Labyrinth of Touhou 2 -13F

[Axel Ryman]

So did a Skype Call with a friend and did Screensharing while I went through the postgame and....

Spoiler:

I got to the Great [C] and suddenly I'm holding my sides trying to fight it and not laugh so hard while she goes on about how it's The Great Cookie. Even after I managed to beat it the Cookie jokes still kept going.

[Ghaleon]

ok being a sorcerer hina useless... her painflow is god tier nuke now. For example, flan hits a boss for 12k... hina's pain flow hit for 34k. everyone else for like 3-5k. I don't even have high mag equipment on my hina, egads.

[DarkAtma]

So did a Skype Call with a friend and did Screensharing while I went through the postgame and....

Spoiler:

I got to the Great [C] and suddenly I'm holding my sides trying to fight it and not laugh so hard while she goes on about how it's The Great Cookie. Even after I managed to beat it the Cookie jokes still kept going.

I trough it was a evil pumpkin, On what are the strengthen bosses based? I know guardian of the crystals is Culex from Super mario RPG, what about the other 3?

Great C
Desire Eater
The Second sun

[Kaitani]

ok being a sorcerer hina useless... her painflow is god tier nuke now. For example, flan hits a boss for 12k... hina's pain flow hit for 34k. everyone else for like 3-5k. I don't even have high mag equipment on my hina, egads.

You weren't kidding about that, just did a quick test on it myself. Gambler Hina vs. Gambler Flandre, both hitting the last boss with their dark type nukes. Hina got 900k+ damage with -40% debuffs and herb of awakening on her, Flandre got similar numbers with a +40% ATK buff (no herb though). What gives this round to Hina though is that her MAG was less than half of what Flandre's ATK was (25k vs. 55k). Overall I still think Flandre wins for two reasons:
1) setup time is lower since Hina needs to first get the debuffs on everyone, then concentrate to get them on herself and then finally attack with Pain Flow. And then repeat the same again if the enemy still lives.
2) having massive debuffs on your allies is not the best of ideas in tough boss fights, even for a short while, and god mode Byakuren don't really work with it.

[Ghaleon]

you don't need to debuff your allies for it though, just hina herself, and her final passive skill does that all on its own. You can also just use misfortune when your allies out have high debuff resistance, and she'll debuff herself even faster (not even sure if higher level debuffs matter so much as just having more). I have parsee and patchy in my group, and they already have super debuff resistance at base, which is easy enough to accomplish with equipment or whatever (except at the very start of the game of course)

That said I don't wanna make mine a gambler just cuz her defenses are actually not too shabby, and don't wanna ruin that.

[Kaitani]

That said I don't wanna make mine a gambler just cuz her defenses are actually not too shabby, and don't wanna ruin that.

Yea that makes sense, I just wanted to be able to compare the two nukers on a more even ground in my test. Although, most of the damage boost gambler gets comes from the double MP cost (+60%) rather than the increased damage taken (30%) so you could still get more damage out of it compared to sorceress without losing her tankiness. Whether or not the increased damage is worth having the MP consumption problems is another story though...

Now that my enhanced boss "challenge" is completed, I'm trying to think of a fun and interesting way to fight the remaining bosses. So far the best idea I've come up with is banning Flandre from the party, since killing bosses when they get 0-1 turns isn't very interesting.

[jaxter0987]

You weren't kidding about that, just did a quick test on it myself. Gambler Hina vs. Gambler Flandre, both hitting the last boss with their dark type nukes. Hina got 900k+ damage with -40% debuffs and herb of awakening on her, Flandre got similar numbers with a +40% ATK buff (no herb though). What gives this round to Hina though is that her MAG was less than half of what Flandre's ATK was (25k vs. 55k). Overall I still think Flandre wins for two reasons:
1) setup time is lower since Hina needs to first get the debuffs on everyone, then concentrate to get them on herself and then finally attack with Pain Flow. And then repeat the same again if the enemy still lives.
2) having massive debuffs on your allies is not the best of ideas in tough boss fights, even for a short while, and god mode Byakuren don't really work with it.

Uh, disregarding the Herb of Awakening discrepancy, -40% for Hina is +80% for other characters. Might want to redo your tests with that in mind before coming to a conclusion like that...

1)Set up time is not much different, though its likely safer for Hina. You do have a point about the boss surviving the hit though.

