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Frequently Asked Questions

Touhou Community Jargon

This list contains explanations for terms and acronyms used in the community of Touhou players. It also contains general gaming and shoot 'em up terms that are relevant to Touhou.

Contents

Gameplay Related Terms

Jargon	Meaning
0/0	0 extra lives and 0 bombs, the point at which the player has no resources left and is thus forced to survive all of the upcoming patterns to still clear. The 'x/y' notation is often used to denote the number of spare lives and bombs a player has at a given point in time in a run.
10D	If you use this, please switch to using TD for that game now.
1cc	1 credit clear; a clear without using continues, which is equivalent to only using one coin if playing on an arcade machine, the origin of the term. This is the primary goal that people will have in a game when starting to play it.
Bottomhugging	Being at the bottom of the screen all the time while playing, a tendency that newer players often have, due to being afraid of the bullets and wanting to be as far away from them as possible. While sometimes useful, this is not always the best general strategy.
Cancel	Bullets being converted into items, effectively wiping them from the screen, which is often important for score. This occurs when the player ends a boss pattern by shooting the boss, but can have several other causes too, such as enemies that cancel their bullets when killed, or bombing.
Cap	Abbreviation of 'capture'; a Spell Card being dodged without dying or bombing, which awards a Spell Card Bonus.
Clipdeath	Dying because of wrongly estimating bullet hitbox size(s).
Counterstop	The point at which the score counter stops increasing; the score limit of a game. Sometimes this is reachable, but most of the time it is not. Not to be confused with overflow or underflow.
CS	See counterstop.
DB	Deathbomb; a bomb within a few frames after getting hit, which saves you from dying.
DDC	Touhou 14: Double Dealing Character.
DS	Touhou 12.5: Double Spoiler.
EoSD	Touhou 6: the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
Ex	Extra; the Extra Stage.
Extend	An extra life; a 1up.
ExNN	Extra No Miss No Bomb; a 1cc of some Extra Stage without dying or using bombs. A third 'N' is appended if there is a game-specific third restriction.
FS	Full Spell; a run that captures all Spell Cards.
FW	See GFW.
Graze	Having a bullet come very close to your hitbox, which means it touches your 'grazebox', a hitbox larger than your main hitbox that is used to detect grazing.
GFW	Touhou 12.8: Great Fairy Wars.
GO	(Uncommon) Game over. Not to be confused with "Good Omen", a Spell Card.
Hitbox	The part of a sprite that is used for collision detection; that is, the part of the player character or an enemy that can get hit, and the part of a bullet that kills you when touched. In Touhou, hitboxes of a sprite are smaller than the full size of the sprite.
HRtP	Touhou 1: Highly Responsive to Prayers.
HSiFS	Touhou 16: Hidden Star in Four Seasons.
I-frames	Invincibility frames; frames during which something does not take any hits. Your player character has a number of I-frames after a death, as well as during a bomb. Under certain circumstances, some enemy characters can also have I-frames.
IN	Touhou 8: Imperishable Night.
ISC	Touhou 14.3: Impossible Spell Card.
LLS	Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story.
LNB	Lunatic No Bomb; a 1cc of some game on Lunatic difficulty without using bombs.
LNN	Lunatic No Miss No Bomb; a 1cc of some game on Lunatic difficulty without dying or using bombs. A third 'N' is appended if there is a game-specific third restriction.
LoLK	Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom.
LS	Last Spell; a spell used at the end of an IN boss fight when the time requirement is met. It does not cost a life to die to it.
LW	Last Word; a special spell (and the difficulty of such a spell) used by an IN boss, which is only available in Spell Practice mode.
Macrododging	Dodging waves of bullets by going around them rather than through them, which may or may not be to avoid having to micrododge. Often abbreviated to 'macro'.
Maingames	Disputed. Generally means integer games, but the status of PC-98 games and PoFV as maingames is not agreed upon. The integer games from EoSD to UM, excluding PoFV, are always included.
