Chrono Trigger Notes: Beginning to The End of Time

This is a largely informal bulleted list of things to do and not do.  It assumes that you have a good knowledge of the game and that you have at the very least a superlevelled party so that you don't really need the experience points, gold, or items from fights.  It's best to have everyone max level with enough of all listed equipment to outfit everyone simultaneously so no equipment shuffling has to happen.

The only Tabs this list considers to be important are Magic Tabs, as most people's power gets maxed through levelling (and for everyone else, repeatedly charm the first Tubster in Black Omen for all the Power Tabs you need) and Speed Tabs should be done after two or three playthroughs, especially if you charm the Panels in Black Omen.  I have no plans for a charm list or a tab list, they're already covered sufficiently on GameFAQs.

Since this post is essentially a huge wall of text, I'll put a jump break here to keep the main page unpolluted.

Starting up

• Set battle mode to Wait.

1000AD

• Reminder: If you want a "not guilty" verdict in the trial:
• Talk to Marle before getting her pendant
• Ignore the guy's lunch
• Take the cat to the girl (the follow AI is annoyingly stupid and can get you stuck if you do it wrong)
• Talk to Melchior and refuse to talk Marle into selling her pendant when he asks
• Don't do anything while Marle's picking out her candy
• Get Marle, then set up equipment and game options:
• Crono equipment: Rainbow/Haste Helm/Nova Armor/Gold Stud
• Marle equipment: Valkerye/Vigil Hat/PrismDress/Hit Ring
• Battle gauge: Slowest
• Text speed: Fastest
• Controls: Swap Confirm and Cancel so Circle is confirm and X is cancel/dash
• Turn on all cursor position remembering
• Talk to the guys up north in front of the entrance to Lucca and Taban's show (they'll tell you it's not ready, but you need to do this)
• Go down a screen, talk to Melchior, refuse to sell pendant
• Talk to girl sitting on fountain so Lucca and Taban will be ready
• Go fight Gato three times to get silver points for later on (mash Triangle, it's the shortcut for Attack)
• Head up to Lucca and Taban's show (wait for Marle if you want that "not guilty" verdict)

600AD

• Mash Triangle in the forced encounter.
• Run from the next encounter.  It looks forced, but it isn't.
• Stay south of the next group to avoid them.
• In Guardia Forest, hug the trees to avoid all encounters, run if you accidentally trigger one.
• Don't bother with chests in the castle.
• Go into the throne room and up the right tower to talk to Marle.
• If you have a turbo controller, use it and hold down Circle when you meet up with Lucca.  Unskippable scene FTL.
• When Lucca joins, set her equipment: WonderShot/Vigil Hat/PrismDress/Hit Ring
• Talk to all four "women" in the Cathedral, examine point, fight Naga-ettes, get Frog.
• Set Frog's equipment: BraveSword (I sure hope you didn't sell it)/Vigil Hat/Moon Armor/PrismSpecs
• Avoid avoidable encounters (the vast majority are avoidable, you cannot trigger a battle while standing still, wall hugging is your friend), run from everything, and hold run while moving.  Don't go for the Naga-ette Bromide.
• Use *Luminaire to kill Yakra in one hit.
• Open the left chest to get the real chancellor.
• Back in the castle, get Marle back (tell her you would have shown her around even if you had known she was royalty) and leave.
• Go back to the Cathedral, which is now devoid of enemies, and take any and all chests you want.  Make sure to grab the Naga-ette Bromide, it gets you a Magic Tab later on.
• Now go to the mountains, run from the encounter, and use the gate to go home.

1000AD

• Take Marle to Guardia Castle.
• Enemies in Guardia Forest are visible this time.  Rather than treehugging, walk between them or around the outer edge of the forest to avoid triggering the fights.  Treehug to avoid the bird.
• Trial time!
• If you're going for a "not guilty" verdict, answer "I started it.", "Not tempted", and "Not at all."  These are conveniently the pre-selected choices when they come up.  If you did everything right you should get a unanimous not guilty verdict, and the bag in your cell will have six Ethers.
• Wait the three days if you like, it's technically faster to break out but if you wait then you have Lucca and can save Fritz to get some Mid Ethers you don't really need.
• On your escape:
• Run between the enemies.  If done right, the battle won't be triggered.
• Head out the top right door at both opportunities.
• Try to incapacitate both guards in the execution area, it's faster.
• Head north at the branch between the first guard and the second one.
• Fight off the next two guards, meet up with Lucca, run past the guy with the Dragon Tank manual, and out onto the bridge.
• Kill off the Dragon Tank.  Head first, then depending on how much the WonderShot decides to suck, take out the rest of the body in two hits.  Hopefully you'll be fast enough that you won't take any damage.  Alternatively, if you know you deal enough damage, you can ignore the "kill the head first" rule.
• Run back and forth on the chancellor's back just because he's an ass.
• Get Marle, escape to 2300AD.

