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Ahhh, Satori. How I underestimated this character. ...granted she was way, way worse in the original game before the Weekend release, but there's a lot she can bring to the table if you go search a bit with a list during whatever grinding you wind up needing to do for the party, whether it be EXP or materials.
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May 27, 2023 20:45
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Stage 6 - Part 1 BGM: Overworld Theme  Now that we recruited Satori, we can finally head to Netherworld and confront Yuyuko.  Satori, Satori... I don’t like her, at all. I dislike her unique gimmick.  She’s a Blue Mage. She has very few personal skills she can use. Most of her skills are instead obtained by learning it from the enemies. There are a lot of unique enemy skill. Like, she has 8 pages worth of normal skills and 2 pages worth of Spellcards. This can potentially make her the most versatile party member in the game with her ability to use all different kinds of attacks, support, buffs, and debuffs. But there’s a problem: First, she requires a LOT of investment to make her viable. Second, she’s fragile. Which makes learning new skill a massive pain in the butt. Last, she’s not as good as any party member who specialized in their field despite her versatile skillset. Her unique weapon are Eyes, a weird slash type weapon that also boost her MAtk. It’s a weird weapon and I don’t like it.  So I equipped her with a spear for now in reference to a certain blue mage from a very popular JRPG that’s also ended up outclassed by his more specialized teammates. Also, her starting armor is a Kindergarten Clothes. Heh… She can only equip Small type armor and shield. Her Last Word is Potent Heart-Reading which inflict Control status effect with 100% base chance toward all enemies. Most elite enemies almost always has resistance toward Mind Control, so her Last Word isn’t all that useful. Her Commander Abilities is as follows: Command Power: Res +5% Commander Spell 1: Foresee Attack: Grants 33% deflect chance. Commander Spell 2: Youkai Skill: Uses a random enemy skill. In my opinion, her Commander Ability isn’t as useful as Aya or Nitori.  Satori’s Satori skill tree is pretty important as it boost Learn Rate. The default Learn Rate for most skill is usually around 5-10% chance. This is such a small chance.  Before I start the next stage, I grinded Satori’s level first.   And then, I had her learn a few enemy skill. This is such a tedious grind. I took me about 10 minutes to learn this one skill because my luck sucks, I guess.  I see that you got new recipes for us, Akyuu.  : I hear that Satori is a powerful foe, skilled with her Mode Change, as well as her power to draw out the spells sleeping in her foes’ hearts.: You must have had a difficult battle.Nah. I think you’re overselling her, Akyuu. She stood no chance at all against our party. : I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. I hope they help you resolve the incident.  We got recipes for tier 2 unique weapon as well as Marisa’s and Patchouli’s unique armor.  Tier 2 stuff requires Netherworld Peach which can only be found in the Netherworld. Ideally, if you want to keep everyone’s weapon up to date, we need 9 Netherworld Peaches.  Okay then, let’s head to the Netherworld shall we. BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  The music sounds so otherworldly. It’s befitting of the Netherworld itself.   : We’ve finally arrived.Indeed.  : So this is the Netherworld… I’ve never been here before.Yeah… Who wants to go to a place like this? : It’s just like I’d heard it would be. : Just like the Undeground, there’s no mist here, huh.  : It would be strange that the mist wouldn’t be able to reach here.: …Or, at least that’s how things appear. But is that really the case, I wonder…? : “There’s no mist because the culprit is here.” That’s a plausible line of thought as well, after all. : But anyway, if Yuyuko is the culprit, why would she cause this sort of incident?Maybe she isn’t the culprit? : Beats me. I’ve got no clue what goes on inside that head of hers. If we want answers, we’ll have to ask her ourselves. : Indeed. : And in order to put a stop to that-- : We have to keep moving forward.: That’s exactly right. I’d better finish it fast. This place gives me shivers.  First thing first: This place is huge. It took me a while to finish the stage because of how big it is.  I see a treasure. You can’t fool me by placing me close to the teleporter. Instant Death resistance is really important. Especially for the next boss.  The stage is divided into 2 areas: The bright and heavenly Serpent Path, and the dark and dreary Netherworld. Unfortunately for me, we’ll be spending more time in the ground instead of above the clouds.  The enemy is represented by Bakebake. It’s also the weakest enemy in the stage. BGM: Battle 1  What a cute dragon girl. Vouivre has 460 HP, resists fire, water, earth, thunder, and is weak to dark. Her claws and tail can deal heavy amount of damage, and she can also inflict charm and poison. She’s pretty dangerous and also hard to kill. Dragon type enemy are almost always resists fire, water, earth, and thunder. This makes them hard to kill.  Giant Frogs. Fortunately, it’s not the type of enemy that can swallow us. Senpoku Kanpoku has 400 HP, resists earth and strike and weak to water, and slash. It can inflict poison with its breath. Sakuya and Nitori should be able to kill them before they can move. Poison status effect infliction is quite useful for Satori in the early game. She deals far more damage with the status effect compared to using attack skills. I’d recommend learning its Poison Breath.  A giant sentient virus. Sanae, buff our Res before it makes us sick. Natural Killer has 300 HP, heavily resists all physical attack, and weak to fire and water. I don’t think it can threaten us, especially when Marisa and Nitori vaporize it in one hit. It has 15% chance to drop Ring of Dexterity I (Dex +4)  There’s the Bakebake. It has 256 HP, and is weak to light. It’s the weakest enemy in the stage. Have Reimu exorcise it with her amulet and be done with it.  Uuuh… This giant bird looks pretty intimidating. Hraesvelgr has 1200 HP, 50 Eva, 100 MDef, immunity to earth, resists dark, and strike, and weak to light (despite its majestic appearance), and stab. It can move twice, it has bird type enemy turn cancelling Swoop, it can inflict Control with its normal attack, it can zombify fallen allies, and it can buff its Evasion. Those package makes it one of the most annoying enemy in the stage. While it’s unlikely to wipe out the party, its very high MDef and Evasion makes it really annoying to kill. Best option is to use Nitori. It has 20% chance to drop Ring of Intelligence I (INT +4). BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme   From the starting area alone, there are a lot of teleporter in the map. There are a lot of place we can go from here. This also makes navigating the area confusing.  A dagger with slayer effect against aqua type enemy. I still prefer Dagger of Speed with its +25 Agi.   What the hell?!  The cracked tile drop you to lower area? BGM: Battle 1  The enemy encounter below the clouds is different. We got 2 new enemies. First is the rather cute winged creature called Itsumade. It has 300 HP, resists earth, and weak to thunder, and stab. It’s an annoying bugger. It has the turn cancelling Swoop, and it can also inflict confusion. I hate having my turn cancelled. It has 15% chance to drop Ring of Agility I (Agi +4) Next, we have the headless statue. Kubikiri Jizou has 333 HP, 120 PDef, immune to light, and dark, resists slash, and stab, and is only weak to earth. Be careful with this enemy because it can inflict Curse status effect which can potentially kill your main damage dealer.  A living flame made out of darkness itself. How cool is that? Darkness has 265 HP, resists dark, and weak to light. It’s as weak as the Bakebake and will die in one hit from Reimu’s amulet. It has 4% chance to drop Netherworld Peach, an important material for crafting unique equipment. It’s maybe a good idea to farm this enemy.  That’s a lot of dropped items. I don’t think I’ve ever seen enemy group dropping more than 1 items before.  I’m guessing you’re the elite enemy on the Netherworld section. Shade has 1000 HP, immune to dark, and weak to light. It is at least a little bit easier to kill than the holy bird. But still, be careful of its dark elemental attack. It can demolish your party if it’s not taken care of fast. BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  The lower area is equally big and there’s also a lot of areas.  This is an accessory that gives resistance to Confusion, Blind, and Silence. It’s at this point that I escaped from the stage to recharge. The enemy encounter quickly burns Reimu’s and Sanae’s MP stock since almost half the enemy is weak against light, and Sanae’s Res buff is in high demand thanks to the numerous status inflicting enemies.  I crafted Marisa’s 2nd tier broom since her weapon is horribly outdated at this point.   I get it. We need to drop down from stepping on cracked tile to access the path beyond the spikes.   There we go! I’d take a detour first and check out the western side of the area.   A new spear for Nitori. I’ll take that.   Oh wow. That armor’s name is so cool. BGM: Battle 1  There’s new enemy encounter as we reach deeper. First, we have the Swordsman. He has 425 HP, and is weak to dark. He has decently powerful slash based skill like Kabutowari (high damage + PDef debuff), and Gale Sword (AoE attack). Kill him quick before he can become a problem. He has 15% chance to drop Ring of Strength (Str +4), and 4% chance to drop Netherworld Peach. There’s also the Ascetic. He has 385 HP, and is weak to dark. He’s more of a support character. He has Area Heal and he can also inflict status effect. Satori can learn Area Heal, which is a very useful ability for her. But the process to obtain it is so difficult and annoying I hate doing it.  Like I said before, poison is the best way for Satori to deal some sort of damage. I tried using elemental spell with Satori. And man, her damage is so pathetic.  MDef is an important stats. So Sanae’s MDef buff costs a bomb to cast. BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  It is difficult to memorize the stage due to how large the place is.  Agi +15. It’s a good accessory for your support character. We want them to move first before the enemy does. The random encounter is a lot more than I can handle. This leads to exit the stage again.   This area contains only a treasure chest.  Now we’re back to this area.  Perfect Square inflict Stop on enemy with 100% base chance. But I much prefer Private Square since bosses will most likely immune to Stop and Private Square stops everything except for Sakuya and nothing is immune to Private Square. BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  Inf +15. A very important accessory for our debuffer (Satori). There’s also a silver key that can be used to open silver treasure chest.   Now we gotta find the golden door to access the latter half of the area.    There we go!  We are entering the second half of the stage. There are new encounter in the area. BGM: Battle 1  Evil trees. And there’s plenty of them. Zaqqum has 444 HP, resists thunder, and stab and is weak to fire. The most important thing I’d like to say about it is that it is the best source of Netherworld Peach. Each tree has 15% chance to drop the peach.  Case in point.  What is that snake thingy. Its appearance is so unique. It is called Sagari. It has 369 HP, and it’s weak to fire, light, and dark. It’s a weakling with lots of weakness. It has 15% chance to Ring of Vitality I (Vit +4) and also 4% chance to drop Netherworld Peach. The evil spirits is Hitodama. It has 199 HP, heavily resists dark, and all physical type and is weak to light. It can possess your party member, inflicting Control at the cost of killing itself. Interesting skill, but otherwise easy to kill.  There’s another elite enemy, eh? The Cerberus has 1111 HP, resists fire, and weak to water, and earth. While it can move twice and hits very hard with its physical attack, it probably won’t pose a problem to the party as Nitori, Marisa, and Patchouli can deal heavy damage to it and kill it in one turn. It has 20% chance to drop Netherworld Peach. Technically it has the highest chance to drop the peach, but it is an uncommon random encounter in the area and the evil tree is more commonly found and appear in greater number.  Of course there’s another demon. The Infant Daemon has 472 HP, resists dark and weak to light. My description of the previous demon type enemy also applies to this enemy as well. Highly damaging dark based spell. There’s 3 enemies that are called Infant Demon. The demon in stage 3, 4, and 6. BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme   Activating this button open a shortcut that leads to the starting area. This allows us to instantly skip half the stage.  Poison is Satori’s main way to inflict damage. Buffing poison damage will make her even better. If it’s proc, the poison can deal about 200 damage per turn.   I remembered that there’s a Snake Path in Dragonball Z. Maybe the Serpent Path in this game is inspired by Dragonball Z. BGM: Battle 1  I see there’s also angel type enemy as well. Angel has 420 HP, resists light and weak to dark. Their light elemental attack means nothing to me since Reimu heavily resists light.  There’s two of them?! poo poo! BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  The silver chest contains a Gold Shield. It’s a pretty good shield in my opinion.  I wonder how large this stage is. I think I escaped to heal like 5 times already.  A mid stage cutscene. Okay, that’s new. I guess she is a plot important opponent.  : ……: …I’m hungry… : Is dinner ready yet?  : I’ll bring it in right now! Meet Youmu, the half-ghost samurai/gardener of Hakugyokurou. And also the place’s caretaker and Yuyuko’s personal cook. She basically does everything.   She has a full animation of her placing the food on the table, and then sliding it toward Yuyuko. : Yay! : Please, go right ahead. Japanese people will say “Itadakimasu” before they eat their meals. : By the way, Lady Yuyuko…: Yes?: While out shopping for what we needed for dinner, I heard something. Apparently, someone’s entered the Netherworld and is making their way here to Hakugyokurou. Where you heard it from? There’s no NPC in the place. Only hostile enemies. : “Someone”….? : (Coming here is a smart move, but it certainly took her a bit to get moving.)She’s a lazy shrine maiden after all. : Reimu? Why is the Hakurei shrine maiden coming here…? : Don’t tell me… Did you cause some sort of trouble again, Lady Yuyuko…!?: Fufufu. What do you think?: …I don’t know.It’s Reimu who picked a fight with Yuyuko first. : But regardless, I’ll protect you from any enemies either way.: I see.: So, I’m heading out to protect Hakugyokurou!: Yes, I’ll see you again soon. And so, she left without finishing her lunch first. I feel bad for her.  : (That being said, I wonder what Yukari is doing about this…?)Working behind the scene? I bet she already knows who the main culprit is. : Either way… Fufufu, this will be fun.: Go on, come visit. And then, she continues eating her lunch. BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  Let’s not keep them waiting shall we.  With the new sword, Reimu can have 100 PAtk despite primarily being a mage.  There’s 2 Netherworld Peaches that can be found on treasure chest. This will help players to get their stuff up to date if they have a bad luck getting it from enemy drops.   Acc +15. Accuracy boosting accessory is a must have for Sakuya as her Two-Handed Sword base accuracy leaves much to be desired.   When is Netherworld, we dress like the Netherworlder.   Man, this single area is HUGE.  The stone lantern placements and the spirits makes this golden door looks so ominous. By the way, the treasure contains Sakura Petal (Accesory that resists Mind Control)  Two Netherworld Peaches isn’t enough to upgrade everyone. Hopefully, the tree enemy drop the peach.  I don’t see the silver key anywhere. I searched it.   I believe this is the last explorable area.  Nice! We can finish the stage.  The treasure chest in the area contains very useful accessories. The googles adds +10 Eva. Aya should have this.  This is also equally important. The earring adds +10 Res. Res is a really important stats to block status effect and debuffs.   Let’s take a break first before we head for the next boss fight. The next boss is pretty difficult. Side note: I tried finding the silver key by exploring the stage for about 20 minutes. But unfortunately, I failed to find it. I’m already tired of this stage, I guess I’ll leave it be. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: It’s not just Youmu that fight us.
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Jun 10, 2023 16:24
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Okay, so, Satori: - That fragility doesn't matter in the slightest for learning new skills; even if a skill kills her, she'll play the "Learned!" animation if the check succeeded, drop dead, then learn it after the fight if you win. - As of Weekend Edition and onward, the lowest base Learn Rate for any skill is 10%, and a lot of them are party-target skills she gets to check for just by existing. The most common base Learn Rate is 20%, tripled to 60% upon fully investing in the Satori tree (which you really want to do because it makes her Learned skills even better), and there's a fair few with base rates even higher than that. ...unfortunately, that Destruction Beam you were grinding out is a 10% chance, and those little flying robo eyeballs only have enough MP to cast it twice before being tapped. Rough case there. - Important note for learning, though: Satori can only attempt to learn a specific skill once per encounter. If she's hit with different skills, she can make an attempt at each one, but the same skill? You get one shot, then the game doesn't even check for Learning after that. - Regarding her magic skills, I've found her to be just fine, but if you're going full mage Satori, you want her Third Eye tree and its chunky MATK bonus, plus some MATK from her Eyes tree. Side note, the Satori tree lowers Learned cooldowns by 1, and the Third Eye tree eventually lowers Magic cooldowns by 2; I think this might stack, but I've yet to check since I'm running a mixed Satori plus some healing for emergencies. - I will say, though, this version of the game isn't doing her any favors by getting rid of the early recruitments; one of the members we could've had by now in other versions has easy access to Mind Control, which you otherwise need Satori's Last Word to access at the moment. That status is great at getting an enemy to target Satori with single-target skills, and it does so much more reliably than Charm. As for the spear-wielding Blue Mage... god, I'm never gonna get over that game doing the galaxy-brain move of only letting him actually be a Blue Mage for his drat Limit Break equivalent 
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Jun 10, 2023 17:41
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LPFinale posted:Okay, so, Satori: - Her fragility does matter if I'm using for actual fight. I prefer using Marisa for my mage because she's slightly more capable of taking hits. - The minus cooldown stacks so long as it's not on the same skill tree. So yeah, it's -2 cooldown.
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Jun 14, 2023 17:58
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Stage 6 - Boss Fight BGM: Tower of White Jade Theme  I’ll spoil it first: Yuyuko will join Youmu in the next boss fight.  Youmu is a dual-wielding samurai. Yuyuko is a ghost with the power of death. So we need slash resistance and instant death resistance to protect us from their attacks. I replaced Reimu with Alice because Yuyuko resists light (You’d think a ghost would be weak to light instead to resisting it), so she won’t be useful in this boss fight. The rest of the party remains unchanged.  The slayer effect from Marisa’s Laser skill tree will be useful in taking down Youmu.  Wish me luck, guys.   : It’s already almost time for our showdown with the true culprit, then!? It was totally worth coming along to get close-up coverage!: I can’t wait!I doubt it, Aya. There’s no way a JRPG would be this short.  : I’m going to run out of stamina before we can punish Yuyuko…: Hm? Hi there, Youmu. I see you have been expecting our arrival.  : So it really was you.  : Well, that certainly won’t do.It’s 9 against 1. Good luck with that. : The culprit of the incident is here in Hakugyokurou, so we’re passing through here no matter what.: Master or not, you really shouldn’t be protecting the incident’s culprit.: Even assuming that Lady Yuyuko is the culprit, I’m her bodyguard-- She’s completely loyal toward her master. She will follow Yuyuko no matter what. : “Assuming”…? Yuyuko IS the culprit, right?: I don’t know.: Huh? But you HAVE to know…: Is she telling the truth, Satori?: ……: “After all, she hasn’t told me anything.” : It seems she’s telling the truth.: So that means Yuyuko’s acting alone…? That doesn’t make any sense. Something doesn’t seem right about this…Maybe because she isn’t the culprit? : W-Why do you know what I’m thinking…!? Wait, don’t tell me… Can she…?: “Can she read my heart!?” Yes, she can. : “If that’s true, then she can read this, too!”: “Lady Yuyuko, you’re a dummy! A dummy!” Yuyuko-sama no baka! Baka!  Youmu has a great shocked expression. : “At this rate, she’ll find out that I wet the bed this morning…”What…!? Is she a kid? : You… wet the bed? That’s really embarrassing, man.  Marisa bitch-slapped Satori for revealing Youmu’s most embarrassing secret. Satori deserved it.  : Don’t go readin’ that! Nice going Satori. You just piss her off. : Ah.: ……: She’s mad, huh… : She sure is… Satori, apologize to her. : Quickly, before my secrets get leaked… I don’t think she’ll accept out apology. : Are you going to cut us or crush us? Which is it?Cut. Her attacks are all slash elemental. : That’s irrelevant!  Youmu tries to strikes the party. Fortunately, everyone managed to get out of the way. : That was a good dodge. However… : You’re serious, huh.: Then I’ll return the favor!  Youmu can slash Reimu’s amulet in two? Can I consider this cheating? : Wha!?: She cut Reimu’s danmaku…: Konpaku Single Blade Style. I’d like to test that. : Not too shabby. But how’s this!? Reimu fires off more Amulet. But Youmu parry all of it.   That was close! Reimu barely dodged Youmu’s counterattack. : Konpaku Dual Blade Style. With my Roukanken for offense, and my Hakurouken for defense… Well, Youmu. I’d like to introduce to a swordsman named Roronoa Zoro. The man who triple-wield his swords. : I will not allow you to get any closer to Lady Yuyuko!: What’s goin’ on? Youmu sure is fightin’ hard today…: We’ve got a real troublesome foe in our way…That’s why I prepare strategy specifically for fighting her.  Go home and stay in the kitchen… Or something like that. : Ahem. You haven’t forgotten about us, have you, Reimu?: …Yeah, I know. Let’s get her, everyone! : Hm? Even her dual blades can’t protect her when 9 people focus fire on her. : Whoa! : But it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to take us all on alone.: Prepare yourself, Youmu! Oh right. There’s another person living there. : Eek!: Wha!?: That danmaku…! : T-That voice…! It’s the woman of the hour: Yuyuko herself.  : You look like you’re having fun. Mind if I join it?No really. I’d like to get this over with. Also, please don’t join in as well. : What are you doing here, Lady Yuyuko…? There’s no point in guarding the entrance if you come outside…!: Because it looked like fun. Her reason is as simple as that. : So the culprit’s finally shown herself!: Culprit? : !: I knew it!: Incident…?: There’s no mist here in the Netherworld, so the fact that you know about it…: It looks like you must be our culprit, Yuyuko!: Oh dear, you’ve got me all wrong. After all--: “That mist isn’t coming from here, is it?” Satori’s mind reading managed to break Yuyuko’s composure. : …I don’t think I know you.: I’m Komeiji Satori, master of the Palace of the Earth Spirits.: I see. So you’re the one I’ve heard of…: So, what’s the readin’, Satori? Is Yuyuko really the culprit?: ……: ……!?: I-I can’t read her heart…!? Mind reading is a powerful tool. The game knows this. To counteract it, the game makes it so that anyone we want to use mind reading on will have some way to resist it. So Satori is made useless from the get-go. : What…!?: If she’s capable of that, she’s not just any ordinary foe…!: Goodness… You just had to go and ruin the fun with that boorish power of yours.Oh great. Satori pissed off Yuyuko as well.  Notice that her attack is focused on Satori. : It looks like you’re in need of some punishment!Look Yuyuko, can I offer you Satori in exchange of you letting us go? : Eep!?: Wha!?: W-Whoa! Y-Yuyuko’s mad!: Troublesome as always, I see…!: Don’t forget about me!  Ouch ouch! We’re being double teamed. : Eek!: Ack! : I know! Let’s take this fight in the actual turn based combat! : I cannot allow you to hurt Lady Yuyuko.: Come, it’s time for your punishment. I’ll make you guys pay for this! BGM: Boss 1  Youmu and Yuyuko are a pair of dangerous bosses. Youmu has 3500 HP, 10 Emergency Evade, 30 Physical Barrier, 15 Magical Barrier, and is weak to fire, water, earth, and thunder. It’s easy to inflict high damage to her due to her numerous weaknesses. Yuyuko has 3500 HP, 240 MDef, 75 Evasion, 33 Emergency Evade, and 30 Magical Barrier, resists light (You'd think a ghost like her would be weak to light, not resists it) and dark, and weak to fire, water, earth, and thunder. She’s almost immune to magic damage. Use elemental physical damage (Nitori) against her.  First thing first: buff everyone’s Res! ASAP!  While Yuyuko has single target elemental attacks, she favors inflicting Instant Death more than anything. As long as we have Res buff active, we should be fine. We can ignore her for now. We want Youmu to be gone as fast as possible because her physical attacks is more dangerous than Yuyuko’s Instant Death.  She’s a stance based fighter. She has 3 stances that she can use Human Realm Sword Stance, Deva Realm Sword Stance, and Asura Sword Stance. Each stance buffs her stats and gives her access to certain spellcards. Human Realm buffs her Acc, and Crit Rate, and its skill revolves around dealing high burst damage toward a single target. Deva Realm buffs her PDef, and Evasion. Its skill mostly targets an entire column while inflicting debuff. Asura Sword buffs her Patk. Its skill revolves around low damage, AoE attack that is meant for wiping out numerous trash mobs in one strike. I consider Human Realm to be her most dangerous stance. We want Alice to take the full brunt of her attack as I don’t think the other party member can survive a single from her!  Holy poo poo! Youmu almost kills Sakuya with that one attack! Geez…   Sit down, Youmu! I have a business with your master. I don’t want you to interrupt it. While Yuyuko won’t be dealing as much damage as Youmu does, actually damaging her can be a problem. Magic attack is useless against her, and physical attack will most likely miss due to her very high Evasion and Emergency Evade.   Slowly but surely, we’ll eventually delete all Yuyuko’s HP. Unfortunately, the fight isn’t over.  Because she has one last trick on her sleeve. Namely her spellcard which activates after her HP hits 0.  Resurrection Butterfly inflicts Instant Death on everyone with 100% base chance to inflict the status effect. Not only that, it also ignores half of the targets’ Instant Death Resistance.  Case in point: Sanae has 95% Instant Death resistance. Yet, she still falls victim to the Instant Death. BGM: Victory  I’m supremely lucky that Alice isn’t hit with the Instant Death. It’ll be really suck if we lost the fight after we kill all the bosses. Game is bullshit. Just like that.  : There, that settles our fight! Give yourself up, Yuyuko!: Ugh, that was awful… : You’re not doing a good job of convincing me…: No, she appears to be speaking the truth. I can read as much from the part of her heart that’s opened back up. It’s obvious she isn’t the culprit. : Huh? So… What’s that means for us? Are we back to square one again!?Yes we are unfortunately. It is what it is. : It looks like it… What do we do now?: Oh, right. You must know something that could help, right, Yuyuko?: Hey, now! We won fair and square. Victor must obey the loser. : Come on, please! WHAT!? : Huh…?: I wouldn’t have minded, but you just HAD to use that boorish power on me… So I don’t feel like telling you anything now.: Satori ended up just making things worse for us… Now what do we do?Satori is an active liability at this point. : (I didn’t do anything wrong, so why am I being vilified here…?)Go away, Satori! : But, well… Since you came all this way to Hakugyokurou, I don’t mind lending you some power as a parting gift.Oh… More power. I like it. : I can’t tell whether you’re refusing to help or agreeing…: What are you trying to say?  A new party member! : You’re… what? : Why me…!?: “Lady Yuyuko, you’re a dummy! A DUMMY!”幽々子様のバカ！ バカ！ : Erk! That’s really freaking embarrassing indeed. : Awawawa…! Don’t tell me… Were you watching earlier…!?: You can either stay here and get punished, or you can go with Reimu. Which would you prefer? Ufufu. I mean, she basically gave her only one choice. : I understand… I’ll go…: (Oh no, poor Youmu…)I feel sorry for her. : I don’t feel like I got any say in this… but whatever.It’s free party member. : Um, so… With the matter of Yuyuko’s involvement being resolved, that means I’ve done my job here, yes?Bye, Satori.  : I’m not letting you go home until we find the culprit!Dammit, Reimu. Just dump her! : Blegh… : So, with all that settled… What are we doing next?: Yeah, good question. We’re back to square one. Where are we supposed to look now…? There’s our next stage. : What’s your basis?: Our Yuyuko theory ended up falling through, but our outlook on the mist’s makeup shouldn’t be far off the mark. : In which case, when deciding where to go next, wouldn’t it be wise to pick another place related to said makeup?: And that would be Muenzuka? It’s a graveyard. It’s also related to death indeed. : Muenzuka may have some merit as our next destination.: It’s decided, then. Right then!  : I’ll leave Hakugyokurou to you for a while.: Yes, good luck out there.: I’ll give it my best. In the end, Youmu never get to finish her lunch.  : Go out there and grow, Youmu. I’ll look forward to seeing how this all turns out. We finally finished this stage. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Red Spider Lily, also known as: Lycoris  Wait… the cutscene isn’t over yet?  Who are you supposed to be? A member of Organization XIII? ???: …I see. ???: Just as expected of the Hakurei Shrine maiden.   Youmu is the last character that we recruited by defeating them. We won’t be recruiting anyone by force anymore.  So it pours all the buff toward Bonus Video: Stage 6 - Boss Fight Your Everyday NEET fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jun 14, 2023 17:59
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That formation grid can be very hard to read at times; I can't tell for certain if the division of Konpaku Style is: Front: 1, 2, 3 Middle: 4 Rear: 5 Or: Front: 1 Middle: 2, 3, 4 Rear: 5 Heck, I could even see an argument for: Front: 1 Middle: 2, 3 Rear: 4, 5
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Jun 15, 2023 00:01
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I like 'recruiting by force' as a metaphor.
