This guide is intended to give a quick overview of the game, explain basic mechanics, and cover the basics of gameplay. I will not be going into detail on any mechanics or giving any of the formulas used in the background. This is just for getting started with the game, to help new players from being overwhelmed by some of the mechanics that differ from other RPGs or dungeon crawlers. If you want detailed mechanics or specific strategies, the wiki contains both: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Touhou_2

Keep in mind that part of the fun is figuring out strategies for yourself. This guide is meant to avoid the frustration of going in completely blind, but (hopefully) without spoiling any of the fun. It can also serve as a quick reference sheet, e.g. for the Town functions and party menus (located in the "Miscellaneous" section) or the effects of ailments (located in the "Character Stats" section)

Some quick bullet points:

• You can bring up to 12 people into the dungeon, but only 4 are active at once
  
• Characters in the backrow will recover HP and MP
  
• Using the "Spell Card" command is much more useful than the "Attack" command. MP is easy to recover.
  
• All characters are pre-built in terms of available stats and skills. Customization is available through skill selection, bonus point allocation, and subclasses.
  
• There are no recovery items or other consumables usable in the dungeon. All healing, buffing, and inflicting ailments must be done with spell cards or a character's passive skills.
  
• There is no progress penalty for a game over, or leaving the dungeon early. Don't be afraid to keep advancing.

The goal of the game is to enter the dungeon repeatedly, explore its corridors, and defeat the bosses. It is not necessary to explore every inch of every floor, but exploring will yield bonus items and party members. Additionally, the mandatory bosses are roughly balanced with the expectation that you’ve done significant amounts of exploration – and therefore fought many random battles. In my experience, it is usually not necessary to grind for a boss if you spend the time to fully explore each dungeon, at least until well into the late game.

The primary stats in this game are HP, MP, TP, ATK (Attack), DEF (Defense), MAG (magic), MND (Mind), SPD (Speed), EVA (Evasion). Offensive spell cards will use one or both of ATK and MAG. Spell cards that use your character’s ATK are referred to as “Direct Attack” and will (typically) be resisted by the target’s DEF. Spell cards that use your character’s MAG are referred to as “Magical Attack” and will (typically) be resisted by the target’s MND. Spell cards that use both will be “Composite Direct/Magical attack”, depending on which defensive stat is used. Exceptions to the defense used exist, and are usually stated clearly in the spell description.

HP, ATK, DEF, MAG, MND, and SPD will increase with each levelup. SPD uses a different formula so the gains are less noticeable early on. MP will increase by 1 after every X levels, with different growth values for each character. EVA and TP will not increase with levelup and can only be increased by skills and items.

When a character’s HP hits 0, they are defeated and removed from combat. Some skills may revive the character, but otherwise they are permanently removed from your party until combat ends. There is no way to revive a character once they’ve been removed.

There are 8 elements: FIR (Fire), CLD (Cold), WND (Wind), NTR (Nature), MYS (Mystic), SPI (Spirit), DRK (Dark), and PHY (Physical). Non-elemental attacks exist but are rare and are referred to as VOI (Void). A character’s resistance to a particular element is referred to as “Affinity”. Typically a character or enemy that is strong against one element will be weak to its opposing element, such as being strong to FIR and weak to CLD, but there is no strict set of elemental weakness pairs or triangle or any other shape. Characters, enemies, and items can have any arbitrary set of affinities. An affinity of 100 is considered neutral - less than 100 will increase the final damage of an attack using that element, while an affinity over 100 will reduce the final damage of that attack.

There are 8 status effects, referred to as Ailments. A character’s resistance to a particular ailment is referred to as “Resistance”. The ailments are: PSN (Poison – take damage over time), PAR (Paralysis – prevents the ATB bar from increasing), HVY (Heavy – Prevents formation changes on this character. For enemies, it instead reduces DEF and SPD), SHK (Shock – Immediately cuts the ATB bar in half. This ailment disappears immediately), TRR (Terror – drains MP when the character gets a turn and reduces all stats slightly), SIL (Silence – Prevents the use of spell cards. For enemies, it instead reduces MAG and MND), DTH (Death – Immediately KOs the target), DBF (Debuff – Reduces a stat by the specified percentage. Each stat can have a separate debuff (or buff)).

Debuffs are resisted in the same way as ailments, but are not considered ailments when a skill description refers to an enemy or ally having an ailment.

The keys can be changed by going to the options menu on the title screen (but not while in-game). The default keys are listed here for reference, as well as the less-obvious uses for each key. Any references to keypresses within this guide will use the default keyboard settings.

• Arrow keys / DPAD – Move character through dungeon, navigate menus.
  
