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Clarste posted:There's really nothing in WaHH that would have led them to what they chose. Trust me, I'm an expert. Touhou fandom making up character qualities out of whole cloth? Say it ain't so.
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Sep 24, 2016 17:11
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 18:53 |
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You know, I hope Yukari and Yuyuko keep their current level distance from the party. Fighting a crazy out of level boss now and again seems like a neat gimmick.
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Sep 25, 2016 13:16
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Sweet, LoT 2 is one of my favourite fangames. I like all the customization and variety available, the overall challenge (especially on Hard mode), and compared to the previous game's dialogue, it's pretty amusing and doesn't spend nearly as much time doing 4th wall humor (despite all of said humor we've seen so far). Komachi's my favorite tank but she definitely loses effectiveness once stuff like fixed damage comes into play. But leveraging her huge health pool with elemental resistances is really fun. And Narrow Confines of Avicci is probably one of the best debuffs I've abused in RPGs. I'd love to understand how Edokko God of Death's formula works though. When you get a near party wipe it can produce some really crazy numbers. Hope you don't mind asking but is using Imgur safe as far as images being deleted goes? I've seen an image expire already last page, it's the one past this line: "Heading back into the dungeon, we head to the red point of interest down and to the right." Most people here use LPix but I understand if you've got a comfortable method working for you.
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Sep 26, 2016 00:36
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I had some problems registering with LPix the other day, though trying it again this morning it seems to work. I think the offending image in question was one that was accidentally deleted while I was organizing pictures - it's been edited out for now. The rest should be in no danger of expiring anytime soon, but I'll port them over when I have spare time before it becomes an issue.
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Sep 26, 2016 01:22
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  .......  ......Eh?  We're in the sea!? Wait, what's going on here!?  We're gonna drown! Need.... air...!! ...Wait, I can breathe? Ah, huh. We CAN breathe. Geez, that was a scare. That makes things even crazier. We can breathe, yet it still feels like we're underwater. It may be more accurate to say that the atmosphere feels very stiff... It's like we can "swim" through the air. But there's a whole lot of fishes.... "swimming"... around here. So there's a sea within this Great "Tree"...? Completely incomprehensible... I don't even know whether to call this a sea, or maybe we're just submerged somewhere. Not like this tree wasn't crazy from the start though. You have a point there. That may have been true from the very beginning, but it's only apparent when you actually experience it yourself like we are now. How does this even work? This tree just keeps outdoing itself in breaking the laws of sanity. A whole buncha strange monsters and weird items all mixed up inside, people randomly trying to kill us for no good reason as we pass by... Ehhh, ahaha... I know, that was my bad. I apologized for it already, yeah? Can't we forgive and forget? Huh? ...Ahh, yeah, I suppose you qualify for that last bit too. Hm? You didn't mean me? Then who were you talking about? ......Yes, quite the mystery...... ???Welcome to the aquatic levels of the Great Tree. As you might expect, with a new level theme comes a whole host of fish-themed enemies. The dungeon also comes with a foggy water overlay that is promptly turned off – it lags the game and makes things hard to see.  Exploring around the staircase, we pick up a nice sub-equip. Ultrafast Granite Keystone – Just place it, and it will emit a special field that totally draws out the potential of anything and makes it much more awesome and stuff. It involves so much breakthrough technology that everything about it is a mystery. Sub-Equip, All stats +12%, ACC and EVA +8, All Resistances +12 Equipment is getting a lot more interesting than +12/24/36% to one stat now, and we’ll be doing a lot more playing around with equipment sets as we progress to find good builds for our party.  The first of our new enemies on this floor. Coral Gems are tanky enemies with very high defense, while Blue Shades are relatively more fragile, but with high Mind. Like most enemies in this tier, they attack with Cold attacks and have extremely high Cold affinity, but are weak to Nature.  Narrow Confines of Avici in action. With its high chance of debuffing, status inflicting and instadeath, there’s rarely a better move for Komachi to cast. Look elsewhere for moves that actually do significant damage, though.  This staircase leads to an otherwise inaccessible section of 3F. For now, it remains that way until we find the blue orb on this floor to turn this gate off.  From this innocuous spot we pick up four Tomes of Insight – Attack, Defense, Magic and Mind. Tomes of Insight are consumables that can be used at the Hakurei Shrine, and teach the relevant stat-boosting skill to whatever character they’re used on if they don’t have it.  Electric Oarfish are fast and annoyingly evasive enemies which like to hit our party with single or all-target paralyzing attacks. Here’s where Momiji’s accuracy-raising skill comes in handy – we can hit it fairly reliably as long as she’s on the frontline.  Oozes are big slimy jerks with too much HP for their own good. Their attacks are slow but powerful, and they’re especially fond of launching an all-target cold attack with a high chance to inflict Heavy, Poison and Def/Mind debuffs.  We’ll have to take quite the detour to reach that particular boss fight. The later floors are no less large and sprawling than the earlier ones.  Sometimes the game throws us a bone, though. Without this tunnel, we’d have to take a very long walk around to reach the west side of the map.  Heading for the boss, we run into another fishy friend.  Reimu, and Marisa. Hm? Who's that?  Oh, you're that oarfish. Eldest Daughter? ...Oh, you mean Tenshi? Yeah, she was a huge pain during the shrine incident.  If I may ask, have you happened to come across Eld... I mean, Lady Tenshi in your exploration? Nope, haven't seen her. ...Did she come here? She was no longer in Heaven, so I suspect this is where she went... At the rate that this Great Tree is growing, it will not be long before it reaches Heaven. Tenshi was supposed to stay in Heaven to attend a meeting of celestials to decide what to do about this situation, but... If that attention-seeker really did come here, she can't be up to any good. I believe so as well... Along with all the matters during the shrine incident, do allow me to apologize in advance for any troublesome matters that she will be inciting. That's the strangest apology I've ever heard... Besides, you're here to prevent her from causing trouble, right? I do hope I can... If you happen to see Tenshi, do you mind informing me as well? And if possible, subdue her too. Ehh... If we do meet Tenshi, we'll try. Though don't expect too much. Your agreement alone is plenty. I will be continuing my search for Eldest Daughter meanwhile. Till we meet again. ...Tenshi's definitely up to something annoying. Agreed.   (As if you two can talk...) Aquamarine Sword Devils start with a boost to their ATB and will almost certainly get a turn before any of our party members. They will either give themselves an ATK buff, or a DEF/MND buff. If they get an Attack buff off, they become the highest priority target – boosted attacks really hurt. With a Def/Mind buff, they become annoyingly tanky, but aren’t quite as high priority a target, so just take them out as per usual. Eyes that Perceive Reality and Dark Side of the Moon are good anti-sword devil skills.  Whoa, there's some huge and disgusting bug here. It certainly looks extremely colorful. I've not seen anything like it around here, big or small... Could this bug be one of those poisonous bugs that stung the bug youkai back at 3F? Ahhh, hmm. Maybe. It does look like what the bug youkai described. You got a description from her? Shoulda told us that first. All right then, let's do this. The Great Tree’s Paralysing Wasp is the bigger brother of the wasp we fought on the last floor. His moves are pretty much the same – strong single target and occasional all target Wind and Nature attacks, but this time they inflict paralysis instead of poison. It has higher Mind than its brother but lower defense, and is weak to Fire and Physical.  We begin by setting up for a stall war with the Wasp. Reimu tosses out Great Hakurei Barrier, while Komachi and Kasen hit the wasp with their debuffing/status moves. Keine is paralyzed and won’t be of use for a while, so I swap her out for Nitori.  After a couple of rounds, we’ve settled into a good rhythm. Kasen, Komachi and Nitori stay on the front line to tank, while the last slot switches between Chen for offense and Reimu/Minoriko for healing. The tanks alternate between Form Changing, Concentrating and Narrow Confines (in Komachi’s case) or casting their self-buff (in Kasen and Nitori’s case).  Here’s that high Mind in action – Master Spark does significantly less damage than Phoenix Spread Wings does. Master Spark isn’t quite the boss-killer it was on earlier floors.  Portable Versatile Machine has a very low delay, and Nitori can keep her stats buffed to almost 100% at this point as long as she keeps casting it whenever she’s able. One advantage of the paralyzing wasp is that unlike the poison wasp, getting hit with paralysis doesn’t inhibit our tanking capabilities in any way. While paralyzed, the ATB does not fill until paralysis runs out. This means that turns aren’t passing for that character, which in turn means that buffs/debuffs don’t run out. Our current party is now buffed to the point where the wasp does fairly negligible damage – as long as we don’t get overconfident and keep up with the occasional heal, we’re pretty much bound to win the battle, if only through sheer attrition.  Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that. This is a reminder not to underestimate Momiji – she still has higher Attack than anyone else in our party, second only to buffed Chen. With her natural bulk, she’s not quite as fragile as the latter, and can do more consistent damage over a long period of time.  ...*sigh* I'm glad the poison gland from this one is easily retrievable once the stinger's removed... Obtained Special Item “Gland of Super Neurotoxin”! Good job. Things are going well. Okay, let's keep it up. Hold it. We aren't finished here. We've got all the poison glands collected here. But we haven't thought of how we're gonna be makin' that medicine next. Ahh... Yeah, now I remember. We were saving that for later. None of us are skilled enough to make it, so we have to ask someone else... but I can't think of any humans who are well versed enough in the medicinal sciences to create an antidote from the poison itself. So we need someone who's really good with medicines... Hmm, where can we find someone like that...?2F, that’s where.   My, you're still here? Just to make myself clear, I'm not joining your group. Heh heh heh, that's not why we're here today. ? Is that really something to be proud of, Marisa? Eirin, can you help us take a long at these poison glands? We retrieved them from some weird bugs. Poison glands? ...My, this poison is quite the specimen. We're lookin' for an antidote that can treat this poison. You're Gensokyo's main resource when it comes to medicines, can ya do something 'bout it? With an actual sample of the poison, I should definitely be able to make an antidote from it... But it would take some time, and time is not something I have to spare while I'm searching for the princess. Ehhh, can't you do it for us? We'll help to search for Kaguya too in return. Hmm... That does sound like an attractive offer... And turning down a request as a doctor does leave a bad aftertaste... Very well. Wait there for a moment. Cool! Wouldn't have expected anything less from a model doctor! … Are you done, Eirin? Yes. Here you go, take it with you. Obtained Special Item “Great Tree Insect Antidote”! Yes! This will be a real help, thanks! Glad to hear that. I'm looking forward to news about the princess as well. Meanwhile, I'll continue my search upwards. Thanks a bunch~. Now to deliver this medicine to Wriggle. That took more time than I thought. Oh well, let's get a move on.  ... Now then, we were finally able prepare the antidote for Wriggle. We should administer it as quick as possible. Yes, let's do it at once. Through the nose. ”Great Tree Insect Antidote” administered to Wriggle. ... ... ......Uh...... Uh? ...Waaaah! I can finally move, yaay!! Woah, that was surprising. Aaah, I'm really happy~... For a while there, I didn't know what was going to happen to me... Well bug youkai, you should be fine now if you're able to move around like this. You, don't call me that! That's not what I am! Everyone else is a bug youkai! I'm a "Firefly" youkai! And why did you just leave me here alone! Getting the antidote was important, but you should've least moved me somewhere safe first! Waaaaaahh! (...Now that she mentions it, that's true.) Don't sweat the small stuff. In the end, we got you the antidote, you're up and lively, and all's right with the world. And thus, you're coming along with us to explore the tree till we're done with it. *sniff* That's not faaaaaaair...Wriggle Nightbug joined the party! Wriggle is a tanky attacker whose specialty is inflicting Poison, with single and all-target nature attacks capable of inflicting it.  With Wriggle in our team, we now have three members of Team 9 in our party. After some reinvestment of skill points, all of them have two ranks of the Team 9 skill, which gives them a 32% passive buff to all their stats with a lineup like this. Komachi babysits the team for now – we still need a bit more bulk on this frontline.  The buff from Team 9 is immediately obvious – where before enemies were often outspeeding us, now we’re outspeeding them. Unfortunately, Cirno can’t contribute much to battles beyond moral support – with the exception of the occasional Shadow Cat, all the enemies here have such high Cold affinity that her attacks just bounce off, and the battles don’t last long enough for the speed debuff to really come into play. Where Cirno falters, her teammates thrive – a cast or two of Rumia and Wriggle’s all-target attacks is sufficient to take out most enemies.  We find another one of those rod things. ...Hm. What now, Marisa? It's nothing. It's certainly something. You just picked up something, didn't you? That again? You really pick up everything you find! I don't even feel like commenting on it anymore... I'm sure you'll get tired of it sooner or later too. Easy for you to say. Anything she can't fit in her house gets dragged over to my shrine! What, ain't there a legend where if you treat your trash real well, it'll pay you back someday? ...Was there a legend like that? I'm not that knowledgeable about legends... But nothing particularly comes to mind after hearing that. .........It really may exist. I mean, yeah, it definitely does exist. You just made that up, didn't you...Obtained Special Item “Mysterious Scrap of Iron – 3”! These things are starting to clutter up our inventory. Thankfully, the payoff to this event chain will be coming very soon.  Like the staircase near the start, this one is also blocked by a blue gate. Finding the blue orb should clear the path to both. In the event below the staircase, we run into a somewhat downcast bird.  *siiiigh*... Ah, Aya again? What's wrong? Oh my, if it isn't my dear Aya. Weren't you partaking in your favorite activity of collecting information for your newspaper while being haughty to us? Ayaya, that's quite the grudge you're holding... ...I've given up on outpacing the other tengu and getting the news out the fastest. Their headstart of a few days was a huge hurdle, and the monsters are getting strong enough to make progress a little difficult... Huh, izzat so? Then you might as well come with us. We're gonna keep going further in, though we're in no rush. Ehh... (Hm... Wait.) (The other tengus would surely reach a point where the monsters become too strong for them to progress any further as well...) (That would make going with Reimu's group the best plan... They're definitely a strong bunch, and if they can assemble this many people, they might be able to reach the very top...) Heeeey, you listenin'? Say something. (...This should do.) *sigh* Goodness me, since you're so insistent, I suppose I could deign to accompany you. But doing so would mean giving up on my newspaper. Don't I deserve something in return? My inclination to agree isn't helped by the way you put it... But whatever. What do you want from us? Ohh, no worries, it is nothing too annoying. I simply want to put all the information you've collected thus far into my newspaper. Let's see, to fill up the amount of space I have reserved for that section... Information of about 30 species of monsters should do it. Information on... 30 species of monsters? Hrm, we've beat up a whole buncha monsters, but I don't remember how many different species of 'em there were. Keine, you were compiling information on the monsters, right? How many species of them have we defeated so far? Hold on, let me check… About 25 or so. Just a little bit more to 30. Come back here once you’ve gathered information on 30 different species of monsters. I’ll be resting here meanwhile.We actually have 29 entries in our bestiary at the moment. We can make up that last one fairly easily in a couple of ways.  Like this one. The Kedama Daddy is a rare monster found on 3F, around the area where the Reisen event was. At our current level, it’s no more a threat than the regular kedamas were. It has a higher drop rate of the kedama-related drops than its cousins. Back to Aya… Hey, Aya! Here's the information on 30 different species of monsters, as promised! Ayayaya, many thanks. If I combine your information with what I've already collected, it should make for a decent article indeed. Don't forget your end of the promise. You're coming with us. Ah well, a promise is a promise. No matter how much I dislike it, I shall join your group for now. (As if I dislike it, hah. These tight paths full of bends and curves make a tengu's speed irrelevant. No tengu, including myself, can get any further alone.) (Not only did I manage to catch an easy ride all the way to the top, but I got a whole bunch of enemy information from them on top of it. This is truly my lucky day!) (...That smug grin on her face... She's definitely manipulating things to her advantage.) (Oh well, all this monster information is just an extra to our main goal, and certainly worth an extra party member. I'll just keep quiet and let the tengu think what she wants...) By the way, you did mention that you were pursuing another story before you came here, which is why the other tengu had a head start. I'm curious, what kind of story was that? I can't imagine what else could take priority over this incident. Ah, yes. My sources informed me that a celestial was behaving quite oddly. I was collecting information on that. I went with my intuition and decided to look for that celestial and leave the Great Tree for later... But I never did find that celestial, and that lead ended without anything else interesting occurring. *sigh* Maybe my reporter's intuition is beginning to grow weak... A celestial, huh? It's gotta be Tenshi then. You're only saying that because Tenshi's the only celestial you know. She's definitely one to dive right in to any kind of uproar though... It won't be surprising if she's already here. And if so, she's definitely going to annoy us at some point. Yeah. In Tenshi's case, odd behavior is pretty much her normal behaviour. You are familiar with a celestial? Your social network truly knows no bounds... Anyway, let's leave that aside. I'll be in you care from now on, let's work well together.Aya Shameimaru joined the party! Aya is a speedy attacker who can boost her own speed and buff the party’s speed with her wind attacks. More on this later.  