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Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.
This is when the game opens up a lot, and I'm not entirely sure if I like that that or not. The Inflatable Boat lets you go to all sorts of optional areas, but it's kind of too much at once, imo.

Anyway, the Three Fairies are absolutely destroyed by anything Illusion Type. Because they're all Light, obviously. Dark doesn't really work because Star is tanky enough to survive and counter. Also, pretty sure Sunny's power works on all light, not just sunlight. There's a notable moment in one of the comics where she deflects a laser from Yukari.

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Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Waggysaggy :allears:

I remember immediately running off to see all the new areas I could when I got the boat and ended up forgetting where the plot was.

serefin99
Apr 15, 2016

Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Ooh, I can actually help with the weather explanations!

So the game has 4 different weather effects: Calm, Aurora, Thick Fog, and Sandstorm.

Calm makes it so the secondary effects of attacking skills are nullified, so stuff like Dancing Wind loses the 10% chance to boost stats, etc.

Aurora, as you guessed, increases the power of Light attacks, but it also decreases the power of Dark attacks. They really did not want you using Dark-types against them.

Thick Fog is the opposite of Aurora, strengthening Dark and weakening Light attacks.

Sandstorm is basically just the Pokemon version. All puppets, except for Earth and Steel-types, lose a little bit of HP every turn.

Shard of Dreams, in addition to all the other things it adds, also has a 5th weather type: Sunshower, which swaps the defense stats of all puppets on the field.

Fun fact, the abilities that trigger the weather effects are named after the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic), while the moves that trigger them are named after China's Four Gods (Seiryū, Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu). Of course, the sequel continues the trend, with Sunshower's ability being the oft-unused Supine temperament, while its move is named after Kōryū, who often gets left out of Japanese media using the 4 Gods.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

serefin99 posted:

Fun fact, the abilities that trigger the weather effects are named after the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic), while the moves that trigger them are named after China's Four Gods (Seiryū, Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu). Of course, the sequel continues the trend, with Sunshower's ability being the oft-unused Supine temperament, while its move is named after Kōryū, who often gets left out of Japanese media using the 4 Gods.

Um, the Chinese gods are actually entirely separate from the weather. It's like, uh, some kind of secondary weather. They call it Terrain, and it fills in the bottom half of a Yin-Yang orb, underneath the Weather (look at the screenshots with Aurora and you should be able to imagine it). They all have extremely weird effects, which I can't ever remember since they're hardly ever relevant, but I think Genbu is Trick Room from Pokemon (Speed priority is reversed), and Seiryu nullifies all type advantages and disadvantages.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011

Clarste posted:

This is when the game opens up a lot, and I'm not entirely sure if I like that that or not. The Inflatable Boat lets you go to all sorts of optional areas, but it's kind of too much at once, imo.

Anyway, the Three Fairies are absolutely destroyed by anything Illusion Type. Because they're all Light, obviously. Dark doesn't really work because Star is tanky enough to survive and counter. Also, pretty sure Sunny's power works on all light, not just sunlight. There's a notable moment in one of the comics where she deflects a laser from Yukari.

I can kind of see that, I think. Though I guess that's also kind of true of normal Pokemon, once you can Surf, you suddenly have a ton of side paths open to you that you didn't before. Off the top of my head, I only know of a path to go to the Forest of Magic, but I know I've seen a few items laying around I couldn't reach until now.

The team I'm running was just really not well set-up for that fight, and I kind of got wrecked and panicked, I admit :v
Reading into it a bit, it seems yeah, I emphasized the wrong part. She bends anything considered 'light'. Including neat tricks like being able to see how the front door of your house looks, from inside, without opening it or going outside!


Leraika posted:

Waggysaggy :allears:

I remember immediately running off to see all the new areas I could when I got the boat and ended up forgetting where the plot was.

Waggysaggy has surprisingly high HP. I forgot to bring it up, but her Ability in that Style is unique to her, I forget the name now (and in hindsight, I forgot to actually show off her stat ranks), but it doubles her speed in heavy fog. Not terribly useful to someone like me, who just prefers to use straight up damage attacks all the time, but I guess I could see that being useful.


serefin99 posted:

Ooh, I can actually help with the weather explanations!

So the game has 4 different weather effects: Calm, Aurora, Thick Fog, and Sandstorm.

Calm makes it so the secondary effects of attacking skills are nullified, so stuff like Dancing Wind loses the 10% chance to boost stats, etc.

Aurora, as you guessed, increases the power of Light attacks, but it also decreases the power of Dark attacks. They really did not want you using Dark-types against them.

Thick Fog is the opposite of Aurora, strengthening Dark and weakening Light attacks.

Sandstorm is basically just the Pokemon version. All puppets, except for Earth and Steel-types, lose a little bit of HP every turn.

Shard of Dreams, in addition to all the other things it adds, also has a 5th weather type: Sunshower, which swaps the defense stats of all puppets on the field.

Fun fact, the abilities that trigger the weather effects are named after the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic), while the moves that trigger them are named after China's Four Gods (Seiryū, Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu). Of course, the sequel continues the trend, with Sunshower's ability being the oft-unused Supine temperament, while its move is named after Kōryū, who often gets left out of Japanese media using the 4 Gods.

Aaah, thanks for that!

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

Of all the things in this game, I did not expect to see the PC-98 Doofy Ghosts. :allears: Easily the best part of the PC-98 games that hasn't shown up in the Windows era. Mima? Who's that?

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

KataraniSword posted:

Of all the things in this game, I did not expect to see the PC-98 Doofy Ghosts. :allears: Easily the best part of the PC-98 games that hasn't shown up in the Windows era. Mima? Who's that?

The best thing is that they've got the Wobbuffet gender difference.

serefin99
Apr 15, 2016

Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Clarste posted:

Um, the Chinese gods are actually entirely separate from the weather. It's like, uh, some kind of secondary weather. They call it Terrain, and it fills in the bottom half of a Yin-Yang orb, underneath the Weather (look at the screenshots with Aurora and you should be able to imagine it). They all have extremely weird effects, which I can't ever remember since they're hardly ever relevant, but I think Genbu is Trick Room from Pokemon (Speed priority is reversed), and Seiryu nullifies all type advantages and disadvantages.

Oh, woops. I guess that's what I get for assuming TV Tropes is 100% accurate.

Shei-kun
Dec 2, 2011

Screw you, physics!
I see an opportunity to have five unique fairies in the party.

This needs to be done at the earliest opportunity.