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Jun 15, 2023 03:16
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NyoroEevee posted:That formation grid can be very hard to read at times; I can't tell for certain if the division of Konpaku Style is: After checking the wiki, I found the answer. The formation is 3 Front, 1 Middle, 1 back. The formation actually buffed 3 people, which is slightly better than I thought, but I still don't like the defense debuffs. I prefers the well rounded Hakurei Circle formation suited for 1 tank, 2 physical attacker, and 2 magic user.
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Jun 15, 2023 05:31
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Stage 7 - Part 1 You guys ready for another filler stage? We got through 6 stages already, yet we still hasn’t find the culprit yet.  Youmu is our other slash-based physical attacker. She’s a bit harder to use compared to Sakuya due to her stance-based fighting style. She needs to use a turn to activate her stance before she can use her offensive skill. Each of her 3 stances will buff her stats and gives her access to skills specific to that stance. I already wrote what her stance does in the previous update. Let me just copy and paste it here: Human Realm buffs her Acc, and Crit Rate, and its skill revolves around dealing high burst damage toward a single target. Deva Realm buffs her PDef, and Evasion. Its skill mostly targets an entire column while inflicting debuff. Asura Sword buffs her Patk. Its skill revolves around low damage, AoE attack that is meant for wiping out numerous trash mobs in one strike. Using her effectively means knowing what stance to use against the current enemy or boss encounter… Or you can just pour all her Pow toward a single stance and only use that one hyper buffed stance. Youmu with Human Realm and her unique weapon is a ferocious crit machine. Her unique weapon is Katana, a slash-type weapon that’s a bit heavier than regular sword, but it also grants her a bit of Exorcism and crit rate. She can equip all types of armors and shields. Her Last Word is Konpaku Slash, an attack that inflict Instant Death on all enemies with 100% base chance. It’s not all that effective since Youmu doesn’t have the Inf to help her proc the Instant Death and bosses naturally immune to Instant Kill. Her Commander Ability is as follows: Command Power: Physical attacks score more critical hits (ironically, the one who wants this buff the most is Youmu herself) Commander Spell 1: Half Phantom Attack: Halves all enemies’ Res Commander Spell 2: Six Realms Sword: Makes physical attacks more likely to score critical hits (maybe Sakuya could take advantage of this buff.)  That’s all for the character analysis. Time to visit Akyuu for more recipes.  : Oh my! I see you’ve defeated over 1000 youkai. It appears solving this incident won’t be a straight forward task.Geez… We’ve already slain that much enemies during our journey. And we still haven’t found the culprit yet. : Anyway, that aside… They’re not much, but I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. : Please make use of them to resolve the incident. We got recipes for accessories with beneficial buff like: Bomb+, Lives+, Physical/Magical Damage Down. Useful stuff, but I’m saving my materials.  But wait, there’s still more. : I hear that Yuyuko is skilled at manipulating death, and that Youmu is skilled at her renowned Konpaku Style of swordsmanship. You must have had a very difficult battle.I can’t deny that. I’m supremely lucky to walk away from that fight. : I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. I hope they help you resolve the incident. We got Youmu’s unique weapon and armors. Also, Alice’s unique armor.  The next stage in Muenzuka, which is located just north of the Netherworld. BGM: Muenzuka Theme  The place is filled with red spider lilies  We’ve already arrived, guys. : Right. I won’t say we should comb every inch… but let’s at least check the deepest reaches.Because that’s where the boss is. : This certainly is a strange place… I’ve never been here before, but there’s a sort of difficult-to-describe presence in the air.  : --The dead with nobody left to tend for their graves.That’s bleak… : This is a cemetery?: She means it’s a cemetery for anything that flows in from the outside world. People, objects… Things unconnected to Gensokyo.: Gensokyo, the Netherwold, and the outside world are separated by barriers, and Muenzuka is where those barriers intersect, making them weaker.Thanks for the exposition. I don’t know much about Muenzuka aside from it being the place of the dead. : That may explain the presence you feel from the outside. You can find plenty of broken modern appliances in the graveyard. : You tend to find a lot of tsukumogami here, though…: I see, so this place has a complicated history behind it…: With all that said, would the culprit really be here of all places…?: I wonder, too…The answer for that question is obvious. : They could be here precisely because it’s such an unlikely place. But, we have no way to know…: However, we may still find some clues here.: That’s right. I don’t know whether we’ll find the culprit here, We’ll be on the lookout for treasures and enemy encounter as well.  The stage is at least a bit easier than the Netherworld. There’s no silver/gold key & door in this stage.  The enemies here is represented by a living umbrella. Nitori did say we can find a plenty of tsukumogamis here. BGM: Battle 1  The humanoid enemies here are Judges of the dead. The Judge comes in 4 variations: Sword, Spear, Axe, and Staff. All Judges have 600 HP and weakness to dark. The staff wielding Judge has single target fire, water, earth, thunder elemental spells. Satori can learn those spells from that enemy. She also has Ether (Inf buff to all enemies). The buff isn’t important in this encounter. I think the sword, spear, axe wielding Judge have more advanced weapon skill. But fortunately, I never seen them use it. Which is fine because their basic attacks hits hard.  Just one encounter is enough to get Youmu to level up due to the large difference in levels between her and the enemies. Also, at Pow Level 25 and above, the next level requirement is increased by 5 per level. We can deal with it.  Okay… even the flowers’ trying to kill us. Amaryllis has 525 HP, resists thunder and weak to fire, and slash. It loves to inflict sleep. If anyone if inflicted with sleep, it will follow it up by inflicting Instant Death against the afflicted character. We’re fine so long as Sanae’s buffing everyone’s Res.  I don’t like what the bug is holding. Armored Scarab has 400 HP, 80 PDEF, and weak to water. Have Marisa and Nitori kill it before it can detonate the bomb that it’s holding. It has 4% chance to drop Earth Snake’s Armor.  There’s the sword wielding Judge. I thought I missed her. She has 8% chance to drop Magic Bokken, a sword with Avian and Beast slayer effect and also gives resistance to sleep, paralysis, and petrify.  Crap! Dragon type enemy. Wyvern has 1000 HP, 120 PDef, resists fire, water, earth, and thunder, and is weak to dark. It’s a strong opponent. Its Wing Breath is a decently powerful AoE thunder based attack, and its Tail Chop can deal up to 100 damage, which is a lot of damage and can potentially one shot Marisa and Patchouli. Dragon type enemy almost always have resistance to fire, water, earth, and thunder which makes them hard to kill.  I really hate this bastard. Ittan Momen has 490 HP, 60 Eva, resists earth and strike, and weak to thunder and slash. Its mere presence will make the fight much more annoying because of its Quick Flight (buff Eva and gives generous amount of Emergency Evade) buff. We can forget about using physical attack once it uses its buff. On top of that, it can use Constrict to inflict paralyze and dealing damage at the same time. Annoying stuff all around. At least Nitori’s Chaser will always hit regardless of enemy’ Evasion. It has 8% chance to drop Pocketwatch, an accessory that gives 25% resistance against all Quick status effect.  Oh. That’s good stuff right there. BGM: Muenzuka Theme  The road are almost always divided into two. One will lead to treasure and a dead end and the other will lead us further.  I believe I chose the wrong path.  I see how this works. Operating the lever will open the blocked path while also closing the previously unblocked path.  I believe I have completed the elemental medium armor set. There’s fire, water, earth, and thunder armor.    There’s a lever right here. It’s just that Reimu’s body blocks it from the view. I should’ve operated it from the right or left.  I see… That lever operates with bed of spikes as well. Let me just go back and open this path.  The lower path contains only a treasure and a dead end.    This lever will permanently open a shortcut that leads back to the starting area. We can go back and refill our MP and bomb just in case.  As we progresses further, garbage and toxic waste starts filling up the area. There’s new random encounter from this point on. BGM: Battle 1  Eww… What is that mud creature?! Hitotsume Bouzu has 650 HP, resists water and strike, and is weak to fire. Its Gaze can inflict Res debuff to everyone. It isn’t all that dangerous when it is by itself. However, it synergizes well with enemies that primarily inflict status effect. Like the death flower for example.  Slimes are maybe one of the staple starting enemies in JRPG that’s easy to kill. But when the slime is this big? I don’t know. Black Pudding has 450 HP, immune to strike, heavily resists slash, and stab, and is weak to fire and water. It’s actually just like any other slime type enemies in the game, can’t be damaged with physical attack, and it has HP absorption. It’s actually easy to kill. It has 12.5% chance to drop Muscle Belt I (+30 HP). Good accessory for either Alice or the magicians.  That enemy is freaking awesome. Panther V has 700 HP, and is weak to fire, and earth. Its tank cannon deals decently high damage to a small area. Have Sanae buff everyone’s PDef just to be safe. It has 8% chance to drop Dakimakura, a small shield that can block anything.  A ghost lantern. Spooky. Nagare Andon has 500 HP, resists light, dark, all physical type, and is weak to fire, water, earth, and thunder. It can inflict Curse. That the most notable part of that enemy other than its numerous resistance.  Freaking poo poo! Hard disk enemy. Momentus 512 HP, immune to light and dark, resists stab, and weak to strike and thunder. It’s one of the most annoying enemy due to its signature skill: HDD Crash. That skill can inflict Erase toward everyone. Erase outright removes the afflicted character from the fight. They can be brought back with Revive skill and they won’t earn EXP after the battle. Always have Sanae’s Res buff before it can screw you over. Remember that the mud creature has Res debuff. We’re more vulnerable to being Erased because of the debuff.  When there’s a hard disk, there’s almost always a computer chip accompanying it. Atom has 512 HP, immune to light and dark, and is weak to thunder. Aside from its signature AoE Paralysis skill Bug, this version of chip also has offensive skill like Drill, and Electromagnetic Wave (Column targeting thunder attack). Nothing too dangerous so long as Sanae’s Res is active.  This barrier skill can nullify either physical or magical attack. Although it’s only for a single character. It’s not that effective in my opinion.  Holy hell! That enemy creeps me out. Laughing Tire has 550 HP, immune to light and dark, resists stab, and is weak to slash, and earth. Its signature skill is Hit and Run, a penetrating attack that can inflict Topple and cancel that character’s turn. Satori can learn this skill and turn herself into a poor man’s Sonic the Hedgehog. There’s not much about that enemy other than its intimidating sprite. BGM: Muenzuka Theme  Let me open up the path first.  There we go.  This lever also opens up a shortcut back to the starting area. Just make sure to keep the road on the previous area unblocked.  We need to get to the other side and press the switch to open the final area. BGM: Battle 1  AAAAAAAAHHH!!! Yukkuri!  poo poo! Should’ve assigned Aya as the commander. Yukkuri enemies are the Metal slime-esque enemies of the game. Killing them grants a lot of EXP, but they really love to escape on the first chance it gets. BGM: Muenzuka Theme  Underarmor grants resistance against stab. In this stage, we’re able to obtain accessory that gives resistance toward physical attacks.  Elemental Sphere is a decent mid-tier material. It is used to create magic damage reduction accessory.   Is that a toxic waste? Can someone dispose it safely?  We can finally progress further.  Hakurouken is the slash resistance accessory. I gave it to Youmu since it’s her canonical weapon.  We’re getting close to the end. I can feel it.   This shield is a really good shield for our physical damage dealer. Equipping the shield gives it’s user +5% slash/stab/strike damage. Sure it’s small percentage, but every little bit helps.  The random enemy encounter in the final section of the stage is at its strongest. BGM: Battle 1  The demon and angel type enemies have been upgraded to a full blown miniboss. The Lesser Daemon has 1200 HP, 25 Divine Barrier, heavily resists dark, and is weak to light. It can move twice in a turn and its physical and magic attack hurts like hell. Just nuke it fast with Reimu and Patchouli’s light based spell before it can kill the party. Those demons don’t mess around. Demon miniboss can drop Daemon Heart, a high-tier material that can be used to craft high-end accessory. But it has an incredibly low chance to drop (0.1%).  Crap! There’s also the angel miniboss. Principality has 1200 HP, 12 Divine Barrier, heavily resists light, and is weak to dark. Angel type is slightly weaker than the demon. They’re still a dangerous enemy though and only Patchouli has access to dark based spell. His physical and magic attack hurts like… heaven? No, that’s not right. Bottom line is, it deals a lot of damage.  Holy! That’s a lot of enemies is a single encounter. It can be easily wipe out with Patchouli’s AoE thunder spell + Nitori’s Chaser.  What the hell am I looking at?! Shichinin Misaki (Seven Caped People) has 1500 HP, heavily resists dark, and stab, and is weak to fire and light. They can attack twice and their normal attack also has a chance to inflict Control. It can also zombify any fallen party member. They’re intimidating enemy for sure. But they’re manageable as long as they don’t Control any party member.  Patchouli only learns single target spell at level 14. Her spells are more powerful than Marisa’s, but it also costs more MP. BGM: Muenzuka Theme  We can see cherry blossom trees in the final section of the stage.  I ended up running away from all the enemies. I don’t have enough resources to take on the elite enemies.  There’s still another area!  Let me squeeze in through the small gap between the slope and the tree.  This is the strike resistance accessory.   Finally. We arrived at the rest area. We’ll find out who’s the boss in the next update. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: This isn’t a good time to take a nap.
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Jun 27, 2023 17:29
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Your Everyday NEET posted:
"WAGA ZANKANTOU NI TATENU MONO NASHI!" ...Sorry, had to get the Sänger out of my system. Also if Yukkuri are the Metal Slimes of this game, then I assume Yukkuri Slash is the Metal Slash of this game?
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Jun 29, 2023 09:42
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I always get confused when fangames allow you to change Youmu's weapon - she is one of the few characters who actually has a named, storied weapon and uh, it would be very weird for her to trade it out for most normal blades.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:45
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Cyflan posted:"WAGA ZANKANTOU NI TATENU MONO NASHI!" Regallion posted:I always get confused when fangames allow you to change Youmu's weapon - she is one of the few characters who actually has a named, storied weapon and uh, it would be very weird for her to trade it out for most normal blades. Also, she can be made to equip non-katana weapons.
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Jul 1, 2023 17:18
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Stage 7 - Boss Fight BGM: Muenzuka Theme  Let us see who the boss of Stage 7 is, shall we.  The boss will use slash, and dark based attack as well as Instant Death. So we’ll give our frontline party members resistance to that attribute and status effect. Physical based characters have little use in the upcoming boss fight. So Reimu and Patchouli will be our primary damage dealer in the fight. I assigned Nitori as the commander for her Camouflage because I need that to block the boss’ most powerful attacks as it deals far too much damage not even Alice can tank the attack.  Right then, we’ll finish this and move on to the next stage.  : Hmm… The dialogue progresses automatically without our input as the party head deeper. : Hey, y’know… Maybe this place isn’t related after all…?: We haven’t investigated the area up ahead. There’s no harm waiting to judge that until afterwards.: Right.  The person at the end of the stage is Komachi, the lazy shinigami.  : Zzz… : Zzz…: She’s asleep…: She sure is…Ferrying spirits to the afterlife is a demanding job. Maybe she needed the rest. : Zzz…   : You up now, slacker queen?: O-Oh, it’s you guys…!: Same as always, I see. What are you doing in a place like this?The place is where she works. : W-What do you mean by… : You, obviously.: I don’t wanna hear that from YOU!Reimu is as lazy as her. Both of them needs to be forced to do their jobs. : But you were slackin’, weren’t ya?: D-Don’t be so quick to judge. I’m on duty and travelling around Gensokyo right now. : I’m just on break right now. Understand?No I don’t. There are many holes in your story. : (I’ve heard that kind o’ excuse before… from Reimu.): Was travelling around always part of the job of a shinigami…?: *glare*: Uugh… Well, actually… : (She wears her heart on her sleeve anyway…): T-There’s nobody as passionate about their work as I am!I don’t need Satori to know she’s not telling the truth. : Oh, I know! Hey, Miss Phantom, wanna ride on my boat? : I’m only half-phantom. I live in the Netherworld, so why would I ride a shinigami’s boat…? Ridiculous.I don’t know how Youmu can be a half-human and half-ghost. : So, what should we do, Reimu? Should we ask her anyway?: Yeah, I guess we’d might as well.: Hm? I also don’t need Satori to know that Komachi doesn’t have the motive to cause the incident and the ability to do so. : Huh? Why would I be…: Lazy or not, you’re still a shinigami. And shinigami have a close relation with death, don’t they?: Oh, you’re talking about that mist, then. : I figured as much.Right then. Let’s go back, everyone. : Huh? What? You’re believing me that easily…?: Well… yeah, c’mon. You were sleepin’ until just a minute ago.: You’re too much o’ a slacker to go to that much trouble.: ……: There’s no way you could control that mist.: You don’t have it in you to be the culprit. Okay, why is she gets pissed off? : Plus, you’re too careless.: You’re just a lazy shinigami with only big boobs to her name.: You guys…: Ah…: (This one’s not my fault.)This time, Satori knew to keep her mouth shut. : You think you can just say whatever you want about me!? Well, I’m not gonna let you get away with it!: Huh? You’re mad…?I mean, she’s no longer considered a suspect for the incident. : Of COURSE I’m mad! She really needs to take a chill pill. BGM: Boss 1  It’s straight to the boss fight. No comeback remarks from our heroes. Anyway, Komachi has 8500 HP, 30% Physical Barrier, 20% Magical Barrier, resists dark, and weak to earth and light.  There’s a reason why I think physical based character has no use in the fight.   It’s because she counter any physical attack from frontline fighter with Shinigami’s Scythe. So Sakuya is dead weight for the rest of the fight. Satori can learn that skill. Most of Komachi’s attack are single target slash and dark elemental attack. She hits hard enough to kill anyone in 2-3 hits. She can also potentially kill Patchouli in 1 hit. Also, she can buff her PAtk and PDef. Have Alice be the Decoy and hope Komachi will primarily attack as I don’t think the other party member can endure her attacks.  Light elemental spells from Reimu and Patchouli is the best method to take her down effectively.  Crap! Here comes her ultimate attack! Have Nitori use her Camouflage to block the attack.  Her first ultimate skill is Yesterday’s Money a freakishly powerful all-targeting dark based attack that’s strong enough to one-shot anyone without dark resistance.  poo poo! Sakuya already ate Shinigami’s Scythe to the face and cannot block the attack.  Her other ultimate skill is Price of Life, a horribly powerful single target dark elemental attack that ignores PDef. The damage can only be reduced with dark resistance. It can also one shot anyone without dark resistance.   Eventually, Reimu and Patchouli deplete Komachi’s HP through spamming their light elemental spells. BGM: Victory  The fight doesn’t go as well as I thought it would be. Her counter attack caught me off guard.  : Geez, you had to make us go and waste time on an unexpected battle… I demand compensation in cash! : Why’d this have to happen to me…You attacked us first. So it’s just self-defense on our part. : Well, I can’t deny that we said too much, but you still earned this.: You’re at fault for being lazy enough to make us think those things. : So with that settled, in the end, we didn’t find anything here.You’ll get used to being disappointed, Youmu. : We didn’t find any clues in particular, meaning we’ve hit a wall again…: You know anything, Komachi?: Nope. Not a thing.: How about your boss, then? This wouldn’t be her doing, would it…?: You mean Lady Shiki…? : Really?: Yeah, she’d lose her job for that. It wouldn’t be pretty if one Yama got judged by another.: Yeah, that makes sense.: So, the situation remains the same…Yes. Back to square one. Again. : ……: Komachi, was it? Culprit aside, is there anything that stands out to you about the incident?: Huh? Well, I guess kinda…: What is it?: It’s about the mist. : Nor under mine as a shinigami, and definitely not a Yama’s: So what does that mean?: I’m saying the makeup isn’t death itself.We’ve been searching at the wrong place all this time. That’s just great. : If I had to describe it, hmm… Oh, I know.  At least we got another clue. : Whuh? Makai…?: Makai, hmm…? It certainly does feel similar to Makai’s harmful miasma…: So does that mean the culprit is in Makai…? : I dunno if this mist is leaking out or being sent out intentionally, but there’s too much of it to be coming from Makai.: So the culprit is in Gensokyo, then…: Perhaps they’re a resident of Makai…?: I’m still unfamiliar with Gensokyo so I wouldn’t know, but are there any places here connected to residents of Makai?: Hmm… In the first place, I doubt there are any Makai residents here in-- The place sounds mundane after a stage taking place in a graveyard. : Huh? The Garden of the Sun…?: You have a lead?: Yes, I do. It’s something I heard once, : I see. So that’s why you brought up the Garden of the Sun.: That’s right. Not only is Yuuka in the Garden of the Sun, but it’s also the closest place to Makai.: Guess we know where we’re goin’, then.: Right. So long as we have the next objective. : Yep! We don’t recruit Komachi after the fight. She’s free to resume her nap.  : They just had to drag me into the middle of this… Ugh, what a pain.  Lucky her. I also want to take a nap as well. But unfortunately, the incident’s still on going. Oh well. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: The place is so ridiculously peaceful. Bonus Video: Stage 7 - Boss Fight Your Everyday NEET fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 1, 2023 17:18
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Your Everyday NEET posted:I didn't play any Dragon Quest games, so I don't know what Metal Slash is. I assume it works the same way. Yukkuri Slash in this game deals bonus damage against Yukkuri type enemy. Metal Slimes in Dragon Quest are enemies with only a few points of HP, but sky-high defense and evasion stats(and are generally immune to spells). Your best bet at beating them is either getting lucky crits, using Metal Slash, or using a weapon that does bonus damage against them. But as a reward you get a big pile of EXP, if you manage to take one down. Just kinda assumed Yukkuris in this game work about the same way.
