Part 54: Update Fifty One: The Genocide Dome
Dariusknight posted:
Leave probably uses his veto and takes whichever he wants. Tie goes to Leave to decide, I think that's the way he's done it on other LPs
I can't recall if I've ever had a tie in other votes, but if there is a tie like that, I'll make the decision. I had actually planned to drop whoever had the lowest amount of votes in favor of taking Janus, since he has a couple of Techs to learn yet. But, anywho, onto other matters...
Update Fifty One: The Genocide Dome
Howdy, folks, and welcome back! Last time, on Chrono Trigger, we finished up the Rainbow Shell sidequest, and got some great shit. Today, we're going to clear out a factory in the Future, so let's bounce.
Before we get into this, I want to tell you all that I am not as well versed in the Geno Dome as I am in the other sidequests. I missed stuff here.
Geno Dome isn't very long, but I have a buttload of shots here. There's a fair bit of stuff within the Dome, in what you have to do there, but it's mostly a lot of running around.
For this sidequest, we're just slightly southeast of the Keeper's Dome.
Geno Dome is short for Genocide Dome, which is what it was named in the Japanese version. It's a bit of a hint as to what is going down in here.
For this sidequest, Robo is equipped with a Prism Helm and the Prism Specs, offering him +50% damage on all attacks, as well as insane Magic Defense. Ayla is also wearing a Prism Helm, and a Wrath Band, for the 80% counter rate, while Janus has a Gold Stud, for 25% MP costs. His armor is unchanged from the last time we saw his equipment.
Your sanctum? Can someone actually use that word without sounding like a pretentious douchebag?
Yeah, Robo's real name is Prometheus. I don't know why he's named after the Titan who created mankind and gave them fire, but that's his name.
The door opens and we enter one of the best grinding spots I know of.
The voice wants to test us and puts us on a conveyor belt where enemies keep attacking us.
These guys are the Deverminator EX, and they have 1,024 HP and a weakness to Light.
There's a bunch of EXP to be had here, as well as a lot of TP. Janus still has two Techs to learn, while Robo has one. Ayla had one, but she learns it during this sidequest.
Our next challenge is two Version 4.0 robots.
Robo has the Prism Specs, and I wanted a good example of how to show them off.
Ayla landed a critical strike for 750 damage. It's a pretty number.
Robo lands a regular strike, which works out pretty well for what I'm showing here.
There's still a bit of a difference between those two numbers, but the Prism Specs are highly valuable for when you need to dump a ton of damage at once. Personally, I'll probably always have a party where someone is wearing them. Usually I like Chrono to have them, with the 70% crit rate of the Rainbow, but the Wrath Band has proved quite valuable in its own way.
While we're right here, let me talk about Ayla's Fists for a minute. From Levels 1 to 23, she has just a fist; nothing fancy or special about it., and it has a 20% crit rate At level 24, however, her Fist "changes" to something else; it's still called the Fist, but the crit rate goes from 20% to 25%, and she keeps that until Level 48. At that point, her Fist is "transformed" into a weapon with a 30% critical rate, and it stays that way until Level 72. At Level 72, her Fist changes to the Iron Fist, which gets another 5% to the critical rate and also has a chance of Confusing enemies when she strikes them. That all sounds pretty good, right? Well, at Level 96, it gets better. Her Fist becomes the Bronze Fist, and when she gets a critical hit, it deals 9,999 damage, no ifs ands or buts. Granted, there's absolutely no reason to ever reach that high of a level, but it's still something interesting.
By the by, all those upgrades before the Iron Fist are DS exclusive things; the SNES version doesn't have those (or so I've read).
So, now, after that lengthy explanation, you're rewarded with a shot of Janus frying some more robots.
This hallways is great for grinding because these enemies ain't shit, and they drop a fair amount of EXP. This section takes just a couple of minutes to get through, too.
Now, the colors on this are piss-poor, but that's because there's a lot going on here, from Robo and Ayla's motions to the fact it's on a moving background. However, this is Boogie, which inflicts Stop on enemies.
See the stopwatches? They're Stopped! I guess. That might very well have been my first time using Boogie.
Expect a lot of shots of Janus throwing down Lightning II in this update. We're fighting robots and it's the most effective tactic.
