Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 17F

[IRUN]

Most of Futo's attacks are Physical, so good resistance to that element would help, as well as investment in defence. Her main gimmick is her plate counters, which increase when she uses most of her spellcards. When you hit her, the plate counter decreases by one. Since she buffs herself, you will probably require a debuffer or buff remover. She's also weak to physical, so use tanky attackers with physical nukes.

[Arcvasti]

Futo is probably the hardest fight in Plus Disc, at least before Plus Disc postgame. You need to hit her hard, fast and often while being able to take a hit. I found that using SDM team worked quite well, since Remilia and Meiling can just grind down her plates and health while tanking all her attacks. Its still worth it to buff yourself, although Byakuren is probably not worth bringing along, since she can't buff without already being buffed.

[elminster1372]

I managed to defeat her best with Renko / Yuugi / Nitori / Maribel. Buffed Knockout in Three Steps and Super Scope can deal millions of damage.

[General_Milky]

I just Mountain Breaker'd her to death. Meiling's more than a little good.

Also, IRUN, that save file you posted a while back with all subclasses and awakenings unlocked from the beginning doesn't seem to be working right for me. It has most of the relay points unlocked, and most of the item lists filled out, with a ton of acheivements unlocked both related and unrelated.It doesn't even have all the characters open, their awakenings are indeed already there, but I only had the starter four.

[Serela]

I remember there being comments about Rinnosuke's "murakumo's former former owner" not actually working on all of his auxillary skills in the past. I'm still trying to figure out what my team's long-term support core is going to be (Renko+Byakuren is barely cutting it), so can anyone answer if it works on all three of his skills? Bonus points if I can get an answer on whether First Aid heals a decent amount in endgame where he can afford atk+mag high boosts.

[LonelyGaruga]

Murakumo's Former Former Owner specifically applies only to healing spell cards, so it has no effect on Battle Command. As far as First Aid goes, I don't think it'll be able to heal like, half of the HP of a tank unless you put all of Rinnosuke's level bonuses into ATK or MAG, or if he receives a buff to ATK and MAG. That's just looking at the numbers though, I didn't check in-game.

[Libra]

Here's a look at Rinnosuke's stats at the end of the current patch and how much he heals with First Aid (20 gems in everything but HP and TP with 11 and 15 respectively). The upper one is with HP Giga Boost and all level up bonuses into HP, the bottom one is with MAG Giga Boost and all the level up bonuses into MAG; in both instances Rinnosuke has an 80% ATK/MAG buff. Its worth noting that if you get all of the Enhancer's passives and all of Rinnosuke's own skills (including awakening skills) you only have enough for one Giga Boost at this point.

Remember that Rinnosuke's Precise Command is currently bugged and the 50% chance to heal ailments and debuffs works on the enemies too, which makes it hard to use in boss fights.

[attach=1]

For reference, most tanky characters will have between 1-2m HP at this point, depending on how you manage level up bonuses and equipment, while bulky attackers will probably range from 500k to 1m.

[MewMewHeart]

Been a while since l posted anywhere on here, l wanted to know which translation patch do I use for Plus disk 1.203 or 1.204?

[Libra]

1.204 is the exact same as 1.203, just that it was made compatible with the 1.204 game version that came out recently (so any of the new content and dialogs aren't translated).

[MewMewHeart]

1.204 is the exact same as 1.203, just that it was made compatible with the 1.204 game version that came out recently (so any of the new content and dialogs aren't translated).

Ah ok just figured it out myself,but thank you for confirming my choice to upgrade to the current patch...now l just need to play catch up it's been 5 years since l played LoT2, but l did beat the final boss... so l just need to grind a lot and unlock A LOT of the stones that require the shadow bosses beaten.

[RegalStar]

There is no 1.204 for plus disk; we're only on 1.104. If you see patch for 1.203 that's for main game only.

[Serela]

Here's a look at Rinnosuke's stats at the end of the current patch and how much he heals with First Aid

Hmmm... enough to help, but considering the buffs he?s at in that case, still not exactly a great amount. Enhancer would possibly give more with its passive at least. Still considering Minoriko and a magic-heavy team instead of Eirin, or swapping Rinno for awakened Keine, or herbalist Mokou... ah jeez! @.@

[MewMewHeart]

There is no 1.204 for plus disk; we're only on 1.104. If you see patch for 1.203 that's for main game only.

