Touhou Blogging Thread

[Zil]

The lives are every 5 million, up to 45 million, and you actually get one more than you can hold at one time. In the first 5 stages, try using up all of your energy to cast level 2 spells, and don't allow your spell points (number in the upper left) to reset. If you're using Eiki, 5 million per stage is quite doable.

After stage 5 focus on surviving and save your spell energy for when you need it. There's also a trick you can use to make surviving much easier. If you don't shoot anything, the enemy won't have anything to reflect back at you, so the game will be very easy. However, the enemy's timer will stop counting down if you don't shoot anything. What you can do to prevent that is selectively destroy one fairy at a time every few seconds. You can do that for a while at the start of the difficult stages. You likely won't be able to win an entire round like that though since you'll eventually have to destroy fairies and use spells to survive, and calming the game back down once it gets chaotic is pretty much impossible.

[Sakurei]

I haven't really made enough progress to actually blog about anything, but I'll do it anyway.

After finishing up SA with a more than unsatisfactory run, I moved back to Imperishable Night with Youmu. I'm not sure why I'm playing lunatic mode instead of normal, or perhaps easy mode, but the order probably doesn't really matter. Maybe a subconscious influence on my environment, since a lot of people near me also score on lunatic mode.

Anyway, to learn the game, I'm referencing myself to the world record obviously. For now the goal is to survive and PoC. Cancels are mostly secondary at the moment (though stage 3 kind of requires 'smart' cancels or else I can't PoC; or live for that matter). Stage 2 is much harder than it looks, it's kind of silly. I kind of got it down, but my consistency (obviously) needs work. A lot. It may be the hardest stage when it comes solely to the stage potion (to do properly), followed by stage 3 and 4. Stage 4 didn't change very much from easy mode: There are more bullets than on easy mode, so I can't hug every fairy anymore. That's one change. I also sit on some fairies to prevent bullets from spawning. Another change. And the last one is the bomb near the end of the stage potion. I must say Alan does a great job at keeping familiars alive; aside from the fairies he can't hug, he only destroys I think one or two in the whole stage. Stage 3 seems insanely fun, actually. I don't know. I started to play it some and had a lot of fun despite being bad (and I mean really bad). There is a lot of bulletcancelling in it. Stage 5 is, from what I can remember, the same routewise. hug everything and don't die. Even Tei is the same. kinda silly overall. Stage 6 is different in the sense that you can't just leisurely stick to the bottom of the screen, but have to go up between the familiars to kill things (in case of bad RNG at least). So that's new to me.

Now for the bosses. It's a lot of supergrazing, simply speaking. Both Keine and Marisa Only have one attack to graze, but even on the other ones there is milking involved (shooting familiars for less damage, switching what familiars to shoot so you don't destroy them). Which all will take a lot of work. I've decided to omit some grazes at the very least until I've scored some. Stuff like Horned Owl (I haven't really decided on anything else) that is just really hard are things I feel I can ignore for now. Reisen's first spell might be another one where I'll decide to leave it alone for now. The only spellcard that I know is really hard and will still do is Hourai Jewel for obvious reasons. The gain is just too much to ignore. Learning that alone will probably take some 20 hours, then another 1240 hours for consistency. Microtapping bullshit that looks really unfun. Reminds me of the time when I tried to learn Honest Man's Death supergraze, haha. We'll see. At the current rate I'm playing, it's no good. I'm not playing a lot, it would take months to be reasonably consistent enough to even attempt runs, much less do them; so I think I'll pick it up some. I don't really like the phase before runs much, which is also why I'm so very inconsistent when I play for points. We'll see.

[SIRookie]

I'm not really good at these games, or even shmups in general. But for some reason I decided I was cocky enough to do a small competition in SA this last month with another local gaming group. We started working out the details with the other team about early-mid October, and I started focusing solely on SA. After four months (so December now) I had managed to clear stage 4 once, but had racked up about 210 completions of stage 1, 170 of stage 2, and 90 of stage 3, as well as putting in about 120 hours of gameplay and getting around 30-35 million per run. I wasn't worried about practice mode because I didn't want to practice -- I wanted to get further.
The competition came in early-mid January, and I felt confident enough to not loose at the event, even though after four months I still couldn't manage a normal 1cc. my competitor does his run, manages to clear stage 1 and get 1/4 of the way through stage 2 before getting a game over. I get cocky again, and get a game over on the first wave after Kisume. Halfway through stage 1.

