Touhou Blogging Thread

[ILikeBulletZ]

Sooo, I'm interested. Did you end up going around twice like you wanted to?

For me 10-7 took the most attempts at around 1,500 attempts, then 10-4 at 1,100, then 5-2 at 900. I choked at a lot of close attempts on 10-7 though and probably should've gotten it hundreds of attempts earlier, lol

Nope, at the end I just managed to kill Remilia right after she started her Second wave... got lucky with the knifes so I could shotgun somewhat safely and close to her

Now that I completed the entire game without items, I have been thinking if I should try to finish 10-4 doing 2 waves just for fun. The good thing about the waves is that they are static, so I have no RNG to blame if I mess up! I will see if I feel like doing that later...

10-7 for me took around 400-500 to me... but I got incredibly lucky, to the point that I made a big mistake that should probably have killed me (Not a good idea to go to dodge the amulets to the upper left side... when MIKO herself in on the left side as well, I could have easily got walled in!... Luckily RNG decided to have mercy on me, for once and got a dodgeable pattern anyway).

As for my top 3 scenes that took the most challenges:

1) 5-2 with 5,000+ Attempts. Yeah, I don't like that scene, at all. Its silly and BS. I think its the only time I literally had to swear at my screen because I was so TIRED of doing that hell of a scene over and over and over and over and over and OVER AGAIN!!! Now everytime I heard its respective BGM I automatically relate it to this FREAKING scene and it just makes me MAD! LOL
2) 10-4 with 2000+ Attempts. At least it was fun! (Unlike 5-2).
3) Ugh, I guess 10-5 with almost 1000 attempts... not sure though, should probably check later but I am pretty sure it has to be 10-5. Mainly because of that crappy 2nd phase Yukari does...

[Mero]

So, out of nowhere I found myself playing PCB and decided to go for an LNB, but I really need to adjust myself to PCB again (Reimu's speed makes me want to cry).

So far I've only practiced individual stages, and I have some issues here and there:
- Chen's last spell, this one's actually hard so I don't mind dying to this on a full run
- The section after the second Alice is a mess every time I do it, but I guess as long I survive it consistently (which I kind of do) it's ok
- Lunasa's second nonspell, now I know why Mino didn't like this attack
- Youmu's first spell, very difficult attack, but pretty much the only such thing in stage 5
- Lolthespam

Also, I really need to work on Yuyuko, especially her last two spells, the penultimate is a mess, and I have only captured Reflowering once.

[rsy_type1]

thanks for the GFW .
I can hardly view here and en.touhowiki.net now...

[ILikeBulletZ]

SO I need help in something that actually isn't related to Survival or Scoring (Not directly anyway).

I decided that my next Touhou task would be to unlock all Last Words in IN...
I am currently working on one that says "Capture all the NORMAL SpellCards as Marisa Solo" Fair enough.

So I first went and tried to do just that, in practice mode. However, SOME Last Spells were locked... also  a few Spell Cards weren't captured but I didn't exactly knew on WHAT stage they were and trying to find them all with the Spell Card list was annoying so I just decided to do a Normal Marisa Solo run anyway., it should be stupidly easy with my current level of playing. And so was it, I captured almost all SpellCards in one go cept most of Kaguya but that doesn't matters I already did them in Spell Practice...

But I could NOT unlock ANY Last Spells in the Normal run. ANY!!! (Obvious Kaguya exception), despiste the fact that I almost always get them in Lunatic practice unless I play horribly bad...

In particular, I NEED help with unlocking Stage 5?s Last Spell in Normal, as it is the only one left (Apparently I COULD unlock all other Last Spells sometime before, IDK how). I can do the whole thing just fine perfectly no deaths no bombs whatever.... I even Milked ALL nonspells and spells for Time points but I STILL Need more of those "Time" points! (My best was 9000 out of 9999) What the hell??!!