Whoops made a typo for the version, but yeah l do have plus disk 1.104, just need to grind now.

[qazmlpok]

Ah yes, that's why I can't stand fighting Futo.

She heals herself. Repeatedly. For insane amounts. Even if she's down to a sliver of health.

I guess I should always try to keep my leftmost character at low MP.

But then her plates just keep stacking up and everything goes so fast I can't do anything about it.

Meiling is a lot better than I remember, so thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I'll just grind another 20 levels. Even if I can do it, with her heals, she's just not fun

[IRUN]

Also, IRUN, that save file you posted a while back with all subclasses and awakenings unlocked from the beginning doesn't seem to be working right for me. It has most of the relay points unlocked, and most of the item lists filled out, with a ton of acheivements unlocked both related and unrelated.It doesn't even have all the characters open, their awakenings are indeed already there, but I only had the starter four.

My bad, pasting this into your save file should unlock all the characters.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

I'm reading through character overviews for 2 and only halfway through them all but I've noticed many inconsistencies with skill naming between skill lists and the overview/comments as well as a few typos here and there. Can't edit these myself as I don't have a wiki account but maybe someone can proofread them if they have the time. Dunno if this has already been brought to attention.

[Libra]

Not sure if that's what you mean, but I did notice that a bunch of skills (particularly those added in the Plus Disk) are named differently in the translation patch than in the wiki. Other than that, there's also Rinnosuke's awakening description that wrongly assumes Murakumo's Former Owner applies to Battle Command.
Mamizou's spellcards also aren't up to date with the japanese wiki.

[Serela]

Most information for awakening/plus disk character stuff was based off data leak translation from before the corridor was even added, so there may be inconsistencies. (E.g.:The original translation on Rinnosuke was "all auxiliary skills") Even I'm not likely to comb through all the overviews for things like name inconsistencies, so the best way to fix it would be making your own wiki account. IIRC it has to be approved but when I signed up that only took like, a day or less. Take initiative!

[MewMewHeart]

Ok l now know what enhanced bosses l need to kill the Mirror of Darkness and Magatama of Darkness, and possibly the orbs?

Does anyone have any tips l can use at the bosses l just named (l can't bloody damage the mirror either)

[Libra]

For the orbs just try to rush down the leftmost orb as fast as possible, just like in the original fight, once that one is gone, the other 2 orbs have zero offensive presence so its just a matter of taking your time to kill them both at the same time (remember that if the middle orb is the last one standing it revives the other 2 and if the right one is the last it detonates).

For the Magatama just take your best DRK attackers and rush him down, its not really vulnerable to anything but DRK and is resistant to statuses/debuffs too, so there isn't anything else to do but just pumping as much damage as you can. It mostly uses moves like Black Universe and Half Moon Slash so with a bit of luck your frailer attackers can survive a few of his attacks; remember that he gets SPD each turn so the fastest you kill it the better.

The Mirror is probably the hardest of the upgraded bosses, its very resistant to the 4 natural elements, resistant to MYS/SPI/DRK and slightly resistant to PHY. Its not completely immune to debuffs so you can stack those on it with a strong debuffer like Hina, its also very vulnerable to SIL (which both lets your magic attackers deal more damage and makes it deal less damage); it increases its MAG each turn. It depletes your MP 2 times during the fight. For the most part, with debuffs and SIL its not much of a threat offensively unles you let it get too many turns, for damage, you either want to abuse its weaker PHY affinity with Nitori and Yuugi or its lowered MND due to SIL with MYS/SPI/DRK attackers (characters that can pierce affinites like Marisa, Okuu or Patchouli are good choices as are charactes that can pierce its DEF/MND like Eiki and Kaguya).

[MewMewHeart]

For the orbs just try to rush down the leftmost orb as fast as possible, just like in the original fight, once that one is gone, the other 2 orbs have zero offensive presence so its just a matter of taking your time to kill them both at the same time (remember that if the middle orb is the last one standing it revives the other 2 and if the right one is the last it detonates).

