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

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Tam's Foe? Reimu was 29 when I beat it. So quick levelers probably 31-32. How are your levels so low? I've been backtracking as little as possible by fighting until I've only got shit characters left then escaping from fights until I absolutely have to return and I was 29 when I got there. Admittedly took a bit longer owing to dungeon gimmicks on level 7, but still.

Anyways, the boss attacks in a specific pattern. Use that to your advantage and swap characters appropriately. Equip any bomb rings you have and spend points on fire resist for anyone you're planning to have take the big multi target move. You can also buff someone, swap them out, then swap them back in to take the hit without having the buff weaken in the mean time.

I'm at the 12th floor boss now. Went back to mug the 8th floor boss (Highest level is 52) and it was a joke. Current boss fight is looking pretty EXTREME, but I still got lots of things to attempt.
 
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Yeah, I've figured out his attack chain (always AoE after 2nd Tackle), problem is that his regular hit still 1HKO's my casters and he likes to go after my casters with it. Dunno how I got so underleveled, the dungeon has been easy up till now (Marisa/Patchouli both wipe random encounters in a single spell, I can cycle them forever). At least I have 3 Bomb Rings. Maybe I should try seeing how well Alice's ATK/MAG debuffs work on him, I've been ignoring her up until now for the most part.
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Managed to win my fight without levelling up. Was a lot easier once I figured out the triggers for certain things the AI was doing.

Alice probably won't help much during that fight, her single target is fire elemental, and the boss seemed to have pretty good debuff resists. Have you been using Iku? If you're using Mei-Ling for tanking anyways, the side effect of sticklebug is irrelevant and the stat boost can easily double the damage your heavy hitters are putting out.
 

Crooked Bee

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Tam's Foe is beatable with Reimu at 28, at least I did that, with some luck. Bomb rings help a lot indeed, as does investing points in fire resistance.

@ OM
You are indeed quite underleveled... Not sure if Tam's Foe is even beatable at 25.
 
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Managed to get him playing uber-defensively. Basically only using Reimu/Meiling for healing and Cirno/Wriggle for offense. I think what got me through was figuring out that his slash move has a lot less downtime than the tackle, meaning you have to be ready to heal again before he has a chance to kill something.
 

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On floor 15 now. Levelling rate has slowed to a crawl, mostly because floors 13-14 had tougher enemies that didn't really give any extra xp. Some side bosses available to me right now but I haven't had any luck so far. Can't tell whether I'm close to winning them or not either. One broke into a second phase a thrashed me, and the other just steadily tore me down.

Edit: Killed one of the boss, highest level 70. Other one seems to be way out of my league.
Edit 2: Encountered the boss of floor 16. Fucking cool fight, but I'm definitely going to need to finish exploring the level before I make a serious attempt at it.
Edit 3: Boss killed for great justice. Highest level was 76. All hail Suwako, frog queen of ultimate pain. I keep checking the wiki after boss fights for stats on the fight and knowing exactly why what I did worked, and the level recommendations always seem terribly high. For this last fight? 115+. WTF. Maybe the level scale was different before a patch or something? If I'd had 40 more levels I'd probably win without swapping characters.
 

Crooked Bee

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Yeah, the Wiki was definitely written by mindless grinders. :P

And even though I read the last patch made the game better balanced, I doubt that can explain such a drastic difference in recommended levels.
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Holy fuck is the next floor tough. Looks like I'm in for some mindless grinding after all. There is an enemy which fucking refills the guages for it's entire team, including itself. And it goes after it's teamates. But still before nearly anyone on my team. And some of these attacks are more powerful than the boss I just fought. :x I'll probably ninja my way around with Chen and Aya for treasure chests and then go grind on a lower floor where I can pop groups with one or two spells before they can move. I've been hetting shit for items lately too. No drops from bosses and only common stuff from enemies.
 
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The Floor 12 boss fight is pure awesome. Did it at lvl 44ish. You can basically take them down in any order if you know how to handle them. Also, great battle music for it.


