DDC Gohei Dupe

Author: Nylilsa

  1. Introduction
  2. Gohei duplication glitch
    1. Player's y-coordinate
    2. Gohei-target distance
    3. Button tapping
  3. Different techniques
    1. Basic techniques
      1. Duping method: Shift-Z-Shift method
      2. Duping method: Double tap method
    2. Intermediate techniques
      1. Gohei maintenance
      2. Amulet shift tapping
      3. Duping method: Triple tap method
    3. Advanced techniques
      1. Gohei retry time
      2. Counting goheis
      3. Centered goheis
      4. Duping method: Quadruple tap method
  4. Personal summary of methods
    1. Methodology
    2. Results
    3. Elaboration

Introduction

DDC ReimuA has a massive Gohei that deals above average damage compared to the other shottypes in this game.

A screenshot of Kagerou being attacked by ReimuA
Figure 1: ReimuA's gohei, which you spawn by shooting focussed

But wait, the gohei isn't at its full potential - currently a part of it is hitting the boss. This is because the Gohei gets recoiled by the hitbox it is currently hitting. However, we can prevent this by centering the gohei !

A screenshot of Sekibanki being attacked by ReimuA
Figure 2: The gohei is centered onto the boss

Now that gohei is used to its fullest potential, but our damage certainly isn't. We can also summon homing amulets by shift tapping: we quickly alter between unshifting and shifting to keep the gohei alive !

A screenshot of ReimuA spawning amulets
Figure 3: Shift tapping is done to spawn more amulets

…alright, surely that must be the maximum damage we can deal, right ? We're getting the most out of our single gohei through centering, and at the same time we're shooting the amulets by shift tapping. There's nothing else we can do to achieve more damage it seems as we've quite run out of fire power.

…well, not quite.

A screenshot of ReimuA fighting Seija
Figure 4: Seija being beaten up by 2 goheis at once

There exists a glitch that allows for multiple goheis to be created. The name of the glitch is also known as Gohei duplication or Gohei dupe or dupe in short.

Video

Below shows a video showing varying methods on how to deal damage as ReimuA:

The video above demonstrates the different ways ReimuA can maximise her damage. The times mentioned below are the same times I got in this video, but two seconds are subtracted from it. This was done because Seija starts off with invincibility frames for one second, and her death animation also lasts one second.

Method nr Description Time
Method 1 Focus only + no amulets 20.41s
Method 2 Re-centering + no amulets 16.16s
Method 3 No centering + amulets 15.46s
Method 4 0/2 centered double gohei + no amulets 14.01s
Method 5 Centering + amulets 13.68s
Method 6 0/2 centered double gohei + amulets 12.01s
Method 7 2/2 centered double gohei + amulets 10.63s
Method 8 0/3 centered triple gohei + amulets 9.10s
Method 9 3/3 centered triple gohei + amulets 8.25s

There are some things to keep note of though.

Method 2 and method 5 are only possible if the player can go high enough to reach the boss. This is possible on most patterns except those that force the player to be low on-screen.
While method 7 and method 9 are extremely powerful, their additional power comes from the first couple of seconds in which the goheis are centered. After those couple seconds the goheis slowly diverge from the boss and less DPS is dealt to the boss. In this video, the 2/2 centered double gohei is about 12.9% faster than the 0/2 centered double gohei method, but I chose a different attack that has more HP, then the ratio would be less than 12.9% because the 2/2 centered double gohei only deals more damage at the beginning of the attack.

Gohei duplication glitch

This is tricky glitch to execute as there are a bunch of factors involved, and for simplicity's sake I dumbed them down to the following factors:

  1. The player's y-coordinate
  2. The distance between the gohei and a target
  3. Your button tapping ability

Note that this is a very very numbed down version of the gohei dupe. The actual cause of it can be found here.

Player's y-coordinate

The gohei dupe can consistently be done at specific heights. Below is an image that should roughly give you an indicator where to be if you want to do the dupe.

An ingame screenshot with a red bar across the top of the screen
Figure 5: The height range (in red) required for the player to be at for the dupe to take place

Since it's at quite a height it means you need to go to the top if you want to do the dupe glitch. If you want to do the dupe on bosses, it means you have to go to the top left or top right for it to work.

Gohei-target distance

The gohei has a feature that, when shot, instantly centers on a target. If the gohei is 160 units within an enemy, the gohei instantly locks into the enemy. You can see this if you are up-close to an enemy. This is good if you want to dump a gohei on an enemy real quick, but this makes it impossible to do the gohei dupe glitch.

