Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia – How to Unlock the True Ending

Here’s a really helpful guide to defeat the big boss after you finish Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia. Beating this boss will help you unlock the best ending or get that final achievement you’ve been aiming for. This guide is for version 1.2.5 (the one that’s out now), and we’ll keep it updated if there are any changes to the boss in future updates.

Overzicht

Wauw, if you made it through Pandemonium and reached the lower stratum, you deserve major kudos! Enduring all the crazy challenges that dungeon throws at you is seriously impressive. But brace yourself because things get even tougher with the final boss encounter. If you’re still reading, consider this your final spoiler warning because I’m about to dive into strategies and tactics for tackling the big bad boss. From here on out, I’ll be referring to the final boss as Shinki, their in-game name. This guide is based on what worked for me, using a mix of characters between levels 86 en 94 with both Physical and Magical Sumireko builds.

Nu, while I’ve shared what worked for me, there might be even better or unique strategies out there that I haven’t thought of. If you’ve got some great ideas, I’d love for you to share them! I’m totally open to adding and expanding this guide with your contributions or collaborating together on it.

Shinki Breakdown and Exp/Money Guide

Fighting against Shinki is no joke, and just having higher stats won’t necessarily give you the upper hand. She’s relentless and will really put you through the wringer with moves like Paradise Lost. My first few attempts were total disasters because I didn’t fully grasp how the fight worked. I spent a whopping 24 turns clueless as to why my attacks weren’t doing anything. It felt like Shinki had no weaknesses, and I was starting to wonder if I had to wait for some arbitrary number of turns before I could even start attacking. But even when you figure out what’s going on, Shinki doesn’t let up, turning the battle into a grueling test of endurance.

Paradise Lost is Shinki’s go-to move, and it’s probably the most powerful spell in the game. But understanding how it works isn’t exactly straightforward. Let’s quickly break down how Shinki attacks, debuffs, and the mechanics of this final showdown:

Here’s a breakdown of how Shinki operates in battle:

• Shinki gets 3 actions per turn, typically using Focus/Charge every 2-3 draait.
• After using Focus/Charge, Shinki will always follow up with a Physical/Magical attack and its AOE version.
• Every 2-3 draait, Shinki will remove her debuffs or any stat buffs the player has applied.
• Shinki has a fixed amount of 25,000 HP and 90,000 MP, with base 60 stats across the board.
• On Turn 1, Shinki will retain base weaknesses (Gun and Lightning).
• On Turn 2, Shinki will always cast Paradise Lost.
• After Turn 2, Shinki will continue to cast Paradise Lost every 6 draait.
• Paradise Lost significantly lowers player party stats while maxing out Shinki’s stats.
• Paradise Lost grants full immunity to elements and shuffles a singular weakness.
• The immunity induced by Paradise Lost can be countered with abilities like “Pierce Command” en “Yuddha-Samira.”

This battle might seem incredibly tough to overcome, en eerlijk, het is. Starting from turn 2, Shinki becomes immune to all attacks except for one random weakness that shuffles periodically. Gelukkig, if you’ve got the “Affinity display” upgrade from the terminal, you can quickly check and cycle through your moves to find Shinki’s weakness, rather than wasting time analyzing her and SP.

Nu, throughout the battle, Shinki absorbs attacks instead of just resisting them. This means tactics like using Hiphani-Kopa/Jala won’t work as intended. In my first attempt, I tried to reflect her attacks to cover my sleeper weaknesses, but that only ended up replenishing 400-800 HP of her health. This fight doesn’t let you cheese your way through by absorbing or deflecting attacks you’re weak against. It’s a real test of skill and strategy.

Maar hé, if you’re a seasoned SMT fan, you know that gods and demi-gods are often overrated, and it’s time to bring this one down. Before we dive into that, let’s take care of the money and exp grinding spots first.

Geld: I think the best place to get a lot of yen in the game is at Shinning Needle Castle. Eerst, put on the “Negotiation” grimoire so you don’t have to deal with Hijacks. The enemies there are around level 60, so they can’t hurt you. Look for Seija; she’s important because she gives you 2990¥, the most money I’ve found in the game. Hijacking her should work 90% of the time, and defending will help you regain SP quickly.

In het eindspel, other enemies only give you about 2000 or 1900¥, so finding Seija in the castle is great for getting 6000 yen per battle with 3 vijanden. With some luck and finding Seija a few times, you can easily make 100,000 yen in about half an hour.

