Bars
The top, thinner bar is called Burden Bar, and it represents the damage dampening. The closer the bar is to being full, the lower your damage output is. The bar shows the damage reduction in percentage : A full bar means your attacks will do zero damage. The bottom, thicker bar is called Danmaku Bar, and it is the power you need for most projetile/special moves. If you use the entire bar up, it’ll be turned into red, and moves that require bar will be unavailable until it is filled to the max. It fills slowly all the time except when using skills that consume it, and faster if the opponent has fallen to the ground.
Moves that need this bar have the required amount listed in the COST column, where the whole bar equals 1000.
The two star icons in front of the bars are the Bombs. These are optional and are off by default. You can enable them in minus.st. You can use them via the D,D,c command, and it will make a nearby opponent fall, while giving you invincibility for a short duration. You can gain new bombs at random when hitting the opponent, and start each match with one. You can see your spellcards at the bottom of the screen. (If they are not there, make sure you are using the correct screen resolution ratio of 4:3)
Grazing
By holding the z button down and pressing a directional key, the character will move quickly in that direction. This movement is so fast that you can avoid being hit by projectiles while moving this way.
It doesn’t work against hyper projectiles (those with a type of HP listed), which is unlike the original Touhou games, so you have to be more careful when to do this. In exchange, the guard break mechanism of the original game is not present here : You are free to guard as much as you wish, but be careful about chip damage, unguardables, and low/high attacks : guarding all the time is rarely a good strategy.
Card System
You can configure your deck of cards using the DeckConfig.exe utility. You can have any number of cards in your deck, and each card can have any number of copies. The deck can never run out, if it would, a new deck of the exact same contents is generated. When construction a deck, you have to
-Include at least 5 different types of card.
-Have no more than 50% of your deck made of the same card.
The deck construction program won’t allow you to break these rules, but you better know about them in advance, anyway.
If you have any trouble with the spellcard system, delete the deck.dat file, restart Deckconfig.exe, ignore the error message, and save.
Doing this will generate a new, empty deck configuration file.
There are four types of cards.
-Skill cards will increase the power of one or more special attacks, or they give you a new move or passive ability.
-Stage cards generate a permanent effect of some kind that, unlike a passive ability, has effects on something other than yourself.
-Spell cards will provide a one-time effect when used, usually an attack, but sometimes other, more special effects.
-System cards are spell cards that are common for all Touhou characters.
You can declare a card, that allows you to use it without needing any copies of that card, and allows you to level it up. Skill cards cannot be declared. Stage cards cannot be used, only declared, they have a passive effect. When you attempt to use a Stage card, it will be automatically declared instead.
Declaring a new card will remove the old declaration and all levels of that card will be lost.
Declaring an already declared card will level it up by 1. Declaring a card costs 33% of the card’s normal cost. Using a declared card costs 75% of the normal cost. The maximum level of a declared card is 4. If this level is reached, any further copies of the card are immediately removed from your deck.
Declared Spell Cards sometimes also grant passive abilities.
Cards that are ready to be used have a GREEN frame of light around them.
Cards that can be declared have a RED frame.
When performing a spell, you can sometimes chain another one, by the c button.
You either need to select the card you will be chaining, or have it declared.
Spells that allow chaining other spells have the spell listed in their description.
Chaining a spell costs 1000 less power than using it, and there is no additional discount even if it is declared.