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I just did some savestate science to confirm that. You get an extend at the end of every loop stage you no-miss and end with no extra lives in stock. I also confirmed that it doesn't matter how many lives you have left when you enter the loop and if you get the fixed extend in 2-4 you will not get the "mercy extend" even if you no-miss.

not sure if this was mentioned before, but does shot speed rank carry over into one level to the next if you no longer have hyper running at the end of the level?

also, for survival purposes, would it make the most sense to refrain from picking up hypers as to not increase shot speed rank?

For survival I would say you should pick up one hyper and let the next hypers go away, and use that hyper as a bomb to save your life. Then pick up 1 hyper again... Rank would go up only slightly, if your skill is decent i think it's definitely better to have all those additionnal life-saving bombs traded against slight rank increase.

I did a lot of practice on stage 4 and 5, definitely over 30 hours, maybe up to 50, in order to get more consistent at doing them both right in succession. I think I'm reaching a no miss no bomb success rate around 40% now, should be good enough to get some serious stuff done in second loop ! But we will see what the numbers will look like when I do actual runs with the first 3 levels included, probably something closer to 30% for the whole loop.

My success rate in DDP's first loop was at 40% at its best, but it was definitely much easier. I wonder how well I would do with it if I came back. Maybe One Day !

DDP Stage 5 feels harder to me than anything in DOJ first loop. I may not have 1-all DOJ yet, but it'll hopefully come soon.

I have actually no miss no bombed everything in the first loop myself with savestates, but I'm nowhere near being good, so my consistency is completely bad so I mess up in all sorts of unexpected spaces. There's stuff in DDP first loop that I've never done it with.


But then I don't try to chain as I find it annoying outside of stage 1 which I recently figured out and stage 2's popcorn hall.


Also, any consistent strats for the stage 3 boss final phase? In the rare times I actually don't screw up before that, I pretty much always die and/or bomb to it. I have done it maybe once or twice without dying/bombing in an actual run, but it was always after messing up some earlier. Even if I have a Hyper going into it, it usually isn't enough to do it "perfectly"

Also, where exactly are the bees in Stage 3? I pretty much always miss them in different places each time. And strats for any that may be harder to get.

Well the thing is when you no miss no bomb AND score (= generate and use as many hypers as possible) in DOJ rank gets to much higher levels so it definitely gets much harder than DDP !

Guidelines I use to dodge the final phase of Stage 3 boss :

- The pink lines rotate clockwise or anticlockwise and invert their rotation every 3 lines. Make sure you're always rotating in the same direction they are, and they won't be as much of a threat. Sometimes you might be unable to do that and have to spot a hole in the lines as they rotate towards you... but the point is to prevent that from happening for most of the length of the pattern.

- The best way to look at the blue shots is to stand close to the barrage they form, moving against you, and focus on that barrage to spot when blue bullets overlap. The second after they overlap, and the location of their overlapping, is when and where there will be a space for you to fly forward through. There is a rythm to it as barriers come one after the other with a constant frequency of blue bullets overlapping in front of you. Catch the rythm and fly forward right after 2 blue bullets overlap in front of you !

- When the boss drops the... metalic objects... that aim at you, you should try and be either on the left of the screen or right side and move to the other side fast after you destroy the object that is on the side that you started from. This way their aimed bullets will never be in your way or corner you or force you to move to a very dangerous zone like very close to the boss.

This is definitely not a easy pattern, very hard for a 3rd stage !

As for the bees I suggest watching a video or replay.

I still think that's the hardest attack of the entire first loop. I got tired of randomly dying to it so I worked out a new hyper distribution for 1-3 just to have a hyper ready to pass that attack easily. For that, you want to activate the hyper just as the "couple more shots" warning comes and move on top of the boss to finish it (should be just before you need to go through any of the denser rings).

Anything in DOJ would be 3x more easy if the ship had a better hit box.

A better hit box ?

I'm also curious to know what's the problem with the hitbox...

I think he's just disoriented from being used to DFK for so long.

Wait...really? I've been messing with DOJ since I got my DDP clear and can regularly hit stage 4 if I don't bother trying to score. The final attack in stage 3 actually doesn't give me a great deal of trouble. I'm not consistently no bombing or anything, but the whole St3 boss fight has been sort of a nonevent for me as far as survival is concerned...actually I find it really fun lol. Definitely took me a lot longer to figure out the DDP st3 boss than this guy.

If that's the hardest pattern of the first loop, or even one of them, I'm a lot more confident about at least getting a cheesed 1CC out of this game.

If you're only playing for survival, you are probably not confronting the hard version of that pattern. It includes tinier versions of the blue bullets in higher quantity and they seem to move a bit faster. "I can get to stage 4 if I play for survival only" does not sound as if you reached this rank yet.

How many Hypers does it take to see that harder version?