TracerK
Jun 25, 2013

Clarste posted:

Anyway, the Three Fairies are absolutely destroyed by anything Illusion Type. Because they're all Light, obviously. Dark doesn't really work because Star is tanky enough to survive and counter. Also, pretty sure Sunny's power works on all light, not just sunlight. There's a notable moment in one of the comics where she deflects a laser from Yukari.

Ah, that explains why I barely remembered this part. I would have breezed through the fight with my starter Reimu (and to a lesser extent, Kagerou).

Also, I am puzzled with the naming of the Skill card 74. Where did 'Shark Trade' come from?

CaptianKatsura
Feb 28, 2011

I'm not Katsura, I'm Captain Katsura!

Clarste posted:

Um, the Chinese gods are actually entirely separate from the weather. It's like, uh, some kind of secondary weather. They call it Terrain, and it fills in the bottom half of a Yin-Yang orb, underneath the Weather (look at the screenshots with Aurora and you should be able to imagine it). They all have extremely weird effects, which I can't ever remember since they're hardly ever relevant, but I think Genbu is Trick Room from Pokemon (Speed priority is reversed), and Seiryu nullifies all type advantages and disadvantages.

Suzaku makes all attacks/abilities with healing effects hurt the user instead, Byakko makes all attacks have 100% accuracy but prevents crits from happening, and Kohryu is weird and I don't understand the wiki's description enough to explain it.

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

CaptianKatsura posted:

Suzaku makes all attacks/abilities with healing effects hurt the user instead, Byakko makes all attacks have 100% accuracy but prevents crits from happening, and Kohryu is weird and I don't understand the wiki's description enough to explain it.

The manual translation makes it sound like the Magic Room to Genbu's Trick Room. Also it looks like Seiryuu doesn't work on type nullification, just resistance/weakness. In other words, it won't make Poison work on Steel, or Illusion on Void.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

Shei-kun posted:

I see an opportunity to have five unique fairies in the party.

This needs to be done at the earliest opportunity.

I've done the all-fairy team before. Twice, when Clownpiece came out in the expansion and replaced the non-canon Daiyousei.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

TracerK posted:

Also, I am puzzled with the naming of the Skill card 74. Where did 'Shark Trade' come from?

I can only guess it's a Japanese idiom that doesn't translate well, since I can think of a few English equivalents - but none of them are socially acceptable.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Aw yeah, fairies and doofy ghosts. Now we old school.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011


So last time we got this nice boat. As mentioned, it really opens up the map a lot, but for now we're just going to head up the Youkai Mountain so I don't get hopelessly lost or something.
I spent about 30 minutes getting lost, before remembering what I was doing.
With the Liberation Front chased out of the place, we can now enter all the blocked buildings, but most of them don't have much, besides a kappa to talk too. You can loot some Sun Fruit Jam though, which is basically the Max Potion of this game. The only other thing of interest I found in the place was a Skill Card...


[img]https://lpix.org/2843554/CropperCapture[2].png[/img]

At first I thought this was a Wind-type Changeling, but on a second glance, I'm fairly sure this is basically a Whirlwind that deals damage. With the -6 priority, I don't think its possible to ever go first with this attack, which makes sense if its a damaging Whirlwind.



I wasn't kidding about that nuclear power thing. I'm sure we'll be meeting Okuu in the not too distant future... she's a pretty fun Touhou.




I think this is our cue to leave, and go up the Youkai Mountain. With the boat, this isn't too hard actually. While you can, naturally, walk up there, going through some caves... you could also just use the boat to go up the river. We cannot go up waterfalls, but we can go down them, but whenever a waterfall is around, we can easily disembark nearby and go up a flight of stairs to get past it. It seems you do not get wild Puppet encounters while on the Boat either, or perhaps only certain bodies of water contain a wild Puppet. Since the way to the Mountain is full of generic Trainers, I didn't feel too bad leaving them all behind. I can go gobble up their EXP later if I need it.



Well this tengu is very nice, trying to scare us away! That being said, the tengu are known to be fairly territorial and don't have a great fondness for outsiders... I'm sure we'll be fine.


Youkai Mountain

The tune here is a remix of "Fall of Fall", one of my more favorite Touhou tracks to be honest. It's pretty nice. Naturally as we've reached a new area, we have new Puppets to capture! There isn't an Akyuu Doll nearby though (we'd have to go back to the Kappa Hideout and use the Rest Area), so I'm not going to be showing off the stats on the ones we catch right now, apologies. (I guess that doesn't really matter though huh? Unless we use it anyway)



It's worth noting, wild Puppets get a new theme here

Momiji Inubashiri is a white wolf Tengu, who patrols the Mountain for encroaching outsiders (like ourselves). In the actual game, she wields a scimitar and a buckler with a maple leaf upon it. The giant sword this Puppet is wielding is one of the fanon weapons she's been shown to have (some other interpretations replace her scimitar with a katana or such). Momiji's own ability is her incredible eyesight, said to be capable of seeing one thousand 'ri' ahead - a 'ri' being a Chinese mile standardized nowadays to about half a kilometer. So she's capable of perfect eyesight to a distance of 2440 miles, or 3927 kilometers for the non-Americans. Combined with her superior sense of smell, Momiji is pretty much impossible to sneak past if you tried to get up the mountain undetected.

The white wolf tengu have a bit of a quirk, in they have a great fondness for shogi. However, Momiji prefers playing Dai Shogi, which seems to be a variant of shogi that contains a playing field about three times the size of a normal Shogi, with an equal number of different pieces. The white wolf tengu also like to make up their own versions of shogi, all of which tend to be versions that require a very long play session. In fact, they have their own unique version known as "Great Tengu Shogi" which is said to be so large, and with so many new pieces, a single game of it can last days.

Momiji has only shown up in Mountain of Faith and the two Aya/Hatate spin-off games, but she has shown up in some of the printed works. As a final aside, Momiji is known to have a strong dislike of Aya, but seems to get along fine with pretty much any other crow tengu. This is one of these canon info bits that wasn't known about until later, so for a long time Aya/Momiji was a pretty common ship. Not that canon distaste has changed this much, of course.




(As you can see, I caught all the rest of the Puppets that are here before I remembered to screenshot the Book)

Hatate Himekaidou is a crow tengu like Aya, and also runs a newspaper a lot like her - Hatate's own paper is known as the Kakashi Spirit News. Unlike Aya who prefers gathering her news directly (or sometimes being the cause of the news by her own investigations), Hatate writes her newspaper using her ability of spirit photography. This ability involves the use of the cellphone-like object she holds (something the kappa apparently made), and is basically the equivalent of writing your newspaper by using Google to find your news. As a result, the Kakashi Spirit News is not a very popular newspaper amongst the tengu, as she's only capable of reporting news that has already happened, and likely reported. She views Aya as her rival, despite the fact Aya's Bunbunmaru isn't really that popular either.

