ST: Momoiro Underground

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Dinir
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ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by Dinir »

This forum doesn't deserve one random guy's honest effort. I am taking the ST off.
Last edited by Dinir on Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:33 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Dinir
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ST: Momoiro Underground (Lore)

Post by Dinir »

This forum doesn't deserve one random guy's honest effort. I am taking the ST off.
Last edited by Dinir on Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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CStarFlare
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Re: ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by CStarFlare »

Some commentary on stage and boss value from a scoring perspective. Some boss kill values are still missing, but none of them sans Momoko are worth a significant amount in the end and I kind of want to kick this list out the door. Sorry for the length - I tried to dump most of what I considered most relevant here, and while it's pretty long, but it's also pretty lacking in survival tips and specific strategies.

I think all stages have an Extra variant. Extra variants have some small enemies swapped for more dangerous ones (specifically, Helis become , and more aggressive enemy behaviour overall. I'm not sure if bosses are more dangerous but I imagine so. I'm also not sure if drops are increased to reward you for the extra challenge. Probably.

The main things I'd still like to figure out are how much is Momoko worth (/what influences it) and whether the stage 10 boss choice can be influenced. Would also be interesting to know what determine's Momoko's final form.

Route S is reportedly the highest scoring, with scores known to go up to at least 4.6m.

None of the B (or C) stages have plants to water or treasures to collect.

City

A1: Lisbon Underground, ホームレス鬼軍曹 ゴードン
Town, Homeless Tiger Sergeant Gordon (4,000 points)

Treasure: 9
Plant: 11

Stage is in the middle - fair amount of treasure and plants and the boxes are good sources of animal/money. But the boss is quite poor for score. Just kill him as fast as possible

A2: Mikulov Underground, 歌舞伎系鼠小僧 チューブラー
Railroad, Kabuki-style Mouse Boy Chubura (10,000 points)

Treasure: 12
Plant: 6

The stage seems good for scoring, though the boss is fairly empty.

The boss's front shot can be cancelled with your own quite easily which nets you a nice animal bonus but ultimately not much of value. Milk this spread if you want, then feel free to finish the fight after it scrolls on. It appears you can somewhat direct the way the screen scrolls depending on where you position yourself. I also think that finishing this boss off with a bomb nets you 0 points.

A3: Kotor Underground, 貧血用心棒 ムミョウイ
Spheres, Anaemic Bodyguard Mumyoi (8,000 points)

Treasure: 9(?)
Plant: 5(?)

The boss spawn purple rings which block your shots and deliver contact damage - however, destroying them nets you 3,000 points each. He spawns a lot of them, so milking here is a strong option. There are other targets that spawn during the fight, which you can focus on while waiting for more rings to spawn. The boss fight also contains a couple of the stage's plants, which is unique in the game.

B: Las Vegas Underground, イノメちゃん
Flying above a city, Inome (Phase 1: 4,000, Phase 2: 4,000, Phase 3: 6,000)

This is a stage where rank has a big impact on how much it's worth - high rank results in a lot more enemies. The big thing to consider in this stage the direction and speed of the stage scroll, which can make collecting animal spirits difficult. Some of the waves of enemies will scroll backwards back on screen if you miss them the first time around which can provide a good opportunity to collect their animals if you can kill them going in that direction.

The boss fires missiles in its second phase which are milkable - I'm unsure if this is worth the time and effort thanks to time penalties. It also has one destructible part in its first phase and 4 in its third. I need to find out what each is worth.

Ocean

A1: Rota Underground, 吸血魔導師 ピエルカッロ
Sea cave flooding, Bloodsucking Mage Piercarro (5,000 points)

Treasure: 10
Plant: 8

There's water in this stage that rises and falls. When in the water you're pushed back, the up shot is useless, the forward shot is about half the screen, down sprinkle scatters when it hits the water, and back seems relatively unaffected. These restrictions aren't a big deal during the most of the stage, but near the end the whole thing is submerged and it will become very important.

Boss has no scoring potential. Speedkill it.

A2: Maldives Underground, 甲殻ホステス カルデラーラ
Shore backward, Crustacean Hostess Kaldelala (5,500 points)

Treasure: 13
Plant: 6

A small number of enemies spawn during the boss fight with Kaldelala, but they don't contribute much. There's a couple of decent bullet cancel opportunites in this fight, but it's alway super dangerous to try to collect the chips - it's best to just speedkill this guy.