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Jul 1, 2023 21:00
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Cyflan posted:Metal Slimes in Dragon Quest are enemies with only a few points of HP, but sky-high defense and evasion stats(and are generally immune to spells). Yes. It works the same way.
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Jul 8, 2023 17:09
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Stage 8 - Part 1 BGM: Overworld Theme  After Muenzuka, Garden of the Sun is next on the list.  Before we go there, we visited Akyuu first as she has brand new recipes. : I hear Komachi is a strong warrior who slaughters the living and sends them to Hades. You must have had a very difficult battle.Yeah, Komachi’s strong. But I think you’re over exaggerating her a bit, Akyuu. : I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. I hope they help you resolve the incident.  We get 3rd tier unique equipment from her. Third tier stuffs requires Sunflower Seed, which can only be found in Garden of the Sun. It also has lower chance to drop than Netherworld Peach.  The Garden is located in the southwest of Gensokyo. I like the place. It’s so mundane compared to the other dungeons. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  The BGM is so peaceful. I like it.  : Wow, what a pretty field of sunflowers! I haven’t been out this way much. Seeing so much gold is new to me!I agree. I like this place. : The fairies here are insufferably obnoxious, so I would have preferred we didn’t come here.: How cold…I’d take Reimu’s side on this one. The fairies ARE annoying. : We sure have a troublesome suspect this time around, too.: We sure do. Her strength is no joke. : If she really is the culprit, we’ll have to exterminate her.: Ugh… What a pain.: By the way, I’ve got a question. Does she actually have the power to make this “Makai miasma”…?: Everything surrounding Makai, and Yuuka as well for that matter, isn’t well understood. So honestly, I’m unsure.: It seems we’ve got no choice but to see her ourselves to find out.: Looks that way. We get to see pretty sunflowers.  Sunflowers are everywhere in the stage.  The enemies here are represented by a dragonfly. The place is a huge garden after all. BGM: Battle 1  We have seen the flame version of this enemy. Here’s the earth counterpart. Venom has 550 HP, resists earth, and weak to thunder. Any thunder based will kill it in one hit. It’s free EXP and good source of Earth Shard.  Of course there’s killer sunflowers in the sunflower garden. Sunflower has 710 HP, resists thunder, and weak to fire and slash. Sakuya and Youmu can cut it down with ease. It has a good skill that Satori can learn. Its signature skill is Sunburst, a single target fire spell that deals really good damage and also slays Immortal (Alice and Patchouli are considered Immortal, Sunburst can potentially one shot Alice) and Undead (Most Undead enemy is already weak to fire, adding slayer will hurt them even further). I really like that skill. Good luck trying to get Satori to learn it because the Sunflowers rarely ever use that skill and it has enough MP to casts it once. It’s also the best source of Sunflower Seed as it has 10% chance to drop it. I have little luck in getting those seeds. At the end of the stage, I have 35 Sunflower kills under my belt, yet I only got 2 Sunflower Seeds from them.  The humanoid opponents in the stage are Sunflower Fairies. All 4 version of Sunflower Fairy has 900 HP and weak to dark. The Sword version has Falcon Slash, sword weapon skill that will strike first. That attack can potentially screw over the mage characters (Sanae, Marisa, Patchouli, and Satori). Sunflower Fairy is indeed an annoying opponent. The staff and spear Sunflower Fairy has 5% chance to drop Sunflower Seed.  This is by far the best skill for Alice. It allows her to protect everyone regardless of their position. This skill is very important when facing dangerous enemies.  Staff Sunflower Fairy can use single target fire, water, earth, thunder, and mystic single target spell. Although they prefers mystic based spell. She also has Leaf Shield, a barrier skill that can nullify 2 instances of damage. Also annoying opponent.  It’s snake in a pot. Toubyou has 590 HP, resist earth, and strike, and is weak to water and slash. Its normal attack can inflict poison and it also can Constrict one of the party member and paralyze them. It’s annoying, but Sakuya can put an end to its threat.  What plant are you supposed to be? Tsurushi Hyoutan (Hanging Gourd) has 620 HP, resists thunder and stab and is weak to fire and slash. They can use Constrict. That’s it. It’s the 2nd weakest enemy in the stage. It has 3% chance to drop Sunflower Seed and 8% chance to drop Rabbit’s Foot (accessory with +1% Party EXP Gain). There’s only 4 enemies that can drop Sunflower Seed.  Two creepy enemies. Whatever, I have Reimu. The creepy face is Akashita (Red Tongue).It has 750 HP, resist earth and dark, and is weak to fire and light. Like the bird enemy in the palace, it can potentially cancel any spell before it can be casted. And it can also use Lick, which can potentially give the affected party member weakness against fire, water, earth, and thunder. Annoying status inflicting enemy. The mud creature is Dorotabou. It has 850 HP, resists dark, and is weak to fire and light. It can use Bottomless Swamp, I don't know what it does, maybe erase? I don’t want to find out what it does.  Elephant!!! It has 1900 HP and is weak to fire and earth. It’s one of the miniboss of the area. Not only its physical attack hurts a lot, it can also use Gather Strength, followed with Headfirst Charge, an AoE strike which is strong enough to one shot anyone it struck. Kill it fast, preferably with fire. Satori can learn Headfirst Charge. Just don’t expect her to deal any damage with it as her PAtk sucks. The Elephant has 15% chance to drop Border Talisman, and accessory that provides 25% resistance against Variety debuffs. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  This is the gimmick of the stage. Touching the gas will cover your character with its scent. This effect lasts until you switch area 4 times.  That was fast. The first Sunflower Seed is obtained in the starting area.  There are two colours: Orange and purple.   Touching the colored sunflower while having the same color as that flower will allow us to take the flower down temporarily. This will allow us to enter the blocked area.  This is a pretty good heavy armor. It provides slash and strike resistance.  This geyser will remove the color of our character. We need to turn it off if we want to access the second half of the area as the next area is blocked off.  There are 3 ways we can go from the starting area. I’ll explore the west area first.  I should be able to go through this path had it not for this stone in the middle of the path.   Crap! Wrong color.   Before continuing, I took a detour to Kourindou to crafted Nitori’s and Sakuya’s third tier weapon. Nitori’s Carbine carries slayer effect against Immortal, and it has high base accuracy. Sakuya’s Arondight carries slayer against Plant, Beast, and Avian. There’s plenty of Plant and Avian enemies in Garden of the Sun.  Also, Nitori’s weapon is called Carbine. Yet, it looks more like a shotgun instead. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  Back in the first area, I decided to check the eastern side.  I got this right, this time.  The side path contain treasures. Not bad.  The other side path requires purple color instead. BGM: Battle 1  AAAAAAAHH!!! Yukkuri!  Heh! You can’t escape now!   Yukkuris are very rare enemies with very low HP, extremely high resistance, high evasion, that loves to escape. But killing them provides ridiculous amount of EXP. For comparison, normal enemy encounter here provides 100-180 EXP. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  More small armor is fine too. This one also provides resistance against debuff variety effects.  Gotta coat ourselves with purple color.  Okay, now we can move past this purple sunflower.  We can access the second half of the stage. BGM: Battle 1  Screw this poo poo! I hate Cockatrice! I consider it one of the most enemies here. It has 950 HP, resists earth and dark, and is weak to thunder, light, and stab. The reason it’s dangerous is because of its signature skill: PET (Petrify) Breath, and AoE attack that have a high chance of inflicting petrify. Sanae’s Res buff isn’t enough to completely block it. It needs to go away. Fast! It has 8% chance to drop Cockatrice Crest, and accessory that provides increased chance of inflicting petrify and resistance against petrify. Satori can learn PET Breath. With that skill, she’s now has a small chance to completely shut down enemy.  Sakuya, the Cockslayer.  I hate mantis! I developed a fear of that ugly insect because of a bullying incident in my childhood. Anyway, Killer Mantis has 860 HP, resists earth and slash, and is weak to slash. While they don’t have any attack skill, they can however, attack twice in a turn. So 2 Mantises means 4 regular attacks. Kill them fast or use PDef buff before they can overwhelm the party with their attacks.  The other miniboss of the area. Earth has 1800 HP, immune to earth and is weak to thunder. It can move twice, delivers really hard hitting earth based attacks, and it’s quite tanky to boot. Overwhelm it with thunder based attack before it can screw us over.  No no! I won’t be distracted by that enemy! Succubus has 660 HP, resists dark and slash, and is weak to light and stab. She specialized in inflicting Charm and her Inf is high enough that Sanae’s Res buff isn’t able to protect the other party member from being Charmed. She has 8% chance to drop Sexy Underwear, and accessory that provides its user with increased chance to inflict Charm and resistance against Charm.  Freaking giant lizard! Basilisk has 1700 HP, resists fire, water, earth, thunder, and dark, and is only weak to light. Aside from hitting really hard, it’s normal attack can inflict instant death and it also use Poison Breath, AoE attack that can inflict Severe Poison, a stronger version of poison that deals 100+ damage per turn. Nuke that thing! Don’t show it any mercy or else it’ll wipe out the party, fast! It has 25% chance to drop Shrine Talisman, an accessory that provides 25% resistance against all Permanent status effect.  There’s the other version of Sunflower Fairy. Again, axe wielding enemy is usually the most dangerous enemy. Aside from dealing very high damage, she can also buff her allies’ PAtk, making every enemy in the field significantly more dangerous. I hate the Sunflower Fairies. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  We should go back here once we found the orange geyser.   Right. This lever deactivates the color removing clear geyser. Now we can skip half the stage by heading north through the starting area.  Having all party members petrified counts as a defeat. When facing both Cockatrice and Killer Mantis in this encounter, I’m faced with either buffing Res and pray the Mantis doesn’t rip the party to shreds, or buffing PDef and hope the Cockatrice doesn’t petrify everyone. Unfortunately, I chose poorly.  Screw this! I can skip half the stage. BGM: Battle 1  Holy! That’s a lot of enemies in one encounter. Kill the snakes fast with water!  Sunflower Seed is really hard to obtain.  I used the extra seed to craft Sanae’s unique weapon.  I need the MP Drain in Snakes’ skill tree. Sanae really needs the MP to cast her multi-target buff. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  Dragon Slayer carries a slayer effect against Dragon. Nice reward.   We need to find where the orange geyser is. It’s hard finding it in the latter half of the stage. BGM: Battle 1  gently caress off game! Yes. I’m still being pissed from being wipe out by the Cockatrice. Okay, gotta calm down. The Lesser Daemon and Power (the heavily armored angel) have 1600 HP. The demon heavily resists dark and weak to light, while the angel heavily resists light and is weak to dark. Both of them can move twice and they also adds all-targeting dark/light spell. They can quickly overwhelm the party and wipe them clean. My current party isn’t able to beat them. Have Alice and Patchouli in the frontline before trying to beat them. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  I haven’t find much use with shield since its activation is random. Alice at least has Shield Activation Rate+ in her skill tree.  I actually forgot that the orange geyser is located right beside the lever. BGM: Battle 1  poo poo! This is really dangerous formation. The staff wielding fairy can shield the Cockatrice with Leaf Shield, making them last longer, and the axe fairy can buff every enemy’s PAtk, making them incredibly dangerous. BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  We’re near the end of the stage.  Just past one more area filled with dangerous random encounter.  And we finally reached the rest area. It’s nice to be able to take a break. That’s all for the update. I’m off to do some off-screen grinding and skill learning for Satori. Getting the Sunburst from the Sunflower is a complete pain. Next Time on Genius of Sappheiros: Didn’t know you had a guest coming. Death Counter: 4
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Jul 8, 2023 17:09
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Fun read so far! And oof, that's some nasty enemy combos.
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Jul 9, 2023 00:14
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Stage 8 - Boss BGM: Garden of the Sun Theme  Time to harass a flower youkai that’s just minding her own business.  There’s 2 bosses we have to fight in this stage. One will use physical earth based attacks and the other will use poison. Prepare defense accordingly. One of the boss is immune to light, so Reimu doesn’t have much use in the fight. Nowadays, I love using Patchouli for my magic user since she deals more damage. I use Satori as a Commander for her first support skill (33% deflect chance to all).  It’s vitally important for Sanae to have the Poison Barrier from the Snake skill tree.  It’s about time we fight the boss. This won’t take long.  There’s Yuuka. The youkai who loves flowers so much.  : The sunflowers are in full bloom once again this year. What a wonderful feeling.: Now, if only that mist were gone… : ? Yeah. There’s two opponents we have to fight in this stage.  Despite her name, she’s actually a poisonous doll.  : I came to play, Yuuka!: You’re in good mood today. Did something happen?: Ufufu, yep! That’s why I’m here.: Oh? What’s the occasion, then?: You know the mist covering Gensokyo right now? She’s so cute. It make me forget for a moment that she can produce poison that can kill human in horrible way. : The mist…? Well, aren’t you a strange one.: For me, that mist is nothing but harmful.: That’s why it’s so great. I’m happy that I get to feel the same pain as other youkai. So I came to tell you that, Yuuka.Uuuh… I’m not gonna question your reasoning. : I-I see…: (She did tell me she was studying social skills, come to think of it. This must be part of that… How adorable.) Despite her carefree attitude, she does have a nasty side of her. : So you had a good experience, then?: Yep! I guess it’s time for the confrontation. : ?: Now who could that be…? It’s our party. Ready to ruin’s anyone’s day just to find the culprit.  : Ah! It’s you…Yes. It’s us. : If it isn’t Reimu and her attendants. Good day to you.  Reimu would treat the other party members as a mere sidekicks. : Now, now.: Oh, is that you, Medicine? What are you doing here…?: Oh, Alice! I just came to play, that’s all.: I see, what a coincidence. : Oh, right! Lend me you dolls when I enact my doll liberation plan!: Huh…? Straight to business. Reimu has no patience for idle chat. : We’re here because we’ve got business with you, Yuuka.: Oh my, you’re making me blush. Whatever could you need?: Let me ask you this point-blank. Are you the culprit?: …? : She’s talkin’ about the incident goin’ on right now. We came here to question ya as our newest suspect.: Ahh, now I see. So that’s what this is. Okay. That’s understandable. Sorry for taking your time. : Really…? I don’t believe you in the slightest.: As for our reasoning…: This mist resembles Makai’s miasma, and out of all of Gensokyo’s residents, you’re the only one to have come from Makai. How do you defend yourself?: Well, that’s simple. While it’s true that I come from Makai, though this mist may “resemble Makai’s miasma”, it’s just a resemblance and nothing more.: So I have nothing to do with this.: Furthermore, I don’t even have the power to create this sort of mist. And why would I go to all this trouble in the first place? That’s a pretty solid reasoning. She’s definitely innocent. : How about it, Satori?: …Ah!: What’s the matter? Don’t tell me you can’t read her heart or something…Even Nitori knows how useless Satori turns out to be when we needed her power. : Ah, no. I can read her heart, but…: I can only see flowers.Satori failed us, once again. : So that means that’s all she’s thinking about…? I guess that DOES sound like Yuuka…: Oh my. That’s quite the strange power you hold. To step into my heart with those dirty feet of yours.  I don’t like Satori very much. But even then, I don’t want to know what will happen if Yuuka gets her hands on Satori. : Hmm, things are starting to take kind of a weird turn… What do we do, Reimu?: Shouldn’t we ask Medicine too, just in case?: …You’re right.: How about you, poison doll? Are you the culprit?: Of course not.Understandable. Have a nice day. : Well, I can’t say I’m surprised… This mist isn’t directly poisonous, after all. Yes. It is. Better luck next time. : What do we do now? Are we going to check somewhere else?Yes. We’re bound to find the culprit sooner or later. : Oh? Excuse me?: Yes? Of course we’re not leaving without a fight. : Huh!?: Above all, I don’t forgive those who disturb me when I’m admiring flowers.: Ooh, this looks like fun! Lemme join too! I’d like to see you try! I have prepared protection against poison. : Hey, c’mon now… Yuuka’s one thing, but Alice, stop Medicine, would ya? You’re a puppeteer, right? : D-Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a tsukumogami, Marisa. : I’m powerless to stop her.: What’s the problem? This is just perfect.: Whuh?: We’ll exterminate them and make them cough up the truth by force! This method suits me way better! There’s a reason why there’s a term called: Brute Force Attack in hacking. : Let’s do this Su-san…Su-san is the small doll accompanying Medicine. : How very interesting… Come on, then! We’ll put you out! BGM: Boss 1  I like that the background make it seems like Yuuka is sitting on a giant sunflower while Medicine is surrounded by poisonous gas. Anyway, both Yuuka and Medicine have 6000 HP. Yuuka is immune to earth and is weak to thunder. Medicine is immune to light and dark, extremely resists earth, and she has no weakness.  First thing first. Have Sanae casts Serpent Barrier.  With the barrier active, our party is completely immune to poison. Medicine’s offense relies heavily on inflicting poison. So that barrier will neuter most of Medicine’s attacks.  While Yuuka relies on direct hard hitting earth elemental attack. Have Alice block earth elemental attack and we all be fine.  We’re not out of the wood, yet. Medicine’s Lily of the Valley can potentially removes poison resistance. Res buff is also needed if we want to block Medicine’s poison.   One thunder spell isn’t enough? How about a follow-up attack from Nitori’s Chaser to finish you off!  Since Yuuka has a weakness and lower defense than Medicine (Yuuka has 0 PDef, Medicine has 200 PDef), she’s very likely to be the first boss to go down.  All that’s left is slowly whittling down Medicine’s HP while she’s incapable of dealing any form of damage to our party. This takes quite a while. BGM: Victory  They’re surprisingly easy to defeat. Unlike previous bosses, I did not have any trouble at all defeating them.  : Hmph, we beat you!: Oww… : Now I know what it’s like…I find Medicine obsession with being similar to youkai to be troubling. : Phew, that was fun.: Let’s hear the truth from you this time.: You’re still going on about that? I told you already – I’m not the culprit.: But what of the mist’s resemblance to Makai’s miasma…?: What do you think, Yuuka?: …Oh, fine. I’ll tell you one thing, then. Again. We’re off the mark. : Life force…?: More specifically, “the power to control life force”. : Whuh? That’s quite the crazy power.So what? The culprit is using the mist to steal human’s life force in order to make themselves immortal? : …Wait a sec.: “Immortal”, you say? That kind of rings a bell…: Um, what was it again… : Hourai… So in which case, the culprit is…?: Don’t tell me… Houraisan Kaguya!?: No, it could be Eirin too… Or perhaps it’s both of them again.The lunar people is up to no good, again. : Either way, we know where we’re headed next-- We have the place for our confrontation against the culprit. : I see. We haven’t checked Eientei yet, and it’s the only place we have no info on… I’d say it’s pretty much our last option.: It looks like we’ve found our culprit… That makes this easy, then. The hard part is actually beating them up. : Oh, you’re going to Eientei? Give Eirin a message for me, then. Tell her that I’ll share Su-san’s poison with her again sometime, ehehe…Uuh… Why would she need a deadly poison from you? Suspicious. : You sure are a carefree one, huh…: …Fine. I’ll tell her if I remember.I think Reimu will forget it. : Medicine and I are going to play now, so I’d like it if you’d quiet down already.: Yeah, yeah, we’re going.: Let’s get moving, everyone. Let’s go to the final dungeon of the first arc!  The formation we’ve got from them isn’t bad. Putting everyone on the same column makes it easier for Alice to defend them. Gotta be mindful of the Speed penalty though. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: You haven’t leveled up your reserve character? You’re screwed! Bonus Video: Stage 8 Boss Fight Your Everyday NEET fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 16:47
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Yay! It's always in the final place you look! And I like to think that the party would have gone around and beaten everyone up even if they knew where things were earlier.