After the events of Double Spoiler, one of the picture-taking spin-off games, its been suggested Hatate has taken to trying to actually investigate the news directly in an attempt to increase the success of her Kakashi Spirit News.




I forgot to hit screen capture when Shizuka Aki showed up, my bad. To save us some time on explaining her...




Shizuha Aki and Minoriko Aki are a pair of harvest goddesses. Shizuha is a goddess of autumn leaves, where as Minoriko is a harvest goddess. Despite being a goddess of autumn leaves, Shizuha's powers are surprisingly... mundane, is perhaps non-existent. While she says she has the ability to 'turn' leaves to autumn, she in fact "paints" all the leaves by hand, resulting in the inconsistent colors, and causes the leaves to fall by kicking the trees. Naturally, with powers such as this, Shizuha does not enjoy a great deal of popularity but there are also very few autumn leaf goddesses, so she doesn't have much competition unlike her younger sister...

Minoriko is a harvest goddess with the ability to cause an abundant harvest - but only with autumn crops. As there are many other harvest gods or goddesses, Minoriko is a fairly low-key one and receives very little faith, she gets enough to get by, but she is considered a "wild" or "feral" goddess due to looking a lot like a normal youkai. The Human Village calls her as a special guest every autumn to get her blessing for an abundant harvest, where she uses her power on each individual crop.

The pair of goddesses are pretty nice though, although they both get depressed when winter comes calling.




Lastly we can capture an Aya Puppet here. We've already talked about her though.



Have I mentioned the tengu don't really like visitors?




As you can see, the fodder Trainers are starting to have Style Changed Puppets now as well. She opens up with a normal Momiji, which Flandre takes down in a single hit, but not even with a Super Effective Fire attack could she oneshot a Speed Momiji.



What are you, a himehorn? :colbert:


Uh oh


You ever get that sinking pit in your stomach...




Reimu Theme again

To compare, her Aya in the first fight was only level 10. I actually wonder what the stats are on Reimu's Puppets, but I don't have a program that can crack the game open to check the values, but I'm going to assume with 28 levels and a Style Change, her Aya is a lot tougher.



She's also faster then a Speed Flandre. Which isn't too surprising, as even in Power style, Aya has 130 base Speed, compared to Speed Flandre only having a 110. Twister is a Focus Wind move that can hit 2-5 times... in Flandre's case it hit 4 times.



Which was just enough to sweep her, before I could even try anything.



Pache is resistent to Wind-type, but even so 5 Twisters will do a serious number on her, Power Aya's Focus Attack base is 105. But if Aya doesn't get another 5 we can -



Crapbaskets. I thought of healing, but I thought, "What's the odds of Twister giving her 5 attacks again?"



Seriously what is the odds of a 2-5 attack move getting 5 attacks three times in a row? :psyduck:



Reimu's Suika has bulked up even more, as she was also only level 10 last time we saw her. Defense Suika has a combined total of 540 base stats (Power Aya had only 525), so she's even stronger... although she does have a weakness to Water, with her Fighting/Fire typing. Kiso doesn't have much of an issue with her, two Waterfall Drops and she goes down, leaving...



Power Reimu has only 535 combined stats, so she's slightly weaker in overall stats to Suika. Also last time Reimu's, uh, Reimu was only level 14. Hopefully she won't sweep my whole team like she did back in the first fight.



Move sadly does not contain an actual guided missile showing up. Guided Missile is a Void-type move with an 80 base power, 85% accuracy and a 10% chance to make you flinch though, so its not too shabby, especially as Void-type isn't really resisted by many types (but it also isn't super effective against anything). Reimu, in any Style, learns this at level 24.



Still, Captain Kiso is pretty good. Waterfall Drop, while not being super effective, is still a hard-hitting 100 base power attack that gets a STAB bonus alongside the held Sapphire Hairpin, which boosts Water attacks as well. Honestly, after that Remilia fight, I was kind of expecting worse... although I guess Reimu did rough up a fair amount of my team, so I have to backtrack to get patched up.


Reimu: Well, I did warn you, so do whatever you want. Whatever happens to you is none of my concern anyway.
Reimu: Oh yeah. I don't need this, so won't you take it? (She gives us an Ecstasy Set, basically a Full Restore)
Reimu: The cave ahead is a long one, so if you aren't prepared, you'll be sorry. Well, good luck doing things on your own.

And then she leaves, as usual. Well. At least know there's a cave up ahead now... which we'll tackle next time I suppose. Gotta get the team patched up and get prepared for some spelunking. In the meantime, does anyone actually care to see the stat pages of the Puppets we captured? I realize it may not really matter. And as usual, if anyone wants to suggest a Puppet they'd like to see used, I'll see what I can do about it! While this game is pretty hard, compared to a normal Pokemon game, it isn't unfair or stupidly gimmicky :v:

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
It doesn't seem like there's a nineball synergy or whatever, but all the same I'd love to see you confront something with as much of Team 9 as possible.

Alex0080
May 3, 2013

krisslanza posted:

In fact, they have their own unique version known as "Great Tengu Shogi" which is said to be so large, and with so many new pieces, a single game of it can last days.

Days? Please, feast your eyes on THIS. The Campaign for North Africa! Look upon our human board games, ye tengu, and despair. Yes, that play time is nearly 42 days straight of playing one game of this.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.
Power Aya has an Ability that makes her multi-hit attacks always hit the maximum number of times. It wasn't random.

Cirina
Feb 15, 2013

Operation complete.
See that 8-12 level jump between the fodder trainers and Reimu? I had made the mistake of trying to level an alternate team of puppets since nothing the fodder trainers had could even vaguely threaten the team I had leveled to beat Remillia with, so I was pretty annoyed at the sudden level jump the game once again makes here.

Falconer
Dec 7, 2003

Did you know, I was THE MOON once!

Yes! You see, one night it turned out the moon had been STOLEN!

