Part 46: Bonus Update 44.5: Bambi vs. Godzilla - The Rematch

Bonus Update 44.5: Bambi vs. Godzilla - The Rematch

There are two ways to kill the Mega Dragon: the right way, and the awesome way. In this update, I'm going to show you how to do it the awesome way.

Step 1: Cut A Hole In A Box



The ideal party for killing the Mega Dragon consists of 8 Clerics. Paladins can substitute for Clerics if you use a fountain or item to raise their spell level to at least 8. In this update, I've replaced one Cleric with a Sorcerer, because I like to live dangerously.

Make sure all of your clerics and paladins know the Mass Distortion spell: it can be bought at the temple in Atlantium.

Step 2: Put Your Junk In That Box



It's best if you build your dragonslaying party up to a reasonably high level, since it seems to improve the chance of getting past the Mega Dragon's magic resistance. Level 100 or so should probably be fine. Getting party members all the way to level 255 isn't necessarily a great idea, because there are some bugs that crop up when abilities get very high: for example, the Protection from Elements and Protection from Magic spells (whose effectiveness is based on level) will suffer from an overflow bug and become almost useless if your level is close to 255. Something similar happens with stats: if you already have 255 Speed, put on another pair of Speed Boots and take them off, you'll permanently lose the amount of Speed that the Speed Boots would have given you.

If we want a good chance of victory against the Mega Dragon, we need to get the first turn. The Mega Dragon has a Speed of 250, so everyone has to be faster than that. You can either get everyone's Speed to 100 and wear two pairs of +63 Speed Boots, or grind up their natural Speed using the stat exchanger on the second floor of Luxus Palace's dungeon. The exchanger trades away Might, so bring something like a Might Gauntlet or Power Club for everyone to equip so that they can keep exchanging once their natural Might gets too low.

It helps a little if you can get everyone's Armor Class as high as possible, although it's not strictly necessary. The upper limit is 255, which requires wearing four +63 Defense Rings. Unequip any weapons or other equipment besides Defense Rings or Speed Boots to make room: the Mega Dragon is immune to physical attacks, so our weapons are no use anyway.

Finally, everybody needs to be carrying a Photon Blade in their inventory. You can snag one from the Dragon's Dominion and duplicate it. There's no need to enchant it.

Step 3: Make Her Open The Box



We've made all the preparations we possibly can: it's time to head back to Era 8.



Take one step to the north...



... and we're face to face with the Mega Dragon. (Well, considering our relative sizes, it's more like face to big toe, but you know what I mean.)



In the first stage of the fight, we want everybody to spam Mass Distortion. This normally does damage equal to 1/2 the target's current HP, but the Mega Dragon will resist 75% of the damage, so it'll only do 1/8 of its HP per casting. This is still much more damage than we can do any other way.



By the end of the first round, more than half the Mega Dragon's HP is already gone. Of course, the more HP it loses, the less damage Mass Distortion does, so the battle is nowhere near half over.



All Jostiband can do is cast Implosion for 250 damage, since she can't cast Mass Distortion and there's no item that casts it either.



Expect the Mega Dragon to eradicate one character per round. Casting Protection from Magic with a high-level Sorcerer or getting a blessing from the Atlantium temple might give you a chance to resist eradication, but don't count on it. Being at 255 AC might make the Mega Dragon miss all of its attacks in one round, but don't count on that either.

Since our eight characters get the first strike, and the Mega Dragon eradicates one character per round, we have (8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1) = 36 character turns to kill it. If you have eight characters, all capable of casting Mass Distortion and all carrying Photon Blades, this should be just enough.



We're now in the final phase of the fight. Once Mass Distortion starts doing less than 250 damage, switch to using the Photon Blades to cast Implosion.



At this point, it'll take 6 more Implosions to kill it. Unfortunately, if the Mega Dragon eradicates a character on every turn, we only have 5 character turns left. This is what we get for bringing a sorcerer along: to guarantee victory, you must have eight clerical spellcasters.



All we can do is keep blasting away and hope the Mega Dragon misses at least once.



Sure enough, it does! We're now guaranteed to win as long as we don't do something stupid.



Oh, so now it decides to start missing all the time. If it had missed a couple of times at the start of the battle, we wouldn't have to resurrect half the party after this is over.



"It is done. King Kalohn has been avenged."
"Hooray!"
"But we were trying to save King Kalohn, not avenge him. The Mega Dragon was doomed to drown here anyway. We haven't changed history at all."
"Aw, nuts. I guess that means we'll have to go back and do this the proper way later on."



The Mega Dragon is worth 32 million experience points, more than anything else in the game. On the other hand, that's only about half as much as a group of three Cuisinarts nets you, and the Cuisinarts are a hell of a lot easier to kill.



At least it must have some great treasure, right?

"We don't have a thief in our party..."



"If we just killed the most powerful monster who ever lived, a trap isn't gonna kill us, is it?"



"See?"

The Mega Dragon's treasure is really nothing special. There's literally no reason to kill it except for bragging rights.

Well, we're done here for now. Back to the present we go.



The one disadvantage of having ridiculously high-level characters is that reviving them if they're Eradicated gets very expensive. You can just use the Resurrect spell, but then you have to deal with permanently losing a point of Endurance.



"We just went back in time and killed the Mega Dragon! Give us the best room you've got!"
"Sure you did, ma'am. And I'm King Kalohn."



"Nothing else is as fast as the Mega Dragon. Even Cuisinarts only have a Speed of 160, so we can all remove one of these pairs of Speed Boots now."



"Aw, man, why'd I have to be right up the front of the party? I died early and missed all the fun."



"What happened? Did we kill the Mega Dragon? Are we still in the past?"



"We may have proven our strength, but our victory means nothing unless we can find a way to save King Kalohn!"



"Didn't we already have a plan for that? Something about the elemental talons?"



"The Element Orb is already in our possession. All we must do is retrieve the talons from the elemental planes to unleash its full power."



"I hope that's enough. It's hard to imagine even King Kalohn standing alone against the Mega Dragon."



"Hey, why can't we just go back one day further into the past and kill the Mega Dragon before it finds King Kalohn?"
"Oh, Jostiband, have you come up with some insane scheme again?"
"This one's less insane than most of them, I promise!"

The Mega Dragon is somewhat different in the DOS version of the game, by the way: it still has 64000 HP, immunity to physical attacks and an eradicating attack, but instead of using its attack it will often breathe energy for a couple of thousand damage to the whole party. All this means is that levelling up to 200 or so becomes more important, since you need to be able to survive the damage for long enough to kill it.

Well, I hope that was an interesting little diversion even if it didn't really achieve anything in the end. Next time, we'll get those talons and prepare to kill the Mega Dragon the right way.