Touhou Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - Expansion Disk Translation Now Available, Too

[pakoito]

How many bullshit bosses are there after 3F? I've just defeated that shinigami girl but without any sense of accomplishment because it was mostly luck-based with the DTH procs. Just right after that FOE that can only be defeated with one spell from the vampire waifu you optionally get on 2F.

If that's what I have to expect from the rest of the game, I'd rather quit now.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You can become pretty much immune to DTH (or whatever other status) via equipment, but tbh I don't even remember the early bosses (before floor ~5 or so) because I pretty much won them all on the first try. FOE's aren't necesarily meant to be fought when you first encounter them either.

But regardless, as your roster grows you get more and more options for how to deal with various enemies/bosses. Judging by what others have said in this thread, we all played using very different party setups and utilized different characters as the cores of our teams.

Usually there's an ideal character for a given boss, but out of a party of 12, it often isn't necessary, and even if the character is tailored for a given floor or boss, they might be of little use to you simply because you've utilized your resources elsewhere. Not sure which character you thought you needed for the boss (nobody remotely vampiric gets recruited on floor 2) but consider that there are over 40 characters in the game to recruit. So far you've hardly reached the point where you even have to decide who is in your party or not. Would be a pretty piss poor boss if your lineup didn't matter at all and you could bring in only the worst characters for that fight.

Another thing to consider is that often things that appear random are triggered, whether by passage of turns or an hp threshold or something else. One of the death attacks you faced occurs at a specific point during the fight, you could have swapped characters to prepare for it.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I just mostly use whatever characters I feel like usimg, and have been doing mostly fine. Had a couple of very hard figths on later floors but they haven't really felt luck-based to me. Plus, you get a lot of new options as you recruit new characters.

This is actually one of the most flexible RPGs i've played.

 

[pakoito]

The boss was a stone golem with MND and DEF high enough that all your attacks deal 0 damage unless ultra buffed, except for this one spell that ignores MND. Then the golem oneshots everyone in the party except one char, so you're restricted to holy trinity with that single spell, that single tank and the healer.

The DTH girl had a similar problem except this time you have one char that even after a DTH effect has a 50% chance of reviving with 1HP, so you have to abuse that along with shield spells for the rest of the party, again hoping none triggers DTH.

Maybe it's more flexible in later levels but given the limited roster at that point it felt very shoehorned.

 

[Damned Registrations]

For the golem you really did have no other option at that point, I think it's there as a sort of tutorial miniboss to show you how def/mind work, in case you were under the impression that it reduced damage on a percentage basis. There's maybe 2 or 3 other enemies in the game like that, and by the time you find them you'll have more options for getting past the defense.

For the DTH girl you could have used Youmu as your tank instead, she has 80 points of death resistance even with no equipment or buffs. Of course any fight with an insta death mechanic will be a little RNG based (or any other status for that matter) but in the long run, the RNG element is pretty small when you consider it'd have to instakill 12 characters before dying, and you can prepare appropriate resistances, or choose members that can focus on the boss' weakness to end the fight quickly. There are also 3 different healers you can have at that point, one of whom has an ability that increases the damage your party does to humans.

 

[pakoito]

To be honest I don't quite understand all the mechanics yet, as I haven't found a textbook manual definition of what each stat does. I know DEF is physical defense and MND is magical defense, but the interaction with the damage types and the statuses is still unknown to me. I didn't want to wiki-spoil it, so if you could do a quick summary I'd be grateful.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The various elements have nothing to do with whether an attack is physical or magical, they're just modified by elemental defence or certain character skills.

Status defences work on two levels, they not only reduce the chance to be affected, but if it's the kind of status that has a duration or potency, that will also be lowered. Around ~100 is nigh immunity to most status attacks, but some are much more likely to cause the status, or inflict it much more powerfully, etc. None of the stats impact how status effects work besides the appropriate status defense.