• Accept – Z / PAD_B. Confirm selections within a menu.
  
• Cancel – X / PAD_A. Cancel selection within a menu. Brings up the Party menu while in town or in the dungeon.
  
• View Map – A / PAD_X. Brings up the full-screen map.
  
• Instant Encounter – S / PAD_Y. While in the dungeon, sets the encounter chance to 200%, guaranteeing an encounter on the next step.

The configuration allows you to change the way the arrow keys move your character diagonally while in the dungeon. This is the “Movement Type” setting in the Options menu. There is no impact to navigating menus.

• 1 – Up moves your character up-right; Left moves your character up-left. This is the default.
  
• 2 – Up moves your character up-left; Left moves your character down-left.
  
• 3 – You must hold two directional buttons at once to move within the dungeon.

This chart shows all four directions in modes 1 and 2:

While in the “Character Status Up” menu of the Magic Library, press A (View Map) to immediately allocate 10 points to the currently selected skill. If you don’t have enough money, it will increase the stat by as much as it can.

While in the Hakurei Shrine submenus, hold down A (View Map) and press left/right while allocating levels or bonus points to allocate 10 at once, or hold down S (Instant Encounter) to allocate 100 at once.

Holding down Alt and pressing F4 (i.e. Alt+F4) will close the game.

Managing your party is a major part of the game. Your party is divided into two groups: the front line is the bottom 4 people; the backrow is the top 8 characters. At the start of the game you’ll only have 4 characters and thus no backrow, but you’ll quickly recruit more and will eventually need to start leaving people behind.

The frontline is up to four characters actively participating in battle. Only these four can attack the enemy, and only these four will be attacked. The backrow is the reserve. While in the backrow, characters still get turns, and will slowly recover HP and MP with each turn. If the front line is defeated, you will get a game over, even if you still have characters in the back.

Every character has a “Formation” command that they can use to swap any two characters within the party. Use this to protect a fragile attacker right before the enemy gets a turn, or to swap out an exhausted character with a fresh one. Picking a good party of 12 to bring in to the dungeon and managing your front and back lines are critical to your strategy.

Additionally, within the front line, the leftmost character is considered the vanguard, while the rightmost is considered the rear. Enemy row attacks will hit your entire frontline, but do more damage to the leftmost character and less to the rightmost. The leftmost character is more likely to be targeted by most single-target attacks. The left-to-right position does not affect damage taken by anything other than row attacks, only probability. (The row attacks used by your characters do not follow this behavior; character row attacks will do equal damage to all enemies, but only in a single row)

Members of the party of 12 can only be changed in town at the Human Village. The order of characters within the party can be changed at any time. Press X while in town or in the dungeon to bring up the party menu, and select “Formation” to move around members of the current party. Note – when you exit the dungeon, your formation will reset to what it was when you first deployed. Changes made in town are permanent, changes made in the dungeon are temporary.

The dungeon is the main part of the game. You’ll spend most of your time in here. It is not possible to save or load your game while in the dungeon – you must conserve resources to make trips last long enough to explore the floor. You cannot level up, learn skills, or spend money while in the dungeon. You can leave at any point in time by selecting “Leave Dungeon” from the menu (press X to bring up the menu). You don’t need an item or skill for this; it’s always available, unconditionally.

At the start of the game, only the first floor of the dungeon will be available. When you reach the second floor, there will be a warp point right at the stairs which will allow you to immediately start exploring from the second floor. Each floor has a warp point, and some floors have additional points. Use these warp points to make it easier to reach the depths of the dungeon.

Explore the dungeon using the arrow keys. You can only see one square around you, but events are visible on the map even in unexplored areas. These will help guide your exploration, but keep in mind there may be other items in sections of the map you haven’t seen at all.

While in the dungeon, a minimap of the nearby area is visible in the top-right corner. Press A to bring up a full screen map. This map can be panned using the arrow keys. Unexplored areas will be marked in red.

The icons for special events are:

• Green !: Treasure chest. Contains either some equipment or money
  
• Green ! with a key: a locked treasure chest. You’ll need a key to unlock them. There’s no way to see what’s inside before opening it.
  
• Red !: Events. These are typically required for completing the story or advancing to the next floor. Or they might just be banter.
  
• White arrow: A warp. This might be an unlocked shortcut, or it could just be part of a puzzle.
  
• Purple monster: A boss fight. Make sure you’re ready before tackling it.
  
• Staircase: Advance to the next floor or back to the previous floor. Every floor has at least one Up staircase leading to the next floor.

