Labyrinth of Touhou 19F

[Ghaleon]

I haven't played that part of 2 in so long, but for LoT in general. It's good to identify if a boss' killer nuke is physically based or Magic based (I don't mean by element, but in terms of if Defense or Mind reduces its damage). Lots of characters that aren't neccesarily tanks can be pretty tanky for that attack type specifically. For example, Patchouli, parsee, Hina, Minoruko can often survive mnd-targeting attacks better than an even pure tank like Tenshi or Meiling, likewise, even if you built them for attack, characters like youmu, yuugi, Remilia, etc can take a def-targeting attack pretty decently. I find that pure aoe attacks th at really smart target mnd more often than defense however, defense ones tend to be more single target or row-attack.

You mention library levels, you for sure want to spread those out. Level up bonuses you generally want to invest in 1, maybe 2 stats, but the skill library, It's normally best to spend them pretty evenly among the relevant stats. By relevant, I mean all defensive stats (except maybe patchy's defense, Yuugi's Mind, etc, but even then it's worth spending some points into them while they are really really inexpensive comapred to t he other stats), and whatever attack stat your character uses. If they have composite attacks that you actually use, you generally can afford to spend half as many levels on the 'other' attack stat since they generally don't matter so much, and your points are better spent elsewhere, but still get at least half for sure because the investment is low and the return will be noticeable.

As for affinities, I haven't really figured that out for lot2 yet. I'd cram it up  in lot1 pretty mindlessly, but in lot2 they scale up in cost REALLY fast. Probably best to just spend them so that they are about the same cost, maybe double of your 'usual' stats (cost per level, not actual level).

Finally, I don't know how reliably you are at debuffing bosses. But I find that that debuffing bosses in lot2 to be a bit more reliable than it is in 1. You aren't going to get them -50% on everything, but even -10% on all stats makes a big differense, and if you can make them -10% on most stats AND -30%ish on one stat, it helps a lot. I find in lot1 lots of bosses had hard debuff immunities across the board, but in 2 it seemed to be more of a thing to be expected of you.

[Thurler]

I did some digging today to uncover the numbers for a mechanic I noticed some time ago while doing bosses way under challenge level: you get a boost in drop rates based on your party's average level. This stacks on top of what the game shows you as the "Drop Rate Bonus" on the victory screen, and can be a very significant boost depending on how big the level difference is between your average level and the enemy's level.

I made a pastebin with a "mock" python code that explains how the formula works and gives examples of how this boost would happen. It should be readable enough that someone with zero background in programming can follow along: https://pastebin.com/f1m633qc

For a brief explanation in plain english though: each enemy has 8 item drop slots, each slot has a number 0-10000 describing how likely that drop is. The values in % you see in the bestiary are simply that number / 100, so a 50% drop would have a value of 5000. Some spells and skills affect this base drop rate, such as Nazrin's Rare Metal Detector doubling the (base) drop rate, and Radiant Treasure Gun giving a 1.25x boost to this base drop rate.

After computing the modified base rate, the game applies a multiplier to that value, based on the consecutive battle bonus, the amount of items held that increase drop rate, whether the frontline knows some skills, and the difference between the party's average level and the enemy's level. The game then multiplies the modified base drop rate with the multiplier (the one you see on the victory screen), arriving at a final value that gives your final probability of dropping an item. It then rolls a random number 0-9999 and uses that to check whether an item should be dropped or not.

A quick example, Nazrin killing a Small Kedama with Rare Metal Detector, with Dowsing learned and Kourin in the frontline with Lv.10 Shopkeeper, with no consecutive battles bonus:

• Base drop chances: [200, 320]
• Modified base drop chances: [400, 640]
• Base Multiplier: 100%
• Dowsing bonus: 120%
• Shopkeeper bonus: 160%
• Final drop chances: [640, 1024]

The 2% drop rate for a Piece of Heart becomes 6.4%, and the 3.2% Kedama's Fur Bundle becomes 10.24%. Since the Small Kedama is Lv.1, there's no way to get an extra bonus based on your party's level, but if the enemy was, say, Lv.100, and your party's average was Lv.80, you would get an additional +60% in that multiplier, which would further boost your odds at dropping those items.

One final note: the Appraiser skill "Kill bonus: Drops" is bugged and improves the base drop rate chance by 40% instead of 16% as stated in the game. This is because it applies a 7/6 bonus, which would yield the correct 16% increase, but then applies a 6/5 bonus as well on top of that. Very weird.

[Ghaleon]

That's nice to know. I just f igured you got a static increase for doing it under challenge level. This kinda makes high stat slow level characters more attractive... The challenge level thing stops becoming a thing post game though right? I forget.

Anyway I've been pondering on making a 2nd play-thru simultaneously with my current one (currently at 11f) using some characters I overlooked at somewhat before. Kinda. I remember when lot2 was new I though Kogasa was surprisingly good, so I kinda want to try her again. Based on my last post, I've been eyeballing reisen... I just auto-ignored her before because she's probably my least favorite character in the Touhou universe, but discarder looks sooo dang good, and her vertigo eye thing looks broken too, I plan to combine her with Hina again because I'm not using Hinda in my current playthru, which is painful because I really enjoyed her in my last one that I cut short.

