Insane Difficulty: Fight with Magus (Video!) - Insane Difficulty

As promised, here is a video of the fight with Magus. Enjoy. Hope it gives you guys a break when you fight him.

Magus Fight - Chrono Trigger: Lavos' Awakening (Insane Difficulty)

Nyxian, on 18 April 2014 - 08:01 PM, said:

You can embed it like so:

Ooo... no Marle. Ballsy.

zombero, on 21 April 2014 - 04:04 PM, said:

I think Lucca was a good choice in this case. Lucca is able to survive Darkmatter without a barrier (barely); I'm sure his Marle would not have been up to this task (without the silver earrings at least).

Could be, I'm just used to seeing Marle there in most people's plays, heh.

zombero, on 22 April 2014 - 12:45 PM, said:

Yeah, me too. Marle is popular for good reason. I think she's the best choice in most situations. I just found it interesting that not only did Nyxian choose Lucca, but that at his levels, a good case can be made for Lucca being the best choice. If Lucca (presumably with the recently aquired Taban Helm: MDef + 10) can only barely survive Darkmatter, then Marle will almost surely fall to it.

I think I was at a similar sweet-spot in my run but lacked the determination to see a strategy with Lucca through and just increased my levels so that Crono was able to weather Darkmatter.

This thread is interesting because I actually used Robo. I always pick the lowest level party members (so they rotate and I can use them all), and this ended up being one crazy fight. Thank goodness that group had a triple tech which was learned relatively early or I probably would have had some serious difficulties.

Yeah, there's certainly merits to using Lucca. Robo I've never seen used before, that would be an undeniable Hard Mode choice haha.

Lockirby2, on 23 April 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

Robo!?

Respect to you sir!

I think Robo might be a good choice for the gruelling fight with Slash as Triple Raid might make it possible to short-circuit his final deadly phase; I'd be wary of speed problems though.

I also try to use lower level characters to keep balance but don't follow this rigourously. This did lead to some tough fights. In particular, I recall tackling Ozzie, Slash, and Flea, with Magus, Ayla, and Robo, which made for a rather spicy battle.

I figured you guys might be interested in seeing the video, since others have been posting theirs as well. I'll post the description here too.



"Lavos' Awakening, if you're not familiar with it, is a hack of Chrono Trigger.

This battle was a pretty interesting one. If you're not aware, I always try to cycle my characters evenly in terms of EXP, so that is why Robo is here. That made things trickier, but far from impossible (indeed, it was a while since I did this fight the first time, so I made a few mistakes recording it here). I always take full advantage of the Masamune's Magic Defense decrease, even though Frog's turns are valuable for healing, because Magus' counterattacks are the most dangerous part of the first phase of this fight. I play this phase slowly and methodically, as Frog can't take a Lightning 2 unless he's at full HP. This necessitates him being at full HP all the time when I'm about to attack. Also, eating a counterattack and a Geyser in tandem is bad news, so I plan my attacks to avoid it.

This phase is made harder by the fact that I increased the battle speed from its usual lowest setting to something higher, in preparation for the next phase. Increasing the battle speed makes Barriers last longer, but it also shortens the time you have to input commands. Chrono Trigger is so fast paced that sometimes this makes it *literally* impossible to input commands fast enough, and the enemies will get extra turns. As such, I have to find a healthy balance between Barriers that only last one or two Dark Matters, and making it go too fast to handle. Notice that when I throw the Barrier on Robo, Magus casts Dark Matter immediately. I'll take this as a good sign that I judged it well.

Since I accomplished this on my first attempt which made it to the Dark Matter phase, I misjudged Crono's ability to survive Dark Matter without a Barrier (even with the Silver Earring equipped). I was still able to win quite handily, but that explains decisions which otherwise would have been questionable (Silver Earring on Crono, not throwing a Barrier on Crono, etc.). To be honest, I'm not sure that healing both Crono and Robo to full HP would outdo my current strategy in terms of speed anyways. When Crono died, I didn't panic and try to get a Barrier on him, which likely would have resulted in my death. Instead, I just altered my strategy to something I was fairly confident would work anyways.

In short, this fight is tricky, but fairly forgiving once you know what to do with it."

I agree that this battle is ok once you have a method. Relatively speaking, Magus is slow and predictable.

Part of my joviality stems from the fact that my levels were fairly low at this point in the run (Glenn: 20, Marle/Lucca/Robo: 21, Crono: 22), so Robo was almost out of the question. At these levels, only Crono or Lucca, with optimal equiptment and a barrier, are able to survive Darkmatter. Additionally, I'd not learnt Heal which made Geyser a bit harder to handle. Still, you do make me want to try this with Robo. I have a save game just before the fight if anyone's interested.

I'm familiar with the strategy of tweaking the battle speed to get more milage out of the two barriers (critical in a low-level game). I didn't need it myself as I had Marle with Haste, but it does seem helpful when using Robo.

Well done on not letting Crono's mishap faze you. It's recovering from unexpected situations like this that make the player. I fail in this more than I'd like to admit.

I saw your video as well, and you're pretty good, so I'm sure you could beat him with Robo. Although I think Robo can survive Dark Matter at your level, if I'm not mistaken. Mine was only 23, and he was surviving with 100+ HP, so I think he could tank it at level 21 (although it's hard to tell since I don't know the growth of his HP/Magic Defense). Of course, it's a moot point since Crono would probably be the better choice for survival anyways.

I attempted to fight each encounter in the game once and only once to keep my levels reasonable in either direction. Occasionally that fell flat though, since I couldn't escape. And of course, I had to fight those imps going out of the Middle Age portal every single time.

Ironically, getting Marle for this fight may have caused some issues for me, since mine was nowhere near learning Haste yet.

Lockirby2, on 24 April 2014 - 04:00 PM, said:

I didn't upload a video; I don't know how.

I just checked and I'm in error. Robo is able to survive Darkmatter at level 21, more comfortably than Crono even (a 20 HP buffer). I really don't know how I managed to overlook this. I guess I was focusing too much on MDef (which is much less important than MaxHP at this level) and, seeing that Glenn and Marle were unable to withstand Darkmatter, looked only to Lucca. It seems I wrote Robo off too quickly in preparing for this fight.

Thanks for the info.

Lockirby2, on 24 April 2014 - 04:00 PM, said:

I see. I tried to keep my Exp down (and generally enjoy the challenge of avoiding encounters), but I wasn't strict with this either. I do, for example, allow myself to earn 10 tech points shortly after aquiring Lucca so that I have Fire Whirl for the Nagaettes. I also wanted to avoid missing limited equiptment and pick up all the tabs, both constraints supplying me with roughly enough Exp to survive.

Lockirby2, on 24 April 2014 - 04:00 PM, said:

I did wonder. I put a lot of effort into picking up Haste as early as possible, without accruing too much Exp, and had only just aquired it. Would have been nice to get Heal too but this didn't seem so important.

Without Haste, and with Magus being so slow and reactive, I think you're right in your suspicion that Robo could well have been a better choice than Marle (there I said it).

That's true, while mdef is *ridiculously* important late game, it isn't that big of a factor here, and Robo's HP would be pretty significant. I guess we've been shortchanging our robotic friend!

teukon, on 24 April 2014 - 06:17 PM, said:

Now I feel stupid. That wasn't you...but he used the same strategy as you, so that was probably the source of the error.

teukon, on 24 April 2014 - 06:17 PM, said:

Maybe you forgot to take Robo's innate Shadow reduction into account?

teukon, on 24 April 2014 - 06:17 PM, said:

Especially since the only weakness Marle can hit is one that I can hit just fine already with Swordstream.

Hey I just discovered this hack a few days ago. Currently in my first playthrough and at the Death Peak.
I was able to beat this too using the silver ergg and a barrier.

I slapped the Chrono Compendium translation patch as well so it's CT in a whole new different experience and I'm loving it!

I found the Gradius but might I ask where the Pico Magnum is?

Pico Magnum is gotten from killing the first version of Spekkio, which is only fightable if you encounter him while Crono is level 9 or lower. It becomes outdated about halfway through the game, and after that it, it is just a trophy. It's a pretty good early game weapon for Lucca, though.