How the **** is even REMOTLY possible to do this if I literally did it all perfectly, unless I am missing something obvious (Most likely), I mean I know the basics, Human for Stage and letting the familiars spam the screen with bullets then kill them, Youkai for Boss graze milking! Is that how it works right? That, and NMNB the entire thing should do the trick, right? WELL IT DOSNT...

WHY? I am sorry if this was a bit overly dramatic but I have been doing this freaking stage like 10 times as of now and I cant seem to get any closer than 8500-9000 Time points out of 9999...Its frustrating to lose for something that isnt my ability to dodge the bullets!


I also HATE how this is ridiculously easy to do... in the highest difficulty... that doesn't makes any sense!

Oh yeah another question...

I can unlock the Last Spell by doing it on Stage Practice right? I can also use Marisa/Alice Team to do that as well right? That would unlock said Last Spell for the team AND their respective Solo versions right? Do Last Spells even count towards the Last World requeriment? What about Marisa?s own spellcards, do I have to do them all including her freaking Last Spell as well (Which also isnt unlocked), even though its silly because then it would be a fight of Marisa VS Marisa? SO MANY QUESTIONS!...sorry.

[?q]

Marisa Solo has no Youkai component, so you cannot graze for Time points.  In addition, since most of the Time in that stage comes from familiars exploding after their master enemies die, and you have no way of killing the master enemies without also destroying the familiars, you can pretty much write off Marisa Solo from getting the Last Spell for Stage 5.  Use a team shot type.

I can unlock the Last Spell by doing it on Stage Practice right? I can also use Marisa/Alice Team to do that as well right? That would unlock said Last Spell for the team AND their respective Solo versions right? Do Last Spells even count towards the Last World requeriment? What about Marisa?s own spellcards, do I have to do them all including her freaking Last Spell as well (Which also isnt unlocked), even though its silly because then it would be a fight of Marisa VS Marisa? SO MANY QUESTIONS!...sorry.

Yes, yes, yes, I'm 99% sure they do, yes, in that order.

[ILikeBulletZ]

Marisa Solo has no Youkai component, so you cannot graze for Time points.  In addition, since most of the Time in that stage comes from familiars exploding after their master enemies die, and you have no way of killing the master enemies without also destroying the familiars, you can pretty much write off Marisa Solo from getting the Last Spell for Stage 5.  Use a team shot type.
Yes, yes, yes, I'm 99% sure they do, yes, in that order.

Oh so that's how it works...

I though it was a matter of destroying the familiars first THEN leave the master for last! I have been doing it the other way around all this time, LOL. So I need to use Youkai for that... I wonder why everyone says "Stage= Human, Boss=Youkai" regarding Time Points then, but whatever.

Thanks for the answers... I really didn't wanted to do all of Marisa Spell Cards again... with Marisa... What the hell zun...

[Avakyon]

Apparently you just need to know vaguely what you're doing... I just ballsed up stage 5 normal real bad and still got 13,000+ time with Marisa solo. For instance the very first enemy has no hitbox so instead of massacring the familiars by shooting from the bottom, just sit on it. I got 700+ time from just that as opposed to almost nothing from the bottom.

[Inadequate]

Stage 5 is one of the three most beneficial stages for Marisa solo, in terms of time-gain. (For me it's the second best stage, only after Final. But there's a Japanese player with better route than me, and they don't release replays, so I can't say for sure.) 20k+ should be simple enough once you know how to remain below -80% during the boss. With a little bit more to it, you can reach 10k after the midboss dies.

As most humans, her time gain is largely based on shooting unfocused, and maintaining the phantom gauge under -80% in order to gain time from it. As a human she also gains extra time from cancels, so you should put some effort into that.

A quick replay. I hope you forgive me for poor execution and character control, I have not played Touhou (or any STG) for several months. And don't get intimidated if it looks scary, I gain way more time than the requirement for the last spell, so you can pick down a couple of the easier tricks shown. Try to capture spell cards, as that gives you quite a bit of a bonus to your time.

I also HATE how this is ridiculously easy to do... in the highest difficulty... that doesn't makes any sense!