We continue our exploration. Most of the equipment on this floor is, as you’d expect, stuff that give us bonus Cold affinity. In this one, however, we find a fancy main equip. Sword of Singing Delusion – A weapon that has a chance to inflict ‘Delusion’ when attacking. It has a really awesome name. Main Equip, adds ‘Silence’ effect to all attacks. There’s a character we’ll be getting fairly soon who would benefit from this. For now we’ll give it to one of the tanks, or Kogasa/Marisa, who can pierce Silence resistance with Sheer Force. Silence isn’t as crippling on enemies as it is on our party, only inflicting a Mag/Mind debuff on them, but every little helps.  Exploring further out into the sword’s direction, we run into another party.  Ah. Ah.  Short time no see. It's no surprise to see that you've made it here with no problems. Yep, it's us after all. Looks like things are going well for you too, despite your numbers. Naturally. Who do you think we are? Right, Meiling?  ......Yes... Though your gatekeeper's looking increasingly haggard... I suppose it is quite some work carrying the tea set for our tea party, while serving as our shield against the fodder around here. She won't be making a dent in the enemies soon, so she needs to be able to protect us at least. Meiling, you can still go on, mm? .........Yes, easily... So she says, with tears formin' at her eyes. That's the first time I've heard "easily" said sounding so uneasy. It's about time for us to continue our picnic. How fun picnics are, Sakuya! Indeed, picnics with Milady are truly enjoyable. Don't you think so too, Meiling? ......Yes... Till we meet again. ...When do you think Meiling's gonna die? She'll do well to last 2 more floors. Wanna bet on it? ...Don't bet on such morbid things. Exploring the top of the map, we find the blue orb, conveniently located past this relay point. We won’t be hitting it just yet, however. It’s not clear in this screenshot, but the orb is blocked off by a boss with a challenge level of 17. We’re definitely going to want every last bit of this floor explored before we take on this boss – we need every advantage we can get. Heading straight west from the relay, we come across a boss with a much more reasonable level.  Reimu, over here. That thing's here again. What thing? ...Ah.  Hmm? That voice... Marisa? Huh? Alice? That was your voice just now, right, Alice? Ehh, where are you? She's not anywhere around here, Marisa. Alice's voice is coming from the doll. Seriously? Alice, what's this about? Ah, I've been learning how to control dolls without using strings recently. This girl's an example. I've attached a voice function to her as well. I see. So, Marisa. You mentioned that the doll you "destroyed" is back again, correct? Wanna hear it again? This doll's the same as the one we destroyed. You deserve praise for your fearlessness, if nothing else. This girl is the second of my stringless remote-controlled dolls. From what I could gather, the first one which was at the 2nd floor of this tree was surrounded and destroyed by a certain bunch of people... ...Which based on what I just heard, would be your group. Ahhh, yeah, there was something like that. That doll back then couldn't speak, and it was drawin' it's weapon at us. If you didn't want us to destroy it, you shoulda let it talk and keep its weapon unsheathed like now. The first girl is incomplete in many parts. She didn't have any voice or hearing functionalities, and her optic abilities were fairly weak. So all it could tell me was that she was surrounded by a large mob that she didn't know anything about. The only things in this tree that would surround others are the monsters, right? That's why I had her ready her weapon. So in short, it's all your fault. As if. You should've been able to tell she was one of my dolls from a single glance. Why didn't you take her under your care then? Now that's crazy talk. We don't even know if you're on our side right now. For all we know, it could've stabbed us the moment we tried to pick it up. It's weapon was even ready to do just that. You don't think I'm on your side? Ah-ah, you can say that after all the help I've given you during your youkai exterminaion excursions? You're starting to tick me off. This girl's pretty strong for a doll, perhaps a little pain will make you rethink your opinion. You think some doll is gonna hold us back? Hah, bring it on. This won't even take a second. Oh, you've gone too far now! I'm not going to let you off so easily anymore! ...We don't have a place in this conversation, do we... Thanks to these two magicians and their poor communication skills, we're going to get wrapped up in pointless battles again... Alice’s Upgraded Remote D-  Ow. Alice’s Upgraded Remote Doll is similar to her first – ludicrous speed, punishing attacks and not much else. However, unlike its cousin it uses all-party attacks instead of single-target, which is where the problem lies. The doll is almost certainly guaranteed to get two attacks before any of our party members even get a turn, and will most likely wipe out any non-tank on our frontline. The party never really recovered from that opening move, and from there the battle went rapidly downhill. If we wipe out to a boss, we have a choice between resetting our party to the state it was in at the start of the battle and immediately retrying the fight, or retreating back to the Human Village. We take the latter option – without a solid plan in mind, our retry attempt wouldn’t go any better than our first one.  Let’s put our new trump card into play. With two ranks invested in the ‘Gensokyo’s Fastest Lessons’ skill, Aya starts every battle with an ATB of 20000 – giving her a guaranteed first strike against any enemy.  Divine Grandson’s Advent raises one ally’s ATB to 10000, effectively allowing Aya to pass her turns to other party members with a fairly costly spellcard. Aya passes her first strike to Reimu, allowing her to get a cast of Great Hakurei Barrier up before the doll acts.  With Great Hakurei Barrier up, the impact of the doll’s opening move is blunted, and Keine follows it up with her own defense buff. Komachi fishes for debuffs and status ailments with Narrow Confines, but the doll proves remarkably resistant. Looking it up, the doll has 100 affinity to all elements, taking neutral damage from any attack, and 50 in all resistances – not immune to any particular status/debuff, but not especially susceptible to them either. Side note: unlike our party members, enemies have different debuff resistances for every stat. Some enemies are vulnerable to attack debuffs but not defense, etc. Narrow Confines is only debuffing two stats here as each possible stat debuff is rolled against their respective resistance, and only these two got through.  As with previous fights, we switch Chen in and out of battle to chip away at the doll’s health with Instant Attack. The doll’s ludicrous speed means that Chen can’t avoid every attack – the best she can do is avoid every other one. Unlike the paralyzing wasp, there’s no winning a war of attrition with this doll – we need to throw everything we have at it as fast as we can before it wears us down.  The fight continues like that for a while. Komachi continues to alternate between Narrow Confines and concentrating, Reimu and Keine keep up their buffs and bring out reserve members with Form Change. Chen falls shortly, so Momiji is brought in as our main offense instead.  Keine and Komachi soon fall, and Reimu brings Wriggle out. The party is in bad shape, but the doll is on its last legs as well. As a bonus, all those deaths have powered Main Character: Reimu up to the point where she can pretty much shrug off the doll’s average attack. Moving her to the tank slot would probably be pointless – the doll likes all-target attacks too much.  We finally land a status ailment on the doll. Poison can really debilitate tanky bosses over long fights, and it may have been a good idea to begin with Wriggle on the frontline to start stacking poison off the bat. Luckily, there’s no need to put that particular theory to the test – the doll falls shortly after that.  THAT was supposed to be strong? Hah, try to say that again!I am fully convinced that Marisa was not actually paying attention. She DID say that it was strong for a doll... They're quite the pain when there's several of them with Alice at their side controlling them, but alone, they're nothing much. Geez, that stupid shut-in magician! She points weapons at people, makes excuses and doesn't even say sorry! (If Marisa was less aggressive in her attitude, I'd imagine the chance of an apology from the other side would be considerably higher...) (...Just let it slide, things will get annoying if you actually say it.)
Inadequately fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 17:41
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Let’s review our new party members. Wriggle Nightbug A Bug of Light Wriggling in the Dark Theme: Stirring an Autumn Moon ~ Mooned Insect First appeared as the stage 1 boss in the eighth Touhou game, Imperishable Night. Since then, has made the occasional background cameo in other games and side-works. Is a semi-popular character in fandom due to being a part of Team 9. Wriggle is an exceptionally long-lived firefly who turned into a youkai. Fireflies are one of the more common insect youkai, as humans are less likely to kill them. Being an insect, she is weak to fire, cold and insecticide. She is generally friendly to humans, and occasionally comes up with a scheme to promote human-insect relationships, but due to the natural antipathy of humans and her short attention span, such schemes usually fail. Other than that, she has no real goals in life other than buzzing around and living life aimlessly – though no doubt the same could be said of many other cast members. In combat, Wriggle uses her insect manipulation powers to protect herself. She can command and control almost any type of insect (though it has to be weaker than her), and her spellcards are actually composed of large insect swarms. Often carries around harvest mites as a weapon of last resort – exceptionally venomous and incredibly small insects capable of felling a human in a single bite.  Wriggle has mostly average stats, with higher than average Defense and Mind. She has exceptional resistances, being practically immune to poison and paralysis (that must have been some antidote) and above-average resistance to all other status effects. Being a bug, she has high Nature affinity, but is weak to Fire and Cold. Has very high TP, making her good for exploration. Skills Defense Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Defense. Mind Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Mind. Evasion Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Evasion. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Wriggle’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Wriggle’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. Team 9 – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Wriggle is in the frontline, all her stats are increased by (8*S.Lvl)% per member of Team 9 alongside her in the frontline, herself excluded. Inhale Poison – Max level 2, cost per level 5. All allies on frontline take reduced poison damage. If an ally is poisoned, Wriggle recovers (12*S.Lvl)% of her max HP whenever she takes a turn. Kodoku Queen – Max level 1, cost per level 10. Whenever an ally or enemy is poisoned, Wriggle’s stats increase proportional to the strength of the poison effect. Toxic Vaccine – Max level 2, cost per level 5. If Wriggle is on the front line, the probability of enemy attacks inflicting Poison on any party member is reduced by (20*S.Lvl)%, the damage allies take from Poison is reduced by (20*S.Lvl), and the stat reduction effect from Poison is nullified. Insect’s Commander – Max level 2, cost per level 5. All damage against Insect enemies is increased when Wriggle is on the frontline. If another party member knows a similar skill, the damage increase does not stack. Poison Touch – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Wriggle is hit by a Physical attack, she has a (35*S.Lvl)% chance to inflict Poison and Paralysis on the attacker. Spellcards Comet on Earth – Nature element, single target, 3 MP, sets ATB to 6000. 150% ATK – 50% DEF, has a (97 + (3*S.Lvl))% chance to inflict a strong Poison effect. Firefly Phenomenon – Nature element, all-target, 4 MP, sets ATB to 4800. 210% ATK – 82% DEF, has a (85 + (3*S.Lvl))% chance to inflict Poison. Nightbug Tornado – Nature element, all-target, 6 MP, sets ATB to 3600. 182% ATK – 67.5% DEF, damage increases if enemy is poisoned. Wriggle is, pretty much by default, the tank of Team 9. That’s not to say she’s bad at it – her defenses are respectable, more so when boosted by the Team 9 skill, and her resistances are excellent. Spellcard-wise, her raw damage potential isn’t really a major factor – most of her offensive capability is in stacking poison on tanky enemies and slowly debilitating them. Her skills are a bit of a mixed bag – most of them are reactive rather than proactive, and have no bearing on battles where enemies don’t poison your party. There’s another feature coming up soon that will solve a lot of problems for Wriggle.  Aya Shameimaru Traditional Reporter of Fantasy Theme: Wind God Girl First appeared as one of the playable characters in the ninth Touhou game, Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Reappeared as the stage 4 boss in the tenth Touhou game, Mountain of Faith. The main character of two side games, Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler, and the (in-universe) writer of one of the side works, Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. Aya is a high-ranking crow tengu who lives on Youkai Mountain. While she follows the orders of superior tengu, most of the time she’s left alone. In her free time, she writes, publishes and distributes the Bunbunmaru Newspaper, a relatively popular tabloid in which she writes about anything that takes her fancy. She doesn’t seem to make much of a profit from this, and most likely does it because she enjoys it. Can often be found roaming Gensokyo looking for willing interviewees or interesting events to photograph and write about, and is not above instigating interesting incidents of her own when nothing turns up. In combat, she uses her wind magic and unmatched speed to battle opponents. While all tengu possess some manner of wind magic and are naturally quick, Aya is exceptionally skilled even among the tengu. However, she dislikes fighting at full power, instead preferring to goad enemies into flashy displays that she can photograph. Rarely ever needs to fight seriously – her incredible speed means she can escape from practically any situation before she’s ever in serious danger.  Aya has average to low stats in everything except Speed and Evasion, and is the fastest character in our party by a large margin. Her resistances are below average, and she has no resistance to Shock or debuffs. She has high Wind and Nature affinity, but is weak to the ‘magical’ elements. Skills HP Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases max HP. Attack Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Attack. Evasion Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Evasion. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Aya’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Aya’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. Quickwitted – Max level 1, cost per level 7. When Aya receives a Speed debuff, her speed is calculated as though it were a buff of equivalent magnitude. Gensokyo’s Fastest Lessons – Max level 2, cost per level 5. If Aya starts the battle on the frontline, she has a (50*S.Lvl)% chance to start with an ATB of 20000, giving her a free turn before anyone else. Tengu’s Wind – Max level 2, cost per level 6. Whenever Aya takes a turn, all other party members on the frontline gain a (4*S.Lvl)% Speed buff. Ability to Manipulate Wind – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Aya is on the frontline, all other party members on the frontline take reduced damage from Wind attacks. Extra Steps – Max level 1, cost per level 12. If Aya kills an enemy with a spellcard or normal attack, she immediately gets a free turn. Spellcards Wind God’s Fan – Wind element, one enemy row, 2 MP, sets ATB to 5400. 121% ATK – 55% DEF, Accuracy +12 Peerless Wind God – Wind element, single-target, 4 MP, sets ATB to 6600. 255% ATK – 75% DEF, gives Aya a 20% Speed buff when used. Sarutahiko’s Guidance – Wind element, one ally, 3 MP, sets ATB to 7500. Gives ally a (37 + (3*S.Lvl))% Speed buff. Divine Grandson’s Advent – Wind element, one ally, 5 MP, sets ATB to 4000. Instantly fills target ally’s ATB. Aya is all about speed, boosting her own speed and the party’s speed with every move. She’s a pretty flimsy character, but her high evasion potentially allows her to dodge-tank a couple of hits. Gensokyo’s Fastest Lessons gives her a guaranteed first strike against anything, and we’ve seen how effective that combo can be earlier. Quickwitted helps mitigate her nonexistent debuff resistance somewhat, and with Tengu’s Wind, she boosts the party’s speed simply by virtue of being present. Extra Steps can be useful, but her low Attack means she won’t often get much use out of it. Spellcard-wise, Peerless Wind God can boost her own speed while still doing average damage, and the speed buff from Sarutahiko’s Guidance is always appreciated. Her most notable skill is undoubtedly Divine Grandson’s Advent, which can effectively pass one of Aya’s (very many) turns to another character. It’s a powerful tool, but fairly expensive, considering her small MP pool and limited MP recovery. Let’s take a look at some of the enemies we’ve been fighting.  A legendary soldier in the 60’s, ‘Kedama Daddy’ became disillusioned with the system and disappeared off the grid to build an army of his own. Several attempts were made at continuing his legacy, culminating in the ‘Les Kedamas Terribles’ project and the creation of Kedama and Small Kedama. Rumours of other kedamas on the loose remain unsubstantiated.  A speedy enemy who attacks with Cold and Spirit attacks. Has fairly high Mind.  Big annoying blobs with a ton of HP. Slow but powerful, and can hit the party with an all-target move that inflicts Heavy, Poison and Def/Mind debuffs.  A tanky enemy with exceptionally high defense.  A fast, evasive enemy that can paralyze the party. Functionally immune to Wind attacks and Paralysis.  Very fast enemy who will spend their first turn either giving themselves a Def/Mind buff and turning into a tank, or giving themselves an Attack buff and turning into an offensive juggernaut.  The cousin of the Poisonous Wasp. Throws around single and all-target Nature and Wind attacks that cause paralysis.  An exceptionally fast and sturdy doll that hits the party with powerful all-target attacks. Next time, 
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Sep 27, 2016 17:44
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Inadequately posted:
Our heroines  Inadequately posted:She has exceptional resistances, being practically immune to poison and paralysis (that must have been some antidote) and above-average resistance to all other status effects. To be fair, Eirin is said to be older than humanity, and IIRC is a genius even among the Lunarians (for the uninitiated, Lunarians are kind of Touhou's version of ancient Atlanteans). EDIT: Forgot to ask- is it worth levelling your characters up to max, or should I be a few levels behind when it comes to bosses? And if so, how behind should I be? CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 19:03
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If you want the challenge rewards/are on hard mode, all bosses have a challenge level that displays on their boss icon. Fighting the boss with an average party level of the challenge level or below gets you the best rewards. For general dungeon exploration and fighting FOEs, go ahead and level up everyone to max. Also dear god, the next boss is a slog and a half. I'm half-considering including every screenshot of every move I made just so the audience gets the sensation of what fighting it was like.
