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Thanks guys!

An okay rule of thumb:

any enemy larger than the generic yellow tanks should generally be lasered, unless you're using A Shotia/A Exy and have a *damn* good reason (sometimes, in stage 4 or 5, it's easier to use shot if you're one of those two ships even to kill big things, provided you're simply trying to survive by that point).

Are you allowed to bomb any part of the cannon in 4th stage to get the extend or is it definately a no no?

it's a "no no" : if any part is destroyed by the bomb, the extend won't appear. I think you can still bomb as long as the bomb doesn't destroy a part though.

Uh, I'm pretty sure you can destroy the sides with a bomb, it's only the middle cannon that you cannot destroy with a bomb (damaging it is fine). I'm a scrub so I bombed the 2-4 cannon a lot of the time and never missed the extend.

Really? Ok, I thought even the side parts were off limits, my bad ! I've tested it a bunch of times but I always forbid myself to bomb there anyway.

I tested it and bombed the left cannon and it did not give me the extend.

I just checked to rule out faulty memory and I get the extend just fine using Exy after a bomb on the left cannon that destroys it and damages the middle part a lot.

You do destroy the right side of the cannon as well, right? That's the other requirement for the extend. Not sure what's going on otherwise.

Yes, sure I destroy the right cannon too. Thought that was too obvious to mention. What I did not mention that I am talking about black label if that makes any difference.

Black Label here too. This is intriguing, who do you use? Maybe the rule is different for Shotia/Leinyan? It's the only thing I can think of

I use Shotia. As Exy is mostly designed for superplayers I don´t see the point giving an extra life easier to people who can allready no miss the damn game.

Sounds like you've used spread bomb? Did you shoot whilst bombing and maybe accidentaly destroyed the part with your regular shot?

Always laser bomb for me, blow up the side cannon for most of the bomb, and deal a little extra damage on the center. (This is my typical 2-4 cannon strategy after blowing up the right cannon, unless I feel really confident with dodging... trust a bad player to know how to abuse bombs!)

Hi guys, I've read through most of this thread and done a search but I can't find any mention of a bug I seem to be experiencing while training the first stage on the PS2 version of DOJ, I'm still trying to figure out the specifics of how it's triggered, but just after the destroying the fountain/turret by the first two bee's it seems that the game sometimes begins to scroll slower than usual, almost stopping, and the appearance of the blue enemy ships that follow is noticeably delayed and staggered, even by as much as a few seconds between destroying one and the projected hitbox of the next appearing. Im using B-L type and default settings for stage 1 in training. Apologies if it's well known or anything. I have the facilities to record/upload a video of it happening if need be. It's only really causing me concern because I'm triggering it 90% of the time I'm training the stage and it's fucking up my chain.

I don't really remember WL that well since it's so long ago, but the next few enemy spawns after the turret depend on how quickly you destroy it, and there can be a fairly large gap with certain timings. As I recall, the most reliable way requires slowly lasering across the stars hidden behind the turret on WL, and not destroying the turret with pointblanking.

Apparently there's actually an improvement that can be made over what HFD does in his run. Basically at this section rather than using a hyper you store it and use it at some section later when you have 4 in stock. Aside from that HFD's run is pretty much perfect.

Credit to x91 for telling me.

Technically you could also no-miss/no-bomb Hibachi so you end with the Maximum bonus for a juicy extra 50m... have fun

Well yeah, but isn't that kind of a given? I just thought it was interesting that there's still 1 more improvement to be made over HFD's stage chaining paths though if you watch the vid you can see that section is kinda sorta hard to do without hyper, especially with all the pressure that comes with a full run and that's probably why HFD hypered there.

There's also the pod attack the midboss does which I think is pretty tricky to chain without a hyper. The older WL TAS does that so it probably is the optimal strategy, but I don't know how feasible it actually is.

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but if you save all of your hypers for the bosses from stages 1-3 and apply a hypered laser, you can get both extends pretty early in the game. Tip for those who care more about extends than score.

Use 5 hypers at the end of 1-2 and you'll be fine too.

There is a pattern on the stage 4 boss that is killing me every time. I always have problems with this kind of pattern. This is what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpj-LLyedEQ#t=20s

Problems I think I have:

1. Can't pull bullets to make gaps since there is no direction and all pattern
2. spinning concentric circles of bullets basically prevents me from readings gaps until they are directly in front of me. When the gap reads are back-to-back-to-back-to-back at a ships length or two in front of the ship, it's VERY DIFFICULT for me to spot gaps quick enough to get through the pattern unscathed. In other words, typically I can find gaps a bit higher up the screen so I can prepare more efficiently.

Anyway, any tips on this one? Curious.

It's the hardest part of stage 4 boss I think, I miss there occasionally.

my tips :
- it is usually better dodging this in a corner due to wider gaps because increased distance from the point that emits the bullets. I personnally go near left corner.
- it is very important to leave space for you to move in all directions (= try never sticking to bottom or left), because if you do you are not controlling WHEN you go through a circle, that's what prevents you from avoiding having to dodge 2 or 3 circles at once.
- so you want to keep some freedom and, while staying in the same general bottom left quarter, move around depending on what the pattern throws at you so that you dodge circles one at a time, at favorable times (good angle, not too narrow..).

With this you make it manageable and you should miss much less. Whether you will still miss or not will depend on your accuracy and skill !

It is POSSIBLE that you can make the pattern easier by standing in a specific spot at the moment when it starts (patterns like this sometimes get locked in a (still randomized) state that depends on where you were when they begun). I've tried playing around with that just a little bit but haven't paid too much attention cause now I get to dodge it fine most of the time. I think I often start this pattern in a position near the bottom right or center of screen, then immediately move to bottom left corner area before the first bullets reach me. Maybe there some spot that's better to be on for starting it up in a favorable way - DDP had that on a similar pattern at 1-6 boss.

Hey Prometheus, since I've been able to clear the loop rather consistently, I'd like to start chaining little by little. I wanted to try and chain 1-4 up to the cannon, but that platform section seems really hard. Are there any tips that you can give to help improve on that?

Well you can do it two ways,

- there is the much easier way which is sort of straightforward where you use an hyper at one point through the section, check White Label videos to see it done, you can adapt that to Black Label no problem.
- there is the hard way (you get more points) with no hyper usage. It then becomes a very methodical section with many tight chaining spots one after the other, overall it's quite high difficulty (not survival wise). The benefit of learning the hard way is not just the bonus points, but you will also learn a lot about being methodically precise. You can learn that from Black Label HFD superplay. Don't burn yourself out on this though, if it's too difficult for you you could switch to the easier way and learn something worth more points to get a much better score more easily. It took me a whole afternoon to learn how to do it, then I practiced it many many times to get more consistent. Now I get it maybe 80 or 90% in black label.

Obviously, in both cases savestate that shit and look carefully at the video / experiment carefully to reproduce and adapt.

If you're trying to practice this with the savestates/video and you have a very hard time with some particular spot feel free to ask me a more precise question, I know every detail very well there (hard version, don't know how to do the easy version, learned it a long time ago but forgot).

I think I'm just gonna do the easy version. If this is the easy version, it doesn't look too hard to learn. I'm just trying to get some cheap points as I try to get more consistent in the first loop.

Thanks for the tips on the 1-4 boss too. That attack is a bitch.

In addition to what Prometheus said about the 1-4 boss, you can also try to time it so your hyper fills during the middle of that pattern. Go into the boss with your hyper meter 98-100% full, and dodge his first two attacks while firing your rapid shot (this won't fill your hyper). When his second pattern is nearly finished, start lasering - if you time it right, you'll only have to dodge a few waves of the next pattern. I saw someone do that in a replay and immediately stole the idea for myself.

Here's a video of the whole process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKnjBP5jadA

Just seeing this now. I came in here to post my findings on that pattern after having finally cleared that first loop. Funny thing is, you've already covered it. Staying in the left corner makes the pattern a stay-still-and-slightly-tap-when-needed kind of thing. Really reduces the intensity. Perhaps it's the wider gaps, but I also think that you don't have to try to analyze as many bullets as they come in. Wish I saw this earlier though. Would have saved me hours of experimentation and facepalming.

Video doesn't exist.

Fixed. I missed the last letter when copy+pasting.