Labyrinth of Touhou 9F

[Kanoe]

*falls over* Floor 18 and Rinnosuke down. Honestly, going through Floor 18 was more painful than the boss. I was extremely limited on my way to sweep the encounters without losing people or losing all my SP so I had to start from the beginning of the one way maze many times (plus the many times the maze led me back to the beginning too). Was Reimu level 92-93 (at 80% exp) by the time I reached Rinnosuke. Anywho...

This battle was one that everyone participated in. I generally do not like this fight as my horrible luck makes Rinnosuke spam Heavenly Demise all the time (it was his first two attacks in fact).

Sakuya: Main tank, swapper, and speed buffer

Yukari: Second slot tank and defense buffer. She did start running out of SP towards the end though.

Ran: Third slot attack buffer. I would swap her out once she runs out of SP.

Cirno: Bait. She actually took a Heavenly Demise which surprised me.

Shikieiki and Flandre: Neutral damage dealers. They helped get through the first phase and any phase I was lacking elemental damage in.

Yuugi: I used her to tank some hits though she did some good damage with Knock Out in Three Steps

Minoriko: Healer and buffer

Suwako: Blew away the electric form then died soon after. He was rather fast and it was hard to swap her in.

Yuuka: Helped with teh electric form and Master Sparked the spirit form.

Yuyuko: Blew away the mystic form and kinda helped with a few other forms when I was lacking SP.

Patchouli: Helped in the first phase but her lack of speed eventually got her caught in a paralysis during the electric form. She died before it could wear off.

Just two floors to go now. Whew.

[Rukoto]

Oops, I think I forgot about Sanae's foe for too long. It died in 6 attacks :V

I also managed to beat up Mokou at Mino 64. Cirno was quite handy for doing good damage while keeping Mokou's SPD down, and Maribel kept her other stats low. Enduring an inevitable Volcano was a bit tough, but swapping in Marisa + Kanako sealed the deal in the end.

EDIT: Impressively enough, by loading Marisa with MAG-boosting gear, she can one-shot the Blackenmels with Asteriod Belt, which I though I'd struggle to kill upon first reaching this floor.

[Validon98]

When I first heard of Blackenmels, I pretty much thought "This is going to suck, there's going to be a bunch of enemies I can't defeat..."
Then I one-shot the ones I ran across with Asteroid Belt right off the bat. And I haven't even killed the Evil Forge  yet (I'm laaaaaaaaaaazy...).
Suffice to say, they don't really frighten me. At all. Those Wraith palette swaps, however... yeah.

EdIT: Never mind, Evil Forge is down. I really don't want to try to get all those battle points for the Yuyuko and Orin thing right now, though.

[Raikaria]

Oh great I accidentally saved over my draft run hnnnnnnnnngk.

[I was taking a break from F13 and went on my experimental stuff run]

Well, I guess I just gotta give info about how this bunch of misfits go.

Once I can be asked to replay F1-13 again.

[Kanoe]

Awww! 

*sniffles*

[Raikaria]

I had a better idea of something to do, I'll RNG 12 characters...



Now, if we take the first 12 numbers, and discount duplicates, and put them into the character order , going Reimu- Marisa - Remi, not Reimu- Remi - Patchy, we get:

Marisa, Renko, Yuuka, Keine, Ran, Rumia, Youmu, Aya, Minoriko, Maribel, Kaguya, Suwako

... Interesting. I have buffs [Ran and Keine!], utility, and healing, but there is no real tank. Keine is about as close as I get, and she's hardly a slot 1 tank.

Since I have Marisa, and Suwako for NTR damage, I might actually build Yuuka for Slot 2 tanking. She does have a good HP and very good DEF stat, even if her MND is somewhat average, and her leveling is slow, it's better than anyone else. Tank Ran also seems to be on the cards.

Main damage would be Youmu, Kaguya, Suwako and Marisa, it seems.

