Anyways, the new StB scores are as follows, in chronological order:
6-5: 373,350
10-1: 2,129,740
EX-8: 1,811,200
8-1: 822,140
8-8: 3,112,980
2-2: 115,440
2-4: 141,130
6-2: 232,760
6-8: 523,890
Thoughts on the runs/future prospects of the scenes:
6-5: I am very happy how this turned out. The luck was fantastic on the last two photos which allowed this score, but I really like how you can choose to bide your time in this scene. The time is obviously not unlimited (in fact, you really aren't given much time to stall) but there's enough time left over that you don't need to feel forced to take the pictures if you can tell that there's not enough pellets for a good photo. Despite that it's still a matter of luck in the long run because the timer is limited and, at least for me, it's not possible to know the outcome of a photo before I take one. With a lot of experience in this scene you can learn to use your intuition and see roughly if a photo will be good or bad.
There is definitely room for more luck, but this should still prove to be incredibly hard to beat. I have no intentions of improving it, but it's a fun scene, so you never know.
Lastly, surviving in this scene is definitely far from trivial, but I suppose I'm pretty good at it. I felt pretty comfortable dodging the barrages although the deaths were somewhat frequent, certainly not unbearably so.
10-1: In my opinion this is the best score I have in this game. My 6-5 and 9-6 scores are comparable, but this is the one that seems hardest to improve right now. For the first 6 photos, you want frame perfect photos. 1 frame early or 1 frame late costs a lot of score. In addition, I figured out great composition on the first 3 photos, but I only used the best composition on the 3rd photo in order to save time since it takes a long time to set up for. Photo 4-6 can be optimized further by getting the optimal movement patterns, but that's not something I want to stall for. The last two photos are RNG, the base value of the photos vary wildly, but it's also very tough to survive and get 2.0/1.9 boss shots and self shots.
In my run I got great luck on the last two photos, as well as 2 or 3 (I can't remember) of frames total mistakes, which is around 20,000 loss or so. My sum of best for this scene is roughly 2,188,000.
I will never try to improve this score.
EX-8: Sloppy run and with a compromise photo as the finish because the last two photos are almost impossible to take optimally... The compromise still aims to take a self shot and a nice shot but drops majorly from the boss shot multiplier.
I want minimum of 2 million out of this scene in the future, but it is so insanely hard...
8-1: I don't enjoy this scene because of the stalling in the first three photos, but this is a pretty bad score so I'll improve it eventually.
8-8: Around half the time I simply die right after a photo because of the leftover butterfly bullets. Since there's 4 photos, that means that there's 3 such times per run, which means that around 7 out of 8 runs just die. That's pretty brutal, and in addition, the runs take a long time, the scores are all over the place, and it's just weird, subtle optimization to try to set up for good photos. I started grasping it more and more eventually, but it's still a bit hazy. Nonetheless, this was a pretty satisfying score, although I would like a 3.2 some day!
2-2: It's one of those easy luck-grind scenes. I feel pretty satisfied with the great luck I got, 116+ is just too tight for me, so probably not playing this one again.
2-4: This is another luck-grind scene but I actually like this one. There's a cool approach in Fisty's run that I started sort-of copying (but with my own, simpler techniques). In the end I got a great run which is only 30 points behind Fisty. I kept playing another day after that but couldn't get close to that luck again, so I moved on. Maybe in the future I will go for the record, but it feels kind of silly to aim for 40 points improvement... and I don't feel strongly about a personal score, my ego just wants the record lol.
6-2: This is an unique scene in how the photos are taken, and in the end I settled on the unfocus - dash - aim up-right technique. I use my mouse cursor to tell where to stop, and both a part of the screen-border background and the mouse cursor to tell which horizontal position to start from. I try to find the right vertical position during the little time to get, then I count to 3 when Youmu slashes, dash up at 2, and aim up-right at 3 and let go. The composition is fairly consistent (Youmu sometimes ends up outside the picture, but that's ok, since you can just retry with no penalty except time. I never really get Youmu too far right/down in the picture, which is important.) but the timing is hard, so missing the frames leads to a lot of restarts. In my run, the first photo was bad, but the last one was really high!
6-8: This scene is a luck-grind but it's more based on skill than 6-4 and 6-6, and I think I just now got to the point where I actually need to be lucky to make improvements. I think this is my favorite Youmu scene. I don't think I can take the record, but perhaps if I ever get a superb final photo we'll see about it... I think that around 540-550k is pretty realistic for me if I work hard at it.
Right now I want to make improvement son 6-4 and 6-6 in addition to 6-8, to give Youmu some love. 6-4 and 6-6 have been stuck for a long time, though. They are major luckgrinds, particularly 6-6 seems nearly impossible to improve at this point, and I'm actually pretty fine with the score staying where it is, but I've been pretty close to the record on 6-6 since summer last year, and I definitely have a chance...
As for other scenes, I have been playing a good chunk of 2-3 as well, another luckgrind but honestly quite tough to get the photos right in at the end. Still, getting the luck is super important, particularly on the second photo where you get a blue shot like 1 in 10 runs, and without that blue shot, it's almost hopeless. A few other scenes have been part of my rotation but they aren't particularly on my radar right now. Maybe next month?
Picture of my current overall score.
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In addition, played a good bit of FW, mainly Extra and some Easy B1.
I improved the Extra score to 98.9 million, and Easy B1 to 35.6 million. Easy C1 was also improved to 36.5 million, although that one is a work in progress. Extra is a work in progress as well but because the competition is at such a high level, it's hard to make improvements... I think that realistically, 102 million might come out, but I'll leave that to someone else... 100 million is enough for me and, possibly the record, but that might never happen...
Easy B1 is good as it is.
Total score should be 1.791b now, so another 9 millions worth of improvements to make. That should be doable.
I also got 360~ million in PoFV with Reisen, but I think I can get higher than that...