A game screenshot showing two colored circles around ReimuA's gohei
Figure 6: A comparison between a radius of 160 units (blue) with a radius of 320 units (orange). The 160 unit radius check happens on the gohei spawning location, which is right in ReimuA. The 320 unit radius check happens at the gohei's position.

Instead, you want to be at least 160 units away from enemies so the gohei doesn't instantly go towards the target.

Button tapping

There's only two relevant buttons for the dupe: Z and Shift.

You want to hold the Z key, and tap with the Shift key. The general rule is that the faster you can tap Shift it is, but to do the gohei dupe you do not have to tap as quickly as possible ! The dupe is possible with minimal inputs, which I will show later.

I average about 11 clicks per second on my Shift key, though it is possible with just 5 clicks per second. If you want to check out what your clicks per second is, you can check it out on this website.

Different techniques

Below I will provide a few different techniques ranging from basic techniques to advanced techniques, where basic is for those who are just getting started and advanced are for those who want to become well-versed with this.

Basic techniques

I recommend practicing the dupe glitch on Shinmyoumaru's second non-spell because there is a safespot that allows for easy practice, she does not move and she has a lot of HP. You can warp to this non-spell using the practice tool thprac.

Reimu and Shinmyoumaru
Figure 7: A safespot on Shinmyoumaru's second non-spell

Additionally, you may want to use a scan rate tool that detects how short your button presses can be. I recommend checking out this tool to check out your shortest key press duration. It is preferred if your shortest key press were 16ms or shorter: anything above means that you may drop your inputs.

Duping method: Shift-Z-Shift method

My personal preference is to both tap Z and Shift at once, If it is easier for you, you can also choose to only tap Shift while holding Z all the time.
The easiest technique I found to get a double gohei is something I call the Shift-Z-Shift method. Here's how to do it:

  1. Get into the correct position
  2. Hover your fingers over the Shift and the Z keys
  3. Hold Shift
  4. Hold Z
  5. Unhold Shift
  6. Hold Shift again

You need to do steps 3-6 within a short time, like 0.2s. With this technique you are only able to yield 2 goheis at most, which is what the goal of this section is.

Here is a video showcasing the double gohei using the Shift-Z-Shift method:

Note that I only used a bomb at the start to skip the first phase of the attack. Also, I did not get a double gohei every time, instead I got it about 40% of the time.

Duping method: Double tap method

My personal preference is to both tap Z and Shift at once, If it is easier for you, you can also choose to only tap Shift while holding Z all the time.
Alternatively, the following technique also works (which I will call the Double tap method), but from my experience it is less consistent than the aforementioned technique:

  1. Get into the correct position
  2. Hover your fingers over the Shift and the Z keys
  3. Hold Z and Shift at the same time
  4. Release Z and Shift at the same time
  5. Hold Z and Shift at the same time, again.

Congratulations ! You have learnt the basics on how to obtain a double gohei. If you want to learn more on how to get the most out of the double gohei, please read the next section.

Intermediate techniques

Solely getting the double gohei won't be very beneficial if you cannot make the most out of it. This section is going to tell you how you can make the most out of our double gohei, as well as a new duping technique allowing for more consistent double goheis.

Gohei maintenance

A common mistake I see is that people tend to glue their finger to the Shift key, avoiding losing the double gohei. This has its own problems, mainly limiting player movement and lowering your potential DPS. Another mistake is that, if the player has to make a sudden dash, they would release Shift for too long, losing the double gohei.

A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 8: A graph representation of a player doing a dash (on frame 15) in which the player is unfocussed for too long, resulting in the gohei(s) despawning

The goal of this section is to prevent your gohei from accidentally despawning. If you want to get better at this I recommend you to practice patterns that involve a lot of movement while trying to maintain your gohei(s), such as Kagerou's mid-spell-card or Kagerou's third spell-card. Try to get a rhythm for how long you can unfocus for before the gohei(s) despawn.

Amulet shift tapping

While being unfocussed may put you at risk for despawning your gohei, being unfocussed also generates a lot of homing amulets that deal additional damage. It is therefore in our best interest to unfocus for as long as possible while making sure the gohei does not despawn.

I recommend shift tapping at a sustainable frequency of 4-5Hz: any less and you greatly risk the chance of losing your goheis, while doing it any higher may increase fatigue in your fingers as well as less DPS due to Shift being held more than needed.