The status effects are mostly self explanatory, but the main ones that aren't:

Terror lowers your mp each turn, or simply reduces stats for enemies.
Heavy prevents switching, for enemies it lowers speed (and defence, but that is a bug)


Also, it's fairly obvious after a while, but when the damage you deal is displayed in red, it's hitting an elemental weakness. If it's in blue, it's hitting a defence. Although 0 damage is always displayed in white, regardless of the elemental resistance. But resistances don't lower damage to zero, only by a ratio. So an enemy or character with 400 fire resistance effectively has 400% hp vs fire attacks, and reduces all fire damage to 25%.

There's also the enemy categories, like human, elemental, plant, etc. Again, most of these are fairly straightforward and you'll understand what they are by looking through the bestiary a bit.

 

[pakoito]

The various elements have nothing to do with whether an attack is physical or magical, they're just modified by elemental defence or certain character skills.

I didn't get this one, so how does DEF and MDN affect an enemy attack, and how can I tell if an attack uses either type for defense?

 

[Damned Registrations]

DEF and MND are subtracted from the attackers attack value. Then there's a multiplier on the damage afterwards, based on the attack itself.

The attack will generally say in it's description if it's a physical or magical attack, or doing something stranger (like Reimu's composite attacks, or certain attacks that pit attack against mind, for example.) But if it's an enemy attack it's mostly a matter of figuring that shit out yourself.

Some (not accurate) examples:

Komachi's weak attack is physical, gives an attack value of maybe 1.5 times her attack (so you'd need 50% more DEF than her ATK to negate the damage completely), and multipies by 1.2 after defense is accounted for.
Komachi's stronger physical attack gives an attack value of 3, but multiplies for 1 after defense is accounted for. So it requires a ton of defense to nullify, but isn't super damaging overall, only doing about ~50% more damage than the weak attack against a low defense target.
Marisa's big blasty spell gives an attack value of 1 times her MAG stat, so it is relatively easily to completely nullify. But the damage multiplier is times 5, so against targets with low MND it does amazing damage. Or against targets with average mind, if Marisa has massive MAG power.

It really pays to read the spell descriptions carefully so you know which ones are good against hard or soft defenses, which ones are generally weaker but are quicker or cheaper to cast, and so forth. Plus a lot of them just have really unique additional effects.

Also, as a general rule, enemy single target physical attacks will target the left side of your party far more often than the right (almost exclusively the left two characters really, and the first more than the second.)

 

[pakoito]

My spell descriptions do not have that much info attached:

The first one says Spell but I guess because the damage is physical this is a DEF kind of attack, while the other 2 are not. The multipliers, attack value and everything else cannot be discerned.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, for characters with massively more ATK than MAG or vice versa they generally don't bother telling you if their spells are using the stat they don't suck with. For Komachi for example, her last spells is specifically referred to as a magical attack, which it is.

Nothing in game gives you the exact values, and what is considered a weak attack on one character might have better values than an average attack on another (though that other character likely has better stats, so it is stronger than a 'weak' attack with better multipliers from a weaker character.) The exact variations aren't that important, since the cost, speed, element, whether it's physical or magical, and the rest of the character's assets as a whole weigh a lot more heavily on whether you want to use a given character or not than something like a 10% variation on the damage multiplier her 'average' attack has compared the that of another character.

Part of the fun of the game is experimenting with all the spells and characters and finding ones that appeal to you. Think of it as something to make the time spent on random encounters more worthwhile, having a chance to figure that stuff out.

 

[Crooked Bee]

A guy called EthanSilver has reverse-engineered the game (v1.203), in case you were interested in how it ticks: https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,17698.0.html

Spellcards / Skills
Dummied spellcards List of skills and spellcards which exist in the game but aren't used anywhere.
Skill/spellcard data The function which sets up all spellcards and skills. Contains the name, description, max lv, and purchase/upgrade cost.
Spellcards formulas, (v1.1) A list of all spellcards' effects and formulas, extracted directly from the game. Does not include certain "unique" effects however.
Spellcard-specific code (Incomplete.) The mechanics behind some of the spellcards' more "unique" effects.
Passives and their effects The effects of the passive skills with unclear descriptions/unspecified numbers.

Characters
Passive stat boost setup code The function which sets up all characters' passive stat boosts.
Character and subclass modding Explains how to modify character stats and available skills, as well as the skills learnable through all subclasses. A hex editor, such as XVI32 or HxD, is required.