F13+ battles seemed really hard at first since I'm apparently always underleveled. At first I just ran around avoiding 75% of the fights and made it to floor 15. Then, seeing as how I always deal with problems in the most directly blunt way imaginable, I spent some 50k skill points raising Cirno to +50 SPD, making her total SPD 200 (atm that is 15 levels later, it was something like 180 at first I believe) after items. Pretty much nothing can act before either Chen kills it or Cirno stuns it, and since I'm also working on Reimu's SPD Cirno + Reimu together can alternate stunning while the other focuses to regain energy and the whole party can effectively leave most battles with more SP then they came into it. Crazy awesome :lol:
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Wish I'd levelled Cirno that way. I'm level ~80 now and Cirno's speed is only 186. And thats with some speed gear on. Cirno mostly only gets swapped in for boss fights where the boss has some debuff resistance and I need the solid 50% speed to get through it instead of some pussy ass 25% debuff others use.

Floor 18 had an item on it that made all the running around worthwhile though. Among other things, it gives +88% speed. Finally went back down and killed the earthquake whore on level 15. I can manage to win a fight or two per excursion on floor 18, but I need to run away from about half the enemy types that appear, which tanks my TP I need to rest so I can burn up the ones I can fight. Next boss is blocking my path now, so I'm going to backtrack and see what I missed on some of the earlier floors. Should be simple to farm xp if I need to, I have like 4-5 mages that can nuke multi targets for crazy amounts now. Might try to farm on floor 17 though, I got a sweet item drop from battle there. Come to think of it, the LotR items seem to kick ass more than the others.
 
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I actually haven't put a single point into SPD for Cirno. Or any character in fact, I don't think raising speed is a good idea in the long run based on the mechanics. She has 3 Getitups that give +30% to all stats (useful because she needs ATK/MAG/SPD all at once, and DEF/MND boosts make her able to survive a hit in the 2nd spot after Reimu).
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Ah, that'd make the difference. Cirno's speed gear is pretty shitty, all the good stuff is on healers and buffers. Speed seems like a good investment for those kind of characters, since their defenses are usually paper anyways, and they don't need much SP or offensive power. Reisen is another good candidate. Both for being able to lower the mind on the whole enemy team before some like Ran really nukes them, and for spamming Discarder during boss fights. I'll agree it's not worth it on anyone trying to deal damage though. 20% more attack power is going to put out a hell of a lot more damage than 20% more turns, by a lot.
 
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That's not to say I don't level SPD with skill points when its cheap on all characters, just not with the level up bonuses (which almost always go to ATK/MAG if they buff anything useful or MND/DEF if not). For healers/buffers I immediately switch them out as soon as they are done anyway, so speed generally isn't that big of an issue. Even if you wanted Reisen to spam discarder you are better off switching her out and then back in again with Chen or Aya (and if you want, get a turn with another character for minimal loss of time as well).

For non-boss fights of course, all that is important is that you either outspeed them with your damage dealers or outspeed them with your stunners. I did go a bit overboard on Cirno though, but 50 is a nice neat number to end at and I didn't feel like checking to see exactly what speed I needed to get in the first strike.
 
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What Crooked Bee wrote:
Looking for a good new dungeon crawler to play? Look no further!

Labyrinth of Touhou is a hardcore -- as in, brutal -- doujin (i.e., indie) japanese turn-based RPG/dungeon crawler for PC. It's quite challenging -- but not grind-ey if you play it in a smart way -- definitely more challenging than Etrian Odyssey, which is what this game is usually (not entirely correctly) compared to, and loads of fun. It's also extremely abstract, being all about numbers and party customization, the only downside being the typical wapanese anime art style.

If you can get past that, however, the game has a lot to offer. You navigate a multi-level dungeon, represented as simply a network of corridors with special symbols for "events", and fight in random and scripted encounters, during which the game switches to first person, meaning it's basically a blobber. It is, however, a very good blobber, with some fairly complex dungeons and a lot of skills, equipment items, and attributes to explore.