Battles use a time gauge system. Every “tick” all combatants will have their gauge increase based on their speed, and will be able to act once their gauge reaches 10,000. The exact value is visible for both players and enemies. The game will pause when it is time for one of your characters to move, and time will not advance until you choose an action. All actions are instant and set the gauge depending on the action taken – certain moves are slower or faster than others, meaning they have a lower or higher post-use gauge.

There are five commands available, for all characters:

• Attack – A generic attack that typically does low damage.
  
• Spellcard – Use MP to perform a special move unique to this character
  
• Formation – Swap this character or another character with another from the full party of 12.
  
• Concentrate – Recover MP.
  
• Escape – End the battle immediately, forfeiting all rewards. This always succeeds, except in boss battles and FOE encounters where it can’t be used at all.

Spell cards are the primary method of attacking in this game. They will typically significantly more damage than the basic attack and may have additional effects for either the user or the target. Buffs and healing moves are also available as auxiliary spell cards. In general, the basic attack should only be used in an emergency, or on a character that has passive skills that boost the basic attack.

Concentrate can be used to immediately recover MP, however being in the backrow also recovers MP and also HP. Using formation change to swap out an exhausted attacker with a fresh attacker is usually a better idea, but both recovery methods are valuable.

After a battle ends, all characters in the front line will lose TP. Any characters that were damaged will fully recover all HP, but will lose additional TP if they were in the front. If a character is defeated in battle, they will still recover, but lose a huge amount of TP. Finally, escaping a battle has an additional TP cost on top of everything else.

TP is a measure of your characters’ ability to continue fighting. When it reaches 0 after a battle, they will immediately leave the exploration party and return to town. This lasts until you return to town, where all characters fully recover. There is no longterm impact to running out of TP, it only affects your current dungeon dive.

TP can be spent to restore MP by going to the character menu and selecting Rest. This may reduce characters to 0 TP – they will leave the party after the next battle.

Enemies in the dungeon will drop exp, money, and may drop equipment or materials. Your exploration may also uncover treasure chests containing equipment or money. Exp is used to level up your characters; this can only be done in Town, at the Hakurei Shrine. It is not possible to level up while in the dungeon. Typically you want everyone to be at the highest level possible for dungeon exploration, but bosses are an exception:

Bosses have a challenge level. If you defeat the boss with your party’s average level below this value, you’ll get an additional reward (hard mode forces you to have everyone at or below this challenge level or you can’t fight the boss). This is what the “level down” and “level unification” options in the Hakurei Shrine are for.

Levelling up will directly boost stats, and will give skill points and bonus points. Bonus points will increase a specific stat, and can be adjusted at any time at the Hakurei Shrine. Skills are learned from the Party Menu (Press X while at the main town page). All characters will earn full XP from battles, even if they aren’t in the party of 12.

Money is spent on boosting stats at the Magic Library and on equipment at Nitori’s Shop. There are no other ways to spend money (A few achievements and checkpoints require X money on hand, but these don’t use it up).

Every character has a set of passive skills they can learn and active spellcards that are used in combat. Learning passive skills will grant special bonuses; the effects are varied but explained in the skill description. Leveling up spellcards will increase their damage and/or special effects.

To learn skills, press X to bring up the party menu while in town and select “Learn Skills”. To unlearn a skill, you must go to the Magic Library and do a skill reset, which will unlearn all passive skills and refund the skill points (there is no cost to doing this – if prompted, you can choose to not use a Tome of Reincarnation). There is no way to lower a learned skill’s level, you can only do a full reset.

All items in this game are equipment, materials (used to craft equipment), or special items. There are no consumable recovery items.

Equipment can be found in the dungeon by fighting monsters or purchased in Nitori’s shop. Each character has 3 “sub” equipment slots and 1 “main” equipment slot. All sub equipment slots are equal; there are no “weapon” or “armor” slots, and the item descriptions and names are purely flavor. There’s nothing stopping a sword-using girl from equipping a hammer, or a witch from equipping 3 swords at once.

Equipment can be changed freely, even in the dungeon. The only exception is that items equipped to a character not in the active party cannot be removed, including someone sent to town early due to running out of TP.

In general, you are free to use whichever characters you like for the whole game. The exception to this is the Battle Point system – when you fight battles, all characters in your party will gain some BP, and the frontliners will gain more. A character’s BP can be viewed in the Status screen – press Z twice to swap views to “Character miscellaneous information”. BP can be used as a way to measure your most-used characters. They are mostly cosmetic…

However, there are a number of events in the game that require specific characters to have a minimum amount of BP. These are all red dungeon events; if you access them with insufficient BP you’ll get a small, inconsequential event and the ! will not disappear. These events are initially optional, but tied to recruitment, and eventually it is necessary to recruit the full cast in order to progress.

