Touhou New World What skills should you choose?

Making your playthrough faster and easier.

Touhou New World What skills should you choose?

Skills in Touhou New World is a long-term investment that cannot be easily changed late-game without lots of grinding. So choosing good skills can make your playthrough much easier and faster.

Skill levels work like this:

• Skills start at level 1, and maxes out at 10.
• Hitting enemies and objects with your skills give the skill EXP. Leveling up makes the skill hit much harder, and depending on the skill, might also increase the range or add more shots.
• However, skill EXP gained is largely dependent on the enemy level, so grinding low level enemies with a high level skill will give no EXP. The only way to reach level 10 is to hit enemies at end-game/post-game maps (level 30+) with your skills.

There are 3 stats for each skill, besides CD (cooldown, in seconds), which is not influenced by level:

• Power: Roughly how powerful the skill is
• Range: Roughly how far the skill can hit. Most shots have a limited range before the bullet dissipates, so you can’t just 360 no-scope an enemy outside your shot’s range
• Bullet: Roughly the amount of bullets. Listed as – for melee skills

Spells cannot be leveled up normally (they’re done via special side missions). When they’re used all enemy movement is stopped, allowing you to stop enemies at its tracks; however enemy bullet triggers are not stopped, so whatever shots being fired will continue so, which could be useful.

Spells also eliminates most enemy bullets, something useful exclusively for bosses.

So, what skills do you actually need?

Roughly speaking, there are 3 kinds of skills:

• Spread: attacks a wide area in front of you. Intended for crowd control.
• Linear: attacks directly in front of where you face, can be aimed. Usually have higher range than other skills. Intended for zoning.
• Single: attacks a very specific area/target, and doesn’t have lot of range, but hits much harder than most other skills. Intended for single, strong enemies.

Generally speaking, you need 1 of each equipped to handle large group of mobs, linear sections, and occasional tough enemies/bosses.

When you actually test the skills, you should’ve noticed already the stats in the skills panel don’t really tell you some key aspects of the skills, which is actually very important for actual use:

• Delay: Your movement stops to a halt when you’re using a skill. This game does not allow cancelling skills (unless you’re being hit), so during this period you become a sitting duck vulnerable to many attacks.
• EXP gain: Some skills are just naturally easier to level up than the others (you can test this by equipping 3 skills for a playthrough, use them equally, and see which levels up faster). This won’t be listed as it can’t be easily measured objectively
• Risk: Some skills require you to be close to the enemy to make it work, which can make you very vulnerable during boss fights (with bosses moving very quickly and attacks haphazardly). This won’t be listed either as it’s subjective
• Other factors specific to each skill

Though, in the end there will always be a part of factor on personal taste, so this list is merely for reference. Your mileage may vary.

p.s A seldom known game mechanic is that before you defeat the first boss (and hence lose a big portion of your power), you can pause the game and change the skills you equip. This lets you test all the skills you have at full power to get a feeling how they behave at end-game. (They’re level 1 here, but still at full power)

Reimu

Generally speaking, Reimu is the Easy Mode(TM): skills are easier to use, hit harder and has much less delay than Marisa’s skills.
Shots are usually homing too, which makes her good for maneuvering around and safely using her skills at most situations, not needing to actually focus on aiming.

As an extra, Reimu’s melee skills allow her to keep moving freely while using them, which is also a plus over Marisa.

Sealing Needle

Power: B
Range: D
Bullet: C
CD: 3.5
Delay: Long (gets worse as it levels up and shoots up to 3 shots)

Mediocre.
Completely outclassed by Youkai Buster in damage and range. Sure, it has a slightly longer range, but Youkai Buster has enough range for all purposes, on top of being spread and hitting harder.
It’s also the only Reimu’s skill that has horrendous delay comparable to Marisa’s skills, which is horrible to use against bosses.

Hakurei Amulet

Power: C+
Range: A
Bullet: A
CD: 4
Delay: Very Short

Bad.
Its homing is actually very unreliable, and the shots scatters out very quickly to make it bad as crowd control (as you leave a lot of gaps within each shot).
What’s worse, before the amulet starts flying away they hit for very little damage, so it’s intended for mid-range enemies, but then again, you have Youkai Buster.

Yin Yang Shot

Power: S
Range: D
Bullet: E
CD: 4.6
Delay: Short

Great.
Boss killer. It packs so much punch within a single orb.
On top of everything, it is homing too, so you only have to aim roughly at where you want to hit, and it’ll work fine most of the time.

Youkai Buster

Power: A
Range: B
Bullet: B
CD: 5.5
Delay: Very Short

Great.
This is the actual reliable mid-range to long-range crowd control Reimu has.