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Jul 12, 2023 23:35
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Stage 9 - Part 1 It’s time to head to the final dungeon of the first arc.  But first, Akyuu got new set of recipes for us.  : I hear that Yuuka is graceful and unmatched when it comes to controlling flowers, and that Medicine skillfully controls poison that eats away at living things. : You must have had a very difficult battle.Nah. They’re just mere pushovers. : I’ll present to you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. I hope they help you resolve the incident. We got very few recipes this time around. It isn’t the time for us to obtain fourth tier equipment.  The game just blatantly spoils that Byakuren is our twelfth party member.  Yeah, it’s a waste of Sunflower Seed. But it’s +3% Party Exp. Every little bit of EXP helps.  Eientei, the mansion deep inside the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. BGM: Eientei Outside  Will we finally meet the culprit of the incident?  : We’re here at last.: It’s finally time for our showdown with the true culprits! : I just can’t wait!: By the way, there’s one thing I still don’t get…: What is it?: According to what I heard, when the incident began, Eirin quickly started working to get medicine to the weakened youkai.: S-She did?: That’s right. Good question. Here’s a hint: This is just the first arc of the game. : Hmm…: Maybe she wanted live test subjects for her beloved drugs?: (Test subject…? Come now, she’s not you.): So in the end, her goal remains unknown, huh…: What are you talking about? We’re here precisely to figure that out, Marisa.: That’s right. : It’s as simple as that.And straight to the point. : (Is that… really okay?) : Who’s there!? Hello there, Mokou. Nice meeting you here. : You’re… : What are you doing here? : What do you mean? I live here in the bamboo forest. I just saw you on the way back from the village and figured I’d say hi.: The village? Do you mean the Human Village?: What were you doin’ at the village…?: Work things. I’ve been acting as watchguard for the bamboo forest lately. I help villagers get through the forest and stuff, so that’s why I went to the village.Normal person unfamiliar with the forest will most likely ended up lost and become prey for the youkai. This is where Mokou comes in and be their guide and bringing back anyone who got lost. : More importantly, what are you guys doing here of all places?: Were here to exterminate evil.So very dramatic. : Huh?: You know about the ongoing incident, right?   : Wait, by “culprits,” you don’t mean…: Houraisan Kaguya and Yagokoro Eirin. Let me remind you that they’re still suspects. There’s no indication that they’re responsible. : The mist resembles the power of Hourai, supposedly. So we’re on our way to question them right now.: So Kaguya’s behind that mist… She’s the one spreading that detestable power of hers around…: You’ve got it.: …I can’t allow this. If this is Kaguya’s doing, I can’t just sit by and watch! Yep. We got a new party member just before a major dungeon. : Huh?: As Fujiwara no Mokou, the watchguard of the bamboo forest, I’m going to perform their last rites!: W-Well… Okay, as long as you don’t get in our way.: Got it.Don’t worry. She’s more than capable of holding her own in combat.  : I guess so, but… Our numbers sure are growing quick.We still have a couple of characters that’s yet to be recruited.  Right then! Time to start the exploration.  She’ll become a valued asset on our team.  Mokou’s formation is an amped up version of Reimu’s Hakurei Circle. It has better buff for the attacker in exchange for lower defense. I still prefers Hakurei Circle though since the defense penalty can be fatal.  Mokou is our primary strike-based physical attacker. She’s capable of hitting really hard with her skills, even potentially one shotting anything that’s weak to strike or fire, she’s able to tank a lot of hits thanks to her high HP and Auto-Resurrection passive, and she also decently fast on her speed. She’s good. Unfortunately though, she ran out of steam fast due to her low MP value and the fact that all her skills costs a bomb to use. So she won’t be able to stay on the field for long. Her unique weapon are Fists: a lightweight strike attribute weapon with high accuracy. Her Last Word is Phoenix Resurrection, which revives all fallen party member. Her Commander Ability is as follows: Command Power: Sometimes endure fatal damage (Really useful passive to prevent death) Commander Spell 1: Phoenix’s Tail = Revives a random ally. Commander Spell 2: Phoenix Rebirth = Grants high chance to endure fatal damage this turn. As a commander, she’s really useful at preventing total party kill. She’s very useful both as a frontline fighter and as a support.  There’s another cutscene introducing us to the stage’s gimmick. : Whuh? What’s goin’ on…?: The layout, it’s… not the same as usual?: This must be Reisen or Eirin’s doing.: It’s those illusions…! I hate this gimmick! : (A and B routes…?)The term is for player’s convenience. : If they’re preparing such thorough traps, the culprits must be here after all.: Why don’t we split into two groups, then? Even if one path is a trap, as long as we cover both routes, we’ll reach Kaguya and Eirin for sure.It basically demands that we keep every party member leveled up and well equipped. : That sounds like a wise choice.: What if both paths are traps? We’ve been brute forcing stuff ever since we started our investigation. : (That’s not an answer…): Got it. This is gonna suck.  What? The cutscene isn’t over yet? It’s 3 cutscenes back-to-back!  : …… : “Fried Chicken Cart Caught Selling Disguised Night Sparrow Meat! Shock Spreads Throughout the Human Village!”Why? Chicken meat is better.   This cutscene introduced us to the next major opponents: Kaguya and Eirin.   : The Bunbunmaru Newspaper, was it…? I can’t believe they even sell that drivel…: They don’t. They just leave it there for you, even if you don’t ask for it.: It’s not like you have to read it, then…The Bunbunmaru Newspaper is infamous for exaggerating the news. : But I’m bored.: *sigh*…: Well, I suppose with how things are right now…: (We can’t exactly afford to act without caution…)Why are you acting suspicious, Eirin?  And then Eirin’s Lunarian Sense senses something. : What’s wrong, Eirin?: …It seems we have intruders.: Intruders? So, does that mean…?: That’s right. It looks like the Hakurei shrine maiden has finally come.: Udonge, Tewi, get in here.  Before we can fight the lunarian duo, we must face off against these bunnies, first. : You heard me just now, right? Heh… : …… : …Well, either way. : The Hakurei shrine maiden has just trespassed into Eientei. I’m putting you two on guard duty. Don’t let her get in here and reach the princess.  I like Tewi’s “I don’t give a gently caress” attitude.  : T-Tewi…! Come on already…! : I mean, that mist’s everywhere right now. As a health-conscious bunny, I wanna just take it easy.I can relate. : …Udonge…: Y-Yes, ma’am…! Correction: Tewi is technically not under Kaguya and Eirin’s employment. She’s an Earth Bunny. : Huh…?: You’re getting punished once this is all over! Poor Udonge. She’s getting punished for something out of her control. : Ahaha!: (Why are you laughing…!?)Tewi is such a troll. : Anyway, you’re on guard duty too, Tewi. That’s an order.: Yep, got it. Can’t disobey an order, after all.: (I don’t like that attitude of hers…)I get the feeling Tewi is just humoring them.  : Yes, Master!: Kay. I have an appetite for some rabbit stew. : (Fufufu, everything is going according to plan. I’ve set up the stage.) Why are you acting so suspicious? You’re not the culprit, right? : “Shrine Maiden Series Feature Report! The Moriya Wind Priestess’s Real Self, Exposed Bare for the World to see!”: “Dolls From the Super Hero Robot Series Discovered in Her Personal Belongings!”That’s an invasion of privacy, Aya! : Huh? Are we done? Okay, good  Now we get to start the stage.  But before that, new recipes from Akyuu. : With her help, you should be one step closer to resolving the incident.: Allow me to present you with these recipes, then. I hope they help you resolve the incident together. It’s Mokou’s unique equipment. I’ll refrain from crafting them since Mokou is still underleveled and shouldn’t be on the frontline, yet. BGM: Eientei Outside  Guess we’ll have to do this.  I still hate the Formation menu. It’s so freaking clunky. Anyway, Route A wants a party with magic attacker (I also put Sakuya there for soaking up damage).  While Route B wants a party with physical attacker. The main problem with party split is that we have only one buffer (Sanae). The difficulty in building the team is which team Sanae should be at.  Team A will go right while Team B go left.  We starts the stage by controlling Team A first.  We get the tutorial on how the party split works. The equipment changing restriction is such a pain. BGM: Battle 1  A sudden enemy encounter?! I didn’t see the enemy sprites. What gives! We got 3 new enemies. First is the red giant slime. Blood Slime has 950 HP, immune to strike, greatly resists slash, and stab, and is weak to fire, and water. Aside from slime’s usual HP drain, it also has Acid Spray for AoE PDef debuff and Lick, which can inflict Quad Weakness (Add weakness to fire, water, earth, and thunder). A couple of fire/water from Marisa and Patchouli should take it down in short order. The Bamboo enemy is called Bamboo Monster. It has 750 HP, resists earth, thunder, light, dark, stab, and is weak to fire and water. It will use Growth to buff all its stats, and then it will proceed to one shot any mages on turn 2 onward. Prioritize killing it before it can slaughter the team. The floating thing is Luna Virus. It has 660 HP, resists dark, slash, stab, strike and weak to fire and light. It loves to inflict debuff and status effects. A single fire attack should kill it in one hit.  Oh. The enemy encounter is represented by a rabbit. The reason why I didn’t see the first encounter is because it got obscured by the wall. BGM: Battle 1  The humanoid enemies in the stage are Inabas. The mage Inaba has 880 HP and is weak to dark. Despite that, she primarily uses dark elemental attacks. While her dark based spell does hurt, our party should be able to kill her before she can kill anyone.  Mokou’s level is so low she get a huge EXP multiplier in this stage. She should have enough level to be at the frontline by the time we reached the end of the stage.  Route A mainly takes place outside the mansion. We have to explore the bamboo forest. BGM: Battle 1  It’s a rat with armor. Tesso has 800 HP, 150 PDef, resists slash, stab, and strike, and is weak to thunder. Its attack deals high damage and can inflict blind. Physical attack are almost useless against it. Use magic instead to kill it.  It’s the miniboss of Route A. Oboroguma has 1650 HP, resists slash and stab, and is weak to light. Don’t use physical attack against it as it can reflect any physical attack. Its attack also hurts a lot, its dark breath can potentially devastate the party. Have Patchouli nuke it with her light elemental spell and don’t let Sakuya attack it.  A living sentient broom? Not the strangest thing I’ve seen so far. Houkigami (Broom God) has 800 HP, immune to light and dark, resists stab, and weak to slash and, earth. It has Marisa’s Broom weapon skills. Unlike Marisa, it has enough PAtk to deals high damage with the skills. It’s weakness against slash means that Sakuya will most likely able to one shot with ease. BGM: Eientei Outside   The place isn’t called Bamboo Forest of the Lost for nothing. It’s a freaking maze.  Especially when I also have to evade the enemies in such confined space, which adds to the tension.  Let us check Route B if it’s easier.  Route B mainly takes place inside the Eientei itself.  There’s only one area in Route B that takes place outdoor. BGM: Battle 1  There’s different set of random encounter in the other route. The fish with limbs is Zeni. It has 930 HP, greatly resists fire, and water, and is weak to slash and thunder. Its water breath is annoying. Alice won’t be able to block it effectively. Nitori alone isn’t enough to kill it. Youmu is only able to assist Nitori in damage dealing starting on turn 2 due to her need to set up stance. The floating ghost head is Maikubi. It has 1000 HP, resists stab, and is weak to fire and light. It’s an annoying bastard. Its scream can interrupt magic cast, its Lick can inflict Quad Weakness, and it can also inflict mass Confusion. Annoying stuff all around and I don’t like it.  Can I kill a Yukkuri without Sakuya’s timestop?  Luck is on my side this time. Fortunately, it doesn’t try to escape on turn 1. BGM: Eientei Outside  There’s second tier of stats increasing accessories in this stage. It’s really good stuff and vitally important for our party. The Earring adds Res +20. Res is very important stats.   This area is a hallway with multiple rooms that we can enter. BGM: Battle 1  A door with eyes. Spooky stuff! Mokumokuren has 777 HP, resists thunder, light, dark, stab, and is weak to water and earth. It’s another annoying enemy. Its Gaze can inflict Paralysis. I thought a wooden door would be weak to fire. But no, it’s actually water. I’ll explain about the Inaba later.  Because this encounter has all the remaining Inabas. All Inaba has 880 HP and weak to dark. The Inaba only has low tier weapon skill despite their increased PAtk. Also, the axe wielding enemy is as dangerous as usual. And yes, that one Inaba is wielding a giant carrot as a sword.  Of course there’s a rabbit in the dungeon. Vorpal Bunny has 800 HP and is weak to fire and earth. The bunny is surprisingly dangerous. Its normal attack can inflict Instant Death, something that I did not expect.  Crap! Crocodiles! Wani (Which actually means crocodile in japanese) has 1100 HP, resist strike and earth, and is weak to thunder. It hits really hard. That’s it. The Vorpal Bunny is more dangerous than the crocodile. BGM: Eientei Outside   We can find treasures inside the room. This one gives Eva +20.   Oh hey! Hidden path. Thanks for pointing that out.  This sliding door only goes one way. It can only be opened from the other side. BGM: Battle 1   Youmu is on a roll. She’s quite good at proccing the Instant Death with her Last Word. BGM: Eientei Outside   There’s another set of hallway. Finishing the stage will take a while.  How do I get to the treasure?  I guess I can reach it from here. It’s just that when seeing it from the previous screenshot, the floor is obscured by the roof.  This is a really good stuff right there. Accuracy +30. Sakuya really needs the accuracy boost.  Back from back where I left the Team A, we discovered another entrance to Eientei.  There’s more indoor area that we can explore.   What’s on this side, I wonder?  A one way door back to the start? Freaking crap! I just wasted my time! Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: This stage is so long I had to cut it in 2 parts.
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Jul 20, 2023 17:32
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The Vorpal Bunny is potentially a reference to the infamous Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail / Spamalot.
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Jul 21, 2023 16:14
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Leylite posted:The Vorpal Bunny is potentially a reference to the infamous Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail / Spamalot. Probably. The game has plenty of references.
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Jul 26, 2023 15:56
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Stage 9 - Part 2 BGM: Eientei Outside Last time, we ended up back to the starting area of Route A. Which sucks as we need to return back to the indoor area again.  Oh hey! I see a hidden sliding door.  Accuracy +30 accessory. This one definitely goes to Sakuya.  And there’s also accessory with +30 Agility as well. I should give it to Sanae so that she can casts her buffs and healing before the enemy can act. BGM: Battle 1  There’s a unique enemy that starts appearing halfway into Route A. Cyber Squid has 100 HP, 120 Eva, resists fire, water, earth, mystic, light, dark, and weak to thunder and stab. It’s super fragile, but it’s also incredibly evasive and has super annoying skills. Escaping is not an option since it has Damage Net, a Field skill that prevent the opponent from escaping and also inflict damage over time. Its Tentacle is also capable of demolishing most character in one hit. Hope Marisa or Patchouli can nail it with their thunder magic and it doesn’t Emergency Evade their magic spells. It has 8% chance to drop Eternal Robe, a better small size armor that gives permanent status effect resistance.  Whoa there… We have some rodent infestation in the mansion.  Most of the enemy have 15% chance to drop basic material. This results in me sometimes getting 1-2 materials in one encounter.  Also, Marisa learns stronger version of her single target spell. While it is more powerful, it’s also costs 5x more MP (weaker version costs 3 MP, second tier spells costs 15 MP) BGM: Eientei Outside  There’s also invisible paths in this area. Fortunately the game gave us hints of the paths by using stone walkway.  Inf +30. With this, Satori will be able to better inflict status effect and debuff.    This path is blocked by a bunch of stones. I guess I’m not meant to make progress from this direction. We’re switching back to Team B. BGM: Battle 1  There’s also new enemies in the area. Yaksha has 1250 HP, resists dark, slash, and strike, and is weak to earth and stab. Its attacks deals a lot damage and it can occasionally move twice. Fortunately, Alice can easily block its attacks.  Of course there’s a miniboss in Route B as well. Yato no Kami (Nightblade God) has 1850 HP, resists fire, water, earth, thunder, and is weak to light and dark. But it’s not advisable to target its weakness since it has Magic Reflect and we have no access to light/dark physical attacks. Its attack also deal a lot damage, move twice, and it has access to one of the most dangerous skill: Pain Bond, an attack skill that deal more damage the lower the user’s HP is. It’s basically one-hit kill move as it has 4-digits HP and our party only have 3-digits HP.  Youmu’s Dragon Slayer sword does come in handy during situation like this.  Proccing multiple Instant Death with one move is so much fun. BGM: Eientei Outside  In the original version of the game, this door isn’t visible.  Even though going through that door is required to make progress.   MDef +20. Equipment that gives MDef is hard to find.   We’re on a very interesting place.  This is an endless corridor.  This place loops on itself and going through most of the door will return us back here. Where do we go from here? I’m confused as heck.  I’m just brute forcing this room by entering through every door I’ve seen and hope for the best.  Eventually, I got thrown back into the starting area. Yeah. This sucks.  Let us finish Route A first.  This place is probably where the Inabas pound the mocha (Japanese rice cake)  PAtk +20. This is definitely goes to Sakuya.   I’m definitely on the right path.   This is the rest area in Route A. We need both team to reach the rest area and step on the red button to open the boss room and the teleporter.  Back in the Endless Hallway, I discovered the hint to exit the hallway: Find a door that’s between the two lanterns. That door will leads to a new room.  PDef +20. It’s for either the mages or Alice.   There’s another exit right here.  This leads us on the outside of the mansion.  Will this lever deactivates the endless hallway?  Re-entering the sliding after interacting with the lever transports us to the rest area. With this, both teams has reached the exit and is ready to fight the next bosses. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Double the Bunny, Double the Trouble.
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Jul 26, 2023 15:56
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Looking forwards to seeing how the boss fight goes/what mechanics it has!
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Jul 26, 2023 23:19
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Stage 9 - Boss BGM: Eientei Outside  There’s 2 bosses we need to defeat in this stage.  The 2 teams must defeat the bosses at the same time. Dividing the team is pretty tough. We need a healer and a buffer in a boss fight. Problem is, there’s only one Sanae, so one team must fight without Sanae’s healing and buff. I hope Team A can win the boss fight without any healer or buffer.  To circumvent the lack of healing, I used evasion boosting formation and Aya to hopefully prevent damage by evading it.  Team B wants Sanae more than anything because Route B boss loves inflicting status effects.   Bunnies are classified as a Beast, so Beast slaying weapons will help us kill the boss faster.   Starting the boss fight requires both team to enter the boss room.  Whoever reached the boss room first will be the one who fight the boss at the start. Team A will fight Tewi, the Rabbit of Fortune.  That was fast. She already sensed us.  Nevermind, false alarm. It’s just an invisible flower. : This is a rarity. Must be my lucky day again! Feels like something good’s gonna happen today. She took the word out of my mouth.  The other rabbits escaped once our party arrived. So it’s 6 vs 1.  The party leader’s dialogue is written under the assumption that Reimu is the leader. As such, her cockiness and rude attitude does feel out of character for Nitori. : Ooh, visitors to the courtyard! Wanna play with me?: We don’t have time for that. We’ve gotta go see Kaguya, so let us through.I can’t imagine Nitori actually speaking like that. : The princess…? : I’m supposed to be on guard duty! : Intruders sighted! Proceeding with immediate elimination.Now she’s taking this seriously. : Oh? Can you really beat us all by yourself?: Today’s my lucky day, you see. I’ve got no intention of losing!: I see. Then we’ll take on you and your luck-- The boss fight is mostly a battle of luck. : Fine, then in that case… Tewi’s mallet drops down from the sky.  Tewi, I just got a certain SSR character on a gacha games. I’m confident in my luck! BGM: Boss 1  We’re up against Tewi. She has 10000 HP, resists dark, and has no weakness at all.   Tewi’s whole fighting style is about using highly damaging, low accuracy skill. Her skill has low chance of striking you, but anyone who got struck will be put in critical condition. Aside from that, she’s also able of inflicting Sleep and casting light elemental spell for guaranteed damage.  Since this team doesn’t have any healer or buffer, I resorted to debuffing her with Satori.  Due to her lack of weakness, killing her is a slow process. Beast slayer only helps speed things up a little.  Not helped by the fact that she can heal and remove negative effects. So Satori remains useless.  My only method of healing is by using Mokou’s Commander Skill to revive anyone she kills. She can only revive 3 times.  Eventually, Tewi is defeated through a battle of attrition and luck. Though I did use all of Youmu’s bomb. BGM: Victory  Notice that the boss provides very little EXP and Pow.  : Looks like something bad happened after all.: Why’d I lose, even with my luck…?: You didn’t know? Nitori’s victory pose does not suit this occasion at all. Why does she act surprised after defeating all the enemies? : Is that so… One bunny down!  One more to go.  We’re immediately sent to the next fight. Losing the next fight means that we need to defeat Tewi all over again.  Team B will fight Udonge, the moon rabbit soldier. : Well done making it this far. What’d you think of my illusions?It sucks. Splitting the party is a really dirty move. : So that really was your doing. Does that mean this is the right way, perhaps?: Fufufu, that’s exactly right.: I’m worried about the others, then…: You’re in no position to worry about anyone else. We shall see. : Your suppository bullets aren’t worth worrying about. The other team leader is also written as if she was Reimu. I don’t think blatantly insulting opponent suits Alice.  : Good grief… Allow me to correct your overconfident attitude. Go away! A useless bunny like you is only good for… BGM: Boss 1  Pounding Mochi! Udonge has 10000 HP, resists light, and she has no weakness at all.  First thing first: Res buff. Udonge is fond of inflicting variety debuff and permanent status effect. This is the reason why I put Sanae on Team B.  Sakuya’s very high PAtk and Beast slayer helps us kill Udonge faster. Team B have an easier time with killing the boss.  Oh, here it is! I’m ready for this.  I see she has a super move portrait as well.  Her spellcard is an AoE attack that has a high chance of inflicting Berserk. Not even Sanae’s Res buff will be able to resist the status infliction. Reimu’s Barrier allows us to completely block the Permanent status effect.  Whoa! The bunny doesn’t gently caress around! She just murdered Sanae, Reimu, and Marisa. 2 AoE skills in one turn is straight up unfair. Not even Alice’s shield and Sanae’s PDef buff can withstand the attack.  Fortunately for us, Sakuya and Alice is more than enough for me to kill her. BGM: Victory  My luck is good enough to save the party from my blunder.  : It appears we won. We’ll be on our way now. : You won’t be able to reach the princess and my master… Had her master not be the main suspect of the incident, maybe she could’ve join us as a party member. : The illusion won’t disappear…? It’s just one problem after another… What did you notice, Sanae? : What’s the matter?: I felt a fluctuation in the barrier… It’s still there, but it looks like a hole opened in it.: Because Reisen’s unconscious?: It seems that way. Reimu’s rude behavior does rub onto the other party member.  Hopefully, won’t get split up anymore.  It looks decent. Maybe Satori could get more mileage from this formation. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: The music is so freaking good. Bonus Video: Stage 9 Bosses
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Jul 28, 2023 16:24
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Definitely agree on the music!