2300AD

• Immediately head to Lab 16.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
• All encounters here are avoidable.  The last one can be avoided by running between the enemy and the brown object nearby it.  Avoid having Tonics stolen even though Tonics are useless in New Game +, just so you don't have to buy more to get back to 99.
• Run from the last encounter.
• Go into the next dome and head down the ladder.
• Depending on how much the WonderShot decides to suck, take out the Bits and then the Guardian in three hits.
• Get the seeds, find out about the rat.  Go and catch the rat so L1+R1+Circle will work.  The dialog always says L1+R1+X, but if you've swapped X and Circle in the options, it'll be Circle. (Circle is where A was on the SNES controller)
• Enter the area leading to the info center, open the second L1+R1+Circle platform even though you can't open the sealed door, then run all the way back around and into the info center.
• Watch cinematics, decide to change the fate of the world using time travel.
• Give seeds, get bike key, push hobo out of way, head to Lab 32.
• Race Johnny and win.  Make him bump into you from behind as much as you can, watch the distance counter, and use a turbo boost just before the end.
• Head to Proto Dome, get Robo.
• Equip Robo: Terra Arm/Vigil Hat/Moon Armor/PrismSpecs
• Leave either Marle or Lucca behind.  It doesn't matter since you have *Luminaire.
• Go into the factory.  Technically an entire half of it doesn't need to be done if you know that the code for the generator is Triangle Circle X Square (XABY on SNES).  Code will probably be different if you didn't swap X and Circle.  The Debuggers between the elevators can be avoided, just walk slowly along the southern wall and then walk around them once they jump out.
• Disable lasers, flip switch, encounter R-Series.  Use *Luminaire to win immediately.
• Lucca repairs Robo, party divides by zero, and ends up at the End of Time.

End of Time

• Talk to Gaspar, try to leave, talk to him again, go talk to Spekkio.  Tell him he's strong.  Walk around the room 3 times, and challenge him if you want.
• Repenish HP/MP with the sparkle next to the save point, then save.
• If you fight battles and don't fight Spekkio, and don't dick around too much, it should take around an hour to do everything listed above.  It'll be faster if you run from battles and avoid all avoidable battles.

Note that if you put the Gold Stud on Crono, and even if you didn't run from battles but avoided the Lab 16 foes that have to be killed with magic, you'll pretty much always lose zero health and use only 10 MP up to this point.  Also, I only ever really like to save in the End of Time, so that's why I don't say "save here" before then.

Strategy for Level ** Spekkio

• My party: Crono/Lucca/Marle
• Equipment: (your weapons don't matter and as such aren't listed, you should know by now that only spells work on Spekkio)
• Crono: Haste Helm/Moon Armor/Gold Stud
• Lucca: Haste Helm/PrismDress/Gold Stud
• Marle: Haste Helm/PrismDress/Gold Stud
• You don't need status protection for Spekkio, and Haste reduces the occurrence of the Hallation Death Trap™ whereupon he casts *Luminaire and wipes your party before you can get your second Aura Whirl off.
• You should use Crono and Lucca for damage and keep Marle ready to heal.  *Ice 2's damage is statistically insignificant.
• You'll mostly want to use the dual tech Aura Whirl for healing, as Spekkio mostly uses spells that deal damage to the entire party.
• Use Aura Whirl immediately after Spekkio uses Hallation.  Then use it again as soon as you can.  Spekkio's *Luminaire hits everyone for over 700 and Aura Whirl only heals for a bit over 500.
• Don't rely on Spekkio's use of Salt, which heals a single party member back to full health.  He doesn't use it in any sort of predictable fashion.
• Since Crono is effectively on double duty between Aura Whirl and *Luminaire, *Flare is your main damage source.  Pop off a *Luminaire after your second Aura Whirl and then be cautious about its use after that.  *Flare can and should be used as soon as Lucca's ready.
• Don't use items for anything except filling MP, and use the lesser MP recovery items since they're more plentiful.  If you find yourself having to use MP-recovering items, it's because you don't have three Gold Studs.
• If anyone dies, depending on who it is, either have Marle use *Life 2 or have Crono use *Life.  You should prefer *Life 2, which resurrects with full health, unless Marle dies.  If Lucca's the only one alive, either pop a Revive on Marle or just let Spekkio kill you and try again.
• You won't always win, sometimes he follows up Hallation with another spell before you can heal.  Just use the sparkle next to the save point and try again.
• You'll get 10 of each type of Tab and 10 MegaElixirs for beating this form, and you can do it on every New Game +.
• If you want to farm these 10 Magic Tabs, remember you can get to the End of Time in an hour or so.  Defeat Spekkio, save, then soft reset (L1+R1+Start+Select) and start another New Game +.  Rinse and repeat.  If you do this, remember you don't have to fight Gato for Silver Points or get the Naga-ette Bromide.  Not doing these things will save you some time.

Another one of these posts will follow.