Ascension Kick

Power: A+
Range: E
Bullet: – (Melee)
CD: 3.7
Delay: Very Short

Mediocre.
The problem: it’s actually outclassed by Cruel Pacification in every way. Cruel Pacification hits harder despite only A in Power, has a bigger range and spread, etc.
Ascension Kick is also hard to use for a good reason: it only hits at where you face, and is hard to adjust afterwards.

Cruel Pacification

Power: A
Range: C
Bullet: – (Melee)
CD: 4.5
Delay: Very Short

Good.
Once leveled up the range becomes bigger and bigger, and would instantly sweep a big chunk of area around Reimu.

Fantasy Seal

Power: S
Range: S
Bullet: –
CD: 30

Outclassed by Demon-Binding Ring in terms of damage.
If you want to be absolutely sure you hit everything around you, that’s fine, but in practice you only need to use spells for tough enemies/bosses, and they’re laughably easy to get inside Reimu’s spell attack range.

Demon-Binding Ring

Power: S
Range: A
Bullet: –
CD: 30

It’s better than Fantasy Seal in almost all aspects, so use this.

Marisa

Marisa is the Hard Mode(TM): every skill is weaker, lots of skills have tons of delay, and manual aiming is required for most ranged skills.
A lot of playing Marisa revolves around actually interacting with the enemies, and blocking at the proper time to cancel damage/enter Perfect Guard.

Narrow Spark

Power: A+
Range: C
Bullet: E
CD: 5.3
Delay: Medium

Good.
As Marisa’s options anyway. One of the main damage dealers.
Aiming enemies afar can be difficult (especially with keyboard controls) but the hitbox is a big bigger than depicted.
One downside is it takes a while for the spark to appear, which makes it unsuitable to hit enemies over height difference; with ranged skills that fire instantly, you can just jump and fire at the peak of the jump.
However, if you’re just hitting enemies on the ground you can mitigate a lot of the delay by bunny-hopping, the use the skill at the peak of your jump. This will make you stop midair, fall and then make the hit, eliminating a lot of the delay.

Meteoric Debris

Power: C+
Range: A
Bullet: B+
CD: 3.5
Delay: Very Short

Great.
Perfect mid-range to long-range crowd control that covers almost 180 degrees in front of the player with no gaps in-between. It also hits as hard as 1 hit of Magic Missile.
As a bonus, this skill has a lot more EXP gain than other skills for some reasons, so it’ll be very easy to get it to high level compared to other skills.

Magic Missile

Power: B
Range: C+
Bullet: D
CD: 4
Delay: Long (gets worse as it levels up and shoots up to 3 shots)

Mediocre.
There are no reasons to not use Narrow Spark over this, since Narrow Spark pierces, only hits for slightly less damage, and has roughly the same delay.

Violent Brew

Power: A
Range: C+
Bullet: C
CD: 5
Delay: Longest

Bad.
As the highest ranged damage option it’s incredibly unsafe to use with the longest delay out of all skills in the game.
Another massive issue is that it takes a long time to actually throw the brew and deal the damage: enemies can move freely during this time so by them they might already have left outside the range, or approached you, making you defenseless.
Narrow Spark deals more damage, and Meteoric Debris does crowd control much better with good enough damage.

Sweep Aside

Power: B+
Range: D
Bullet: – (Melee)
CD: 5
Delay: Medium

Good.
It covers a lot of range, and while doesn’t hit very hard is good enough for its purpose.
Remember, this is Marisa: you struggle a lot to get versatility out of your skills.

Witch Leyline

Power: C
Range: D
Bullet: – (Melee)
CD: 4
Delay: Longest

Why?
Yes, it deals a lot of damage, but it is even more unsafe than Violent Brew with all the delay. It’s not like Reimu’s Yin Yang Shot where you get easy big damage almost risk-free.
In general staying close with the enemies is very dangerous, especially with bosses because they can suddenly shoot without warning. Using this is basically asking for trouble.

Master Spark

Power: A+
Range: B
Bullet: –
CD: 30

Great.
It deals a ton of damage, even bigger than Reimu’s spells, though only at a line in front of the player.
Some caution should be taken to aim it properly: after activation there’s ~1s of window where the aim can be freely changed from movement, then a few seconds where you can slightly move to make fine adjustments. It can be easy to misaim during the first window and cause the shot to face at a completely wrong direction.

Stardust Revarie

Power: A
Range: S
Bullet: –
CD: 30

Good, but outclassed by Master Spark.
Again, in this game you don’t really need a full screen wipe; wide area wipe is already good enough.

Satellite Illusion

Power: B
Range: E
Bullet: S
CD: 30

Bad.
It doesn’t really help you in bosses, when you want big damage to either take away a big chunk of their health bar, or skip their spell phases.
For the range the orbs provide, you’d need to stay close ranged to bosses all the time, which is bad for Marisa (she doesn’t have good melee options to begin with) and makes you very vulnerable (as most skills have long delays).