Exp: If you want to level up fast, you have two choices:

• You can fight sleepers in Pandemonium like Sariel, Shinki, and Kikuri. On average, they give you 18-22 thousand experience points when you sacrifice them. But they need to take some damage first before your chance of hijacking them goes up to about 80%.
• Or you can use the money you earned earlier to buy Shinki, Sariel, and Pandemonium sleepers to level up quickly. Om dit te doen, you need at least 75% of 100% completion in the database. If you have 100% voltooiing, you get a 90% discount on any sleeper, which makes it really easy to level up new sleepers for the Shinki fight. Anders, you’ll have to spend more time hijacking and fighting in Pandemonium to capture and sacrifice them.

Strategy Guide

Let’s talk about how to defeat Shinki for good. Up to now, you might have used sleepers that seemed cool or that you personally liked. Echter, we may need to replace them because we want sleepers with a high Agility stat to reliably move first. It feels really bad when you bring Shinki’s health down to 2000-4000 points only to lose because of bad paralysis or slow sleepers that give Shinki free attack opportunities. My poor Zanmu, who’s a key player on my team, had to be swapped out because of her low Agility stat of only 15. This led to some unfortunate situations where after chipping Shinki down to 1230 HP, I ended up losing because Zanmu got paralyzed and couldn’t act. Vertrouw me, you don’t want a situation like that ruining your game.

Nu, the main focus should be on Agility, followed by Strength and Magic. Even though Shinki has an Agility stat of 60, her Luck stat boosts that to around 66. Dus, it’s highly recommended to use sleepers with a minimum of 67 Agility or higher. Shinki has a wide range of devastating attacks, including area-of-effect physical and special attacks of every type.

She really enjoys using attacks that cause secondary effects like Poison, Blindness, or Paralysis, which can be really devastating.

Nu, let’s gather our team and defeat this wannabe god once and for all. Hier, you have a crucial decision to make regarding Sumireko’s role in the fight, which can either be a Physical or Magical tank. I suggest equipping HP and MP springs on Sumireko and every sleeper for this battle since you’ll be using a lot of MP. In my playthrough and all my attempts, I stuck with the Physical role for Sumireko. I also recommend making her a semi-support tank and giving her Hideluo and Dai-atma.

Since Sumireko is very fast, she can reliably heal and remove negative stat changes from Paradise Lost before the team starts taking hits with defense reduced by -3 of lager. There’s no specific reason to choose Physical over Magical here; in werkelijkheid, Magical Sumireko might be better for this specific fight. But there’s nothing more satisfying than literally punching and then shooting down gods to the proverbial ground (I always end up with Physical builds in SMT/Dungeon crawlers). Regarding other stat management, you can allocate the rest into INT and VIT for longevity, alongside the healing/utility spells mentioned earlier. I also highly recommend changing her affinity to neutral for every attack, which can be done using Toyohime. The last thing you want is a Focus/Charge boosted attack dealing 400 damage by hitting a weakness, which could end your run almost instantly if you’re not defending.

To easily equip the HP and MP springs on all four of your sleepers, you can sacrifice Lily White, whom I fused earlier with all buff and debuff abilities. Lily can become a cost-effective summon since she’s only level 32, allowing you to pass on utility spells to your other party members without spending too much.

Social Distortion: This ability is arguably the most crucial component for defeating Shinki. As far as I know, only Seija has access to it, and it’s also a non-transferable skill. You can only pass on this skill through fusion. To be honest, I’ve tried many fringe strategies, but nothing has worked without Social Distortion. Shinki simply wins the endurance battle with her 90,000 MP, overwhelming you as you try to regain MP or heal your team.

This ability is a game-changer, as it inverts stat changes, maximizing every stat for the user while lowering Shinki’s stats to their lowest. To get this skill onto a sleeper with over 67 Wendbaarheid, strong attack stats, and possibly the ability to bypass type immunities with Pierce seems like a tall order. Echter, fortunately for us, Meira fits the bill perfectly, and acquiring her isn’t too difficult. I managed to optimize her, and it only requires two fusions to achieve.

Eerst, we fuse Seija and Yugenmagan (found in pandemonium) to obtain Kokoro.

Dan, we use another Pandemonium demon, Sariel, to get Meira, who is what we’re after with Social Distortion.

Meira & Yuddha-Sumira: Now that we have Meira, our first sleeper who naturally learns Yuddha-Sumira, she becomes the cornerstone of our strategy. Gelukkig, you can pass Yuddha-Sumira onto other Sleepers, which we’ll use on our second sleeper shortly. This ability allows any sleeper to bypass type resistances or immunities while also making the next attack a critical hit. This is incredibly useful because it not only ensures reliable damage but also restores SP with critical hits. This is crucial for Meira, as it becomes the primary method of collecting SP to cast Social Distortion during the next Paradise Lost cycle.