I also don't like the hp only sponge tank thing people like, but I figured I'd give it a shot for once, so that means Komachi of course. Also th inking of Eiki because her team synergy skill thing has no requirement and is strong so may as well, plus she can carry the high defense main game content somewhat.

I like parsee already in lot2, but having kogasa and hina and not parsee just seems like a waste, so having her as a safe choice as I experiment seems good. I'm also th inking of attack build Meiling. I consider Kasen as Remi+, but looking at attack build Meiling, she may also fit the bill. Finally Byakuren because none of these characters have  buffing as a forte, and she's pretty good at buffing everything.

So so far I got:

Byakuren, Meiling, Kogasa, Parsee
Hina, Komachi, Reisen, Eiki

Looks like  I'm lacking a healer, I always have Minoruke and reimu, so I kinda don't want to have them, but they are both so good at it. Any suggestions without making me feeling like I'm playing a handicap run? I'm thinking of going Minoruke again, and dumping reimu. Still can't figure out who else to put in, any suggestions?

edit: Lack of Mag nukes too, so I'm thinking Rumia without any other team 9 to get her solo synergy buff (solo synergy lul)

[kael070]

Challenge level stops being a thing once you reach

Spoiler:

Yamata no Orochi

, don't know exactly why though, but I guess because bloated values on exp start to give very different average levels on the party as the floor number goes up, so you may end with a team of fast levelers that naturally go beyond the challenge level, and if you went with slow level characters you could be like 50 levels below challenge level and still do fine.

[Ghaleon]

welp, made another party for another playthru.

Not sure if anyone cares but just so you don't think too hard about it when I already selected it, I got:

Komachi cuz I never tried a squishy high hp sponge tank before, I hate the concept but will give it a go.

Eiki cuz her synergy skill is powerful and easy to access and even without it defense ignoring attacks are nice main-game, and I hear spirit is a good element post-game, so win/win I guess.

Rumia cuz team 9 has a solo skill that looks good, and I hear weak stat fast levelers are pretty good in plus disk, so I'd like to see how, with a character I thought wasn't bad already mind you, dark side of the moon  always seemed to h it like a truck coming from someone with low stats.
(totally off topic though, but where does the Touhou lore about rumia being an op maniac like Flandre who is suppressed by.. I forget... her hairband? b racelet? something?, come from? Does said lore mention how much it suppresses her? just curious)

Kogasa because originally I already thought she WAS good, and like rumia, she is a low stat fast leveler with a surprisingly good dark attack. I guess the atk/def  version of rumia instead of the mag/mnd version. Even now though kogasa seems better because high def always seemed rare compared to high mnd, in addition, kogasa's surprisingly good dark nuke comes with a terror debuff and 'arm twisting' =P, while rumia's does not. We'll see long term I suppose though.

Reisen cuz I dislike her and I recently looked at her kit and thought, yeah sure, she looks good.. blah.

Hina cuz Reisen's vertigo skill helps other debuffers alot too, and who else debuffs like hina? I've played  with hina before, and am curious how m uch of a difference vertigo eyes make for her.

Meiling Attack because I always have her as a tank, but I can see how op her mountain breaker is. I'm curious what it's like to not use her as a tank, and  use her as a dps who can take a hit with it is.

Minoruke cuz I have no healers at all still, and  komachi has a bigass health pool to deal with, Meiling does too even if her def stats are low (her hp isn't), and I got mokou, yeah.

Byakuren because I have no buffers at all, or any majesty characters yet, I need a super buffer, and she fits the bill.

Parsee as something of a carry because I know her, and having hina and risen and kogasa. Parsee will have all the requirements she needs to shine pretty much.

I couldn't figure out my last two, b ut I guess I teased one by mistake.

Mokou: She looks like trash to me, but was the accidental spoiler. Her stats aren't bad, but they aren't great either, and her level up rate doesn't really change it. Her spells are really quite poor as well imo given how she is limited to 2 elements only. Her main single target attack formula isn't even better than the warrior subclass base attack. However this is exactly what I'm looking for. A character with stats that doesn't seem bad, but spell formulas that DOES. Seems like the perfect swordmaster candidate to me. Looking forward to trying it.

Last, Keine, I decided on her before mokou after seeing her plus disk s kills. I saw her base stat upgrade one, and sat there mouth-agape for a minute. Just like i wanted a not bad stat bad formula attacker for swordmaster, I wanted one for archmage, and Keine delivers. Her spells are dung, her s tats are meh, butr her level up rate is ok, but who cares cuz both her stats and her spells don't stand out. I want to see how archmage spells stick out as a whole using a character with seemingly broken stats (which plus disk keine seems to be).

[Gobbles]

Welp I'm just a bit too late with this. But some suggestions if you want to change your mind.