The list of BP requirements are:

• Utsuho, Wriggle : 120 BP.
  
• Cirno, Nitori, Chen : 200 BP.
  
• Meiling, Patchouli, Sakuya, Remilia : 300 BP.
  
• Minoriko, Komachi, Nazrin: 400 BP.

The town (Gensokyo) serves as your base of operations between dungeon dives.

The shrine is where you level up your characters. If you find “special” items (gems, tomes of insight, training manuals) you can use them here. In general, for dungeon exploration you typically want to be the highest level possible, so just click the “Level all characters” option to level everyone up to the max.

Leveling characters increases their stats and gives 1 bonus point and 1 skill point. Bonus points can be applied to HP, ATK, DEF, MAG, MND, or SPD to slightly increase that stat. These bonus points can be redistributed freely, so if you need extra attack to damage a tough boss, or extra speed to outpace some fast enemies, you can adjust these whenever you need. This can only be done here in town, never in the dungeon.

Here you can spend money to increase your stats. These stat boosts function the same way as bonus levels, but aren’t limited to your characters level, only your money. Typically you’ll find yourself showering money on a handful of preferred characters to keep them super strong.

The skill reset option is used to reset all of a character’s skills. There’s no way to reduce the level of a skill; you must do a full reset each time. If you have a “Tome of Reincarnation”, you’ll also be asked if you want to return all money and special items used on this character. Save this for real mistakes where you try out a character and they’re not pulling their weight, or you just don’t enjoy their play style.

This isn’t available at the start of the game, but once unlocked, this is also where you learn subclasses.

This is where you change the party of 12 characters you bring with you into the dungeon. New characters will always return to town once you find them in the dungeon, and not enter your party immediately, so remember to check back here once you find someone new. Once you have more than 12 characters you’ll need to leave some behind.

The unequip option can be used to remove all equipment from all characters, or from those that aren’t in the active party. People that aren’t fighting don’t need fancy swords; save them for your active characters.

This is where you buy and sell items, or craft them using materials. Crafting is free but requires materials. There’s no way to buy materials, you can only discover them during dungeon exploration.

Here you can view the bestiary and achievements. Achievements are tracked in-game separately from Steam achievements, but certain in-game achievements will also unlock Steam achievements. There’s a reward for obtaining each achievement, so it’s worth checking the list to see what can be done.

The bestiary will list the HP, type (this only matters for certain skills) and resistances of each enemy you’ve encountered. Symbols are used to denote the monster’s affinities and resistances:

• × - Extremely weak
  
• △ - Weak
  
• ― Normal
  
• ○ Resistant
  
• ◎ Resistant
  
• ★ Extremely resistant

For ailments, “★” usually means that the foe cannot ever be inflicted with this ailment, while “×” means they have little or no protection. For elements, this will increase or decrease the final damage by a multiplier. Strong elemental defenses will never reduce an attack to 0 damage, and an elemental weakness will not make an attack that does 0 damage inflict damage.

The left and right arrow keys can be used to jump up/down an entire page of bestiary entries at once. Bestiary entries are roughly in the order the enemy is first encountered, with all normal enemies in front, FOEs after them, and bosses at the end.

Enter the dungeon.

Save and Load your game here.

The party menu is available by pressing X while in the main town screen or in the dungeon. The menus are slightly different depending on where you open it; you can’t rest in town, for example, and you can’t learn skills while in the dungeon.

The menu only applies to characters within your party of 12. You cannot change equipment or learn skills for characters outside of your party. The left/right arrow keys will switch between characters while in a submenu (e.g. while learning skills, checking status, or changing equipment)

View detailed status for a character. There are three subscreens; press Z to swap between them. Pressing A will bring up a help menu giving an explanation of elements and ailments and their resistances.

Change equipment for characters within the current party.

Check all owned items. This includes main equipment, sub equipment, materials, and special items. This screen is the only way to view item descriptions for special items.

Main equipment is used in the top slot for each character. Sub equipment is the bottom 3 slots. Materials are used for crafting equipment at Nitori’s Shop. Special Items are consumables used at the Hakurei Shrine, items that give bonuses just by having them, and progress-based key items.

(Dungeon only) Immediately exit the dungeon. There is no penalty or cost for this, except losing your position and any consecutive battle bonus.

Change the order of the current party. If you are in the dungeon, any changes made will be undone when you return to town.

(Town only) Learn new passive skills.

(Dungeon only) Spend TP to recover MP

Configuration options for the game. This is the same menu as when first launching the game, except that you cannot rebind keys from this menu.