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Sep 27, 2016 20:07
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Inadequately posted:If you want the challenge rewards/are on hard mode, all bosses have a challenge level that displays on their boss icon. Fighting the boss with an average party level of the challenge level or below gets you the best rewards. For general dungeon exploration and fighting FOEs, go ahead and level up everyone to max. Ah, right then. So there isn't any general rule to how low I have to be below a boss to get the good stuff? Like say , "You need to be [Boss Level]-2" or "half the boss's level" or whatever? Just lower? 'Cos if so this game's just got a lot easier for me 
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Sep 27, 2016 21:20
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Yeah, the game takes off the kiddy clothes starting from here. No more easy 1HKO encounters, and boss gimmicks abound. Wriggle might be the most I have ever made use of Poison in a JRPG. Actually seeing the enemy's HP bar deplete faster and faster while your stats keep getting stronger is a really cool feeling. And when Toxicologist is unlocked... oh boy. Meanwhile, Aya's Peerless Wind God is just so much fun to use. It's why I put a lot of work investing into her attack stats; it might be a bit misguided, but it really helps wear down bosses. Sadly between last game and this one, she lost her AoE attack, which I'd often make use of to wipe encounters before anyone ever gets a turn. Definitely more of a switcher/support here.
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Sep 27, 2016 21:24
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I'm going to place a guess that Aya is at least in the top five for "Highest natural Speed and Evasion".
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Sep 27, 2016 23:56
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She's #1 in both, iirc. I found her a very powerful support character, but her damage falls as you get higher level and everyone gets more specialized.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:10
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Extra-quick update since the last one (and this one) were shorter than usual. Features  thread participation . With the doll down, we head back to the village to rest up, and then back into 4F. Exploring the area northeast of Aya, we find this event.  Oh. You scared me. You don't look scared at all though. In that case, who would actually be scared by someone who says ta-dah? True enough. This cat sounds like conversing with her alone would be tiring... Reimu, Marisa, another acquaintance of yours, I take it? An acquaintance... yeah, you could put it that way. This is Orin, she manages the vengeful spirits at the Hell of Blazing Fires in the Underworld. She's a youkai, more or less. Eheheh, nice to meet you! By the way, what are you doing here, sis? Ehh, lots of reasons. For the time being, you could say we're investigating and resolving this Great Tree incident.. Really! Yikes, that sounds really tough. And what would you be doing here? If you're here, I take it that Satori is here as well? Excellent deduction! Lady Satori is indeed here... But she's feeling a little bad right now. According to her, there's some youkai around here who's spreading some really evil thoughts. You know how Lady Satori can read people's minds, right? Whoever that youkai is, Satori's been listening to its bad thoughts the whole time she's been in here. Her condition deteriorated from that... Whoa, is she okay? Ehhh, she isn't really okay right now, so she put up a barrier in a quiet place at the 4th floor so she can rest a little. Meanwhile, Utsuho and I are searching for ingredients to make some medicine that can help Lady Satori feel better. Ah, Utsuho's here too? So the usual folks from the Palace of Earth Spirits are all here. (Another name I haven't heard of... Reimu and Marisa really are known everywhere...) Ingredients for medicine, huh... What exactly are you looking for? I think they were called "Seaweed of Serenity" and "Coral of Silence"? Those are the two. I'm looking for the seaweed myself. Lady Satori told me to check the 4th floor cuz she remembered seeing it on our way here. Anyway, Utsuho and I are busy searching for ingredients for that medicine, so we can't go with you. Guh... Rejected before we even asked. Hehe, I'm no Lady Satori, but even I could tell from your faces. Especially Marisa's. Would you like some help? Whoever this Satori person is, we should do our best to help those in need. Really!? Mm, yeah. We'll be wandering around this area regardless. If we happen to find some during our meanderings, we'll retrieve it. Thanks, you're a lifesaver! Best of luck! Heading up to the top of the floor, we find this interesting area. The staircases, as you might have guessed by this point, are only accessible from 5F. As for the event…  …? ...! Reimu, stop! Hold up! That was sudden. What's up? Someone's created a gate a few steps ahead of you, Reimu. ...I don't see it. Me neither. This is a gate that only Mayohiga residents know how to create, and we're the only ones who can see it too. That means this is either Lady Ran or Lady Yukari's work. Yukari or Ran, huh...? Yukari shouldn't be bothering with things like that, no? She seemed to be aiming for the higher floors with Yuyuko. Which means it's probably Lady Ran who created this... Do you know what effect this gate will have? Sorry, it's a bit too complicated for me. Ah, okay. Since we know nothing about this gate, or why Ran is lurking around here anyway, we'd best not step anywhere near it. Yep, it'll be messy if it were a trap. Let's make sure to avoid it while we walk. Mmmhmm. Watch your step, everyone.This event requires 50 BP with Chen, and is a step towards the recruitment of Ran. Every subsequent Chen event will require 50 more BP to trigger.  In the top left corner of the map, we find this floor’s FOE. My word, that’s a remarkably large eel. Heh. *sigh*…so are we going to take it down?*CHOMP* …It just swallowed one of those sword devil things whole. You know, I never liked eel anyway. Let’s leave it for later.The FOE is way above our level for now. It might be possible after we’ve cleared out everything else on this floor, but our safest bet is to take it on once we’re almost done with the next floor. We can’t explore this way – the FOE will chase and catch us, so we head downwards and start looking around.  While checking out the area underneath the FOE, we come across two useful items. Violent Green Rupee – A sentient gem on the back of a certain younger sister. Wearing it will probably increase your money luck. Main Equip, Yen Acquisition Rate +4%. LOVE Machine 3322 – A special machine that changes its effect depending on the combination of its 4 IC chips. With a 3-3-2-2 combo, fire damage is completely negated. Still, against that Nurse guy, even with this you’re not totally safe. Sub-Equip, Fire +100. The LOVE Machine 3322 is going to come in especially useful very shortly. It goes onto Komachi, raising her Fire affinity to 180 and removing her Fire weakness.  The way around the FOE is by taking this bottom path here. As long as you keep moving to the left, the FOE will stay one step behind you, eventually losing interest and returning to its territory once you get far enough away from it. Hey Kasen, can’t you do your animal-training trick on these things? These things aren’t ordinary creatures – they’re barely even youkai as we know it. They’re connected too strongly to the magic of the Great Tree to form any other type of meaningful connection. If we broke that connection, it’s doubtful they’d even exist. Do you think it’s safe to eat them, then? Certainly hasn’t stopped Rumia. Mmph…what? They thashe good. This is the reason to skirt around the FOE – it guards the staircase to the next floor. We won’t be able to loot the actual stalking grounds of the FOE unless we can beat it – there’s no room for outmaneuvering it there. We could go up, but we still have unfinished business on this floor.  Ah!  Ah, Mokou. Mokooooooou! I heard from the Eientei residents that you're racing the Eientei princess up the Great Tree! Didn't I tell you to stay in the village during emergencies!?  Ack, you already found that out...? That loose-lipped fool! *sigh*... I suppose I should've never expected you to want to be part of the rear guard during situations like these... But that can wait for later! Mokou, you're coming with me! We're going straight back to the village and having a looong discussion about this! Ehhh, give me a break. You already know that Kaguya and I are competing. If I back out of this now, everyone's gonna call me a chicken who ran away from showdown with my eternal rival! And she'll get the last laugh as well! If you were in my shoes, you wouldn't want to back out either! If anything, people would laugh at you more because you're holding a silly competition inside the Great Tree at a time like this. Don't try to distract me! Ooh... I should've known that you you wouldn't understand. So I'll have to make you understand by force! Prepare yourself, Keine! If it's a battle you want, it's a battle you'll get! I'll make you behave and drag you back to the village! ...Doesn't it feel like we've been getting caught up in a whole buncha silly disputes that we shouldn't be involved in recently? ...I think you can put that down to our large entourage. ...Probably... As you might expect, Mokou will toss around a ton of Fire attacks, so a fire-resistant party is important. Mokou generally attacks with medium-damage single-target Fire or Cold attacks, or an all-target Physical or Fire attack. When she wants to be mean, she pulls out Fire Bird – Flying Phoenix, an especially hard-hitting single target attack. When she first hits 75% and 25% health, she uses her frenzy move Curse of Tsuki no Iwasaka, a hard-hitting all-target Wind attack that debuffs Attack and Magic, and under 40% health, she adds Earth Shaker to her arsenal, an all-target Nature attack with a chance to inflict a Speed debuff and Heavy. Her big gimmick is health regeneration - every turn before she acts, she regenerates 1100 HP. We can take a few turns to set up, but once we start attacking we really have to commit to it. If we can’t do enough damage to her to overcome her regeneration, Mokou will just heal it off, and we’ll just have wasted our resources. For our opening move, we use the same Divine Grandson’s Advent – Great Hakurei Barrier combo that we used in the doll fight. It’s not the necessity it was in that fight, but it’s a good opening move in general. Komachi is in her usual role of tanking and fishing for debuffs with Narrow Confines, Cirno is there to hopefully inflict a speed debuff and buy us more time for setting up. Has anyone considered the irony of fighting a fire-themed boss underwater? I once fought a clown on the moon. I don’t have a sane reply to that. I don’t think there is a sane reply to that. We’ve managed to get a few debuffs to stick, and Aya is pulled out for Keine so we can start boosting our attackers. Mokou doesn’t have much in the way of debuff resistance – in fact she has below average resistance to most status ailments, Death excepted. Affinity-wise, she’s slightly weak to Cold and Wind, has high Dark affinity, and is functionally immune to Fire. Cirno managed to get a few speed debuffs to stick, but sadly she doesn’t have the raw offensive power needed to really dent Mokou. We’ll have to switch to someone else for that. The damage she took was from one of Mokou’s all-target physical attack – Cirno wouldn’t last a second if Mokou actually targeted her with a fire attack, despite all her defensive boosts.  Chen is pulled out for offense, and begins hammering away at Mokou. With Mokou’s speed debuffs and Chen’s speed boosts, Chen can stay in for longer, as she gets multiple turns for every one Mokou gets. Unfortunately, Mokou’s colossal Fire affinity means using her more powerful Phoenix Spread Wings would be pointless, so she has to stick to the weaker Flight of Idaten. It still does respectable damage, but Chen can’t keep up the offense forever. Remember, buffs slowly wear off bit by bit every turn, and by this point the Kimontonkou buff is only half of what it once was. Incidentally, that’s why speed isn’t as useful a stat on your tanks as it is on your attackers – the faster they are, the faster their defensive buffs will wear off.  While Chen takes a break, Kasen is pulled in. She doesn’t do enough damage to be used as our main offense, but does enough to keep the pressure on Mokou. The debuff and ailment infliction doesn’t hurt either.  Reimu’s taking quite a beating, so Kasen is swapped in as backup tank, and Rumia is pulled out for main offense. She proves to be surprisingly good at it – Moonlight Ray is hitting even harder than Flight of Idaten, and while Mokou hammers away at Kasen, Rumia carves a significant portion of her health away.  While Rumia recovers, Chen is pulled out again. This time, she uses Kimontonkou twice in a row before attacking. With a further boost from Keine’s offense buff, Chen is almost at the cap of +100% attack. Unfortunately, using up that much MP for buffing herself means she doesn’t have very much left for her actual spellcards.  Rumia is swapped for Chen just as Mokou unleashes her frenzy move, Curse of Tsuki no Iwasaka – an all-target Wind attack that debuffs Attack and Magic. Annoying, but it doesn’t affect us all that much. The only person on the frontline contributing to offense is Rumia, and her colossal debuff resistance allows her to shrug it right off. Our magic attacks are hitting a lot harder than our physical moves, but looking at our party, we don’t actually have all that many mages at the moment. Aside from Narrow Confines, our entire party only has five members with Mind-targeting spellcards at the moment – Reimu, Keine, Rumia, Minoriko and Marisa. Reimu and Keine aren’t built for offense and their support moves are more valuable, Minoriko needs to conserve her MP for healing, and Marisa is being kept in reserve for a very important reason.  Kasen and Komachi are looking a little haggard, so Keine swaps out for Minoriko, who proceeds to heal them up. With the battle having hit a bit of a lull, Marisa swaps in to get a few casts of Concentration in before popping out.  Both Rumia and Chen are pretty exhausted, so Nitori and Momiji cover for them for a bit while they rest up. Unfortunately neither of them can hit hard enough to outpace Mokou’s regeneration. More attackers on the field would be nice, but Minoriko needs to be there for emergency healing, Komachi is our best tank, and switching Kasen out would mean losing valuable stacks of Fighting Spirit.  Mokou hits her second HP threshold and tosses out another Curse of Tsuki no Iwasaka, managing to pierce even Rumia’s hefty debuff resistance. Her follow-up Earth Shaker manages to knock Chen out as Rumia is sent back to recover. She’s a lot more dangerous at this stage – she uses Fire Bird – Flying Phoenix far more often, and Earth Shaker hits like a truck. We need to end the battle quickly.  Easier said than done, though. Most of our party members are almost completely out of MP by now, and we can’t keep hitting her with as many debuff moves as before. With our two main attackers debilitated, Momiji steps up to buy them some time. If we can’t take her down before her debuffs run out, Mokou can easily turn the battle around with her massive regeneration.  