of 2.xx) then, it's not that :V
-
After you get teleported to the shrine, when do you get other check points? Do you have to walk from spawn all the way to were you died all the time?
-
One of the buttons will bring up the world map. From there, you can warp to any area you select. Yellow exits are generally warp points iirc. I think some of the red boss warps are? It's been awhile since I picked the game up.
The only places you can't warp to/from are the insides of towers, but when you reach the bosses you'll get a shortcut to the front.
-
Thanks for all the help, I have one more problem :(
The translated english patch crashes when i bring up the character menu, i just dragged the game1 and img1,2,& 3 onto the packages. The movement is also screwed up too, everytime i hold onto a movement arrow i only take a small step and stop. Everything works fine the the jap version :(
-
That's strange. Are you running version 2.11? You may need to update the game up to that, as it's the version the patch is made for. Patches can be found here- just remove the english patch before you try to do them. http://www.gensoukyou.org/support/update_2.html
-
Thanks so much man, Everything works now :)