Touhou Blogging Thread

[I have no name]

The 1st Touhou Labyrinth seems to have died so...

When I upgrade my laptop I'm going to go back to working on my speedrun of it...you're right about Meiling before Chen being a good idea, but my route involves beating Chen at level 3 before Meiling  :V  Fun game, fun game.

[Mew seeker]

When I upgrade my laptop I'm going to go back to working on my speedrun of it...you're right about Meiling before Chen being a good idea, but my route involves beating Chen at level 3 before Meiling  :V  Fun game, fun game.

In about how much time people speed run that game?

Also, I realized why some people have made pictures packs available for the game :
resizing pictures of all characters on your own take a while. X D
Especially when you have to do it again because the picture you used is a square instead of a thin rectangle. X D
Oh well, I made a few, I'll update the rest if some new characters that I don't have a custom picture yet shows up.
And beside my Chen looks like she's about to kick some butts! 

[I have no name]

In about how much time people speed run that game?

I'm expecting something like 8-10 hours for segmented (basically, using saves a lot to be able to force good luck) and 10-12+ for RTA (real time, new game to winning).  I haven't seen any finished runs, though, so my estimates might be way off  :V

[Mew seeker]

I finally managed to beat Youmu in Labyrinth of Touhou at my 4th-5th try.
After a attempt where Mei Ling was the sole survivor after her ghost half was defeated and managed to tank her attempt for a while,
I grinded for a short while and managed to beat her although only Mei Ling and Remilia survived.
The Curse of Vlad Tepe is not a big liability if Mei Ling turn soon follow to heal after and even if you switch out remilia, the effect linger for quite a while. ^^
If my research are right , the 3rd floor is apparently located in the Vagrant Story world. X D
I have 10 characters so far, only two more to get a full team. ^^

[Mr Jovial]

Since January 1st, the only Touhou game I've played extensively has been IN. Since then, I've managed to perfect stage 6A, 4B, 5 and 6B (in that order) and can almost consistently get LNB 1ccs reaching a personal best of 6MNB. It's entertained me for almost 3 months but I'm now moving on. INs become a bit tedious, stage 1 is so slow, stage 2 commonly throws bs at me and it's not much fun now (especially considering I need to perfect those first 3 stages if I want to improve from 6 miss). So I decided "Let's move on to DDC." Decided on DDC because I've played so little of it (did a hard 1cc, extra 1cc and lunatic 1cc but that's it) and I have good memories of it. I wanted the first perfect to be stage 6 since I love Shinmyoumaru's fight and was looking for a challenge. And holy shit, it feels so much harder. I kept dying before reaching midboss Seija and restarting since I needed to learn the enemies. I did one run where I didn't restart and I gameovered somewhere on the 3rd lifebar. Keep in mind this is in stage practice; you start with max lives :colonveeplusalpha:

This is gonna be painful but will almost definitely improve my skills a huge amount. It's rare I flop so badly in a game but think "That was fun" after.  Wonder if that will last until I start LNB runs. Only have to perfect stages 3-6 before then :V And that only involves learning reversed controls and getting legendary at general dodging for Kagerou :V

[Mew seeker]

Just defeated Alice in Labyrinth of Touhou. It took me a few tries to understand how the flow of that battle is going then I won it.
Basically, she has 3 doll backing her. A physical one that use strong single target attack, a magical one that use multi target elemental attack
 and an healing one that basically prevent the others of dying.
Meanwhile, Alice is using various disruptive moves like silence, paralysis and so on.
Basically, if you want to go somewhere, you have to take down the healing doll first. However, the other dolls are buffing her defense so you must use poison and piercing attacks to take it down.
And when it goes down, Alice start using dolls attacks instead of disruption so you have to be ready for that and take down the other dolls ASAP and finish Alice.
I was happy to have focused so far in leveling up the elemental stats of my character to remove their elemental weaknesses, it helped making the battle go smoothly.
The battle ended with 5 casualties on my side.
I also got a Forbidden Tablet. To get an Unlimited Saga reference here, of all places. X D
I removed Chen from my team to put Alice in it. Something tells me that from now on, I'll have difficult choices to make. X D

Was I the only one surprised by Alice's dolls appearance by the way? X D
Also, Alice looked off model or something. Was it some kind of reference that went over my head?