Memo	Memorisation; remembering a specific route for a pattern in order to dodge it.
Micrododging	Dodging dense waves of bullets by navigating through them, usually using small taps to get safely through. Often abbreviated to 'micro'.
Midnon	A nonspell used by a midboss.
Midspell	A Spell Card used by a midboss.
Milking	Stalling a pattern for as long as possible to maximise the value of something, which is mostly graze. In GFW, players milk freezes instead.
Misdirection	Making aimed bullets go into a direction away from you, to make sure you are safe.
Miss	Losing a life. This term came from the Japanese transliteration of "mistake", ミステイク misuteiku, which has as abbreviation ミス misu, i.e. "miss".
MoF	Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith.
MS	Touhou 5: Mystic Square.
Non	Nonspell; a boss attack that is not a Spell Card.
NB	No Bomb; a clear without bombing.
NBB	No Border Breaks; used in PCB to mean a clear without breaking Supernatural Borders, whether it be by getting hit during one or by pressing the X key.
NC	No Cards; used in UM to mean a clear without using any active, equipment or passive cards. Cards that do not affect NMNB play, such as the life card, the bomb card and the money card, may be exempt from this.
NF	No Focus; a clear without using focus mode, that is, without pressing Shift.
NM	No Miss; a clear without dying. Also known as '1 life clear'.
NMNB	No Miss No Bomb; a clear without dying or bombing. Also known as Perfect or the even shorter acronym NN.
NN	See NMNB.
NNN	NMNB, plus a game-specific third restriction, which is NBB for PCB, NV for UFO, NT for TD, NR for HSiFS and NC for UM. Also known as Perfect or a more comprehensive version of the acronym, such as 'NMNBNT' for TD.
NNNN	Used in WBaWC to mean NMNB, plus two game-specific restrictions, which are No Berserk Roars (No Hypers) and No Roar Breaks (No Hyper Breaks). Also known as Perfect.
NR	No Release; used in HSiFS to mean a clear without using releases; that is, without pressing the C key. In Japan, this is also used in PCB, to mean NBB.
NT	No Trance; used in TD to mean a clear without using manual trances; that is, without pressing the C key.
NUFO	(Uncommon) No UFO summons; used in UFO to mean a clear without summoning UFOs. Because of the length of the acronym, NV is often used instead.
NV	No Ventora (Japanese for UFO summons); used in UFO to mean a clear without summoning UFOs. In Japanese, this also means not picking up any tokens at all.
Opener	The first nonspell of a boss, which is the first attack that they use, unless there are only Spell Cards.
Overflow	When a number becomes higher than its maximum value, causing strange behaviour. Notoriously occurs in UFO, in which the score will be displayed wrongly once it reaches higher than 2,147,483,647. It loops back to 0 again once it reaches 4,294,967,295. Not to be confused with counterstop or underflow.
OD	Overdrive; the difficulty above Lunatic that is used for a select few unlockable Spell Cards in TD.
PB	Personal Best; someone's highest score or best survival in a specific category.
PCB	Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom.
Perfect	See NMNB or NNN.
Pause buffering	Repeatedly pausing the game in order to make reading and dodging a pattern easier. Doing this during a run is commonly considered cheating.
Penult	The penultimate Spell Card of a boss fight.
Ph	Phantasm; the Phantasm Stage in PCB.
PIV	Point Item Value; the number of points awarded for collecting a point item (blue item). The higher up on the screen you are, the higher the value is, with the maximum value at the PoC. Most games have a system that allows the player to increase this value in some way.
Pointblanking	See shotgunning.
PoC	Point of Collection; this is the area at the top of the screen that, when entered, makes your character automatically collect all items on screen. In TD, this does not work on spirits. Also used as a verb, e.g. 'poccing', to mean collecting items this way.
PoDD	Touhou 3: Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream.
PoFV	Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
Rage phase	See timeout phase.
Resources	Extra lives and bombs, the tools given to you to survive through a game with. Making good use of them is known as 'resource management'. Resources are often denoted with the 'x/y' notation, for example 0/0 for when the player has no extra lives and bombs left.