I had 10x his score (200k vs 2mil) because he wasn't collecting anything, but that hit me harder than it should have. I'm playing a lot less frequently and to be honest, I'm kind of upset at how poorly I've performed over the last five months. I've tried the other games, but still keep going back to SA in hopes of a miracle 1cc run.
In any of the games I can make my way to stage 3, but usually no further. I keep seeing people talk about clearing the game on X difficulty, and it's kind of demoralizing to know I'm still struggling in stage 3 after putting un what I think is a lot of practice

[Oh]

Nice
Epic
I like it

[CyberAngel]

I wasn't worried about practice mode because I didn't want to practice -- I wanted to get further.

I'll just say that to do the latter you have to do the former. Just trying full runs hoping you get lucky enough won't get you far. To move further than that you need consistency, and to get any sort of consistency you need to know how to deal with each attack you'll encouter. And that means you need to practice them, either looking for strategies yourself or trying advices you can find.

[chirpy13]

Just got to Parsee using my chin to press the arrow keys.  It's a good workout for your jaw muscles but my neck kinda hurts now.



EDIT: Got to Yamame second non with my eyes closed.  So silly.

[Oh]

I cleared stage 1 on 420fps once

[Fuyuumi]

I cleared stage 1 on 420fps once

But seriously, how's the experience?

[Oh]

But seriously, how's the experience?

I was blazing it at sanic speeds

[Stifled Voices]

*sigh* Relating to my earlier posts, I've given up on the main games (remember, I tried normal for the sake of endings and failed, but for some reason on th13.5, I whooped everyone's asses (granted it was also normal)). I've shaken off the appeal of the endings, and resigned myself to the fandom (and safebooru!Danbooru).

[Mero]

Took a week off from Touhou... and I didn't realize my gamepad wasn't working until today, so I fixed it and now I suck horribly, stage 1 too hard, etc.

[Reiko]

I've been switching to Marisa for PoFV Lunatic recently. She's really fun to play, a bit less scoring potential than Reisen, but she doesn't have to deal with Medicine on stage 7.
I managed to beat Aya first round without much trouble, she's quite easy to handle once you get the rythm. Why did I have to lose a round against stage 5 Youmu on the same run ?  :ohdear:

Also, holy shit this game is still awesome. I might not improve much, but still having a blast every time.

[Szayelaporro Granz]

I'm playing PoFV match mode with Reisen vs Cirno AI. GAWD I CAN'T STOP I'M SO ADDICTED :getdown: Still can't beat this yet, hmm...

[Oh]

That feel when mediocre player like me get rekt by UFO ;_;

[Burning Love]

Untitled "Flying Mysterious Shrine Maiden"  is pure hell.

[CyberAngel]

I think I found a trick behind "Midnight Chorus Master". Green bullets seem to be aimed around you. Sometimes very close to you, but as long as you stay still when she fires them, you should be safe. There is a short time gap between third green wall passing you and Mystia firing green bullets again, but if you can reposition yourself within that time (preferably to where she'll stop after moving and/or away from where blue bullets will fall), you're safe. Here is a replay where I successfully used this trick. It's even done with Alice, and she requires very good positioning.

EDIT: Learned a new strat for "General Headquarters Crisis" - staying dead center.

EDIT2: Another awesome capture: "Demon Binding Ring" with Alice. Awesome because it's almost a timeout. I thought it would be impossible to survive this long the first time I ever captured it. But now I can move through those arrowheads no problem if I want. Hell, any version below Lunatic now looks sluggish to me. Talk about advancement.

[Andrew]

Recently starting playing Subterranean Animism after a 4 month long break from the Touhou games. Cleared normal in a few hours, then cleared extra after a few more hours. Currently going for a hard 1cc. After practicing the stages for awhile and restarting a lot of runs where I made stupid mistakes, my best attempt so far has made it to Subterranean Sun. One of my earlier attempts had 2 more lives coming into stage 5, but then it got ruined by 3 stupid deaths with 1-3 power in stock, so I know I can get this 1cc if I keep trying.

I find the Koishi and Utsuho fights pretty fun, especially Utsuho when I'm fighting her on my last life.

Edit: Got my Hard 1cc a few hours after this post. Finished 3/0. It was just a matter of not derping or dying with 1-4 power.

[Monkeypro257]

Tried to 1CC MoF on Lunatic since haven't played for a couple of months now. I'm still stuck with stage 6. -_- (meaning - I have not improved at all)

[Mino ☆]

Haven't played Touhou in 2 weeks. Decided to play DDC for the hell of it. It was sort of fun to play around with I suppose. Ended up getting a very high miss LNB run, but that's okay. I wasn't really expecting much.

Although it may look like it, I didn't retire from Touhou because I was unable to get a good MoF score in a short amount of time. That has nothing to do with it. It would be ridiculous to expect consistency that early. I have my reasons.

