Touhou Labyrinth of Touhou: Hardcore PC dungeon-crawler - See OP for links etc.

[Crooked Bee]

Nope, but a game does translate into an experience!

Against Youmu my biggest problem by far was the ghost. If that AoE poison spell decides to proc on all 4 people (which I swear happens 50% of the time) its pretty much game over since you only have a single poison remover. You can try to do some funky things switching people out, but they degen while in reserve so you are still crippled a ton and probably aren't getting past the fight unless you are a lot higher leveled then I was. Of course, as far as I can tell there is exactly zero ways to increase your poison resistance at this point so the whole fight is spent praying the ghost does stupid things until you kill it.

Her big sword attack is not going to kill anyone who isn't an absurdly weak character or already hurt so long as you have Reimu's defense barrier up. Pile the SP recovery items onto her, you should nearly double her rate of SP regeneration. Crino probably deserves the other SP recovery items, since the slowing effect of her ice spells gradually wears off every turn spamming it as much as possible to keep it at full strength is ideal.

Funny, as I didn't find the ghost in any way troubling. I just switched some characters out and healed the rest, switching some new ones in. And as I had two "tanks" on my team, one in the active party and one in reserve, the first one being poisoned didn't trouble me either. Also, Patchouli can bring the ghost down in, like, 4-5 magic attacks. Youmou's Cherry Blossom + Karma Wind combo, otoh, always meant trouble to me, even with Reimu's barrier active.

EDIT. Iirc, my characters were lvls 10-12 when I defeated Youmou, but I may be mistaken.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Unfortunately it took 3 tries before I was able to take that ghost down without someone important (Marisa/Reimu/Cirno) dying. Once the ghost is down it should be easy mode, Cirno practically stunlocks the boss while Marisa can spam magic missiles for ridiculous damage since Youmu is weak to MYS (I was hitting 1.1k, the strongest spells Patchouli could output were 1.2k and slower/more expensive). At that point Youmu should go down quick. Mega quick if you speed boost Marisa as well.

At least one consolation for tough bosses is that when they join you they manage to remain really tough in your hands as well.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Holy fucking fuck I hate Alice. 2 dolls that dish out 400-1000 damage each turn, and if you kill either of them she starts cranking out 1000 each turn herself, or just one shots a character. And of course a healer that is nearly invincible and drops 10k heal bombs on anything you try to kill, itself included.

Is poison actually useful against bosses? Do multiple applications stack, increase duration, damage rate, what? I've been trying to use wriggle before she kicks the bucket (Generally ASAP because the 2 safe spots are reserved for important characters so wriggle plays tank and dies to a shield bash) but I'm not sure if I'd be better off forgetting she exists.

Just went and poured over the skill and enemy stats a bit. Going to try some new stuff. They should make all those attack attributes transparent though. There are attacks described as 'defense piercing' just because they use a bit more of a MAG modifier than usual, and others that only take into account 20% of the usual enemy defense, or ignore it outright.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Alice dead.... barely. Mostly came down to a bunch of wasted turns on silence attempts at the end. Though I suppose the flip side of that is I'd have had more than 2 fucking characters at that point if she'd bothered to cast anything but EPIC RAPE for the entire begining of the fight.

 

[Kawaii Theurgist]

You should have tried stealing her precious thing.

Oh, well, I'm reinstalling now. I hope you all feel guilty about making me go through that horrible frustration all over again, hmpf.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Whats worse is the attacks that say they ignore armor when they really don't.

God's Slash of Karma Wind 110 Enemy (All) WND 625% ATK - 125% T.DEF
Flashing Cherry Blossoms 88 Enemy (All) NTR 400% ATK - 50% T.DEF

God's Slash's description says its not affected much by enemy armor. Derp.

