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freshfeelingI played the fourth session of my playthrough for this year's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge on the morning of December 11th.
We were starting at the Blackbird, and I knew this was going to be really easy compared to last year since Ayla happened to be on my team! I had happened to set my party to Frog (the actual frog), Frog (the scientist), and Ayla, but because of my script Frog would be replaced by Crono in combat.
Well, interesting fact that might seem obvious to some folks: only the current field party loses their stuff. Consequently my Frog-coloured Crono was able to join in with Ayla in the fights here, and we blew through it in record time.
I thought aloud that it be interesting to abandon Frog's (the frog's) equipment here and lose the Masamune forever. I was disheartened when I got the chest with Frog 's equipment, but that turned out to be Frog the scientist with the space in her name! So we actually, seriously dumped the Masamune and left with our money, our items, Ayla's stuff, and LuccaFrog's stuff.
The technique points are really high here and by the time we fought our very first Turret on the wing we had learned both Luminaire and Triple Kick, unlocking every technique we would ever have.
We fought GolemBoss, and then Dalton Plus. I chose not to hold back and tried out Luminaire here; it was a quick fight.
Ayla delivers another line that sounds just like my dog talking:
With our new-found, late-game freedom, we beat Spekkio for only the second time, which was fairly easy, especially since we were still wearing various elemental defenses.
I also went to Laruba Village to investigate the renaming situation. I did a web search, and it turns out that in the SNES release of Chrono Trigger, when you name a character with blank space at the end of their name, it is saved as an actual space character... but when you insert actual space characters, those are truncated! I renamed Frog the frog to "Glenn" and then finally fixed Lucca's name to... "Frog". With no space.
I thought the next reasonable step to take would be to try and revive Crono - even though he appears in our battles regardless. I semi-accidentally used the computer in Keeper's Dome to rename the Toad , formerly the Epoch, to "Toad" with no space.
Next, we needed a clone, and for that we needed silver points. Doing several fights with Gato seemed like a good opportunity to try out Crono with all of the other characters' palettes.
I did the copycat game perfectly and didn't have to pay for my clone. Next, we went to Death Peak. Some of the enemies here were hard, and I never actually managed to Charm a Lavos Spawn shell here.
After the Blackbird we had quite a bit of money, actually, and I had bought a very large stack of Full Tonic that alleviated a lot of my healing concerns.
We got Crono back! Even though, in a way, he had never left.
I went to Guardia Castle briefly to get a Red Mail in 1000 AD and a Red Vest in 600 AD, and then I went to face Son of Sun. It was a fight where nearly everything he does heals us, so yeah, it went well. We also Charmed a Black Mail. We did the Sun Stone quest and thus earned WonderShot.
Next, we went to Ozzie's Fort. Flea and Slash were easy. I stole the Slasher 2 and the OzziePants but I don't think either really matters. This dungeon doesn't do much for us. Crono was sporting Magus' palette for the occasion.
Next up, we did the North Ruins / Hero's Grave while also opening up Giant's Claw. We got some armors that may be useful for Crono but there was nothing else much here to comment on. You may recall that we intentionally left the Masamune on the Blackbird, but it turns out the game doesn't care.
I didn't give Frog/Glenn that equipment; it's just whatever he had. At some point the game must've forced that back onto him, which I would bet is right after the Blackbird crashes. I mean, that makes sense: Chrono Trigger is known to behave rather strangely when characters have no armor equipped.
May as well do Giant's Claw while we're here! This is one of the areas where I find the enemies a bit beefy and counter-happy that makes normal fights a bit tough. Well... they aren't so tough when you just spam Luminaire in nearly after battle.
Rust Tyrano was easy although we did have to endure its countdown attack once... which healed two characters. We tried a few different means to deal damage. Ayla's Triple Kick on its own did 2969 damage. I was surprised that this guy didn't seem to particularly resist fire. We managed to Charm a Red Mail.
Next we did Geno Dome. This is fairly pointless for us, but we'd get a few consumables and levels. Again... I used a whole lot of Luminaire to accelerate things. I figured the fun part would be the Atropos fight, which is designed for Robo to fight solo. We won in two Gatling Kicks.
MotherBrain was very easy, in part thanks to Falcon Hit.
And, almost finally, there was Yakra XIII. I thought we could Charm a White Mail from this guy but all we got was a lousy MegaElixir.
We used strong attacks, including Gatling Kick, and it was fairly easy although some heals were required from his nasty spikes.
We are going to enjoy our Rainbow Shell goodies!
In terms of endgame sidequests before going to either Lavos or the Black Omen, all that's left is the Sunken Desert. I have never legitimately attempted this without a character who would use water magic. While the random enemies on the first level were no problem, I don't think we're going to be able to beat Retinite.
The usual way to defeat this guy is by using water magic, and then physical attacks. Besides the core, he takes 0 damage from fire, lightning and even water. Our physical attacks tend to miss or do 0 damage. When we do stronger techs, they do some damage, but its defense actually goes up in response... resulting in things like Crono's very strong Confuse tech dealing a total of 12 damage.
I tried to think of ways to damage this guy that didn't involve physical attacks or elemental attacks... and I may have one: Ayla's Tail Spin. Unfortunately, Retinite happened to spawn in a spot where he couldn't approach Ayla. I tried the next most likely option, I thought, which was Ayla using Dino Tail while at critically low HP.
Unfortunately, even a near-optimized Dino Tail only does double-digit damage. Doing this means keeping Ayla's HP low, which means she keeps dying. As well, Retinite's parts both have health-draining moves so really it's possibly healing faster than I can hurt it. I might come back to this but I'm not sure it's possible. Maybe with Tail Spin?