Finding a cool profile picture for Wriggle probably took me more time than beating Alice. X D

I also want to mention the Rumia battle. At first I thought : "Well, it's only Rumia, that shouldn't be too hard."
And thing go well for a while but suddenly she start using Demarcation and cripple my characters. I won it on the first try but that caught me off guard. X D

Fifth floor reek of Sake. Oni recruiting coming soon? :3

[redlakitu]

I now know I can clear Mountain of Faith on Hard. That's because a run that was only meant to unlock stages for practice (I forgot about the replay bug/feature) came dangerously close to actually clearing the game. Thanks to the power of bombs, I made it all the way to Virtue of Wind God before panicking and losing my last life there. In the same run, I actually lost a life on Stage 1 and another on Stage 2, so assuming I don't suffer similarly stupid deaths on a proper run, this leaves plenty of resources for Kanako. I simply cannot fail.

...if I even try, that is. The fact that it's potentially so easy to do discourages me somewhat.

[FlareDragon]

I never really realised the vast difference between Hard and Lunatic (moreso because I don't realise the huge difference between Normal and Hard, despite being able to Normal 1CC any game w/e I choose and have to put effort in to get Hard 1CC's), but it's is brutal. It was because I tried PCB Lunatic that I saw this. Pretty much, Hard = Game Over at Midboss Youmu (while simply seeing how far I could get), while Lunatic = Game Over at Boss Alice.
Looks like there'll be a lot of skill development I'll need just to get to that next level, but for now I think I'll stick with Hard (and NB/ND Extras)

Also, SA is hard, much harder than EoSD, PCB and MoF (granted, probably the easier 3 games, but). Reason? Game Over at Satori, while other games get me at least to Stage 6, if not Stage 6 Boss. Guess it was about time I saw its difficulty (UFO still takes hardest game for me XD)

[Burning Love]

Sometimes you just feel that the challenge is too impossible to beat. Sometimes you feel like quitting after failure and failure again.




But not this time. http://youtube/uAGOQ4U8jrE Touhou 12 MarisaB 1CC Normal fuck yeah!!!

[Oh]

But those who endure those failures will emerge victorious.

[Mew seeker]

I made it to floor 7 in Labyrinth of Touhou.
St Elmo fire was annoying with its SP emptying move, its tendency to silence the team and its elemental resistance that are up to eleven.
But since I tend to try to get ASAP 100 in elemental resistances, its fire attack was not a bit threat.
I also realized that Master Spark can cost more than the base cost. I should I payed more attention to the description.

Among a few things I found Iku in some place faraway in the maze. She has good magical stats. ^^
I gave her the Red Mage Iku profile picture. ^_^

Also, as I suspected, I eventually fought Yuugi. Thanks to defense buffing, Alice reducing Yuugi attack power and Cirno slowing her down,
Mei Ling actually managed to tank her for a while. However my supporters eventually ran out of SP and got unlucky with the debuffing.
Mei Ling got taken down and Yuugi started to one shot the rest of my team.
I took more time than I should to realize that no one else would be able to tank her attack but when I did  I started to spend a maximum amount of SP to nuke her ASAP.
In the end, I managed to outlast her. ^^

By curiosity, I would like to know if I am overleveled. I am at the beginning of stage 7 and my levels range from 24 to 30.
Reimu is 28, Marisa is 26, Remilia is 24, Sakuya is 27, Patchouli is 25 and Yuugi is 25.

So far the thing that gave me the biggest challenge was finding a decent profile picture for Yuugi. May I am too picky?  X D

[Oh]

Quitting Touhou for IIDX

[Mew seeker]

I just met TAM's foe in Labyrinth of Touhou and he seems to hate me. X D
If I want to get somewhere in that battle, it seems like I'll have to increase my magic and fire defense. XD
(And I was wondering when the game would get harder. XD )

Also, while seaching the 7th floor I fougth

Spoiler:

Nitori

as a random battle. That was rather unexpected but it gets explained a bit later.
I believe I explored all of the floor before Tam's foe location but I'll double check to be sure while leveling up for the boss.
There's a lot of teleporter and I didn't took notes while exploring the place.
I also have started to level up my speed to have several characters faster than those annoying sword. X D
Also, I am on the fence with Yuugi. On one hand she's quite strong but on the other hand she as much slow. X D
Remilia was more limited but faster and got involved more. I'll have to experiment a bit.