Eirin is a pretty good healer, if you subclass her for it. With subclass heal she can overheal squishy characters to twice or trice their max HP. She also has limited armour piercing so can do reliable damage.

Also fun to use now that you picked Komachi is Satori. She can copy Komachi's Narrow Confines of Avici, which is an extremely powerful holy nuke. I believe of all abilities in the game, only Marisa's master spark is (slightly) more powerful.

Speaking of hp sponge tanks, I noticed Aya is a really good in that regard as well. High evasion and HP make up for her low defense. But more importantly she has excellent support skills, so she always has stuff to do even as strategist.

For surprise archmage: I wonder how well Renko would do. Her magic stat is pitable, but her leveling rate is ridiculous. With some books and gems she can become fairly powerful. Plus since her speed and hp are so high you can afford to spend all leveling points in magic.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah renko looks like an interesting choice for mage, but I dunno if she can compare to Keine without deliberately giving her all the best gear for maintenance, which I know is kinda what you do with that skill but it makes it hard to tell how good the character is as a base, and how much of it is that you're playing favorites with them. I'm using her in my only postgame content game too so I don't want to re-use her.

I was eyeballing Eirin instead of Minoruke, but Minoruke heals faster, is great against trash, and I actually think she makes a good magician. It's not on the wiki. But her  mp is sky high, and her spells are cheap (well the aoe one isn't but you don't tend to use th at for bosses), with her fast leveling and regen and def buff/heal in one. She's really good at staying out and keeping someone beefy out with her, and since she's fast, I find I often don't have to use a turn healing, or maybe even switching if my attackers aren't full bar nukers. So giving them that mana battery buff thing is something I like to do to keep people's mp bars high, beefy attackers in particular tend to use efficient low delay nukes that allow them to stay out several turns, but th en poop out and be gone for some time, so keeping mp up on them really helps them do what they're already good at for even longer. Magician is the mp healing class right? that's the one I'm talking about. Oh yeah, and her super concentrate when low mp thing makes it so even if she has no mp to share, she gets it all back super fast.

I never used Satori yet Satori copying narrow confines DOES sound good, though I have to wonder  narrow confines uses mag not atk, so Komachi has to effectively waste a turn doing it first right (I mean I imagine it's a waste to do it for damage with Komachi alone, you do it for the debuffs, but if you're looking for damage, it do esn't deliver with her very well I would think). But then Satori comes in and makes good use of it. Does Komachi have to do it every time for every time Satori does? Or can Komachi do it once, and Satori proceed to spam it for as long as you like? It does sound interesting though. I'll probably give it a shot if I end up being able to live with the sponge tank thing enough to play with komachi again later.

Sponge tank Aya also sounds interesting, but I only want one sponge tank for my first time trying it, and Komachi is pretty much the gold standard. Well I guess Mokou can also be a sponge tank, I didn't select her to be an alternate tank specifically though. But I suppose she'll end up with that job on occasion if needed.

I just hope I like Keine archmage lol. I have to wait a really long time before I get to make use of that, especially this is my secondary run in a simultaneous run thing going on. Mokou on the other hand I'm expecting not to be too keen on. She's not exactly a high stats bad formula character, but more like a decent stats below average formula character, so I don't expect her to make good use of swordmaster nearly as well as Keine will be an archmage, but I really coudln't find someone who seems to fit in like Keine does. I was thinking Mystia, but opted for mokou because I know mystia is actually pretty good, and mokou I'm skeptical of, and then there is the keine synergy.

[FabulaFares]

Satori gets to copy all personal spellcards from her frontline allies, you don't need to have the character actually use the spell for Satori to be able to use it; as long as Komachi and Satori are both in front, Satori can use Narrow Confines.

[Ghaleon]

simultaneous playtru fail. I accidentally saved over it. I hate it when games auto-select a different save file than the one you loaded from lol. At least I was only on the 2nd floor.

[Marbychu]

simultaneous playtru fail. I accidentally saved over it. I hate it when games auto-select a different save file than the one you loaded from lol. At least I was only on the 2nd floor.

ouch, that's rough. You could always try to keep a backup of the save folder that has the save you want to keep, but then you have to replace the backup every time you make progress. I'm currently playing through not one, not two, but FOUR playthroughs myself, and I'm worried that I'm gonna save over one of those, or Kanako forbid, my 5th file that has all of my Plus Disk progress.

Each of those 4 other playthroughs uses a different set of characters. There are 48 characters you can start with on a NG once you beat the enhanced final boss, there are 12 you can actually use, and there are 4 save files that I wasn't using. The math works out perfectly.

I limited myself to 3 healers per team (doesn't seem like much of a limitation until you realize that I'm counting characters like Yuuka and Mystia, whose heals are very situational, as healers), and anyone with kinship/synergy skills (like Yukari/Ran/Chen or Aya/Nitori/Momiji/Hina, even though the latter is postgame only due to Awakenings) must be on the same team. Each team is based around a leader, though I have no special rules in place regarding them (basically, if they die, I'm not declaring it a game over or anything. That would be WAY too rough). The leaders of each team are one of the four characters you start off with in a normal NG: Reimu, Marisa, Keine, and... Rinnosuke... ugh.