Minoriko falls, and without Minoriko’s healing, Kasen promptly follows her. The party is definitely flagging now – Mokou’s regeneration is starting to outpace our damage output. It’s time to pull out all the stops, focus solely on burning down Mokou’s health, and hope Mokou doesn’t feel like tossing out too many Earth Shakers.  Keine returns to the frontline for the first time since she left it, and wastes no time boosting the party’s attack. Rumia tosses out Moonlight Ray after Moonlight Ray, but soon falls to Earth Shaker. It’s down to Nitori and Momiji to turn things around – none of our other members have anywhere near enough offense to burn through Mokou’s regeneration.  Momiji runs out of MP, and has to resort to basic attacks. Even Komachi pitches in with Short Life Expectancy – every little helps at this point. On the plus side, Nitori has finally finished powering up with Portable Versatile Machine.  And with the last of her MP, one final cast of Illusion Waterfall takes Mokou down.  *huff, huff*…There! Will you finally listen to reason, or must I… …aaaaaaaaAAAAAARRRRRGH! Oh no. Take cover, everyone! There’s no telling what she’ll do when she gets like this!   This is the second phase of the Mokou fight. Upon her first death, she regenerates 3100 HP and immediately uses Fujiyama Volcano, a powerful all-target Fire attack which immediately knocks out Keine and Nitori. Komachi barely pulls through, and Momiji somehow manages to dodge.  From now on, the only attack Mokou will use at this point is Fujiyama Volcano. Thankfully, it has a very long cooldown – she still hasn’t recovered from her first one. If we can take out her remaining 3000 HP, we win. This is what we’ve been saving Marisa all battle for. FINALLY. Outta the way, people!  Owowowow... What the heck, Keine! You were going all out! Do you even know how to hold back!? *gasp gasp*... As if you were holding back! You're coming back to the village with me now! You need a very strict lecture! I already said I don't wanna, geez! Know-nothings like you... ...Can all just burn! *FWOOSH* Whoa, wha!? Ahhh, hot hot hot hot hot!! So hot...! Mokou, stop! Stop right there! ...... She got away handily there. Honestly, that all felt like a huge waste of time. Yeesh, I thought I was gonna melt~. Reimu, is the tip of my hat burnt or anything? Let me check. ...Nope, looks all right. Whew, that's a relief. ......Grrrrrrrrrrrr!! Now, now. Getting so angry is bad for your blood pressure. She's competing with Kaguya anyway, so Eirin and Udonge should catch up to her too. And now Keine will surely be looking for her actively too. We're sure to see her again. Oooooh... Mokou, I'll remember this...We’ll be seeing her again very shortly, in fact. For now, we head to the blue orb to claim our prize. Incidentally, Mokou only shows up as a boss after you’ve talked to Reisen, who in turn only shows up after you’ve talked to Eirin, etc. We could have avoided her until later, but where would the fun be in that?  The gated staircase to the west of the entrance leads to a Getitup V, while the gated staircase to the east leads to a treasure chest containing 2 Tin Watering Cans, 2 Sources of Magic, and a Strange Meat Pie. Fun fact: we didn’t actually have the key to open the treasure chest at first, but upon leaving the dungeon were immediately rewarded with one for earning the ’10 main equips’ achievement. We popped back in to loot the chest, and upon leaving were rewarded with another one for fulfilling a treasure-chest related achievement. Getitup V – A medicine that makes a certain part of your body extremely healthy. It seems like something vampires drink when they want to show their true form, but this kind of true form is desired only by that vampire anyway. Sub-equip, TP +2, All stats +20% Tin Watering Can – Given to a collapsed traveler who requested water in that rather famous prologue scene. Today’s farmer life consists of methodically growing turnips over and over again with this. No need for Joy Watering Cans. Main equip, TP +5 Source of Magic – An offering from humans that increases the master’s max MP by 1. Magic that expends MP is strong, but Max MP is small and limiting for a mage. People who are familiar with the game do just fine without Magic, anyway. Main equip, MP +4. Strange Meat Pie – From a world in ruins, befriending this heartwarming and closely-knit family engaging in perfectly healthy activities and business gets you this pie. In my opinion, it was the scariest part of the whole game. Main equip, all attacks have a chance to inflict Terror. With that last bit of business done, we slip past the FOE and head up to the fifth floor.   This boulder blocks off passage to the rest of the level unless you have Minoriko recruited. Past the boulder, we hear the distant sounds of fighting. Let’s check it out. Huh? .....Hmm? I think I hear something up ahead... Shut uuup! No, you shut up! You should just acknowledge your defeat like a good loser! That's what YOU should be doing! I reached the goal first! Unthinkable. A strand of my hair reached the goal first! It's my victory by a hair's breadth! Wha!? If you're coming up with excuses like that, you should know that you've already lost! ...... Besides, my hair is longer! And if you want to play that way, my fire reached the goal first! Your fire!? What are you, stupid!? If that's allowed, I can just fire a bullet at the goal and I'll be the winner, right!? Ahh, how ridiculous! You're such a fool! Whyyyyy youuuuuu....! I was just throwing back your stupid hair's breadth logic in your face! ...How much longer are you two going to be arguing? What!? ...Geh, Keine! And Reimu and company, as well. Goodness me, you should have let me know that you were around. Now you have seen such a shameful side of me. So you're actually aware how embarrassing you sound right now...? Keine, listen! This idiot Kaguya keeps saying that... I already heard plenty. You're just disputing who won your little competition by reaching the 5th floor first, no? That's all wrong! There's no dispute, I definitely reached the goal first! Kaguya's just being loud and sore about it, claiming she got here first! That's MY line! Honestly, your looks and personality are already so uncouth, and you're resorting to shouting loudly and twisting words to distort the facts. You are utterly hopeless! Whaaa!? Then forget about a competition, let's just go at it right now! Oh my, relying on brute force now that you have run out of excuses? How simple-minded! But very well, I shall prevail in the danmaku battle you started and show you just where you stand! (*sigh*... Reimu, I know this looks like a pain, but we can't leave them be. They'll really start up a fight at this rate.) (......What's wrong with letting them do so...? I'm not meddlesome enough to stick my neck out against those two.) (You don't have to put yourself in any danger. Just make up a little lie and claim one of them won.) (That sounds like it'll cause even more trouble...) *sigh* Oh, fine... Kaguya! Mokou! What!? You want some too!? Why not let a neutral third party here speak? We saw the two of you reaching the goal from afar, you know. No way! Why didn't you say so earlier!? Which one of us reached the 5th floor first!?  And with that, I’ll let the thread decide. As you might expect, whichever one we pick will be joining our party now, and the other will join us several floors later. Their respective boss battles tell you pretty much what you can expect from them – Kaguya is a mage who launches punishing all-target magical attacks of different elements, while Mokou is a tank with high regeneration who uses fire attacks to burn opponents. No new members in our party this update, so let’s look over what we have instead. Reimu is a decent all-rounder, especially once powered up by Main Character: Reimu. In battle she mostly supports with Great Hakurei/Exorcising Barrier, but her offensive moves can still do decent damage against spirit-weak enemies. Marisa is one of the few mages in our party. Her role is pure offense, and she can clear out low-mind enemies with ease. However, she falls flat when faced with Mystic-resistant enemies. Keine is a tanky support character. With our new recruits she’s not as useful a tank as she once was, but her buffing moves still remain one of our best options for powering up our frontline, and she has our only attack-buffing move of note capable of buffing others. Rinnosuke is a utility character, pulled out for farming and otherwise left untouched. He can’t even tank hits all that well now, and will almost certainly never see serious battle. Still, if the occasion should somehow arise, First Aid is one of our few status curing moves, and Battle Command is relatively decent given its low delay and MP cost. Momiji is a bulky attacker with the highest attack in our party, second only to Chen with Kimontonkou up. Unremarkable but solid, Momiji will probably be a big part of our offensive capabilities for several floors to come. Rumia is a frail but powerful mage with three different niches – Moonlight Ray is one of our hardest hitting magical moves given its cost, Dark Side of the Moon can easily take down high-Mind enemies who like to buff themselves, and Demarcation is a decent all-party heal. All that utility means Rumia will probably have a place in the party for a good long while. Kogasa is our team’s Terror expert. She hasn’t been getting much play recently – Parsee and Kasen can inflict Terror just as well as her, and their tankiness allows them to last on the field longer than her. Still, Sheer Force allows her to Terrorize enemies that would otherwise resist it, so she’s not completely without use. Youmu is our team’s bulkiest member, defense-wise. Despite this, she hasn’t been getting much play either, outside of the battle with Komachi. We’re pretty full up on tanks, and Youmu’s moves are expensive and unspectacular – pure damage with no other effects. Cirno is our team’s freezing expert, slowing enemies down with her cold attacks. She’s not all that useful in these aquatic floors, but Team 9 can power up Rumia and Wriggle. Slowing enemies down is more or less where her utility ends for now – she doesn’t have enough attack to do serious damage. Minoriko is our team’s cleric. Sweet Potato Room is our most powerful healing move, and Minoriko will probably have a place in our party for several more floors just because of that move. Her defense buff is also useful, though it pales in comparison to Great Hakurei Barrier, and her attacks can do decent damage, especially here on these floors with their many Nature-weak enemies. Nitori is an all-rounded physical attacker. Her attacks start out slow, but slowly power themselves up if Nitori can manage to stay in battle. She has a secondary niche as a backup tank - if she concentrates solely on buffing herself with Portable Versatile Machine, her defenses rise to impressive levels. Kasen is a bulky attacker who pulverizes enemies with single-target attacks. Her damage is average, but the sheer amount of debuffs and status ailments she can inflict with a single attack is practically unmatched. Chen is one of our main attackers. She can do serious damage after a cast of Kimontonkou, but any solid hit will probably take her out. Has the only Fire attack in the party at the moment, but regardless of whether we pick up Mokou or not, that situation is about to change shortly. Parsee is a high-mind tank who focuses on inflicting Terror and Silence. Not as efficient a debuff/status inflicter as some of our other characters, but high Mind is rare, so she continues to keep her niche as a tank. Komachi is one of the best tanks we have. Can absorb almost anything and heal it off, and Narrow Confines is one of the most powerful debuffing/status inflicting moves we have. The instadeath chance is just icing on the cake. Doesn’t contribute much in the way of actual damage, though. Wriggle is our team’s poison expert. Excels against tanky enemies who she can outlast over long battles while stacking poison on them, but falters against poison-resistant ones. Aya is our team’s speedy support. A guaranteed first strike, a speed boosting move and the ability to pass her turn on to other characters makes her a very useful support character, but she’s fairly fragile and has to be careful not to take too many hits.  The map of the fourth floor. A fairly straightforward floor, the most notable thing about it is the FOE that stalks the top-left corner and has to be maneuvered around to reach the stairs to the next level. Next time: The Cerulean Ocean that Drowns Everything, 5F.
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Sep 29, 2016 00:57
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Definitely grab Mokou first.
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Sep 29, 2016 02:15
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Always Mokou, because why not?
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Sep 29, 2016 03:38
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Get Mokou, because nothing good has ever come from the moon.
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Sep 29, 2016 06:04
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Mokou. Because dying and respawning in a burst of fire is always cool.
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Sep 29, 2016 07:15
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legoman727 posted:Get Mokou, because nothing good has ever come from the moon. Legoman is absolutely correct  We'll pick Mokou, if only to show Kaguya that not everything will go her way.Besides, after all the Vivit Gray/Shinoasa doujins I've read, I haven't the heart to separate Keine and Mukou
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Sep 29, 2016 07:19
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I'll be the one pointless vote for Kaguya.
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Sep 29, 2016 09:00
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Kaguya, more Mages are always helpful.
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Sep 29, 2016 10:01
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That being said, I do hope whoever we pick gets to fight with the other (who am I kidding? This is Touhou, of course they would) in a future boss battle, just so Inadequately gets to lay this song over the boss battle
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Sep 29, 2016 12:03
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I will vote for Kaguya as I respect her decision of saying gently caress the moon and deciding to live on Earth. More moon people could learn from her example. Also, hey a Labyrinth of Touhou LP. I tried to play this game once and couldn't get into it. It'll be fun to see what I missed.
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Sep 29, 2016 13:24
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Moon people suck. Mokou.
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Sep 29, 2016 22:21
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Time to vote for Kurumi... no I Mean Mokou.
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Sep 29, 2016 23:10
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As someone whose been playing through this game I can tell you that Mokou was the first real brick wall I hit. Sure other bosses were tough but the regeneration combined with her hard-hitting attacks makes her a really difficult boss. Oddly enough after I beat her a lot of the fights afterward were much easier.
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Sep 29, 2016 23:53
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Mokou, clearly. We can't ship her and Keine unless they're in the party together, can we?