For the Magatama just take your best DRK attackers and rush him down, its not really vulnerable to anything but DRK and is resistant to statuses/debuffs too, so there isn't anything else to do but just pumping as much damage as you can. It mostly uses moves like Black Universe and Half Moon Slash so with a bit of luck your frailer attackers can survive a few of his attacks; remember that he gets SPD each turn so the fastest you kill it the better.

The Mirror is probably the hardest of the upgraded bosses, its very resistant to the 4 natural elements, resistant to MYS/SPI/DRK and slightly resistant to PHY. Its not completely immune to debuffs so you can stack those on it with a strong debuffer like Hina, its also very vulnerable to SIL (which both lets your magic attackers deal more damage and makes it deal less damage); it increases its MAG each turn. It depletes your MP 2 times during the fight. For the most part, with debuffs and SIL its not much of a threat offensively unles you let it get too many turns, for damage, you either want to abuse its weaker PHY affinity with Nitori and Yuugi or its lowered MND due to SIL with MYS/SPI/DRK attackers (characters that can pierce affinites like Marisa, Okuu or Patchouli are good choices as are charactes that can pierce its DEF/MND like Eiki and Kaguya).

Yeah l went with the Strategist Byakuren + Sanae Enchanter + Ran combo on the Mirror just now and managed to beat the Mirror with only Komachi being KO'd due to l couldn't swap to Sanae in time due to the Mirror was gonna go next... l say Byakuren is the real MVP for most of my Enchanced fights.  found out l did beat the Orbs long ago... so l only need the Magatama and l can fight the Enhanced Murakumo.

[General_Milky]

I've just taken down the final floor 29 boss and, for now at least, completed all of the content in the game.

I have mixed feelings on the direction things have headed. Plus Disk had an extremely strong start, essentially being a real extension of the main game in difficulty and design, but then it hits this massive ninety degree wall right after the story ends where levels skyrocket all the way up to the moon and things start showing some cracks. In particular I'm not a fan of the following;

-Speed goes off the charts and turns come up in mere ticks
-Defense and Mind become harder to leverage. They still matter, but you need TONS of it to get any real results. Only dedicated stonewalls will feel any serious damage reduction.
-Bosses are far more "cruel." They're set up in such a way that there's a "right" approach to all of them. Their sheer overwhelming damage output, extreme gimmicks, or straight up having a "you lose" condition makes it harder to strategize against them in any way that isn't as one dimensionally shallow as "get good items, get good stats, nuke."
-Numbers get so high that it's harder to parse just how much an attack did at a mere glance. Not impossible by any means and it's something you get used to, but the difference between 1 million and 10 million can be harder to spot in that half second showing of damage.
-Equipment gets so strong with so astronomically high boosts, but are in extremely limited quantity, that it ends up all but impossible to have a balanced team. Generally, you want to build around the characters holding the unique +1000% items and try to get the most out of your super-charged members as possible.
-Awakenings come too late to be particularly game changing; by the time you have them, you're moving into the postgame where they don't have a lot of room to be creatively used anymore, ESPECIALLY the awakenings that include skills to "buff" bad characters (Pathouli, Remilia, Youmu)

In summary, the systems jack up to such incredibly high levels that it starts to buckle under itself in a number of ways. It feels a lot more chaotic and at parts sloppy. I still enjoyed the vast majority of the content and still had fun in the megapostgame parts, but it is quite a far cry from the tight, strategic, and well-balanced way the game carries for 80% of its current runtime. Also, special props to how they handled the grindwall. The game DOES still ask you to do a lot of repetitive fighting... but it could be so, SO much worse.

Now to sit around and wait. Or start over. Depends on how quick 3peso works, I suppose.

[Libra]

I personally feel that most of the bosses in late Plus Disk feel much "fairer" than some of the postgame bosses because they have set patterns they generally repeat, so you always know what's coming at you, compare to the Second Sun or The Great C, were you're completely at the mercy of the RNG (the main exception would be

Spoiler:

***WINNER***

). And while high damage is certainly necessary against some bosses due to the damage race nature of the fights, that applied to a decent amount of the main/postgame bosses too (Mokou, Memorized Knowledge, the Orbs, the Mirror and Magatama, the deformed bosses). Its true though, that certain status effects aren't as useful as in the main game (SIL, PAR and SHK), but HVY, POI and TRR can still help quite a bit in certain fights.

