Insane Difficulty: playthrough - Insane Difficulty

figured i'd start a thread talking about bosses and my stratagies.

yakra: here's my party going into the fight




notice that i got the lode sword from melchior.

anyway, yakra's counters seem to be random. only occasionally did it say "too close to counterattack", but sometime he would not counter even without that messege.

i primarily used x-strike and lucca was on healing duty. i had to stop attacking frequently to heal edit: (just assume i do this for every boss)./edit. when chrono ran out of mp he used "att." and frog used slurpcut. slurpcut did pitiful damage but didn't trigger a counter. chrono's "att." did more damage.

questions so far: do enemies counter specific attacks?

This post has been edited by seraph9888: 29 July 2015 - 01:14 PM

dragon tank:



attacking the body while the head is alive causes the head to counter-heal. so crono used "att." on the head while lucca healed. when the head died i switched to cyclone. firewhirl did decent damage but not having lucca heal was too risky. after the wheel died it was easy. just keep up hp and know that the body now has a (weak) counter.

questions so far:
do enemies counter specific attacks?
do you get anything depending on whether or not lucca rescues you (she didn't.)?

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Some counter specific *types* of attacks, I don't think any counter a singular attack.

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I don't recall the exact differences, but it's certainly no special items or anything. It'd be same as in the original game.

so some enemies counter physicals, magic and/or specific elements? is "att." a type of it's own?

that sucks about lucca. next time i'll let her rescue me.

guardian:




easy, just don't attack the shell.

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Yep, any of those things can be a type.

zombero, on 29 July 2015 - 05:19 PM, said:

got it, thanks.

r-series:



a few cyclones took care of the front row. then i alternated cyclones and "att." to avoid getting counters all at once. also i let crono die at the end so that he would be at lvl nine for frog spekkio. speaking of which:

frog spekkio:
go in with whatever; this fight is easy.

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Yeah, I don't think I actually even changed him, as he's kind of a joke fight. You do get a fun piece of loot, though!

heckran:





also pretty easy, just don't attack the shell.

zombone:





this was kinda difficult. the top could one-shot crono (and probably marle but it never tried). taban's vest helped lucca survive. but once the bottom was destroyed the top switched to a weaker attack. bottom still absorbs ice/shadow; top still absorbs fire/lightning.

masa, mune/"masa & mune"




first phase: the one on the right counters; don't attack it. you only need to take out one anyway.
second phase: use fire sword. when "masa & mune" begins storing tornado energy, use slash to prevent their attack.

nizbel:

forgot to get screen-shots and don't have a convenient save.

approximate party setup:
crono: lvl: 18-19, flint edge, rock helm, ruby vest, silver stud.
ayla: lvl 19-20, fist, rock helm, ruby vest, third eye.
marle: lvl 18-19 sage bow, rock helm, meso mail, speed belt.

attacking nizbel with lightning causes him to be "charged"; his defense drops and he performs a powerful electrocution attack against your party but no other attacks. after performing this attack he is no longer "charged."

my strat:
crono ayla marle
turn 1: lightning, strongest attack, wait
turn 2: aura whirl, strongest attack, aura whirl
turn 3: aura whirl, strongest attack, aura whirl
repeat until dead. slow but effective.

notes:

i may be over-leveled; i trained ayla against the nu to learn techs. perhaps she should start with some techs? (similarly, maybe frog could also learn heal from spekkio?)

i normally don't like robo and he is falling behind on techs; i may or may not use him this playthrough. on my next playthrough, i'll probably try using him on denadoro mountain, which will help him stay on par. heal beam / volt bite is probably better against nizbel.

drill kick sucks; cyclone / rollo kick out-damages it.

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Really? That shouldn't be the case... It should be 150% of Cyclone's damage with 175% of Rollo Kick's damage.

magus:





this battle goes alot faster if you use the masamune regularly. make sure your party is near full hp whenever you attack him cause those counters hurt. used a barrier on crono to get him through darkmatter; he barely survived.

i double-checked: cyclone did 135, rollo kick 150, drill kick 235.

nizbel ll / azala and the black tyrano




both fights are pretty easy.

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I looked into it. Seems the dual tech was flagged to ignore Crono's portion of the damage, hence it was just 150% of a Rollo Kick. Which actually makes it worse than the original game where it was 175% of a Rollo Kick. The fixed version does about 80% more damage than the current bugged version.

You're probably past the point of where this fix would matter, but I'll try and post an updated file sometime tomorrow.

golem:







if you only use fire attacks he will only attack with fire. add fire resistant gear and this fights a breeze, but still less cheesy than another method.

zombero, on 05 August 2015 - 07:18 PM, said:

hooray for bug fixes! i'll download it just to try it out. is it possible some other techs do this? some of them feel pretty underwhelming, but i haven't crunched any numbers yet. drill kick was a particularly egregious offender.

edit: add volt bite and falcon hit to the list.

This post has been edited by seraph9888: 05 August 2015 - 08:59 PM

sir krawlie:





i finally used robo!

nothing too exciting about the boss. but i will point out that rocket roll is awesome in the sewers; at my levels it one-shot all the mooks. if one were to attempt this area early, that would be how. not that the rewards are that great. *coughs* bolt sword *coughs*

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It's possible, sure. I'll go through all the techs and make sure the flags are set as they should be. This hack could stand to get an update in general at some point, one that takes a scalpel to the level-up system and defense formulas in particular. And perhaps implements in a scaling level cap in the form of enemies giving reduced XP as you exceed their level.