There are 40 player characters in toto, but you're supposed to build a team of 12 characters chosen from among those, with 4 of them active and 8 in reserve. Apart from the usual increase in a character's stats on a level-up, you also can collect and spend Skill points on fine-tuning a character with amazing results, a process in which a lot depends on this particular character's natural strengths and weaknesses. For each character, you must -- as in, bye-bye if you don't -- find out a role he or she will best fulfill in the party, depending on the overall composition of your party as well as your play style. There's no saving and no resurrection inside the dungeon, there're no healing items, only abilities requiring a lot of Spell points -- and healing spells are extremely rare so that you can't rely on them too thoughtlessly -- and there are many parameters you totally must take into account, such as a character's TP (basically the amount of time the character can spend inside a dungeon before going back to the base), a character's elemental affinities and resistances (there are six elements, which can be of vital importance in a battle), status effects (some of which are *very* nasty) and affliction resistances, as well as the usual things like Speed (the battle system is action gauge-based, so that if your characters' speed is not high enough or you can't find a way to reduce the enemy's speed, the party may get spammed to death by certain bosses), physical and magic defense, etc. The characters are very frail, and a couple of hits may more often than not kill them, especially in tougher encounters. You can actually switch characters in-battle, but that won't help you if you approach a tough encounter carelessly, and you're probably going to lose some progress, too. Positioning matters, as exposing a character with low defense to an enemy's attacks means certain one-hit death, and a character's death may often spell death for the entire party. So, in any case, prepare to die. A lot.

Overall, I've become really addicted to this game in the last few days, and you should, too. Despite being a blobber, it has much more strategy in it than most RPGs these days, or any days actually. Also, surprisingly enough, it has been pretty well-balanced so far, so that if you lose, you tend to feel like that's your own fault, not the game's.

What 1eyedking saw:
Looking for a good new dungeon crawler to play? Look no further!

Labyrinth of Touhou is a hardcore -- as in, brutal -- doujin (i.e., indie) japanese turn-based RPG/dungeon crawler for PC. It's quite challenging -- but not grind-ey if you play it in a smart way -- definitely more challenging than Etrian Odyssey, which is what this game is usually (not entirely correctly) compared to, and loads of fun. It's also extremely abstract, being all about numbers and party customization, the only downside being the typical wapanese anime
art style

If you can get past that, however, the game has a lot to offer. You navigate a multi-level dungeon, represented as simply a network of corridors with special symbols for "events", and fight in random and scripted encounters, during which the game switches to first person, meaning it's basically a blobber. It is, however, a very good blobber, with some fairly complex dungeons and a lot of skills, equipment items, and attributes to explore.

There are 40 player characters in toto, but you're supposed to build a team of 12 characters chosen from among those, with 4 of them active and 8 in reserve. Apart from the usual increase in a character's stats on a level-up, you also can collect and spend Skill points on fine-tuning a character with amazing results, a process in which a lot depends on this particular character's natural strengths and weaknesses. For each character, you must -- as in, bye-bye if you don't -- find out a role he or she will best fulfill in the party, depending on the overall composition of your party as well as your play style. There's no saving and no resurrection inside the dungeon, there're no healing items, only abilities requiring a lot of Spell points -- and healing spells are extremely rare so that you can't rely on them too thoughtlessly -- and there are many parameters you totally must take into account, such as a character's TP (basically the amount of time the character can spend inside a dungeon before going back to the base), a character's elemental affinities and resistances (there are six elements, which can be of vital importance in a battle), status effects (some of which are *very* nasty) and affliction resistances, as well as the usual things like Speed (the battle system is action gauge-based, so that if your characters' speed is not high enough or you can't find a way to reduce the enemy's speed, the party may get spammed to death by certain bosses), physical and magic defense, etc. The characters are very frail, and a couple of hits may more often than not kill them, especially in tougher encounters. You can actually switch characters in-battle, but that won't help you if you approach a tough encounter carelessly, and you're probably going to lose some progress, too. Positioning matters, as exposing a character with low defense to an enemy's attacks means certain one-hit death, and a character's death may often spell death for the entire party. So, in any case, prepare to die. A lot.