[LonelyGaruga]

I'm still a ways to finishing everything, but I have similar sentiments about Plus Disk's design falling off in the postgame. Though I feel that it starts happening around the time Murakumo's Blessing is acquired. Murakumo's Blessing has the same issues as the singular items that are ridiculously strong, like Magic Sword Chaos, in that it gives too much strength to be balanced by only having one character be able to use it. This goes even more so for Dragon God's Power. The inherent design of that kind of subclass regrettably needs to be super strong to justify only 1 character being able to use it, but then the bosses also need to be balanced around the usage of these subclasses, and it doesn't seem that they are. Like, of the bosses that I felt were well designed post-Murakumo, so far there's only the story Orochi fight (hampered by the various blessings though, really overpowered), Ryujin-sama, and the

Spoiler:

Red Hero & Green Brute

fight, and to a lesser degree Serpent of Chaos (it's only challenging because of Time-Space Warp + Disintegrating Breath shenanigans though). I've yet to fight the 250f Corridor boss,

Spoiler:

***WINNER***, Fundoshi Man, or King of Chaos

, but after wiping out the

Spoiler:

Deformed/Grotesque trio

in three attacks, I'm a little hesitant to assume that they'll be great fights. I've been trying to follow Hard Mode rules for everything (average Brave Level seemed to be roughly 90% of the boss level so I used that, and I followed the character level *1.2 for library levels, eventually going for round 100s around the character level 500 range), so as to try to fight the bosses at what I thought would be closest to the intended party strength, but this has generally led to disappointing results in Plus Disk.

Basically all of the B1-4 optional bosses and everything in the Corridor have been fairly disappointing, with one or two fights being more like one might expect for a normal boss fight than feeling like mid-bosses. All of them were easily defeated with simply overwhelming power, and as the game goes on and better options for equipment become available, this becomes even more true. Recently I don't even bother putting any HP level up bonuses on the left slots because 1x Regalia and 1x Medicine of Life makes a character durable enough to take 3+ hits from most Corridor bosses. And for attacking with Tenshi, I just put Magic Sword Chaos and 2x Scourge because there's no need for defensive equipment. With Dragon God's Power she's 2-shot at worst by the stronger multi-target attacks, because it offers so much affinity. I'm hoping that, by the absolute endgame, the bosses genuinely will be balanced around this level of gear, and they'll be good fights, but the present state of the game doesn't leave me confident about it.

I'm a big fan of having fights be challenging enough to make players adapt to the boss instead of using whatever strategy they want, so being able to blow over everything through overwhelming power has been a little disappointing. Still, I understand that with the incredibly huge amount of possible character combinations and strategies, the bosses need to be balanced in a way that everyone can reasonably defeat them, so for a player that tries to utilize every possible advantage available, it is inevitable that dissatisfaction should be encountered, since the game isn't supposed to be played like that. But there were still great challenges like the Guardian of the Crystals, which I'd like to see more of.

Regardless of criticisms, the game is fun though, I'd just like to see more of a challenge from it like the earlier sections of the game had. I think, because there were less options available earlier in the game, it was easier to balance around them, but as more options become available, from characters to skills to subclasses to equipment, it becomes harder and harder to balance, leading to this problem I have, and various other additional problems. Plus the balance of SPD, player DEF/MND and enemy ATK/MAG, and other imbalances as a result of the levels getting too high. It's difficult since this is a consequence of things that 3peso wanted to do with the game, and it would be hard to scale levels back down, or alter how stats function.

Although, I have to say,

Spoiler:

Why the heck do the Deformed/Grotesque trio have ~33 affinities to at least one element each for Dragon God's Breath, lol

[Libra]

Yeah, a lot of the Shadow bosses die too fast, and the Abyss bosses are a joke.

I personally have always felt that features like the library and gems reduce your options, since otherwise you could easily switch to the optimal characters for every boss fight (which I feel would be a bit easier to balance), and at the same time you can still challenge yourself by trying to clear them with a suboptimal/favorite party (though, of course, the results may be that some fights end up being literally impossible without X character)

[General_Milky]

I've always been reluctant to use gems for just that reason. As soon as you start seriously investing in a character, it's harder and harder to justify putting them away. Thankfully, tomes of reincarnation exist to make even gems a non-permanent investment, but even those being limited in quantity can be discouraging.

