Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door
I can't believe it's been over 2 years since I've owned this game, in fact it might even be approaching 2 years since my first, and up until recently, only attempt at TTYD's pit of 100 trials. Well today i did it
My first attempt was on a real gamecube, no hacks no cheats, just vanilla game, back then i was pretty much on a time limit of 2 hours whenever i wanted to play video games and that afternoon i'd already been going for 2 hours 15 min, and i only got as far as floor 80 and most of my partners and items were down, so i gave up and took the bail pipe and saved that and never tried again for ages.
Recently, I managed to use GCMM to extract that very same save file (which by the way is also the same file i used for my first playthrough of TTYD) and load it on Dolphin. I had the idea I'd try again now, as not only am I on less strict time limits these days but also save states mean I don't have to do it all at once. So I did that and over the course of yesterday and today I worked my way through and beat it. I guess you could argue that my playthrough wasn't 100% legit, for the following reasons:
- Played on Dolphin
- Used a save state to effectively save halfway through
- Deliberately abused lag to rig a couple of bingo's (they were shine bingos i really needed, i couldn't resist)
- Most objectionably of all, I made a save state after beating floor 99 and used it once.
Won't list my stats, upgrades, and badges in full detail but going into the pit I had about 50HP, 50FP and 30BP and a fairly good badge selection (I think the real ones that saved me in this run were Quick Change, Mega Rush P, Peekaboo, Charge P, Defend Plus, Flower Saver P, Power Smash). I didn't have the strange sack going in despite having reached level 80 previously (the sack is on level 50, I think I missed it last time because I took a mover, I did use some movers in this run but I think I now have all the items from the pit). I had 3 ultra shrooms, 3 Jammin' Jellies and a few other things like super shrooms, as you can tell I was much more intent on things that would preserve my party in the long term due to no save blocks or inns down there rather than just short term benefits like a boo's sheet. In the end I used none of the jellies and only one of the ultra shrooms.
First 20 floors or so were really easy
After that it built up gradually, by about floor 60-70 it was pretty tough. I think I was around halfway through or so when I realised that many of the fights could be greatly simplified by using Gale Force first thing, especially as I have Flower Saver P which makes that cheaper and Quick Change meaning I can switch Flurrie out immediately if I want.
80-90 I lost both my life shrooms on partners and bobbery and koops both died but I later revived them thanks to dried shrooms and hearts dropped on the ground.
90-99 thankfully many of these involved whatever those giant bombs (and i could usually quickly dispatch of the rest with Gale Force) are called that basically give you loads of free moves where you can appeal and use Sweet Treat and/or Sweet Feast to heal your party, then all you have to do is use Veil to avoid getting blown up, thankfully I managed to correctly do the Veil every time. However 95 and 99 involved those Wizzerd things that have loads of defense and really advanced attacks so that sucked. Thankfully I didn't see many chain chomps in the pit since I hate those with all their really high defense.
Made a save state at floor 99, originally with the intention that I was nearly certainly going to beat the boss and I'd be able to use this save state to replay the boss whenever I wanted.
The Bonetail fight was going pretty well at first, but then Bonetail started healing a lot, and then I died due to really bad luck (was on about 45 HP then I got a poison shroom bingo (the only time i got one of those this whole run) taking me to about 22HP then bonetail did his sleep breath so i couldn't do anything and then he did two more breaths (this is especially unlucky as I'd put mario in the back so if he'd done stomps or bites i might have been safe) 3 * 8 = 24 I lose, well i guess i'd have survived if i'd superguarded the first breath but i'm far from being consistent at superguarding). I decide that even though it's kind of cheating to load the save state I really didn't feel like spending another two days on this and if I want I can always go back and do a legit run. This time I steamroll by just charging yoshi loads of times then doing a stampede (thanks quick change). Overall I'm not really sure if Bonetail is harder or easier than the Shadow Queen since the first time I lost midway through mostly due to really bad luck and the second time I sorta used a highly broken strategy
Anyway that was cool