Our final fight is against six enemies, and I take the opportunity to use Robo's newest Tech, Proximity Bomb. (Lv + Mag) × 12.25 for damage on it.
I have a .gif of it later on, but Robo basically blows up to inflict Fire damage on the enemy.
This is also one of the Techs that uses the zone around Robo to target enemies; most Techs target enemies directly and some can hit enemies within the zone around them (Shadowbomb, from Janus, is an example of this). However, a few Techs rely on an area around the caster, which gimps their usefulness. With certain battle layouts, the caster might be too far from the enemy you want to hit with that Tech, or it might appear you should be hitting all of what you want, and you'll only have two within range.
In short, Techs that rely on the zone around the caster are kind of shitty and I don't like using them. Also, that +50% damage can make for some very crazy numbers with certain characters.
And now we move into the factory proper.
Or the Dome, rather, but I'm pretty sure this is a goddamned factory.
Opening that currently does nothing, but it'll be used later on.
By the way, we've seen most of the enemies around here already. There's one new type.
That Gold Stud is so fantastic, it's not even funny. 2 MP to blast all enemies, using the guy who is so good at magic Spekkio creamed his jeans meeting him? Yes please.
There's also some history lessons around here, in case you'd forgotten bits of the earlier plot.
And, once again, robots are talking shit about humanity.
If you'd like, you can leave from here and redo the conveyor belt as much as you'd like. I did it the one time.
In this door, we find an elevator leading up.
There are enemies in this shot; can you spot them?
That's right, they were the thing that looked different from the other things!
Laser Guards only have 400 HP, are weak to Lightning, and can self-destruct. They also have a Laser attack, but you'll probably not see it.
I think I have around twenty of these in my inventory.
In hindsight, I have no idea why I turned around and went through this door. But it works out.
It leads to a hallway.
Where a robot asks the questions all robo-revolutionaries ask humans when they want to take over.
I have nothing inspirational to say here. I'm not a big fan of Geno Dome, except for one thing here. You'll know it when you see it.
Oh, no, two Laser Guards and two Version 4.0s! Whatever will I do?
Normally I wouldn't have shown this fight, but something fun happens afterward.
Ayla learns her final Tech!
We go down back to the first floor. Not that we couldn't have gotten here from where we entered; I just took the scenic route.
Moving on, we find some more Laser Guards.
But that won't be our only challenge here!
This guy comes rolling out.
This is Triple Kick, where Ayla kicks the shit out of them three times. I know, I know, confusing name, but wait until you see the damage formula.
3 Hits, 4/3× damage
4× damage = Total
Don't look at me like that; I just copied it from the FAQ I'm using. But if I got it figured right, and I could be wrong as I'm not good at math, each hit deals 1.3 repeating times her normal damage three times, to make roughly 4 times damage.
But first, I want to go and flip this switch. Before, the conveyor belt there was running south; it's now running north. There's a reason for that.
And I pop open this pod.
Now we head left of where we came in at.
Into an encounter just down the hallway.
Where we snag a Hi Potion.
And where we can obtain more information about where we are.
Each of these is important for progressing through.
Energize first, in the pod to your left, and then enter the pod next to the locked door.
Conveyor Belts
Sentinels
In the unfortunate event that this should occur, please deposit the disabled Sentinels in the room upstairs.
Figurines
In short, the doors need to have their pods charged to open, the conveyor belt can change directions, the Sentinels fuck up if they face each other, and Mother Brain, the head honcho of this place, still likes dolls and everyone should point and laugh at her.
So we pop this pod open and step inside.
Running out of it, you'll notice Robo now has an electrical arc around him.
We take him into one of these pods and the nearby door pops open.
The arc is on a timer, around ten or fifteen seconds, so you can reach a door and still be powered up.
This opens a door to some treasures.
Nothing phenomenal, but the fifty grand will help me if I decide to keep torturing myself in the Arena of the Ages.
We go power ourselves up again.
This is why I flipped the conveyor; if you try and run up it when you're powered up, you'll have a hell of a time making it with your charge intact.
I think the charge can only move so fast; even when normally running, it'll sometimes lag behind Robo (who is the mandatory leader here). However, I am okay with Ayla running around all shockified.
