Labyrinth of Touhou 2 -12F

[Serela]

Ok, how can I beat that strengthened Memorized Knowledge on the 14th floor anyway ?
After the buffing turn, he just one-shots everything I have, including 40k Komachi. Guess my MYS res isn't high enough ?

Bring in Mokou since she won't die (you don't have to invest into her apart from her resurrection passive) and go from there. If it's still weak to debuffs, debuffing speed is incredibly important. Plus that'd give you time to try to get Tenshi to take off the buff, if you still can't handle it. I haven't fought it yet.

[ZXNova]

Haaah, my first hurdle has appeared...

I'm seriously trying to defeat

Spoiler:

Tenshi

in 6F to get the drops... I can manage to get her to 1/4 HP using

Spoiler:

Wriggle poison spam + Heavy item, maxed-out atk Yuugi, maxed-out mag Marisa, Hina debuffs, and Mokou's revival tanking.

I feel like I just need more numbers...

EDIT: challenge surpassed! It took quite a bit of RNG, but nuking the boss with all my might provided results.  :3 Now onward, to 7F and beyond~

You sir, deserve an internet.

[Kirin no Sora]

You sir, deserve an internet.

Honestly, why couldn't the game makers just make an achievement for that?

[Ghaleon]

Im just about to start floor 4 on my ng+... Looking forward to tenshi #1 actually because im pretty sure my party is better suited to it this time. My lineup is:

Reimu: (i just cant live without good def buffs and didnt want yukari since my lineup lacked healers)
Remi,patchy,china,sakuya: gonna see just how much sdm buff helps. Plus now that sakuya can pierce defenses well she'll be a LOT more useful than in lot1
Ran: i like party buffs too much, i prob should have dumped her though since i seemed to have picked up alot of characters with buffs and/or majesty
Nitori: didnt want her per say but i felt i needed her as a "just in case" character that i know can carry a group thru any boss in terms of kill past defenses
Byakuren: i plan on playing lots in this save so her late game worth after investing tons of skillpoints will be more practical since ill actually level enough fo get em
Eiki: my fave def ignore character
Kasen: just to compare to remi, with and without sdm buff. Currently her top dark nuke seems op as fuu... I mean its formula is stupid good. For example, that wasp boss on 3f that is weak to physical and dark? Took 300 from remi, and 1000 from kasen, and i gave remi better atk gear too.
Hina: wanted to try her all along, but waited for my ng+ game cuz i want to see her in post game too
Parsee: seeing how she compares to patchy.

Note that so far my parsee is having no luck at ALL applying terror to bosses with EITHER of her terror inflicting spells. I often try both like 4 times each on a boss and fail to inflict it once. My kogasa on the other hand almost always landed terror. The nuke she has that only works after a terror seems good but doesnt seem good enough to carry her into op status like people claim unless you have a better source of terror than parsee herself (or simply are more lucky).

Im too scared to use hina much still atm. Waiting to get her dbf reduction on ally skill before i start debuffing everyone, gear would be nice too but ill try before that point.

[Yookie]

Parsee is kind of an all or nothing character in that she deals either craptons or no damage at all, depending on if the enemy is either vulnerable to terror or at least physical so that the box works.
But together with Kogasa (whom is capable of inflicting terror much more reliably because of Arm Twisting) she performs quite nicely.

I kind of put together a party that has no defense ignoring capabilities at all and aside from Sanae no real heals (There's Yuuka, as always and newcomer Maribel but their healing capabilities will only be noticeable much later on) but whatever it will probably work out. :V

First 4 floors were a breeze thanks to op Flan twoshotting everything (or oneshotting Alice's dolls...).
Even Mokou was silly easy (not thanks to Flan though) for some reason. She normally is much more problematic. Was probably the synergy of Suika's and Iku's wind nukes that dealt up to 5k damage in one shot.
I'll see how this setup fares against Tenshi. Probably not so well though.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah there is always the healer subclass but im not sure if it will be as good on anyone as it was for aya in my first playthru. Her atk is high enough that her heals cure a crapton, and her speed is crazy high so she can both spam them, AND switch in and emergency heal someone before the boss' next move. Plus her evasion is so good that shed rarely have to sorry about healing herself.

That said i forgot abou china as a healer without subclass. In lot1 she easnt much o a healer at all for hp curing capabilities unless she was healing patchy or kaggy (with their pathetic hp making china's puny heals to be significant). However sofar in this game her heal seems pretty effing good, 1mp, fast delay, and heals half as much as colourful rain (as opped to like 1/8 as much as before)

[ZXNova]

Yeah there is always the healer subclass but im not sure if it will be as good on anyone as it was for aya in my first playthru. Her atk is high enough that her heals cure a crapton, and her speed is crazy high so she can both spam them, AND switch in and emergency heal someone before the boss' next move. Plus her evasion is so good that shed rarely have to sorry about healing herself.