A3: Galapagos Underground, 装甲海坊主 ベルナルド
Going down in rocky hole, Armed Sea Bonze Bernardo (6,000 points)

Treasure: 0
Plant: 0

No treasures or plants is a big negative for this stage, which doesn't really have anything to redeem its scoring potential.

Bernardo is a terrible boss - underwater half the time, spawns drop few items and are with 0 points to boot. If you've got to go through this stage, just bomb him for a speedkill. It's safer and you might save a bomb's worth of score via less time penalty by doing this.

B: Palau Underground, 海内無双 ディアマンテ
Above and under an ocean, Diamante The Unrivaled in Ocean (16,000 points)

Diamante is a great boss for milking - several parts to destroy, spawns lots of enemies that drop a lot of items, and seems to last a long time. A good run on this can probably bring in around 200k/life - probably more.

Early in the stage there's a couple of enemies who are great bullet cancel targets. There's not many easy cancels in this game that net you several thousand animal chips so this is a good place to observe how bullet cancels work and how quickly you need to move to collect them.

Forest

A1: Sherwood Underground, 音速シスター ジバンシー
Bushes, Sonic Sister Givenchy (5,000 points)

Treasure: 12
Plant: 9

The boss occasionally releases a bunch of enemies which don't seem to offer enough score or drops to make them worth waiting around for, and it's easy to loose a lot of resources waiting for it to happen. Probably worth just killing her.

A2: Inland Underground, 幸福の根 シャルネル
teal structures, Root of Happiness Charnel (4,000 points)

Treasure: 13
Plant: 15

Great stage, lots of destructible boxes and treasures. It's sometimes worth tossing a bomb to jump between paths!

The boss, on the other hand, seems to have no scoring potential. I've never successfully destroyed his spiked ball - I'm not sure what it's worth.

A3: Black Forest Underground, エリンギ魔人 ガリアノ
Pistons, Eryngii Demon? Galiano (6,500 points)

Treasure: 15
Plant: 8

This stage is great for score. The blocks you destroy give great money/animal drops (be as close as possible so you can grab all the animal souls) and there's some of those great jet lines that drop a lot too. There's a lot of plants, so you'll get a lot of shops - and the stage isn't very difficult, either.

The boss doesn't have a ton going for it from a score perspective, but there's a few enemies and some stacks of boxes to get items from if you let the scroll continue for a while. I haven't gone to the end of this one - there could be enough boxes to make waiting it out worth it, but you won't lose much if you just go for a quick kill. His laser beams do seem to drop animals and money if they're on screen when he dies.

B: Amazon Underground, 機略縦横 トレフル
Industrial area, Trefle The Resourceful

This stage is incredible for score and could be the single best stage to continually suicide on. The stage has a lot enemies which drop a lot of items (the lines of jets are great), and the boss is worth an absolute boatload even if I'm not entirely sure why. You can drop a bomb and end up with a great score bonus and a shop (which will give you another bomb to repeat) and likely won't damage the boss much. (I'm not 100% clear on where you shoot this boss to damage it - usually a bomb ends up eating through it - but the lower on its body you stay, the less damage you seem to do.) Each life spent on this boss will probably get you 250k+, plus nearly 100k from the stage. Forest B is king.

Mountain

A1: Fuji Underground, 双生クリスタル ハラ&ディ
Cliffs, Geminous Crystals HaLa & Die

Treasure: 11
Plant: 9

Stage has a decent amount of treasure and enemies, and isn't too tough. The main problem is that it leads to Mountain B.

This boss has several patterns that seem like they'd be worth cancelling, but it's quite difficult to cash in by actually collecting the chips because there are usually two claws shooting different patterns at once.

A2: Matterhorn Underground, クレイジーハンター ククリ
Slope, Crazy Hunter Khukuri

Treasure: 0
Plant: 0

The stage has nothing going for it - a low number of enemies, no treasure or plants.

I think the boss's regenerating bulbs are worth about 500 each - the boss moves a little erratically, with the bulbs often being behind you (which is a serious problem considering the back shot doesn't give you any points!) and it's easy to take a lot of hits in this fight. It's worth milking in a perfect run, but you're likely to come out behind on this one in my experience. And a perfect run won't include this stage in the first place.

A3: Mauna Loa Underground, サイコニート レイピア
Narrow tunnel, Psycho NEET? Psychonite? Rapier (8,000 points)

Treasure: 17
Plant: 19

The stage has a lot going on - lots of enemies, lots of plants, lots of loot. It has more plants/treasures than any stage in the game. It also seems to scroll a little faster than other stages, so it's difficult to grab everything. To make things worse, the big enemies block your way and make you waste time getting around them.