The animal people asked ME to take its place as I am so WISE and BRILLIANT!!
I wouldn't mind seeing Momiji get some action for a bit. As for this Reimu fight, it was another one where having a few over-leveled puppets (Yuuka and Chen) saved me since they could carry the team after the other four got wiped out. At least now most of my team can actually put up a fight, barring bad type match ups.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011

Alex0080 posted:

Days? Please, feast your eyes on THIS. The Campaign for North Africa! Look upon our human board games, ye tengu, and despair. Yes, that play time is nearly 42 days straight of playing one game of this.

Oh dear god why. :gonk:

Clarste posted:

Power Aya has an Ability that makes her multi-hit attacks always hit the maximum number of times. It wasn't random.

"Salvo". Yeah, that would explain it then... man that is a nasty ability. I guess since Flandre went down in 4 (which was how many she could take), I just never considered there is an Ability that maximizes your attack like that.

Glazius posted:

It doesn't seem like there's a nineball synergy or whatever, but all the same I'd love to see you confront something with as much of Team 9 as possible.

I'll see what I can do!

Eopia posted:

See that 8-12 level jump between the fodder trainers and Reimu? I had made the mistake of trying to level an alternate team of puppets since nothing the fodder trainers had could even vaguely threaten the team I had leveled to beat Remillia with, so I was pretty annoyed at the sudden level jump the game once again makes here.

It seems to be a running theme that any 'boss' has a pretty high level spike compared to anything in the surrounding area. Although I guess that level spike wasn't really that insane until Remilia's fight earlier, which I think (my memory is pretty bad) is the largest spike to this point. That being said, reading the Uranium and Reborn LP's going on now, I have to say, a level spike is a welcome change of pace compared to those. :v:

Falconer posted:

I wouldn't mind seeing Momiji get some action for a bit. As for this Reimu fight, it was another one where having a few over-leveled puppets (Yuuka and Chen) saved me since they could carry the team after the other four got wiped out. At least now most of my team can actually put up a fight, barring bad type match ups.

Momiji has a pretty cool sprite. One of her Abilities, "Fair and Square", while suggesting it only works on OHKO moves, I did have it in a wild Puppet battle prevent me from KOing her on the first turn... but oddly, another Momiji Puppet with that same ability did not have that happen.

Alex0080
May 3, 2013

krisslanza posted:

Momiji has a pretty cool sprite. One of her Abilities, "Fair and Square", while suggesting it only works on OHKO moves, I did have it in a wild Puppet battle prevent me from KOing her on the first turn... but oddly, another Momiji Puppet with that same ability did not have that happen.

The wiki says that ability is called Stubborn, which would be Sturdy in Pokémon terms. Sturdy has two separate effects, first, immunity to dedicated OHKO moves (originally it did only this), and second, if the Sturdy mon has 100% full HP, any damaging attack will leave the Pokémon with at least one HP, even if it would normally KO. The downside of that part of the effect is that even one missing HP stops it from working, so damaging weather, recoil, contact damage and entry hazards can all turn off that part of Sturdy with a tiny scratch before the opponent has even tried to attack.

Also, seconding a Momiji puppet, she has some pretty cool abilities, Defence Momiji gets Indomitable, which is both Sturdy and Battle Armor (attacks can't crit her) in one. Speed Momiji gets Gale Form, which is Aerilate (Normal/Void moves become Flying/Wind type and get 30% stronger), and learns Swallow Cut at level 36, which is EXTREME SPEED! She's not Wind type so she doesn't get STAB, still pretty good, though.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.
Pretty sure the ability should be called Fair and Square based on what it's called in Japanese.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011

Clarste posted:

Pretty sure the ability should be called Fair and Square based on what it's called in Japanese.

It is called that in the game, I think the Wiki uses some older translations.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011
Been a while, hasn't it? Well, let's check what might be on the other side of this bridge...




No one is ever happy to see us up on the Mountain, are they? Well, she can't be any worse then Reimu...




So I forgot to capture it, but Pache came out with a whole 3HP. I had completely forgotten how roughed up my team was after Reimu, and Momiji is literally standing right after this. Whoops. :v:
Still, the levels of her Puppets are significantly lower then Reimu, so this shouldn't be so bad, even if I have to basically just go rely on my much higher leveled Puppets. Momiji's other Puppets are a Normal Nitori and lastly a Speed Momiji, all three being the exact same level. Waggysaggy mops them all up without any real effort.



This is more or less what Momiji says in Mountain of Faith, I think but its been a long time since I've played MoF. It makes sense though, given she is basically a scout.
So at about this point, I went back to look in the thread on Puppet requests and backtracked to the Kappa Hideout (it was the only Rest Spot I could remember) to start training up when... well, I decided to make a sliiiight adjustment.

Up to this point, I've been grinding out each replacement Puppet as the game intended, but in the interest of getting the LP going and steady again, I've just used CheatEngine to hack myself a bunch of Prismatic Candies (basically the Rare Candies) so I can get any requested Puppets up to a decent level without having to spend a few hours grinding them up, while also having to swap out my usual Puppets so their levels don't skyrocket too high above everyone else. I wanted to keep the whole LP legit, but after the extremely long hiatus I took already, I don't want to slow it down further but I also don't want to discourage people from asking if they want to see a particular Puppet.



So here is our team as we go back up the Mountain to go to the Moriya Shrine! I'd like to go and change the outfits on the three new Puppets, but since the Human Village is a fair trek away, I'll save it for later. There is some sort of Fly equivalent in this game, so I'm sort of hoping we might be getting it pretty soon...



On the way back up, I remember to grab this orb I saw. Skill Card 56 contains the skill Ghost Wave, a Nether Spread-type move with 80POW/100 Accuracy and 15SP, it also has a 30% chance to inflict Fear on the opponent.



Well last I remember, Reimu did say this cave is fairly lengthy... luckily there is a peddler just right outside, although he won't heal you or anything, its at least an easy source of healing items and Thread if you need it. Still, I'd prefer a proper Rest House or something, or at least an Akyuu Doll for the inevitable new Puppets we'll find!



Speak of the devil. :v:
This Yamame took a surprising amount of effort to capture, she has an ability that was changing my Abilities to 'Infection', but checking the wiki doesn't really tell me exactly what this ability does. She was also surprisingly resilient to getting the Seal Thread to work on her, which prompted me to look into the mechanics a bit more. Best as I can tell, the effectiveness of Thread depends on the level of the Puppet, so it might simply be that level 29, even with red HP, is proving a bit too strong for Seal Thread.