Poison does work on bosses (assuming you see that they got hit, that is). Its nigh impossible to figure out how much damage it does except in retrospect by keeping track of their HP, which kind of stinks. Not sure if its a flat rate or % of health based or what. No idea if it stacks, though I'm guessing not since I don't think it stacks on you.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You got different numbers than I do. From what I understand though (Modified ATK and DEF are subtracted from each other before multiplier comes into effect), it's listed as defense piercing because it requires a much higher ratio of DEF:ATK to mitigate the damage.

Compare

Killing Doll         ATK Influence 100%   DEF Influence  50%   Damage Multiplier 550%
Slash of Eternity    ATK Influence 250%   DEF Influence  50%   Damage Multiplier 300%

So assuming both characters had 200 ATK, an enemy with only 50 DEF would take 962.5 from the first move and 1425 from the second. With 400 DEF, they'd take 0 from the first move but still take 900 from the second. To completely mitigate the second they'd need 1000 DEF. I think a 4~5 to one ratio like this is qualified as 'defense piercing', though some moves indeed have much better ratios. 3 to 1 is supposedly 'normal' despite being less common so far. 2 to 1 is 'only good vs weak defense'.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

How do you win when she starts spamming Little Legion? That thing does ~500 damage to my backline even when I have prot up, and the only caster I have with >500 health is Reimu so I end up getting screwed fast. I'm at lvl 16/17 for the most part, except Reimu who is 18. Too low level to beat her or is there some trick?

Also, getting your only condition removal paralyzed for ~5 mins straight just plain sucks. I have an anti silence item on Meiling but no anti paralyze sadly . Really wish there was an item shop in this game so that you didn't have to rely on rare random drops.

You got different numbers than I do. From what I understand though (Modified ATK and DEF are subtracted from each other before multiplier comes into effect), it's listed as defense piercing because it requires a much higher ratio of DEF:ATK to mitigate the damage.

Compare

Killing Doll         ATK Influence 100%   DEF Influence  50%   Damage Multiplier 550%
Slash of Eternity    ATK Influence 250%   DEF Influence  50%   Damage Multiplier 300%

So assuming both characters had 200 ATK, an enemy with only 50 DEF would take 962.5 from the first move and 1425 from the second. With 400 DEF, they'd take 0 from the first move but still take 900 from the second. To completely mitigate the second they'd need 1000 DEF. I think a 4~5 to one ratio like this is qualified as 'defense piercing', though some moves indeed have much better ratios. 3 to 1 is supposedly 'normal' despite being less common so far. 2 to 1 is 'only good vs weak defense'.

Where are you getting this from? I'm using the Touhou wiki and it has nothing like this.

 

[Kawaii Theurgist]

While I do not know from where is he taking the numbers, his explanation is correct.

14: When I use the same spell, sometimes it does 0 damage, and sometimes it does huge damage. What's going on?
A: A spell's effectiveness is not calculated particularly simply.

·User's ATK Percentage
·User's MAG Percentage
·Defender's DEF Percentage
·Defender's MND Percentage
·Damage Multiplier (a percentage multiplier to the calculated damage)

All these stats are involved, so doing the calculations is rather difficult.
And there's also affinities, SP used, active gauge remaining after using the spell (delay), any special effects (for some spells), and so on.


For example, Sakuya's "Killing Doll" has the characteristics of User's ATK Percentage 100%, and Defender's DEF Percentage 50%.
This doesn't seem that much stronger than a normal attack, but it's damage multiplier is extraordinarily high at 550%, so when compared to a normal attack, the spell will do significantly larger amounts of damage against targets with low DEF.


The above spell is a fairly extreme example, but in general, all the spells have their uses in specific situations.
Against high-defense targets, one would be led to think that it's a crap spell and never use it again.
Since the game is mostly about battling, every now and then, bring out some of the characters lazing around in the Scarlet Devil Mansion and look at their spells. You might find something you didn't realize before.

The damage multiplier can chance things a lot, and a spell with little defense penetration but high damage multiplier could also be considered "Armor Piercing", given what little damage passes the armor gets greatly multiplied afterwards, etc. The damage calculations are pretty crazy, though.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I have a hard time believing that the wiki has literally hundreds of stats on skills relating to the game and that all of them happen to be wrong. Do you have a link for all this stuff?