2)Byakuren can work with Hina just fine. There's no reason Byakuren shouldn't be immune to debuffs and if you're playing with Hina in the party, you'd have characters that are immune or nigh immune to debuffs already (like Parsee for example). Anyone that's not just needs some debuff resistance and they're good to go.

[Kaitani]

Uh, disregarding the Herb of Awakening discrepancy, -40% for Hina is +80% for other characters. Might want to redo your tests with that in mind before coming to a conclusion like that...

1)Set up time is not much different, though its likely safer for Hina. You do have a point about the boss surviving the hit though.

2)Byakuren can work with Hina just fine. There's no reason Byakuren shouldn't be immune to debuffs and if you're playing with Hina in the party, you'd have characters that are immune or nigh immune to debuffs already (like Parsee for example). Anyone that's not just needs some debuff resistance and they're good to go.
 

You did notice I mentioned the huge difference in their respective attack stats as well? I'm well aware of the effect of Curse Reversal, but the point of the quick test was not to set them on an even ground. I just wanted to see for myself if Hina can reach the "Flandre level" of damage with a bit of effort. Since I use Flandre for the end boss gem farm I've gotten her an ATK buff of 80% with herb of awakening, which makes Starbow Break hit for 1,5 million damage.

As for the setup comment, I find Flandre to be faster since you can just copy Byakuren's buffs on her before she even gets a turn, whereas Hina needs to do all the heavy lifting herself to set herself up for the damage. This of course applies only to longer fights you don't plan to end in a couple of hits and where Flandre is waiting safely in the back row for her turn.

I guess the Byakuren comment came out a bit wrong, since the setting I had in mind for the combo was a first turn nuke without dedicated DBF resistances. In a similar setting to Flandre's back row waiting, fully buffed Byakuren with DBF resistance can just shrug off Hina's debuffs and then share her buffs to an ally that hasn't got that high DBF resistance (or got unlucky). Hina can then do her own thing without having to worry about the others and since she's rather bulky after getting some debuffs, she shouldn't be in much danger. Focusing on using a party with high natural/built DBF resistance just for the sake of making Hina non-detrimental to you only applies to main game in my opinion, since for post game bosses those kind of parties aren't likely very effective.

All in all, which character you prefer to use depends not only on the enemy you're fighting but the playstyle you want to have. Both are entirely capable of filling the role of a nuker. Flandre has an edge with bigger numbers and more frequent attacks, Hina has an added benefit of debuffing the enemy in addition to being quite bulky.

[Thata no Guykoro]

I trough it was a evil pumpkin, On what are the strengthen bosses based? I know guardian of the crystals is Culex from Super mario RPG, what about the other 3?

Great C
Desire Eater
The Second sun

Thanks to the exclusive item drop (which is IIRC named after an upgrade from it) and the whole concept (multiplying cookies), I'm 99% sure that the Great [C] is basically one big Cookie Clicker reference. No idea about the other two.

[Kuilfrayt]

Thanks to the exclusive item drop (which is IIRC named after an upgrade from it) and the whole concept (multiplying cookies), I'm 99% sure that the Great [C] is basically one big Cookie Clicker reference. No idea about the other two.

Their exclusive drop is the same reference as the boss.
The Desire Eating Demon is from Ultimate Survivor Kaiji. The item dropped by the boss is a dice that references a gambling game in the manga series (the item is a reference to that, not sure what the boss himself is a reference to what/who in the series)
The Second Sun is a reference to "God" in the Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa visual novel. The item dropped by the boss is the sword of the main armor.

[Nightassassain]

So... Kanako is surprisingly awesome.
Pros:
 - bulk means she wont die from the physical attack equivalent of a sneeze (looks at patchy)
 - has decent natural mp recovery and MP restoring skills, so Mp consumption isn't really a problem (looks at Kags)
 - Terrific Elemental Coverage (looks at Marrissa)
 - Part of the Moriya shrine which includes fellow awesome members sanae and suwako.

Give her a try, i was pleasantly surprised by how useful she was in both randoms (virtue of the wind god spam) and boss battles (inflict heavy with mad dance and nuke with spring like suiga).

[jaxter0987]

So... Kanako is surprisingly awesome.
Pros:
 - bulk means she wont die from the physical attack equivalent of a sneeze (looks at patchy)
 - has decent natural mp recovery and MP restoring skills, so Mp consumption isn't really a problem (looks at Kags)
 - Terrific Elemental Coverage (looks at Marrissa)
 - Part of the Moriya shrine which includes fellow awesome members sanae and suwako.