How would you suggest building a Slot1 Tank Keine? [I don't exactly have other options for a Slot 1 tank here]

[Tangrelle]

I'd just throw all my points into defense, but that's just me. It's worked out pretty well so far for me doing that and she doesn't fold to mind either despite it.

[Serela]

DEF build Ran is a good tank, yes. Not what I'd ever consider for slot 1, but... Keine isn't, either. For a party like this, you'd need it.

If you've ever used Yukari as a tank, Ran basically has slightly better stats then her in all areas. (Or maybe her HP was way better too, it's been awhile)

[Raikaria]

DEF build Ran is a good tank, yes. Not what I'd ever consider for slot 1, but... Keine isn't, either. For a party like this, you'd need it.

If you've ever used Yukari as a tank, Ran basically has slightly better stats then her in all areas. (Or maybe her HP was way better too, it's been awhile)

Ran's growths are:

110 (14) HP
41 ( 8 ) DEF
51 (10) MND

Yukari has:
110 (14) HP
49  ( 9) DEF
61 (12) MND

So Yukari has the same HP and better in both defenses.

However, Ran levels faster, with a 116 difficulty compared to 140...

Not sure how the defenses pan out with level rate involved, but I guess Ran has more HP.

[RegalStar]

Assuming 20 million exp, Ran would be at level 63 and Yukari would be at level 59, so their uninvested base stats for HP/DEF/MND would be 2797/1202/1503 and 2526/1226/1635 respectively. So yeah, Ran has more HP and Yukari has more MND (on DEF, since Ran has 4 more level up bonus, if you invest them for DEF they would be nearly equal). However, the other thing is that Yukari costs way more SKP to raise her HP and DEF, and actually slight more SKP to raise her MND as well. If you throw in SKP based on skill level numbers only it would make no difference, but if you're like me and throw in SKP in proportion to the cost needed to level up a stat, Ran's defense would come out to be superior.

[Tangrelle]

Just beat out Suwako, grabbing the Mist Robes magically. She was rather nervewracking, but Fujiyama Volcano did a number on her, as well as Return Inanimateness! Now to go down to the next floor whoohoo.

[Serela]

RegalStar has the right of it; with scaling setting in (including SKP because it's not as if you won't use that), their def/mnd are very similar, with Ran having an advantage somewhat in DEF. I had them both in my party on Winner (on my third game run) with theoretically similar amounts of exp after considering proration depending on use, and Ran was slightly superior in MND as well. And, of course, HP is pretty important on a tank...

Ran is really great for random sweeping and for boss nuking with either a weakness or En No Ozuno, but when you need a tank, you need a tank, and she does have buffs to use while she does it (and good speed for switches), so she's pretty much fabulous no matter what you set her up for.

After a couple of runs of the game, considering I'm slightly obsessive about tracking stuff like this, one gets a pretty good innate feeling on how stats actually turn out from the effect of levelup modifiers.  :V

[Kanoe]

Sakuya does alright as a tank but her good speed is both a strength and a weakness. Yeah, she swaps and take actions faster but she eats up defense buffs like they are candy (due to taking more actions in a shorter time) which forces Yukari to cast buffs more often. Also if I buff everyone's speed, that eats up all her action bar and leaves her unable to swap for a bit.

[Joeyscraggy]

Umm, hi, I just registered to ask about a bug.
I collected every single Aya's note, but for some reason, when I talk to her, the game doesn't let me recruit her. I checked a lot of times already at the note's locations and there's no mistake. I'm already on floor 13 and no Aya. What can I do?

EDIT: same thing happened with Suika Recruit, I have explored every single tile of all the floors containing jar shards, and there's nothing where they're supposed to be, meaning that I already collected them.

[Rukoto]

Was exploring 15F and ran smack dab into Hill Gigas. Cirno tries to paralyse with Diamond Blizzard, it fails, and then she gets one-shotted by Rasetsu Fist. With my only means of inflicting PAR dead, the boss is free to attack, sniping off my main attackers in slot two or 3, and even one-hit killing even my tanks with Thousand Handed Kanon. Thankfully Marisa wasn't sniped, as she shaved off 170k HP with just two Sparks. Due to the majority of my attackers getting sniped off, the remaining HP was shaved off by Orin, Ran, and Eirin (it was that bad, but Galaxy in a Pot was doing around 15k a hit). Given that people were basically dying in one hit when the boss used either of its defense ignoring skills, Sanae got the chance to use Miracle Fruit. I've yet to tacke the other bosses on this floor (I sure hope I don't run into them like this though).