 

[Kawaii Theurgist]

The quote I posted is from the game's manual. You have a translated copy on your installation folder, and that's from the FAQ chapter of it.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

For example, Sakuya's "Killing Doll" has the characteristics of User's ATK Percentage 100%, and Defender's DEF Percentage 50%.
This doesn't seem that much stronger than a normal attack, but it's damage multiplier is extraordinarily high at 550%, so when compared to a normal attack, the spell will do significantly larger amounts of damage against targets with low DEF.

this reduces to

550% ATK - 275% DEF

Just as the wiki says.

More idiots who can't into math.




Back to my original question: How to get past Little Legion spamming?


EDIT: Apparently, the bugs you kill for Wriggle have a 4% chance of dropping paralysis protection equipment. What genius had the idea to put semi-required equipment as an incredibly rare drop on an enemy you can only encounter 4x? Pretty much every game has an item shop for a very good reason, but apparently Touhou is too hardcore for this

 

[Kawaii Theurgist]

Shopping for goods is beneath Gensokyo's finest!

About Alice, I seem to remember her stronger spells don't come out until you have killed several of her dolls, so try to control when they become active so you are able to survive them or try to delay the defeat of the dolls if you are more comfortable fighting her like that. Also, don't her attacks use MND for defense? If so, keep that in mind when picking who to use and what to raise before fighting her.

And was she the one who had the group silence spell or am I mixing her with someone else?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

She has group silence and a ridiculously lengthy paralyze attack (thankfully uses paralyze a lot less later on). If her boss attack matches up with her character attack then it should ignore mind and only count defense for reducing damage, which is probably why the backline falls like flies. I'm going to try keeping 1 doll alive, but those bastards put out enough damage on their own that it might end up harder, because you still have to deal with most of her other stronger spells I think.

If that fails, I'll just grind a level or two. Apparently I'm 1 or 2 levels below the low end of what the wiki says I should have for her. Whatever

 

[Damned Registrations]

What I did was try to do as much distributed damage as possible. I had Patchy spamming Royal Fire to do most of the heavy lifting, but generally if someone had a multi target spell it was getting used. It's also nice to have her out in case the healer uses that debuff spell, it never does anything to her. The melee doll died first, which doesn't make Alice go as ballistic as having the healing doll die. Leaving the healer up also makes the magic spammer waste a turn buffing it once in a while. Kept poison up on everything the whole fight as well. I used Marisa and Rumia for spamming multi targets early on and kept Chen and Youmu in reserve for blowing SP on single targets once the healer was down. I pretty much gave up on Cirno, everything is so resistant to either debuffing or paralysis that all her attacks are pretty subpar.

The numbers I'm using for spells are translated files apparently found on the 'special disk'. Download was from http://www.mediafire.com/?a0nbsxf53shg7t0

Just got to the 7th floor now. Starting to get a nice variety of characters and items now, I can do almost anything at least a little bit. I'm starting to see the value of having a fast character in boss fights just for the purpose of switching out characters who just blew their entire gauge, like Sakuya after using the team haste spell, or Reimu after healing. And I think Chen is one of my favourite characters now. It took a lot of points, but she's so damned fast and strong now I can generally put out 7k+ in between boss turns, then swap her out to recharge. I was hoping Marisa could do something like that with Master Spark but it seems awfully weak for it's cost.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Wow, you've almost caught up with me now. I'm still only on 8F, haven't had the time to make much progress lately.

And yeah, Alice's group silence was a bitch. I raged so hard. Subjectively, poison does help a lot, as both Alice and her dolls are vulnerable to it. The dolls must be killed asap, but the healing one should be killed last -- I didn't try keeping it alive as DR did, so maybe that helps a bit too. I guess the key is damaging Alice as much as possible before finishing the healing doll off. Improving defensive stats is a must for that battle. And Meiling's Healer is useful for removing status effects, so switch her in when necessary.

