Touhou Accomplishments the Fourth

[LHCling]

Is Veronica the first player to timeout VoWG ?
Kefit mentioned it in his VoWG vid. I haven't seen any of her (?) replays though :V

Here you go. As a quick aside, Kefit and FAV are (were?) on quite on a different level compared to "us" (yes I'm clumping you all together, myself included). And yes, "her".

Time means nothing.  How that time is spent means everything.

Time spent playing overall isn't the only factor affecting (the development of) one's skill. There's also previous experience, external "environmental" factors, and "motive". Previous experience is pretty self-explanatory. By environmental factors, I'm referring to things like stress, mood and even CPU hardware. "Motive" is also pretty self-explanatory... I hope.

That being said, this is a concise summary of my progress in skill, broken down into monthly intervals. Note that months 14/15 are quite inaccurate (or rather, not known to me).

First green cross represents the point where I started listening to peoples' advice by lurking certain forums for general pointers. Second cross marks the point where I started using SCT (Spell Card Theory) as a means to improve. Red line; Line of Best Fit  :V  :V  :V (Protip: ignore it) Blue line; a more accurate line which shows the ups and downs between. Black crosses were there just as a guideline for me to scribble on. Got lazy with removing them.

The Borders refer to the average difficulties of the games themselves. So the border of a Lunatic 1cc wouldn't be a UFO Lunatic 1cc, but something a bit below it.
To address the fluctuations / oddities / inconsistencies...

My previous experience... was when I was 8-10 or something. I played "normal" arcade shmups. I was decent at them. That's it there. So Easy Mode was pretty... easy for me once I got the hang of the controls and mechanics.

No time constraints have affected me so far... well, not to a great extent, so I guess you could say that my playtime on a weekly (and hence, monthly) basis is pretty consistent. I do recall holidays every now and then, but that didn't stop me from playing my set amount of time for the week. Stress? Not really, despite all the RAGE moments. Those only led to me wanting to improve to make sure it never happens again  /trauma.

Now, motive. At first, I only aimed to do Hard 1cc's. My skill started to taper off at that point anyway, and I also thought Lunatic would be too overwhelming for "poor old me"; cue the "past, present and future" barrier, which is what this essentially is. Then I met 'nut and I changed the thought quickly, and then started to use SCT to my advantage (where possible) in hopes of "getting there".

And that's my life story  :V

*insert proofreading here*

[Lybydose]

What is "Spell Card Theory"?

[ebarrett]

I play for fun and clear the odd lunatic without doing NOT FUN stuff like grinding stages in practice or putting together Excel charts (I have to deal with enough of these at work, thanks). I'm happy enough. Maybe I could be one of the top western players if I put everything into it. Who knows? Who cares? I'd rather take it easy.

[lmagus]

Today is 4 months I've started playing and I've finished 2 games on hard only.

But I can't even play for 1 hour a day because of work, wife, studying... So that kind of annoys me cause when I stated playing I was set to beat my first Lunatic by 5 months x_x

Guess it will have to wait a while =P

[LHCling]

4 months and 2 games 1cc'd on Hard is better than me.

What is "Spell Card Theory"?

Simply put, breaking a Spell Card down to its basic components, finding out how it works and from that, find the most efficient method of surviving it every time. It's "Theory" because it doesn't always work.

I play for fun and clear the odd lunatic without doing NOT FUN stuff like grinding stages in practice or putting together Excel charts (I have to deal with enough of these at work, thanks).

I only slapped the Excel Chart together because it uses a grid. Everybody knows drawing a graph is easier on a grid  :V
I also rarely ever grind out a stage, unless it's for (attempting to do) Perfect runs. My first 1cc's are usually filled with the lack of practice. (see: IN lunatic 1cc).
2 NDNB Stage 4 MoF... stage portion only. See other post (you'll know which one) for more details.

[Sen]

I've been playing Touhou for almost 14 months now and I'm just starting to make my way up to Hard Mode :V

I spent about a month on Easy, then moved up to Normal, got my first 1cc about five months after I started (IN Magic Team; happened totally by accident btw, I was half-asleep and didn't realize I'd 1cc'd until the ending started playing :V). Then I started playing almost exclusively Extra Stages for some reason. That helped immensely with improvement. I can almost 1cc Hard at this point, but I'm not really in any rush to do it. I play the games because they're fun (except EoSD Extra, scorerun that shit).

I mean I would like to get to Lunatic eventually but it's not a huge thing for me. The only Lunatic I can come close to beating is PoFV. I'll get it one of these days...

[Sapz]

Been playing for about 11 months now... I don't think I really bothered with Easy much, I just went straight to Normal. Managed EoSD Lunatic after 8 months of playing. There was a massive gap between me being a Hard mode and Lunatic mode player, though... I kept putting it off since it seemed above my skill level

Spoiler:

kind of like what I'm doing with SA and UFO right now

. Pretty confident I could beat them with some practice, though... maybe I'll go and have a look at those games for the next section of DONUT'S EXTREME SPELL CARD CHALLENGE. :V

[LHCling]

Alternate Title: "The Do's and Don'ts of PCB S6 Lunatic"

*collapses*

[Formless God]

Two months.