Restreaming	Changing your streaming direction, usually by making a quick, unfocused movement to misdirect the bullets and then streaming into the other direction. Also known as 'cutback'.
RNG	Random Number Generator; used to refer to random bullet patterns, which, because of their randomness, do not have a route.
Route	A specific path used to navigate through one or more bullet patterns. The routing approach is used on both static patterns and patterns aimed at you.
s1	Stage 1; similarly, 's2' means Stage 2, 's3' means Stage 3, etc.
SA	Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism.
Safespot	A spot, or a larger area, inside of which the player cannot be hit by anything. There is a large grey area to the application of the term in practice, as it is not necessarily only used for singular spots; it can include safe areas that require the player to move, although safer than doing the pattern in question "normally". It can even include spots or areas that are not actually completely safe, just mostly safe.
SCB	Spell Card Bonus; the score awarded from capturing a Spell Card.
Shmup	Abbreviation of shoot 'em up, which is the genre of games that bullet hell is part of. STG has the same meaning.
Shotgunning	Shooting an enemy up close. Typically done with a spreadshot to deal as much damage as possible, as most or all of the shots will hit. Also known as pointblanking.
SoEW	Touhou 2: Story of Eastern Wonderland.
Speedkill	Shooting down an enemy or ending a boss pattern as fast as possible.
Static	A bullet pattern that is always the exact same, and thus can be routed.
StB	Touhou 9.5: Shoot the Bullet.
STG	Shooting Game; an acronym used to refer to shoot 'em up games, just as shmup does. Used primarily by Japanese players.
Streaming	Tapping into a certain direction to dodge aimed bullets, making them move behind you in a stream-like fashion. This can be done either horizontally or vertically. If a player comes close to either edge of the screen while doing this, they will want to restream the pattern.
Suicide bullets	Extra bullets fired by an enemy when it dies, usually aimed at the player. On Hard or Lunatic difficulty in GFW, all enemies fire these.
Survival spell	A Spell Card during which the boss is invincible, forcing the player to survive until the time is up, which is referred to as a timeout. Because of this, such a spell is also known as a 'timeout spell'.
TAS	Tool-Assisted Superplay; used to refer not to speedruns, but to runs that used external tools, such as slowing down the game, savestates and pause buffering, which is often done to see what is theoretically possible in a game.
TD	Touhou 13: Ten Desires.
Thcrap	Touhou Community Reliant Automatic Patcher, a translation and modding tool; see Touhou Patches and Tools for more information. Not to be confused with thprac.
Thprac	Universal practice tool; see Touhou Patches and Tools for more information. Not to be confused with thcrap.
Timelock	A feature in thprac that allows the player to lock the timer on a boss pattern, so that it never ends. Typically used to practice dodging skills.
Timeout	Surviving a pattern until the time is up. Survival spells, Spell Cards that force this on the player, are also called timeout spells.
Timeout phase	A (very) hard phase of a Spell Card that starts when you get close to timing it out. They typically start when the timer is at 30 seconds and they are typically found on final Spell Cards in final boss or Extra boss fights.
TO	(Uncommon) see timeout.
Token	Refers to either a small UFO or a beast in WBaWC, both of which float around the screen.
UFO	Touhou 12: Undefined Fantastic Object.
UM	Touhou 18: Unconnected Marketeers.
Underflow	When a negative number is converted to a format that does not have negative numbers, causing a very high positive number. Notoriously occurs in DDC and ISC, in which the Spell Card Bonus can be made negative, which, if the score becomes negative when the bonus is added, increases the score to 9,999,999,990, a counterstop. Not to be confused with overflow.
VD	Touhou 16.5: Violet Detector.
Wall	A cluster of bullets with no space that a hitbox can pass through in between them, although it can also refer to a cluster of bullets that looks like that.
WBaWC	Touhou 17: Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.