That said i forgot abou china as a healer without subclass. In lot1 she easnt much o a healer at all for hp curing capabilities unless she was healing patchy or kaggy (with their pathetic hp making china's puny heals to be significant). However sofar in this game her heal seems pretty effing good, 1mp, fast delay, and heals half as much as colourful rain (as opped to like 1/8 as much as before)

Yeah, Meiling's heal is quite strong considering how much MP you waste. And if you get some attack buffs from like say Sanae or Byakuren, her heal becomes super strong, with low delay and low MP consumption.

[Serela]

Kogasa can actually inflict Terror pretty alright once you learn all the abilities. Kasen is much better on bosses that aren't resistant... but Kogasa can land it decently on bosses that have even star resist, IIRC. It syncs well with Parsee, yeah. I know someone who ran Kogasa as a tank to support Parsee; Easygoing and Heart of Patience does kinda work alright with a support subclass... although, her HP/MND are only passable enough to just make it work out well? At least her DEF is pretty nice.

[ZXNova]

I forget, what are all the things Terror can do?

[Dodging_Rain]

Makes you lose 1 MP per turn taken or slightly reduces enemy stats.  The only enemy I know of that takes advantage of terror is floor 16 dream eater.

[Ghaleon]

There are several bosses that inflict it but most are the kind that have a chance of simply inflicting absolutely everything.

That said the stat reduction on enemies when you successfully inflict terror on them seems so minor that the simple + or - 10% is more significant... in other words I've seen cases where some hits after terror hit me harder than before, and same for the other way around (me hitting them).

[ShiroiMahotsukai]

I've never used terror to actually do anything to enemies, it just seems to have too minor of an effect. Using it for Kogasa's self-buff skill, however, makes it awesomely awesome. Kogasa, Kasen and Parsee really do make a fantastic combination, especially if you give Kasen and Parsee that terror-inflicting thingy to boost their chances.

Is anything actually immune to status ailments? The star resist seems to be imperfect if you've got a high enough proc chance so is there anyway to make sure whether it will or won't work?

[The Krve]

Beat the strengthened Memorized Knowledge  :DDD.

I used Aya to give Cirno first turn and debuff the thing's speed, Reisen to debuff it's defense and Orin to SHK-locking (Gave her the Great Hammer, Cat Walk is so cheap, repeat so many times that the boss will always get shocked before it can even buff itself).

After getting everything to -50%, I switched Flan, Remilia and Nitori in for the pummeling while Orin keep shocking the thing. It never got a turn so I didn't even have to reapply the debuff 

This reminds me of how better some of the boss fights in this game are, not just fighting big numbers with bigger numbers.

[Kirin no Sora]

There are several bosses that inflict it but most are the kind that have a chance of simply inflicting absolutely everything.

That said the stat reduction on enemies when you successfully inflict terror on them seems so minor that the simple + or - 10% is more significant... in other words I've seen cases where some hits after terror hit me harder than before, and same for the other way around (me hitting them).

And the reason that the game makers couldn't make it so that it could act as though it was a -10% debuff in everything is... why?

...although, I do wonder if maybe it affects something else as well, like how well you could land other ailments like Shock...

Kogasa can actually inflict Terror pretty alright once you learn all the abilities. Kasen is much better on bosses that aren't resistant... but Kogasa can land it decently on bosses that have even star resist, IIRC. It syncs well with Parsee, yeah. I know someone who ran Kogasa as a tank to support Parsee; Easygoing and Heart of Patience does kinda work alright with a support subclass... although, her HP/MND are only passable enough to just make it work out well? At least her DEF is pretty nice.

...the fact that Kogasa can inflict Terror on enemies that possess Star level resistance proves to me that Arm Twisting is very effective in assisting people in inflicting status ailments(the fact that she has a skill that increases her ability to inflict Terror makes it even better).

That said, this is why I had stated before that some people would be better with Arm Twisting, like Cirno. In fact, if Cirno were granted the Arm-Twisting and Impact Attack skills, all it would really do is enhance her theme of "slowing the enemy to a crawl" by both make said debuffs and Paralysis more effective, and by giving her another way to do so via inflicting Shock.

As a related question in regards to ailments: does leveling up Wriggle's spellcards strengthen the poison that she inflicts with them? Because if so, then that would explain why she didn't get a skill to power up her ability to poison: because said 'skill' is already in the spellcards themselves.

[Dodging_Rain]

Beat the strengthened Memorized Knowledge  :DDD.