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Jul 29, 2023 23:14
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Stage 10 - Part 1 BGM: Eientei Inside  I really like the music for Stage 10. It’s really good. You should listen to it.  Finally, the 2 teams are reunited at last.  : Looks like both our teams made it through just fine.: Yes, we managed. Reisen attacked us, but we dealt with her.: You guys got attacked too? We had Tewi on our end.: They split us up, then attacked while we were apart.  We are getting closer to them. : Yeah, looks like it. Those rabbits weren’t very good assassins, but we’d have been in trouble if Eirin and Kaguya had joined in.Fortunately they don’t. Both of them are really hard to beat. I’m not so confident that I can beat them. : Regardless, with those rabbits taken care of, : Let’s keep up the pace and continue forward! I’m still nervous though at the prospect of fighting Kaguya and Eirin.  This stage is simpler since there’s no party split.  Be sure to switch the lever to activate the teleporter that connects Stage 9 to Stage 10. The party MP and Bomb is running low after the boss fight. So let’s go back and find a healing circle to restore it.  I haven’t been back to Hakurei Shrine ever since the start of the game. I mean, there’s no reason to at this point.  Oh yeah, I haven’t explain anything about the Land mechanic. Even in fight I rarely pay any attention to the Land value. I’ll let the game explain it to us.  A branching path. I’m heading north first.  It only contains treasure. Usually, the straight path is the way forward.  This accessory is really good. Resistance against 4 elements in one accessory.   The enemies here are represented by… whatever that thing is. BGM: Battle 1  Ninjas. Silent yet deadly. Genin has 940 HP, 50 Eva, and weak to dark. His normal attack deals decently high damage, has high critical rate, and can also inflict Instant Death. He can also throw Smoke Bomb for AoE Blind infliction. He’s deadly indeed.  Werewolf. This place is associated with moon after all. Lycanthrope has 1150 HP, resists dark, and slash and is weak to earth and light. Its attack deals high damage, it can inflict poison with its claws, and it can inflict Berserk to either itself or our party member. It should be easy for Reimu to kill it.  I really hate the moon people. Moon Resident has 999 HP, and they’re only weak to dark. They’re pretty dangerous. Aside from highly damaging mystic elemental spell, they can use Exhaust, AoE spell that debuff both PAtk and MAtk (This can stack with regular PAtk or MAtk debuff), and they also has Time Stop, which can prevent any afflicted party member from moving (Strangely enough, it’s listed as Variety effect even though the effect is more like a Permanent status effect). The latter two spell can potentially disable our party. Don’t fight them without Sanae’s Res buff. Satori can learn Exhaust and Time Stop. Both are really good spells to disable her enemies. The Moon Resident has 8% chance to drop Merlin’s Staff. A staff with innate MP Drain for more MP conservation.  Another plant based enemy. Mandrake has 820 HP, resists thunder, and weak to fire and earth. Like the Bamboo Monster, it can buff all its stats. But it doesn’t matter much since it’s weaker than the Bamboo and it’s easily killed. It has 8% chance to drop Double-sided Dakimakura (Body pillow), a small shield that can block every type of attack. It’s really good.  Freaking annoying turtles piece of crap! Metal Turtle has 1700 HP, 300 PDef, resists fire, slash, and stab, and is weak to water. Turtles can cover all its teammates with Imposing Stance and absorb damage meant for them, making the other enemies lasts longer. It can also potentially counter attack with Fang Crush, a 2-hit attack that deals high damage. I wanna blast them with Marisa’s water elemental spellcard. Note: This stage is the last stage that played the first battle theme. From the next stage onward we have a new battle BGM.  Diamond has only 2% drop rate. Is this my lucky day? BGM: Eientei Inside  The correct path is actually on the left.  In my opinion, this stage is simpler than the previous stage.   There are numerous side rooms in the mansion. Some room may contains a treasure.   While the other may contains nothing. I tried searching if there’s a hidden path or something. I don’t think there is.  I can’t open this sliding door. I’m guessing it’s one way only.  The stage is a simple go from point A to point B with some occasional explorable side rooms in the way. Dodging the enemy is this cramped corridor is quite difficult though.   The shortcut in this stage is strictly one way and only helps us go back to the start faster. Which is unnecessary since we can teleport out of the stage just by pressing Start button.  Going south will lead us back to the one way door we’ve seen before.  This medium armor is cool. Good defenses and gives dark resistance.  There is no reason for us to go back.  So we get another cutscene of Eirin and Kaguya. They’re rather chill even though their home is currently being invaded. : ……: (I’ve left security to Udonge and Tewi. Let’s see how they do…): ……: Now, then. Just what have you been doing this whole time…? More specifically, she’s playing Takeshi’s Challenge. A game infamous for being one of the worst game of all time. And it’s made like that intentionally. : A game?: It’s this thing I had the rabbits buy me from Kourindou. It’s a game from the outside world, I guess.They’re definitely trolling her. : So you’ve brought more junk into… oh, whatever.I can introduce you to a much better game. Like Dark Souls.  Eirin’s Lunarian Sense flared up again. : Oh my…: What’s wrong, Eirin?: Udonge and Tewi… were defeated, it seems.Nothing escaped her sense. : Huh.: At this rate, they’ll reach us sooner or later… The Hakurei shrine maiden and her group.Their group is halfway through the stage. : Huh.: ……Kaguya is remarkably chill about all this.  You died!  : And there wasn’t even anything ON that stupid treasure map! This game sucks! It’s total trash!This is what happens when you played a game made by a dude who hates video games. : (Good grief, Princess…): By the way, Eirin.: What is it?: I know the Hakurei shrine maiden’s important and all, but what about… you know?: !: …No movement to report yet.: I see… What? Do they know the real culprit? : Yeah, you’re right. All we can do is sit and wait for the Hakurei shrine maiden.: Precisely. : (Let us see that power of yours once more.)Why are they supposed to achieve by luring us here? BGM: Eientei Inside  Cutscene’s over. We’re halfway through the stage. Which means that there’s new enemies that want to fight us. BGM: Battle 1  Goddamit! Who the hell has a bright idea to give a hard disk a futuristic gun? Scorpio has 1050 HP, immune to light and dark, resists stab, and is weak to thunder and strike. Aside from its dreaded HDD Crash (Inflict Erase), the gun gives it more method for directly dealing damage with multiple elemental shots. Also, the gun carries slayer effect against Warrior (Sakuya, Youmu, Mokou) and Magician (Reimu. Marisa, Sanae). Ironically, the gun expands its moveset and makes it less likely to use HDD Crash. Have Marisa or Patchouli destroy it as fast as you can. It has 8% chance to drop Full Moon Shield, a shield that provide great defense against elemental attacks. The Hard disk and Moon people have a frightening synergy with the broom. The broom can cast Ether and buff their Inf. Suddenly, their status infliction attacks can potentially disable half our team even with Sanae’s Res buff protecting them.  This Barrier can nullify fire/water/earth/thunder elemental attack for one turn. We can only pick one element to guard against. This could be useful for future boss fight.  Of course there’s a freaking angel. I hate Deity type enemy. Virtue has 2100 HP, 25 Divine Barrier, near immunity to light and weak to dark. Aside from very hard hitting light-based attack, she can buff all the stats of every enemy. She’s very dangerous. Doesn’t help that only Patchouli can deals dark elemental damage at this point.  If there’s an angel, there’s always a devil nearby. Lesser Daemon has 2000 HP, 25 Divine Barrier, near immunity to dark and weak to light. It’s also a very dangerous enemy. Fortunately, Reimu can nuke it to oblivion before it can become a problem. The demon type enemy have such an unimaginative names.  Miss Kaguya’s Dragon Maid. She has 1200 HP, resists fire, water, earth, thunder, and is only weak to dark. Her Tail Chop can deal quick damage and potentially kill of party member before we can heal them, her broom can inflict Dispel (remove all Variety effects) on our party member, she can also use Ice Breath which is strong enough that 2 cast of that attack can wreck our entire party.  Sanae is barely alive from taking their onslaught of attacks. Dragon enemies are dangerous. BGM: Eientei Inside  The stage’s aesthetics is rather plain. It’s just a darkened off mansion.   Nice! Sunflower Seed outside of Garden of the Sun. I need those.   They must’ve put a lot of effort into creating this individual room eventhough there’s no point to it.   Whoa. The floors and wall in this room is invisible. It’s so trippy.  We’ll have to look for the lamps and the wall to guide us.   No more invisible floors. By the way, the south west exit is a one-way door. This time, I’m taking the shortcut to go back since I’m running low on MP.  Back in the previously darkened room, we want to go right.  The enemy encounter is at its strongest in the last area. BGM: Battle 1  This is a very dangerous formation. We want the squid and hard disk gone, fast. But the turtle may use Imposing Stance to cover their asses. Running away is also not an option as the squid can use Damage Net to prevent us from escaping. It’s all boil down to luck.  Mokou learns a new skill at level 17. Her skill list is so tiny she doesn’t have to worry about the limited skill slot because she can assign all her skills without worry. HP Regen and ability to resist Fatal Blow is great and all. But that skill costs 2 Bombs (Out of 3 Bombs that she has). She better of spending her bomb on offense skills instead of self-buff.  Angel and Demon in one encounter. No thank you very much.  This is just plain unfair. The squid starts the fight by ambushing the party. It then erects Damage Net to prevent our escape and then it proceeded to one shot anyone with Tentacle. I got wiped out before I can move. Yeah, this is fair. Especially when I’m at the last area of the stage.  The 2 minibosses of previous stage in a single encounter. One reflect magic and the other reflect physical attack. So AoE attack is out of the question.  Little Legion allows Alice to covers all allies. This is extremely useful. Beware that Alice will die if she ever takes AoE attack to her face. BGM: Eientei Inside   Finally made it. It sucks that I have to repeat the stage again because of an incident that’s out of my control.  I think I’m going to do some grinding first. Like I said before. I’m not so confident that I beat Kaguya and Eirin. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Oh Lord. Please help us defeat the bosses. Death Counter: 5
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Aug 5, 2023 17:08
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Stage 10 - Boss Oh hey, Akyuu has a new set of recipes even though we haven’t completed stage 10 yet.  : Oh my! I see you’ve defeated over 2000 youkai.2000 kills in 16 hours. We’re committing mass murder in this game. : It appears this incident is more than we imagined. The road to resolving it may prove to be very difficult indeed.: Anyway, that aside… They’re not much, but I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. Please make use of them to resolve the incident.  We got a lot of recipes from this set. We got shields, more powerful elemental armors, accessories, and material recipes.  I want this one for the poison damage buff. Satori want those buff. Besides, we got lots of Steel from the random encounter.  Third level of poison is called Lethal Poison.  Imagine if we can inflict Lethal Poison on multiple enemies. That’s pretty good damage for a cheap MP cost. I did need to put all Poison damage buff and Inf+ equipments on Satori and also use formation with Inf buff to achieve this.  The reason I did all that is because of this. : Ah! I’ve got an idea! How’s this formation sound? It should raise all five member’s defense, resistance, and poison resist. This formation is obtained after managing to deal 600 damage per turn with poison and then interacting with Garden of the Sun’s healing circle.  Okay, she lied a bit about the formation’s effect. Only the front most member get the defense, and resistance buff. Poison Shield is the best formation bar none. It will much use even in the late game boss fight due to how extremely useful it is. This is perfect for Alice. Putting her in frontmost position allows her to soak most of the damage from the enemies while also letting her shield her teammates in the back. Having this with Alice basically means that her teammates will very rarely take any damage from the enemies, trivializing boss fights. This formation is definitely very important for the upcoming boss fight.  After spending a couple hours grinding, I think I’m ready to face the bosses.  Our team must be optimal in this fight. Alice for defense, Sanae for buffs, Sakuya for physical DPS, Satori for status infliction and debuff, Marisa for magic DPS, and Mokou as Commander for revive in case something goes wrong. Also, in this fight MP conservation is a must. Have some low cost skills.  I replaced Satori’s weapon to this knife. The status effect infliction is important.  I also got the Time Stop and Exhaust from the Moon Resident. drat! They’re truly good at disabling group of enemies. Also, Tentacle is a really powerful single target attack. No wonder it can one shot anyone.  This elemental armor is so good. Alice’s PDef is insane. I don’t think I’ve seen any enemies with 200+ PAtk.  The next boss consists of a Warrior and a Magician. So having the slayer effect from the skill tree is very important.  More buff level = more stats increase from her buff.  We can do this! I spent many hours preparing for this fight!   The stage’s boss awaits us at the end of the stage. : So you’ve come. I’ve been waiting for you.: So one of the culprits finally makes her appearance.: We’ve finally made it here… Reimu is still randomly accusing anyone she encounters. : Oh? Just what am I supposed to give up?: Are you seriously playing dumb after all we’ve gone through?Eirin has a point though. We have no evidence of her being the culprit. : It looks like she isn’t just going to admit everything.: It still doesn’t sit right with me. You worked hard to help those youkai… I can’t picture you being behind the incident that targeted them. Maybe because she isn’t the culprit? It’s very obvious you have to be as blind as Reimu to fall for it. : I feel the same. Especially because I’m so indebted to her…: I knew it… That’s some major accusation there. : Huh…? L-Living test subjects? Just what kind of person do you all think I am…? There’s been nothing of that nature going on here.: Huh? Then what’s goin’ on here?: Or are ya maybe still playin’ dumb?: Fufufu. : Indeed-- Yeah… she’s just acting. : ! And Reimu falls for it. : U-Unbelievable… : So you guys really WERE behind it… : Where’s Kaguya at? I’m not seeing her out here…: The princess is—: Here I am. The former Lunarian princess has arrived.  : There you are… Houraisan Kaguya!She’s also Mokou’s rival. Despite their established rivalry, don’t bring Mokou to the frontline. : You certainly took your time. What were you doing? Most NES/Famicom games uses password system for saving your progress. This means bringing pen and paper while you were playing the game. : (Good grief, princess…): Carefree as always, huh…: Oh, the fried chicken cart operator from the rumors is here.: Hm? Oh, you mean me. What rumors are you talking about…? Remember Aya’s news back at the beginning of the game? I certainly don’t. : “Fried Chicken Cart Caught Selling Disguised Night Sparrow Meat!” Aya’s facial expression is priceless. : D-Disguised Night Sparrow Meat!? That’s totally baseless! Who the hell spread that around…!?: I read it in the Bunbunmaru Newspaper.: The Bunbunmaru Newspaper…: That’s Aya’s paper. Heheheheh… : Don’t “teehee” me!: Eep! I-I’m sorrryyy! Is fried crow even edible? : C-Calm down a little, Mokou…: Oh hey, you were in there, too.: Huh?: E-Erk! : “Dolls From the Super Hero Robot Series Discovered in Her Personal Belongings!”: Wha!?: M-M-M-My precious secret! I really didn’t want that to get out! How’d you find out…!?Why are you ashamed? Giant Robots are awesome and you shouldn’t be embarrassed for liking it.  : Don’t you ”ehehe” me!: Eep! I-I’m sorrryyy! Reimu isn’t a good team leader. : You said it…: (I can’t really argue with that…)For once, I agree with Satori. : Shut up already! All we need is for you two to give yourselves up, then this is all over!  Good luck with that. We all know they won’t go down without a fight. : It half sounds like you’re just taking your anger out on us.Reimu is always irritated and pissed off from being forced to solve the incident under summer heat. : I’ve got something I’d like to ask first. Just why did you cause the incident…?: Oh my, even a witch of the Forest of Magic is getting second thoughts, hmm? : Rrgh!They’re good at acting like a dick. : Hey now, you’re makin’ it sound like I’m getting’ second thought, too.: In that case, we’ll question you with force just like you asked. But not quite in the way you were thinking of.Reimu, you know that we can’t depend on Satori to read their mind, right? : …..: Go ahead, Satori.: Yes, I know.: …..: …..!?: W-What’s the matter? : I can’t read her heart!You suck, Satori! : What!?: Yuyuko aside, but can your power not read the heart of ANY high rank youkai…?No. Satori is far too weak to do that.  Do you have 4-5 digits HP, Aya? No? Then you’re not high-rank youkai. : Heh! Lady Yuyuko is on her own level entirely!: (It’s no good.) : (…I’ll admit that I’m sad to have to rely on her for it, though.)   drat…! Eirin has no mercy for Satori!  : You… Komeiji Satori, was it? The mistress of the Palace of the Earth Spirits, who they say can read hearts. : Learning all that is easy with my network of information.I guess Eientei has rabbit spies as well? : Even if you can read my heart, I’ve got nothing to fear if you can’t disclose its contents. Just like how you’re unable to now!: Uugh…I hereby dub Eirin: the number 1 Satori’s bully. : (In reality, I could use the same arts I sealed the princess’s heart with, but this is the sad part of playing the foil…) : So we can’t take the lazy way outta this, huh. What a pain…Unfortunately. I really don’t want to fight them. : Come on, then. We’ll take you on.: You got it. We’ve got exterminate you two anyway. : Agreed. Remi sent us to punish the culprits, after all.: I’ll slice you up with knives in the mistress’s stead!: Mufufu. Tremble in fear before my weaponry!: I’m gonna settle my score with you here and now, Kaguya! This time, about half of our party gets a badass line before the fight. : Fufufu. This’ll be definitely be more fun than that game.: Go on, then, show me. I’m nervous, but I think we can do this. BGM: Boss 2  If you’re hearing this song that means you’re screwed! This song is used when we’re against the truly difficult bosses. Eirin and Kaguya is step up in difficulty compared to the previous bosses. Both Eirin and Kaguya has 11000 HP, Eirin heavily resists dark, Kaguya heavily resists light, and both of them has no weakness to exploit. We need to deplete a grand total of 22000 HP. Without proper strategy or team member, our party will run out of MP long before the bosses run out of HP. Their strategy is very simple, yet incredibly effective. Kaguya will buff their attack and defense, and attacks primarily by using magic. Meanwhile Eirin will be the physical attacker. Oh, also Kaguya has a healing spell to extend their survivability.  Fortunately for us, Kaguya is vulnerable to Mind Control status effect (Berserk, Charm, and Control).   Thanks for the buff Kaguya. I’ll make sure to use it to murder Eirin.  Eirin’s 60 Eva is more than enough to make Sakuya miss like half of her attacks. I guess her 160 Accuracy isn’t enough to make her land her hits consistently.   Slowly but surely, we’ll deplete their health with the combination of Sakuya’s and Marisa’s attack.   Heh! With Sanae’s full power PDef, MDef buff + Alice’s incredible PDef, Eirin can’t even touch Alice. There is literally no risk of me getting wiped out as long as Alice isn’t paralyzed.  Eventually, I took down Eirin after an extended beatdown. I’d recommend taking down Eirin first because she has a revive spell which she will use should Kaguya goes down first.   Too bad! Alice has resistances against those element.  Once Eirin goes down, I use Sakuya’s Colloseo World to disable any form of healing. This is because Kaguya has Elixir, a healing spell that will restore her to full HP. If any of the bosses ever use their healing spell, restart the fight. Because we likely won’t have enough MP to defeat the boss.  Beating Eirin took a lot of Sakuya’s and Marisa’s MP. I’m forced to use weaker and cheaper skill to take down Kaguya. This will take a while.   Kaguya ended up spamming her spellcard every turn to no effect because Alice took no damage from Kaguya’s strongest attack. Eirin never had a chance to use her spellcard: Apollo 13. We don’t get to see her portrait.  After like 5 minutes of extended beatdown, Kaguya finally goes down from Satori’s attack. I guess she can be useful once in a while. BGM: Victory  Huh? I have to problem at all with this fight. Maybe because I’m over-prepared for this boss fight.  Max HP increase buff. I could make Alice even tankier with this buff.  Whew… Now I don’t have to worry about them, anymore. : That settles that.: Eirin, Kaguya! We beat you!Yes, indeed. I actually expected me to take lots of retries when fighting them. : We know, we lost…: Oh, well isn’t that a straightforward admittance. Keep that straightforward attitude up and stop the incident. Of course. I’m not surprised. : Whuh? What’s your deal? C’mon, don’t be stubborn. : What do you mean you “can’t”… Like I said before, it’s glaringly obvious that they’re not the culprit. : Huh? What are you saying…? You JUST said “We’re the one behind the incident”!: Sorry. That was just a show we put on.And you guys failed to see past their obvious acts. : Why would you… Is this true, Satori? : I can only read Eirin’s heart, but regardless…: You’re STILL keeping your heart closed…?: (Well, that’s not my fault. Eirin’s arts are still active, after all.)She could deactivate it, right? : A show… Hmm. Why don’t you tell us, then? Why did you do something so incomprehensible? : Well, you see… We were waiting for you, Reimu.: …For me? What’s this all about…?: Let me explain from the beginning.: As you correctly surmised, this mist’s makeup resembles the princess’s power of Hourai. However… : It’s absolutely unthinkable that there’d be someone else with the same power.: So that means that the culprit just has a similar power, then?: That’s one possibility. The problem is the other possibility.: The other possibility…?: Let’s say that someone else with the power of Hourai really DOES exist… That could only mean one thing…: Just what it would mean…? : That’s why we couldn’t act without caution.Lunarian people are extremely dangerous. That’s why they’re being really cautious. : Oh yeah, you guys came here to escape the Lunarians, huh.: So, the solution we thought up was you, Reimu.: Ah… I think I see what you’re getting at, though I’d rather I didn’t… You lazy, opportunistic bastards. : You two aren’t any different from ukari in the end, huh…You’re missing the letter “Y” there, Reimu. : But in that case, there wasn’t any need to fight us, was there?: No, not in particular. But, hypothetically… You could end up having to fight this supposed Lunarian in our place, I’d prefer if you didn’t do that. You guys are one of the hardest boss in the main story by far. : And with that, I’ve explained the meaning behind our show.: Geez, what a pain in the neck!All of this stuff could’ve been avoided. : Sorry. But, this play actually had another goal.: Another goal?: Our fight might just be able to draw out our real enemy, don’t you think? What?! : !? Organization XIII! You snooping bastard!  : Crap! Dammit! Get back here! You don’t get to steal anyone’s heart. You hear me! : We have to keep our guards up…: Whuh? Was someone in there…!?You see the hooded person hiding, Marisa? : Were those two…?Two? I only saw one person. : Most likely.: New enemies on the scene, huh? So that means…: Kaguya wasn’t behind this after all… I agree. We’re halfway into the game and the only thing we found is that the culprit exists. : I’m exhausted…: I know you’re tired, Reimu, but could I ask you to take care of this?: No need, I’ll find those despicable peeping toms, and chase them to ends of the earth to exterminate them.Once Reimu set her sight on anyone, there’s nothing that can save them from her wrath. : But you know, sure. We’ll say that you owe me for this.: Fufufu, thank you.You’d better give me free medical check-up for life.  : What…? You gotta be outta your mind! Why would I ever listen to a request from--: And how’s that a “by the way”!?They’re clearly are using us. : If this is related to the power of Hourai, then you’re not exactly unrelated, are you? But luckily, you have no direct connection to the moon.True. But she also has no personal stake in this anymore.  : I’d like to ask for your assistance too, Mokou.: …!: …*sigh* Fine. I’ll go.: Thank you, Mokou. : This is an issue, though. If Eientei was a dead end, we’re back at square one yet again…I hate this! This arc of finding the culprit has gone for way too long. : Just where is the culprit is hiding…?: We’re not quite at square one, Sanae. There’s no need to overthink it, is there?: What do you mean…?: We’ve checked a lot of Gensokyo so far, right? So that means-- We can only brute force this incident. Go scour the entire place until we found the culprit. : C’mon, don’t steal the good part!: I see, that makes sense. So if we’re looking somewhere new, that would mean… One of the places unaffected by the mist. : That’s the only place, I believe.: I’d thought it was unlikely… I can’t believe Youkai Mountain is a viable candidate now. : I don’t know who the culprit is, but… It looks like we’ve got no choice but to visit Youkai Mountain.: Come on, surely Lady Kanako and Lady Suwako aren’t our culprits.Besides, like Eirin and Kaguya, they got no reason to hurt everyone. : We’ve come far enough that we can’t rule that out. This is the only place left to look, and knowing how those two are, they could be deceiving you.: And I suppose that means the tengu could be, to…: Yeah. Or the kappa… : That’s right. Let’s go everyone. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: New adventure, new BGM, more people to fight.  I didn’t see the Hooded person with rabbit ear in the previous cutscene.  : ……: It’s just like you said… We can’t underestimate them…: See? I told you.: ……: It looks like we’ll have to make a move…: Indeed. We’ll make the residents of Gensokyo aware… Oh. gently caress off!  Eirin’s formation. It’s like inverse Poison Shield. One attacker guarded by 4 defender.