We crack open this door to get to the Sentinel we need.
He now follows us around, with the wonderful pathing you can imagine a SNES-era AI character has. Not to mention since you can run freely around the map, it's really easy to get this asshole stuck on stuff.
There's a Hi-Ether in that other chest.
Here he is stuck on a wall.
And on another wall. It's easy to keep him following if you keep yourself in straight lines, and he responds well enough to move direction when you do. However, he's slow as fuck.
How slow is that, you ask? Well, I spent a good bit of this walking, and you'll still leave his ass in the dust when walking along.
As I forgot about these two, I'll have to kill them, then go grab the Sentinel again.
Thankfully, it's not a big deal, as the door to him will remain open, and it's only about a fifteen second roundtrip.
When you get him here, just get him close to the other Sentinel.
And now you can get past, as this Sentinel blocks your path if you try before.
This is a pretty strong helmet, up there with the Clarity Cap, but it blocks all status ailments instead of just Lock.
We can now grab Mother Brain's plushie and move on.
Through this door.
Despite looking like a fighting arena, there is nothing of the sort here.
Well, there are these guys, but they don't really count, due to them being massive chumps.
In this shot, we can see the pod needed to open the door, these three switches, and the figurine we need to grab to continue on.
Those two open the pod. I didn't fuck around with other combinations.
We get our robot all zapified and open the door.
Where we grab the next figurine.
Now we can go finish out the other floor.
A Strength Capsule I missed when I went through this hallway the first time; I know some of you already started writing a post telling me about it, but stop it.
When we enter this area, a pink Robo enters from the other side.
Robo recognizes this broad, who is named for the oldest of the Three Fates, Atropos, who ended human lives by snipping them out of the threads of fate after Clotho had spun the thread and Lachesis had measured out the length.
Yeah, yeah, there's some Greek mythology stuff here I'm not thinking too much on. I'm just going to keep eating my nachos.
How could we have known that Robo was a double agent?
My God, it all makes sense...Why we found him where we did, how Lucca could fix him so easily, his naivety, willingness to come along and follow orders...
You son of a bitch!
We have to kill Robo.
Come clean, Robo, and let us cleanse your circuit board of your lies!
And we can't even try to talk him out of it. Robo has turned to the dark side.
Or not; he clocks Atropos in the jaw for her bullshit.
Showing the audience a preview of what's about to happen to your pink ass.
Atropos must be one bad bitch to be willing to take these three on.
I have metal joints
I like to Rocket Fist Attack
I did the name exchange joke last update; don't expect it here.
Namely because seeing Robo get his ass smacked by a pinkbot is more amusing.
I can see Ayla getting ready to duke it out with Atropos for that; she knows Robo, cares about him, and they punched dinosaurs together. I'm not sure why Janus seems to give such a shit.
And now we have a solo boss battle with Robo.
Click the King of the Koopas to see it in motion!
Atropos is pretty goddamned easy, and not just because Robo is powerful.
It's mostly because she's a boss fight for a single character, but also because she has only 6,000 HP.
A lot of her attacks are just like Robo's, which makes entirely too much sense.
Thankfully, she doesn't have his power. Or Prism Specs.
She also has his Cure Beam.
Not a bad bit of HP recovery, but not nearly enough to keep up with what Robo can dish out.
She has one attack that did any decent damage, but first, Proximity Bomb in motion!
Her Tackle is a doozy.
Seriously. Fucking ow.
It amused me to mimic her actions.
I think this is her Rapid Fire Fist, but it looks more like she was petting his chest.
However, that's all she wrote.
Atropos explodes upon death.
In what I'm sure was supposed to be one hell of a desperation attack, but turned out to be the equivalent of throwing a dud firecracker at somebody.
"Is it truly you this time? Will I not be forced to beat you down again?"
Were probably damaged with all the blows to the head Robo gave you.
She didn't start off evil.
We get a pretty damned sweet item out of this deal. How sweet, you ask?
Boom! Robo's weakest stats raised by damned good numbers!
Lucca and Marle are the only ones in need of Speed now.
We're almost at the end of this place.