I mostly just felt that Touhou was becoming too much of an addiction for me, and I wasn't really having too much fun with it. Although scoring was interesting. I felt I needed to put Touhou aside to increase study time for my grades. Needless to say. I've been in a very positive mood these days after dropping Touhou. I don't know if I'll ever be an active player again though.

[Andrew]

After playing UFO to get my last Windows Normal and Extra clears, and putting off attempting the Hard mode because I've heard that UFO Hard is harder than most Lunatics, I decided to play PCB Extra again. Got a 2MNBNBB on my second try! 1 miss to Fox-Tanuki Youkai Laser of all things, and 1 miss to Charming Siege. At this rate, it looks like it's only a matter of time before I get my first perfect Extra clear! I actually find Ran to be easier than Suwako.

Edit: Had a perfect run coming into Izuna Gongen and then died twice to it.

Edit 2: Well, it took more attempts than I thought it would, but I did it! PCB Extra NMNBNBB!

[Sakurei]

I haven't touched the games very much in recent times. most of the time when I fired up a game, it was PoDD. But even (or rather, especially) that game has been trolling me like mad. game over with over 95 million were the norm for a few days until I game over'd with 99m, which crushed my soul. Not that I will stop - I still want to reach 100m. And clear. I haven't cleared the game since I reached 75m. That's depressing and some real pain. But even playing this game has stopped after that particular run. Discounting the stream I did a few days ago, I haven't opened any game for about 2 weeks and played "seriously". I wanted to learn IN lunatic, but I'm still stuck on stage 2. At the current rate I'm not quite sure if I'll ever get to the point where I'd be able to play full credits, much less get good runs. I've been thinking that maybe lunatic was too early after all. It might have been. I'm bad. The only thing I've gotten further with is deciding which grazes I can't bothered to learn yet. That's some ridiculous progress. I want to try and play more this month; I have no lectures yet and my only real other hobby is watching Anime. And since I have to wait a week for every new episode for the shows I am watching I don't really have anything "better" to do. My motivation is nil and my abilities are somewhere in minus-area. This is bound to make me hate myself. All of you people that think I'm good for anything at these games are crazy lunatics.

As I see it, there are 3 possible outcomes of this: Either I work up enough motivation to practice until I can do runs, quit lunatic and play a different difficulty or stop playing Touhou altogether. I'm old and weary and the only thing to soothe my heart and body are cute things; cute Anime, cute characters...

All of the above mentioned outcomes are realistic.

[cactu]

I haven't had a clear in EoSD lunatic since my 558M run either, which is a bit lame.

[chirpy13]

I found this yesterday but I'm not sure how consistent it is across difficulties/rank.  Unfortunately I don't have Reimu states for other modes so I can't really check too much into it.  Or I can but I can't be bothered to make states 

[?q]

All right!  I've got 42 of the 43 Last Words for P.Trues!  Let's see about that last one.

*looks*

Welllllll it's not too late to give up.  Or learn how to run DMF at 30FPS.

[Mr Jovial]

I've been trying to perfect IN Stage 5 but in the process, I've found an anomaly with Tewi's second non. With Reimu/Yukari and staying focused the whole time, the attack either takes 3 waves to kill or 6, for seemingly no reason.

EDIT: After playing around with it a little, it seems you get a slower kill if you deal any damage at all to the familiars. How strange O_o

[chirpy13]

All right!  I've got 42 of the 43 Last Words for P.Trues!  Let's see about that last one.

*looks*

Welllllll it's not too late to give up.  Or learn how to run DMF at 30FPS.

It's hard but it's static, so you'll get it if you grind it enough.

[?q]

It's hard but it's static, so you'll get it if you grind it enough.

It's not static, though - it's an aimed pattern that updates its angle a little less than once each second.  Even if I found a single path that worked, I'd have to move almost precisely the same way each time.

Starting the spell slightly down and slightly left from Muse and steadily backing down seems to be helping me get up to the first round of arrowhead lanes fairly consistently without sacrificing damage...  Truthfully the major difficulty with this attack is that there's just not a lot you can do during the arrowhead lanes if they're clogged with bullets, and I don't know how I can manipulate that.

[cactu]

I've been trying to perfect IN Stage 5 but in the process, I've found an anomaly with Tewi's second non. With Reimu/Yukari and staying focused the whole time, the attack either takes 3 waves to kill or 6, for seemingly no reason.

EDIT: After playing around with it a little, it seems you get a slower kill if you deal any damage at all to the familiars. How strange O_o

It's safespottable.

[Mr Jovial]

I didn't have problems with doing the attack, I just found it odd that something like that would cause the attack to get 5-6 seconds longer

[Burning Love]

Never did I imagine myself 1CC DDC Normal using SakuyaB today. Those knives are pure hell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuLEWrZm5Bs