Lunatic has more bullets, so you get more time from your cancels. That's why.


Now, you can also play the stage in practice on any shot, and unlock the last spell in spell practice anyway, for all shot-types.

[Mr Jovial]

So recently, I haven't been playing very much. I'm slowly learning scoring (though I'm still learning stage 3) with Netherworld Team. Since I hadn't practiced it in a while, I went back to see how rusty I'd gotten at stage 5 which is the only other stage I've learnt to score. After a few fails to the spammy enemies at the start of the stage (after the streaming bit), I actually managed a decent run by my standards. The only real mistake was that I failed to capture Telemesmerism.  I also realised that I'm crap at releasing the shoot key. I'll typically unfocus and focus before managing it. The other problem that I really need to face is that I'm incapable of bombing when in danger. Makes sense since I probably haven't used a bomb for survival for long enough to forget when the last time was. Oops. I guess that's what I get for doing nothing but stage perfects/no bomb runs  :derp:

Scoring is actually rather fun though but not when I'm dying/failing cancels everywhere :C

[Arcengal]

Wrote a massive Tumblr post about my first Lunatic run.

http://arcengal.tumblr.com/post/102232789320/personal-gaming-experience-1-pcb

[ILikeBulletZ]

Wrote a massive Tumblr post about my first Lunatic run.

http://arcengal.tumblr.com/post/102232789320/personal-gaming-experience-1-pcb

Wow, that truly was a very interesting read!

I like full in depth analyses games, pretty cool!

Its made even better because its relateable (In particular because PCB was also my first Lunatic 1cc so it fits even more). Seriously good job!

[Sakurei]

I've been a lazy piece of shit with practice for the past 2-3 weeks and I really need to resume playing more than twice a week. Hopefully I'm not super mega rusty and can get back into it relatively quickly without wasting days and weeks for derusters. I hope to be able to do some runs by the end of the week, to be honest, even though that's maybe an unrealistic expectation. It probably depends on how much I actually play. IN extra is simply too hard to be lazy about it, I guess. I don't really know what I was expecting when I set my goal to 3b, lol.
Or maybe I'm just doing it all wrong, practicing too much and not doing enough runs. I find it really difficult getting the ratio right. At the moment (if I was playing, that is), it's probably 80:20 in favor of practice, which may or may not be way too much of one, and way too little of the other. I doubt that tipping the scale even more in practice's favor would be beneficial though. The repetition of doing the same couple spells over and over again is already getting to me as is. I'm not a very dedicated or patient player, I guess. I like getting things quickly. Never worked out well though w

[ILikeBulletZ]

I had a 2 month break from Touhou somewhat recently and it honestly hasn't affected my playing skills all that much... I was fearing the entire time that I would be WAY worse than before, but it only took a day or maybe 2 days and I was pretty much back to the same skill level as before!...

But maybe that was just me. Its not like I am that good to begin with, so maybe that's why I didn't noticed the skill drop as much as others who are more skilled than me, if that makes any sense (?)

[Sakurei]

Generally speaking, I probably haven't become any worse. I could likely still do as well in EoSD LNB as I did a month ago. But I am referring to certain things that I have to do in IN extra to reach my goal. Especially on the level of optimization I practice. My stage portion may be bad, but my grazing is better than ASL's on every spellcard (albeit I'm losing out some on the first nonspell). For me, it's not about reading ability, or even dodging ability per se, but the precision needed is far higher than you would usually need to dodge some patterns. Not to mention that I am not allowed to fail any of those things (other than bombing the last nonspell, if I choose so), otherwise I will more likely than not not reach my goal. Keeping that sort of level as high as I need it to is very difficult and it drops far quicker than the general ability to dodge and read things. At least in my experience.

[Inadequate]

Man up and spam some credits.


If you keep practicing the same couple of spells over and over again, you're bound to add more and more micro-optimizations and other little things that can set your heart off the course, make you restart, or lose faith in the run and result in a death when they go wrong. Certain tricks you'll never be consistent at, some things you just have to luck out a couple of times, in the same run.