Enemies
JSON enemy dump (v2) A dump of every enemy's data in JSON format.
Enemy stat viewer (JS, v2) (HTML, v1) Displays qazmlpok's enemy data in HTML format.
Enemy AI listing A list of all enemies' AI, extracted directly from the game.

Others
Hack: 3 commands for Remilia Gives Remilia a 3rd battle command (should be changed to suit your needs; new offsets for her skills are 06A338, 06A342, 06A34C).
Event Dump A (slightly simplified) list of all events in the game. Doubles as a list of in-game dialog too.

I figured putting this stuff in its own place would be for the best. It has pretty much taken over the thread the discussions started in and is leaving little room for gameplay discussion. It will also be easier to maintain an up-to-date list of files and documents produced from the game's data.

The information in this thread is based on LoT2 English-Patched v1.203.​

 

[pakoito]

Awesome stuff, specially the AI bits.

Spellcards formulas, (v1.1) A list of all spellcards' effects and formulas, extracted directly from the game. Does not include certain "unique" effects however.

This one is down.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Yeah, I posted there asking for him to reupload some stuff (both in that and in the LoT Rebirth threads), but my posts need to be approved by a mod first.

 

[pakoito]

Any update on getting this info again? That shrinemaiden link seems down.

 

[Niektory]

Shrinemaiden.org is up now.
If you're looking for spellcard formulas, I tested them some time ago, though I only looked for the damage.

EDIT: Found his spellcard data in another thread. Also here.

 

[Crooked Bee]

So, as LESS T_T has posted in the jrpg news thread, Playism is thinking of bringing over some Touhou fangames to the West and they're having a poll on it now: http://playism-games.com/article/touhou-derivatives-what-would-you-like-to-see

And whaddya know, Labyrinth of Touhou is one of the games they're considering.

GO VOTE FOR IT NAO !!1

 

[Zetor]

A hardcore dungeon crawler where all characters are anime schoolgirls? ... I suppose it was bound to happen at one point.

(still voted for it though, obv)

 

[Ninjerk]

A hardcore dungeon crawler where all characters are anime schoolgirls? ... I suppose it was bound to happen at one point.

(still voted for it though, obv)

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ures-of-darx-the-gentleman-rapist-nsfw.98392/

 

[Damned Registrations]

A hardcore dungeon crawler where all characters are anime schoolgirls? ... I suppose it was bound to happen at one point.

(still voted for it though, obv)

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ures-of-darx-the-gentleman-rapist-nsfw.98392/

This would be the more biblical sense of the word 'hardcore'.

 

[Crooked Bee]

A hardcore dungeon crawler where all characters are anime schoolgirls? ... I suppose it was bound to happen at one point.

(still voted for it though, obv)

It has the best blobber combat ever as well as just one of the best tactical RPG combats ever too.

I'm, like, 105% serious.

 

[pakoito]

Name that tactical RPG for me, please.

Already upvoted Labyrinth. I quit the game after getting stuck on one of the retarded early-midgame bosses, but it was one of the best blobber experiences I've ever had, if not the best.

 

[Crooked Bee]

None of the early-midgame bosses is retarded. Git gud.

Name that tactical RPG for me, please.

You mean a good tactical RPG? Ugh... What about Telepath Tactics? Zetor did a review of it just recently.

 

[Ninjerk]

A hardcore dungeon crawler where all characters are anime schoolgirls? ... I suppose it was bound to happen at one point.

(still voted for it though, obv)

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ures-of-darx-the-gentleman-rapist-nsfw.98392/

This would be the more biblical sense of the word 'hardcore'.

It's the best sense (details inside!)

 

[pakoito]

Name that tactical RPG for me, please.

You mean a good tactical RPG? Ugh... What about Telepath Tactics? Zetor did a review of it just recently.

as well as just one of the best tactical RPG combats ever too

I tought you meant other touhou game that was a TRPG. I know I saw one in the poll, just wanted to confirm whether it was good.

None of the early-midgame bosses is retarded. Git gud.

I suck at videogames. In other news, water is wet.