Yumeko/Other Sleeper: For the second sleeper, ideally, you want someone who can deal significant damage with either Magic or Physical attacks and has good endurance. Yumeko is an excellent choice, boasting a strength stat of 82 and impressive Agility of 75. I opted for a Physical Sleeper in this slot, and she excels, especially with her immunity to Gun damage. Using Hivya-atma to cast +1 evasion for all allies can almost trivialize Shinki after the -3 accuracy from Social Distortion. This results in many free turns as Shinki misses her attacks until she eventually cancels all the debuffs on turns 2-3 of the 6-turn Lost Paradise cycle.

Yumeko can effectively utilize Yuddha-Sumira after raising the team’s evasion. She can choose to attack or simply cast Hideluo as needed, remaining consistent in conserving MP and overpowering Shinki. Aanvullend, you want this third sleeper to always be faster than your fourth sleeper, which in my case was Elis and Louise for a few fights. The fourth sleeper always needs to be slower and have Agility above 67, as I’ll explain below.

Elis/Louise: The final member of the team should possess a high MAG stat, Agility above 67, and a potent magic move that covers every attribute in the game. Elis fits this role excellently, boasting a formidable 91 MAG stat, translating to 280 Matk. She can be found in Makai, meaning you don’t need to grind much and can recruit her easily. You don’t want to be passive, and her role essentially revolves around dealing strong attacks as Shinki continually changes her immunities and reverts -def debuffs after the rest of the party attacks Shinki.

You may opt to use Hipuri-Atma, which increases defense by +1 for all allies, over Dai-Para. Hipuri Atma allows Elis to negate the -1 defense of your team after attacking Shinki, who will always lower your defense by -1 due to debilitating aura.

Elis’s attacks will always occur just before Shinki’s due to her Agility of 69, making her very versatile. If Lost Paradise flips the weakness to Guns/Physical, Elis can better utilize Hipuri-Atma over Dai-Para, which also benefits by granting +1 defense if your party only heals and defends in any given turn, as debilitating aura never triggers.

Alternate Playstyles and Conclusion

Sumireko: In my primary and most consistent build, Sumireko serves as a physical tank and doesn’t utilize Yuddha-Sumira. Echter, you can equip her with it and use Sumireko more offensively. A full special build is also very viable; just swap Sumireko’s role with Elis and follow the guide for the third sleeper to deal massive damage to Shinki. You’ll need to shuffle Dai-Para onto a different fast sleeper, but a full magical build with a solo physical Meira alongside level 89 sleepers did manage to beat Shinki on a few attempts.

Sumireko is truly the most flexible member, and consider placing her in the back for your fight against Shinki. I personally find the mixed physical tank build to be consistent with my playstyle, but you can experiment with various setups.

Shinki: There’s no easy way to put it—she’s tough, and sometimes she’ll simply best you with status effects and a bit of bad luck. If all your sleepers are blinded, using a Hideluo stone to conserve MP is a smart move. Try to conserve your MP and use more items if you’re having a tough time or losing when she only has a little health left. Algemeen, she’s a very enjoyable and challenging final boss, and I didn’t expect her to be this memorable. She clearly earns the title of God, but I hope it’s not a Demiurge situation, after reading her database entry.

Sleepers: From my experience, fast sleepers with two party members having Dai-Atma and another two with Hideluo seem to fare really well against Shinki. Algemeen, equipping Yuddha-Sumira to break and having Social Distortion is a must for the final fight. Full physical and magical builds can defeat Shinki, but as detailed in my guide, having dedicated roles with a physical, magical, support, and Social Distortion user feels very reliable, with consistent victories.

I’ve actually come close to beating Shinki without Social Distortion once, eventually losing due to low MP and having to constantly debuff her. Echter, with quad Yuddha-Sumira, I did manage to bring her down to 987 HP before she killed Sumireko, ending my run. I’m considering a guide without distortion as it can work but would be much less reliable.

Artikelen: You can easily exploit items, where Hideluo stones and Life Chunk bundles act like spells and can be used by any sleeper. Don’t hesitate to use them or simply buy a ton of them. If you need cash, you can follow the money grinding guide to top up on yen. Echter, if you equip MP springs on every sleeper as I suggested, I think you can get away without needing to rely on items.

Slow Sleepers: I’m exploring all builds with less than 60 Wendbaarheid, which seem to fare much worse against Shinki. I did achieve a win with a Zanmu build, which is one of my favorite sleepers for walling almost every boss, but the best I’ve managed is a win with a Sumireko Magical, Yumeko, Meira, and Zanmu build. A team of quad less than 60 Agility sleepers gets wiped out by status effects, and the game almost becomes luck-based.