Speaking of personal experience.

[Mero]

I've been working on and off on my PCB LNB. There are some points I just can't do reliably, but it's not like I can't actually work on them, due to how random they are.

My ideal run going from stages is just 3 misses (this is assuming I capture Yuyuko's penultimate and Reflowering), so I think I've practiced enough to try full runs now, but I don't really have time for it now (real life is kind of a thing). I'll have to stick with single stages just to keep myself used to playing

[Baron_Blade]

After playing Phantasmagoria Trues almost exclusively for the last month, playing any other Touhou game feels really wide and fast. But on the bright side, I captured Peerless Wind God on a whim earlier today, so I guess playing PT helps a lot with general skill.

[Failure McFailFace]

Currently trying to no item ISC.

I have the 20XX spell card left in Day 3.

[MrL1193]

I played a bit of PCB tonight and captured the last two Hard spell cards I was missing--Hell Flame Sword and Deva Realm Sword. I was motivated to do it after seeing a PCB Hard Stage 5 NMNB video and thinking, "I didn't remember all these patterns being this slow" (possibly an aftereffect of playing SA Lunatic so much of late). That didn't stop me from messing up on Youmu's boss opener, but I did capture the two spell cards I was after in two runs, the first with Reimu B and the second with Sakuya A.

Now I just need to capture 6 more cards to complete my PCB collection: Benevolent Orleans Dolls, Sumizome Perfect Blossom "Bloom," Resurrection Butterfly - 80% Reflowering, Unilateral Contact, Kokkuri-san's Contract (just a loose end--I've already gotten Yukari's version), and Double Death Butterfly. Hopefully that last one won't give me as much trouble as Satori's version has. :ohdear:

[CyberAngel]

All this time, up until today, I was handling Dragon's Necklace like a total retard. Lasers are not as dense from the side that familiar comes from. Movement is life.

...No, I'm not back. Just playing IN for survival before dropping this stuff for good. Don't care about any other shmup anymore.

[MTSranger]

Since I don't want to double-post in the rage thread...........

ISC 4-3, 1313 attempts and still no capture.
HOW HOW HOW do you guys all swim through those butterflies like it's nothing. I just can't do it. I always get clipped. It's impossible for me to kill it in two waves because I just really really can't dash through all the butterflies and get to shoot the boss in time. Seriously what's wrong with me. Why am I so bad.

ZUN I hate you. Why do you make it so that you can't move to the top of the screen. WHYYYYYYYY. WHY do you make it anime flashy cherry petals over those butterflies, as if they aren't flashy enough already, just so that I can't even see them. WHYYYYY

ISC 10-3, how do you dash through the red balls so fast? I just can't..................... I just can't..........................

This is just so HORRIBLE. I feel like I'm not fit to play Touhou and I should just quit. Clear ISC in 18 hours? 60 hours? HA. At this rate I will never clear it even after 500 hours. I can't even begin to fathom how to dodge the clipshit that is 10-5. Some of you said consistent at waves 1, 3, 4? HA. I can't read 2, 3, 4. I can't make the 0.000001 milimeter tap. I just caaaaaaaaaaaaan't. I'm just so bad. Lunatic 1cc in every other game feels so easy compared to this. SFN timeout with Youmu Solo? EASY. VoWG timeout? EASY. None of them took 1300 attempts. NONE.

[ILikeBulletZ]

Since I don't want to double-post in the rage thread...........

ISC 4-3, 1313 attempts and still no capture.
HOW HOW HOW do you guys all swim through those butterflies like it's nothing. I just can't do it. I always get clipped. It's impossible for me to kill it in two waves because I just really really can't dash through all the butterflies and get to shoot the boss in time. Seriously what's wrong with me. Why am I so bad.