Anyhow, Yamame Kurodani is a tsuchigumo - otherwise known as an earth spider - who lives in the Underworld. She is the Stage 1 boss of Subterranean Animism, the stage 3 target in Double Spoiler and as a background character in Hopeless Masquerade. Her Book description in the game is actually rather spot-on, as it states, Yamame has the ability to manipulate diseases and illnesses, particularly infectious ones. It seems the disease she is most skilled in manipulating is influenza, the only identifiable common symptom of them being a high fever, and that the disease changes from year to year and is given a different 'Type' naming each time. Eirin seems to be working on a cure for this mysterious influenza.



Well, I... I think this is the right way? There isn't too much interesting in the cave, I mean its a cave. Not exactly a straight forward layout though, and I've learned Aya Puppets are the bane of my team, since most of them seem weak to Wind, and her multi-hit Wind attacks can really tear into my team.



:aaaaa: Well this must be the right way! Food Rations are Leftovers, one of the few Hold items back in the original gen if I remember right? I don't remember much, but I do remember always using Leftovers in any Pokemon game once I find the thing. Can't argue with free healing right?



Yup named Touhou characters ahead, the Aki sisters. Have to be going the right way. They don't attack by line of sight, but if you talk to them...




Tag battles don't exist in TPDP or I'm sure they would be one. Naturally, Shizuha has a Minoriko and a Shizuha.



Oh its even Style Changed.



This was a poor match up choice, I used a multi-hit Dark-type move and gave Shizuha 4 speed boosts. She was already faster then my Rumia anyway so it isn't a huge problem, but a bit of a 'whoops'. Speaking of Rumia, her ability in this Style is 'Dark Clothing', which by the wording says it resists Light-type attacks and restores HP if attacked by Dark-type moves. However, the wiki says Dark Clothing increases Rumia's weakness to Light from x2 to x2.5, despite the wording of the ability suggesting it should resist Light, so I'm not really sure.

The fight lasted long enough for Shizuha to get a 'Speed can't raise any higher!' message which I've never seen before actually. I never use buffing moves in Pokemon so I've never really known there was an upper limit to the amount you can boost, I mean it makes sense, but just nothing I've actually experienced. Oh well, lets go bully her sister Minoriko next!




Like her sister, Minoriko leads with well, her sister in a non-style changed form and of a lower level. And naturally her second Puppet is a Style Changed Minoriko, Power-type specifically. But since I suspect we're near the Moriya Shrine and all, I just decided to roast both of them with Mokou. :supaburn:




To the right is this not-slacking Tengu who will let us slac- I mean, rest in this house. Which is pretty handy, as the SP of my moves was looking a little low, but regrettably there isn't an Akyuu Doll inside.



Something I'm now noticing with the Masters in the way on this path is we're starting to see even the random, generic Masters with some Style Changed Puppets. Seems the game is starting to ramp the difficulty up ever so slightly.



Well at least now I know I'm going the right way!



I find something really cute about Hatate's attack animation here. :keke:
Also that Salvo ability is really handy, luckily Momiji is resistant to Wind-type attacks, so even 5 Twisters was only hitting her for 30 damage, but given almost the rest of my team is weak to Wind-type attacks...



Wait there are wild Kasens here!? I'll... need to catch one later. I'm kind of hoping the Moriya Shrine will have an Akyuu Doll. Though I suspect we'll have some nasty boss fights first, but let's see...


Moriya Shrine



Oh yeah, this is the Moriya Shrine so - but wait, isn't she supposed to be shrine sitting?


Sanae: I heard you were traveling around, but you ended up here. This is my home. Nice place, isn't it?



A mysterious new voice appears!



It is, naturally, the shrine's god.

Sanae: They're traveling through Gensokyo to resolve the incident and go home. Doesn't it remind you of something?



Kanako: Hm. How very interesting. There's much we could converse about.
Sanae: N-no way, Lady Kanako. Today is my day to play with Selfi!
Sanae: Hey, Selfi. Have a Puppet battle with me! I really wanted to give battling a try.
Sanae: That said, it's battle time! Alright, here I come!



Okay well, Sanae is new at this Puppet thing and isn't an experienced Puppet Master, so how tough can she -



Sonofabitch. Oddly Sanae doesn't get a unique theme or something, just using the generic master theme that everyone else here does.
While thinking of how tough a Defense Reimu might be, Sanae gives me my answer:



This promptly oneshots Awoo.



Even Waggysaggy takes a massive hit from Guided Missile. Waggysaggy and Awoo actually have the exact same Focus Defense (64), and Guided Missile is an 80POW Focus attack, so even without type advantage its still clocking in at 81 damage. Even in Defense Style, Reimu has a pretty good Focus Attack BST of 90 compared to 125 in Power Style.



I tried to count pixels, but turns out Sanae's Reimu had a magic pixel still and takes out Waggysaggy. This is why I can't do Nuzlocke runs, I'm not good enough at measuring pixels to see I probably did only 49% damage instead of 50%.



I took an unnecessary hit on Succubus by using an Illusion-type attack, forgetting Reimu is immune to that. However, Marisa is not immune to Illusion-type attacks...



However Star Flare still does 60 damage, and I'm slower then Marisa. But I have healing items unlike Sanae (thankfully), so...



I mean, I was expecting her Puppet to be the strongest, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite that strong.



Sanae has a type advantage over Mokou as well, and I didn't do nearly as much damage with a Fighting move as I hoped. So I unfortunately sacrificed Mokou to use a rare Hakurei Shinshu to fully revive Waggysaggy, CIrno has some Water-type moves but she'd never get a hit in edgewise before being oneshot with the massive level difference.



:suicide:
Then it turns out Sanae's Speed is higher then Waggysaggy's (134) and she gets oneshot before I can take advantage of Sanae's Water-type weakness, because Waggysaggy and Mokou are both weak to Wind-type.



Unknown Flare spam and healing items save the day though. Not my proudest moment here, I'm so used to just steamrolling my way through Pokemon-esque games without regards to team builds, that TPDP is really kicking my teeth in with every boss fight now.



Says the shrine maiden who has zero Puppet Master experience it seems and has some really high-level and rare Puppets. I don't think you can even catch a Reimu Puppet yet! I haven't backtracked to try and get a Marisa one yet though, and I think the Sanae Puppet has only now become obtainable.

Sanae: Thank you very much. It was really fun! Ah, take this as a token of my appreciation.



The Superhuman Glove lets us use Rock Smash basically. No Fly yet it seems...

Well, we made it to the Moriya Shrine at least. Before we meet up with Kanako, we're probably going to want to heal, catch some of the new Puppets in the area if I can find some grass... but that'll be next time.

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Hooray, you're back!