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Aug 12, 2023 16:58
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Stage 11 - Part 1 BGM: Overworld Theme  I won’t have to worry about Eientei anymore.  Akyuu got new recipes for us after we defeat Eirin and Kaguya : I hear that Kaguya, master of eternity and the instantaneous, controls five divine treasures, and that Eirin is a prodigy when it comes to both medicine and archery. : You must have had a very difficult battle.They’re both are indeed very difficult to beat. No sugar coating it. : I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. I hope they help you resolve the incident.  We got the recipes for fourth tier unique weapons. Fourth tier stuff requires Youkai Mountain Rock which can only be obtained on Youkai Mountain.  Fortunately, Youkai Mountain, or rather, Mountain of Youkai is a multi-stage dungeon as well. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  Which one is the correct name of this place? Mountain of Youkai or Youkai Mountain?  : This place is needlessly tall as always. I’m getting a little sick of climbing it…Everyone in Gensokyo can fly though. But since this is a JRPG, we have ascend the mountain on foot. : I’m totally used to it. : Same here.: At least the trip down’s easy, Reimu. You don’t need stamina for the river, after all.It’ll be like riding a water slide. : Don’t go lumping me in with you kappa : Where’s there!?Huh? Do you mean to say “Who’s there!?”. We already knew this is the Youkai Mountain.  Oh hi there, Byakuren. Nice to finally meet you. : Oh, it’s…: Well, if it ain’t Byakuren. What are you doin’ here…? What a coincidence. We’re about to head there as well. : Oh, you got business at my place? : Oh my, you’re here too, Sanae?: Yes, I am. What business is your trip for?: It’s regarding the mist incident.: The incident…!: You’re all acquainted with the effect this mist has, aren’t you? The youkai of Gensokyo are being made to suffer, and I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch.  Byakuren and Sanae is pretty much the only heroic character on the party. : So if you’re heading for the Moriya Shrine, that means you’ve deduced the culprit is there. Is that correct?: N-No, that’s not actually the case… : However, I’ve been unable to pinpoint where the mist is originating from… : In order to find out, I wanted to visit Youkai Mountain, not only because it’s got the highest view in Gensokyo, but also to ask advice of its gods. That’s why I’ve come here to the mountain.: (Hijiri Byakuren… I’ve heard she’s a fellow witch.) She is an extremely good character. : I see. So your goal is the same as ours, then.: Exactly. Well, I guess we’re here for extermination as well as investigation, but still.Note that extermination comes first. We all know she’s the type to shoot first and ask question later. : Oh my, you too!?: Of course! Resolving incidents is the Hakurei shrine maiden’s job after all.: (Ya didn’t even wanna leave the shrine at first…) YES! By all means. Come with us! : The more the merrier, surely.: Why don’t we take her up on that, Reimu? I think she’d be a good ally to have.: I agree. We still don’t know the culprit’s identity, so we can’t be too prepared when it comes to battle.: Okay, I don’t mind. We’ve got a big crowd at this point anyway.YES.  This isn’t Suikoden. Our party size isn’t going to be that absurd. : (No, I think a hundred more would probably matter…) Welcome aboard, Byakuren. : Right.  With this, our party is now complete. These 12 girls will be one to beat up the culprits and solve the incident.  I don’t think we should build a party consisting of 5 magicians. Having a balanced party overall is much better.  Byakuren is really good. Like Sanae, she’s a must have in the main party simply because of how incredibly useful she is. She specialized in light/dark magic, and powerful single target status infliction, buff, and debuff. Her buff/debuff is very useful due to how incredibly powerful her buff is. Her unique weapon is Scrolls, a slash type weapon that also increase her MAtk and her defensive stats as well. She can equip to up medium type armor and shield. Her Last Word is Flying Fantastica: It multiplies EXP gain and drop rate by a certain percentage. The multiplier value can go from 1.1 to 2.0. Her Commander Ability is as follows: - Command Power: Physical Damage Received -5% - Commander Spell 1: Magic Butterfly: Restores 10% of your MP (Very practical and useful) - Commander Spell 2: Daemon’s Recitation: Cut enemies’ HP in half. Success rate based on Inf. (Incredibly situational and will most likely fail to proc) We should increase her level by putting her in Commander position so that she’ll learn her very useful buff skills and break the game in half.  : With her help, you should be one step closer to resolving the incident. : Allow me to present you with these recipes, then. I hope they help you resolve the incident together. She gives us Byakuren’s lower tier weapon. And this is exactly what I need.  I consider Deva Scroll to be her best weapon. Simply because it’s the only weapon for her that increases her Inf for better status infliction and debuff proc. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  With everything’s in place, we can the stage exploration.  There’s a silver nearby. This is easy to remember since it’s located right near the teleporter.  The enemies is represented by Kedamas. Do note that there’s no Kedamas as opponents in this stage. BGM: Battle 2  Starting from Stage 11, the game will use a new Battle Theme for the random encounter. I don’t like the new Battle Theme. It feels so somber and really doesn’t fit being a Battle Theme. Crows. They’re as annoying as always. The Youkai Mountain Crow has 800 HP, 50 EVA, resists earth and weak to thunder and stab. We knows how crows operates: evasive bastards that loves using Swoop to cancel someone’s turn. Thunder magic would probably one shot it. The Crow has 6% chance to drop Youkai Mountain Rock.  Byakuren is so underleveled she will gain the first few levels at an incredibly fast rate.  Geez… A creature with exposed internal organ? Penanggalan has 1000 HP, 50 Eva, immune to earth, resists light, dark, and strike, and is weak to thunder and stab. It’s one of the less notable enemy. It mainly tries to inflict status effects or drain your HP. It has 4% chance to drop Youkai Mountain Rock.  Three new enemies in one encounter. Interesting. First is the stone slab. Nurikabe has 1500 HP, resists thunder, light, dark, stab, and is weak to water and earth (Despite being made out of stone). It hits decently hard and is annoyingly durable. I don’t like fighting it. The Nurikabe has 8% chance to drop Plating Shield. A powerful Large Shield that grants immunity against Slayer effect. The snake is called Giant Viper. It has 1050 HP, resists earth and strike and is weak to water and slash. Snakes can poison our party member with its normal attack and it can use its tail to Constrict and inflict paralysis. Sakuya will most likely kill it in one hit. The Viper has 4% chance to drop Youkai Mountain Rock. The deity like enemy is Hariti. She has 1400 HP, heavily resists earth, dark, and strike, and is weak to thunder, light, and stab. She got a decent kit in her skillset consisting of debuffs, earth elemental magic, and Area Heal. Satori can learn her Area Heal with help from Byakuren, making her a decent sub-healer. Learning support skills from enemies is pretty annoying thing to do. It’s pretty much luck based whether the Charmed enemy will use their support skill on our party or not. She has 12.5% chance to drop Ring of Potential II (Pot +7).  Nice! Youkai Mountain Rock. We can now craft fourth tier unique equipment. There is one specific weapon that I want the most.  Alice’s fourth tier weapon. It’s by far one of her best weapon despite being only a fourth tier because it grants her resistance against all elemental attribute.  Now she has resistance against almost all attribute. This makes her even harder to kill. BGM: Battle 2  That’s a pretty intimidating giant killer plant. Rafflesia has 1600 HP, resists thunder and weak to fire and slash. It hits decently hard and it can inflict sleep.  Though it won’t matter much when Sakuya slaughter it due to her Plant slayer effect from her sword and its slash weakness.  This Elemental Shield is quite useful when fighting against enemy that uses single element. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  There’s noticeable lack of climbing despite the stage taking place on a mountain.   Taking the right path from the starting area will lead us to the shortcut into the next stage. This can only be opened through the other side.  So this time, we’ll take the left path.   After a short journey, we come across a Blue Healing Circle. This Healing Circle can only restore our party once.  Since I’m not running low on MP or Bombs, I’ll save it for later and continue onward. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: There’s a boss fight this early into the stage?!
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Aug 24, 2023 15:34
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Stage 11 - Part 2  Looks like there has been a Dragon Ball Z-esque fight at this place. : Whoa! : This certainly doesn’t look like any natural phenomenon… I get the impression this area was destroyed with an incredible force.: This almost looks like an oni’s power. Was Suika maybe behind this…?: Who knows…: Is this related to the incident…?Could be. : It’s not connected to the mist, so probably not, right…? We did see that there’s 2 mysterious hooded person in the previous stage. : Suika, along with a partner capable of controlling the mist… Is that what you’re suggesting?It can’t be Suika. Suika is small. The hooded person is bigger than her. : Hmm… The pieces aren’t really lining up for me.: Well, I’m sure we’ll figure it out if we keep going.  A new person has entered the scene. : You’re… The White Wolf Tengu of the Youkai Mountain. : What are you doing he--: …I guess that’s a stupid question. : I am a white wolf tengu, part of the mountain guard. I have come because I sensed the presence of intruders.Okay. Will you help us find them? : However, what I cannot understand. What?! We’re the intruders? I mean, we did enter without permission. But we come in peace. : Ehehe…: Ahaha… Then go back and continue your game and let us be on our way. : …Did you say something?: I did not.: Allow me to ask again. : No, of course not.We don’t have anyone in our party that can punch THAT hard. : Then, why have you trespassed upon the mountain?: To resolve the incident. The culprit is here on Youkai Mountain. We’ve come here to find and stop them.: Don’t be ridiculous. Youkai Mountain’s society is entirely different from that of the surface’s. We would never threaten the well-being of anyone down there. Yeah… But we already checked everywhere else and the culprit isn’t there. : Well…: Yeah, I guess…: Furthermore, the mist isn’t originating from the mountain. I wouldn’t think the culprit would be here, where its effect are so minimal.: That part sounds kinda suspicious if ya ask me.: Hmph.: It seems continuing this dialogue any further would carry no point. If you are going to withdraw, do so now. Dammit! We have to fight her. And I did not prepare my team for the upcoming mini boss fight. : If you do not… Usually, the game gives us the time and place to prepare ourselves. : Even if the culprit isn’t here on Youkai Mountain, we still have reasons that require us to continue. We cannot withdraw here.: If you’re going to get in our way… Go away you annoying wolf! : …It appears I have no choice. I hesitate to do battle with my own comrades, but if that is your intent, then I must deliver you a warning. Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with. BGM: Boss 1  Okay, can we beat a miniboss with an unprepared team? Let’s find out.   Holy drat, dude! She hits HARD. And that’s with me already applying PDef buff. Thank goodness she only move once per turn.  There’s not much strategy beyond buff defense + attack, and then attack her until she dies.  As always, Sakuya is a freaking beast.  That’s a wrap. I admit she did almost screw me over.  Thanks for the Youkai Mountain Rock. I really need those stuff.  : Looks like a lone white wolf tengu wasn’t enough to take us all on!I fought much harder opponents. She is nothing by comparison.  : Prepare yourselves well if you intend continue upward…!: Yeah, yeah, come back never.: Tch…! Unfortunately, this isn’t the last time we see of her.  We didn’t even get her entry on the bestiary. This is why I don’t any idea how much HP she has and what’s her resistances and weaknesses. : Hmph.  : Hey, c’mon now, Aya. I feel bad that we did that to Momiji…I don’t feel bad. She’s the one picking a fight against us. : Well, it’s just how things happened. We couldn’t have avoided it.: Who cares? Stop worrying about it. We still got half a stage to go.   Not worth it. We don’t want to sacrifice our defenses and the single line formation just make us more vulnerable against row targeting attacks. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  We continue our climb to the top of the mountain.  Before that though, we’ll use the blue healing circle first. I did spent almost all of Mokou’s and Sakuya’s MP and bomb in the miniboss fight. There’s noticeable lack of effect when using the blue healing circle. After touching it, the healing circle immediately vanished instantly. It feels jarring for me.  The second half takes place at the riverside of the mountain. BGM: Battle 2  The humanoid opponents in this stage are the Helmet Fairies. The sword, spear, and axe wielding fairies have 1300 HP, and weakness against dark. The Helmet Fairies hits decently hard and they have access to advanced weapon skills. The sword fairy is pretty dangerous as they have Meteor Zapper, which is an all-targeting attack.  The staff wielding Helmet Fairy has 1200 HP, and weakness to dark. These magicians have all-targeting elemental spells. All-targeting attacks can potentially kill our weaker party members. They have 12.5% chance to drop Magic Ring II (MP +40).  Nice. We finally unlocked Byakuren’s PAtk buff. It’s such an important tool for Byakuren since she can now buff our party member’s PAtk to such an absurd degree.  I think the axe Helmet Fairy isn’t as dangerous as the sword Helmet Fairy. Sure she hits really hard, but at this point, I’m more afraid of AoE attacks. Is that a raccoon? The Elite Tanuki has 1450 HP and is weak to fire and earth. It can either throw rocks at you or inflict variety debuff. We’ll wipe ‘em out and call it a day. It has 12.5% chance to drop Ring of Vitality II (VIT +7)  Oooh… A yeti. The Shoujou has 1750 HP and is weak to fire and earth. It’s basically a slightly stronger Elite Tanuki. Not much else to say about it other than it can buff its own PAtk and PDef. I usually just nuke it with Mokou’s spellcard or Sakuya’s beast slaying greatsword and kill it quick. It has 12.5% chance to drop Ring of Strength II (STR +7). Good stuff for Sakuya. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme   It’s pretty easy to guess where the hidden path might be located in the forest area.  I prefer getting armors though, but I’ll take it.   Axe is really bad. Its very high PAtk don’t matter if it can’t land a hit due to its very low Accuracy.  Returning to the previous area, we’ll take the left path.  I wonder where’s the bridge that can take us to the other side of the river. BGM: Battle 2  Freaking poo poo! Another miniboss demon type enemy. Officer Daemon has 2750 HP, 33 Divine Barrier, near immunity against light and is weak to light. It can move twice in a turn and it’s attacks hits really hard. It seems to favor using physical attack more than dark elemental attack. It’s Divine Barrier as well as its high PDef and MDef makes it really hard to kill.  At least it gave me a Youkai Mountain Rock. Thank you for that.  Compared to the scary demon enemy, a giant skeleton is a much easier opponent. Gashadokuro has 4000 HP, near immunity to dark and stab, and is weak to fire, light, and strike. It can inflict Instant Death, Curse and it can deals heavy damage with just its normal attack. Despite it’s very high HP and dangerous skills, it’s actually easy to kill due to its numerous weaknesses and 0 PDef and MDef. It has 20% chance to drop Youkai Mountain Rock. This makes the giant skeleton the best opponent to grind the material. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme   A sword that can ignore slash resistance. This should be a decent sword for Youmu.    The dungeon is shorter than I expected. I guess the game decided to have it easy on us after Eientei.  There’s some place I need to check before I finish the part.   Now the shortcut back to the starting area is opened. The north part leads us to the shortcut that take us all the way to the end of stage 12. But it needs to be opened from the other side. So we need to wait for the next update to access it.  The Gods of the Moriya shrine are earth elemental Gods. Obtaining an accessory with 75% earth resistance is pretty necessary for the upcoming boss fights.   We still haven’t found the silver key, yet.  At least this one is pretty easy to find. I still sad about not finding the silver key in the Netherworld (Stage 6)  Another shield upgrade. Okay. Fine, I guess.  Time to do some offscreen grinding. The next boss is surprisingly difficult. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Who ever thought those 2 weaklings could be such a dangerous duo.
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Sep 22, 2023 17:15
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This has been a fun read! looking forwards to figuring out who (even if by process of annihilation) said mysterious evildoer is! ... And probably just leveling the mountain out of spite too.