The boss has a couple of destructable melee weapons but I don't think they give points for destroying them (they do drop items though). There's really no scoring opportunity here.

B: Kilimanjaro Underground, 狷介孤高 サーベル
Spinning structure, Sabel The Lofty (Phase 1: 2,000, Phase 2: 1,500, Phase 3: 3,000, Phase 4: 5,000, Phase 5: ???)

The stage portion has nothing going for it. The boss has four stages, the second of which spawns a fair number of small enemies to destroy. However, I've never found a way to make that part of the fight not be total chaos - milking here does not seem like a viable option. I don't think the arms in the fifth phase of the fight are worth any score, though they do drop animal and money. Overall, Mountain B seems like a dog for score so far... on the other hand, there are reports of Route Q having scores over 4m, which is a clue that either the other stages make up for some of it (which doesn't seem likely with A2 in the mix) or I'm missing something on Sable.

Tower

A1: Leonard Tower
Going upward in a residential area

Treasure: ??
Plant: ??

The tower has a lot of plants and treasures to collect, but it's a very wide field that you move upward in so it's hard to say how many are actually on the map, and how many can practically be collected in one run. It't not difficult to clear 150k SMART in the stage, but optimising this would be hell considering how many paths through the stage there are.

It doesn't have a boss, which is something.

A2: Leonard Tower Center
Horizontally long corridor

Only a boss fight. How which of the three bosses is chosen is a mystery so far - I don't think it's route, rank (of any sort), or resources. Perhaps it's tied to your performance in stage 9? Number of treasures collected, route taken, etc. I sure hope that's not it, because testing different variables 35 minutes into the run is just cruel... maybe the developer would answer if someone asked him on Twitter?

酸性プリンセス レネオモーレ・ビアンカ・フーラー
Acidic Princess Leneomore Bianca Fuller
(8,000 points)

Teleports in front of/behind you. Fires some extremely dense patterns. She can also fire missiles, but they're infrequent - speedkilling advisable because of her low instance of scorable shots and dangerous attacks.

断食パラディン キラウエア・グレイブヤード
Fasting Paladin Kilauea Graveyard
(~7,100 points)

Flies back and forth. Very occasionally launches destructible missiles, but not enough for them to be worth milking or waiting for. Speedkilling is best.

豪腕バトラー ミタビ・サンヨウ
Outstanding Butler Mitabi Sanyo
(9,500 points)

He fires enemies and missiles pretty often which can be milked for points. Undoubtably the best boss to fight on this floor, and probably the easiest to manage as well.

B: Leonard Royal Household, ”ロードオブアンダーグラウンド” レオナルド・グレネイド
Horizontal corridor backward, "Lord of Underground" Leonard Grenade (Orbs: 0 points, Hatchling: 13,000)

The stage portion can be quite challenging - you're moving backwards very quickly, which means all of your animals will scroll off the right side of the screen. It's very difficult to collect animals unless you find a way to get behind enemies before they die, which means it's difficult to get a shop. Bombs are hugely useful for the boss's second phase, but you're probably pretty low from the last two stages and you don't have many opportunities here to restock.

The boss has two parts. Both shoot dark energy balls which can be destroyed for 100. In the first phase they're decent for milking and getting geared up for the second half. In the second half, you're again moving backwards and you'll probably struggle to collect the animals they drop - but there are a lot more balls being fired at you to destroy. I'm sure the second phase is milkable, but it's such a difficult fight I'm just happy if I can fight my way through it.

One thing to be cautious of is the boss's hitbox stays active longer than you might expect - I waste a bomb here far more often than I should. Because of the scroll here, you should sit to the boss's right to collect his animal drops, anyway.

C: Shibuya Ground, 女子高生 モモコ
City and outer space, High School Girl Momoko

Only the Momoko fight. She drops animals after every phase and when you destroy her parts, so you should be able to get a shop or two out of this fight so long as you make it past the first part. With any luck the shop will have bombs. Note that her third form seems to have two variants (her being surrounded by spears or pendulums) and I'm not sure what influences it. I rarely make it to this boss, much less this phase. :oops:

Momoko's points are hard for me to figure out. She can be worth huge points, but it seems pretty inconsistent which leaves me scratching my head. If anyone wants to analyse Momoko fight footage be my guest.