Give her a try, i was pleasantly surprised by how useful she was in both randoms (virtue of the wind god spam) and boss battles (inflict heavy with mad dance and nuke with spring like suiga).

Except your second point is not a valid comparison when Kaguya's play style is obviously hit and run, with Desire to Rest being almost all the MP restoration she needs and Thousand Year Exile making up the little bit Desire to Rest isn't able to give. I don't usually need to do this since I rarely run out of MP on her for boss fights but when I do need to, I can just give her a Jogurt Doll and that's more than enough.

[Serela]

Kanako -is- pretty great. In postgame though, it's hard to make her damage and bulkiness manage to keep up, and at that point Sanae IMO gets outclassed pretty hard by people like Byakuren and Renko. But for the main game, she's fab.

There's more good bulky attackers than there was in LoT1 in general though, but Kanako's elemental coverage and useful passives does put her up there. Wind God is a pretty good "I don't feel like fighting this random battle" button, too; it's worth the mp cost (assuming the enemies don't resist wnd or all magics or whatever.)

Speaking of bulk though, some people are bulkier than you'd think. I found Rumia to be a pleasant surprise there, even without the 9 team bonus, for example. Her fast level rate and very cheap library levels helped make up for her base stats (and her base mnd was significantly buffed in a rebalance; her mnd is actually really high now in practice) plus I gave her Transcendent. The 9 team members can really stand on their own, I should try actually using them -together- in my next run.

...mm. I did have to give Rumia one of those "ridiculously huge HP buff" equipments though. Late in the game you start getting more of those than you can use though, so that's fine.

[Ghaleon]

So kanako's spell formulas are seemingly better than 1's? I loved kanako on paper in 1 but after actually using her i felt that she was a very boring meh character. Virtue despite its cost wasnt as potent a trash clearer as youmu's  karma blade, or yuyu's flawless, or patchy's spells, etc. and suiga was not really impressive either unless the enemy was weak to cold. Granted being able to aoe trash with defense OR mnd targeting nukes was cool. Im not saying she sucked but she really wasnt anything special in any way.

Maybe ill try her again, im still dumbfounded at how much of a monster rumia is... Though variety of elements isnt much of a point either when you have arm twisting =p.

Im at 13f now... Sighh... Lot2's 13f-15f are by far my least fave thing in the series other than 30f grinding and dat binary floor which is only one floor.

[Yookie]

It's either the formulas or the stats of Kanako herself but I had her in my party several times now together with Sanae and while the  Moriya buff is noticeable she can hold her own.
Even in Post-game.
It's a bit risky to utilize her full potential though since she needs to be half dead for that.

Floors 13 to 15 are a bit tedious, granted, but at least the music is nice and the enemies not too annoying. :V

[Kaitani]

Kanako does have a lot of things going in her favour when compared to other nukers. Good defensive stats, useful skills (unlike Suwako, I mean bonus damage when in the first slot wth?) and spell cards that use elements few other nukers have access to, mainly SPI and cold. Not only that, her SPI attack can cause HVY and Suiga can lower attack stats, so her offense isn't just pretty numbers either. Moriya shrine buff is just bonus if you like using Sanae to buff up nukers like me.
Having said that, she doesn't get the same damage numbers as the other nukers so I would only consider using her if she can hit a boss's weakness (post game that is).

[Validon98]

Im at 13f now... Sighh... Lot2's 13f-15f are by far my least fave thing in the series other than 30f grinding and dat binary floor which is only one floor.

It's not worse than 10F-12F in LoT1, you have to admit that. Nothing is worse than that between both games. Nothing.

[qazmlpok]

It's not worse than 10F-12F in LoT1, you have to admit that. Nothing is worse than that between both games. Nothing.

30F

[ZXNova]

So... Kanako is surprisingly awesome.
Pros:
 - bulk means she wont die from the physical attack equivalent of a sneeze (looks at patchy)
 - has decent natural mp recovery and MP restoring skills, so Mp consumption isn't really a problem (looks at Kags)
 - Terrific Elemental Coverage (looks at Marrissa)
 - Part of the Moriya shrine which includes fellow awesome members sanae and suwako.

Give her a try, i was pleasantly surprised by how useful she was in both randoms (virtue of the wind god spam) and boss battles (inflict heavy with mad dance and nuke with spring like suiga).

Marisa has Sheer Force, so her lack of elemental coverage doesn't matter.