ZUN I hate you. Why do you make it so that you can't move to the top of the screen. WHYYYYYYYY. WHY do you make it anime flashy cherry petals over those butterflies, as if they aren't flashy enough already, just so that I can't even see them. WHYYYYY

ISC 10-3, how do you dash through the red balls so fast? I just can't..................... I just can't..........................

This is just so HORRIBLE. I feel like I'm not fit to play Touhou and I should just quit. Clear ISC in 18 hours? 60 hours? HA. At this rate I will never clear it even after 500 hours. I can't even begin to fathom how to dodge the clipshit that is 10-5. Some of you said consistent at waves 1, 3, 4? HA. I can't read 2, 3, 4. I can't make the 0.000001 milimeter tap. I just caaaaaaaaaaaaan't. I'm just so bad. Lunatic 1cc in every other game feels so easy compared to this. SFN timeout with Youmu Solo? EASY. VoWG timeout? EASY. None of them took 1300 attempts. NONE.

Well, you don't HAVE to finish 4-3 in 2 waves... you could try to take the risk and dodge 1 more, and safely kill Yuyuko after (I would personally just rush and kill her ASAP, but that's just me).

And yes, the fact that you cant move to the very top of the screen is absurd. I do remember it begin VERY annoying in that one scene, because I felt like I was able to actually dodge an incoming butterfly, only to find I have apparently hit the top of the screen... even thought I am not that close to it :/.

10-3 is slightly more doable if you try to lure the laser into a certain way... I would link my own replay if ya want but I am a n00b who has never shared replays IDK how to upload them...

10-5... Well yeah that one is just plain HARD. No excuses there. For some reason, it MIGHT seem like its better to go with the normal shoot than the Cursed Doll shot in this one scene (Not 100% sure though).

And finally, I know its cliche, but I don't think its a good idea to compare yourself to others... we all have difficulty in different stuff. I have cleared the entire game with no Items, yet all of the stuff you said there (Including apparently having all Lunatic 1cc- I barely have 2 under my belt because the rest are TOO HARD for me ATM) just seems unreasonable for me, to say the least...


One more thing... I know its tempting, but I would personally try to focus on as few scenes as possible (Around 4-5 Max). Because you know, practice/memorization. You may just clear one of those earlier than if you didnt focused on any scene in particular, and its just a good feeling to clear them, giving you motivation to continue clearing and so on

EDIT: Edited "Yuyoko". I don't know why I seem to ALWAYS misspell her name as "Yuyoko". WTF.

[MTSranger]

OK FINALLY cleared 4-3.
A freakish streak of luck allowed me to dodge FIVE waves in a row.
To solve the top-of-screen problem, I taped some paper over the screen to cut it off ....





Thanks for the advice btw!!! I really need to calm down and not become extremely frustrated every 500 attempts.

EDIT: WOW what a productive day, also got 9-1 (1/798), 7-4 (1/356), and 6-5 (1/149) as well! The first one I had suboptimal strategy for a while... then once I fixed that it was surprisingly quick to capture. For 7-4 I relied on massive luck. For 6-5 I gave up reading the lasers and just move to the bottom right corner while praying. Eventually all stars aligned, the God of RNG answered, and I survived all waves.

I am now at 69/75... pretty good pace, and essentially running out of non-impossible scenes to do  :V Time to start practicing Fitful Nightmare...

[ILikeBulletZ]

Is 5-2 one of those "impossible scenes"?

I am curious to hear your thoughts about that one particular scene.-


69/75 is indeed really, really good!

[MTSranger]

I'll comment on the six scenes I have left:
5-2: Out of my silly attempts at it I die to nearly every wave, with some miraculous stream turns from time to time.

8-6: This just looks plain hard to me, but no serious attempts either. If I get stuck on 10-3 I may try this one from time to time.

10-3: I'm putting my main "serious" attempts on this one. It looks *possible*, but alas not enough practice yet + still haven't figured out what's optimal strategy for me. Ideally I want to kill it asap but that necessarily requires dodging more bullets as the laser will swing around more if you just circle around and go shoot the boss. Unfortunately dashing through red bullets is proving to be hard.