For now though, I was ready to stop. I think we'll just do Black Omen next.
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We were starting at the Blackbird, and I knew this was going to be really easy compared to last year since Ayla happened to be on my team! I had happened to set my party to Frog (the actual frog), Frog (the scientist), and Ayla, but because of my script Frog would be replaced by Crono in combat.
Well, interesting fact that might seem obvious to some folks: only the current field party loses their stuff. Consequently my Frog-coloured Crono was able to join in with Ayla in the fights here, and we blew through it in record time.
I thought aloud that it be interesting to abandon Frog's (the frog's) equipment here and lose the Masamune forever. I was disheartened when I got the chest with Frog 's equipment, but that turned out to be Frog the scientist with the space in her name! So we actually, seriously dumped the Masamune and left with our money, our items, Ayla's stuff, and LuccaFrog's stuff.
The technique points are really high here and by the time we fought our very first Turret on the wing we had learned both Luminaire and Triple Kick, unlocking every technique we would ever have.
We fought GolemBoss, and then Dalton Plus. I chose not to hold back and tried out Luminaire here; it was a quick fight.
Ayla delivers another line that sounds just like my dog talking:
With our new-found, late-game freedom, we beat Spekkio for only the second time, which was fairly easy, especially since we were still wearing various elemental defenses.
I also went to Laruba Village to investigate the renaming situation. I did a web search, and it turns out that in the SNES release of Chrono Trigger, when you name a character with blank space at the end of their name, it is saved as an actual space character... but when you insert actual space characters, those are truncated! I renamed Frog the frog to "Glenn" and then finally fixed Lucca's name to... "Frog". With no space.
I thought the next reasonable step to take would be to try and revive Crono - even though he appears in our battles regardless. I semi-accidentally used the computer in Keeper's Dome to rename the Toad , formerly the Epoch, to "Toad" with no space.
Next, we needed a clone, and for that we needed silver points. Doing several fights with Gato seemed like a good opportunity to try out Crono with all of the other characters' palettes.
I did the copycat game perfectly and didn't have to pay for my clone. Next, we went to Death Peak. Some of the enemies here were hard, and I never actually managed to Charm a Lavos Spawn shell here.
After the Blackbird we had quite a bit of money, actually, and I had bought a very large stack of Full Tonic that alleviated a lot of my healing concerns.
We got Crono back! Even though, in a way, he had never left.
I went to Guardia Castle briefly to get a Red Mail in 1000 AD and a Red Vest in 600 AD, and then I went to face Son of Sun. It was a fight where nearly everything he does heals us, so yeah, it went well. We also Charmed a Black Mail. We did the Sun Stone quest and thus earned WonderShot.
Next, we went to Ozzie's Fort. Flea and Slash were easy. I stole the Slasher 2 and the OzziePants but I don't think either really matters. This dungeon doesn't do much for us. Crono was sporting Magus' palette for the occasion.
Next up, we did the North Ruins / Hero's Grave while also opening up Giant's Claw. We got some armors that may be useful for Crono but there was nothing else much here to comment on. You may recall that we intentionally left the Masamune on the Blackbird, but it turns out the game doesn't care.
I didn't give Frog/Glenn that equipment; it's just whatever he had. At some point the game must've forced that back onto him, which I would bet is right after the Blackbird crashes. I mean, that makes sense: Chrono Trigger is known to behave rather strangely when characters have no armor equipped.
May as well do Giant's Claw while we're here! This is one of the areas where I find the enemies a bit beefy and counter-happy that makes normal fights a bit tough. Well... they aren't so tough when you just spam Luminaire in nearly after battle.
Rust Tyrano was easy although we did have to endure its countdown attack once... which healed two characters. We tried a few different means to deal damage. Ayla's Triple Kick on its own did 2969 damage. I was surprised that this guy didn't seem to particularly resist fire. We managed to Charm a Red Mail.
Next we did Geno Dome. This is fairly pointless for us, but we'd get a few consumables and levels. Again... I used a whole lot of Luminaire to accelerate things. I figured the fun part would be the Atropos fight, which is designed for Robo to fight solo. We won in two Gatling Kicks.
MotherBrain was very easy, in part thanks to Falcon Hit.
And, almost finally, there was Yakra XIII. I thought we could Charm a White Mail from this guy but all we got was a lousy MegaElixir.
We used strong attacks, including Gatling Kick, and it was fairly easy although some heals were required from his nasty spikes.
We are going to enjoy our Rainbow Shell goodies!
In terms of endgame sidequests before going to either Lavos or the Black Omen, all that's left is the Sunken Desert. I have never legitimately attempted this without a character who would use water magic. While the random enemies on the first level were no problem, I don't think we're going to be able to beat Retinite.
The usual way to defeat this guy is by using water magic, and then physical attacks. Besides the core, he takes 0 damage from fire, lightning and even water. Our physical attacks tend to miss or do 0 damage. When we do stronger techs, they do some damage, but its defense actually goes up in response... resulting in things like Crono's very strong Confuse tech dealing a total of 12 damage.
I tried to think of ways to damage this guy that didn't involve physical attacks or elemental attacks... and I may have one: Ayla's Tail Spin. Unfortunately, Retinite happened to spawn in a spot where he couldn't approach Ayla. I tried the next most likely option, I thought, which was Ayla using Dino Tail while at critically low HP.
Unfortunately, even a near-optimized Dino Tail only does double-digit damage. Doing this means keeping Ayla's HP low, which means she keeps dying. As well, Retinite's parts both have health-draining moves so really it's possibly healing faster than I can hurt it. I might come back to this but I'm not sure it's possible. Maybe with Tail Spin?
For now though, I was ready to stop. I think we'll just do Black Omen next.
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