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Sep 30, 2016 01:46
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Mokou was one of the first brick walls I hit too, way back in my first run. That second phase is a pretty nasty trick if you're unprepared for it and use your trump card to burn down the last of her regular health. The recorded attempt above was actually my third one - the other strategies I tried stalled out about halfway when her regeneration started outpacing the party's damage. We get more tools to deal with regenerating bosses later on. Anyway, looks like second-best firebird has a solid lead over moon princess at the moment. I'll call it sometime tomorrow and get to work on the next update. Inadequately fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 02:53
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I'll use my first post to put another vote towards Mokou
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Sep 30, 2016 07:51
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Looks like everyone's got their vote in. Calling it for Mokou and working on the next update. Sneak preview: 
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Sep 30, 2016 16:18
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Alright, that’s six votes for Mokou, four votes for Kaguya, one vote for ‘I hate both of them’, and a vote for further restrictions on air-traffic around Youkai Mountain. You wanted my opinion. On Kaguya and Mokou. Who cares about them? ...Mokou, definitely. But only by a tiny distance. Hah! Heard that, Kaguya!? Hope you heard that loud and clear! That is impossible! I most certainly reached the goal first! Wahahahaha! Hearing the whining of a sore loser is the best feeling ever! C'mon Kaguya, say it again! "Oooh, I sooooo reached the goal fiiiiirst!" And make it sound really bitter too! Aaaaaaaaaargh! Who would have thought you all would be her accomplices!? Fine, I do not want to see your faces ever again! Ah, wait! ...Ah-ah, there she goes. We may not have been conspiring against her or anything, but from her point of view, it'll be natural to think so, I suppose... I kind of feel bad. Huh? Don't you worry about it. Kaguya already knows we tied anyway, she just wanted to start a fight for fun. Eh, what? How did you know? Yeah? Besides, you all were obviously lying when you said you were watching from afar. Huh, so you were calmer about it than I thought. Guess the lie was meaningless then. Honestly, if both of you knew that already, why were you even fighting to begin with!? Aww, c'mon, let it go. I'll even help out with the exploration in return. I definitely don't want to stand by at the village, that was super boring. There's no point in relying on you to do something you're completely against, I suppose... Fine, come along with us on our exploration. We've been having a surprisingly tough time, we could use the help. I've been waiting for that! Geez, if you just said that at the start, we wouldn't have to go through all this song and dance. Are you really trying to play the self-important card here? Honestly!Fujiwara no Mokou joined the party! As mentioned (and displayed) in the last update, Mokou is a tank with fire attacks whose skills are focused mostly around defense. She packs high HP regen, and a special skill that gives her an almost-guaranteed chance of revival at the cost of some TP. Naturally, if we picked Kaguya, she would admit that she knew it was a tie too, and was just picking a fight.  Great Tree Slugs are the first of the new enemies we’ll be seeing on this floor. They have incredibly high evasion – enough to dodge two out of three attacks, on average. +Accuracy items on our main attackers and using Momiji helps a lot when dealing with these. Unlike many other enemies in the aquatic floors, they have high Nature affinity.  The rightmost path to Kaguya/Mokou leads to the main bulk of the floor, a huge sprawling expanse. This tunnel back to the relay point comes in pretty handy.  Sharks are enemies new to this floor - fairly straightforward enemies who hit hard and fast with strong physical attacks.  Ah, a familiar face. Hold on a second! Ahh? Who's that?  What, you knew it? Yes, just as I said. This is normal behaviour for you anyway. By the way, have you happened to see Lady Kanako or Lady Suwako? Kanako and Suwako? No we haven't. They're here too, huh... Pretty much everyone is comin' here for fun. ...Hm? Wait, then who's at the Moriya Shrine now? ...That's why I need to find them and bring them back as quickly as possible. Honestly! Trying times like are the perfect opportunity to nab more followers, with all of them fearful of this obvious incident! Yet the actual gods themselves went off somewhere else. Not to mention all those new gods popping up! Sounds about right. Reimu, you oughta learn to use your head a li'l more like she does. Oh hush. In the first place, you should've stopped them before they even left, Sanae. I tried to! I was going to cut them off before they got the idea to come to this great tree, but when I started looking for them, they already left. And they were REALLY quick about it. They more or less left as soon as the Great Tree appeared. What are gods supposed to be, huh... I'm startin' to wonder myself. ...Please do not ask me that, it'll only make me feel worse... In any case, if you happen to see either of them please let me know. ...I suppose I could keep that in mind. Thank you. I must be going as well. ...If they're that fired up about coming to this tree, it sounds like it'll be easy to convince 'em to join us as well. Hopefully Sanae won't think too badly of us... This spot contains two Concepts of Everything – a rare material required for crafting just about any of the affinity-raising items. We’ll hold off on doing that until we really need it - it’ll be a while before we can find common enemies that drop them.  Drunk Ice Spirits are upgraded versions of Blue Shades. They are faster and tougher, and like hitting your party with all-target magical cold attacks.  Exploring the top-right corner of the map, we find an inaccessible staircase. However, while poking around, we run into someone else. This event only shows up on the map after all three scrap iron events have been encountered.  My, Nazrin? It's been awhile. Indeed it has. .....Oh, the shopkeeper's here too... Yes, long time no see. Thanks for the "help" you provided during that period. Ahh, it's nothing to worry about. It's natural for a shopkeeper to offer what his customers are looking for! If you ever find yourself in need again, you won't go wrong with patronizing Kourindou. (......Ugh, this guy's trying to play the nice salesman... Doesn't really work when you grossly overcharge me for the pagoda that my master lost...) Whatcha doing here anyways? Ah, uh... Lady Byakuren was worried about the humans. They've all been really shaken by this Great Tree. I had some free time, so she asked me to come along as well. I'm quite interested in this place too. My dowsing rods reacted really strongly to the Great Tree. So I joined her, half out of respect for her request, and half out of my own interest in it. I see. Yeah, I remember Byakuren loving to stick her nose into things like these. (...Though there's also the part where I got so involved in finding all the tons of treasure here that I erred in when to retreat...) (And ended up losing the detectors with secret powers hidden within them to the monsters...) (...And I'm not going to tell them. Not as long as that man's with them at least... If he finds it first, he's going to fleece me for all I've got again...) ......Hm? Is there something on my face? No, don't mind me. ...Huh? Marisa, mind showing me what you have in your pocket? Ahh, this? It's a bunch of scrap iron I picked up. Reimu keeps making a fuss when I do that though. (The shape's a bit different... But it's definitely my detector!) (The monsters who took it probably bent it all out of shape. It should work just fine if I bend it back to the way it was. Now, how to phrase this...) Let me see that. ...Hmm... This metal rod looks pretty well made. Ah yeah, you know all about dowsing. I'm sure you have your own evaluations on these kind of things. So this metal's good? Hah, I knew it. No wonder my sixth sense was yellin' at me about it. ...That's not quite right. The metal itself is normal iron. It's just that for dowsing, metal that's left in this Great Tree for some time makes for one of the best materials. In other words, this metal is great... If I'm using it. Really? That sucks. So let's get down to business. How about you give me the metal objects you've found, and I'll join your exploration efforts in return? You all came here to do something about this tree, right? Huh? ...Uh, yeah, that was in the plans. I would be glad to be able to progress more easily, and find a lot of new treasures too. It's a pretty good exchange, if you ask me. Ehh, but I picked these up... Wouldn't it be best to give it to her? We can't do anything with it, and giving to her is only going to help our exploration. Yep. In fact, that's probably as useful as it's going to get. C'mon Marisa, hand it over. Hrrrrrm.... Well, fine. Not like I really need to add 'em to my nest egg of stuff. Fine, here ya go. Thanks. ...Yeah, this metal looks good. If I modify the shape a little, it should be helpful in searching for treasures within the Great Tree. (And most of all, I stole merch from that man! Hah, this is payback!) ...You look awfully happy. Ah, uh, I do? Wouldn't anyone be happy if they had a new toy to play around with? Hah, I know that feeling all too well. Makes you wanna hurry up and try it. Y-Yeah, you see? Anyway, let's leave that topic aside. I'll be in your care for a while. Let's work well together.Nazrin joined the party! Nazrin is a mage who, like Rinnosuke, is useful more for her utility than her actual prowess in battle. Still, right now we’re short on mages, so we’ll take anyone we can get.  This FOE is the Siren of Silence, who lurks in the center of 5F. The area which it patrols is only accessible from 6F, but the path outside is on the edge of its aggro range and it will float over to us if we continue aggravating it. It’s fairly easy to step back and let it wander back, and that’s what we do – we simply aren’t strong enough to battle it yet.  We head back to the village shortly afterwards, as we’re running low on TP. 5F is huge – here’s the half-explored map of it for reference – and the fairly common slugs force us to burn twice the amount of our usual resources just to hit them.  While there, we pick up our newest members. Mokou invests a rank in her ‘With Keine’ skill, since this thread appears to like the pair, and also because it’s a good idea - it boosts her defense and Mind when Keine is on the frontline. Keine’s companion ‘With Mokou’ skill raises her offensive capabilities – not quite as useful, as we aren’t using Keine for offense much.  Going straight down from the 1-way tunnel below Kaguya and Mokou leads us directly into this FOE’s territory. This FOE is a lamprey eel, like the one on 4F. We can’t outmaneuver it, and we can’t take it on quite yet, so we make a hasty retreat.  Going down the side allows us to walk past it without much issue, and we walk around its territory, running into this rock near the bottom of the floor. We have little to no money at the moment – going to have to do quite a bit of farming to remove this rock.  To the right of the rock, we run into another one of Chen’s events. This one requires 100 BP with Chen to trigger. ......? ......! Reimu, stop! Hold up! That was sudden. What's up? There's another gate a few steps ahead. Huh... Maybe if I squint and look reaaaally hard, I can see it... ...Nope, can't see a thing still. Does it really matter if you can see it or not? Anyway, let's just make sure we avoid it for now. Chen, give us the exact location so we can stay away from it. Ye~es. Let’s work on moving that boulder. Our newest member is going to come in pretty handy. Nazrin has three single-target magical attacks – Gold Rush, Rare Metal Detector and Nazrin Pendulum. Gold Rush multiplies the money dropped by an enemy that it kills, Rare Metal Detector the item drop rate, and Nazrin Pendulum the EXP earned. She comes with the same Extra Steps skill that Aya has, which maxes out her timebar whenever she kills an enemy, allowing her to chain-strike a weakened enemy group to death.  While farming for gold/items on 4F, we run into a new enemy. Lazulite Sword Devils are pretty much buffer Aquamarine Sword Devils, and will almost always open with a DEF/MND self-buff. With Rinnosuke and Nazrin, we hit the 10k gold after about half an hour of farming. Focusing on item drops to sell is currently more lucrative than focusing on Gold, so Rare Metal Detector is getting a lot of use.  Past the boulder, we find a valuable sub-equip. Water Cutting Sword – A weapon effective against aquatic enemies. In 4, it’s so important that one must obtain it before 20F, no matter what the cost is. Basically it’s all those Gyazaas’ fault. Because of this, Gyazaas are hugely nerfed in 5. Sub-equip, HP, ATK and MAG +20%, Cold +60, Par and Sil +25 We give it to Mokou, who could use the cold-resistance. The water-cutting sword is craftable, but we won’t be meeting the enemy who drops the last material needed until a few floors later.  Walking past the Siren of Silence, we find a staircase down to one of the previously inaccessible portions of 4F. Hm... What's wrong? There's a barrier erected somewhere here. It's not strong, but it's skillfully made nonetheless. Oh really? ...Ah, hey! There's someone inside the border. Ah, there is! ...Oh, that appearance, that must be...   What would you be doing here...? ...Ahh, so you've already met Orin. It is as she has said, I do not feel well at the moment... Hey hey, quit it with the mind readin' and sayin' parts. It's hard to talk like that. You're the same as ever, huh? We did hear from Orin about why you're resting here, but we forgot to ask why you all even came here to begin with. Mind giving an explanation? Yeah, especially in your case, Satori. You ain't the type to proactively go outside and all. Ahh... So you did not hear about that part from Orin. It is true that we normally would not have any reason to come to this Great Tree... But I heard a voice coming from the tree that I could not ignore. I can still hear it now. A voice coming from the tree? The heck? I know how strange it sounds, even I do not fully understand it either. The voice is definitely not from a human or youkai, and it emits sounds that do not seem like words... It is the first I have heard of it too... But at the very least, behind able to hear it from all the way down to the subterranean is out of the ordinary. A mysterious voice that isn't from a human or youkai, huh... How about this? That voice's comin' from the tree itself. Doesn't that sound viable? I have considered that possibility. That is why I brought my most helpful pets, Orin and Okuu with me to this tree... But as you heard from Orin, another mind whose thoughts are filled with evil intentions have made me feel a little weak... Erm, so lemme get this straight. You're hearing the voices of two minds right now. One is a voice belonging to a specific person filled with evil intentions, and the other is a mysterious voice on which information is scarce. Yeesh, this is complex. The two voices probably belong to different people. The one with evil intentions seems to be somewhere close by... Hmm. Who could be the one having all these evil thoughts? Reimu, does anyone that hateful come to mind? Nope. If you want to wring a name out of me, maybe Parsee. It is definitely not Parsee. I hear her mind's voice as a daily occurrence. It is not merely jealousy. It is more repulsive, as if the mind of the voice itself is drowned in pure negativity... A mind drowned in pure negativity? No one who sounds that dangerous comes to mind... ...Maybe it's the same person as whoever stole the Ame-no-Murakumo? Ahhh... Hmm, it might be, but it might not be as well... Honestly, we have no evidence or proof, there's no point trying to guess the culprit now. If the person is nearby, then we'll confirm who it is by proceeding onwards. Do you mean to continue onwards from floor 5? I created a barrier there that only Utsuho can go through, since she went to the 6th floor to find ingredients for the medicine... It would obstruct you if you wish to proceed to the 6th floor. My apologies if you have already encountered it. I will remove it at once. Thanks! While we explore, we'll help Orin and Okuu gather their ingredients and try to find whoever it is that's making you sick too. That would be very helpful. Orin and Okuu specialize in manipulating fire, so they will not be able to utilize their full power in floors filled with water like these... If they are struggling, please help them out. Gotcha. If we find 'em in a spot of bother, we'll lend 'em a hand. We'll be on our way then. All right. Take care. This event spawns a couple of bosses, and removes a barrier that was blocking the path to the 6F staircase. There’s no way to reach 6F without triggering this event.  This conspicuous section will become important later. For now, the red event at the edge opens up a tunnel to the main section. The item at the top is a treasure chest, and unlocking it gives us two Training Manuals and three Tomes of Insight – Fortitude, Sense and Energy.  Exploring the bottom of the floor, we run into another flower event. This is kinda late to mention, but there's a whole lotta unfamiliar living things 'round here. We may not really be underwater, but there's clusters of coral everywhere. It's no surprise if there's some that you've never seen before. Don't just take in the monsters and plants because they're big! There's plenty of fun in seeing the tiny bugs and small flowers around as well... ...Hey, this flower looks pretty withered... ...Ahh, I see. It's suffering from the poison around this area. Poison? The soil around here looks very clean... There's really poison inside? It might be poison from other living things. I've heard about fish who store poison in their bodies, though I don't know much about them. Whatever the case, my bugs have removed the poison around here already. If you care for every li'l flower on our way, we won't be makin' any progress. It's like that saying, a good deed a day goes a long way. Whatever you like. Let's just move on.This particular event only triggers if Wriggle has 120 BP. If not, Reimu and Marisa fail to spot anything interesting, have an awkward conversation and move on.  At the bottom of the floor, a boss guards the staircase to 6F. Now that we’ve met Satori, we can fight this boss – but we’ll hold off on that for the moment. With the second relay point activated, we head back to the village.  Now that we have a bit of spare cash on our hands, we burn a bit of cash on upgrading some of our characters. After we’ve bought a decent amount of skillups, this event happens: Heeeey, Patchouli? Oh, here you are. I figured you would come quickly if I waited just a little. My, you’re greeting us at the entrance? That doesn’t happen often. That’s because I have a little favor to ask of you today. And that happens even less often. You’re always helpin’ to make us stronger with magic, so I guess this’s the least we could do. What’s up? I’ve recently been working on magic to make my Philosopher’s Stones autonomous. It would be easier for me to have the stones move of their own will instead of me having to control them all the time. The magic was completed, and the stones were able to move autonomously to quite a high degree, and… I know where this is going. At least let me finish, mm? The stones clearly enjoyed their freedom too much, and ended up going into the Great Tree. None of the five of them have returned. Uh huh, say no more. You want us to recover those stones, right? Indeed. The cause is most likely due to my programming of the stones to prioritize searching for areas with high magical activity over everything else when their magic capacity runs low. In layman’s terms, please? Erm, well… The five stones which haven’t returned have most likely stationed themselves in an area of the Great Tree with lots of magic around, and will attack whoever approaches them. Gah. Why’d you wait till now to say that? You should go get them yourself then. I had to wait because you wouldn’t accept if I put that out up front, obviously. I’m always helping you out here, can’t you do me this one little favor? Hrmph…I guess it can’t be helped. We just need to whack those five stones while we explore, right? Fine, we’ll do it. Thank you. I’ll be counting on you. *sigh* Honestly…This event triggers after you buy 255 skillups in any stat on any party members. The five stones are elemental-themed bosses scattered across 5F to 7F, and defeating them allows you to recruit Patchouli.  