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Sep 27, 2023 23:21
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Stage 11 - Boss Grinding Byakuren’s level does took a while. I think her level should be enough for the upcoming boss fight.  This is my ideal party formation. One tank (Alice), one healer/support (Sanae), one offensive support (Byakuren), and 2 attackers which can be replaced based on the situation. Alice, Sanae, and Byakuren should be present on the frontline at all times. Their abilities is so useful. I have Aya as the Commander because I need her Action Initiative. On this boss fight, we need resistance against water and slash attacks.  Elemental Weapon is one of the most useful skill that she has. This allows any physical attacker to exploit elemental weakness. Combining Sakuya’s and Nitori’s slayer effect on their unique weapon with Elemental Weapon allows them to deals massive damage to their enemies.  Okay then. Time to show the boss what Byakuren is capable of.  This is definitely not Momiji. So we have a new boss. ???: The mist floats high! The mist makes youkai cry! …and then collapse!  It’s Cirno, the ice fairy. She may be not the brightest person in the room and she has an ego the size of a glacier, but she’s also decently good in a fight.  : Aaaand I’m here! : There’s barely any pesky youkai around to bug me, thanks to the mist. I can pull all the pranks I want! Have all the FUN I want!The poisonous mist only affects youkai. Fairies aren’t affected by the mist. : Lemme see… Maybe I’ll starts by freezin’ some of the frog here.: But if I get too carried away  One of the gods of the Moriya Shrine has a frog theme going on. Best to not mess with frogs. : I gotta be careful.???: Oh look, we found an idiot.  I like this pose of hers. It makes it seems like she just instantly surrender whenever she’s caught off-guard.  Yep. Reimu is as rude as always.  Hahahahaha! That’s a pretty good comeback. She’s doesn’t realize that Reimu is calling her an idiot. : Don’t make me slap you.: I didn’t expect to see you all the way up here…Cirno usually hangout at Misty Lake, which is located near the Scarlet Devil Mansion. : Yep! Outings to faraway places are nothing to me, ‘cause I’m the strongest!: So what’s the strongest doin’ in a place like this, then?: Getting up to no-good, obviously.: Of course!: Oh, wait a sec. You’re here to get in my way, aren’t you!?  Stay out of our way and we won’t do anything to you. : Unfortunately, we don’t have time to waste on you.: Huh? Why not?: We’re busy searching for the culprit of this incident. For that reason, we must continue past you up the mountain.: What!? Ooh, you shouldn’t have told me that! Usually, it’s Reimu who instigate the boss fight. : Heheheheh.: Huh? But why…? I don’t know which is more annoying? Momiji or Cirno. : You’re a real people displeaser, huh…: (I feel like you shouldn’t be talking…)At least Reimu’s trying to save the day. : Plus, it’d suck if the mist went away! There’s less youkai around like this, so it’s easier to pull pranks! : Selfish and only concerned with things being easy.: So? Do you really think you can beat us alone? : You guys are NOTHING to me!Can’t wait to melt this overconfident brat. ???: I hadn’t expected to find another intruder all the way up here. : That voice… Not you again, Momiji.  Two annoying characters walks into a lakeside. : Who the heck are you?: It would appear you didn’t heed my warning.: Of course not. We can’t leave the mountain until we’ve finished what we came for.: Then you leave me no choice. I cannot allow you to wreak havoc on the mountain any further… Your threat carries no weight. We already beat you once. : Cirno too?: Huh? What? Me?Yes. You. : A fairy or two is nothing to raise any alarm. I will leave her be for the time being. I smell discrimination. Don’t say no toward equality. : You all pose the greater problem right now. I cannot allow such high-threat intruders to act freely.: Prepare yourselves!We’re trying to investigate, you overly paranoid, dog! : Huh? You’re really gonna talk big after losin’ earlier?: Hmph! My prior warning was but only that – a warning! Try it! We already prepared countermeasure against you. : Against our numbers, you’re still at just as much of a disadvantage. How do you plan on counteracting that fact?: …… You shouldn’t have said that, Byakuren. : Hmph! That’s some attitude you got after trash talkin’ me!: At this rate, you, along with the shrine maiden and her cohorts, are going to suffer an unpleasant removal at the hands of us mountain tengu.: Whuh?: You might just get put out of commission. : Erk, I don’t want that…: But if you’ll lend me a hand, I’ll sort things out so you get overlooked.: Hmmm… I don’t really get it, but it sounds like I get more of this if I help… With the power of blackmail, Momiji turned this fight into a dual boss fight. : (That’s the idiot for you…): I’m impressed, Inubashiri Momiji. You taught me something new today. I didn’t realize the honest, hard-working white wolf tengu used these sorts of methods too.: Is that intended to be sarcasm? Was that sarcasm? I would prefer to not hear such slander from a fact-fabricating crow tengu. No. I think it’s intended to be an insult. : (Geez, there they go…): Anyway, this doesn’t change what we have to do. If you’re going to get in our way, we’ll get through with force.: It doesn’t matter how many times you come at us-- : Looks like another chapter’s startin’.: As you wish. If I defeat you this time, Momiji, I want you to never show your face to me, ever again! BGM: Boss 2  A dog and a fairy. How hard could they possibly be? Cirno has 11900 HP, 100 MDef, 70 Eva, immunity to water, and weakness against fire. Momiji has 12000 HP, 160 PDef, and is weak to earth. Having physical attacker to fight them is a good choice. I don’t think mages can deal high enough damage to Cirno even when exploiting her elemental weakness.  On the first turn, they’ll charge up their ultimate move…  And then immediately unleashing those ultimate right that instant. This game is definitely fair and doesn’t hate its players. Cirno’s ultimate skill is Perfect Freeze, a moderately damaging all-targeting water elemental attack that have pretty high chance of inflicting Freeze status effect to cancel your turn. This is despite her having 0 Inf. Not even Sanae’s Res buff can fully defend the party against the Freeze status effect.  This is then immediately followed up with Momiji’s ultimate skill, Expellee’s Canaan, an all-targeting skill with very high attack power and very low accuracy. Anyone affected by Freeze will have their Eva temporarily reduced to 0, making then vulnerable to that attack. That skill will most likely kill anyone that is not Alice in one hit.  Surprisingly, the bosses have a frightening synergy with each other. The game really loves blindsiding the players with cheap instant kill attack that requires them to look up guide to circumvent it.  This is why I need Aya’s Action Initiative. I need Sakuya to move first before they do.  Have Byakuren adds Fire Elemental to Sakuya’s weapon, and then have Sakuya Time Stop to stop them from using their nasty combo attack.  Then go ham on Cirno. Without her Perfect Freeze, Momiji won’t be able to kill the party.  Aaah, gently caress! I’m too focused on trying to stop their first ultimate skill. Now they about to use it on the next turn and my defensive skill is still on cooldown. Hopefully, the Res buff will be enough to stop Perfect Freeze.   Crap! Sanae’s down. Can I beat the boss without the assistance of our main healer?  Okay! Cirno’s finally down. You’re next, Momiji!  Nailed the debuff. With Momiji’s Acc and Eva being debuffed to oblivion, Momiji can no longer able to attack our party anymore.  Byakuren’s buff and debuff is really powerful.  All that’s left is to put her out of her misery. BGM: Victory  They’re easily beaten once we get past their nasty combo attack.  : There. We fended you off. : Lord Daitengu is going to scold me… Goodbye! May we never meet again! : Uugh… First the giant frog, then the frog hat girl, and now you guys… Should’ve just leave us alone. : Frog hat girl…? Oh, does she perhaps means Lady Suwako? : She musta punished her for messin’ with too many frogs.: Serves her right.: Come on, there’s still a ways left to the summit. We can take it easy since we removed the most annoying obstacle of the stage.   It’s a really weird formation with weird mish-mash of bonuses that’s so impractical and doesn’t benefit the party in anyway. Don’t use this formation. Formation bonus: Position 1: Auto Defend, party member in this position only have 10% chance to be attacked. Position 2: Magic Up, Defense and Evasion Down. Have the most chance to be attacked (35%) Position 3: Attack and Magic Down, Speed Up. Position 4: Attack Up, Speed Down. Position 5: Magic, Evasion and Speed Up, Defense Down. Death Counter: 6 Bonus Video: Stage 11 Boss Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Holy poo poo! She got Yamcha’ed Your Everyday NEET fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Oct 16, 2023 |
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Oct 5, 2023 17:25
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Stage 12 - Part 1 BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  Technically, this is already Stage 12. But the title doesn’t come up until we’re near the end of the stage.  We must pass through the giant pond by using these water lilies as bridges. BGM: Battle 1  Those birds aren’t a cockatrice thankfully. Basan has 1250 HP, 60 Eva, greatly resists fire and earth, and is weak to water and stab. Its primary method of attacking is by using fire breath. While it doesn’t deal much damage, the damage can pile up if it’s not quickly killed. Aside, from fire breath, it also has Swoop, the turn cancelling attack that all bird type enemy have. It has 12.5% chance to drop Ring of Agility II (Agi +7)  Crap! Another angel type enemy. Veteran Power has 2900 HP, extremely resistant against light and is weak to dark. This miniboss leve; enemy can move twice and hits very hard with his slash and light elemental skills. I didn’t bring dedicated dark elemental attacker (Patchouli or Byakuren), so I can only kill him by using brute force.  And hey. I did get Youkai Mountain Rock from fighting him. The minibosses have good chance of dropping that important material.  Two new enemies this time. The humanoid crow creature is Konoha Tengu. He has 1350 HP, 70 Eva, immune to earth, resists strike, and weak to thunder and slash. He’s like that bird enemy, Basan. Low HP count, high amount of Evasion. They’re annoying enemies to fight. The most annoying skill they have is Whirlwind, an all targeting thunder elemental skill that deals low damage and has a decent chance of cancelling our party’s turn. The dude with glaive is Seiryuu Gongen (Clear Waterfall Avatar). He(?) has 1650 HP, resists fire, water, earth, and thunder and is weak to dark. Dragon type enemies are always annoying to kill due to their numerous resistance. He attacks by using Light, Dark, Venom, and Death Zapper. Death Zapper is especially dangerous as the unlucky Instant Death proc can potentially screw over the party. Satori can potentially learn those Zapper skills. She can starts instant killing enemies in a single strike. He has 8% chance to drop Rune Armor. A medium armor which is an upgrade to our existing list of armors. Although it doesn’t provide additional passive.  Nice. Youmu obtains better spellcards. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  I sometimes wonder if the plant can support our weight. Maybe it is a magic plant.  We obtain a better and improved small armor. This armor provides resistance against poison and curse and boost poison damage. So this goes towards Satori.  Oh wow. This is such a rare material. We can combine 4 of the shards to craft Orichalcum, which are used to craft top tier weapon. This includes party member’s ultimate weapon.  Aside from providing higher MAtk, this staff increases its user MP by +25%. Patchouli’s magic spell costs large amount of MP. So, this staff will be useful to her.    This treasure used to be completely hidden by the trees back in the previous version of the game. I guess this version of the game no longer tries to hide treasure chests anymore.  Whoa! Seeing that many enemies does intimidate me.  I don’t think I need this much healing right now. Maybe I’ll start using it at the endgame. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme   We enter the next area. This area is called Waterfall of Nine Heavens (eventhough there’s no waterfall in sight). This marks the halfway point of the stage. BGM: Battle 1  Oh. The giant catfish enemy looks pretty cute. Jishin Namazu has 3300 HP, greatly resists fire, water, and earth and is weak to thunder. It is not as difficult to kill as the other miniboss enemies. Its Thorn Bind AoE turn cancel is annoying, but it can be dealt with Res buff. We still do need to watch out for its Earthquake which can deals heavy earth elemental damage to all party member. It has 15% chance to drop Muscle Belt (HP +60). I want this to cover up Patchouli. But unfortunately, I haven’t obtained it and that giant fish is a rare encounter.  A living flame. There’s no need to check the bestiary to find its weakness. Kosenjou no Hi has 900 HP, resists fire, and all physical attacks, and is weak to water. They’re easy to kill with water elemental magic and their fire based attacks deals below average damage. But there’s plenty of those enemy in any given fight and the damage can pile up.  I loving hate this enemy! Tenaga Ashinaga (Long Arms Long Legs) has 2000 HP, resists strike, and weak to stab. That enemy has only 1 pattern: Leg Sweep, and then followed with Apnea Rush (Rapid fire punches), aimed at the character with lowest HP. Yes, that enemy move twice in a single turn, and they will one shot their victim unless we can kill them quickly in one turn.  Byakuren also learns some healing spells. Her healing takes the form of row targeting heal (Light Heal) and column targeting heal (Dark Heal). While the AoE nature of heal is certainly good, it’s also has a long cooldown of 4 turns. So it can’t be spammed like Sanae’s and Reimu’s heal.  A flaming wheel. Okay, not the weirdest thing. The Wanyuudou has 1550 HP, resists fire, light, dark, stab, and is weak to water. It’s basically slightly stronger version of the flame enemy. Aside from fire elemental attack, it also has Hit and Run for a quick turn cancelling move. It has 8% chance to drop Youkai Mountain Rock. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  It’s about time we starts climbing the mountain. The previous areas consisted of flat terrain.  I already got plenty of those rocks from miniboss encounter. But thanks anyway.   The next bosses are earth elemental Goddesses. That shield could be useful for the upcoming boss fight.   Another top-tier material. We can combine 4 Adamantite Shards to create Adamantite, a top tier material used for creating top tier defensive gear, including party member unique ultimate armors.  I should have no problem crafting everyone’s fourth tier unique gear.  The view is so pretty. I like that there’s a sense of progression in this stage. We go from exploring forest, to lake, and until we reached the top of the mountain. BGM: Battle 1  AAAAH!!! A new type of Yukkuri enemy.  poo poo! I don’t Aya to gain action initiative and prevent them from escaping. BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  We can find better version of elemental resisting accessory.  I don’t care much of knife type weapon. What I want to do is going to the side area at the south.  Like Rune Armor, this large armor has no additional passive aside from providing more PDef, MDef and Res. Which is fine as it’s rare for large type armor to have MDef and Res.  After unlocking the spike barrier, we can now skip large chunk of the dungeon by going through this side area.  This also gives us easy access to the healing circle.  We can proceed forward with fully refreshed party.  The stage sign only appears now after we make significant progress at the stage. : !: T-This again…!? See, Momiji!? It wasn’t us who did this. : Just what caused these craters…?: I don’t know…Someone with immense strength?  : ! What is it? What did you see Byakuren? : Byakuren? : What was that about…?: Beats me. Let’s just follow her. The victim of the culprit?  Holy poo poo! She got Yamcha’ed! What kind of monster used such an excessive force to knock down a small cat? : Hey… You’re that Bakeneko from Yukari’s place. : Uugh… : It seems whoever made these craters did this to her. But why would they do this to Chen…?: Perhaps because she’s connected to Lady Yukari…?: Probably. Maybe she got silenced by them after she found out their identities. : In which case, that means that whoever’s behind this destruction, is highly likely to also be the culprit responsible for the incident.: Yep.: Here on the Youkai Mountain, aside from our culprit, there’s nobody who would do something this violent.: So does that mean that the one behind the incident and Chen’s defeat… was Suika?: N-No…: Chen…?  Of course we won’t get the answer. : H-Hey, Chen…!? Don’t faint before telling us! Who did this to you!?: ……: She… seems to be unconscious.We can see that without you having to read her mind. : Geez… What was the point of her even waking up?I agree with Reimu on this one. They’re just teasing us about the culprit’s true identity. : Did you catch anything just now, Satori?: No, it was no good… Satori remains not as good as always. : But, she managed to tell us something important.: “No”…: So it’s NOT Suika… Would that make it Yuugi, then…?: No, it shouldn’t be her. Yuugi has circumstances that keep her from leaving the Underground right now. She’s not the type to make spontaneous trips to the surface anyway.: Then who could be behind this…?: We can’t judge at the present… The same thing we’ve done as before. : Right.  : Let’s go, everyone.We’re almost there. : By the way, what should we do about the bakeneko?: Unconscious or not, she’s still a youkai. I guess Reimu just can’t be bothered to just carry her to safety. : (Poor Chen…) BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  There’s something that they miss  So we’ll go back and check on Chen again. : Chen? Answer me if you’re okay.: ……: Yeah, she’s completely out of it…: …Hey, hold on. : This might help with resolving the incident, so I guess I’ll borrow it. Chen carries a formation for us to use.  It’s like a mini Poison Shield for 4 party. It’s cool. I like it.  I don’t think we have fought anyone with thunder based ability, yet.  Ah. I never get bored seeing the nice view of the land.  The waterfall reminded me of some old school run-and-gun game. BGM: Battle 1  That’s a lot of enemies. The waterfall is the last area of the stage. Makes sense it has the hardest enemy encounter in the stage.  Finally reached the summit. It’s been such a journey.  Let’s take a short break first and grind the level for our backline party member before we fight the next boss. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Oops… You’re dead!
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Oct 16, 2023 17:12
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Stage 12 - Boss BGM: Youkai Mountain Theme  We’re about to punch a god in the face.  Elemental magic is not effective to use against the upcoming boss fight. So we’ll be using physical attackers. I have no idea who to pick as the Commander. So Nitori it is.  The offscreen level grinding I did let Sakuya obtain better skills. I love her multi-hitting skill. It’s an effective crowd-controller tool.  Byakuren haven’t learned Dark Sword yet. Once she does learns it, she’ll be able to help physical based party member exploit enemies’ elemental weaknesses.  Okay then. We’re ready to go!   So, the Moriya Shrine is located at the summit of Youkai Mountain. Sanae get to enjoy the nice view of Gensokyo everyday. : It’s been a long way here.: But in the end, on our trop here, we didn’t find anyone who seemed to be the culprit… Girl, did you forget Momiji and her ferocious effort to kick us out?! : So they’re silently letting us pass… Is that right, I wonder…?: If the tengu were behind this, they wouldn’t benefit from letting us roam free, so they wouldn’t stay silent and passive like this.: In which case, leaving us like this must carry some benefit for them. Here’s my supposition. The culprits are a public menace that threatens everyone. Of course they also want them gone. : In which case, they’re off our list of suspects…: To add onto that, our culprit shouldn’t be a Lunarian either.: Whuh? Why not?: All that lies up ahead is the Moriya Shrine and Heaven. There’s nowhere for a Lunarian to be dwelling.: Oh, I see. So… That means our enemy’s got nothing to do with the power of Hourai, then.: We’ve managed to narrow down our scope by quite a lot.Only by using trial and error and brute forcing our way. : The only possibilities we’ve got left are…: Either those two from the Moriya Shrine, or that moron from Heaven.: Standing around here isn’t going to do anything for us. Better not keep the Goddesses waiting.  The 2 goddesses of Moriya Shrine are enjoying their peaceful life free from the conflict.  : Another nice day. : Yep. It’s nice that they can laze around while we’re busy running around the entire Gensokyo. : Whew… This is some nice tea, too.: Yep. Those Goddesses are OLD. They’re both hundreds of years old. : You sound like an old lady, Kanako.: Hmph! Well, so do you!: Hmph!Fun fact: Suwako is older than Kanako despite her young appearance.   As we can see, they get along well like a married couple. : Let’s stop this pointless squabbling.: Yeah.: More importantly, Kanako. Have you noticed yet?: If you’ve noticed, then there’s no way I haven’t too. About time. This is not the time to laze around without worry. : That they will. You know what we have to do, right, Suwako? : I won’t drop the façade.: Make sure you don’t. It’d ruin the fun if you did.I see. They’re using this incident to test Sanae and the party. We have this same exact scenario with Kaguya and Eirin. : Talk about shameless…: There they are. We’ve found the gods in question.  Yep. Here we are.  : I’ve returned, Lady Kanako, Lady Suwako.: Welcome back, Sanae.: By the looks of things… Fufufu. You must have delivered that spare food without issue, hmm?: …Oh, and I see the recipient is here with you for some reason.: Hello, Lady Yasaka and Lady Moriya. Did you enjoy the cucumbers? : Thank you, Nitori.: They were definitely damaged, though.: Erk! You could tell!? Why did she gave them defective products, though? : Eep! K-Keep your mouth shut…!: Defective, hmm…?: I mean, I found out earlier too, so I probably would have told them sooner or later.  Why did you do that? You should respect the goddesses. : I’ll bring you plenty of good ones next time! So please, forgive me!: Goodness, you don’t need to get THAT worked up.: That’s Nitori for you. You should be grateful, Nitori that the goddesses forgives you. : Fufufu. : What’re you doing!? Cut the friendly chat! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten why we’re here!Oh right. The incident. : Oh, whoops.: Oh my, whatever could this be about?: The incident, of course.: It should go without saying that we’re working to resolve it.: After lookin’ all around Gensokyo, we’ve narrowed the culprits down to you two and Tenshi.: Let me ask you directly. : Good grief, THAT’S what you’re here for…? Understandable. Have a nice day. : ……: The two of us want the faith of youkai. So we wouldn’t do something like this, would we?: I suppose that’s a good point…: Yeah, makes sense.: So, in that case… Lady Kanako and Lady Suwako aren’t our culprits, then? They have alibi and they don’t have any motives for creating the mist. What else do you want? : In that case, I have separate question I’d like to ask. Is there anything you could tell us about the incident or the mist’s point of origin?: You’re barking up the wrong tree with that – we’ve been here at this shrine this whole time.: Oh? But, you got a view of the whole Gensokyo from here. Shouldn’t gathering information be a simple task for gods such as yourselves…?: …? So we still need to beat them up. : (Hey, Kanako! Your poor wording’s got them suspecting us!): (W-What’s the problem? You said you were fine with things going this way.): (Yeah, but you still have to watch your wording!) I’d like to point out that the goddesses have a great facial expressions. : (What’re we gonna do if YOU let the façade slip… You old snake hag!): (W-What’d you call me!?) It’s an anime tropes. The young girl you see may be way older than you. : (Argh! Y-You KNOW I’m self-conscious about that!): (Yeah, and!?) Ladies, we’re still here, you know. : Aah, here we go again…: You’ve got it rough, huh…: Well… Yes. But despite how they look, those two are actually very close.: …… : Absolutely not.: Well, I figured you wouldn’t spill the beans that easily. I guess you’re up, Satori.: (You “guess”…?) : …..: …! : Can’t read their hearts, huh? Okay, good job.We could have obtained a much more useful party member had they not forcefully recruited Satori. : Uugh… How mean… : Komeiji Satori.: So you know of me… You closed off your hearts, didn’t you?: Indeed. I’m somewhat knowledgeable when it comes to the Undeeground, you see.: Closing off your hearts… Goodness, how troublesome.: …?: This isn’t making any sense…: What doesn’t?  We got you now!  Understandable reasoning. But… : …You’re panicking. I’m suspicious of you two after all. *Cracking my knuckles* : ……: …*sigh*, it looks like there’s no way around it, Kanako.: It looks that way. I had no intention of fighting, but I suppose it’ll be interesting to get a glimpse of everyone’s power.: Agreed. Let’s see just how much you’ve grown, Sanae.: Huh?: Bring it on. We’re going to put up a whole show just for you! : Let’s begin, then--: --A festival of humans and gods… It’s time for us gods to play! I’d like to offer you guys a sandwich, It’s fillings: My own knuckles! BGM: Boss 1  I like that Suwako is positioned in such a way that makes it seems like she’s riding on Kanako’s pillar. Suwako has 12000 HP, 50 Eva, 25 Divine Barrier, resists all elemental types (fire, water, earth, thunder, mystic, light, and dark), and is weak to all physical type (slash, stab, strike). Kanako has 18000 HP, 200 PDef, 120 MDef, 25 Divine Barrier, greatly resists thunder and light, resists all physical type (slash, stab, strike) and is weak to dark. Between her high HP, physical and magical defenses, she’s the tougher boss of the two of them.  The 2 goddesses are all about using overwhelming force against the party. Alice’s protection couldn’t completely protect from their onslaught of attacks. Since Suwako is weaker and has easily exploitable weaknesses, I’m going to focus all my attack on her. As for Kanako, I’m going to improvise when it’s time to kill her.  Sure. Why not. It’s not like an instant kill Last Word could possibly work on-  HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What the gently caress?! I’m just messing around when I used Youmu’s Last Word. I didn’t expect her to just Instant Killed Kanako, just like that.  That’s 100% chance Instant Death does to her. Not even her 50 Res could protect her from that.    After that, Suwako become easy picking for Sakuya and Youmu. All they need is Byakuren’s PAtk buff.  One diced up frog, coming up!  Godslayer. That’s a really cool title.  And Byakuren just obtained Dark Sword.  Mystic Chaser? Pass! Mystic elemental attacks isn’t as exploitable compared to fire, water, and thunder elemental attacks.  To think that my half-assed attempt to fight them could lead to me easily beating them. : Looks like you got a good taste of our power.: Oh my, I’m not sure how to feel about all this…Just think of the fight as a mere sparring match.  : You got us real good.: Well done. That was a pretty good time.Well, Eirin and Kaguya are much harder opponents compared to you Ladies.  : We’ve got nothing to cough up.: Oh? I guess you haven’t had enough, then. : It’s like I told you earlier – We’re not the culprits.Again, we’ve accomplished absolutely nothing after the boss fight. : …It seems she’s telling the truth.: See? : (She’s probably still hiding something…)Did you guys know where the culprits at? : So, when ya said you didn’t know anything about the incident…: That was the truth, too.: Look, I told you they weren’t behind this, didn’t I? I feel kind of relieved now.: Argh… If it’s any consolation, the next dungeon is the last filler stage. : Yes, but this means it’s settled, doesn’t it?: That’s right – we’ve only got one suspect left.: Good point. We’ve got our final destination figured out. After exploring the Netherworld, we’re now exploring the Heaven. : Yep!: Lady Kanako, Lady Suwako. I’ll be heading out once more.: Yes, we’ll see you again later.  Just one more suspect to fight. Hang in there!  : Bit late to ask that now, don’t you think? Besides, you wanted to do things this way too didn’t you?: Yeah, I did but… I’m just a little worried. Again, we see this scenario back in Netherworld with Yuyuko and Youmu. : We ought to send our cute little girl into the world. Hiding the truth from her, and having her make contact with the Hakurei shrine maiden – This is all to make her grow as a wind priestess.: Yeah, I know that. I went with your plan because I agreed with you, after all. : I want Sanae to grow accustomed to being a shrine maiden here. And above all--: I just can’t help but love watching her grow.: You really ARE shameless…  Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Stairway to Heaven.