I use 2 during Stage 1, 5 on Popcorn Hall, any I get from the Popcorn hall chain on the stage 2 boss. I then try to avoid hypering during stage 3's stage part, but I usually end up using some.

It will get harder for each additional hyper you have used in the entire run,
and easier for each life you have lost and for each bomb you have used.

If you no miss no bomb, and use 3 hypers in stage 1, then 9 hypers in stage 2, then 5 hypers in stage 3, you are getting the rank you get if you maximize scoring in the early part of the game. Can't do this without scoring and chaining very well though, because it requires a lot of optimization to be even able to use that many hypers !

That would make sense. I generally try to chain each run and abandon it if I break too early. Some runs I go a bit crazy with the hypers but if I'm playing for survival purely after breaking a chain early I generally try to limit my use. I have yet to see any real overwhelming attack from the 3rd boss (not that he doesn't keep me on my toes in spots) so I'm guessing I simply haven't activated it.

As an aside, I could use some general tips for stage 5 mainly, and some of late stage 4. I'm gradually improving but seem to consistently find myself trapped when the turrets on rails come up in 4. In 5 I find myself repeatedly trapped on a regular basis. Thus far I've been approaching the game similar to how I approach late game DDP. It seems that prioritizing targets with the laser is more important in DOJ, but then it's easy to become cornered by zako. Is there some trick to this stage or is it just something that will naturally sort itself out the more I play it?

There is no general tip to deal with the stages other than very general techniques such as bullet herding and stuff, but they will not allow you to always avoid being 100% trapped, they'll just help.

You can just keep playing and it will "sort itself out" for you, as you slowly memorized routes through each specific parts that seem to allow you not to get trapped, but that is hardly optimal and you will make progress at a very reduced rate that way.

The best way to improve as always is watching and mimicking videos. They represent refined knowledge of the game and while you can sort some of it out by yourself through personal research, it will always so much faster to understand a new math concept with the help of a book or teacher, right ?

It's up to you which way is more fun and rewarding for you to play. I think learning and studying is a small amount of time (5% of your game time ?) you spend that helps you enjoy the game a great deal more. If you want to keep playing semi casually, just be careful not to try and mimick every trick you see in videos, because execution gets really hard if you optimize scoring. It may not be fun for you to spend 10s of hours dying all over the place to learn one stage, if you don't want to score that high. But if you adapt what you see to suit your style and goals, it can be much much faster to learn and get to the point where you're having good fun, surviving a lot better and scoring a bit !

I'm always slightly torn on researching videos when approaching a new game. In games like Garegga and Batrider that I've put a great deal of time into already, I spend a fair amount of time reading and watching to pick up new techniques for survival and scoring alike. When approaching a game that is relatively new to me (while I've played DOJ intermittantly for years, only within the past month or so have I started to give it focused attention) I like to push through as much as I can on my own at first. I noticed myself making better progress with DOJ than I have in the past and decided I'd like to try and simply achieve a 1-all more or less on my own. If I decide I'd like to really improve my play and learn some techniques beyond that I'll definitely start studying videos en masse.

I understand this may be counterproductive, as I might be developing bad habits that will have to be unlearned later, but I guess I sort of see working through this game for survival as some sort of general shooter test or something Sort of a way to gauge how my skills have increased over time. When I first started playing DOJ years ago on PS2 even the stage 2 boss was beyond my abilities!

Stage 5 seems pretty rough though, I might break down and turn to research if this becomes too frustrating haha

I'm the same way Deca. It might not be the quickest way to get as good as possible, but thats not really my goal in the first place. I feel a lot more accomplished full-chaining a stage by figuring it out on my own, even if I only have one stage down in the 3 months I've been playing the game

However, eventually, doing things on your own can get really frustrating, and sometimes seeing just one trick in a video can change everything for me.

I thought I knew how to play Garegga, or at least the early levels. Then I watched the superplay on the disc, and I realized that I had known nothing about this game. But... that was just as awesome!

Oh, so Gunbird time?

I've unfortunately had a string of crappy unexpected expenses, the most recent of which being a 50 dollar ticket for parking my car facing the wrong direction on the street in front of my house (the same direction it's been facing for most of the near year I've been living here). I'm putting Gunbird on hold for the time being while I go into cheap mode and try to recoup some funds I feel bad because it was my idea to begin with

As a little side note to this, according to the PS2 white label simulation mode, "hyper rank" maxes out at 15. I'm not sure if this was changed for black label, but I haven't seen any evidence that it did. So, if you hyper a total of 15 times (which you will if you are chaining close-to-optimally) and no-miss, you are guaranteed to be facing the same rank of this pattern even if your hyper usage varies slightly, because you get more than 15 hypers before this point, and "survival rank" is obviously guaranteed to be the same if you no-miss.

That is all assuming the hyper rank caps at 15 on BL though. Anyone happen to be able to confirm that?