I used Aya to give Cirno first turn and debuff the thing's speed, Reisen to debuff it's defense and Orin to SHK-locking (Gave her the Great Hammer, Cat Walk is so cheap, repeat so many times that the boss will always get shocked before it can even buff itself).

After getting everything to -50%, I switched Flan, Remilia and Nitori in for the pummeling while Orin keep shocking the thing. It never got a turn so I didn't even have to reapply the debuff 

This reminds me of how better some of the boss fights in this game are, not just fighting big numbers with bigger numbers.

The shock method isn't going to work for most of the other bosses other than

Spoiler:

Soul Eater and it is reasonably fast

.  However, expect to grind your teeth when fighting Mirror.

And the reason that the game makers couldn't make it so that it could act as though it was a -10% debuff in everything is... why?

For terror inflicted on enemies, I think it simply acts separate from debuffs particularly when interacting with some characters that are strengthened by them or terror in particularly.

As a related question in regards to ailments: does leveling up Wriggle's spellcards strengthen the poison that she inflicts with them? Because if so, then that would explain why she didn't get a skill to power up her ability to poison: because said 'skill' is already in the spellcards themselves.

I tested this out and for some strange reason, Wriggles's comet on earth always inflict 40kish poison regardless of everything.  I am trying to figure out what  determines the damage of the poison.

Edit: OK this is interesting.  A level 1 Wriggles that spent on 0 points on anything has poison visibly dropping a floor 2 boss in mook clothing at the same speed as if she hits a floor 4 mook.  I can confirm that toxo increases the duration but doesn't seem to have a visible effect on DoT.  Leveling her spellcard doesn't seem to change that either.  Reapplying poison on an enemy already poison seems to increase the duration by a fraction of what it normally would.  I suspect poison damage scales with the enemy's max health.

[Serela]

I suspect poison damage scales with the enemy's max health.

That'd do odd things with certain bosses...

Maybe I should test sometime.

I would have assumed damage scaled with level, but maybe they thought that was too unreliable in large scaling after LoT1? Wriggle was amazing in that game, but then in the 70+ level gap to reaching plus disk, poison became completely useless, dealing practically no damage.

[Dodging_Rain]

It have more to do with that LoT1 speed scales entirely too fast (at least until you hit the upper limits) compare to poison and the fact that poison deals set damage over time (and probably the reason why they set poison they way it is now). 

[Zengar Zombolt]

And Alice get!  \o/
Is it normal that while Patchy's recommended for the fight, I got way more mileage out of Kasen? Seriously, she's way too good.

[ZXNova]

And Alice get!  \o/
Is it normal that while Patchy's recommended for the fight, I got way more mileage out of Kasen? Seriously, she's way too good.

Yeah, Kasen is a powerful jack of all trades kind of character. But that also might be to due to Patchy not being particularly strong early/mid game. Once you get some more levels and level up her attack skills, she will begin doing some serious damage but... Patchy is still very slow and has wet tissue paper tier defenses. So it really depends on the situation.

[Dodging_Rain]

Thinking about doing another run but with another carry (the one putting out the numbers) with some unconventional choices).  Here are the candidates:
- Ran
- Byakuren
- Okuu
- Yukari
- Kogasa
- Sakuya

Ones I won't do.
- Nitori (just done her)
- Kasen (too obvious of a choice)
- Yuuka (think a lot of people already done her)

[Leerius]

Must be hard to get good damage from Okuu 'cause I believe she needs to stack Overheat/Fighting spirit but looking at her post-use gauge spells delay and survivability...
I once tried to pump her up with gems and skill points the outcome was terrible I gave up after the 2nd turns, keeping her longer might not be possible against some bosses.

So I would say Sakuya.
From my experience she's a good random encounters sweeper but I didn't try further because I rely on her speed buff otherwise.

[ZXNova]

Thinking about doing another run but with another carry (the one putting out the numbers) with some unconventional choices).  Here are the candidates:
- Ran
- Byakuren
- Okuu
- Yukari
- Kogasa
- Sakuya

Ones I won't do.
- Nitori (just done her)
- Kasen (too obvious of a choice)
- Yuuka (think a lot of people already done her)

I vote Ran.

[Yookie]

Try Okuu and/or the Yakumo family (can't really see Yukari dishing out too much damage without Ran and Chen. Her only proper nuke is Shikigami+ and it falls off hard once even one of the two dies and if you pick Ran and/or Yukari you might as well pick up lil Chen as well. But the three together really wreck everything.)