Tapping at the correct frequency is only the first part. If a player is not used to shift tapping, they might shift tap at a sustainable frequency but with a too short of an interval leading to fewer amulets being generated.

A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 9: A graph representation of a player shift tapping at 5hz with an average interval of 3.2 frames, meaning very few amulets were generated

In contrast, a more experienced player may shift tap at a similar frequency but at a much longer interval, resulting in more amulets being generated.

A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 10: A graph representation of a player shift tapping at 5hz with an average interval of 8.6 frames, meaning many amulets were generated

This method can be improved by simply increasing the time during the interval. A way to tell if you are doing it correctly is by looking at the amount of amulets generated between every shift tap. If the amount of amulets looks very similar to being fully unfocussed, you are on the right track !

Duping method: Triple tap method

My personal preference is to both tap Z and Shift at once, If it is easier for you, you can also choose to only tap Shift while holding Z all the time.

The following gohei dupe technique is something I commonly use, which I will call the Triple tap method:

  1. Get into the correct position
  2. Hover your fingers over the Shift and the Z keys
  3. Hold Z and Shift at the same time
  4. Release Z and Shift at the same time
  5. Hold Z and Shift at the same time, again.
  6. Release Z and Shift at the same time, again
  7. Hold Z and Shift at the same time, once again.

Steps 3-7 need to be done within a short time, like 0.25s. With this technique you are only able to yield 3 goheis at most.

This is personally my most commonly used method if I want to get a double gohei. This is much more consistent than the previous methods, because in this case you are rolling for a double gohei twice, and a triple gohei once. This triple tap method is more intensive on your hand, but with consistent practice it will get more doable.

Advanced techniques

Now we have covered how to obtain a duped gohei as well as how to deal the most DPS with it with amulet shifttapping. What else is there to learn you might ask ? This section covers some other techniques that will boost your rates and DPS.

Gohei retry time

The gohei retry time is the amount of time taken between two trials, usually varying from 0.5s to 1.5s. This is the timeframe where the player confirms whether they got a duped gohei or not. Having a lower gohei retry timer is usually better, because if you fail to duplicate a gohei, you can quickly try for another dupe attempt.

A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 11: A graph representation of a player's gohei duping attempts. It starts off with a gohei dupe attempt, followed by the retry time of 52 frames. Then, the player intentionally despawns the gohei by not holding Z/Shift for 12 frames. This prepares for the next gohei dupe attempt.

One might ask how many more trials you can perform depending on your gohei retry time. Below I have depicted two charts, both done on Benben's first non-spell with two varying gohei retry times.

A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 12: A graph representation of a player's 6 gohei duping attempts on Benben's first non-spell with an average retry time of 59.2 frames
A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 13: A graph representation of a player's 9 gohei duping attempts on Benben's first non-spell with an average retry time of 31.4 frames.

The former image has a longer average retry time than the second image. This is due to two reasons:

  1. The player wants to carefully inspect whether the gohei dupe was successful or not. This takes some time to process as it may not be instantly very clear if you succeeded at the double gohei or not.
    • If the player doesn't take enough time, they might misinterpret the number of goheis on-screen (e.g. thinking you got only 1 gohei instead of your actual 2 goheis) and despawn the goheis, only to realise that they wrongfully despawned the double gohei.
  2. The player wants to ensure that all the goheis have despawned, so they wait out a time much longer than the despawn timer.
    • Going too quickly may have the drawback where you haven't fully waited out the gohei despawn timer. When missing the gohei despawn timer, your goheis still stay on-screen, meaning you wasted one trial.
A chart with the y-axis showing the button state and the x-axis showing time
Figure 14: A graph representation of a player's failed second gohei duping attempt due to unfocussing for too little time at the despawn timer.

To get better at both aspects, there's not much of a trick other than getting a feeling for it: once you have done it enough times you will develop a natural feeling that will do it for you.

Counting goheis

It may be hard to know if you got 1, 2 or 3 goheis, so here are some ways you can tell how many you have:

  1. You hear a lot more noise. Hit a boss with a single gohei and you hear a few damage ticks every second, but if you have two goheis or more you will hear more damage ticks.
  2. If you have some experience on a boss you can tell the significant increase in damage that you are dealing.
  3. Visually, you will notice that the gohei looks denser.
  4. Right as you are doing the dupe, you will notice the individual goheis spawning, but this might be hard to tell.
  5. The goheis may split up, which reveals that there are multiple goheis.