*snip*

Hey, Kawaii T, surely if you have enough time for playing this game, you can spare some to update your LP once in a while! The Playground is declining without ya.

 

[Damned Registrations]

7F boss is not what I expected. This might require some hefty equipment juggling and buff cheese. Too tired now, will attempt tomorrow.

7F was a BITCH. I hope there aren't any levels more tedious than that. Holy fuck. I even ran into some super rare spawn that dropped a shitty item for me.

 

[Kawaii Theurgist]

@ Miss Bee

Free time? What's that?

I haven't even cleared one floor yet. The only thing I have had time to do was...

... the actually important stuff.

And only for the five initial girls plus Cirno, China, and Alice, and then had to stop before finishing Youmu. So the Playground will have to survive without me for a while.

 

[Damned Registrations]

On F8 now. Reimu was 29 when I offed the boss, figure I'll start keeping track of that now.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

This is embarrassing. Managed to kill off Alice and 2 of the lights, but the 3rd light wiped out my last 6 characters and I lost. Mostly because it was the anti-physical light. Both Marisa and Pachtouli were dead because I just now learned that it actually costs 1 TP every time you switch out a character. They both got roasted half way in and the only things I had left could hardly do 300-400 damage to the light. :/

Hopefully 5th time's a charm. Killing the non-healing lights earlier is definitely better (for some reason even after the healing light was dead Alice didn't use little legion for the ~4 turns it took to kill her, wonder if thats a hardcoded weakness?), but the healing light puts that 10k heal off at the worst possible time every time

EDIT: Yep. Lost my condition removal and icer 1/3rd in but some amazing luck against the SIL spam pulled me through (it never hit Reimu/Chen/Patchouli). Chen is ridiculous, especially in this fight. She did more AoE damage per hit than Patchouli could with her fire attacks (thanks to her armor ignoring ability), and 2x as fast too.

 

[Damned Registrations]

One thing that might help is if you have Remilia use the curse of vlad tepes (Equip something to resist poison, pretty sure one of those came from a chest by then) + another defense boost and then leave her paralyzed in the front slot. Although she can swing pretty hard too, if she never gets a turn the stat boosts never degrade, and she can sit there with +100% DEF and MND soaking up hits. Obviously not helpfully against multi targets, but if you have her in the front slot, you can throw minoriko in the back and she'll only need to really heal + buff herself and whoever you want to do damage, just throwing a heal at Remilia every 5th turn or so. Sometimes it's not worth having all 4 slots filled in if you can't keep them alive and they don't dish out enough damage anyways.

Also, you have Rumia right? She should have been able to lay the smack down on the physical light too.

I'm on the ninth floor now. Skipped the 8th floor boss because I didn't feel like equipment juggling for that damned multi target rape spell. Will come back with superior firepower gathered on F9.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Wow, the forbidden tablet drop from Alice is amazing, esp for Reimu. +30% MAG/+4% REC/lots of resists for MYS/SIL/DTH. Also got an anti paralyze ring as soon as I hit 5th level. Its almost like this game gives you the stuff you need to defeat the boss after its dead...

 

[Damned Registrations]

I actually got one of those as a rare enemy drop before I got it from a boss or chest. It's cool when nice stuff like that drops. Boss drops aren't guaranteed either, lots of the time you get squat.

Enjoy the rape squad that is Alice. She's like Patchy except faster and with more TP and more SP and more HP and ... she's awesome.

Beat 9th floor boss without breaking a sweat at level 35 on Reimu. Going to go back and try the 8F boss without spending my xp yet.

Edit: Got crushed again. Much harder fight than anything on the 9th floor. Guess you're intended to come back later with better characters?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Glad you guys are enjoying it. Too bad I won't have the time to be playing it myself for the next couple of days. Will hopefully catch up with you later.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Hmm, what level were you guys when you beat the level 7 boss? I'm getting the feeling that it can't be beat at mine, at least not without massive amounts of luck. I'm in the 21-25 range.