Okuu has massive mana problems early on  with overheat though and really only starts to shine once she has enough skillpoints to get her entire kit up and running.
Her damage does become good and she also gets quite tanky in the later stages if you get her to stack her stuff. Careful though with balancing the overheat and then picking a good moment to switch her out and back in.

On another note: Flan is still silly and twoshot Hina with lvl5 Laevateinn.


Edit: You're all typing way too fast at such a late hour...

[Kirin no Sora]

I tested this out and for some strange reason, Wriggles's comet on earth always inflict 40kish poison regardless of everything.  I am trying to figure out what  determines the damage of the poison.

Edit: OK this is interesting.  A level 1 Wriggles that spent on 0 points on anything has poison visibly dropping a floor 2 boss in mook clothing at the same speed as if she hits a floor 4 mook.  I can confirm that toxo increases the duration but doesn't seem to have a visible effect on DoT.  Leveling her spellcard doesn't seem to change that either.  Reapplying poison on an enemy already poison seems to increase the duration by a fraction of what it normally would.  I suspect poison damage scales with the enemy's max health.

So, leveling up the spellcard doesn't affect the poison effect in any way? That's bizzare. Does that mean that leveling it up only increases the damage that it would deal directly(as in "damage that is instant and not DoT")?

Wait a second. I recall that Wriggle's "Nightbug Tornado" spellcard is supposed to deal more damage if the enemy is poisoned. Maybe that spell and the other spells operate on that principle and the leveling up affects that?(If that's true, I would call it a bad idea, given how Wriggle isn't supposed to be used for direct damage in the first place)

That'd do odd things with certain bosses...

Which bosses are we talking about, if I can ask?

[Averaen]

I've lost my save with all characters unlocked at lvl 1 for LoT, can anyone help a guy out?

EDIT: Never mind, went back a few threads and it was in the OP.  I'll see myself out.

[Ghaleon]

I haven't used one from the op for some time, you may wanna make sure it's not bugged out so that everyone has the same elemental affinities, I seem to recall that was an issue. if it is I can see if I have mine which was fixed.

[Serela]

Hmmm. Been debating trying a Gambler Satori after I beat the final boss. In postgame she can have the max mp for "Small MP Recovery" to really shine, and won't have a large mp detriment on ally skills, and Gambler would give her the means to turn any strong move into a real nuke. Honestly, with a main equip to boost max mp, she'd probably have very few mp troubles even as Gambler, and Trauma Recollection+flexibility with weakness hitting would help her be useful against any boss. The question is if it's worth dropping Flan...

As for Byakuren Carry, she does have the self-buff stuff keeping her going, but in my experience her actual attacks aren't quite as strong as you might think. The main advantage is just that she has a variety and they carry debuffs/statuses, and that she's in general a good character with her passives, but... I think other people are better suited, other than Byakuren's durability getting boosted by having permanently high buffs. Sakuya Carry would depend on SDM to really work, but if you were doing Sakuya Carry you'd probably use them all already anyway.

Yukari actually -would- be a pretty cool carry, since she has -very- good passives like Border of Strength/Witchcraft and her regeneration passive (and majesty) and a good team passive. Ran is a useful support to have boosted with her and then Chen is... huh, Ran buffing her evasion, I wonder how useful 200+ evasion is?

[Ghaleon]

My alice had like 140 evasion and it was nice but there are attacks that seem to be unavoidable every time.

[Trickster-kun]

12F is cleared and good! I'm making pleasant progress-- though I have to admit, I saw a 40k Nitori blast on

Spoiler:

12F's Tenshi

and wondered if I'm leveling too fast...

Nah 

I have to admit, the new soundtrack starting at 13F is pretty cool!

[ZXNova]

As for Byakuren Carry, she does have the self-buff stuff keeping her going, but in my experience her actual attacks aren't quite as strong as you might think. The main advantage is just that she has a variety and they carry debuffs/statuses, and that she's in general a good character with her passives, but... I think other people are better suited, other than Byakuren's durability getting boosted by having permanently high buffs.

Yeah, from my EXP Byakuren isn't exactly a "carry". She's simply a bulky offensive support. Able to switch up between attacking and supporting with buffs, but doesn't quite hit hard enough to "carry". She does do quite a bit of damage, but not enough to be a main carry, especially since you're gonna be trying to switch between supporting with buffs and attacking, you'll end up running out of mp.

About the evasion, my Aya has 183 evasion and it works out quite well, however, there is that one attack that just hits you once in a while. Which is why it is very good thing to give Aya HP investment.

@ Trickster-kun You're probably not leveling too fast. Are the bosses becoming to easy and boring for you? If they are you should probably slow down.

And yeah, 13-15 floor soundtrack is really nice, but imo, I liked 16-18 floor the best. Though 19-21th floor is also really great.