I have read that one of the changes in Black Label is that rank increases slower per hyper, but the total rank cap has been increased. So the old 15-hypers rank in White Label should be reached by using more than 15 hypers in Black Label, and then you can go even beyond that.

Ah yeah, I've read that too, but I wasn't sure if it was hyper or survival rank (or both). But when I think about it, it makes sense to reduce the per-hyper rank since you get way more hypers. Still applies to white label, though, for anyone who still plays that.

It would be nice to know what the hyper rank max is in BL. Maybe someone with the superplay booklet can find that info? Might also be in BLEX port but I don't have my 360 hooked up right now.

edit: actually, hell, I'm not even sure whether there is two ranks in BL like there is in WL. In WL, you can see the difference between the two rank types in simulation mode (one primarily increases bullet count rather than speed, and vice versa, though I don't remember which is which since I haven't played for a while now, just started putting in some BL credits again yesterday )

We spent some time figuring the exact score distribution of Black Label and I thought I should post this here since it should pretty interesting. Thanks to Zetzumarshen for a big part of the research. Reference used is HFD's 3.5 billion A-E run which can probably be assumed to be close to the max score.

Exact mechanics of the max bomb bonus:
-Works almost the same as DDP, but with a small twist.
-Base max bonus is 770 points, every extra bomb picked adds one to its multiplier (if you pick up a bomb while already full you jump straight to x2).
-The max level displayed next to the multiplier increases by one every time you no-miss a stage and finish it with an active max bonus. It maxes out at 3 and resets to 1 if you die. At level 1 you get 770*multiplier every 3 frames, at level 2 every 2 frames, and finally every frame at level 3.
-The second loop adds a base x2 multiplier to the whole bonus.

Full max bonus is around 85M from the first loop and 600M from the second.

Full bee chains with HFD's hit counts are around 300M from the first loop and 700M from the second.

In the 3.5b run, the first loop is worth 1.1 billion, the second loop 2.1 billion and the end game bonus is 300M. We see that the differences in the max bonus and bees account for the whole 1 billion difference pretty nicely. Furthermore, if we keep in mind the end stage bonuses which are pretty minor (60M or so from HFD's first loop, a bit more in the second) we get an estimate of around 650M-700M for the value of full chains of one loop with good hyper usage.

Thanks for the research, all that stuff is good to know.

hi, everyone!

i've just started to play this game seriously after playing a few credits here and there for the last few weeks.
my goals for now are:
- no miss the first three stages constantly
- 1CC the first loop
- getting a decent score/learn to chain properly

what i wanted to ask, is if someone has a advice how to approach this game as a beginner. should i learn how to chain from the start or just try to clear the game first?

I invite you to read the guide that I wrote on this broad topic, link in my signature ;]

If getting better fast is your objective, trying to 1CC first is a waste of time.

Quick question from a noob:

What are the uses of the shot and the laser?

What I have picked up so far are the following:

* The laser seems better for scoring as it can keep the combo meter high when trained on a big enemy unlike shot.
* The shots seem better for 1cc or staying alive since they spread all over the place and take out enemies attacking from the flanks.
* Advanced players use the shot in certain situations to ensure that they don't kill too many enemies or pierce enemy attack formations in a way that would create a gap preventing them from keeping their combo going.

So would I be correct in assuming the following:

* Beginners should stick to shot as laser is useless unless you are going for chains
* Once a player is advanced enough to go for chains, he should stick to laser at first because shots alone cannot give good chains
* When a player has gotten some decent chains going, he will need to learn to creatively switch between laser and shot in order to get the optimal chains.

All this is just blind inference and I want to know exactly how horribly wrong I am before I subject myself to pain and suffering borne of ignorance!

Thanks.

Regarding the assumptions:

I think that right from the start, it's important to get a good balance between the shot and the laser. The laser's advantage is in its high power and precise movement speed; it's mainly useful for taking out large enemies before they can become a major problem, survival wise, as well as when there's a particularly tricky cloud of bullets you need to move through.

For chains, I think the laser is a good fallback option when you don't know what to do, for two reasons, which you seem to have figured out - firstly, as you guessed, it's nice because you have very good control over what you kill and what you can leave alive for later. Even more useful is being able to prevent your chain from breaking while holding the laser on a large enemy - this is one of the most basic chaining techniques you'll need to master. However, there are equally points where the shot is essential - sometimes you'll need to make a dash for an enemy on the other side of the screen, or slowly ration out some enemies in a column (which can be done with quick taps of shot, while laser would just destroy everything instantly). There are also points where either shot or laser are preferable for the survival aspect, so it's not really possible to make a generalization like sticking to one or the other. They work in tandem.

Keep at it!

Also I think its very important to understand that using laser equals lowering your ship's speed equals increasing your movement accuracy, which can be crucial in certain types of dodges (sometimes speed is better, too). Like the tandem that Sapz described, speeds also work in tandem to insure maximum efficiency in dodging patterns.