I started with UFO on the day it was released (I've NEVER played any STGs before that). Took all morning to clear Easy (over 20 retries at Stage 6 ._.). Then I got stuck at Stage 6 Normal for two weeks before ragequitting to look for a save file :V

I came across this Extra cleared save. With 9 lives I could make it out of that stage (with no lives left at all)

Then I found the Trainer thingy on DS. I know cheating makes Touhou pointless, but I was desperate. 8~10 Stage 6 Hard and Lunatic runs per day, over 30 deaths each. Tried Lunatic mode of PCB too.

A few weeks later (one and a half month after my Easy Modo clear), I went back to try Normal, and pulled this off.  A UFO Normal 1cc right after that, then I 1cc'd Normal and cleared the harder modes of the other games as well. That was so much easier thanks to, uhh, practice.

Current statistics :
EoSD: Normal clear [X] ... Hard clear [X] ... Lunatic clear [X] ... Extra clear [ ]
PCB: Normal clear [X] ... Hard clear [X] ... Lunatic clear [X] ... Extra clear [ ] ... Phantasm clear [ ]
IN: Normal clear [X] ... Hard clear [X] ... Lunatic clear [ ] ... Extra clear [ ]
MoF: Normal clear [X] ... Hard clear [X] ... Lunatic clear [ ] ... Extra clear [X]
SA: Normal clear [X] ... Hard clear [ ] ... Lunatic clear [ ] ... Extra clear [X]
UFO: Normal clear [X] ... Hard clear [ ] ... Lunatic clear [ ] ... Extra clear [X]

Couldn't clear Extra for the older games because Maze of Hate and Mokou are BS, and clipdeaths happen way too often in PCB (friggin' delusional hitboxes).

Although ... with that little help (and a little curiosity), I managed to capture Boundary of Humans and Youkai (8~10 deaths on first try) and BoLaD. Best accomplishments so far :V

EDIT: Oh yeah, one more thing. I have this "fear of failure". Every time I pull off something seemingly impossible, I stay away from the stage or even the game after that. Bad ... isn't it ?

[Matsuri]

I've been playing Touhou for almost two years now, and I haven't got a Lunatic clear yet. That doesn't mean I'm not good at the games by any means, I just haven't put any effort into beating them yet. Instead of playing just Touhou games like many of you, I play a whole bunch of different shmups on a daily basis, all of which play differently, have different mechanics and movement physics, scoring systems, and methods of playing altogether. I'm sure if I played Touhou more than once every couple of days, I could 1CC a game on Lunatic difficulty in due time.

[Lybydose]

words

Wait, you can clear <insert game here> on Lunatic (or is it just a clear and no 1cc?) but not IN Extra?

IN Extra is the very first thing I 1cc'd on any game/difficulty.  Yes, I did this before 1cc'ing anything on Easy, and I was using Scarlet Team instead of Border Team (because my strategies for Ihakasa's Moon Curse and Fujiyama Volcano at the time absolutely required capturing them very quickly).

[Helix ⑨]

Wait, you can clear <insert game here> on Lunatic (or is it just a clear and no 1cc?) but not IN Extra?

IN Extra is the very first thing I 1cc'd on any game/difficulty.  Yes, I did this before 1cc'ing anything on Easy, and I was using Scarlet Team instead of Border Team (because my strategies for Ihakasa's Moon Curse and Fujiyama Volcano absolutely required capturing them very quickly).

You need to 1cc normal to unlock extra  cheater 

[Lybydose]

You need to 1cc normal to unlock extra  cheater 

You only need to 1cc Easy  :V (and you can use 7 lives, so I wouldn't count that as a 1cc)

I was using someone's Score.dat though.  I didn't even know you had to unlock the Extra stage.

[Formless God]

It's a clear. And only the older games because they have continues.

IN Extra seemed almost impossible for me. I fail at finding safe spots (and this stage happens to have a lot of them). Flying Phoenix, Fujiyama Volcano and Possessed by Phoenix's 2nd wave were completely impossible until I watched SP's Pacifist run and slapped myself in the face after that.

P.S.: You have to 1cc Normal to unlock Extra :V

[Lybydose]

Which safe spots?  The only ones I can think of off-hand are:

1.  Ancient History "e".  Found this myself after like 2 tries because I didn't move at all and OH WHAT I DIDN'T DIE?!
2.  Death fairy bottom left, border team only.
3.  Xu Fu's dimension trick, which is easy without it anyway.