The more you have done it, the easier it will become to tell the difference between 1 or 2 or 3 goheis! It took me some time to master it so don't expect to get it quickly.

Centered goheis

At the start of this guide I showed you that the gohei is the strongest if it is centered onto a target. Using this knowledge, we can combine gohei centering with gohei duping for extra damage at the start of an attack.

It is quite simple to achieve this: perform your desired gohei duping method outside of the gohei-target distance, then immediately move closer to the enemy. Below is an example illustration of where to perform the dupe before moving into the enemy.

A game screenshot showing a colored circle around Reimu
Figure 15: The 160 unit radius gohei-target distance check happens on the gohei spawning location, which is right in Reimu.

The reason why this works is because newly spawned goheis spawn from Reimu's center. By performing the dupe you are spawning new goheis from Reimu's location. By moving Reimu closer to the boss, the newly spawned goheis will be within the gohei-target distance, centering into the enemy. For more information, please read this page.

Duping method: Quadruple tap method

My personal preference is to both tap Z and Shift at once, If it is easier for you, you can also choose to only tap Shift while holding Z all the time.

The following gohei dupe technique is something I commonly use, which I will call the Quadruple tap method:

  1. Get into the correct position
  2. Hover your fingers over the Shift and the Z keys
  3. Hold Z and Shift at the same time
  4. Release Z and Shift at the same time
  5. Hold Z and Shift at the same time, again.
  6. Release Z and Shift at the same time, again
  7. Hold Z and Shift at the same time, once again.
  8. Release Z and Shift at the same time, once again.
  9. Hold Z and Shift at the same time, once more.

Steps 3-9 need to be done within a short time, like 0.33s. With this technique you are only able to yield 4 goheis at most, but don't ever expect to actually get 4 goheis.

This is personally my most commonly used method for triple gohei. Though, this quadruple tap method is extremely tiring and I rarely deliberately use this method. Since this method involves a lot of steps, it means that the average gohei retry time is longer, which may put you at an additional disadvantage.

Personal summary of methods

This section goes over all four aforementioned gohei duping methods, explaining how I conducted this experiment and what the results are.

Methodology

This was conducted using the stage warp tool in thprac. The selected attack was Raiko's third non-spell. After every 10 non-failed trials I would reset the stage. After every 5 non-failed trials I would denote my results. If I notice I failed to perform a method, I will discard the result. For example, if I am doing the Double tap method but I notice I accidentally did the Triple tap method, I will discard that result and redo it, or if Raiko moves into the player such that the gohei is within the gohei-target distance, the result will be discarded. This was done to ensure correctness of every method. Also, once I really felt that my hand was getting tired, I made sure to take a break.

Results

Method 1 goheis 2 goheis 3 goheis Total trials count
Shift-Z-Shift method 132 68 0 200
Double tap method 125 75 0 200
Triple tap method 126 70 4 200
Quadruple tap method 141 54 5 200

Elaboration

I chose the sample size of n=200 because it was large enough to determine the double gohei rate. Though, a larger sample size could have been chosen to determine my triple gohei rate more consistently. However, this has a drawback of having to do more attempts which would tire me out quickly, especially for a method like the quadruple tap method.

In terms of fatigue, the Shift-Z-Shift and the Double tap method did not tire me out. The triple tap method tired me out around 100 attempts in. The quadruple tap method tired me out every 50 attempts, meaning I had to take a total of 3 breaks for the quadruple tap method. Breaks are important of course and I wouldn't want to ignore them, but taking a break may have influenced my "flow" meaning my results would vary between breaks.

In terms of double gohei consistency, it is about what I expected: a success rate between 33-40%. This result aligned with my previous sets I did. I was actually quite surprised by how well the double tap method did despite not using it that much. In contrast, I was quite disappointed with the double gohei rate on the quadruple tap method…

I expected the quadruple tap method to be much more consistent for triple gohei than the triple tap method. I noticed that for the quadruple tap method, at the end of a 50-trial set my performance would be much worse, oftentimes failing to perform the quadruple tap method due to fatigue, having to redo them. I guess I could have taken even more breaks, but by doing so it would take me a few hours to do a total of 200 trials. A more robust method would be to increase the sample size, but this would take a very long time to complete, and even with breaks my hand would not like it.

So yeah, that was everything I had to say about it. If there's something you wonder about and want to ask you can do so by contacting my Discord nylilsa !

Good luck and have fun with this trick !