I also found one of those sake glasse or something again. I checked the floor with smell Sakw but there doesn't seems to be anything new there.
Hmm. I wonder if it triggered something on a upper floor. I'll have to wait and see. Or maybe double check? X D

[Mr Jovial]

Took a break for about 5 days due to suddenly having a lot of school work to do and started playing again. Somehow, I forgot how to do Future God's Realm and Final Master Spark which is surprising considering I've done them so many times and they not particularly difficult attacks. Restarted entering stage 5 due to having 5 misses by then so there was probably no way I was going to improve on 6MNB. Now I'm worried about what else I've forgotten  :ohdear:

[Snakebite969]

Finally got past Parsee today! On to stage 3!

Mum calls me down for dinner, I close laptop, SA crashes.

[Mew seeker]

Finally got past Parsee today! On to stage 3!

Mum calls me down for dinner, I close laptop, SA crashes.

Parsee's jealousy has no bounds! : P

*Update*

After a short session of grinding to raise my fire and magic defense (mostly Reimu but also Meiling and Iku), I faced again Tam's foe and defeated it.
Tam's foe attack hurt a lot but if you can survive it and heal, you have chances of winning. Also, it doesn't use it that often and alternate instead with its physical attack.
Mei Ling, Iku, Reimu and Yuugi was my line up. Reimu raised the defense and was afterward on healing duty backed by Mei Ling.
Iku attacked and was able to buff herself at some point. Yuugi survived for a while thanks to being in the very back of the team.
She managed to poison the boss and even managed to land a few paralysis on it. I didn't think I would use Yuugi for disruption purpose instead of, you know, huge damage. X D
When Yuugi was inevitably defeated, Patchouli replaced her and start to nuke the boss. After the while, I won. ^^

[Zil]

Some discoveries regarding how damage is taken in PoFV. Mostly taken from the Japanese wiki.

The kind of bullet you hit is irrelevant.
At the start of a match, the amount of damage either player will take for getting hit is 1 (i.e. 1 full orb).
Every 12 seconds, that amount is increased by 0.5 (meaning a hit taken after 12 seconds have passed will do 1.5 damage, a hit after 24 seconds will do 2 damage, etc.) up to a maximum of 3.
Whenever either player gets hit, the amount is reduced by 1 (so for instance, if your opponent is hit after 50 seconds, and you're hit a second after that, your opponent takes 3 damage and you take 2).
The damage amount cannot fall below a minimum of 1, and furthermore, that minimum seems to increase over time. The rate of increase is unknown, but I'm planning to experiment with it. I would guess, though, that the minimum is never further than 1.5 from the maximum.
The AI, in at least some of the various modes in which it can be fought, seems to have different rules for how much damage it takes.

Edit: huzzah! I played some Normal mode matches as Mystia versus AI Cirno. On Normal, the AI tends to get hit at around 0:50, 1:30, and 2:30, the first hit dealing 3 damage, the second reducing it to the last half orb, and the third killing it. In the matches I played, I rammed into things at 0:48, and 1:24, and the first and second hits on the AI that followed shortly after each did only 2 damage. Then the AI took a hit at 2:00 (normally doesn't happen) which brought it to it's last health, and then finally killed itself at around 3:00. I got this same result several times. (I have replays if any pofv dorks are interested.) And so, I believe I've found the explanation for this nonsense. If you take hits at specific times, you can prolong the AI's lifespan.

[Snakebite969]

In Great Fairy Wars...
If Cirno levels up by freezing bullets, and easy mode reduces the amount of bullets, would that actually make easy the hardest difficulty??

Also stuck on Prismriver sisters on PCB. I have decided that until I can beat them on Lunatic, I can never 1cc the game on normal.

[CyberAngel]

In Great Fairy Wars...
If Cirno levels up by freezing bullets, and easy mode reduces the amount of bullets, would that actually make easy the hardest difficulty??