Video 1 - Route M, Rank 411 starting
Phase 1 175.5k
Phase 2 60k (no points for destroying the ring)
Phase 3 206k combined for killing all 6 spears, but 137k were from the first 3. Destruction bonus ~64k.

Video 2 - Route C, Rank 459 starting)
Phase 1 191k, 2nd life 46k, 3rd life 0 back shot (but maybe 18k for killing the outer ring?)
Phase 2 0 (back shot), 3rd life 56k
Phase 3 3rd life, 170k for killing all 6 spears (some might have been with back shot?). Destruction bonus ~60k.

Video 3, Rout R, Rank 256 starting)
Phase 1: Maybe 40k for killing the outer ring, nothing for phase end (killed by time ticking?). Life 2, 20k for ring, 24k for killing.
Phase 2: Life 2, nothing for ring (back shot), 52k for killing.
Phase 3: Life 2. Pendulums here, one destroyed for 16k. 20k destruction bonus.

Average rank updates after the fight which hopefully gives you one final score boost.
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CStarFlare
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Re: ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by CStarFlare »

Maybe this isn't news to other people, but I realised today that enemies stop dropping animal tokens when your shop gauge is full and sometimes it seems excess animals on screen disappear when you hit a full gauge.

For me, this means I try to kill as few enemies as possible while my shop is open/opening, and exit the shop as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this is making it even more clear that sometimes the shop just refuses to close when you leave it - I've considered holding back on purchasing some weapon upgrades to makes it less likely that I'm stuck waiting for a shop to close, but that's a bit galaxy brain at this point.

Anyway, I've been doing runs of Route S and 3.5m seems quite possible for a good run that finishes. But I have a hard time imagining where an extra 1m would come from - there's either boss milks I'm not seeing, or I'm misunderstanding something fundamental about how the stages should be approached. It could also be that 4.6m just requires one to understand how Momoko's scoring works and suicide there instead of Forest B (and be good enough to not get slaughtered by her - which is actually quite doable). Really hope others spend more time with the game to help push things farther.

I think I'll probably push for a 3mil+ clear on Route S and move on. I'd pay someone to make an all stages mod for the game, though. :D
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Zaarock
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Re: ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by Zaarock »

How much are you using bombs? The guy who got over 4mil mentioned in one of his posts that there is some kind of massive score penalty if you bomb multiple times during a stage. Not sure what are the specifics, maybe it's indicated poorly ingame.
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CStarFlare
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Re: ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by CStarFlare »

I do bomb a lot. It's often hard to tell with this game as there's always so much going on but I could see it simply being a matter of costing you 5,000 each bomb. Sometimes I wonder if I've gotten less points because I killed certain enemies (particularly bosses) with a bomb, or if it affects the amount of money/animals dropped, or if it clears some of the money/animals that are on screen, but I haven't found any basis for those suspicions yet. I can try to cut down on my usage and see what happens - will require a big change in how I approach things at max rank.

Do you remember where the player was posting? I'd be interested to read through them to see if anything pops out (even machine translated).

I think I have to revise my previous statement about animal tokens not dropping when your gauge is full - tokens seem to stop dropping, but they seem to still get added to your animal score. This might actually make keeping the shop open better for scoring as in some cases as you don't need to chase down items (which is a big problem in stage 11, though just opening the shop is difficult there for the same reason).

Also - the dev has confirmed via twitter that all boss differences (Stage 10, final, are there any others?) are based on triggers, rather than being random. He didn't give any hints, unfortunately. I'll have to investigate whether bombing is a possible factor, given what Zaarock has reported.
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Dinir
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Re: ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by Dinir »

The tweet wrote: Yes, all the bosses include final boss have each secret to meet them, not random. It is still a top secret of the game that how to meet them.
I believe that of all my 15 clears I only saw the butler once, and the princess twice, in Stage 10.
I should be triggering something constantly to always see the paladin... or the paladin is default one? :cry:

Btw shouldn't we make a GD post for all this discussion?
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CStarFlare
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Re: ST: Momoiro Underground

Post by CStarFlare »

I certainly felt like Paladin was default for a while. Then I had a string of getting Butler really consistently. The more I deviated from my usual path the less he showed up. I’m thinking it’s either:

- treasures collected
- side of the tower one spends time on/is on when you cross some trigger
- bombs used

Route through the tower impacts all of those so I could see each of them being possible explanations.

I don’t think it’s necessary to split discussion into about thread - there’s probably little enough in the discussion that we’re not in a position where splitting off makes a lot of sense.
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