This is something we could have inferred earlier, from the Lavos Spawn, but Mother Brain makes a horrifying point here; Lavos isn't some sort of unique badass entity that eats worlds, but merely one of an entire race that does so. Who knows how many of those parasites are soaring through the cosmos right now, and who knows how many have drained and destroyed entire planets? Not to mention, since Lavos is responsible for magic coming to this world, what changes have others of his race brought upon other planets?
Goddamn, that's what Chrono Cross should have been about.
Also, that wasn't an invitation to talk about Chrono Cross.
And Jesus Christ, Mother Brain is one chatty Cathy.
Finally, she shuts up and we can move on.
I'm curious about why Mother Brain, despite hating humanity and what-not, is keeping plenty of human cash around.
And yeah, that's a guy on that conveyor belt.
I made a little video for this, because the scream you hear when that guy enters whatever he goes into horrifies me. Click here to see it, if you'd like.
Ayla gets electrocuted for trying to help the guy.
I'm not sure that's a computer, Robo. I don't see a screen or anything that looks like you can manipulate that belt from there.
But before we do that, there's something else to grab.
Yippee.
So let's move along, straight to these Laser Guards.
It's been a while since we've seen this. I thought you missed it.
The same thing happens to these guys, and those are the last normal enemies we'll fight here.
Alright, let's install these figurines or whatever the hell we're supposed to do with them.
And now, onto the mighty Mother Brain.1
Walking into this room, we finally get to meet the broad who thinks machines evolved from humanity.
Thinking about it, I bet Chrono and crew would completely fucking wreck the Space Pirates.
I want to point out that when Lucca fixed him up, she made it so that Robo wouldn't attack us. Lucca fucking knew what Robo had originally been designed for and didn't tell anyone a goddamned thing about it.
Lucca fucking knew what Robo had originally been designed for and didn't tell anyone a goddamned thing about it.
"I would lose Rapid Fire Fist functionality, and I do not want that."
Pretty much, toots.
"Janus even taught me that you get whacked if you're weak."
Well, not right now. Give us a little while and there'll be plenty of future for them.
To see the Mother Brain fight in video, click here!
Now starts our fight against the Mother Brain.
She's got this laser attack, like many machine enemies.
The Displays are jerks.
Namely because 1,000 HP is a pretty solid chunk of damage.
Mother Brain herself only has 5,000 HP, which is hilariously low for a three person team to deplete.
But there are three Displays, each healing for 1000 HP, in rapid order!
Yeah, whatever, you can break these fuckers.
They've got a single hit point, too, so anything will kill them.
Now, some will tell you not to kill all of the Displays.
Oh, hey, I forgot Mother Brain can do this.
Anyways, some will tell you not to kill all the Displays; leave one left alive.
However, these people are gigantic pussies and you shouldn't listen to them.
Blast the Displays and then smash Mother Brain with your strongest attacks.
Destroying the three Displays will make Mother Brain go berserk, and there's a little text prompt telling you that, but I don't have a shot of it.
If this is her going berserk, I think we should have let her take a shot at taking over the world. A Blood Yolk on Death Peak could have ruined her shit.
Barring a counter from Ayla, I didn't omit an attack I made against Mother Brain.
She's just that much of a chump.
You started it, lady. Still, a moment of silence for--
Robo, move your fat ass, I see something shining down there.
Two new weapons for Robo!
We also can't return here; well, we can, but we can't get past the front room.
It's okay, Robo. We did a good thing here.
So, this is the Teraton Arm upgrade for Robo. It's nothing special, except for being really goddamned strong, which is good enough for me.
The other weapon is a gimmick weapon, where the last digit of Robo's HP determines damage; (R¬Atk/2 × Last digit of HP) × 2 is the formula on it, apparently, which means it can be pretty good. I find it simpler to use the Teraton Arm, since I'll have an idea of what the damage off of it is, and I'm not trying to micromanage Robo's HP to deal more damage.
SIdequests
For the "forest being brought back to life" Robo and Lucca are part of it, but don't need to be part of the party to go through the dungeon.
Finished Sidequests
So, we have but a single sidequest left; obviously I'm not going to have you vote on that. But do go ahead and BOLD a vote on the party I'm taking. Voting will end Tuesday, at 7:00 PM, EST.
1. May not actually be mighty.