And for that reason, level requirements are lower on Easy. But, IIRC, shot level doesn't matter all that much there. Unlike bullet density when you have to actually dodge them.

[Koog]

Yesterday: Lost almost all lifes with Parsee, lost none to Yuugi, lose to Rin midboss...
Ya' seriously game!

[LunarWingCloud]

This is probably a better thread than any.

So I started playing Touhou back in late 2010, like November. I had been aware of the series' existence since the month prior due to a YouTube user including a remix of Sakuya's theme in one of his videos during a sped-up portion of gameplay. I liked the theme a lot, looked for the original, got hooked, and then found the games after that.

It wasn't until late 2011, early 2012 I was anywhere near close to 1cc'ing anything. My first 1cc was Imperishable Night on Normal using Reimu/Yukari, but it wasn't very good and I had to start with I think 7-8 default lives (since you can get those extras tacked on for losing a lot on the final boss). My first true 1cc, at least in my opinion, was of Ten Desires a few months later, using Reimu.

In 2012 I started to really improve, 1cc'ing EoSD (though I might've done it in late 2011, I don't have the replay anymore, I just know it was my third game 1cc'd), Perfect Cherry Blossom, and Mountain of Faith. 2012 I also moved to having a laptop instead of a desktop, and getting used to that was a little... different as I'd never owned a laptop before then. My progress then sort of halted for a while, I don't even remember doing very well with any game for a while.

Then came 2013. Oh boy, 2013. I... hardly did anything Touhou-related until Double Dealing Character, actually. Before DDC hit, I did get back into Touhou by clearing Mamizou a second time (the first time I wasn't happy with because of slowdown). I didn't play DDC until a week after it had released, but I 1cc'd it a couple of nights later using SakuyaA, and my 1cc literally came a couple of hours after a good friend of mine who's also a big Touhou fan had done it using the same character and shot type.

After that I hit Touhou fever harder than I had since late 2010/early 2011, but this time I was much better as a player. I cleared Lotus Land Story completely out of boredom, I wasn't even trying to do it, I just did while taking a break from the targets I had in mind: SA and UFO. Tackling these games was gonna be hard as hell, because, well, they're hard. :V But I turned to SA first because I had managed to improve to a point where I could make it to Rin continue-less. I couldn't say the same about UFO and being able to get to Shou.

So I kept on trucking and eventually, after many tries, I 1cc'd SA. I've only done it once as it's just so hard, it exhausted my want to play it again as a full game, but I go back for stage practices here and there. The replay is a bit bugged as skipping to Stage 6 causes the Utsuho fight to mess up, but as long as you don't fast forward and play the replay from Stage 5 or earlier it works, so I'm happy with it. After that I moved to UFO, which was easier to do once I got the hang of the UFOs. In fact I managed to clear that one within a week, in contrast to about 3 weeks of effort for SA.

That was about it for 2013. I would off and on attempt to beat Flandre, which I'm close to but still have yet to do, but other than that, my newest achievements actually happened this year. I was taking a break from trying to beat Flandre, and I would do stage practice a lot of Byakuren's stage, so I decided to give Mystic Square a go. Ended up 1cc'ing it after a few hours of trying. :V It was a lot harder than LLS, but I was coming off a hot streak as I had to re-1cc a lot of games so I had replays for them (IN, EoSD, MoF, namely).

So I just needed one more single-player shmup 1cc in the series: SoEW. It was rough... No ability to focus, no death bombing, bullet hit boxes being bigger than the bullet actually is, if you could think of something primitive and inconvenient about a shmup, SoEW has it. I don't fault it since it was the first shmup of the series, but damn, it showed. :I Nevertheless, after enough tries (took me a few nights), I managed to clear it.

So these are what I've managed to 1cc without repeating clears I've done with the same character and shot type:

Story of Eastern Wonderland - Normal - ReimuB
Lotus Land Story - Normal - ReimuA
Mystic Square - Normal - Reimu
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - Normal - ReimuA (I have videos up for this one on YouTube)
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - Normal - MarisaA
Perfect Cherry Blossom - Normal - SakuyaA (I have videos up for this one on YouTube)
Imperishable Night - Normal - Reimu/Yukari (I have videos up for this one on YouTube)
Mountain of Faith - Normal - ReimuA (I have a video with commentary of this on an LP channel on YT)
Subterranean Animism - Normal - ReimuB (I have a video with commentary of this on an LP channel on YT)
Undefined Fantastic Object - Normal - SanaeA (I have a video with commentary of this on an LP channel on YT)
Ten Desires - Normal - Reimu
Ten Desires - Normal - Sanae (I have a video with commentary of this on an LP channel on YT)
Double Dealing Character - SakuyaA (I have a video with commentary of this one on an LP channel on YT)

So I'm working on 2 things right now in Touhou, both within EoSD: Beating Flandre, and 1cc'ing Hard. I'm hoping I can do the former soon, since I'm _REALLY_ close to it. I'm also hoping to 1cc several of the games with other characters. I'm almost able to do PCB as ReimuA, and and I can almost do DDC as ReimuA and MarisaA (I love the cursed weapon shot types :V). If it wasn't obvious, I tend to go for whoever can do homing most of the time, I'm not too good with shot types that don't have that unless the game is easy like TD~. I use a hitbox patch for EoSD, and I'm not quite good enough to play SoEW, LLS, MS, PCB or IN with only 3 lives to start, but I could easily take the hitbox out in EoSD and do 3 lives, I've played that game sooooooo many times, I just prefer to make my life easier (I don't do things for competition anyhow), but maybe I'll try to do that one day?

To anyone attempting a harder Touhou game, keep at it! I didn't think I could do it myself, but I broke through, it just takes practice! I've got faith in all of you that are trying to clear the games! *flies away to tackle Hard modes and Extra Stages*

[CyberAngel]

*sigh*

I'm playing DDC. Untranslated. And I'm not bothered by it. Playing for story's only good for a first time, I usually skip everything anyway. Stuff like spellcard names can be found online when I need it. On the upside, maybe I'll end up learning Japanese that way. Would be cool.

I don't care any longer. I waited too long for no reason. Nevermore.

[Oh]

Sayaka a shit

[LunarWingCloud]

*sigh*

I'm playing DDC. Untranslated. And I'm not bothered by it. Playing for story's only good for a first time, I usually skip everything anyway. Stuff like spellcard names can be found online when I need it. On the upside, maybe I'll end up learning Japanese that way. Would be cool.

I don't care any longer. I waited too long for no reason. Nevermore.

Who're you using? : D

[CyberAngel]

Who're you using? : D

I always try to go over all shottypes. All of them are interesting in their own ways.

That said, I gave all types in DDC a spin, and I didn't expect just how unbalanced Sakuya's shots are. On Normal, I needed to use two continues with everyone else. One was usually at the start of Sukuna's battle, one near the end. With SakuyaA, I cleared the game with no continues. With SakuyaB, I ran out of continues on the final spellcard. Looks like ZUN still has trouble at coming up with shottypes for the perfect and elegant maid. As much as I like her, I won't be sad if he drops her for the next game. I prefer a more balanced roster.

[Sakurei]

The thing with SakuyaB in DDC is that she's a high-risk, low damage scoring type. Her full-game potential is significantly higher than for the other shots, but she is very difficult to use due to low damage-output and her bomb not doing any damage.

I agree that DDC's shottypes are very unbalanced with ReimuA and SakuyaA being the homing types and yet they're the strongest. I don't know what ZUN was thinking when he made the game, but it obviously wasn't anything related to the game.

[Mew seeker]

I made it to the 8th floor in Labyrinth of Touhou.
Floor was easy, just large. That being said, the spirit I was asked to hunt on this floor were somewhat of a challenge
due to them being somewhat sturdy ( I didn't find any attacks to deal them tons of damage) and occasionally emptying my MPs and causing instant death.
Also, Cirno froze 1 frog too much which caused

Spoiler:

Suwako to come without any warning

and attack the whole team.
It happened after I explored a large portion of the floor. Even worse, it happened a second time when I was exploring the floor again while I had in mind to avoid her this time. X D
I tried to fight her afterward but she just seems to be a damage sponge and can hit hard.
Poison works on her and paralysis (somewhat) too. I tried to get her with instant death attack but they didn't work either due to immunity or bad luck.
I'll come back to face her later when I will have better resistances.
I also found Sanae but she doesn't want to come with the group. Oh well, floor 9 is next.