10-4: I like practicing it - it's actually fun to play. However, no ETA yet as I haven't figured out how to circle around the screen without clipdeath; it seems like you have a very small margin for error. Plus, I haven't memorized the "easy" part and of all attempts so far I haven't been able to shotgun and get the health down to less than half before the 12-seconds begin.

10-5: Nope, not even going to try at this moment. Looks too hard - especially having to luck through 2nd phase (no way I can read that) and um be "reliable" in 3rd and 4th phase (which currently has 99% chance of death for me) so I don't waste the good luck when I actually do pass the 2nd phase.

10-7: Sigh, another thing that just looks terrifying. Reacting to those lasers seems extremely difficult, and the amulets hit my perpetual weakness of "bullets from below" again. The invisible top of the screen barrier doesn't help either.

[ILikeBulletZ]

Um...

Well, out of all of those, IMO 10-3 is the easiest one. (Still fairly hard), so if your focusing on it as you said you will get it in no time. Shotgunning Tenshi a few times is pretty much mandatory, she has absurd HP (Highest in the game!) for some unexplained reason...

8-6: It seems slightly easier to dodge vertically than horizontally, but maybe that's just me... Shotgun the boss at least for 3 waves! Helps a lot. Other than that, just skills + luck.

10-4: Just plain practice + luck with the knife spam... Also I am not sure what do you mean with "I haven't memorized the "easy" part" ?

10-5: is kinda lame because once you practice it enough, its pretty much about praying that you don't get hit by the 2nd phase with dumb luck (There ARE a number of patterns for it: They repeat after a few times, and are static. You will eventually notice this by playing it a lot, the safespots are the exact same, so they help if you recognize the pattern!).

10-7: Nothing that hasn't been said before. Skill + Luck. Especially luck. Don't take any chances, and get as far from Miko, to have SOME chance to get a doable amulet pattern. I almost blowed my capture because of getting greedy with this-



And 5-2 can simply go f*** itself.

[Failure McFailFace]

So today I was testing out recording Touhou games using OBS.

Link to the video.

The run was terrible, mostly because I couldn't see and had to strain my eyes to see anything.

And the video is tiny. I have no idea why.


[EDIT] And a MS attempt: LINK! A little bit of improvement, but the video looks poor.

[Emerald Mint]

If it appears tiny, check the Video panel in Settings and set the custom resolution to the same resolution the game is running at. That'll be 640x400 for PC-98 and 640x480 for the rest.
You may also want to check your resolution downscale setting that it isn't too low. Your YT uploads seemed to appear okay on my end, however.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/14q3a555yp96y57/th10_06.rpy
MoF - Extra - ReimuB - Clear - 434,439,930

Now to practice and tweak a bit. Not bad for my first MoF EX-clear in a long while.

[Karisa]

Actually you can adjust the video size by clicking "Edit Scene", I think it is? Then right-click on it and there are options to adjust size, if I recall correctly. (I haven't set up recording a new game in quite a while though, so I might be misremembering.)

I used to adjust the resolution manually in the settings, but despite the games all being 640x480, it required a variety of irregular resolutions like 880x550 and 1000x625 that I had to write down; keeping a scene for each game (some can be shared like th7-8 and th10-12) is so much easier.

Also if you're recording live as opposed to replays-- note that you can use vpatch to customize the size for the games it's compatible with (i.e. th06-th13) if you prefer a larger windowed view.

[Emerald Mint]

To me, it feels like a waste of CPU resources going higher than the original resolution, plus it would need more bandwidth for the same image quality as well as having to mess around with the preset option again. If the game had looked out of place, I just deleted and re-added the Window Capture entry. I don't see anything against irregular resolutions if on the other hand you need a specific custom scene.
The Edit Scene option blanks out for me, oddly enough.

Also, I get some judder in the final video and it's not a VLC issue. Is that expected most of the time?