Common Spell Card / Pattern Acronyms

These acronyms for particular patterns usually refer to the Lunatic difficulty version of the abbreviated Spell Card or pattern.

Acronym	Spell Card / Pattern
AoJ	"Aura of Justice", Shou's second spell in UFO.
BD	"Buddhist Diamond", Kaguya's second Spell Card in IN.
BDB	"Brilliant Dragon Bullet", Kaguya's first Spell Card in IN.
BLS	"Blue Lady Show", Raiko's survival Spell Card in DDC.
BoLaD	"Border of Life and Death", Yukari's semifinal Spell Card in PCB.
Books	The section of EoSD Stage 4 where books spawn in random locations and repeatedly shoot green bullets.
BoWaP	"Border of Wave and Particle", Satori's final Spell Card if you use ReimuA in SA.
Cats Walk	"Vengeful Cat Spirit's Erratic Step", Rin's midboss Spell Card in SA Stage 5. This is the name on Easy and Normal only, but it's used for Lunatic regardless.
CC	"Complete Clarification", Shou's final Spell Card in UFO.
DBDB	"Double Black Death Butterfly", Satori's first ReimuA-specific Spell Card in SA.
DR	"Devil's Recitation", Byakuren's fourth Spell Card in UFO.
FIN	"Flying Insect's Nest", Satori's second ReimuA-specific Spell Card in SA.
GC	"Geometric Creature", Keiki's penultimate Spell Card in WBaWC.
Ghost Wheels	"The Needles of Yore and the Vengeful Spirits in Pain", Rin's third Spell Card in SA. Also known as 'needles' or just 'wheels'.
GO	"Good Omen", Byakuren's first Spell Card in UFO. Not to be confused with game over.
GT	"Greatest Treasure", Nazrin's midboss Spell Card in UFO Stage 5.
HBCB	"Hidden Breezy Cherry Blossom", Okina's final Spell Card if you use the Spring season in HSiFS. Also known as 'BCB'.
HCFW	"Hidden Crazy Fall Wind", Okina's final Spell Card if you use the Autumn season in HSiFS. Also known as 'CFW'.
HEW	"Hidden Extreme Winter", Okina's final Spell Card if you use the Winter season in HSiFS. Also known as 'EW'.
HGS	"Hell God Sword", Youmu's first Spell Card in PCB.
HPSI	"Hidden Perfect Summer Ice", Okina's final Spell Card if you use the Summer season in HSiFS. Also known as 'PSI'.
HJ	"Hourai Jewel", Kaguya's final Spell Card that is not a Last Spell in IN.
HMD	"Honest Man's Death", Mokou's fifth Spell Card in IN.
ID	"Idola Diabolus", Keiki's final Spell Card in WBaWC.
IS	"Imperishable Shooting", Mokou's final Spell Card in IN.
KD	"Killing Doll", Sakuya's final Spell Card in EoSD.
KKS	"King Kraken Strike", Ichirin's first Spell Card in UFO.
LC	"Linear Creature", Keiki's third Spell Card in WBaWC. Also known as "lines".
LFS	"Legendary Flying Saucer", Byakuren's final Spell Card in UFO.
MDSW	"Modern Divine Spirit World", Junko's third Spell Card in LoLK.
NDS	"Newborn Divine Spirit", Miko's final Spell Card in TD.
Nueball	Refers to both the Stage 4 midboss and Stage 6 midboss in UFO.
Peta	"Peta Flare", Utsuho's second Spell Card in SA.
PDH	"Pristine Danmaku Hell", Junko's final Spell Card in LoLK.
PWG	"Peerless Wind God", Aya's survival Spell Card in MoF.
QED	QED "Ripples of 495 Years", Flandre's final Spell Card in EoSD.
Rain	The section of LoLK Stage 6 where blue bullets spawn in a rain pattern, combined with aimed red stars.
RB	"Resurrection Butterfly", Yuyuko's final Spell Card in PCB.
Rings	The final section of LLS Stage 5.
Rings of Death	Mokou's final non in IN.
RRoP	"Rainbow Ring of People", Chimata's survival Spell Card in UM.
RTG	"Radiant Treasure Gun", Shou's first Spell Card in UFO.
RW	"Rising World", Kaguya's final Last Spell in IN.
SG	"Scarlet Gensokyo", Remilia's final Spell Card in EoSD. Also commonly called 'Gensokyo'.
SM	"Scarlet Meister", Remilia's semifinal Spell Card in EoSD. Also commonly called 'Meister'.
Spam	If said without context, typically refers to the final section of Stage 6 in PCB. It can also refer to any other "bullet spam" stage section, typically with added context (such as "HSiFS Stage 4 spam").
Subsun	"Subterranean Sun", Utsuho's final Spell Card in SA.
Sumizome	"Perfect Ink-Black Cherry Blossom -Bloom-", Yuyuko's penultimate Spell Card in PCB. "Sumizome" comes from the old English translation patch.
TSS	"Trembling Shivering Star", Junko's fourth Spell Card in LoLK.
UNR	"Uncontainable Nuclear Reaction", Utsuho's first Spell Card in SA.
VI	"Vampire Illusion", Remilia's third Spell Card in EoSD.
VoWG	"Virtue of Wind God", Kanako's final Spell Card in MoF. Occasionally it will be called 'DVoWG' (D for Divine), because of either the translation as of 2020 or the old English translation patch.
YDL	"Young Demon Lord", Remilia's first Spell Card in EoSD.
YGB	"You Grow Bigger!", Shinmyoumaru's survival Spell Card in DDC.
YYDO	"Yin-Yang Divine Orbs", Misumaru's first Spell Card in UM.

Bullet Type Names

Name	Bullet
Amulet
Arrow
Arrowhead
Bacteria, dark rice
Ball
Ball (outlined)
Bubble
Bullet
Butterfly
Coin
Fireball
Fireball (glowy)
Heart
Jellybean
Knife
Kunai
Mentos
Note
Orb
Pellet
Popcorn
Raindrop, droplet
Rest
Rice
Rose
Shard, icicle
Star (big)
Star (small)