So far, I've only extensively played with Reimu's team, which I am calling Border Team for obvious reasons, up to the 4th floor. It consists of Reimu, the Palace of Earth Spirits crew (minus Koishi since she's only recruitable after Plus Disk starts), the SDM residents, and Yukari and her spinny gals. Komachi wasn't nearly as much of an issue as I thought she'd be; turns out, Patchouli is Very Freaking Good. I started with Keine's team afterwards, but haven't even gotten to 2F yet. History team consists of Keine and Mokou, Sealing Club, Moriya Shrine Katamari, and the Youkai Mountain crew, including Minoriko even though I don't think she gets a synergy skill with the rest of them. I've had a bit more trouble coming up with a strategy for clearing trash mobs than I did with Border Team, so any suggestions are welcome.

[Ghaleon]

I never used Rinnosuke too much other than my current playthru. But I've seen other people really swear by him due to his high stats after skill point spending (they are expensive though, so mine is still just a loot upgrade device trying to act as a not quite tank. I mean I swap him out instead of my tank on occasion and generally takes one hit and I'm like ohcrapohcrapohcrap before I switch him out a gain lol. Hopefully th at wont last much longer because I'm now at the point where I CAN spend skillpoints on his def/mnd high stats.

I'd be more worried about Marisa. She was one of my fave characters in Lot1 because asteroid belt was such a good fast aoe nuke that was extremely good at piercing defenses to boot (had like a 1/4mnd formula instead of the usual 1/2mnd). On top of that, her master spark just seemed to hit way harder, and her mp recharge was faster so you could realistically use it multiple times in a boss fight. I haven't used her in lot2 for some time, but she no longer has a great defense piercing aoe for trash, and her master spark can hit bosses for 0! Arm twisting (renamed forcefulness I think?)helps, but it doesn't make it go from 0 to hero, but rather, just your average nuke (except the obscene c ost), combine that with the fact that switch out mp regen in 2 seems WAY slower than lot1, you aren't going to be using it multiple times per boss fight unless they are REALLY long (and even then it's unlikely you will with the 100% extra mp investment buff thing).

As for your 2nd team, it actually has some great trash cleaners in it IMO. Nitori is great, though she wont shine until you get maintenance with a good item or two. I put the wash basin set I got since 6f I believe on her, and ever since then she's been 1shotting entire packs of trash all the way up to floor 14 or something, and even then she generally 1shots everything except really odd enemies like gelatinous cubes and those looking from the voids. Aya is also possibly even better than Nitori, not because of her own personal attacks, not that they are bad. But being able to instantly fill up a slower character's timebar effectively makes it so you can make anyone you want get the jump on the enemies, Great for patchy. Too bad she's not in the same party =P. Still though, any time you have a character that would be good at trash but comes out too slow, just slap em with Aya. Best part is that because Aya is fast, you can use up all her mp when you start a dive doing that, and then when she runs out, do your backup party, and aya will always get mp back after because she's the fastest, so she'll get her mp regen 'turn' for sure when off front lines...Except maybe if you 1shot everything with Chen. I don't remember who is faster after factoring level stuff, probably down to the items they are wearing.

I think Mokou is decent at it too, but never played with her much, and Minoriko is excellent too. Kinda like Nitori without a frost nuke option, nature only. But she's fast, and even if you build her full mnd/hp (not mag), it hits surprisingly hard and fast.

[FabulaFares]

Honestly Rinnosuke's High Boost skills aren't that amazing, they mostly just compensate for his otherwise low stats and make them decent. Most of the value Rinnosuke provides in a team is based on his passive reward bonuses and Effective Formation Change; the latter makes any character Rino switched in get 9100 ATB instead of 7500, which is really useful. Sadly the fast switches become obsolete once Plus Disk Speed inflation comes into the picture.

Marisa generally has it rough during the Main/Post game, partly because so many bosses resist MYS. She performs excellently in Plus Disk though, since damage multipliers become more important, making Master Spark a fearsome nuke that can generally oneshot non-resistant bosses with some setup.

[Ghaleon]

at the pre-plus postgame now. Killed all the shadow bosses up to knowledge, which I guess I'll bite the bullet for and bring orin or something, explored 11f extra and 10f extra, starting 9f now. I don't really remember how I unlock a character's plus disk only skills, is that in the basement floors? Those start at about the same difficulty as the  21f rock unlocking bosses right? So take a crack at a floor or two after I explore all the extra floors approximately?

Also, does lot2 have a charagraph-like thing like lot1 special disk? Some people mention enemy formulas and stuff but I do n't know where to find them, I would LOVE a charagraph-like folder for 2!