Also, a big difference to me between maingame "damage race" bosses and megapostgame (as opposed to standard postgame, which is where bosses like Great C sit. I have little to say about them because I kind of blew them away overleveled, I don't really know how they play out at challenge level) is that main game "rushdown" bosses tend to have lacking areas in many, many ways. Mokou can be pretty effectively defanged and most characters can keep up with her regen. Black Goddess basically has no real defense for itself so you're free to take as much time as you need for setup. Mirror/Magatama are the closest it gets to be forced, but there's still plenty of characters that can pull through with the right setup and strategies. Megapostgame bosses, meanwhile, take much of that AND put it on some intensely deadly opponents, meaning it's much, much harder to do "setup" and so it's much less feasible to spend several turns rotating a bunch of characters around to prep, you basically want 1-3 major nukers to start immediately, receiving whatever support they can get in the form of offense buffs/boost skills, going ham as fast as possible to end the fight before too many characters, ESPECIALLY theirselves, succumb to immensely damaging moves flying out at mach 2. The few fights that can be stalled on usually can't be for very long, so every turn not melting HP is another turn the boss stacks up its EX boosts or another turn before the full heal/party wipe.

I'm sure it's POSSIBLE to win all these fights as practically any combination of party members, but the point is I don't think the actual strategy will differ too much depending on who is in said team. You're always going to have those couple "star players" rolling out massive amounts of damage, much more than the other 10-8 on the team can do, as well as a few supports that can take a hit and whatever auxilery skills you can manage to help the heavy hitters hit heavier, and the supporters support more efficiently. Anyone without some uber defensive equipment isn't survivng more than two rounds, if even that, and anyone not carrying the uber offense equipments are going to be dealing paper cuts compared to the potential of your "carry," and those just won't be able to cut it when a time limit's ticking, or if the boss grows more and more powerful over time.

It is worth noting amidst all the negativity that it's not ALL bad. I actually think ***WINNER*** may be the best boss of the entire bunch, because he's generally tame on the damage input and his rapidly shifting modes can be reasonably countered with a well thought out team. It's more the

Spoiler:

triple deformed bosses, King, and Dragon God

in particular heavily enforcing the "my way or die" playstyle, and while the other 2 floor 29 bosses can feel like they're asking you to damage race them, I can imagine them being doable on a more defensive, slow playstyle so long as the final phase of both has SOME form of burst to take them out before it gets bad.

[Xarizzar]

Personally, I'm pretty okay with how the Plus Disk ended up for me, but then again, I don't think I've played this game nearly as much as others have for me to deserve to have an opinion like this, lol
Not to mention how I suck on game design, despite wanting to be a game developer  :blush: IOW, I'm still not 100% certain how some things work in this game.

But yeah. Bosses like Futo were a challenge, at least. For me, that also applies to a few of the shadow bosses. That said, I'm pretty sure most people, if not everyone, went to the Plus Disk content after they beat the original game's post game bosses. But, you can access the Plus Disk content before you do the original game's post game. Have you tried playing it that way? This might make things more interesting.

And I like that the game is flexible like that when it comes to parties. LonelyGaruga's party is a great example of this, and I want to say I'm proud of you for this (and your quest to help 3peso balance the game). I wonder if I can turn Yukari into a DPS character, without the help of Chen, and possibly Ran. I wonder the same for the person they call Maribel. I mean, she is a pretty okay DPS character, but AFAIK, there are better choices.

BTW, of all the things I could notice. Has anybody else noticed that the selection circle's animation when selecting a character (like for example on Form Change) is less smooth on 1.104?

[Arcvasti]

Yukari is a pretty excellent DPS character, although she's mostly limited to WND without having Ran/Chen to power up Shikigami. Hyperactive Flying Object is pretty much the strongest magical WND attack in the game when you factor in Row Attack Enhancement and it has the added bonus of piercing enemy MND really well. Shikigami with Ran and Chen out is really good though.

[IRUN]

And Skikigami + gets buffed when Yukari is awakened as well. She?s actually decent as a DPS tank now.

[Xarizzar]

Indeed. Though this late in the game, I've already built her as a strategist, and adjusted my party according to that. I'd still rather not waste a party slot with Chen though. Shikigami: Ran Yakumo+ should still be strong enough without her though, right?