Part 39: Humans and Youkai - Part 3

As I mentioned earlier, for this Marisa route update I'll be hacking the game to kill Yuuka.



I'm not just going to go fully upgrade everyone like I will in the Lunatic saves to come, though. "Game Over grind until you can fully upgrade your strongest attackers" may be a valid way to beat Yuuka, but it's a boring one. So instead, I want to do a slightly less boring and far more tactic: beating Yuuka with the maximum amount of resources you can get by chapter 10.

So to start things off, let's count how much points and graze it is physically possible to get at this point. The Point figures all assume you're killing everything Unfocused (which gives +10% points) and are on Normal.


In Departure, you can get 3740/60 points and graze from the fairies and 2200/15 from Momiji.


In Magicians and Lies, you can get 4510/70 from the enemies and 5940/30 from Alice and Star Sapphire (who gives more points than the other two). Killing Alice is usually a bad idea, but beating Yuuka doesn't require the Support so it's alright in this case.


In Silver Servant, you can get 7700/100 from the enemies and 4400/15 from Sakuya.


In Magicannon! Master Spark, you can get 3300/60 from the enemies. Since Elly dies in an event you can't get anything from her, and I don't think it's possible to kill her before the Master Spark event without ludicrous amounts of game over grinding. And if you're going to do that, why even bother going for maximum points?

EDIT:



In Daiyousei SOS, you can only get 4400/50 from the black kedamas since Marisa plot kills one.


In Turmoil on the Lake Part 1, you can get 7040/100 from the fairies and 3300/30 from Cirno.


In Turmoil on the Lake Part 2, you can get 6600/120 from the crows and 3500/30 from Sanae and Momiji. I'm not counting the Unfocused point bonus for Sanae because I am pretty sure that is impossible.


In Scarlet Boundary, you can get 11,770/160 from the enemies and 9900/45 from the gatekeepers. This is probably the ideal chapter to game over grind, by the way.


And finally, in Trap in the Great Library you can get 6050/110 from the enemies and 20,350/60 from the bosses.

All of that adds up to 104,700 points and 945 Graze, with 110 of the latter only being available for Marisa and Nitori. Let's distribute that total.



First off, I'm going to subtract the upgrades I already have for Reimu, Marisa, Keine, Nitori: 49,000. That takes a pretty big bite out of my funds, but I do need to actually be able to reach Yuuka.

(I'm not going to be zeroing out everyone else' upgrades, by the way. They won't be doing anything but killing maids, and how much they're upgraded really isn't going to change how that will go.)



With 55,000 left I can max Marisa's MP and give her a weapons upgrade,



and with the final 20,000 Reimu can also get a weapons upgrade.



Now for skills. I'm going to automatically subtract 110 for Keine's Support Defend (not 160 since she starts with 50), so that's 835 to play around with.


_{You can't delete skills, so I replaced Marisa's Predict with Shotgunning. She won't be using it, so it should be fine.}

P-Hit and three levels of Focused Movement on Marisa costs 312 Graze,



and P-Evade, three levels of Unfocused Movement, and one level of Support Attack on Reimu costs 472. Subtracting the 50 she starts with makes that 422, leaving me with 51 Graze.



That's just enough for a Berserk, so I'll just keep this on Nitori.



Finally, WP. With 9 chapters cleared, I have 135 WP available. That's enough for both Reimu and Marisa to hit WP level 2.

I think by now most of you have already figured out what my strategy will be!

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Okay, now let's go over all the issues with killing Yuuka. As you'll see, quite a few of them are linked to each other!



First off, obviously enough Yuuka is built to last. She's got 25,000 HP, and between 1700 Armor, 119 Defense, and size L (meaning everything does x0.9 damage to her) it's going to take a while to whittle that down. And that's a very bad thing because of Yuuka's unique personality, Sadistic. Caldwell summed it up pretty well:


(Yuuka does get Power from a kill, actually)

Of course, Copy Images (and Shield Defense, and Parry) won't be that much of an issue for me since I'm going to be save scumming the hell out of this run. What is an issue, however, is that the higher Yuuka's Power is the less damage she will take. So not only do you need to get Yuuka's HP to as close to the 7500 HP limit as you can, you also need to do it in as few attacks as possible.



Worse, Yuuka also gains +1 Power for every enemy you kill while she's on the screen. +1 is admittingly not as bad as +3, but it can add up. For best results you should avoid killing any other enemy once Yuuka shows up... which also means that your characters only have four turns to build as much Power as possible. Then they kind of just have to surround themselves with enemies and rack up Power from evading.



That brings me to the Master Spark event. Don't do it. The +30 Power Yuuka gets from Drive is almost certain to fuck you over no matter how much you're prepared. Unfortunately, this also means that there are only two windows of opportunity to use Master Spark. The first attack, where Yuuka casts Strike, and the first conversation Marisa and Yuuka have.



