35. Day of Destiny - Mega64.net

Welcome to Mt. Woe. There's no music, only the wind effects. Thus I'll just post the battle music here since there's little interesting about this dungeon other than the battles.

Battle 1

The first enemy we encounter is one of the most unique, and also the most useful. Meet the Rubble. It had only 515HP, and its physical defense is only slightly higher than average.

The twist is that every time you fight one, it uses this ability so that you can only attack. Even if you could use magic somehow, it has max magic defense and is immune to all elements. Luckily it doesn't attack at all, with the gimmick being it will run away if you take too long to kill it.

Of course, it has high evasion too.

That's why I gave Ayla the Hit Ring, since this is one of the rare enemies to have high enough evasion that it actually matters.

The big reason to fight them is the whopping 100TP they give. They're easy to fight, and later there's even one that respawns, so this is a great place to grind out some techs.

Hell, even without Rubbles this place is nice, as even regular encounters will give around 25TP a battle.

Bantam Imps have low HP, but are replaced with Stone Imps when KO'd...which also have low HP. Not very exciting enemies.

Crono has my Gold Stud, so you better believe I abuse Lightning 2 for the majority of battles.

Due to the insane amount of TP to get here, I get quite a few techs, to the point where Ayla and Robo, both of which were behind the other three, end up surpassing them.

Ayla's fifth tech, which I described last update, is Charm, i.e. the Steal command. This also unlocks a Dual Tech with Robo.

A helmet upgrade. That's as exciting a line as can be written about it.

As an aside, this dungeon sucks for GIF-making due to the damn fog effects blowing up file size. There's one or two techs I had to postpone showing off for a later update because of this.

Ironically, the flashier techs fare better because those effects end up disabling the fog effect. Limitations are wonderful.

That's the line you get when it fails.

The Gargoyles have a nasty attack that reduces a character to 1HP every other round. However, they have crazy-low HP for this stage of the game and have lower-than-usual physical defense on top of that. You'll have to try not to OHKO them.

Let's dance.

Robo Tackle + Charm results in this weird technique. This actually inflicts Stop on all enemies that are vulnerable, which is as handy as you'd expect.

This is the area where the game generally expects you to get Charm, as trying it out here nets a few new weapons that are even better than the ones in Algetty. Big Hand is one such upgrade for Robo.

Ayla and Marle can do a couple Dual Techs now.

This combines Marle's Provoke with Ayla's Charm. It's basically the same as a regular Charm attempt, but it probably has a higher success rate. However, there's nothing to really confirm this since there's no hard numbers on Charm's success rate.

Ice + Rock Throw result in Ice Toss. It's the same damage as each separate, but with a small area of effect and ignoring Rock Throw being ineffective against certain enemies.

Forgot to show off this item before, it's a neat one that restores 200HP to the entire party.

Crono's penultimate technique, it's essentially four hits in a row, each one slightly weaker than usual. I'll show it off on the boss.

It's a whopping one point higher in defense than the elemental mails!

Man Eaters have decent magic defense but that same horrid HP. They can also inflict Chaos and heal themselves.

Ayla's sixth tech also unlocks our second Triple Tech.

And then Robo gets his sixth tech, though I'll have to wait for a future update to show that off due to this damn fog. It does trigger the final Robo/Ayla Dual Tech, though, another one I'll have to show off at a later time.

First off, Tail Spin is a whopping 10MP, but it's one of the more interesting techs in the game. It's one of two techs to use Ayla's Magic stat, doing (LVL + MAG) * 16 base damage. For refence, Lightning 2 multiples LVL + MAG by a mere 5.6, though Ayla's low MAG stat hinders it a bit, as well as only affecting enemies near Ayla. It's also an oddity in being the only single tech to do non-elemental magic damage. And Crono apparently loves this move.

Cyclone + Laser Spin + Tail Spin. It basically adds 50% to the damage from each tech and deals all that to all enemies as Shadow damage. This is up there in terms of best-damaging techs in the game, even moreso if you boost Ayla's Magic.

It's time for Time Hat. This is better than the Lode Helm we just got, and it even prevents Slow and Stop.

Maybe one day we'll actually meet an enemy that inflicts one of those two status effects! Or really any!

Ambient Sound - Wind

Eventually we get near the end of the dungeon. The dungeon itself has several very large areas, with enemy encounters mainly near chests. It's a neat area to navigate, even if it's generally featureless and the music is nonexistant.

Things get dark as we climb up, until...

Looks like we found who we're looking for.

Of course it wasn't going to be that easy, though.

Boss Battle 1

This is Giga Gaia. He consists of a head and two hands. Stop me if you've heard of this boss gimmick before.

The hands like to team up to do Fire and Shadow damage. This is a great battle to put those shiny new mails and vests to use!

Apparently one hand is offense-oriented while the other heals the body.

I didn't really find out because I cut through the hands like butter. They only have 2000HP each so Falcon Hit with the Swallow annihilates them.

Then the head does nothing while reviving the hands, which is also a good time to go on the offensive.

Each individual hit deals ~90% of a regular attack, but of course you're hitting that target with four of them, so if you can shake off the 12MP cost (which we can thanks to the Gold Stud!) this can do some solid damage.

The head also has a Speed Tab, which is simply wonderful. More Speed Tabs are always welcome!

Eventually the hands will come back, but whatever.

Giga Gaia only has 9000HP, so he goes down quickly enough.

Manoria Cathedral

And with that, we defeated the creature guarding the Guru of Life. And behind that ice is...

So we've been kind of spoiled on this, but in the Japanese version you're actually not supposed to know this is Melchior until now. It seems this Melchior and the one we know in 1000AD may be one in the same, but how...?

But there are more important things to discuss right now, so after a period of silence to imply things being discussed...

I see...the Queen has degenerated to that degree...

Her spirit has been stolen by the infamous immortal, Lavos.

It was kinda easy to figure that one out, honestly.

SILENCE

Looks like we'll have to cut things short for now.

Looks like we broke the mountain.

My bad.

SILENCE

If the Mammom Machine is brought closer to him, he may awaken! We must hurry before it's too late!

That answers the question of just how involved Lavos is in all of this. Right now it's unaware that Zeal is using its powers to fuel its civilization, but Queen Zeal's mind has been corrupted by this power, and if the Mammon Machine wakes it up, it probably won't be very happy to find all these people leeching off its power...

Also everyone survived and made it back safely, thanks for asking.

What? Schala's here?

Schala's Theme

Schala's here. Also Janus but who cares.

Stop degrading yourselves! We Enlightened Ones were once the same as you. The only difference is that we are under Lavos's control...

Classy as ever.

Is it safe for you to leave the palace?

That no longer matters! The Ocean Palace is now operational!

Then all is lost!

But without me, the Mammon Machine won't work. I have turned my back on that evil device!

This is our time to strike. We can go back to Zeal and then reach the Ocean Palace from there, stopping Queen Zeal, saving the kingdom, and possibly even finding a way to stop Lavos.

SILENCE