We return to the start of the floor. Now that we’ve spoken to Satori, there’s a new boss over in the top-left corner. We’re not going to take it on just quite yet though – we have bigger fish to fry.  Quite literally, as a matter of fact. This is the Lamprey Serpent we avoided on 4F that Mystia was looking for. Like many other enemies in this tier, it has high Fire and Cold affinity, but is weak to Nature. It has high Death resistance, but not much else resistance-wise. Offensively, it attacks with Bite, a very strong single-target Cold attack that will almost certainly kill any non-tank it hits. It seems to target the third slot almost as much as it targets the first and second, and will readily hit the fourth slot if any party members are down, so the fight is a matter of luck as much as skill. When it hits 80%, 50% or 20% health, it uses Swallow, a single-target Dark attack with a high chance of instadeath. This would be more of a concern if its regular attacks weren’t strong enough to kill most of our party members anyway – although it’s an easy way to proc counterattacks from Edokko God of Death. For our first attempt, we’re going to see if outtanking it is possible. Nitori wears as much cold-resistant gear as possible – with their bonuses doubled from her Maintenance skill - and we open with the same Aya-Reimu combo to boost her defenses right off the bat.  Even with buffed defenses, Keine falls to a single Bite, and Nitori is moved to the top slot. With her buffed cold resistance and defenses, she can just about tank a single Bite attack. Minoriko is brought in to heal her.  Even with Nitori’s defenses at +100%, she’s still two-shotted by Bite. With Minoriko down, we don’t have much in the way of healing anymore – there’s not much we can do to salvage the situation. With our main strategy proven useless, the battle soon falls apart.  Let’s try this again. There’s no out-tanking the serpent, so we’ll just have to take it out as fast as possible. Unfortunately, we can’t keep up our offense if the serpent kills one party member every turn - unless we have someone who doesn’t mind being killed.  Better. With her Resurrection skill maxed out, Mokou will almost certainly revive until her TP runs out. We’ll just have to hope the serpent decides to focus its attention on her. For our main offense, we pull out a character we haven’t seen in a while – Kogasa, who can take advantage of its low Terror Resistance and Nature weakness. Keine tosses some attack buffs around, Aya passes some speed boosts to Kogasa, and Mokou sits there and tanks hits.  Unfortunately, Mokou can’t revive forever – she runs out of TP with the serpent at about half-health. With Mokou gone, the serpent chews up the rest of our party in quick succession. The core strategy is sound, but Kogasa alone can’t carry the offense – our usual three-tank one-attacker structure isn’t going to cut it.  Take 3. This time, we actually wait a while before we bring Mokou to the frontlines – we spend the first couple of turns buffing our attackers. Marisa fires off a boosted Master Spark and retreats to recharge, while Rumia takes her place. Aya swaps Mokou out for the fallen Keine.  With Aya tossing speed buffs at Rumia and Kogasa, they get about two turns for every one of the serpents’. Mokou hasn’t actually got a turn yet – each time she revives, her timebar is reset to zero, and she never manages to hit 10000 before the serpent kills her again.  The serpent rudely decides to take a bite out of Kogasa, and Kasen is brought in. She turns out to not be a very effective attacker, doing miniscule amounts of damage, but since she’s out she might as well fish for debuffs and ailments with her attacks.  The last of her TP gone, Mokou finally falls, and Komachi is brought in to replace her. The serpent takes a bite out of Rumia while we do that, and Momiji is brought in. Komachi is one of the few party members who can survive more than two Bites – let’s hope it’ll be enough.   Thankfully it is, and the serpent falls. We collect our prizes and look around.  Directly behind the serpent is a special item, a Mr. Midnight Oil Set. The boulder disappears if we’ve fought 300 battles or more – a criteria we’ve easily met by now. Behind the boulder, we pick up 1000 gold and a Choice Scarf. Mr. Midnight Oil Set – Special Item, increases EXP gained by 1% just by being in our inventory, stacks up to 25% max increase. Choice Scarf – An item that increases Speed, but locks the user into one move. It can be limiting once discovered, but even so it’s still very powerful. Useful on your aces, or on slow attackers. Main equip, Speed Base Value +1, Max MP -5, Max TP -5  There’s someone all the way back on F1 who would like to talk to us, now that we defeated the lamprey.  Be in shock and awe, Mystia. We've got a massive eel for you. Eh, really? Gimme, gimme! Here. Be careful, it's heavy. ’Lamprey Serpent’s Meat’ given to Mystia. ...Is this really eel? Of course it is, it's legit lamprey eel. It has "Lamprey" in the name, so that means it's lamprey eel, no? Very much so. There was a "lamprey" under its sprite and all. It was really tough to beat too, so you better be grateful. ...I guess it's okay. It's huge, so grilling it should make for a pretty tasty meal. Time to open shop! Thanks, I'll do anything you want in return. Do you want money? Not that I have much on hand right now. ...You said ANYTHING, didn't you? Yeah I did. I'm a good youkai who repays favors. Got it. Fold up your shop then, you're helping us with our exploration. Gotcha! ......Huh? Isn't this kinda strange? I close my shop as thanks for you helping me to open up shop? it seems kinda weird to me... Nope, not in the slightest. You're so diligent at repaying your favors, how good of you! Aren't I? I'm a good, diligent youkai who repays her favors! All right, let's go. We've still got a long road ahead of us. Okay, I'll do my best!Mystia Lorelei joined the party! ......Is that really okay? The person herself seems to be okay with it, so it should be... I think...Mystia is the last member of Team 9 to join our party. Her specialty is debuffing and silencing opponents with her dizzying song. And with three new members, we’re off to a Party Review. Inadequately fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Oct 2, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 18:02
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 Fujiwara no Mokou Human Form of Hourai Theme: Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke First appeared as the Extra Stage boss in the eighth Touhou game, Imperishable Night. Since then, has made occasional cameos and background appearances in games and side-works. Appeared as a playable character in the newest fighting game, Urban Legend in Limbo. Fujiwara no Mokou was the daughter of a powerful member of the Fujiwara clan, one of Kaguya’s rejected suitors. Angry at Kaguya for rejecting her father and ruining her clan’s reputation, Mokou sought a method of revenging herself on Kaguya. She eventually tracked down the sample of Hourai Elixir that Kaguya had given to the Emperor as a gift, downing it and becoming immortal. Unable to find Kaguya after that, she roamed the world and became a skilled fighter and youkai hunter, slowly growing detached from humanity. Eventually she drifted into Gensokyo and found Kaguya living in isolation there, and the two have happily fought to the death every other day for the last few centuries. When not fighting Kaguya, she lives in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. While not a naturally friendly person, she is not hostile to humans and will rescue any lost humans from the Human Village she finds. Most do not know of her immortality, and assume she is the latest in a long line of a hidden ninja clan. In combat, she uses her fire sorcery and her elixir-granted powers to defeat opponents. The Hourai Elixir grants her incredible regeneration and immortality on a metaphysical level – even if atomized, she would respawn completely unharmed. Because of this, she makes no attempt to shield herself from her own flame – in fact she often lights herself on fire to strike harder and detonates herself in a burst of flame to respawn at full health. However, despite being unkillable, she is not invincible – respawning takes an incredible mental toll, and after respawning several times, she loses the will to fight any longer.  Mokou has the second-highest HP of any of our party members, second only to Komachi, with fairly average stats otherwise. She has high TP, and an extremely high HP and MP recovery rate. Her resistances are below average with the exception of Death, to which she is almost immune. Fittingly, she has high Fire affinity, but is weak to Cold and Dark attacks. Skills HP Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases max HP. TP Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases max TP. Attack Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Attack. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Mokou’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Mokou’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. With Keine – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Keine is on the frontline alongside her, Mokou’s Defense and Mind increase by (15*S.Lvl)%. Regeneration – Max level 2, cost per level 8. Recovers (10*S.Lvl)% of max HP whenever Mokou takes a turn. Resurrection – Max level 3, cost per level 5. When Mokou is knocked out, she has a (30*S.Lvl)% chance to spontaneously revive at the cost of 6 TP. She revives with 33% of her max HP and her timebar at 0, and the skill cannot activate if she doesn’t have enough TP. Blazing – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Mokou is on the frontline, all Fire damage done by the party is increased. Fighting Spirit – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Whenever Mokou takes a turn, she gains a stack of Fighting Spirit, which increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken by 5% per stack. Fighting Spirit stacks up to a maximum of (3*S.Lvl) times, and wears off if she switches out. Spellcards Fire Bird – Flying Phoenix – Fire element, single target, 2 MP, sets ATB to 5900. 174% ATK – 66% DEF Tsuki no Iwakasa’s Curse – Wind element, all-target, 4 MP, sets ATB to 5000. 164% ATK – 64% DEF, has a (87 + (3*S.Lvl))% chance to debuff ATK and MAG by (11 + S.Lvl)% Fujiyama Volcano – Fire element, all-target, 7 MP, sets ATB to 2000. 263% ATK – 94% DEF Mokou’s skills are almost all defensive – with proper skill investment, she becomes very hard to remove from the battlefield. Her most notable skill is Resurrection, which when fully invested in, gives her a 90% chance of reviving when knocked out. Maxing out TP Boost and giving her TP-raising items goes a long way to keep her alive, though staying alive is often the limit of her usefulness, as her offense is average at best. Her spellcards are nothing special, though Tsuki no Iwakasa’s Curse can be a useful debuffing skill.  Nazrin Little Dowser General Theme: A Tiny Clever Commander First appeared as the stage 1 boss (and later as the stage 5 midboss) of the twelfth Touhou game, Undefined Fantastic Object. Since then, has made the occasional background cameo in other games and sideworks. Nazrin is a mouse youkai, a skilled dowser who commands a mouse army of her own. She is affiliated with the Myouren temple group, although she is not officially one of their members and lives in her own house in Muenzaka. While the tiger youkai Shou Toramaru is ostensibly her master, she was actually sent to keep an eye on Shou and reports directly to Bishamonten himself. In her spare time, she uses her dowsing rods and mouse army to hunt for treasure, and can be persuaded to look for lost items with proper negotiation. In combat, she uses her dowsing rods to hone in on opponents and close off escape routes. When holding the Jeweled Pagoda, she can also use it to channel Bishamonten’s power, shooting deadly gamma-ray lasers that vaporize anything they hit.  Her stats are the standard mage spread – average with fairly high Magic. Her resistances are low, with the exception of her above-average Silence resistance. She has high Spirit affinity, but is weak to Cold and Dark attacks. Skills Mind Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Mind. Speed Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Speed. Evasion Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Evasion. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Nazrin’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Nazrin’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. Myouren Temple Personnel – Max level 1, cost per level 7. If Byakuren is on the frontline alongside her, Nazrin will copy her current buffs whenever she takes a turn. Bishamonten’s Blessing – Max level 2, cost per level 5. All damage against Divine enemies is increased when Kasen is on the frontline. If another party member knows a similar skill, the damage increase does not stack. Dowsing – Max level 1, cost per level 12. Increases item drop rates by 20%. Has reduced effect if Nazrin is not on the frontline. Eyes that Perceive Reality – Max level 1, cost per level 7. When Nazrin attacks or is attacked by an enemy with buffs, damage taken/received is calculated as though buffs were nonexistent. Extra Steps – Max level 1, cost per level 12. If Nazrin kills an enemy with a spellcard or normal attack, she immediately gets a free turn. Spellcards Gold Rush – Physical element, single target, 3 MP, sets ATB to 5500. 240% MAG – 60% MND, enemies killed by this spell will drop 66% more gold. Rare Metal Detector – Wind element, single target, 3 MP, sets ATB to 6800. 196% MAG – 70% MND, enemies killed by this spell have double the item drop rate. Nazrin Pendulum – Cold element, single target, 3 MP, sets ATB to 5500. 242% MAG – 110% MND, enemies defeated by this spell will be worth 66% more EXP. Nazrin is a mage who, like Rinnosuke, is more useful for her utility than her combat ability. Extra Steps allows her to chain-strike a weakened enemy party to death for increased bonuses, and she comes in very useful for farming/grinding. Dowsing is a useful ability even when she’s kept in reserve, and Bishamonten’s Blessing can be useful against the many Divine Enemies near the endgame. Myouren Temple’s Personnel is an interesting skill, but one we won’t make use of until much later, and which makes more sense once Byakuren’s gimmick is explained. The utility of each of her spellcards is fairly self-evident, although note that the additional effect only occurs if the spell actually finishes the enemy off. If the enemy is resistant to the element you want to use, it may be better to just pick another spell instead.  Mystia Lorelei Night Sparrow Youkai Theme: Deaf to all but the Song First appeared as the Stage 1 boss in the eighth Touhou game, Imperishable Night, and later as a playable character in the ninth game, Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Since then, has made the occasional background appearance in other games and sideworks. Is a fairly popular character with the fans due to being a part of Team 9. Mystia Lorelei is a night sparrow youkai who roams the Youkai Trail near the Human Village. She runs a grilled lamprey food cart, as she dislikes cooking and eating birds. She has the ability to drive people night-blind, making them unable to see in the dark, which she actually uses as a sale tactic. By driving people blind in the night, then slowly lifting their night blindness as they approach her lighted cart, she attracts people to her cart and sells them lamprey, claiming that it improves eyesight. She loves to sing, and has recently started a punk rock band with another youkai, Kasodani Kyouko (sadly not appearing in this game). In combat, she uses her magical song to disorient and confuse people while driving them night-blind. As her ability can only intensify the effects of darkness, not generate it like Rumia, she prefers to fight at night. Her magical song appears to be an innate ability to her species, not a skill she actively chooses to use, and not even Mystia herself understands entirely how it works. She has an affinity with birds and winged insects, and can command them to a limited degree.  Her stats are low to average, though she has decent Evasion. She has high resistance to Heavy and Silence, but low resistances otherwise. She is weak to Fire, Cold, Dark and Physical attacks, and especially weak to Mystic. Skills MP Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases max MP. Speed Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Speed. Attack Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Attack. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Mystia’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Mystia’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. Team 9 – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Mystia is in the frontline, all her stats are increased by (8*S.Lvl)% per member of Team 9 in the frontline, herself excluded. Diva of Darkness – Max level 2, cost per level 5. . If Mystia is on the front line, the probability of enemy attacks inflicting Silence on any party member and the duration of Silence inflicted is reduced by (20*S.Lvl)%. Silent Singing Voice – Max level 1, cost per level 10. For every unit (ally or enemy) affected by Silence, Mystia’s stats and abilities increase. Soothing Type – Max level 1, cost per level 6. When Mystia uses Concentrate, all allies on the front line recover 1 MP. Instant Attack – Max level 1, cost per level 12. When Mystia is brought to the front line from the reserve, her ATB is set to 10000. Spellcards Ill-Starred Dive – Wind element, single target, 2 MP, sets ATB to 6500. 192% ATK – 80% DEF, Accuracy +20 Poisonous Moth’s Dark Dance – Nature element, all-target, 6 MP, sets ATB to 4000. 196% ATK – 70% DEF, has a (60 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to Poison and Paralyze enemies. Midnight Chorus Master – Wind element, all-target, 5 MP, sets ATB to 600. 313% ATK – 125% DEF, Accuracy +30, has a (85 + (5*S.Lvl))% chance to Silence enemies. Mysterious Song – Wind element, all allies, sets ATB to 5000. Cures Silence and has a (60 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to cure Paralysis and Heavy. Is supposed to heal allies who have a status ailment removed by this spell, but the spell is bugged and does not heal (though the status removal works). Mystia is Team 9’s status specialist, able to inflict a wide range of ailments onto enemies with her song while keeping the party status-free. Like Chen, it’s best to leverage Instant Attack and keep her on the field only as long as you need for her to attack, as her low defenses do not allow her to take many hits. If she decides to stay on, she can provide some support with Diva of Darkness and Soothing Type, especially when alongside other Team 9 members. Her spellcards can debilitate enemies with status ailments and cure party members, and with Instant Attack, the long cooldown isn’t an issue. It’s unlikely that her attacks will do very much in the way of actual damage unless heavily invested in and boosted via Team 9, however. Let’s look at some of the enemies we’ve been fighting.  An upgraded Aquamarine Sword Devil, often opens combat by buffing its defenses.  A common underwater sight. Likes to swim in packs and attack with strong physical attacks.  Annoyingly evasive enemies that like to hit our party with paralyzing and poisonous attacks.  High-Mind enemies who toss around all-target Cold attacks.  A massive eel that chews up enemies with its powerful Bite. Easy to fillet due to its lack of bones, and can be sautéed, fried, grilled or baked in a pie. Lamprey flesh has a distinctive taste, more reminiscent of squid than fish.  The map of 5F. As you can see, the floor is huge, and we’ve still got quite a bit more to explore. Sharp-eyed viewers might spot a boss icon on the platform that I mentioned would be important earlier – the first of Patchouli’s Philosopher Stones. Next time: the 5F boss rush.
