I played the fifth session of RevenantKioku's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge with my party-forcing script on December 9th, 2023.
This was a very prehistoric session. We went to get our dactyls, and then we headed to Tyranno Lair. Besides some slightly poor wayfinding, the only issue was Terrasaurs. Normally, a Terrasaur is dealt with by using Crono's lightning attacks; lightning-elemental attacks are not only their weakness, but put them in a stunned and vulnerable state. If you know this, and you should, Terrasaurs are just big, useless HP sinks. Without any lightning, they're actually pretty threatening, using frequent, powerful fire attacks and a physical attack that brought my party members' HP to 1. This did result in two casualties during Tyranno Lair - our first two in the entire run!

Not too long into Tyranno Lair, everybody learned their sixth techs, meaning we unlocked the very powerful Antipode II and Fire Tackle combos.
This brought us to Nizbel II. After Masa & Mune, Nizbel (augh) and Magus, this was our last boss that was clearly designed to take advantage of Crono's lightning affinity - which, of course, we do not have access to. After our 38-minute marathon battle with Nizbel the first, I was expecting this to be completely awful.
When our very first action was Fire Tackle for 1261 damage, my concerns were largely alleviated.

It was still a little bit concerning when the message "Def pwr up when attacked." popped up, but it seemed to cap eventually. Lucca and Robo kept using Fire Tackle while Marle used Haste and healed them. The next Fire Tackle did 985, then 720, then 524, then 520, then 523, then 526. I said it's possible that this was going to make the battle easier than having Crono, since we don't have to deal with Nizbel II's powerful electric discharge attack.
It still took a lot of Fire Tackles, but it was fine! We won, and it was considerably faster and easier than the original Nizbel.

Before finishing up with Azala, I realized this battle doesn't feature very much in the way of physical attacks. I decided to put the Taban Vest on Lucca and a Ruby Vest on Marle so they'd both have fire resistance, with Robo keeping the Dark Mail on for its magic defense boost. Then I started the battle. The phase with Azala was quick and easy; we did a lot of elemental tackling.

After the Black Tyrano dropped its defense to charge its fire breath, I had all kinds of options. Antipode II did fairly good damage (and looks awesome).

Fire Tackle, once again, proved to be our strongest option, dealing 1176 damage while the Tyrano's defense was down.

I squandered a lot of MP on Fire Tackle and a few Ice Tackles; we didn't need a whole lot of healing, because the decision to emphasize fire resistance proved to be a solid choice. What I forgot is that the Black Tyrano's defense at least partly normalizes after its fire breath... until it drops its defense again. In that range of time I sort of squandered a few strong attacks in such a way that they were dealing considerably less effective damage, with Fire Tackle only doing 748. Oh well, we still won before its second fire breath.

With that, we got to my absolute favourite part of the game. We thoroughly explored the communities of Zeal, finding the hidden rooms and getting several tabs in the process. When we finally got to the throne room, we faced the Golem. I remember this being a plot battle that is winnable but that the game expects you to lose... but for some reason it was really easy. Like maybe the Golem's fire attacks are just super weak? In typical play I would never be using Lucca during this portion of the game. I'm glad I did, because Fire Tackle was crazy.

With damage like that and Marle designated for healing, we won! Easily, for that matter. That's 35 tech points we wouldn't normally have.

The game proceeded a bit and we now have an empowered pendant. I decided to take a bit of time to get the treasures from 600 A.D. and thus unlock the upgraded chests with the elemental mails. I went around getting those from Truce and Porre, though I don't have access to Guardia Castle's black chest quite yet.
This little wander around the world provided an opportunity to visit my favourite treasure chest in the game:

My theory about what the heck is going on here is someone's idea of a joke. Like, the fact that it's pointed out as unusual that more than one piece of jewelry would be in a large box must itself be a gag about single treasures as a trope. Right? I don't know. I find it quite funny though.
With most of the sealed chests retrieved (although I didn't go back for vests yet), I also visited the sealed doors through most of 2300 A.D. I raided Trann Dome, Bangor Dome and Arris Dome, where the best prizes were a few tabs and the Gold Stud. I saved outside of the Sewer Access; we'll do that next time.

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This was a very prehistoric session. We went to get our dactyls, and then we headed to Tyranno Lair. Besides some slightly poor wayfinding, the only issue was Terrasaurs. Normally, a Terrasaur is dealt with by using Crono's lightning attacks; lightning-elemental attacks are not only their weakness, but put them in a stunned and vulnerable state. If you know this, and you should, Terrasaurs are just big, useless HP sinks. Without any lightning, they're actually pretty threatening, using frequent, powerful fire attacks and a physical attack that brought my party members' HP to 1. This did result in two casualties during Tyranno Lair - our first two in the entire run!

Not too long into Tyranno Lair, everybody learned their sixth techs, meaning we unlocked the very powerful Antipode II and Fire Tackle combos.
This brought us to Nizbel II. After Masa & Mune, Nizbel (augh) and Magus, this was our last boss that was clearly designed to take advantage of Crono's lightning affinity - which, of course, we do not have access to. After our 38-minute marathon battle with Nizbel the first, I was expecting this to be completely awful.
When our very first action was Fire Tackle for 1261 damage, my concerns were largely alleviated.

It was still a little bit concerning when the message "Def pwr up when attacked." popped up, but it seemed to cap eventually. Lucca and Robo kept using Fire Tackle while Marle used Haste and healed them. The next Fire Tackle did 985, then 720, then 524, then 520, then 523, then 526. I said it's possible that this was going to make the battle easier than having Crono, since we don't have to deal with Nizbel II's powerful electric discharge attack.
It still took a lot of Fire Tackles, but it was fine! We won, and it was considerably faster and easier than the original Nizbel.

Before finishing up with Azala, I realized this battle doesn't feature very much in the way of physical attacks. I decided to put the Taban Vest on Lucca and a Ruby Vest on Marle so they'd both have fire resistance, with Robo keeping the Dark Mail on for its magic defense boost. Then I started the battle. The phase with Azala was quick and easy; we did a lot of elemental tackling.

After the Black Tyrano dropped its defense to charge its fire breath, I had all kinds of options. Antipode II did fairly good damage (and looks awesome).

Fire Tackle, once again, proved to be our strongest option, dealing 1176 damage while the Tyrano's defense was down.

I squandered a lot of MP on Fire Tackle and a few Ice Tackles; we didn't need a whole lot of healing, because the decision to emphasize fire resistance proved to be a solid choice. What I forgot is that the Black Tyrano's defense at least partly normalizes after its fire breath... until it drops its defense again. In that range of time I sort of squandered a few strong attacks in such a way that they were dealing considerably less effective damage, with Fire Tackle only doing 748. Oh well, we still won before its second fire breath.

With that, we got to my absolute favourite part of the game. We thoroughly explored the communities of Zeal, finding the hidden rooms and getting several tabs in the process. When we finally got to the throne room, we faced the Golem. I remember this being a plot battle that is winnable but that the game expects you to lose... but for some reason it was really easy. Like maybe the Golem's fire attacks are just super weak? In typical play I would never be using Lucca during this portion of the game. I'm glad I did, because Fire Tackle was crazy.

With damage like that and Marle designated for healing, we won! Easily, for that matter. That's 35 tech points we wouldn't normally have.

The game proceeded a bit and we now have an empowered pendant. I decided to take a bit of time to get the treasures from 600 A.D. and thus unlock the upgraded chests with the elemental mails. I went around getting those from Truce and Porre, though I don't have access to Guardia Castle's black chest quite yet.
This little wander around the world provided an opportunity to visit my favourite treasure chest in the game:

My theory about what the heck is going on here is someone's idea of a joke. Like, the fact that it's pointed out as unusual that more than one piece of jewelry would be in a large box must itself be a gag about single treasures as a trope. Right? I don't know. I find it quite funny though.
With most of the sealed chests retrieved (although I didn't go back for vests yet), I also visited the sealed doors through most of 2300 A.D. I raided Trann Dome, Bangor Dome and Arris Dome, where the best prizes were a few tabs and the Gold Stud. I saved outside of the Sewer Access; we'll do that next time.

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