[Formless God]

Hmmm... not exactly safe spots, but strategies to completely trivialize them.
- Ihakasa Moon Curse : Circle around Mokou (funny thing is ... I successfully captured this the normal way).
- Flying Phoenix : At first I tried to move -through- the pillar of shards/bullets the first phoenix creates, then dodge the rest. It doesn't always work (especially when the entire thing collapses). Turned out this can be misdirected.
- Flaw of Forgiving Shrine : The gap between the two waves of purple amulets coming at each other is safe.
- Xu Fu's Dimension : I DIDN'T KNOW I HAD TO TAP UP ONCE.
- Honest Man's Death : Fairly easy. That laser confused me at first though.
- Hollow Giant -Woo- : So I turned it into a Peerless Wind God and made things harder for myself.
- Phoenix's Tail : Small hitboxes, no-vert :V
- Fujiyama's Volcano : Complete BS ...
- Possessed by Phoenix : 2nd wave can be streamed horizontally. *feels like a baka*
- Hourai Doll : YOU MOVE IN A CIRCLE.

[Matsuri]

It's a clear. And only the older games because they have continues.


P.S.: You have to 1cc Normal to unlock Extra :V

...huh? All of the games have continues. What are you talking about?

Also, you can unlock the Extra stages in PCB and IN by simply clearing the game on any difficulty (including Easy) as long as you don't use continues. You can even cheat your way through it by starting with more lives than you should >_>

[Bananamatic]

4 months and 13 days for me, all Hard 1cc'd except for PC98 and UFO(because I play way too much PoFV lately)

I could probably 1cc EoSD Lunatic if I would stop dying with bombs all the time.....but it's not really worth trying with no room for error. I'm not that good :V

[Lybydose]

...huh? All of the games have continues. What are you talking about?

Also, you can unlock the Extra stages in PCB and IN by simply clearing the game on any difficulty (including Easy) as long as you don't use continues. You can even cheat your way through it by starting with more lives than you should >_>

UFO and SA have useless continues, where you restart the current stage with 2 lives remaining.  Generally if I'm continuing, it's because I died like 15 times on that stage after stocking up lives on the previous stages, so starting it again with 2 lives isn't very helpful. 

MoF, on the other hand, you can push X a lot and get more lives from all the faith/point items you collect.

Also, how is

Ihakasa Moon Curse : Circle around Mokou (funny thing is ... I successfully captured this the normal way).

easier?  Dodging near point blank knives with stupid hitboxes at the top of the screen isn't really my idea of a good time.  It took me a lot of attempts to time this out because I kept dying around the top.

[Formless God]

...huh? All of the games have continues. What are you talking about?

No ... you continue from where you lost all your lives (for example, in the middle of a fight). If you lose all your continues, you get kicked to the main menu.
From MoF onwards, losing all your lives doesn't throw you back to the main menu, but you restart from the beginning of the stage with default lives (which is harder IMO). At least you can save replays this way.

[Matsuri]

It's still continuing either way. You're just throwing pointless semantics into it

[Formless God]

Just found this in my replays folder. Was it a TAS clear ? The way he moved grazed was ... perfect.

[Helix ⑨]

Just captured green UFOs on my first time seeing it o.O Just saying.. without those 2 deaths in the stage itself and me not fucking up on danmaku chimeara I could already clear it :V

[theshirn]

Look, I've only been playing about a month less than bjw and Baity, but I've spent basically at least a couple hours on these games almost every freakin' day for months straight.  Demoralizing.

*Goes to go play more Lunatic modo*

[Jaimers]

Check the timer.
Closest call ever?  :V

[Sapz]

Seems I now find Fantasy Heaven pretty manageable rather than a crazy mess like I did when I was going for my original capture, so I thought I'd have some fun with it. Fantasy Heaven No Focus capture with Magic team. :V
Finally, that took ages... most IN spellcards become way more difficult when you have no homing and practically no spread. Anywho, 222/222 IN spellcards captured with both Border and Magic team. Time for a break from DONUT'S EXTREME SPELLCARD CHALLENGE.

[ebarrett]

Finally, that took ages... most IN spellcards become way more difficult when you have no homing and practically no spread.

Youmu says "wrong"

[Garlyle]

It took four hours of continuing to get my first UFO Hard Clear

I... am gonna need about a 15-hour nap to recover from that

[Sapz]

Youmu says "wrong"

Tell that to Life Spring Infinity, Tree-Ocean of Hourai, Total Purification... actually, quite a lot of stuff. Also, Youmu can aim to the side; Magic team can't do that, plus if you want to actually do damage you need to keep focusing and unfocusing so your movement is pretty messed up, too. :V

[nintendonut888]

Storytime again? Well, I played my first Touhou game at the very end of November 2007. Within a week of getting EoSD I 1cc'd it on normal and after 14 days of straight playing beat PCB extra in my first month. Then due to a number of factors such as my former computer's lag making the games really difficult to a lack of self-confidence to perhaps feeling like I was doing nothing because I was playing on max lives, it took me until March to beat my first hard and despite beating stuff like LLS lunatic on max lives, I pretty much got no better for a period of five months. Then October of that year, my computer mysteriously started to perform better, and I started playing with default lives. The first of November I 1cc'd LLS lunatic on default lives and soon after that I had a massive spike in skill, 1ccing MS, EoSD, PCB, and IN in a one month period. I've been gradually working at my skills ever since, and judge for yourself how far I've come in nearly two years. :V