EDIT: Okay I've explored the entire floor, at Mino 69 and I'm getting wrecked by Great Stamp. Also Kaggy's Foe one-shots me with Hellfire. Guess I'll be exploring 16F next.

[Kanoe]

After the hell that was Floor 18 randoms, I said screw Floor 19 and went to Floor 20 to begin final boss grinding. Got a few drops, a bunch of levels, and am now going through Floor 19. Have found three of the four seal bosses and will probably record fighting them all back to back since I am already overleveled for them.

The grinding help ALOT for dealing with the Floor 19 randoms. They are not as bad since majority of the enemies can be Paralyzed with Cirno thankfully so I could actually use slower sweepers like Patchouli.

[Teshlun]

Much like Raikaria, I've decided to try an RNG selected team. After cutting out duplicates (They really wanted Rin, Flandre, and Eiki to be in the team) I'm left with:

Reimu, Sakuya, Minoriko, Rumia, Aya, Flandre, Rin, Yukari, Kanako, Yuuka, Keine, Eiki.

Seems like a solid enough setup, though I'm worried about the early game SP costs. There's a lot of expensive attacks with this setup, and most people have low SP recovery rates. I guess we'll see how it goes.

[Kanoe]

And done!

Beat Maribel at Reimu level 131 (at 80% exp due not using her in party). Might have gotten away with a few levels lower. The battle was rather straightforward with Yukari and Ran buffs. Sakuya did was as a tank and gave speed buffs in the beginning to help get through the phases quickly. By the time it was time to kill all the minions, everyone cept a few members had 100% atk/mag buffs going so it was easy to sweep the field.

The difficulty came when Mari in the final phase opened with her self buff and proceeded to shred even my tanks. Yukari getting Deathed was really unexpected but Minoriko and Ran held the line while I tried to swap in attacks as quickly as possible to finish the battle.

Overall, a decent party for bosses cept against Alice in the early game (due to lack of resistances and status removal). The biggest flaw was not having very reliable sweepers for randoms towards the end. I relied heavily on Flandre to sweep enemies with Lavaetien. When it got to the point where that was not enough, I was forced to rely on Cirno's group paralyze spell but that was unreliable at best until about Floor 19. I never dreaded random encounters until I was doing them with this party. I had powerful spells to sweep with but most were too slow to act before taking serious damage from things like Tengu, Harpies, or those super fast drill things.

Spending your skill points in the beginning on getting Sakuya, Yukari, and Ran up to decent tanks is key. With that, you have room to breathe while you buff and prepare your attacks for offense.

I have to say, Cirno was rather impressive. She was not really a main tank but I built her for Defense and equiped her with Speed gear. She was good as a temp swap in when someone needed to take a hit and her Speed debuff is great if you can get it to connect.

Grinding for BP kinda made me overleveled for some of the boss fights but not too many of them. In the end, I had to grind more to ensure I survived randoms more than Maribel herself oddly enough.

Enjoyed the draft and hope to try another in the future perhaps. Will continue posting videos on Sundays until I am out of videos to post. 

[Zil]

Umm, hi, I just registered to ask about a bug.
I collected every single Aya's note, but for some reason, when I talk to her, the game doesn't let me recruit her. I checked a lot of times already at the note's locations and there's no mistake. I'm already on floor 13 and no Aya. What can I do?

EDIT: same thing happened with Suika Recruit, I have explored every single tile of all the floors containing jar shards, and there's nothing where they're supposed to be, meaning that I already collected them.

My only guess would be to make sure you're getting your information from the right wiki, assuming you used of them. http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

The other one might be missing some locations, and in general shouldn't be trusted. Otherwise I don't know what to tell you.