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Oct 22, 2023 16:22
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Stage 13 - Part 1 Looks like I won’t have to scour the map to find the next dungeon.  Beating up gods is a major accomplishment. Of course Akyuu will reward us for it. : They’re the two gods of Moriya, and need no introduction. I hear their divine power is something incredible. You must have had a very difficult battle.Sure. Let’s go with that. In fact, I barely survived the boss fight. : I’ll present you with these recipes to commemorate your hard work. I hope they help you resolve the incident.  We get some elemental generic weapon and fourth tier unique armors.  I do have plenty of Youkai Mountain Rocks. I’ll just craft some armors for the fragile magicians (Marisa and Patchouli).  I wonder. Can we see the earth from up there? BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  Right. I guess we have another multi-stage dungeon to complete.  : Indeed. It’s a troublesome place, but we have to pass through here to reach Heaven… We’re going to have to cross through the Sea of Mysterious Clouds.: Huh, neat. So do I. Here I thought we’re just gonna go straight to Heaven. : Learned somethin’ new today.: Hmm, I didn’t know either.: In the end, we ended up having to come all the way up here…: Yeah… I planned on resolving this incident quickly, but we ended up having to tour all of Gensokyo, and now we’re here of all places…: Geez… Suddenly, there’s a flash of lightning.  : Thunder? The atmosphere here is unstable as always, I see.We’re standing above the clouds after all. : Aw, man… Now I’m worried the weather might interfere with my precious machines.: I-I… I don’t like thunder… Let’s, um… get through here quick…: Ugh, geez, what a pain! This is all thanks to Tenshi’s stupid scheming! This anger’s just about to drive me mad…! I’d be pissed off to if I’m unable any progress halfway into the game. : In which case, let’s hurry on forward. We’ll just have to reach Lady Tenshi so you can take your frustration out on her.: Yeah, I know! I can’t wait to see what Heaven looks like.  This dungeon is all gray. It reminded me of gritty military shooter games where the environment is all bleak.  The enemy here is represented by a feet. I don’t even know what’s the deal with that creature. We’ll handle the stage gimmick later. BGM: Battle 2  Almost all the enemies are thunder based enemy. The flame/lightning creature is Plasma. It has 1100 HP, resists thunder and weak to earth. It has basic attack, and weak single target and AoE thunder elemental attack. Patchouli should be able to kill it with one earth spell. Even without her, we can beat it no problem. The Thunderbird has 1600 HP, 50 Eva, immune to earth and thunder, resists light, and weak to water, dark, and stab. Bird enemy always has the turn cancelling Swoop. Aside from that, it also has Thunder Breath which is surprisingly painful and hard to defend against.  ALIENS!!! Ventla, the UFO, has 1000 HP, immune to light, dark, its own element (fire UFO is immune to fire) and weak to its opposing element (fire UFO is weak to water). There’s only fire, water, and thunder UFO. They use weak single target, AoE, and breath elemental attack. Nothing to write home about. It’s just weak cannon fodder. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  By interacting with the lever located in the stage, we can turn off the lightning gate.  Looks like we need a Gold Key. No matter.  We’ll explore this path first, then.  Got wiped out this early into the stage. *Sigh* This loving sucks. My party can’t take two 100 damage AoE every turn.  Since most the enemies in the stage are thunder based, it’s preferable to equip thunder resisting equipment for our frontline party member. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme   The gimmick with the lightning gates is that when we flick the lever, it will deactivate one gate and reactivate the other gate.  There’s no need to interact with this lever anymore since the gate doesn’t block anything. BGM: Battle 2  Flying bugs. It’s called Gray Tower. Named after the tongue stealing Stand from JoJo part 3. It has 900 HP, 250 PDef, 60 Eva, resists earth and strike, and is weak to thunder and stab. Its fang may inflict attack down. Its main threat lies in its physical bulk. Physical attack is not effective against it, so just blast it with thunder magic and call it a day. It has 8% chance to drop Youkai Mountain Rock.  Nice! It’s a field skill that lets her allies to move first. It’s a really good support skill against enemies that don’t have any field skill.  Aaagh!!! Dammit! I hate this miniboss. Sylph has 2800 HP, 80 Eva, immune to thunder, and is weak to earth and all physical attack. Exploiting its physical weakness is rather tough as it has very high Eva and it can also buff its own Eva. On the offensive side, it uses a lot of thunder based attacks and it can move twice in a turn. Buff your Accuracy and hope the physical attacker can take it down before it can kill us.  Go away bird! I have important business with the walking computer chip. Tualatin has 1170 HP, immune to light and dark and is weak to thunder. I think higher tier computer chip enemy prefers using drill rather than Bug (AoE paralysis). Thunder based magic will finish it. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  Oh hey. Another Youkai Mountain Rock. Thanks.  Stupid rock preventing me from passing through. The gap looks like its big enough for me to pass through. But nope. Find another way.  Occasionally, there’s a quick flash of lightning. Don’t worry though, the lightning won’t harm us. BGM: Battle 2  I’m more afraid of the Thunderbird than the scary ghost. Pathos has 1300 HP, immune to all physical type and is weak to dark (despite being a ghost), fire and water. Its attack is weak and nothing to write home about. Just blast it with magic. It has 8% chance to drop Psycho Dagger. I haven’t obtained it yet.  It’s an Electric Lizard. It has 1800 HP, immune to thunder, resists earth, and is weak to water. Despite being an electric lizard, it seems to favor using physical attack than using its own lightning power to attack. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  It’s an accessory that gives resistance against confusion, blind and silence. I usually got attacked by more debilitating status effects like Paralysis or Instant Death.  There’s silver chest at the end of this section. We should remember this area.  There’s the Gold Key. Now we can open the golden door back in the first area. BGM: Battle 2  Oh. gently caress me!!!  Thank God. I almost got wiped out again. Mokou and Sanae only left with only sliver of health before I managed to escape. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme   Past this door is the second half of the stage.   The puzzles gets slightly more complex. But it’s still manageable.   That’s two Adamantite Shards. BGM: Battle 2  GAH! That big slime is so disgusting. Gelatinous Matter has 2400 HP, immune to strike, massively resists thunder, slash, and stab, and is weak to fire and water. Despite its exploitable weaknesses, it’s so drat hard to kill due to its high HP, physical resistance, 200 HP regen per turn, and HP draining attack. It’s not dangerous, just hard to kill.  Marisa starts learning stronger version of her elemental spellcards.  Dammit! Oarfish. I hate that enemy. Ryuuguu no Tsukai has 2050 HP, resists fire and water, and is weak to slash and thunder (despite being thunder elemental enemy). Its Thunder Breath is dangerous and deals high damage. What’s makes it even worse is that it can counter attack with Thunder Breath. So we’re looking at 2 Thunder Breaths per turn. Hope that Sakuya can kill it in one hit before it can wreck the party. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme   I wanna make a complaint: Almost everything in this stage is all gray. The stage is so bland.   Another Golden Key. The other golden door must be somewhere else.  Nice. Eight small fries in a single encounter = Easy EXP. Too bad I only got one item from them.  I don’t know how to reach the other side and get those golden key and treasure chest. Maybe I’ll check it later in the next update. BGM: Battle 2  Crap! 3 Oarfishes. Alice, go set up Thunder protection so that we won’t get wiped out. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  The golden door is definitely in the next area.  We already obtained the golden key. No need to leave this gate opened.  This large shield also grants its user immunity against poison. I gotta ask: Does that multi-headed creature is able to inflict poison? Usually, that creature is famous for having multiple heads.  I knew it.  Yep. We’re done with this stage.  This is a more useful accessory in my opinion. It gives its user great resistance to paralysis, petrify, and sleep.  And the Orichalcum Shard is easy to find as well. And the silver key is also located in this area.  This medium armor is really good in my opinion. Aside from providing high PDef, it also increases its user’s Eva by 20. It’s ideal for Aya. She could potentially become a great dodge tank character.  All that’s left now is the boss fight. Gotta prepare myself for the boss fight. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Saturday Night Shock.
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Nov 4, 2023 16:34
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The Kanako/Suwako is one of the more interesting gimmick fights in the game. While taking down Suwako is possible with some effort, legitimately beating Kanako is an ordeal and a half. On top of her arsenal and her sheer defenses, when she drops below 50% HP she'll heal herself to full using her version of Sanae's Miracle of Otensui. Even the Game Over tip of that fight is this intentionally vague "Fighting them directly is too hard, we need to try EVERYTHING" (paraphrased). With "everything" being Instant Death on Kanako and Petrification on Suwako.
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Nov 13, 2023 00:42
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Stage 13 - Boss BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  Okay, we should be ready for the upcoming boss fight.  The boss will exclusively use thunder based attacks. So we should give our frontline fighter thunder resistance.  There’s a certain skill that I want Satori to learn. So I put her on the very front to soak up all of the boss’ attacks. This also means that I’m self-handicapping myself as I’m now left with one completely dead weight party member (Satori) and Sakuya being the only damage dealer in the fight.  Let’s hope this team is more than sufficient.  The boss in this stage is Iku Nagae, the oarfish youkai and the Messenger of the Dragon Palace.   : I feel so at ease… : Work’s been so busy lately. It’s been ages since I’ve been able to relax like this. I guess summer is the time for everyone to slack off. : …Though saying that, things may be relaxed up here, News doesn’t travel as fast here since there’s no smartphones in Gensokyo. : But it has nothing to do with me. I’m off-duty, so I’m going to take it easy. : Oh? Hey, you’re…: ? That was quick. I guess they’re really want to get it over with.  : Right, this was your territory, wasn’t it.: It’s rare to see you… No, it’s rare to see ANYONE visit this place. Do you have some sort of business with me…?: Not with you, no. Our business is further ahead. So you’re just going to let us pass on by.: Up ahead? Are you saying you intend to go to Heaven…?: Is there some sort of issue…?: Well, I mean… It’s not exactly a place the living are meant to visit…It’s supposed to be for dead people, right? But we mortals can still climb up there. : Yeah? What, are you gonna stop us?: No, I’m not a guard for Heaven in particular. Furthermore, I’m off-duty right now.: So, what are you going to Bhavaagra for…? : We’re heading to Heaven to resolve it.: The incident? Ah, that thing that has the lower world in a panic.: Come to think of it, the Eldest Daughter--: Tenshi?Gotcha!!! : That’s right, you were working as her underling, weren’t you… : What!? : I’m not her underling, either. I’m just a Dragon Palace Messenger.She actually isn’t close to Tenshi. But since there’s only 2 characters associated with Heaven (Tenshi and Iku), Iku will almost always paired up with Tenshi. : Come now, I wouldn’t go making more work for myself, would I?: “Nothing’s worse than work after all.”True. True. : Huh!?: (I had no idea Iku was such a slacker…)Almost everyone in this game is a slacker. : So what were you about to say earlier…?: Oh, it just kind of clicked in my head, that’s all… She’s bored with the mundane, stress-free life on the Heaven. : How about it, Satori?: Don’t tell me, can she…?: It appears she’s telling the truth. She doesn’t seem to be involved in the incident.Holy poo poo! Her mind reading finally work for once. : S-So you really CAN! Come on, that’s cheating!No, it’s not. It balanced by the fact that it won’t work on stronger individuals like the goddesses Suwako and Kanako. : Hmm, I see. : With that confirmed, let’s keep going toward Heaven.: But, Reimu… We’re not familiar with Heaven.: If Tenshi is the culprit, she should be hiding somewhere up there, but will we really be able to find her on our own…?Nah, that’s easy. Just scour every corner of the place and we’ll eventually find her. : Yeah, good point… What do you wanna do, Reimu? We’re the one picking a fight against the stage’s boss. : Huh? Who do you… Oh! Of course!: Hmm, I see. That’s a good idea.: What…? Don’t tell me… You don’t mean ME, do you!?: You know a lot about Heaven, don’t you?: Well, yes, I do…  : Daga kotowaru! (だが断る): W-Why?: Because I’m off-duty.: Yeah, and? : C’mon, help us out. The circumstances demand it, Iku.: But I want to take it ea--: Ugh, geez! Off-duty, off-duty, yeah, we heard you! Hahahahahaha!!! : What, can you not read the atmosphere!?: !?Oh snap! : (I don’t see you bowin’ anything.)Yeah, she’s far too prideful to be bowing to anyone. : …What’d you just say…?It’s Reimu who ended up pissing her off. : H-Huh…? Her attitude’s sort of shifted…: I’m a Dragon Palace Messenger. : Yet, just now, despite my professional status, you asked “Can you not read the atmosphere?”.: (Didn’t know there WERE pros at that…): There could be no greater insult! I won’t let you get away with this!: Wha!? What are you even mad over!?: This discussion is over! My sure-piercing drill, known as the strongest of spears-- Man, her drill looks really mean. : Hou?: A drill, eh? Now that’s interesting. I can’t just stay quiet after hearing that!: My cutting-edge kappa drill, and yours-- I’m betting on Iku. Look at the size of Iku’s drill. : H-Hey, cut it out, Nitori! You’re just adding fuel to the fire!: Fufufu, how interesting. No avoiding the boss battle now. : Wha!? You too!? Grr…: Ugh, FINE! Whatever! : I’ll show you, then-- Then allow me to show you my experience I obtained from beating up almost everyone in Gensokyo. BGM: Boss 1  It’s just one boss with single element. Let’s do this. Iku has 18500 HP, decently high defenses (120 PDef, 140 MDef), immune to thunder, resists light, and is weak to earth and dark.  First, have Alice guard everyone against thunder based attacks, then have Byakuren buff Sakuya’s attack and imbue her weapon with earth element, lastly, have Sakuya wreck Iku. That’s it.   Crap! Iku is surprisingly fast. Sanae didn’t manage to cast her Res buff before Iku attacked us.   What the gently caress?! I got checkmated on first turn?! gently caress, we’re not off to a good start. Her strategy is the same as Cirno and Momiji from stage 11. AoE stun, then instant killing anyone who are unable to move. By the way, Elekiter Dragon Palace’s instant kill will kill anyone suffering from Shock no matter what. Not even Instant Death resistance could protect them. The combo of Electrostatic Guided Missile and Elekiter Dragon Place is her most powerful attack and she use it a lot. I think she’ll use it once every 2 turns.  Change of party member. I’ll have Aya as the Commander and have everyone gain action initiative so that Sanae can cast Res buff before Iku gets to attack.   Okay, game is loving with me! Iku only has 20 Inf. Why is she able to inflict Shock while my party is protected with Res buff.  Change of plan: I’ll have Alice cover everyone and soak up all the damage (and Instant Death) meant for the party and revive her if Alice got Instant Killed.  gently caress! Byakuren got instant killed. She can no longer buff Sakuya’s attack. Why is this keeps happening.  Without Byakuren’s buff, Sakuya simply doesn’t have the raw attack power to remove all of Iku’s 5-digit HP. Satori’s attack power is too low to deal any damage to Iku. gently caress this piece of crap!   I was wrong. It’s not her thunder based attack that we need to watch out for. It’s her Shock that’s more dangerous.  Dark elemental attack is more effective against her than earth elemental attack. That’s mistake number two from my part.   Nice! I’m making progress. Now I have a chance of beating her.   The reason I’m handicapping myself by fielding Satori is because I want her to learn this skill. Mad Thunder is a 3-hit thunder elemental magic that target random opponent. The fact that it hit thrice makes it the most efficient DPS tool for Satori, especially against enemies weak to thunder or against single powerful opponent. This fight is the earliest opportunity to learn this skill as it won’t be learnable until late game.  Nice! Byakuren’s Last Word.  I guess her Last Word has been buffed. In the previous version, the multiplier’s value only ranges from 110% - 200%. Now: it’s 210% - 300%  Freaking finally! BGM: Victory  Geez. Why did a Messenger give me so much trouble compared to the goddesses and the Lunarians.  Whew. Finally. Just one more to go. : Geez, what a waste of time!I wanna throw her off the clouds.  : You were the one that picked this fight.: (I feel as if you led her into picking it with us…)Don’t care. She attacked us and suffer the consequences. : But at least now I can finally take it easy and relax… Stay down! Don’t get up! I don’t want to see you ever again. : She sure is determined to rest, huh…: But, uh… Our guide kind of… Y’know, fainted…: She certainly did…: What now, Reimu?: S-Shut up! If she fainted, then whatever, she fainted. : Hear that!? Our OWN power! I’ll sniff her out with my intuition like always!: (Feels like your intuition’s has a lot o’ misses lately…) We’ll just gonna explore every inch of Heaven until we found her. That’s all. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Heaven isn’t as gorgeous as I expected. Your Everyday NEET fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Nov 17, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 17:20
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I love the Iku fight conceptually even if it's basically condensing what was a duo's gimmick into one boss. Even knowing what you have to do, you gotta adapt to the situation, whether by sacrificing Alice to give the others a chance, gearing up better, or even using Aya or Reimu (Reimu has an All-targeting barrier that can nullify any Quick effect like shock and goes fast enough to outspeed Iku). (also the image tags of Iku dying/EXP rewards are broken)
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Nov 16, 2023 18:18
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HGH posted:(also the image tags of Iku dying/EXP rewards are broken) Oops... This is what happened when I'm rushing to post the update and not double checking the post. Thanks for notifying me for that.
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Nov 17, 2023 02:53
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Stage 14 - Part 1 BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  Our ragtag bunch of incident solvers goes to the Heaven.  : Yeah, finally. We’re at Heaven, our final destination.: Now all we have to do is find Lady Tenshi. Right. It’s about time we finish this. : Yeah. Let’s start looking for that moron right away.Typical Reimu always so disrespectful. I find it funny that Youmu still respectfully addresses her name. : Wow, though, I really have to say… Why did the camera pans upward? Is there something to see?  I still prefers the view of Youkai Mountain, though. : Fields of flowers, a clear blue sky, a sea of clouds stretching as far as the eye can see… This truly is paradise.Is there any sort of building in the Heaven? Where do the Heaven’s dweller stay? : As a dweller of the Underground, I never thought I’d come to a place like this… I’ll convey this feeling to my pets as a souvenir.: So this is the final resting place of souls… As well as the final resting place of hermits… How absolutely intriguing.: It’s pretty here, yeah, but there’s not even the slightest trace of tech. Looks boring, so I’d rather pass. We all can relate with Nitori. People these days carries their personal smartphone everywhere. : Come on, give it a rest, everyone. We’re not here on a sightseeing tour. I can’t wait to Sparta kick her off the clouds. : Do your sightseeing after we’re finished.: (I feel like our objective has escalated a bit…)It’s always been that way ever since we headed to the Netherworld. : Yes, I know.: We’re going to resolve the incident and burn off my pent-up anger. I can’t wait to see the ending.  Gotta admit, this place looks nicer than the Sea of Clouds.  The Heaven’s dweller is represented by a feet? Do we get turned into a body part should we ascend to Heaven? BGM: Battle 2  gently caress! Mindflayer. I loving hate that enemy! Elite Mental Flayer has 1888 HP, greatly resists fire, water, earth, mystic, light, dark, and is only weak to stab. The flayers’ paralysis inducing Mental Blast and Instant Death on normal attack remains as dangerous as ever. Don’t try to fight it without Sanae’s Res buff. It’s very easy for it to demolish the entire team. And then we also we 2 other new enemies: A dual sword wielding dude and an old spellcaster. The Swordmaster has 1700 HP and is weak to dark. His slash based attack deals moderate amount of damage and he strikes twice in a single turn (he did carries 2 weapons on his hand). Nothing too troublesome so long as we’re careful. The Hermit has 1500 HP and is weak to dark. He’s an annoying bastard that can heal his teammates and inflict Control on one of your party member. Shoot the medic after getting rid of the flayer.  *sigh* Satori. Satori. Mad Thunder’s damage is lower than I expected even with +40% Satori Skill damage from her skill tree. Marisa and Patchouli can deal much more damage with less effort and equipment.  Dammit! Another annoying enemy. Shiisaa has 1920 HP resists earth, light, strike and is weak to fire, and dark. It’s an annoying support enemy with multiple buffs than can make the other enemies more dangerous and halt your offense. It has party defense and offense buff, magic reflect (to stop your mages from exploiting its elemental weakness), and Starlight Barrier (Nullify one instances of attack for all its teammates). I hate it and I want it dead, fast.  Byakuren also has light and dark nuke. She can potentially substitute for Reimu if necessary.  Most of the enemy in this stage are dangerous. This time, we’re against a duo of Giants alongside Shiisaa. The Giant Raijin (blue dude) and Fuujin (green dude) has 2300 HP, immune to thunder, resists strike, and weak to earth and stab. Their strike based physical attack are dangerous and could potentially kill anyone in 1-2 hits. Have Sanae’s PDef buff ready to blunt their attacks. It’s more ideal to use Patchouli as the magician as some of the enemy are weak to earth and Marisa doesn’t have earth elemental magic.  That poor old guy. Can someone give him medical attention? Preta has 1250 HP, resists stab and weak to fire and light. He’s the weakest enemy in this stage, bar none. Put him out of his misery. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme   The gimmick of the stage in this cloud platform that’s activated by the lever scattered around the stage. The platform lasts until we switch to a new area. In my opinion, the stage gimmick is easier than the one in previous stage. Fun fact: This stage has been overhauled and is made much easier. Originally, the stage gimmick is a more complex version of the lightning gate from the previous stage. It’s so complicated that I resorted to using video guide in my previous playthrough.    The corridor in the stage is wide enough it made it easy to avoid enemies encounter.  The lever and the cloud platform it creates are usually located nearby.    Maybe I should create thunder elemental armor for boosting Satori’s thunder damage.   I wanna the view of earth from up here. Too bad it got covered by the clouds.   Is there a point of this area? There’s nothing here except for enemy.   I did obtain the earth elemental shield right?    75% dark resistance. Good enough I guess.  The remaining elemental shield that I haven’t obtained are light and dark elemental shield.  This bridge is weirdly small. Only one person at a time could pass through this bridge.  This is the villain of this dungeon, Tenshi, the celestial being with the ability to manipulate earth.  : ……: *sigh*… I’m bored. I’m sick of having tea all alone…: Are they STILL not here yet…?You’ll notice that she operates alone. The true culprit has a partner-in-crime.  Looks like she can detect our presence. : That presence…!   Looks like she’s been keeping an eye on Reimu (and only Reimu) through her magic pond. : So you’ve finally come, Hakurei shrine maiden! I’d gotten so sick of waiting. : (But I have to say, it’s good that you set your sights on me and all, but it sure took you a while to come here.)You’re the last person on her list of suspect. : (You’d better hurry… Fufufu.) : Come on, then! Come defeat Hinanawai Tenshi!Correction: Her name is written as Hinanawi Tenshi. That extra ‘a’ on her name is just typo.  It’s quite easy to guess her motive for antagonizing Reimu. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  Before we progress further, there’s some place in the previous area that I haven’t explored yet.   This particular path leads to an extensive side are back to the previous stage.  So that’s how we obtain the treasure chest (75% resistance against Mind Control) and the golden key. Good thing I’ve already deactivated the lightning gate.  This weapon skill have such a cool animation. Sakuya just opened the fabric of time and space just to attack an entire column of enemies.   And we’re back at the first area of Sea of Clouds. It’s cool, but there’s no point in taking this shortcut anymore since the teleporter to the boss area is nearby.  Okay, we’re back to this area. BGM: Battle 2  That’s a goddamn dinosaur! Brontosaurus has 4100 HP, immune to thunder, resists fire and water, and is weak to earth. It’s a dangerous enemy that can move twice and hits incredibly hard with its physical attack. Even with PDef buff, our party member is still liable to being killed in 1-2 hits. I have to take advantage of Satori’s Commander Skill (33% deflect chance) to increase my survival.  That’s another very dangerous enemy. Ace Power has 3600 HP, extremely resists light and is weak to dark. Like most miniboss, he can move twice. His physical attack hits really hard (his light elemental magic is also pretty dangerous, but it’s nothing compared to his physical attacks), and he also has high physical and magic defense. I don’t even try to fight him and instead run away everytime I see this enemy.  Crap! That’s a dangerous enemy formation. The flayers would be hard enough without the addition of support from the Shiisaa. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme   I’ll deal with the miniboss later. I need to be in full health for greater chance of victory.  Activate all of the lever in this stage.  There’s accessory with 75% dark resistance, and there’s also an accessory with 75% light resistance. It’s good for Patchouli as she has innate light weakness.   There’s no need to backtrack as I already have the golden key to open this door.  The stage is surprisingly short. I guess this is what happen when the game modify the stage to make is easier.  The teleporter is activated. There’s one thing left to do now.  And that is facing the miniboss with fully refreshed team. BGM: Battle 2  The miniboss fight is against the trio of miniboss angels. Alice with light resistance and defense buff should have no trouble protecting the party and soaking up damage.  Fighting them is easy. Have Byakuren buff Sakuya with dark elemental and PAtk buff.  And then have her rip them apart in pieces with assistance from Patchouli and Byakuren’s dark elemental spellcard.  The EXP scaling in this fight is pretty high. BGM: Bhava-Agra Theme  The rewards from beating the miniboss is a sword with +40 Res. Good for resisting status effect. Although it has low accuracy as a drawback. Only the boss is left. I’m going to prepare as I don’t want my fiasco with Iku to be repeated. Next time on Genius of Sappheiros: Fighting the mastermind?
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Dec 1, 2023 16:51
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