[Serela]

Lack of coverage still matters; sheer force helps, but Marisa still takes a significant hit to her damage. As well, Kanako's coverage lets her hit lots of weaknesses, not just avoid resisted elements.

[Ghaleon]

It's not worse than 10F-12F in LoT1, you have to admit that. Nothing is worse than that between both games. Nothing.

Wth is so bad about 10-12f in lot1? I actually like that part of the game. It has 2 different battle bgms, a good field bgm, the most effing huge variety of enemies any dungeon has. Demon tops are annoying yes but not as bad as many other monsters other floors have, ditto for the eyes of twilight, which while more annoying only appear in a relatively small portion of the area.

Plus its like a relatively complex maze without much blind dumb luck or photographic memorization reauired unlike the effing drop holes in lot2s lava zone.

Its so much worse its.... SO much worse.

[DarkAtma]

I found Lot2 13-15fpure hell, i had to make a notepad and write which orb at what place changed the temperature at how many degrees, LoT1 30F was heaven for me,bosses v3/2 with the best drops in the game? yes please

The only thing i hated about 30F was how The Hibachi twins/Serpent and WINNER drops werent 100%, Oh you didnt get them? time to redo the battle!

[Ghaleon]

30f is fine on its own minus the fact that the game suddenly rewuires you to virtually double your effing level just for one floor. (For bosses not trash).

And you mean 13f-15f, the dispute is lot2 13-15f is worse than lot1 10-12f. I LIKE 10-12f in lot1, but 13-15f i wgree is hell.

[Axel Ryman]

but 13-15f i wgree is hell.

Well the place is on fire so I can see the resemblance


The one issue I see with 13-15F is that's its a HUGE Trial and Error set of puzzles. Without the help of say a Map or anything,, you're stuck walking to spot, see you can't go through cause the temperature isn't right, then go back to where the switches are to change it so you can go through it. And then you throw in holes that lead to the previous floor's areas you couldn't get to...with holes leading to areas you already were in.


The only thing that makes it bearable is the enemies are some of the easiest in the game to kill.

[Kaitani]

Odd, I never found 13F-15F to be too annoying. Most of the temperature puzzles were separated and once you got to a relay point you had different access points to get where you needed with the temperature you needed. I disliked the the next set of floors (16F-18F) more on my first playthrough, when I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get back to a location I had been in once before. On the second playthrough it wasn't so bad anymore since I more or less memorised the "good" arrows to take.

[DarkAtma]

30f is fine on its own minus the fact that the game suddenly rewuires you to virtually double your effing level just for one floor. (For bosses not trash).

And you mean 13f-15f, the dispute is lot2 13-15f is worse than lot1 10-12f. I LIKE 10-12f in lot1, but 13-15f i wgree is hell.

13-15F, my bad, i corrected it, Doesnt help that you must find out in WHICH SPECIFIC GAP YOU MUST FALL in order to progress, otherwise walk ALL the way back to other gap  :V, the pros is that is a nice grinding place meanwhile and the background music isnt bad

To be honest, those are floors are precisely the reason i havent done a second play-trough

[Ghaleon]

The bgm is pretty good but i like 1-3f's quite a bit more.

Problem with lot2's map design is actually its art style, it looks nicer in lot2 but the circles have no "walls" outside of simply no having another circle nearby. This makes it harder to maze since you cant have 2 areas right next to each other that are seperated, not to mention there is no 1 way wall capabilities short of having an arrow event.

Do you guys favor the nicer looking maps in lot2 or the more "functional ones in 1?

[DarkAtma]

The bgm is pretty good but i like 1-3f's quite a bit more.

Problem with lot2's map design is actually its art style, it looks nicer in lot2 but the circles have no "walls" outside of simply no having another circle nearby. This makes it harder to maze since you cant have 2 areas right next to each other that are seperated, not to mention there is no 1 way wall capabilities short of having an arrow event.

Do you guys favor the nicer looking maps in lot2 or the more "functional ones in 1?

I still cant see how LoT1 maps are more functional than LoT2 maps

One irritating example i remember was Lot1 18F, so many one sided ways that just had a item or dumped you back to the beggining,its either that or i dont understand your sentence at all  :ohdear:

[ZXNova]

I couldn't hate 16-18th floor. I liked the music on those floors too much.

[qazmlpok]

On the subject of 14F, how do I activate this warp?

http://i.imgur.com/7hFnSwU.png

I'm going off memory, but I believe this floor has a +15, +5, and -10 control. I never found anything else, so I can't see any way to lower it to 30-35