Overall, I've become really addicted to this game in the last few days, and you should, too. Despite being a blobber, it has much more strategy in it than most RPGs these days, or any days actually. Also, surprisingly enough, it has been pretty well-balanced so far, so that if you lose, you tend to feel like that's your own fault, not the game's.

:lol:

never change, codex
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Seems like you can never get enough honestly. You'll be all good for one floor then the next has some asshate enemies that are WAY faster than you.

As far as switching buffers out, for someone like Aya or Minoriko, the delay on their abilities is so low it's quicker to let them just go again. I can see your point if you use people like Reimu and Sakuya for buffing though. I also end up using my switchers (Usually a tank) to swap out a buffed hero so the buffs don't degrade and I can put buffs on a fresh hero. I sort of spend the first part of a boss fight in defensive mode like that, just trying to spread buffs everywhere, then I go pull out the speedy roid raging nukers to blow shit up in between big hits from the boss while the buffers and tanks are either dead or healing in reserve.

Backtracking turned out to be very helpful: Aside from earning more xp in 10 minutes of floor 15 than I got in an hour on floor 18, there were some nice items to collect and a new recruit, who seems to be Chen only far far more useful. Well, Chen did have that sweet defense piercing move, I'll miss that. I somehow forgot to explore a significant chunk of floor 14, which was pretty derp of me given the layout. I missed a few small chunks on 15 too, but there was nothing there so it was just xp and finally using those circles to get some nice items.

Edit: Picked up the chick from floor 12 too. Seems like another nice addition, I'm running out of worthy gear to go around. Need more skill points too, couldn't fully flesh her out.
Edit 2: Yet another recruit. This one is going to be shelved for now though, SP costs are way too high.
Edit 3: Boss is still raping me at highest level 87. Going to resort to some grindan. Shouldn't take much, he's taking shitloads of damage, I just can't outspeed him enough for my characters to swap in and out effectively, they keep getting murdered before they do anything.
 

Crooked Bee

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Do you guys think investing skill points in elemental affinities is worth it? Or are things like SPD, MAG, ATK, DEF, MND always a better option? According to the Wiki,

Wiki said:
The damage modification for elemental attacks is based off of 100 / Affinity , meaning that the value is a nonlinear result. For instance, an affinity of "50" results in taking 2.0x times as much damage, while an affinity of "150" only results in 0.66x as much damage.

I just can't decide how to best proceed (I'm still way behind you, 9F now).
 

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I invest some skill points (Not level points) into affinities when it's cheap enough, and also to bring up affinities under 100. Like the wiki says, going from 50 to 100 is effectively twice as much hp. Going from 100 to 150 is only 50% more hp. This is somewhat balanced by the fact that like all the other stats, it's cheaper to upgrade affinities you're already strong in. Overall, I'd put a low budget on it, maybe 5% of the points I spend go to affinities. Most of it ends up on MAG/ATK, HP/SP, and Speed. My most decked out character has something like 40 levels in HP/SP, 40 ATK, 60 MAG, 30 DEF/MND, and 50 Speed. Affinities are only 15.

Boss still raping me at level 90 now. Gave up and checked on the wiki, from the fight description I'm going to need at least 10 more levels to have a decent chance. Glad I checked, I had some false hope for a bit there when his attack pattern changed a bit. Ironically the recommended level is only 5 above the previous boss, which I killed at level 80. This time the estimate looks halfway accurate.
 