Totally down with you hacking in a bunch of prismatic candies; trying to keep everything on roughly the same level is kind of a pain in TPDP.

Falconer
Dec 7, 2003

Did you know, I was THE MOON once!

Yes! You see, one night it turned out the moon had been STOLEN!

The animal people asked ME to take its place as I am so WISE and BRILLIANT!!
If I recall correctly one of the paths in the caves you went through leads to an exit that in turn leads to a house with an Akyuu doll in it. Granted, you then have to find your way back to the 'right' path that leads to the Moriya shrine, but it's nice having a midpoint of sorts.

Blaze Dragon
Aug 28, 2013
LOWTAX'S SPINE FUND

Yay, this is back! I thought it was dead, so it's good to see it back.

A few things about Pokemon itself (because I know nothing about this game specifically and my Touhou knowledge is entirely fandom-based...as is most people's, but details): you're wrong on the Held Item thing. That mechanic didn't appear until Gen 2, so there were none in the original gen. That said, Leftovers was indeed in Gen 2, as one of the first and most loved Held Items in the franchise.

About stat buffs and decreases, in Pokemon at least, they've always had both an upper and lower limit of 6. Stats can only be increased to +6, and lowered to -6. That's a multiplier/division over the stat but you'll need someone more competitive than me to tell you which. Since this is Basically Pokemon, it probably works roughly the same here.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011

Leraika posted:

Hooray, you're back!

Totally down with you hacking in a bunch of prismatic candies; trying to keep everything on roughly the same level is kind of a pain in TPDP.

Thanks!
I mean, its less a pain and just more by this point I don't want to drag out finishing this LP too much now, so I figured I'd just cut out level grinding. It has an issue of then I lack PP though, I can CheatEngine the PP as well, but it's abit more involved so I haven't tried to edit the PP values of my Puppets.


Falconer posted:

If I recall correctly one of the paths in the caves you went through leads to an exit that in turn leads to a house with an Akyuu doll in it. Granted, you then have to find your way back to the 'right' path that leads to the Moriya shrine, but it's nice having a midpoint of sorts.

That's not too bad though. Still I have an uncanny ability to just always know the 'right' way out of dungeons, even when I purposely try to find the long way so I can get all the goodies. I probably missed some Skill Cards and stuff inside the cave, and possibly Puppets, so I might have to double-check... but the wiki has really lackluster information on specifics by this point in the game.


Blaze Dragon posted:

Yay, this is back! I thought it was dead, so it's good to see it back.

A few things about Pokemon itself (because I know nothing about this game specifically and my Touhou knowledge is entirely fandom-based...as is most people's, but details): you're wrong on the Held Item thing. That mechanic didn't appear until Gen 2, so there were none in the original gen. That said, Leftovers was indeed in Gen 2, as one of the first and most loved Held Items in the franchise.

About stat buffs and decreases, in Pokemon at least, they've always had both an upper and lower limit of 6. Stats can only be increased to +6, and lowered to -6. That's a multiplier/division over the stat but you'll need someone more competitive than me to tell you which. Since this is Basically Pokemon, it probably works roughly the same here.

Thanks! I'm glad there are those who still want to see me finish this. I guess this isn't as enjoyable in a certain way like Uranium or Reborn, but its at least a good game. :v:

And really? I swore I found Leftovers back in Red version in that trash can, but I also don't remember Hold items existing yet, so it does seem likely it didn't exist... yet I swear I remember finding something in that trashcan.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

krisslanza posted:

This is more or less what Momiji says in Mountain of Faith, I think but its been a long time since I've played MoF. It makes sense though, given she is basically a scout.

Momiji has no dialog whatsoever in Mountain of Faith. The first time we see her say anything is in the article about Tengu variant-shogi.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011

Clarste posted:

Momiji has no dialog whatsoever in Mountain of Faith. The first time we see her say anything is in the article about Tengu variant-shogi.

:suicide:
You're right in hindsight. I guess I just imagined she did, but she's one of those portrait-less midbosses like Koakuma or Daiyousei... at least until she showed up in the manga.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Welcome back. It's going to be interesting to see what the people at this shrine have to say.

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

krisslanza posted:

:suicide:
You're right in hindsight. I guess I just imagined she did, but she's one of those portrait-less midbosses like Koakuma or Daiyousei... at least until she showed up in the manga.

You might be thinking of Fantasy Maiden Wars, which, naturally, takes a lot more liberties with pretty much everything.

Also, yeah, Leftovers were one of the very few hold items in Gen 2 Pokemon (where the concept originated). Others include Quick Claw, Scope Lens, Amulet Coin, trade evolution items, and the basic healing/status cure berries.

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Aug 17, 2017

Alex0080
May 3, 2013

krisslanza posted:

This Yamame took a surprising amount of effort to capture, she has an ability that was changing my Abilities to 'Infection', but checking the wiki doesn't really tell me exactly what this ability does.

If it's a carbon copy of the nearest ability in Pokemon, "Mummy", then all it does is spread itself to anyone who touches something with the ability. The funny part about it is that you can spread the ability to your opponent, negating any good abilities they may have, then have, say, Slaking punch someone and replace his horribly crippling ability (Truant, every time Slaking does something it skips it next turn by slacking off.) with Mummy.

Blaze Dragon posted:

About stat buffs and decreases, in Pokemon at least, they've always had both an upper and lower limit of 6. Stats can only be increased to +6, and lowered to -6. That's a multiplier/division over the stat but you'll need someone more competitive than me to tell you which. Since this is Basically Pokemon, it probably works roughly the same here.

The exact math (for anyone with a number fetish :awesome:), a stat at 0 stages of bonus/penalty is at 2/2, or completely normal. For every +1, add 1 to the numerator, so at +1 you have 3/2 of the stat, or a 50% boost. At +2 you have 4/2, so double, and it goes up by 50% from there up to the max of a times four multiplier to your stat at +6 (This is why swords dance and other sharp stat boosters are good on mons that can take the time to use them, one use gives you double your stat, two triple, and three quadruple, huge gains there). That is simple enough to explain without starting with the 2/2 explanation, but minuses are where that comes into play, every -1 adds 1 to your divisor. So at -1 you have 2/3 of your stat, or a one third drop, and at -2 you have 2/4, so half, -4 is 2/6 or one third, and it bottoms out at 2/8, or one quarter of your stat at -6.

krisslanza posted:

And really? I swore I found Leftovers back in Red version in that trash can, but I also don't remember Hold items existing yet, so it does seem likely it didn't exist... yet I swear I remember finding something in that trashcan.