[Serela]

Suika must be talked to twice, even if you have all the shards before you meet her.

For Aya, all I can say is you must have missed one...

[RegalStar]

The newspaper piece on 3F is very easily missed. Try checking there?

[Ghaleon]

Im guessing one was missed by that bloodstained seal

[Kanoe]

I missed that one during my playthrough too.  :ohdear:

[Ikari]

I don't think I've ever had a real Suwako boss battle. EVER. I have a hard time finding patience to look for all frozen frogs and almost always end up forgetting about it until floor 12, right as I'm about to fight Moon Team. I end up going back, finding the last one, fighting her while massively overpowered and beating her in 2-3 attacks.

Just for fun, to everyone out there, who are your top 3 of the bosses that gave you the most troubles? Here's mine;

Edit: Oh silly me, I could have given reasons as well.
3) Nitori: Yeah, Megawatt gun. Enough said ._.
2) Rinnosuke: Stop changing forms, STOP IT.
1) Moon Team: I had a hard time not killing them too fast and causing a party wipe with Eirin/Kaguya, or too slow and dying while all 3 of them are at low health.

[Raikaria]

3] Nitori - Annoying Megawatt gun...
2] Eientei - I like debuffs. They turn it against me.
1] Rinnosuke - I likem debuffs. He's IMMUNE.

[Zil]

1 - Eintei group
2 - Merry Berry
3 - uh... Alice maybe

From hardest to easiest that is. I dunno if you guys were going backwards or what. Maybe I'd put Meribel over Eintei. Mainly it's the bosses that take the most strategy to beat. Most of the others succumb to a big slugathon pretty easily and took only one or two tries.

[Validon98]

Oh crap, I haven't played enough of this game to actually have a good opinion. From what I have fought...

1- Eientei. Pretty much for the same reason as Raikaria.
2- Nitori. No wonder Megawatt Gun is so damn useful while she's in your party.
3- Sanae's Foe. I really hate that line of bosses, but Sanae's Foe... just damn.

Probably Rinnosuke's going to be the one up on that list eventually. Or Yukari or Maribel. I've heard some pretty bad things about them.

[Ikari]

Probably Rinnosuke's going to be the one up on that list eventually. Or Yukari or Maribel. I've heard some pretty bad things about them.

Yukari and Maribel are pretty hard if unprepared, but actually easy once you find a good strategy and pattern. Those 2 are by far the most fun boss battles I've had in this game.

Rinnosuke is... insanely frustrating. To me at least. You pretty much have to prepare yourself for some sort of 6 bosses all at once. They each use different elements and status effects, so you can't take a 12 characters team that will crush a single elements/attack pattern.

[RegalStar]

1. Baal Avatar. I don't overlevel and overpower him, and his second phase gets too strong and too fast real soon. It becomes really annoyingly hectic.
2. Flandre. She's hella strong, hits hard from both spectrums, doesn't have much of a pattern and really doesn't give you a break with any of her moves (as in, has mid-low delay on everything bar laevatein). Utsuho at least has the courtesy of not going batshit insane on you until you remove 1 million HP from her, while Flandre just kind of demolishes you from the get go, and you have to do it for the whole battle unlike Rinnosuke (which becomes tame as a kitten relatively for most of the fight after you remove the first 360k HP). Luckily I can just skip her until 16F or something.
3. Maribel. See Flandre basically, except she only is dangerous in her last phase - which is still pretty damn long.

I do not find Nitori's megawatt gun much of a problem at all. If anything Extending Arms is more of a danger in that fight because it's a MT physical attack, and unlike Youmu and Alice, she's fast enough that you can't just dodge it.

[Joeyscraggy]

Ok, thanks a lot. Had to slam my head against a table, because I couldn't see the freaking path to the note on 3F. I just assumed those triangle-like rooms were the same every time and didn't see the extra path.
As for Suika, I recruited her already, Thanks for the help, and hope someday I can join you on a NG+ challenge