Next, Sakuya. She's not going to just stand still and let you kill Yuuka, which is a mixed blessing. Battling her will help your characters build Power quickly (the same goes for Elly and Kurumi), but the Graze damage you'll gradually take from Yuuka's danmaku field can take its toll. And remember, you only have so much healing. You can take the risk, or you can just block her movement with four of your units. If you do the latter, though, you'll need to find some way to heal them because Sakuya still hits hard.



Finally, and this hopefully won't be an issue, Yuuka's map attack. Ideally you won't even get her to 130 Power, but if she does hit that you'll have to adjust your formation to account for it. This could potentially mean having to move your characters farther away from her depending on what combination of attacks you're using, which will result in a damage drop.

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Alright, let's actually get started now. Reimu, Marisa, Keine, and Nitori will be heading to Yuuka, while everyone else will just kill things to help build Power.



By Turn 2, Reimu has already hit 112 Power. Everyone else is still at 100 though, so they'll have to take her kills.



On Turn 3, Youmu has disposed of the bottom left maid with a bomb, Alice is almost done with hers, and Keine and Nitori are baiting those maids to attack them. Meanwhile, Reimu and Marisa are heading straight for Sakuya to draw as much enemy fire as possible for them to dodge.



Everyone's a bit dented once Turn 4 starts, but its nothing Dai can't fix.



Final figures by the end of Turn 4's player phase: Reimu's at 131, Marisa at 141, Keine at 125, and Nitori at 131. Also in hindsight I really should have landed everyone. Oh well, it won't really matter that much.



Now that Yuuka's shown up, everyone will be doing this if the enemy they're fighting would die on counter attack. Otherwise, they'll use their weakest attacks and hope for no criticals.



Also everyone will be taking shots at Sakuya as they pass by her.



And since Reimu and Marisa have already weakened the maids to the left of Sakuya, Keine and Nitori will be heading to the right of her.



Finally, Youmu and Cirno form a wall against this one maid that Keine left just barely alive.



Reimu hit 150 Power during enemy phase of Turn 6.



And Marisa hit her cap during enemy phase of Turn 7.



At the beginning of Turn 10, Marisa makes the first move.



She's also in just the right spot to avoid a counter attack.



Reimu's going to have move closer through, but she'll wait until Yuuka's initial Strike wears off.



Since they were getting ganged up on, Nitori uses a Bomb to give Keine the legroom to escape.



I've also taken the step of making sure Reimu's HP is the lowest, which will hopefully make Yuuka target her instead of Marisa.



Unfortunately Sakuya is still a jerk so she heads straight for Marisa.



Oh come on, Reimu's right there! At critical HP now that everyone's all ganged up on her!

So yeah, first try failed horribly. Trying to do this successfully took the better part of my evening, so let's cut to the chase.



See this? This is an almost success. I decided to ignore my advice and pump up Yuuka's Power to 150 by doing the Master Spark event and murdering all of the maids (you have no idea how cathartic that last one was by the way) both because why the fuck not (this was like the seventh try) and because I decided to trust in how much I had pumped up Reimu and Marisa. I managed to get Yuuka's HP absurdly close to her limit, baited Sakuya and Kurumi away with Keine and Nitori, and had just enough SP left for Marisa and Reimu to cast Alert and Sense. I should be able to kill Yuuka from here if I use the WP skills and just save scum, right?



NOPE.



If Reimu were over here, just slightly closer to Yuuka, it might work though. But I can't do that because I've already activated the WP skills. They'll expire in 1 battle, whether or not Reimu and Marisa actually attack, so I'm totally screwed.



Faced with yet another slog through this god forsaken chapter, I decided enough was enough. I hacked Marisa to level 18 (and, now that I think about it, I probably should have bumped up Reimu and Marisa's levels to account for them getting so much Graze), bumped up her SP to 40, and cast Valor. Sorry guys, but I can't push myself to do this legitimately.

On a less depressing note, Valor's animation in this game is the exact same as Accel's instead of the normal aura of fire. It's probably because Marisa's the only one who can get it, and Sanbondo decided it wasn't worth making an entire new animation for it. It has the correct animation in FMW2 though.


Yuuka, fuck yoooouuuuuuuuuu



(I had to reset sixteen times before Yuuka stopped activating Copy Images/Shield Defense. )




Marisa jumped from level 13 to 20, but I didn't take a picture of it. If you're wondering why she was at 13 despite me hacking her to 18, it's a quirk in how the game handles levels.



Once you beat Yuuka, she gives the same speech only she's not there.


Watch a small piece of what I had to go through!

To conclude this, since Reimu ultimately didn't do anything I had her go kill Elly just because she was pissing me off. Seriously, do you have any clue how many times she hit Reimu on sub 20% odds?

Now excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

EDIT: Also all of you guys who did this legitimately with a much less stupid strategy can post now.

EDIT 2: I think Yuuka starts with 120 Power on Lunatic (also 32,500 HP wooo). Sakuya becomes a bit more annoying, since her Private Square skill makes her take zero damage if she's Defending. Which she will always do if she's at low health. That just means you have to kill her on either a counter or a Support Attack while she's at high health though.

EDIT 3: And Caldwell comes in with a summary of his successful attempt: