Labyrinth of Touhou 2/Gameplay

Like its predecessor, LoT2's gameplay covers Gensokyo (out-of-dungeon preparation), the Great Tree (in-dungeon exploration), and battling. This page covers the gameplay from the current patch. (V1.203) and sometimes Plus Disk so some mechanics may not be implemented in the game if you use the older patch.

Controls and Basics

PC Version:

• Z: Select/Confirm
• X: Cancel, or bring up the Menu
• A: Open map (Dungeon only)
• M: Set the encounter rate to max (Dungeon only)
• 1, 2, 3, Q, W, E: Adjust color of background (Battle only)

Switch/PS4 Version:

• A/Circle: Select/Confirm
• B/Cross: Cancel, or bring up the Menu
• Y/Square: Open map (Dungeon only)
• X/Triangle: Set the encounter rate to max (Dungeon only)

You can use the A key or Y/Square button to increment library levels in steps of 10.
You can hold the A key or Y/Square button to increment/decrement levels at the shrine in steps of 10.
You can hold the S key or X/Triangle button to increment/decrement levels at the shrine in steps of 100.

Menu

The menu can be opened by pressing 'X' while not in any specific location in Gensokyo, or anytime while exploring the Great Tree.

• Status: Views the character's stats, spellcards, and equipment. (You can press Z at this menu up to twice to look at the character's Skills and character's parameters.) You can also press 'A' at this menu to look at the information about Elemental and Status Resistances.
• Equipment: Equip or remove equipment on your team.
• Items: All acquired items can be examined here. There are four types: Main Equipment, Sub Equipment, Crafting Materials, and Special Items.
• Leave Dungeon: Allows you to exit the dungeon at any time.
• Formation: Allows you to change your party's formation, including moving characters between active and reserve.
• Skill: Use a character's Skill Points to level up their skills (Gensokyo only).
• Rest: Resting can be done in the dungeon to recover MP. In this game, this commands uses up your TP until you have full MP back. The amount recovered is 2 MP per TP, regardless of MP Recovery Rate.
• Options: Access the game options menu.

Gensokyo

Gensokyo itself serves as the hub of your adventures, with several individual locales providing services or your party.

• Hakurei Shrine: The Shrine is where you'll level your party. Once a character accumulates enough experience, you can advance them in level, either singly or (if you have multiple levels worth of experience) by up to all available levels. You can also bulk level your entire rooster if multiple characters have enough experience. When you level a character, they gain one Level Up bonus per level, which can be applied to any main stat: HP, Attack, Defense, Magic, Mind, or Speed. You can redistribute your Level Up Bonuses here. You can even level down your characters but you don't have to reset the bonus points (The numbers will be shown as negative but it doesn't affect anything.) You can unify your party to be at a certain level. The Shrine's last service is applying special consumable items you may have gathered during your game, such as stat boosters or skill books. Plus Disk also added the option of being able to level up/down 10 levels at a time by pressing A, or 100 at a time with S.

• Magic Library: The library serves the same function as it did in the previous game - applying bonuses to your team's stats. Whenever you defeat an enemy, you'll gain money that can be spent to increase a characters' stats (see the Stats section below for further info); if you're playing on Hard mode, you will be subjected to a "character level * 1.2" limit to their library levels. You can also reset Skill Points at no cost, and once you have unlocked subclasses this will also reset subclass, with the Jewel of Awakening refunded. You can also reset all Level Up Bonuses as well as all the parameters points applied to a character if you have a Tome of Reincarnation (if you have a Tome of Reincarnation, every time you choose to reset the game will ask you if you want to use one. Just say no and you will still reset your character's skill points and subclass). Just like with the Hakurei Shrine, Plus Disk added the option of being able to apply bonuses in increments of 10 by pressing A.

• Human Village: The village serves as your party management area. You can swap characters in or out of your 12-person party, remove equipment from all inactive characters at once or your entire roster at once, and even create preset parties for quickly swapping between favorite or strategic groups of characters. You can press 'A' at the Change Members menu to remove your selected character without having to swap another character in.

• Nitori's Workshop: Nitori provides item services. You can use money to purchase a limited selection of items, or sell unwanted items for money. Like the first game, you cannot sell all owned copies of an item. You still need to keep one. Finally, after you do a certain requirement, a crafting section becomes available, allowing you to use the Crafting Materials collected in the Great Tree to make you own items. The number of items you can buy or craft increase as you progress through the game.

• Keine's School: Keine keeps a record of all enemies you've encountered (You have to defeat them first, though there are a few exceptions), allowing you to check a foe's enemy type, elemental affinities, status resistances, and item drops. Affinities and resistances are represented graphically and are detailed in the Elemental Affinities and Status Resistance sections below. You can also view achievements here - in addition, whenever you complete an achievement, all incomplete ones next to the one you completed will become visible, allowing you to see the requirements for those you haven't completed yet.

• Gensokyo's Great Tree: Access the dungeon from here. You may enter the Great Tree at any relay circle you've touched while exploring.

• Akyuu's House: Akyuu will save your game or allow you to load a saved game. Once you advance to the Plus Disk content, Akyuu will also trade Infinity Gems for various rare items, and Jewels of Greater Awakening for character specific Awakening items (the first unlocks their Awakening skills, and any subsequent ones grant a bonus to damage dealt/received).

• Infinity Corridor: Becomes available after advancing enough in the Plus Disk storyline. Allows the party to explore an infinite dungeon with procedurally generated floors, exploring the Corridor is necessary to obtain Greater Jewels of Awakening, as well as various unique equipment and crafting materials. See Infinity Corridor for more info.

The Great Tree

The Great Tree's maze-like dungeon is home to most of LoT 2's gameplay. Each floor is more challenging than the one below, and features all manner of events to find. Like the first game, you can only reveal adjacent spaces as you explore. However, unlike the first game, all events are marked onscreen regardless of whether you've found them or not.

• Green exclamation points denote minor events, such as treasures. Some treasure events are marked with a key icon; you'll need keys found in the dungeon to open these chests.
• Red exclamation points are more significant events such as character introductions or recruitments.
• Purple, ferocious-looking heads are boss battles. Each of them has a level indicated with them called Challenge Level. Defeating the boss with the party overall levels being lower than that number (rounded down) will award you with more loot after beating the boss (specifically, each boss will either drop Stats Gem or Training Manuals. Defeating the boss at the Challenged Level will give you 1 more of those items). If playing on Hard mode, the game won't allow you to fight the boss if any of your party members is above the Challenge Level.
• Stairs are the ultimate objective for each floor, allowing you to proceed to the next floor. Most floors have multiple stairways, which often lead to otherwise inaccessible parts of other floors above or below.
• Arrows will cause you to "jump" to another nearby area. A given arrow will always take you to the same place; they typically either serve as shortcuts around that floor or allow you to access areas you wouldn't be able to otherwise.

You can access a minimap at any time by pressing the A key, which will display everything you've explored up to the current point.

The dungeon encounter rate is displayed on the right of the screen. It begins at 0% and rises each time you take a step. The actual encounter rate is (current% - 40). You can press the M key to set the encounter rate to 200%, effectively ensuring your next step is a battle - great for grinding purposes.

In-battle

As before, battles are timed turn-based affairs. Each participant, ally and enemy, has their own timebar, which gradually fills based on the individual's Speed. Once the bar hits 10000, that character gets to take an action. Actions set the character's timebar to an amount specific to the action, which then fills again, and so on. Usually, all participants' timebars start at 5000.

Your characters have five basic commands:

• Attack: Performs a single-target attack. This attack has two variations: If the user's Attack stat is equal to or higher than their Magic (ignoring in-battle buffs), the attack scales from Attack, targets the foe's Defense, and deals Physical damage (formula is 100% ATK - 50% DEF). If the user's Magic is higher, the attack scales from Magic, targets the foe's Mind, and deals Mystic damage (formula is 100% MAG - 50% MND). Unlike the first game, this option is a lot more worth using due to its improved damage and low-delay. However, you'll only really use to finish off weakened random mobs and conserve MP, or to let the next turn come faster when the character doesn't have anything else they want to do. Post-use gauge is 7000.

• Spellcard: Your characters' special attacks are MP-consuming moves that allow them to damage, buff, heal, and generally do anything productive. Each character has several spells, all of which are unique to that character, and can potentially learn more via subclasses. Post-use gauge is unique to each spellcard.

• Formation/Form Change: Allows you to switch your characters. You can switch an active character for one in reserve, switch two active characters, or even switch a character out completely and leave an empty space in the front row. Post-use gauge of both the user and character being switched is 7500. However, when switching two active characters, only the switcher's post-use gauge is 7500; many character have skills that can affect this value. Unlike the first game, switching doesn't cost TP and characters on the frontline can be switched out even if they have less than 3 TP.

• Concentrate: Spend your action recovering MP. Recovery amount is equal to twice the character's MP Recovery stat, plus any other bonuses. Post-use gauge is 5000.

• Escape: Flees the battle. Random battles can be fled from without fail, while boss battles and FOEs cannot be fled from. Escaping triples TP lost from a battle, meaning it'll cost 3 TP to any frontliner that's at full HP, and up to 15 TP if they're near death.