Unfortunately, no leftovers in gen 1, Pokemon couldn't even hold items until gen 2, although some Pokemon, if traded from gen 1 to 2, had a chance of having hold items on them, the idea behind that being your gen 1 character just never thought of having their mons hold things or check to find the things they were holding.

krisslanza
May 6, 2011

Sanae: I'm sure you've gotten used to this place by now, so how about searching on your own? I'm sure you'll discover a lot of things.

B-but how will I know where to go without being told!? I suppose we have that boat to really try out still...



Completely unimportant and unexaminable, but I have no clue what this structure might be. It looks like a booth almost, with a glass window or something? We can speak to Kanako but uhm, after that fight with Sanae I wouldn't recommend it... because if you talk to her, this happens.




And given how our team is after Sanae, I can tell you how well fighting Kanako would go. :suicide:
Once we get healed up, we can probably try and tackle her, but first lets go poke our nosy nose all over the shrine, eh?



This would be Suwako, whom the Moriya Shrine was originally built for. I think I mentioned it before, but Suwako lost her shrine and much of her followers when she and Kanako fought in the distant past.



Of all the Touhou characters, Kanako is the only one who has shown a pretty strong interest in this particular category. The kappa do their best, but she's been suggesting and pushing for some pretty radical changes. This is probably influenced by her living in the Outside World until just recently, so she has some strong ideas of modern technology compared to anyone else in Gensokyo. Combined with her strong following with the youkai on the Mountain, of which the Kappa are part, she's really getting that ball going. I believe I mentioned it, but the Kappa do have a nuclear fusion reactor that is a result of Kanako... and some other factors, but mainly her.



The onbashira are those big poles you can see in the back. Interestingly, this is an actual festival that takes place every 6-7 years at the actual Suwa Grand Shrine in the Nagano Prefecture! The ceremony involves felling 16 fir trees, ranging from 17 to 19 metres tall, and basically transporting them down a mountain to be erected at the four corners of the buildings at the shrine. The festival does seem to claim the lives of its particiapants each year though, as they don't use any sort of modern technology to transport these things around, they chop 'em down with ceremonial tools, and drag/carry them the old-fashion way. In fact one of them happened just last year, claiming the life of one man who died from falling off the tree as it was being raised.

Kanako has these things everywhere though, and seems to be using them just as pillars. They also tend to be used in her attacks in some Touhou fangames as Kanako is pretty strongly associated with the onbashira.



Well as I was looking for a rest house, or an Akyuu Doll, I tried out my Superhuman Glove to break some rocks south of the Shrine. And then I bump into Tenshi the second I walked into the tall grass. She's the second rarest encounter in this area, so I'm pretty pleased even if I really, really need to find a place to heal before I start capturing all the new Puppets.



Tenshi Hinanawi made her debut appearance in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, the fighting game spin-off. Tenshi isn't actually a youkai, but rather a Celestial a type of human who have gained immortality and ascended to Heaven. Up in Heaven, Celestials basically spend all day relaxing and partying, because there isn't much else to do in Heaven. This is reflected in Tenshi's personality, as while she's a pretty nice person, she's also extremely bratty in her own way, and doesn't really understand anything. Now you might wonder how a human who attained Celestial-hood could be such a brat? Well the thing is, Tenshi herself never did this. Someone in her family, the Hinanawi, attained Celestial-hood and the entire family was uplifted and allowed to be Celestials as well. Tenshi is given this great honor, but basically has no concept of how its attained or what its supposed to mean I guess.

Celestials themselves are pretty powerful in their own right, and aren't usually hunted by youkai as their bodies are poison to youkai, making them a poor meal. Komachi also mentions later in the series that Celestials aren't truly immortal, they are instead immortal because everytime a shinigami comes to collect their soul, they beat the crap out of them and get to keep living. Celestials are also granted a veil by the Lord of Heaven, and the legends state that if a Celestial maiden has her veil stolen by someone, she must marry the thief. In more recent times, some Celestial maidens have used this legend to 'accidently' lose their veil and see who claims it, deciding to marry the one who finds it if they like them, otherwise they just take it back. It's become such a problem, most people would instead just sell the veil to a collector instead of dealing with the headache. According to Eirin, these veils are also made of antimatter, so I don't think I'd want one anyway... as much as I do like Tenshi, she's one of my favorites.

Now back to Tenshi specifically herself. Her innate power is the ability to manipulate the Earth, specifically related to calm and cause land-based disasters. This is related to that rock you see her floating on in her sprite, that rock is a "keystone" something unique to the Hinanawi clan. In the legends, keystones are stuck into the earth to prevent the movement of earthquake causing Namazu, and as long as the keystone is in place, earthquakes are prevented. However, while no earthquake happens, the 'energy' of the earthquakes build up regardless, and if the keystone is ever removed, all that energy will be unleashed at once, causing a devastating earthquake. Only the Hinanawi clan are capable of manipulating or using the keystones, and this was their duty in life and into their lives as Celestials. Earthquake suppressing aside, Tenshi also uses the keystones as bludgeoning objects, a nice rock to float/ride around on, and in some fan games, as freakin' fin funnels.

There's one last thing to mention about Tenshi that isn't shown on her sprite or her book entry, but she owns a special tool known as the "Sword of Hisou". A sort of shape-shifting sword that only Celestials can use, the sword has a bunch of wacky properties but it was mostly used to manipulate and control weather in SWR.



So I had no idea where a Rest House was, so I've gone all the way back to the Kappa Hideout before I go back up the entire mountain to collect new Puppets. But I think this is a pretty high stat Tenshi, the abysmal speed aside. Speed is her lowest BST, so I guess its appropriate. The other Skill she can have is Indominatable, which negates critical hits and OHKO moves.



During my trek back up the mountain, I did find this in the cave. Skill Card 79 contains Upbeat, a Sound-type move which forces your opponent to only use damaging skills for three turns. I'm sure there's some kind of way to use this, but I can't see it. Probably a competitive play thing to deny your opponent turns to buff up.



I got lost in the cave :v: But this is that rest spot someone mentioned earlier, besides having an Akyuu Doll it also contains one other thing...



This is Hina's house, the Curse Goddess. She won't fight us, but she does have the unique ability to remove the Seal on our Puppets - this releases them, of course. But I guess if you ever want to get rid of duplicate Puppets or the like, you have to come out to Hina's remote little house everytime? I did take this chance to get rid of some duplicate Puppets I captured back when I was seeing about getting high base stat Puppets.



Now that I'm back and healed, and bought a few more healing items, time to take down Kanako! I mean, why not?



She starts off pretty strong, gotta admit.



I'm really bad at this. :suicide:
I think I'm going to need to actually start using Puppets with type coverage to protect one another, because Sanae basically wiped the floor with 2/3's of my entire team without taking more then a scratch since much of my team is weak to Wind, and has no moves to take advantage of Sanae's weaknesses.



So. This Suwako is brutal. My lack of moves to take advantage of her weaknesses aside, she has Moody as her Skill. Moody causes her to raise one stat by 2 stages, and lower one by 2 stages, randomly each turn. She also has Stone Circle, which has a 10% chance to raise all her stats each time she uses it. With my inability to take advantage of any weaknesses and just dealing normal damage, this resulted in her getting to really buff her stats up in short order and just demolish Succubus, then oneshot Mokou with a Slime Shot. I'm still not really used to this concept of having to actually build balanced teams in a Pokemon-like game, but TPDP is really kicking my teeth in with these named Master battles.

Also losing to Kanako will kick you back a fair distance. How far?



All the way back to the last true Rest House you used it seems, and I couldn't find any on the Youkai Mountain so it's back to the Kappa Hideout. I'm just going to reload that, and we're gonna get some new Puppets instead of getting my teeth kicked in by Kanako.



Speaking of Kanako! I've upgraded to using Contract Thread, since Seal Thread just isn't consistent enough anymore. I noticed the Contract Thread uses a blue thread look instead of red, kind of a neat little visual touch.



Have we talked about Kanako Yasaka yet? Not sure, so let's make sure. Kanako is an actual deity who used to live in the Outside World before moving to Gensokyo, due to the lack of faith available in the Outside World. She's a goddess of wind and rain, but you may recall she's a big backer of technological innovation right? This is part of a plan of her's to turn her nature from a goddess of wind and rain, into a goddess of technological innovation instead! This is in part due to Kanako's personality, as she views "faith" as a kind of currency, and is always trying to obtain much faith as possible. She's also surprisingly casual for a goddess, not requiring a lot of strict formalities around her, but don't go making her angry, as she's still a goddess capable of cursing you for your disrespect.

Kanako has the ability to create 'heavenliness', specifically the element Qian in Taoist philosophy. What this ability actually entails is a bit of a mystery, but its likely related to her status as a goddess of agriculture (in addition to wind and rain), allowing her to help her followers with bountiful harvests via rainfall and the like.




Well we've got our own Sanae now as well. There's one last new Puppet to get here... the rarest one, of course.




Suwako Moriya, the original goddess the Moriya Shrine was dedicated too. She fought against Kanako in the Great Suwa War, and was defeated, making Kanako the new patron goddess of the Moriya Shrine. Sanae is also a distant descendant of her, which is why Sanae is technically a sort of demigoddess and the "third" goddess of the Moriya Shrine. Unlike Kanako whom is considered more akin to a divine spirit (a god with a human form, more or less), Suwako is a 'myriad god', meaning she is entirely made of faith. In contract to Kanako, Suwako is far friendlier and laid back, but don't let that fool you - while Kanako might be manipulative in her own way, Suwako is just as much, perhaps more so. Combined with her fondness for rarely showing herself, its hard to tell whatever she might be up too.

Suwako has the ability to control earth, or specifically the 'Kun'. Again what this ability means is largely unexplained, but judging by her fighting moves in the fighting games, which include things like 'swimming' through the earth or making geysers erupt out of the ground, its assumed its direct manipulation of the land. This shouldn't be confused with Tenshi's earth manipulation, as Suwako does not seem to have any ability to mess with land-based disasters. There's one other thing Suwako has power over, the Mishaguji, a sort of white curse snake. These are their own type of god, a powerful curse god which she brought under her power in the distant past. Even when Kanako defeated her, she was unable to tame the Mishaguji and was forced to turn to Suwako for this, probably part of what kept her existence as a god around when she lost the faith of her followers from being defeated - they still believed in her to control the Mishaguji.

Now then, that's all the Puppets to capture in the Moriya Shrine, but there is one last Puppet to get in the Youkai Mountain, when we start going down the paths that were blocked by rocks. She's again, a very rare Puppet spawn, but she is one of my favorites, so I'm hoping it won't be too much work to get her...




Took only until my second battle! I'm PRETTY sure we've already talked about Kasen haven't we? I can't remember, if I'm wrong, let me know and I'll splurge all about her. Kasen is one of my favorite Touhous.

Anyhow, I know we didn't actually make any progress this time, but I need to reconsider my team. I want to keep Mokou and Koakuma around, and probably add Kasen to the line up. But I'm not as sure on the other three. We're having an issue of much of my team being all weak to the same things and not having the move pools to cover the weaknesses of others. Anyone have suggestions?

EDIT:
Its been nearly a month!? I DIDN'T THINK I TOOK THAT LONG.

krisslanza fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 12, 2017

Ardeem
Sep 16, 2010

There is no problem that cannot be solved through sufficient application of lasers and friendship.
Pretty sure that building is a small storefront for selling charms and fortunes. I haven't been paying enough attention to Pokémon types to offer suggestions on who to switch in, but getting more coverage seems like a good idea.

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Power Mystia might be a good choice, since with Smooth Sailing she nulls or resists all of the Moriya Trio's STAB attacks.

edit: here's a team analysis:
speed momiji - steel (weak: earth/fighting/fire, resist steel/wind/illusion, null poison)
power mokou - fire/fighting (weak: water/wind/sound, resist fire, dark, steel)
power cirno - water/nature (weak: poison, resist earth/water/light)
speed wakasagi - water/sound (weak: wind/electric/nature/poison, resist fire/water/steel/sound/light)
defense koakuma - dark (weak: steel/light/fighting, resist void/dark)
defense rumia - dark (weak: steel/light/fighting, resist void/dark)

I would recommend replacing either Koakuma or Rumia and giving Wakasagi the Force of Nature ability over the one she currently has.

Leraika fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Sep 12, 2017

AweStriker
Oct 6, 2014

I'm seeing "Hinawari" as Tenshi's clan name a couple times, but it's actually "Hinanawi".

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krisslanza
May 6, 2011

AweStriker posted:

I'm seeing "Hinawari" as Tenshi's clan name a couple times, but it's actually "Hinanawi".

...
Well darn you're right. I must've fat-fingered that, my bad. Lemme go fix it.

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