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Darts

Fast bullets that always track you, it is also called "snipe".

There are many types of dart turrets, but generally two main categories: tracking darts and dart spinners. In addition, the turret on the Sparrow and on the middle of the heron can also be equipped with a dart turret, but it can only fire forward.

  • 圆锥曲线: Go to hell, thanks. 🌹
  • Dark骑士: A simple dart mission is not difficult, even with a large spinner. What is more difficult is that the turret appears in the middle of the screen, and there are lasers on both sides. This restricts the area of movement, and you cannot use any positioning skills.

Tiers and Patterns - Dart Tracker​

  • Tier 0 (Figure 1): Medium turning speed, bullets will not be fired immediately. It will wait briefly after aiming, then fire a dart.
    • It looks like a Tier 1 dart but it's even weaker than tier 1.
  • Tier 1 (Figure 1): The turning speed is fast. When your core appears within the fan-shaped range it is aiming at, it will immediately fire 3 darts.
  • Tier 2 (Figure 2): The turning speed is fast. When your core appears within the fan-shaped range it is aiming at, it will immediately fire 3 rounds of darts side by side. The gap between the two darts can just accommodate your core.
    • In Touhou Project, this kind of pattern is also called an even-numbered snipe. In contrast, the first two are called odd number snipe.
  • Tier 3 (Figure 3): The turning speed is fast. When your core appears within the fan-shaped range it is aiming at, it will immediately fire 3 rounds of fan-shaped darts, divided into 5 lines.
  • Tier 4 (Figure 4): The turning speed is fast. When your core appears within the fan-shaped range it is aiming at, it will immediately fire 5 rounds of fan-shaped darts, divided into 7 lines.

There are actually 2 types of dart tracking dart turrets. T1 and T2 dart tracking turrets continuously track onto your core, even as they fire. In contrast, T3 and T4 will achieve a very brief lock-on onto your core before firing. While firing, the turret no longer turns, which means that the dart lanes are much straighter compared to T1 and T2. The invader is also locked in place, causing very little variance in the pattern between bursts. (Very minimal RNG movement is still possible.) This minimal invader random movement will usually throw off the straight lanes slightly, similar to pellet spreads and spinners. The strategy to counter them is to inch your way left or right of the field. Do not make large movements as that will cause a lot of misaligned darts which can block your exit very quickly, particularly with T2 dart tracking turrets with 2 side by side lanes of darts. Causing T2 dart tracking turrets to mis-align when firing will very quickly cause a barricade.

Because of the need to briefly lock-on for T3 and T4 dart tracking turrets, there are some additional higher level strategies to them. It is possible to circle around these dart tracking turrets such that they never fire, since dart tracking turrets require a very brief moment of lock-on with your core before they fire. However, this is possible if there are purely only T3 and/or T4 dart tracking turrets left in the wave.

T3 and T4 dart tracking turrets are a great to speedrunning since they often prevent you from switching sides of the field quickly. Since there are usually many of these turrets, it is not recommended to pop them off as that requires too much focus on the turrets. Most of the time, the entire invader that has these turrets will be destroyed before you pop them off. Instead, it is a better idea to simply distract them to one side of the field, allow them to fire, and then duck under all the streams to be clear of them all. For survivability purposes however, T3 and T4 dart turrets can sometimes be treated as a T1 dart tracking turret (and more lenient one since the lanes are straight), especially when you are looking at strafing very slowly. Do not ever go point blank with these T3 or T4 turrets no matter your objective, unless they are stunned or you have a CF deployed. (I won't recommend dashing in with PS either since your exit will be difficult)

It is possible to stay completely still when faced with purely and only T2 dart tracking turrets as the 2 lanes of darts will pass right by you. However, this is generally not recommended due to the other bullets that may be present on field. Furthermore, darts do not change direction after they are fired, this means you must stay still for the entire time the darts are fired and the darts pass by you, which is rather lengthy. But when faced with only pellet spreads and spinners that are still far from firing, this strategy is possible, and particularly useful for speedrunning as a means to gain Aura. The example below illustrates an extreme case, although it has a much higher success rate the further away you are from the T2 dart turrets.

For fixed dart turrets, for short bursts of dart streams (in threes), you can also graze off them, or employ the same inching strategy. However, for continuous, never ending dart streams, it is best you stay clear of them since it can be difficult to predict the Sparrows' or Herons' movements. Stay as far as back as possible, and you may wish to graze the partial stream of darts closest to you.

Dart streams can be somewhat seen as laser beams that take time to travel. When the wave first spawns in, look at all the dart streams headed towards your vicinity, mentally draw lines of all the paths and determine where a gap will form between the dart streams. After you survive the first wave, it's just a matter of very slowly strafing to a side since all dart streams will be heading towards your old position. You can usually do this in the middle of the screen, but on some occasions, you may get inescapably trapped if you start in the middle. In such cases, start at the far side of the screen to get all the turrets firing towards the side, then dash under them to a safer spot. It is possible to dash in between dart streams, but it is pretty hard and will take some skill.

A rarely-used technique is the inside graze. It's a very safe skill that also gives you a lot of energy. Darts are fired at a certain distance from the muzzle, so we can cleverly use this blind spot to graze the bullets. The specific position requires more practice to find. The key point is to find a delicate balance between the turret and the bullet.

Darts are very generic bullets are there is generally no defensive Aura or Zen that is best against them. It depends on situation on what is the best defence.

Tiers and Patterns - Dart Spinner​

  • Tier 1 (Figure 1): Each group fires darts continuously in 4 directions, and 8 directions in total. Depending on the intensity, each row of dartss ranges from 3 to 5.
  • Tier 2 (Figure 2): Each group fires darts continuously in 4 directions, and 12 directions in total. Depending on the intensity, each row of dartss ranges from 3 to 5.
  • Tier 3 (Figure 3): Each group fires darts continuously in 8 directions, and 32 directions in total, with 5 darts in each row.
  • Tier 4 (Figure 4): Each group fires darts continuously in 8 directions, and 56 directions in total, with 5 darts in each row.
    • Generally speaking, every row (3 or 5 darts) fired will empty two bullet positions, so the Tier 4 dart spinner can form a perfect dart spiral.
    • Don't try to concel, tell me honestly, you feel particularly cumfortable inbetween right?

For dart spinners, the same strategy applies. However, there are gaps between consecutive dart streams of the same lane which you can sometimes make a daring jump when faced with say, shurikens that may be cornering you off.

For speedrunning, dart spinners are a great treat, simply put yourself in the spot very slightly offset where 2 lanes of darts intersect and you gain a lot of free Aura.

Sometimes, the Condor may be equipped with four Tier-4 dart spinners, in which case their gaps are difficult to find. Therefore, in this case, you need to pop at least one spinner first.

In speedrunning, where grazing is a very important tool to go fast, particularly to get more Aura, you should not destroy dart turrets as darts are the easiest to graze. However, T4 dart spinners are extremely dense and usually, one of them is destroyed before it can fire. If the wave has no other high Tier threats like boomerangs and MIRVs however, it may be possible to survive with 2 T4 dart spinners active.