Also, I'm almost at plus disk content, which is when you start getting stat up gems that you use on characters who hit the 10 cap on the  stat gems. I however, despite killing everything at the challenge level, have only maxed out on 1 or 2 characters on each of the various stat gems. Was there a way to farm more asides from the final boss? Was it infinity gems? I don't remember if infinity gems were too valuable/rare to 'waste' on stat up gems like that or not.


So far with this run some observations of mine.

Remilia, contrary to looking like a weaker Kasen on paper, is in fact MVP for me and my playstyle much like lot1. I recall dark being a more useful element than physical, yet for some reason, I find that the monk's nature nuke kinda works whenever kasen's dark nuke would, and when it doesn't, physical is more useful. I don't know if it's because I have the full sdm team and that makes a big difference, but it doesn't really seem like it since I rarely have remi out with anyone else other than China for long periods of times during bosses. In addition, her last fortress has really helped sometimes. Like the 1f shadow boss. That m-effer was  1shotting like half my party with its adds, ad before long my Remi and her last fortress was able to tank like 12 of those hits when even my pure tank built china could only eat 5, barely, when her def was stacked high (and remi's was always high due to majesty+monk thing). Same went for the wasp. That turn would just randomly up and 1shot my non tanks, and it is so fast you can't really make yourself swap in and out safely, so I'd just have to risk it at times, but after some deaths, last fortress really seems to stack nicely.

Patchouli seems to be doing better this time around than I recall before too. I have been giving her all my speed gems (capped now), but she just doesn't seem that slow with the appropriate mag/speed gear like lilliums panties. I'm looking forward to her +disk skill to make her element resisting piercing ability even better. Also, I made her monk thinking that  seems silly since she's a mag user, but holy smokes is it actually really good. Being able to start with a full bar and concentrate faster on a character with grand incantation and as many aoe nukes as her is win, it could also be what's contributing to her surprisingly not slow speed. I'm looking forward to getting hp on her too. I may yet be able to keep her out for extended periods of time for maxium sdm synergy buffs with  china and remi.

I haven't made sakuya very useful for bosses yet, but she's great on trash.

I can't make Kanako good. I just can't. I'm giving her all my mag gems, I gave her the same equipment as Patchouli, but she's nuking bosses for 0 fairly often, and the ones that don't have super high defenses, she isn't hitting for great amounts, even the ones weak to cold. I don't think she was even slightly better than average against a single boss since floor 10 or 12 or something. hopefully her plus disk skills will carry her, but I'm skeptical.

It's hard to tell how useful she is since it's easy to take for granted the buffs you get from before but forgot about, but I'm just feeling like Ran isn't as good in 2 as 1. the mp  growth and regen in lot2 is just way slower, and once you throw a few buffs out, she's kind of just there doing nothing. She's kinda tanky but not enough to really make a good one. the mp from plus skills doesn't seem that attractive to me, I'd rather have mp regen on her, and her arithmatic thing is nice, but even maxed out it doesn't even kick in 50% of the time. The tofu thing on the other hand makes it look like she will in fact become a great tank. I think I might change her subclass too by then to something that might take advantage of her boosted offensive stats too (currently a strategist). The  speed increase from the tofu will help with mp regen at least, yay.

Rinnosuke now has high def and high mnd, and he is definitely a good sub tank for China currently. First aid is also nice just for debuff clearing. His fast switching is also nice... He's basically full of things that make you go 'oh that's nice', but he still isn't really making the difference on any fights. I have hopes for him though because the increased money and drop rates aren't nothing, and his +disk debuff skill looks absolutely nuts, so I'm hoping he'll go from nice to actually good.

[FabulaFares]

The awakening skills are obtained in the Infinity Corridor, which you unlock eventually as you go through Plus Disk content.

Enemy formulas and ai can be found on the first post of this topic, in "Various info files on enemies/stats/formulas etc.:". Keep in mind it's sorta outdated since this was datamined before Plus Disk came out, but a lot of it is still accurate.

Don't worry too much about stat up gems, if you don't farm them on the final boss, your realistically won't max them out until much, much later. Just focus your gems and jewels on the most relevant stats of your best characters.

[Serela]

Pre-Plus postgame is an absolute strawberriesshow, to be entirely honest. Most fights have WAYYYY too much def/mind for almost anyone to function, and some of them are just absurdly hard even if you really know what you're doing. I'd just overlevel for most of it and don't try to evaluate characters based off that area. Once you enter Plus Disk content the balance is completely different.

Kanako is pretty solid and her Awakening is excellent, and Sanae eventually outclasses Byakuren in late plus as a support tank with family bonus, plus Suwako eventually picks up good steam too (she's pretty eh for most of the game, glass cannons are hard to use in lot2). Kanako might feel a little so-so by herself since she's not the strongest attacker, or the most durable character, she just does both pretty decently at the same time.

I think Ran is pretty underwhelming in this game. Her attack buff is O K in mega lategame where you can afford to cast it a little more, but the cost is mostly way too prohibitive for the effect, and she's not as useful offensively as in LoT1. Chen on the other hand turns into a shredder in late plus, and Yukari's pretty alright all game.