Your battle formation makes a big difference in terms or survivability. Characters are most likely to be targeted by single-target attacks if they are in the leftmost slot, with each successive slot being "safer", although enemies may have attacks that specifically aim at other slots. Row-target attacks will also deal less damage to characters in slots further right. Unlike LoT 1, your row-targeting attacks won't deal less damage.

Winning a battle will reward your characters with experience, money, and possibly dropped items. If you win consecutive battles, without returning to Gensokyo, you'll accrue a bonus that increases your EXP earned, money earned, and item drop rate. This bonus increases by 2% (3% in Plus Disk) for each battle, up to a maximum of 100%, and will reset when you leave the dungeon. Your entire party will fully recover their HP after a battle, but the characters at the front at the end of the battle will lose TP if they have HP missing, with more injured characters losing more TP (up to a max of 5 TP). All characters on your front line will always lose 1 TP just for fighting, even if they are unhurt. Unlike the first game, characters who fall in battle will also be healed afterwards, although this costs a steep 10 TP (thankfully unaffected by the Escape penalty). Any character with 0 TP after a battle, active or reserve, is immediately sent back to Gensokyo (characters can go to 0 TP by using Rest in the dungeon; they won't be sent back until after your next battle). Returning to Gensokyo recovers all HP, MP, and TP.

Victory will also reward every character in your party with 1 Battle Point, or BP. All characters who were on the front line when you started will earn an additional BP, and all characters who were on the front line when the battle ended will earn an additional BP, for a potential total of 3 BP per battle. BP is an additional value that is required to access a number of events within the Great Tree.

If all of your active characters fall in battle, your only reward will be the Game Over screen. However, unlike the first game, a Game Over is largely a formality; you'll simply be sent back to Gensokyo as if you'd returned on your own, and none of your progress will be lost. If you get a Game Over in a boss battle, you can either choose to retry fighting the boss or return to Gensokyo.

Stat System

Characters have three visible stat types: Battle stats, elemental affinities, and status resistances.

Battle Stats

Battle stats determine your character's performance in combat.

• HP: Determines how much damage a character can take. When HP reaches zero, the character is defeated.
• MP: Used for casting spellcards. Can be recovered by being in reserve, using the Concentrate command, or resting outside of battle.
• TP: Lost after every battle. Once it hits zero the character returns to Gensokyo unless it hits zero because of Rest command. Certain skills can also consume TP to grant in-battle benefits.
• Attack: Determines damage done with the Attack command (if equal to or higher than Magic) and with direct and composite spellcards.
• Defense: Reduces damage taken from direct attacks.
• Magic: Determines damage done with the Attack command (if higher than Attack) and with magical and composite spellcards.
• Mind: Reduces damage taken from magical attacks.
• Speed: Influences the rate at which a character's timebar fills. Faster characters can act more often.
• Accuracy: Influences the character's ability to hit their attacks. Certain spells have accuracy modifiers, these are directly added to the user's ACC when calculating hit rate.
• Evasion: Influences the character's ability to dodge enemy attacks. Can only be raised via equipment or Skills.
  • Hit rate is equal to (ACC*100)/(EVA+100)%, with ACC being the user's Accuracy plus any modifiers from the attack used.
• HP Recovery: Affects rate of HP recovery when in the back row. Characters recover a percentage of their max HP equal to this value whenever their timebar fills while in reserve.
• MP Recovery: Affects rate of MP recovery. Characters recover an amount of MP equal to this value whenever their timebar fills while in reserve. The Concentrate command restores MP equal to twice this value.

Base Stats and Stat Formulas

Similar to the first game, every stat (with the exception of MP, TP, Accuracy, Evasion, elemental affinities, status resistances, HP recovery, and MP recovery) is calculated by taking a base value and modifying it by a multiplier. The base value of each stat is calculated as follows:

• HP = (Level + 6) * Growth Rate + 10
• ATK/ MAG/ DEF/ MND = (Level + 4) * Growth Rate + 4
• SPD = (Level + 10) * (Growth Rate / 32)

The Growth Rates are fixed per character, but can be increased via special items or skills. The final Growth Rates are calculated as follows:

• Final Growth Rate = Base Growth Rate + Subclass Boost + Gem Boosts + Skill Boosts + Equipment Growth Rate Bonuses
  • Gem Boosts add 0.2 to the Final Growth Rate for each gem used, and 0.1 for each jewel used.
  • HP Skill Boosts add 0.4 to the Final Growth Rate for each skill level (0.8 for HP Boost 2, 1.2 for HP Mega Boost, 1.2 for High HP Boost, 1.6 for HP Giga Boost)
  • ATK and MAG Skill Boosts add 0.2 to the Final Growth Rate for each skill level (0.4 for ATK/MAG Boost 2, 0.6 for ATK/MAG Mega Boost, 1.0 for High ATK/MAG Boost, 1.5 for ATK/MAG Giga Boost)
  • DEF and MND Skill Boosts add 0.2 to the Final Growth Rate for each skill level (0.4 for DEF/MND Boost 2, 0.6 for DEF/MND Mega Boost, 0.8 for High DEF/MND Boost, 1.1 for DEF/MND Giga Boost)
  • SPD Skill Boosts add 0.15 to the Final Growth Rate for each skill level (0.225 for SPD Boost 2, 0.3 for SPD Mega Boost, 0.6 for High SPD Boost, 0.9 for SPD Giga Boost)

Final Growth Rates can be seen in the Status page by going to the Baseline Value section and dividing each value by ten.

The final values of each stat are calculated as follows:

• HP/ ATK/ MAG/ DEF/ MND = floor(floor(Base Value) * Multiplier)
• SPD = floor(floor(Base Value) * Multiplier) + 100

The multiplier is calculated as follows:

• Multiplier = 1 + Equipment Bonuses + (Level Up Bonuses * 0.03) + (Library Levels * 0.02)

Max MP increases by 1 each time the character gains a number of levels equal to the inverse of their MP growth rate; natural MP growth caps at twice a character's base MP stat, at which point further levels will no longer increase it. MP can also be increased by skills, special items and equipment.

TP, Accuracy, Evasion, elemental affinities, status resistances, HP recovery, and MP recovery can only be increased through skills, special items and equipment.

Stat Buffing

Status Buffing and Debuffing works on a % of the character's total stat. A character with 1000 DEF, and a 50% DEF boost, will have effectively 1500 DEF. Generally speaking, only ATK, DEF, MAG, MND, and SPD can be buffed or debuffed (the only exception is Ran's Ability to use Shikigami's skill, which will buff Chen's ACC and EVA), and the maximum is +100% for buffs and -50% for debuffs (Miko is the only exception, since her buffs can go over 100% with the appropiate passive skill). These effects are cumulative - a 30% ATK buff followed by another 30% will result in 60%, and a 50% DEF buff followed by a -25% DEF debuff results in a total of 25%. Stat buffs are displayed in blue, while stat debuffs are displayed in red.

However, buffs and debuffs will be reduced by 1/5th of their current value at the start of the affected character's turn - so a 100% DEF buff will drop to only 80% when their turn comes around, and then to 64% the next turn. This applies to debuffs too, slowly returning towards 0. Note that this only occurs when a character's turn actually comes - therefore, characters in reserve will not recover - or lose - status buffs or debuffs while waiting in reserve.

Plus Disk also eventually introduces the concept of permanent (EX) de/buffs, these are displayed in white instead of blue/red and as their name implies cannot be removed and won't degrade over time; they can affect any of ATK, MAG, DEF, MND, SPD, or all 5 at once (All). These are almost exclusively used by bosses.

Elemental Affinities

Elements come in nine different flavors: Fire, Cold, Wind, Nature, Mystic, Spirit, Dark, Physical, and the rare Void element. They are based on a scale of (100/value); the result is multiplied by the raw elemental damage taken to determine how much is done. For example, a Fire affinity of 100 is neutral (100/100 = 1), so Fire damage would be unchanged. A Cold affinity of 75 would result in (100/75 = 1.33) and thus it'd cause Cold attacks to deal 33% more damage than normal. A Dark affinity of 225 would be (100/225 = 0.44) and thus a character would only take 44% of the original damage. Elemental affinities are factored in after defenses, so a character with a very high affinity can compensate for a low defensive stat. Also, when you attack or get attacked by the enemies, the color of the damage number will be shown according to the following circumstances: if it is colored orange, that means your characters or enemies are neutral against that element, if blue, resistant, and red for weak.

Since damage received scales with the inverse of its corresponding affinity, a very high affinity reduces damage only by a little more than a somewhat lower affinity. Inversely, a low affinity increases damage by a lot more than a slightly higher affinity. For example, the difference between 20 (500% damage) and 25 (400% damage) is a whopping 100%; the difference between 200 (50% damage) and 250 (40% damage), despite being ten times higher at face value, is only 10%, a tenth of the previous difference. For this reason, boosting a character's already good affinities is less effective than bolstering their weaknesses, and characters with balanced affinities will take less damage than characters with very lopsided affinities (assuming that damage is distributed equally among all types). On the other hand, if you're only going to deal with one or two damage types, characters that are focused on resisting these types will take less damage overall, with their weak affinities not being a factor.