*sigh*

I'm playing DDC. Untranslated. And I'm not bothered by it. Playing for story's only good for a first time, I usually skip everything anyway. Stuff like spellcard names can be found online when I need it. On the upside, maybe I'll end up learning Japanese that way. Would be cool.

I don't care any longer. I waited too long for no reason. Nevermore.

C.Angel, If I may suggest you...

[commandercool]

Some discoveries regarding how damage is taken in PoFV. Mostly taken from the Japanese wiki.

The kind of bullet you hit is irrelevant.
At the start of a match, the amount of damage either player will take for getting hit is 1 (i.e. 1 full orb).
Every 12 seconds, that amount is increased by 0.5 (meaning a hit taken after 12 seconds have passed will do 1.5 damage, a hit after 24 seconds will do 2 damage, etc.) up to a maximum of 3.
Whenever either player gets hit, the amount is reduced by 1 (so for instance, if your opponent is hit after 50 seconds, and you're hit a second after that, your opponent takes 3 damage and you take 2).
The damage amount cannot fall below a minimum of 1, and furthermore, that minimum seems to increase over time. The rate of increase is unknown, but I'm planning to experiment with it. I would guess, though, that the minimum is never further than 1.5 from the maximum.
The AI, in at least some of the various modes in which it can be fought, seems to have different rules for how much damage it takes.

Edit: huzzah! I played some Normal mode matches as Mystia versus AI Cirno. On Normal, the AI tends to get hit at around 0:50, 1:30, and 2:30, the first hit dealing 3 damage, the second reducing it to the last half orb, and the third killing it. In the matches I played, I rammed into things at 0:48, and 1:24, and the first and second hits on the AI that followed shortly after each did only 2 damage. Then the AI took a hit at 2:00 (normally doesn't happen) which brought it to it's last health, and then finally killed itself at around 3:00. I got this same result several times. (I have replays if any pofv dorks are interested.) And so, I believe I've found the explanation for this nonsense. If you take hits at specific times, you can prolong the AI's lifespan.

I've been told, or at least I somehow got the impression, that the direction you're moving relative to the thing you collide with is a factor. Have you found/read this to be the case? Basically I thought that running directly into something would do more damage than a glancing blow, and this seems to have been observed in matches, but I have no real confirmation and it's entirely possibly I just made that up or something.

[Mew seeker]

Mega failing at the 9th floor where I managed to make it to the portal at the end of the floor (and a long exploration session) but was not careful and ended up fighting the boss soon after.
I put up a decent fight but with less than half of my team, I didn't make it.
Then soon after, I find the boss at the beginning of the floor and get nuked.
Then afterward, I decide to explore the missing part of the floor but after a decent wall push the ESC button by mistake. X D

On the plus side I defeat the boss at the beginning after boosting Mei Ling fire attack and having Yuugi using her fire attack and Reimu trying to defend and heal everyone.
I also easily defeat the boss at the end. Since it keeps summoning reinforcement when there is less than 4 opponents (bar the occasional exception),
I just spam multitarget attacks as fast as possible and eventually take it down.

I also went back and got the boss that got me on the 8th floor. Having boosted Mei Ling nature resistance helped a bit.
While trying to buff my defense and heal the team, I have a party member at the back slot nuking the boss for a fire attack.
Then, to make up for the resulting delay, I have someone switching the nuker with another one with another strong fire attack.
Then I rinse and repeat. Eventually I won.

I also found another foe boss. It's like the previous one, but stronger. X D
Only Meiling is able to survive its fire attack for now. I'll have to train my other party member so that some other survive it too.

Also, it seems now that the Eientei gang is up to something. I wonder what will happen next.
And the path ahead is blocked by a door with four fail safe lock or something? I have heard bad things about this part but I will soon see it for myself.
Also, hammerhead shark enemies? Didn't see THAT coming. X D

[Szayelaporro Granz]

I'm trying to clear EoSD Extra. I believe I can do this, but I still need to practice Cranberry Trap A LOT :V That one card sure is tricky.