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Its probably worth it to seriously invest in affinities when the end game comes around and you can afford to actually take away character's weaknesses with 50x in it. But early on I don't think its that important. When a boss sends a fire attack against Cirno having 60 vs fire instead of 50 vs fire it just makes her dead 4x over instead of 5x over. If you want to keep her alive you have to use one of those items that gives +128 vs fire. If you still want +ATK or +MAG there are plenty of items that combine that with +affinity and give you far more then you could buy yourself. And as far as already high affinities, its the only stat in which increasing it gives decreasing returns the more you put in rather than increasing returns (ATK/MAG) or flat returns (all other stats).

Certainly, get it when its cheap though. Often when I have a large amount of points available I'll just buy whatever is cheapest for my characters.
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Well, it's not necessarily decreasing returns if you look at it as effective HP%. Say Cirno has 1000 HP and 50 fire resist. She effectively has 500 HP vs fire. Every point of affinity is going to give her 10 points of effective hp vs fire. + 50 points will be + 500 HP, bringing her to normal. The next 50 points is another 500 effective HP too. So it's not diminishing returns any more than HP is. At some point it's going to be cheaper to just raise HP obviously, but HP raises on it's own, affinities don't. The main problem is there are 6 affinities and non elemental attacks besides; and getting all of them up significantly ain't cheap. So it's really only worth it to survive a particular attack, either from random enemies or a boss, or when it's trivially cheap. (Fucking Ether Flare and Wind of Souls)

There are some strong affinity items, but later on there are some REALLY strong stat items too, and I'd rather spend 100,000 skillpoints in SPI affinity from level 10 to 40 than 1,000,000 to raise ATK/DEF/SPD/MND/MAG by another 10 points each when they're already at 40+.
 
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Flandre is chewing me out at the moment. Slash drive is horrible, half the time she kills either Tenshi or Meiling in the first turn before I even have the chance to buff their defenses. Holy crap is she fast. May leave her and come back after 5 floors of leveling.

EDIT: Wow, next time I tried all my buffs decided to stick and she had -50% speed the entire time. Weird. I wish there was some way to not leave debuffs up to pure luck.

DamnedRegistrations said:
Well, it's not necessarily decreasing returns if you look at it as effective HP%. Say Cirno has 1000 HP and 50 fire resist. She effectively has 500 HP vs fire. Every point of affinity is going to give her 10 points of effective hp vs fire. + 50 points will be + 500 HP, bringing her to normal. The next 50 points is another 500 effective HP too. So it's not diminishing returns any more than HP is.

Hmm, OK. I think I was looking at it wrong. That would seem to make it contribute exactly the same amount to survivability as HP per point when >100 and 2x as much when <100. So long as you are hit by the affinity, that is. Interesting.

DamnedRegistrations said:
There are some strong affinity items, but later on there are some REALLY strong stat items too, and I'd rather spend 100,000 skillpoints in SPI affinity from level 10 to 40 than 1,000,000 to raise ATK/DEF/SPD/MND/MAG by another 10 points each when they're already at 40+

This is more a case of cheaper = better, as I said before. Affinity may be weaker than other stats but pretty much no stat is 10x weaker unless its EVA or an attack stat you don't use.
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Yeah I couldn't get debuffs to stick on her at all. I think I even tried Komachi and the -EVA wouldn't even stick, and that shit is fucking -150%. I ended up winning because Tenshi couldn't be hurt by her unless he buffs dropped under 20%, so I could do a rotation of focus 5x attack once then rebuff and she'd never get hurt.

Started grinding in earnest, as much as I hate the chore. Setup a team that can take out any enemy in two spells tops, ideally speeded so that they can focus enough to never need rest or run out of SP. Enemies never get turns. Still only pulling in about 4k skillpoints and 7k xp per minute, so I'm looking at minimum of 2 hours of this shit to get the levels I need. UGH. This boss should have been tweaked down a bit, or xp rewards from most recent enemies tweaked up. Getting less than a tenth of a level for killing a group that will destroy your entire team in a single round regardless of buffs or tankiness is retarded.
 
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You know you can disable the spell animations to make the battles about 5x faster, right? Check config.exe, second checkbox.
 

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