The damage reduction from affinities caps at 80% (500 affinity), any additional affinity past 500 has no effect.

| x - 0-33 | x - 34-65 | △ - 66-99 | — - 100-139 | ○ - 140-199 | ◎ - 200-299 | ★ - 300+ |

Status Resistances

Statuses hinder characters in combat and range from annoying to crippling, they can be separated into 2 subcategories: Status Ailments (PSN, PAR, HVY, SIL, SHK, DTH) and Status Debuffs. Skills that involve taking advantage of ailments do not include debuffs and viceversa.

• Poison (PSN): Gradually saps the victim's HP. For enemies it's 1% of max HP per 100 ATB gained when under the status, reduced to 0,06% for bosses; for allies the max HP damage scales depending on the current duration of the status. Cannot reduce HP below 1.
• Paralysis (PAR): Stops the victim's timebar. If it was full when they were paralyzed, they may still take an action but their timebar won't fill further.
• Heavy (HVY): Allies cannot be switched. Enemies suffer -12% SPD and -50% DEF.
• Shock (SHK): Immediately halves the victim's timebar. Not a persistent effect.
• Terror (TRR): Reduces all stats by 8%. Additionally, allies will also lose TRR duration/10000 + 1 (rounded down) MP every time they take a turn.
• Silence (SIL): Allies cannot use spellcards. Enemies suffer -20% MAG and -50% MND.
• Death (DTH): Instantly defeats the victim.
• Debuff (DBF): Covers all stat reductions. Enemies have separate resistances to each stat Debuff even though it isn't shown in the game (ATK-debuff, DEF-debuff, and so on...), with the Debuff resistances shown in Keine's bestiary being Debuff-ATK only; players have a single Debuff resistance stat that covers all Debuffs.

A given resistance has three effects on a character: the value is substracted from the infliction chance of the attack and the result is the percentage chance of the character being inflicted by the status; if not resisted, every 10 points of resistance will lessen the initial duration/strength of the status by 5% (since Plus Disk, this reduction now only applies to player characters and no longer to enemies); finally, for PSN, PAR, HVY and SIL the speed at which the ailment ticks down also depends on the character's resistance, the higher the resistance, the faster it ticks down in relation to their gained ATB, it's a 1-1 relation at 0 resistance, and the recovery rate increases by 15% for every 10 points of resistance, so at 100 resistance the relation is 1-2.5 and thus a 10000 strength ailment would actually last 4000 ATB. Debuff resistance reduces the chance of a debuff being inflicted, but due to an oversight increases the effect of received debuffs by 5% for every 10 points of resistance (this was fixed in Plus Disk). Skills that allow one to pierce or reduce enemy resistance will be taken into account when deciding the initial strength of the status, but will not affect the recovery rate. Reaching 200 resistance gives you complete immunity to the status, since it'll reduce its duration/strength by 100%, nullifying it (DTH and SHK are one-time statuses, but they still won't work if they're completely nullified), though due to the aforementioned bug with Debuff resistance, this won't apply to debuffs in the base game.

The duration/strength of a status has a 10% random factor, so it can go up to 1.1x or down to 0.9x of the values diplayed. For ailments in particular, their duration also doesn't stack, the stronger one always prevails (e.g. if a 20000 duration PSN is inflicted when the target is already suffering from a 15000 PSN, the duration of the ailment will be set to 20000, inversely, if a 15000 duration PSN is inflicted when the target is already suffering from a 20000 PSN, the duration remains at 20000).

It's worth noting that there's a difference between attacks that inflict ailments/debuffs that are unresistable, and those that flat out ignore resistances. The first type means they have a ludicrous infliction chance (usually around 10000%), but their strength can still be reduced by resistance and can be nullified if you get 200 resistance (they'll also be affected by skills that increase or reduce ailment/debuff strength). The second type completely ignores resistances, and thus not only will they always be inflicted, their initial duration is completely fixed and cannot be altered or nullified in any way (they also don't have any random factor). Examples of the first type include most player character self-debuffs (like Chen's Kimontonkou's DEF/MND debuffs) or the DTH-inflicting Spirit Decomposition enemy attack; examples of the second type would be the self-debuffs from Okuu's Unstable Nuclear Reaction, or Sakuya's PAR-inflicting Private Square.

Ailment/debuff infliction rates and strength from equipment, skills and spellcards generally stack together, though there are exceptions (check the Misc subpage for specific info).

| x - 0-9 | x - 10-19 | △ - 20-29 | — - 30-49 | ○ - 50-74 | ◎ - 75-99 | ★ - 100+ |

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