Rinnosuke gets fat stats in main game, fast swaps for most of the game as main utility, and eventually his reason for existence becomes Hexer Rinnosuke with -insanely- accurate debuffs that basically nothing can reliably resist. The chance to proc on his base skill and on Hexer's skill stacks and becomes almost irresistable. Still, it's debatable whether he's worth a party slot, but it's a good niche.

Marisa with a Certain Limited Use Special Class just rips boss faces off with an Omega Spark. It's Good.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah I'm just about done pre-plus postgame. I beat knowledge at challenge level by cheesing it via Orin. But the azure giant, megatama/mirror bosses are just  stupid. I remember hating how much def/mnd bosses had in lot2, but I thought Tenshi and 20f boss was the worst, but they were small fry compared to the horror that is the megatama/mirror. I mean FFS. I had a +80% boost 140% level 180 with  200 library levels in her mag, astral dominae for mag, liliums panties for mag.. and I forget my 3rd slot. Just a general thing like breaker title or whatever it's called mostly for resist all, SDM synergy X3, use level 5 silent selene.. and... 0. It didn't have def/mnd buffs either, that was base stats. Granted it didn't have def/mnd DEBUFFs either, but  still. I decided eff it, I'm just killing those 3 at my max level rather than challenge level. Even at max level, the only thing that dents it is fully buffed remi's monk nature nuke, spear hits 0. Even then it hits for like 20k only. Sakuya's killing doll against the weak to dark enemies hits for like 30k just cuz of the pierce+weakness. So essentially nothing. Flan and Nitori are it, and even Nitori isn't really harming them much unless they have high def debuffs, which I can't get to land reliably yet (waiting for awakening skills on Rinnosuke).

Maybe I'm on crack, but I don't recall the enhanced sword final boss (murokumo? makumuro? I forget) being that nasty.

Also, I looked at the spellcard formulas in the first post, thanks again. I knew that skilling up damage spellcards wasn't terribly beneficial, but dang, looking at the formula, it looks like they only buff the damage of the spellcard by about 5%. Not even pre-mitigation. like it calculates post-mitigation, and then slaps 5% on. wooo.

[Ghaleon]

So now I'm at the part where I just beat up Futa (most frustrating easy boss fight ever... Easy for me anyway I imagine because I have such a tanky bruiser heavy party, but frustrating because it was hella hard to finish her off without her healing back up to half over and over. The few glass cannos I have, I'd risk poking their head out for ONE attack and nope, she decides to single target nuke the back slot in one strike alsakfja).

I've unlocked infinity corridor, did a few floors of that just to see what it was like, and instantly regretted it after reading up about how you can't start over again. Is there really no way? I can't hack a data file into thinking I didn't start yet? Seems really weird to have a procedurally generated dungeon that you can't reset lol!

I want to reset b ecause I didn't know it rewards staying in longer for streaks, so Its obviously best to overlevel some in the 'main' game, then do a big honking dive in the infinite dungeon instead of poking at it just for fu n right at the start and 'waste' 5 floors.

Also, to unlock my character awakening skills I have to beat them up as a boss in the infinite dungeon? oi vey, that seems like that is really really far down the line for some characters like Flan. That said I suppose the one character I want to awaken the most is Rinnosuke because I have no dedicated debuffer, and I'm kinda counting on him to become it with awakening skills. What level approximately do you guys think is high enough for me to do a big dive from floor 1 (well, 6) to whatever level Rinnosuke is the boss for?

Actually what happens if you do like a 30 floor dive and game over. Do you start over from 30 floors ago? Or does it 'save' at the last floor and let you try again? With or without the dust you have spent?

[Zoomy Tsugumi]

Awakenings aren't tied to a character's specific boss, they basically give you an item that you can then redeem for a specific character's awakening at your choosing.

[Ghaleon]

I see... I think I also figured out that the level of enemies aren't tied to floor count directly either, but how far you've dived on that particular dive. so starting on floor 300f on the first time will be about the same as starting on 1f for the first time? If I get this right? Maybe wasting 5f wasn't such a bad deal then. Still though I should try and make it so I can do a 10f dive I rekon at least until I can get a few awakening stones.

Though it will be weird fighting a "serpent of chaos' at a relatively sane amount of hours played/grinding ratio =P

[Gobbles]

Enemies scale with floor level directly, but they also seem to get bonus levels from the floors you cleared on your current run. You always start at the last floor you exited or wiped from.
Something to note is that the lower you get, the slower they level per floor compared to your party level. Like from floor 1-10 they get a lot stronger, but from 301-310 you barely notice it.

Another thing is that the stuff you can buy from dust you can generally also get from infinite corridor directly, materials that drop from infinite corridor, or buy with infinity gems.

I liked doing the infinity dungeon at an appropriate level in short streaks. Also since I liked a lot of the bosses in there. But in the end it depends on your own preferences how you go through it.

[Ghaleon]

I think I'll do the same thing with some infinity corridor, some main dungeon, etc. Probably push myself for the corridor until I get a few key characters some awakening skills. Rinnosuke absolutely needs them. He's kind of a doorstop as a hexer without his affinity skills. Reimu's looks pretty good too because blink looks like a serious buff for everyone, and her defense buffs/aoe heals just don't seem as grand as they do in lot1. Patchy's looks really attractive too with some much needed hp in addition to that crazy looking resistance mitigation/ turn non resistances into actual weaknesses. Doubly so since some high end artifacts give bonuses against elemental weaknesses... Does this work  if her passive  makes their resist go <100? Or does it have to be <100 first?

Not that I need to (yet), but I'm just curious. Are there major grind-friendly floors beyond this point like 20f, (for its level range, it's pretty obsolete now) or lot1 27f? Or is it just kinda stable until the plus disk's final floor (which I suspect will be like 20f is to pre-plus disk).

[FabulaFares]

Patchouli's awakening skill does not create weaknesses even if she reduces an enemy's affinity below 100.

You generally won't need to grind until the Plus Disk Postgame, which gives you one location on the top floor and later one in the bottom floor to grind.

[Ghaleon]

I'm at like B6f/23f/inf39f. diamond knight on 30f was total cake, but Marisa on 20f was basically 1shotting even my tanks with her ordinary  magic missles at 200 mystic resist, not a ton I know but certainly enough that they shouldn't totally make the explode. In any case I'm deciding on to do a bit more main content for about 50-100 levels before more inf dungeon because I would like to try and do more than 20 floors per dive which my last was. Incidentally my last dive was pretty funny, on one of the first floors I had to break open a single '!' chest, and it gave me an effing ribbon. I was like HOLY, that's a ONE '!' chest?!?! Near the end of the run I used an infinity key to open a 5 '!' chest, drooling at what it would get me... a ribbon. I mean ribbons are great, and while I'm pretty sure my holy crap that's amazing good luck factor was redlining hard to get one from a single '!' chest, it somehow made the 5'!' one disappointing lol. I got like 4 '!' chests, but they were all spartan books, not too impressed. skillpoints are still at a premium and I don't like spending them on book skills yet. Not to mention I have like 30 unused books still.

I got a few characters who could really enjoy dem ribbons, but I'm finding myself unwilling to take off those growth eggs. Speaking of which, has anyone ever done the math behind finding out when those +exp skills would 'pay themselves off'? I haven't even tried but I have a feeling it would be several hundred levels later.

[LonelyGaruga]

I've seen Abyss Kogasa's Rainy Night's Ghost Story one-shot Iku with the Tenshi bonus at nearly 400 Dark affinity and over 300K HP, the Abyss bosses really do hit that hard. That was prior to the level reduction (564), so the numbers will be a little lower, but don't underestimate their damage.

[Ghaleon]

Kind of a shame because I'm noticing that the other plus disk content is way easy in terms of bosses. It's weird. You get these trash enemies that are fast as fuu, and can 1shot  your guys, like those angry mud things, or more obviously those turbo murder whales, so you feel like you aren't overlevel, then you get to the bosses, and they hit you for like 0 and go down in just a few turns. It's really weird. Then I goto infinite dungeon and the bosses start 1shotting me again. Trash on the other hand is a mixed bag in there. Sometimes they are cake, but then you get those cloud things that  1shot everyone with ether flare. I can normally kill them before they 'splode, but it's always nail-bitingly close, and I have to h ave a stronger group in. If I have some  weaker units out to rotate around the tp spending, you can forget about it, it's flee time.

I think the trash difficulty is good, I like it having oh crap moments, and otherwise being threatening without it being oh crap every time, but without even trying to grind they seem to make me over-level against the bosses. I normally attack them at challenge level, but my understanding is there is no benefit to after  post game and given this is my first time getting this far I kinda want to see how things feel by 'default'.

I do think the earlier floors of the infinity dungeon should be a bit easier just so that players can awaken more of their cast to enjoy for the main plus disk content. As is it feels liek you'll only get very few awoken before you have literally nothing left but the final bosses in plus disk (and only because the level gap between them and the previous ones are massive kinda like kedamageddon->serpent of chaos (I think kedamageddon was the 27f boss? I forget) and infinity dungeon itself.

[Gobbles]

Observing eye is probably the most nasty thing you can encounter the in infinite corridor, and for sure the one that wiped me the most :). They resist all elemental attacks and are weak to the rest. They also seem to have a moderate magic resistance.
I believe the boss difficult will level a bit more with the encounter level. With occasional spikes like Serpent of Chaos or Unicorn of Order.

[Thurler]

So who here misses LoT1? I was replaying the game recently and figured I'd adventure myself a bit in Ghidra to better understand how PSN and PAR work, as it wasn't well documented in the wiki or anywhere else - particularly how PSN damage is calculated and scales. Keep in mind all these tests were done with a character attacking an enemy, but it should be the same code for enemies attacking characters.

First, regarding ailment proc rates. DTH is the only one with a separate proc rate per skill, all PSN/PAR/DBF skills have a (100 - RES*3)% chance to proc. There is a small caveat here that can make a 100% proc rate miss, the same principle behind gen 1 misses in pokemon: the game rolls a number 0-100 and compares it to the % calculated above to determine whether it should proc the ailment or not. However since it checks for a higher value instead of higher or equal, if the RNG rolls a 0 you will miss the ailment proc.

Next up we have ailment duration. For PAR it's very straightforward, you just take the value listed on the wiki/database and reduce it a bit based on enemy resistance and then adjust it by a random factor (I couldn't isolate the formula that does this calculation). To give an example, Reimu's Evil Sealing Circle was giving me values ~40 against enemies with 8 resistance. The enemy's ATB will not move for that many ATB ticks, meaning that Suwako's Iron Rings (80) or Renko's Galaxy Stop (120) are insanely good even on late game, and you really want someone to heal PAR if using Curse of Vlad Tepes (500) or Thundercloud Stickleback (300).

For PSN the formula for base duration takes into account the character's level: Lv * (1.0 + Lv/33.0) * Wiki value. You then apply the same random-ish reduction from PAR and for 0 resistance enemies you'll end up with values around 15k for Wriggle's Comet on Earth (120) and 7.5k for Yuugi's Irremovable Shackles (60), assuming both at Lv50. For every ATB tick, duration will decay by roughly 1% of its value if it's over 1000, or a flat 10 if under 1000. The damage done per ATB tick is equal to 2% of the current duration (+1 to avoid 0 damage in low values).

The conclusion here is that PSN has a diminishing return effect the longer it stays out without you "refreshing" it, and makes it so Wriggle is the number 1 source of PSN damage in the game. It is also much, much stronger early on since enemy HP scales much faster than your own level does. Attached are a few plots showcasing PSN damage by Lv50 characters against an enemy with 0 resistance. The X axis is the number of ATB ticks after PSN procs, and the Y axis shows cumulative damage done from PSN.

The first one shows Comet on Earth with no refreshers, dealing a total of 38k damage after 450ish ATB ticks. The second one compares waiting for PSN to wear off to reapply it (green), reapplying it once when it reaches the halfway mark (red), and reapplying it twice when it reaches that halfway mark (blue). You can deal an extra 30k (76k -> 106k) just by reapplying PSN at the right time! Finally, the third one compares different spells with different strength values, illustrating why you should pretty much only use Wriggle for PSN damage if optimizing damage.

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Edit: here's some python code for you to calculate how much damage each ATB tick is giving, based on the initial duration. It returns a list of how much damage is done on each tick:

Spoiler:

Code: [Select]

def poison(duration, damage):
  if duration <= 0:
    return damage
  newduration = 0.9924 * duration if duration > 1000 else duration - 10
  newdamage = int(duration/50) + 1
  return poison(newduration, damage+[newdamage])

poison(15000, [])

[Sleepy person]

Hi there!
I was grinding in the infinity corridor and encountered a strange bug. Apparently, Reimu can paralyze your own party members if Reimu has the Barrier Expert skill and uses Exorcising. Tested it on Akyuu again to make sure i wasn't going crazy after playing this game a million times and it was definitely Reimu who was paralyzing Akyuu.

[IRUN]

3peso added a function to immediately check the details of enemy drops.

[Ghaleon]

Poor Meiling the odd one out with re-used artwork =P. (Let's blame Strawberry Bose for being obsessed with Chinese tea remixes)

I'm currently somewhere in the middle of 28f. hard to say how far since it's big and full of teleports. but I imagine a bit over halfway since I found a green orb that allows me to go south at the start, and did a dive or two of that, not to mention I fully explored every nook and cranny  leading up to said orb on every teleporter. The last infinity floor I did was 1 floor before the destroyer. I WANT to hold off longer since kogasa apparently nukes for 300k, and my tankiest characters don't even have 130k yet, but I'm starving for infinity gems due to all these @#%@%ing locked chests I don't have keys for. argh. I thought I'd be good for awhile too, I bought like 12 keys in my last big dive, thinking that would last me at least until when I would naturally want to dive again, but no, I ended up wanting to dive early FOR MORE KEYS, doh. The exp/money creep on 28f is really good too, but I'm not excited at re-exploring all the big teleport maze things to find all the locked chests again. woe.

Kanako suddenly became useful a few floors ago. I don't know how it happened. She was rarely hitting harder than a wet noodle, now she's suddenly like my 4th best trash cleaner. Nitori is kinda hit or miss. It seems like floors where water or nature are good elements, they both are, and floors where one isn't great, they both are resisted. Doh.

Alot of the best crafting equipment needs 'iron-man headbands' or something like that. The wiki mentions one is behind WINNER, but alot of the craftables need like 3, so uhh. I'm sure there must be another source. When can I expect to maybe see these? I did get one from somewhere, a chest I imagine, but forgot where, I don't see it listed in the bestiary.