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Oct 1, 2016 18:03
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If you maxed out Team 9 on everyone who has it and put all of them on the front, how good would they be?
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Oct 1, 2016 22:14
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That's a 48% boost to all stats, which certainly isn't minor, even coming off their fairly average stats. The problem is Team 9 is not an especially balanced party - Wriggle is the only tank of note, Rumia is the only one built for straight-up damage, and you have no buffing, debuffing (minus Cirno's speed debuffs) or significant healing besides Demarcation. All the Team 9 members are pretty specialized, although in a couple of updates we get a new feature that helps with that situation a little. Plus, if you switch out/lose one member of Team 9, all the rest are weakened, which can lead to a domino effect where you lose all of them in succession. It's not unworkable, but it takes some effort to make it work. It might be a better exploration party than an anti-boss one, though you might run into TP issues. Plus, it's still a good idea to switch out characters once in a while - the game is heavily built around swapping characters from the frontline and back, and you give up a lot of utility without it. Inadequately fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Oct 2, 2016 |
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Oct 2, 2016 03:48
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It's worth knowing that synergy skills like Team ⑨ increase a character's base stats - meaning they stack multiplicatively with equipment and the like. With all four out, Team ⑨ are statistically some of the strongest characters in the entire game, edging out even late-game powerhouse characters in a lot of ways. The characters themselves are pretty specialized normally, but having a 48% boost to all stats means they can kind of be good at anything you feel like doing with them, and luckily there's ways to take advantage of that later on. Incidentally, Team ⑨ loving destroys Mokou.
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Oct 2, 2016 04:28
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Golden Battler posted:Incidentally, Team ⑨ loving destroys Mokou. Of course, they are the strongest  It seems that Labyrinth of Touhou 2 might have a lot of themed teams, what with Team 9, Nazrin and Byakuran, Keina and Mokou- will we be seeing more of them in the future? I can already see the SDM team being a thing.
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Oct 2, 2016 07:54
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Something about this situation seems familiar. Prooobably just yer imagination. No, I really don’t think it is. So why are we fighting this thing again? Mystia said we needed another one if we wanted to feed the entire party. And she’d cover the drinks in exchange. Free booze! Cheer up, Mokou. If we survive, you get double portions. I don’t even like eel! Okay, then I get triple portions. Aw, Mokou’s all tired out now. Have any of you ever tried being eaten by a giant animal? Repeatedly? Yup. I’m never going to get the smell of eel out of my clothes. You’ve never had an outfit last longer than a week. You keep setting them on fire. It’s the principle of the thing. That lamprey eel was the FOE lurking around the area below the Kaguya/Mokou fight. We employ pretty much the same strategy we used to beat the last one, and now that we know what we’re doing, it goes down even faster. Behind it, we find two Magic Gems it was guarding. Ah, that was tasty. I thought you said you didn’t like eel? I’m not so keen on eel, but I’m red-hot on poetic justice. Time to help Satori out. Ohh... Oh? Reimu, over there. What? Hrm... A monster I've never seen before, and... Oooh... Orin, who's getting whacked by the monster. Instead of coldly analyzing the situation, you could at least lend a hand... Looks like what Satori said was on the mark. Her fire-manipulating pets wilt against a fire-resistant waterish enemy. That's how the elements work. Heeeeeeelp... Fine, fine. Let's go! First off, this is one anime-rear end kraken. There’s not much I can do about that besides murder it with slightly more prejudice than usual. Like many of the other aquatic creatures around, the Kraken is strong against Fire and Cold attacks, and weak to Physical. It has high Death and Shock resistance, and decent Poison and Paralysis resistance. It has an all-target Cold attack, and a single-target Fire spell and an all-target Nature spell which can cause Shock. Shock isn’t an ailment we’ve been seeing often as it’s not really a lingering effect – as a reminder, being Shocked reduces your timebar by half. After the Lamprey Eel, the fight is a bit of a breather, especially since we’re a little overleveled. Even at challenge level, it’s not an especially challenging fight for the most part – the party should be fairly used to dealing with aquatic enemies by now. We’re going to go with the all-out strategy we used against the lamprey as a starter, and see how that works out.  Pretty well, it turns out. With Aya boosting our attackers’ speed and Keine boosting their offense, they get two to three turns for every one the Kraken gets, and carve huge chunks out of it. Troubled Forgotten Item powers up Kogasa every time she attacks the Kraken, as it’s currently afflicted by Terror. For its’ part, the Kraken mostly focuses its attention on Keine, who tanks the hits as well as can be reasonably expected.  This is the Kraken’s frenzy move – when it hits 66% or 33% health, it Concentrates and drops its timebar sharply, then on the next turn uses Octangle Attack, a Cold attack that hits eight times in a row and can strike any party member. The long chargeup time is an obvious giveaway, so you have time to toss a defense buff up or switch in more tanks. This is actually its first Octangle Attack, despite its health - our boosted speed means we did a lot of damage to it while it was charging up. About half the attacks end up missing, though it manages to dent Komachi slightly and knock Aya out.   The Kraken is out of tricks after that, and Kogasa promptly finishes it off. We get a pretty nice reward – the Toadstoolshed only has a 33% chance of dropping. The rest are materials, except for the Life Gem. Toadstoolshed – A most valuable fruit that increases all of a pet’s stats. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it” is what most say about it. Combining a Spiny Seed with a neutral colour seed results in a small chance of getting one. Sub-equip, all affinities +24, all resistances +12 Wheeeew~... You really saved me there. I didn't know what was gonna happen to me for a while there! Satori was quite worried about you and Okuu. She requested for us to help y'all out if you looked like you were struggling. Good thing that we just about made it in time. Ah, you already met Lady Satori? How was she doing? Hmm. Not too bad, but none too good either. Speakin' of which, you were searching for medicine ingredients for Satori, right? Found it yet? Yep I did. Lookie!Obtained special item ‘Seaweed of Serenity’! Huh, this is it? It looks like normal seaweed to me. I thought there were supposed to be two different ingredients. Yeah. Okuu's looking for the other one... But given the situation, she might be in danger too. That monster took fire like it was nothing. Could be. She's pretty strong though, so she should be able to fend for herself... Still, might be a good idea to go look for her. Please do. I'll even help y'all out! Why would you do that? I thought you're supposed to be gathering ingredients for Satori's medicine. Ehh, but there's no point if we don't have both ingredients. So I can either be bored with Lady Satori, or help look for Okuu, right? And choosing the latter, I'm not going to be able to do much alone. I don't wanna make the same mistake twice~... Hmm, I see. It would indeed be more effective for you to come with us at this point. If you wanna help us, whatever your reasons, we're sure to welcome ya. I knew you'd understand, sis! Hope to work well under you two!Rin Kaenbyou joined the party! Much like our other feline member, Orin is a high-speed attacker who strikes with powerful Physical and Fire attacks. Unlike Chen, her offense doesn’t come from buffing herself up – it comes from her moves debuffing enemy defenses and proccing Extra Attack, which gives every move she makes a chance to immediately repeat itself without using MP.  From there, we head west to the conspicuous platform and the first of the Philosopher’s Stones. Oi, Reimu. Look at that! What? Man, what the heck could this be? I have no idea. Play along, won't ya? I was tryin' to pretend I didn't know so I could bring it back home. If you keep stealing Patchouli's stuff, she's going to blow up your house one day. As if that shut-in magician would bother to do that. Fine, if I can't grab it and run, then I'll be good and make Patchouli owe me one. Uh huh. Let's do this. The Philosopher’s Stones are all mages themed around their main element, so they’re fairly easy to plan for. The Fire stone has high Magic and incredibly high Mind, but fairly average Defense. As you might expect, it is strong against Fire and Weak to Cold, and likes to use all-target Fire spells that can shock and debuff your party. We’re a little overleveled, challenge level-wise, but even if we weren’t the fight wouldn’t be especially difficult – especially with Mokou and Orin in our party, who can take anything the Fire stone dishes out. Right now we're still pretty early in the game, and any digression from a straight-up dash to the top will put us over the challenge level XP curve. Later bosses will require a much more concerted effort to even hit the challenge level. Anyway, I’ve seen your house. You really don’t want to be bringing anything fire-related in there. Yeah, I had a plan to deal with that too. Heya. Have some self-respect, Kogasa. For our opening move, Aya passes her turns to Keine, who buffs up the party’s offense and defense. Kogasa hits it with Ghost Story to inflict Terror and lower Mind, and Mokou sticks with her one non-fire move – not very notable damage-wise, but it does debuff the stone’s offense.  The Fire Stone has no Silence resistance – a bad weakness for a mage, and Mystia takes advantage of it. Unfortunately, inflicting Silence on enemies doesn’t prevent them from casting spells outright, merely reducing their Magic and Mind.  Orin steps up to the plate. Her main move in this battle is going to be Former Hell’s Needle Hill, a strong physical attack with a high chance to debuff Defense, and one that anyone who played Subterranean Animism will no doubt remember. With Extra Attack maxed out, every move Orin makes has a 32% chance to immediately repeat itself. Coupled with the fact that Extra Attack can proc off itself, Orin gets an average of two attacks for every move she makes.  The fight drags on for a little while longer, but the outcome was never really in doubt. At this point, the stone can’t do enough damage to get through Mokou’s regeneration, so we’re never in any real danger – Mokou could just solo the thing given enough time. After hitting it a little more with Needle Hill, Iwakasa’s Curse and various other attacks, the Fire stone falls.  Whew, that's one down. Wasn't much work. This stone's gonna be a pain to carry back though. It's huge. ............ ......Why are you staring at me? ............ ...Fine! I'll carry it! Ugh, you beasts, you know I'm not good with physical work, yet... What, you want us weak, frail damsels to move such a massive thing? How scary of you. I'm clearly the weakest in term of battle power... Ahh geez, this is heavy! Mmhm, keep it up~.Obtained Special Item ‘Philosopher’s Stone – Fire’!  Before fighting the boss guarding the 6F staircase, we explore the rest of the floor and pick up the remaining items/materials. It’s mostly a formality, as all the interesting events have been covered in the last update. We do find the staircase down to the other inaccessible 5F area, in which we pick up another Biggest Sword Ever. After some more preparation, we head for the 6F staircase.  I knew you all would come. Glad to have met your expectations. Wait a second... Who are you?  ...Who are you again? Ehh? You're joking, right? Hey, you're really hurting me here. Ah yeah, you were that misfortune god from the youkai mountain. What are you doing here? Whew. I wouldn't know what to do if even the shrine maiden forgot about me. There's no way I can leave this tree alone. Humans enter this place due to their boundless curiosity, and are sure to meet trouble because of that. Like us? Yes, like all of you. This is no place for humans to be. Please leave now. You're being all annoying again... If you ain't gonna let us through, then we're just gonna have to force our way in. Honestly, this is for your sake, you know... It cannot be helped then. I'll have to teach you a lesson to make you go back! You oughta walk the walk before you talk the talk! Kagiyama Hina is a mage who generally attacks with single/all-target Fire and Dark Spells. Every once in a while, she will toss in Pain Flow, an especially strong all-target Dark spell, or Old Lady Ohgane’s Fire, an all-target Fire spell which can randomly debuff the party. She has high Mind and low Defense, and is strong against Dark and Mystic attacks but weak to Fire and Spirit. There’s a couple of things that have to be kept in mind when fighting her. If you use any moves which inflict debuffs on her, she will use Curse Reversal on her next turn, a move which turns all those debuffs into buffs of equal magnitude. If you inflict Terror, Heavy or Silence on her, on her next turn she will use Spinning around More than Usual, a move which cures her of those status ailments and buffs all her stats. Hina can be a very dangerous boss if you don’t know what her deal is and come unprepared for it. Because of this, we have to shake up our usual boss-fighting strategy. No piling debuffs on her with Komachi/Kasen – it’s probably a bad idea to use any move that even has a chance of debuffing her. Instead, we focus entirely on buffing our party and simple, straightforward attacks. Parsee is our MVP here – her incredible Mind and colossal debuff resistance means she can shrug off just about anything Hina throws at her.  Hina doesn’t respond to Poison or Paralysis with Spinning Around, so Poisonous Moth’s Dark Dance is safe to use. Poison can be a good strategy against Hina, but we didn’t bring Wriggle – she probably wouldn’t last against Hina’s fire attacks.  Because we can’t inflict terror or debuffs, Mokou uses Fire Bird – Flying Phoenix, while Parsee has to stick to the somewhat inconsistent Large and Small Box.  Chen more than makes up for their lackluster attack, though. With two Kimontonkous, Chen hits +100% Attack – there’s no real need to conserve her MP in this battle.  At 66% health, Hina adds a new move to her arsenal – Misfortune God’s Biorhythm. This does no damage, but has a high chance of debuffing everyone on the field, herself included. Parsee manages to avoid it through her massive debuff resistance, and gains a significant boost to all her stats thanks to Jealousy Manipulation. I know you gain strength and purpose from seeing us falter, but is pointing and laughing really necessary? If you feel like taking a dozen dark arrows to the face, be my guest. Hina will often follow up Misfortune God’s Biorhythm with Curse Reversal, thus powering herself up while the party struggles under the weight of their debuffs. Against an unprepared party, this move is often a battle-ender, particularly if she decides to follow it up with a full-power Pain Flow.  Luckily, Hina seems fairly content to keep using Misfortune God’s Biorhythm for now. We swap out Mokou for Komachi and Chen for Rin. Momiji can hit through Hina’s buffs with Eyes that Perceive Reality, but she’s still held back by her Attack debuff. Rin attacks with Needle Hill – now that Misfortune God’s Biorhythm is in play, there’s less need to hold back from debuffs as much, since Hina can debuff herself without our help now.  The party’s faltering a bit, but we’re still holding up well under the assault, especially Parsee – Hina can’t even scratch her unless she uses one of her more powerful spellcards while buffed. Hina’s on her last legs too, and with one final Large and Small Box, Parsee gets a lucky high roll and obliterates the last of her health.  I giiiive! Whoo. Honestly... You should know that this is no place for humans, yet you still want to keep going. It was like that the last time too. It's human nature to want to do something even more when they're told that they shouldn't. That's for sure. And that's why a nagashi-bina like me is necessary. Izzat so? You kept saying how this is no place for humans to be. Does that mean there aren't any humans past here? .....There are some. ...Why'd you let them through? I tried to, but they got through by force, like you all just did. Right. You can brag about protecting humans all you want, but you can't do much against humans stronger than you. In the first place, if some humans are powerful enough to fight through the monsters to get at this point, they aren't anyone you need'ta worry about. If you really wanted to protect humans, you should have stationed yourself lower down instead. In fact, wouldn't the entrance have been most effective? Oooh... *sigh* I can't deny you have a point... I guess I'll just have to go with you, then. Wait a second, how did it come to this? You have quite a few humans in your group. My goal is to protect humans from the danger of this Great Tree, so the best way for me to do so at this point is to go with you and protect all of you instead. Someone who we just wiped the floor with is going on about how she'll protect us? Besides, that line ain't got no kick unless it’s said by some cold doll-like girl with short, light-blue colored hair. What was that even about? Bah, ever heard of reading the mood? You shoulda just let that one go. ...Whatever the case, if you want to come along with us, I have no complaints. Your power may be quite helpful. Ehhh, really? She stores up all types of misfortune, right? I feel kinda uneasy just being near her... *sniff*... It's fine, I'm used to that kind of reaction... Reimu already said yes, so I'm coming along whether you like it or not. *sigh* I'm fine with it, I guess...Kagiyama Hina joined the party! Kagiyama Hina is a mage with a heavy focus on debuffing opponents. The boss fight with her is a pretty good showcase of what her deal is.  With Hina defeated, nothing obstructs the path to 6F any longer. However, we still have one last bit of unfinished business on 5F, and a new party member to try out.  Curse Reversal is her signature skill, and thankfully unlike her boss battle, it’s a passive ability and not an active skill. The phrasing is a bit awkward, but functionally it’s pretty safe to go with ‘debuffs are counted as buffs on Hina’. The rest of her passive skills power her up when afflicted by ailments, and help to reduce the effect of debuffs on other party members. Now the only creature of note on 5F is the Siren of Silence. Let’s change that.  The Siren of Silence is, naturally, a Silence-focused mage. She has extremely high Mind, high Cold and Mystic affinity, and high Silence resistance herself. However, she has no debuff resistance – and we’re going to make use of that quite a bit. Offensively, she has an all-target spell that causes Silence but does little damage, as well as single and all-target Cold and Mystic spells.  Hina has three spellcards – Misfortune God’s Biorhythm, Pain Flow and Old Lady Ohgane’s Fire. Ohgane’s Fire is her most straightforward move, an all-target Fire spell that can debuff random stats. Misfortune God’s Biorhythm will debuff everyone on the field – enemies, allies and herself included. Finally, Pain Flow is a spell that starts out weak, but charges up based on how many debuffs Hina has on her. Unleashing Pain Flow with a heavily debuffed Hina deals massive damage to all enemies, but removes all of Hina’s debuffs. For our opening move, we go with Misfortune God’s Biorhythm. Parsee and Rumia’s high debuff resistance allows them to shrug it off, while Aya’s Nimble skill turns her speed debuff into a buff, and she tosses speed buffs to Parsee and Rumia before she retreats.  The fight is fairly straightforward after that. The Siren is slowed to a crawl and can barely harm our party, and the miniscule damage it does can be easily healed off with Rumia’s Demarcation. Parsee attacks with Large and Small Box, while Rumia heals with Demarcation and attacks with Moonlight Ray. Hina sticks to Misfortune God’s Biorhythm, crippling the Siren and powering herself up. The fourth slot is a rotating array of attackers like Momiji, Chen and Orin, who switch in, attack and get out before they can accumulate too many debuffs. The Siren’s pretty weakened by now. Time to end it.   As mentioned, the Siren’s main patrol area is only actually reachable from 6F. Still, we’ve cleared out a future obstacle, and made 6F exploration a little easier in advance. With every last bit of business settled on 5F, we head up to the sixth floor. Inadequately fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 01:34
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Let’s take a look at our new party members. Rin ‘Orin’ Kaenbyou Hell’s Traffic Accident Theme: Corpse Voyage~ Be of Good Cheer First appeared as the stage 5 boss in the eleventh Touhou game, Subterranean Animism. Since then, has made the occasional background appearance in other games and side-works. Orin is a kasha, a feline youkai able to switch between cat and humanoid form. She is the pet of Satori Komeiji, and on most days can be found carting off corpses in her wheelbarrow to fuel the Nuclear Furnace that powers the rest of Former Hell. Dislikes attacking people directly, and prefers to scavenge for corpses and stalk people near death. She was the instigator of the Subterranean Animism incident, releasing a horde of vengeful spirits in the hopes that someone would investigate the underground and thus halt Okuu’s foolish scheme to burn the world in nuclear fire. Is one of the few youkai unwelcome at Myouren Temple, due to her tendency to rob the nearby graveyard for its corpses. In combat, she attacks with her catlike speed and agility, and can communicate with and control the vengeful spirits of the dead. Her attacks are especially dangerous against other youkai – as the core of a youkai is its soul, being possessed by a vengeful spirit effectively erases its identity permanently. She also has a zombie fairy army at her command – actually just a regular fairy army in zombie makeup.  Her stats are average to low, but she has decent Mind and exceptional Speed and Evasion, second only to Aya. She has high Terror and Death resistance, and high Spirit, Dark and Fire affinity. However, she is very weak to Cold and Nature attacks. Skills Magic Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Magic. Speed Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Speed. Attack Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Attack. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Orin’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Orin’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. Earth Spirits Palace Party – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Orin is in the frontline, all her stats are increased by (8*S.Lvl)% per member of Earth Spirits Palace Party (Okuu and Satori) alongside her in the frontline, herself excluded. Hell’s Necromancer – Max level 2, cost per level 5. If Orin is on the front line, the duration and MP drain effect of Terror against any member is reduced by (20*S.Lvl)%. Speedy Formation Change – Max level 2, cost per level 5. After Orin performs a Form Change, her ATB is set to (7000 + (1000*S.Lvl)). Two-Way Curse – Max level 2, cost per level 5. If Orin is affected by a status ailment, her damage done is increased by (12*S.Lvl)% and her damage taken is reduced by (12*S.Lvl)%. Final Blow – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Orin attacks an enemy affected by a status ailment, the damage dealt is increased by (16*S.Lvl)%. Extra Attack – Max level 2, cost per level 7. When Orin attacks, uses a spellcard or Concentrates, she has a (16*S.Lvl)% chance to immediately repeat the action. Extra Attacks can proc additional Extra Attacks, and repeated spellcards do not cost MP or reduce the ATB. Apparition Carrier – Max level 1, cost per level 15. When Orin defeats an enemy, all her stats increase by 20%, and she restores 33% HP and 1 MP. This can only trigger once per turn, even if she defeats multiple enemies at once. Spellcards Cat’s Walk – Physical element, single target, 1 MP, sets ATB to 9000. 140% ATK – 50% DEF, has a (36 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to inflict Shock. Vengeful Cannibal Spirit – Dark element, single target, 4 MP, sets ATB to 6000. 120% (ATK+MAG) – 60% DEF, has a (36 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to inflict Terror and a (46 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to inflict a 25% Defense debuff. Former Hell’s Needle Hill – Physical element, one enemy row, 4 MP, sets ATB to 5200. 225% ATK – 75% DEF, has a (56 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to inflict a 25% Defense debuff. Blazing Wheel – Fire element, all-target, 6 MP, sets ATB to 0. 126% (ATK+MAG) – 70% MND Orin is a high-speed mixed attacker with a focus on debuffing enemy Defense. Most of her offensive prowess comes from Extra Attacks, and it’s possible to wipe enemies out with a lucky chain of Extra Attacks that keep proccing on themselves. Two-Way Curse and Final Blow give her additional utility when employing/affected by status ailments, and Speedy Formation Change gives her some use as speedy support. Apparition Carrier is a powerful skill when exploring, but less so against bosses, and her low TP might give you some trouble. Spellcard-wise, Vengeful Cannibal Spirit and Needle Hill are her mainstays, powerful attacks that debuff Defense alongside their damage. Cat’s Walk is a skill used largely to delay her turn for more opportune switching (and is even noted in the game as a useful skill for such maneuvers). Finally, Blazing Wheel is a straightforward attack, but it has a niche against high DEF enemies as it targets Mind instead.  Kagiyama Hina Nagashi-bina of the Hidden God Theme: Dark Side of Fate Required Viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICpRT855-DI First appeared as the stage 2 boss in the tenth Touhou game, Mountain of Faith. Since then, has made occasional background appearances in other games and side-works. Kagiyama Hina is a misfortune goddess, based on the ritual of the Nagashi-bina.. She absorbs misfortune and stockpiles it in her surroundings, drawing power from it and slowly discharging it back into the environment as good fortune. Humans and youkai generally avoid her, and not without reason – being in her general vicinity causes people to be affected by her aura of extreme misfortune. Despite this, she is generally kind and friendly, and happy to engage people in conversation if they happen to come across her. She considers her work to be part of a greater effort to keep humanity safe in Gensokyo, and carries out this duty to the best of her ability. In combat, she attacks by carefully manipulating her stored misfortune and directing it at enemies. She will attack humans who are determined to go into areas that she deems too dangerous for them, but pulls her punches when doing so – her aim is to drive them off, not do them serious harm.  Hina has the standard mage spread – high Magic and MP, very high Mind, and low everything else. She has high Terror and Silence resistance, but not much else resistance-wise. Has high Mystic and Dark affinity, but is very weak to Spirit attacks. Skills HP Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases max HP. Defense Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Defense. Mind Boost – Max level 5, cost per level 2. Increases base Mind. Motivated Heart – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Hina’s XP earned by (6*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the party. Does not stack with Hands-On Experience. Hands-On Experience – Max level 2, cost per level 5. Increases Hina’s XP earned by (12*S.Lvl)% as long as she is in the frontline at the end of battle. Does not stack with Motivated Heart. Warding Away Bad Luck – Max level 2, cost per level 5. If Hina is on the frontline, the probability of enemy attacks inflicting debuffs on any party member and the duration of debuffs inflicted is reduced by (20*S.Lvl)%. Two-Way Curse – Max level 2, cost per level 5. If Hina is affected by a status ailment, her damage done is increased by (12*S.Lvl)% and her damage taken is reduced by (12*S.Lvl)%. Curse Reversal – Max level 1, cost per level 8. If Hina is affected by a debuff, she gains a hidden buff equal to twice its magnitude. For the most part, this can be functionally taken as ‘all debuffs are counted as buffs instead’. Misfortune Stockpiling – Max level 2, cost per level 5. When Hina uses Concentrate, she transfers (33*S.Lvl)% of debuffs on other frontline party members onto herself. Spinning More than Usual – Max level 1, cost per level 12. If Hina starts a turn when affected with Heavy, Silence or Terror, those effects will be removed, all her stats will increase by 33%, and she will recover 10 MP. Role of Nagashi-Bina – Max level 2, cost per level 6. When Hina takes a turn, any stat not affected by a buff will receive a (6*S.Lvl)% debuff. Spellcards Misfortune God’s Biorhythm – Dark element, everyone on the field, 3 MP, sets ATB to 6000. Has a (96 + (4*S.Lvl))% chance to debuff every stat by 33%. Pain Flow – Dark element, all target, 5 MP, sets ATB to 4000. 150% MAG – 50% MND, damage sharply increases based on how many debuffs Hina has when using it, using it removes all of Hina’s debuffs. Old Lady Ohgane’s Fire – Fire element, one enemy row, 4 MP, sets ATB to 4500. 196% MAG – 70% MND, has a (75 + (5*S.Lvl)/3)% chance to inflict a random 25% debuff on any stat. Hina is a tanky mage who draws power from her suffering. Her unique skill Curse Reversal turns all her debuffs into buffs, a useful ability against enemies with debuffing and anti-buff moves. The rest of her skills are a mix of different skills that power her up in adverse situations, but investing in them requires consideration. Spinning around More than Usual and Two-Way Curse often work against each other, as do Warding Away Bad Luck and Misfortune Stockpiling, and you have to consider what role you want Hina to play in your party before you invest in her skills. It’s possible to play Hina without relying too heavily on her gimmick, using Old Lady Ohgane’s Fire to fish for debuffs while keeping the party safe with Warding Away Bad Luck. On the other hand, a Hina-backed party can be very powerful, with Hina crippling enemies with Misfortune God’s Biorhythm while debuff-resistant allies shrug it off, before destroying enemies with a massively powerful Pain Flow. However, such an approach often requires significant investment and preparation, and battles often boil down to Hina as a one-woman army while the rest of the party plays support. Let’s look at some of the enemies we’ve been fighting this update.  This is clearly a cosplayer dressing up as a Kraken. I don’t know why no one has commented on that.  A minor goddess who draws strength from stockpiled misfortune.  An autonomous magical construct supercharged with fire magic.  A beautiful but deadly sea monster whose magical voice drowns out all other sound.  The full map of 5F. Missing sections only accessible from staircases down from 6F. Next up: The Azure Forest that Sank to the Bottom of Silence, 6F
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Oct 3, 2016 01:35
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Next update is going to be an extra-long one, and since we're almost at the end of this page I'd like to start it on a new one. So to stir up some discussion: how have y'all been liking the LP, is there anything more you want to see in future updates, and is there anything else you would like to see? It's my first LP, so I'm still figuring things out. Also there was an update that may have gotten overlooked, check it out. It introduces a new character with a pretty interesting gimmick. And finally, a preview of what to expect from the next update: 
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Oct 6, 2016 17:20
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Everything's been pretty cool so far. Would like to see video if you ever figure it out, battles in action can get more hectic than people would think. I think I totally misunderstood Hina because of those passives that could work against each other and dismissed her as a result. I'm interested in seeing her against some debuff heavy bosses. I think the Siren of Silence was way easier than either Eel, I remember going up the floor and killing her way before coming back to the Lampreys. Really looking forward to the boss of floor 6.
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Oct 6, 2016 17:43
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I can't say I've been sold much on Hina for many of the reasons you've outlined- either she's just another mage with a gimmick or two, or she needs to be carried by other characters. I just can't see why I should use a valuable party slot to take her when I have all the characters you do at the moment. Haven't used Rin much, but I might do an Earth Spirits Palace party at some point.
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Oct 6, 2016 17:46
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