Paper Mario Dark Star Edition: Jr. Troopa 4 with CantWin File Code, Triple Curse (9x)

That's the Power of Love!

CantWin is a File Code in Dark Star Edition that sets you to level 27, gives you all 128 badges, and the 5 unlockable stones immediately (all but Greed, Badge, and Rainbow). However, in return, it forces all encounters to be at least 4.5x difficulty, the equivalent of Super + Mega Curse. Equipping Curse badges does NOT stack with this multiplier, but if you equip Ultra + Mega Curse or all 3 Curses, you will do a fight on that respective difficulty instead of the innate 4.5x difficulty that CantWin forces.

Immediately when the fight begins, Jr. Troopa loses 50% of his HP since he swam all the way to Lavalava Island and back. As such, his effective base HP for this fight is 20, which scales up to 180 with Triple Curse. His Attack is 5+6+7, which scales up to 45+54+63 on 9x. However, he only hits once if Mario is Electric. Jr. Troopa still has 1 Defense here, and he takes +1 Damage from Throw moves due to still being an Aerial enemy here. However, he's now Spiky against Jumps.

Just like Jr. Troopa's previous 2 fights, you can skip this fight too in CantWin due to having the Warp Stone. But of course, I wanted to do this fight as well. Unlike Fuzzipede though, I opted for a completely different strategy this time around. With how little HP Jr. Troopa has here, this fight is straightforward enough to the point that a lot of strategies can work. Heck, if you opt for the Mega Bounce Exploit, you could get this fight done on Turn 1 by having Head Start equipped. It's not what I'm going for here, but it is worth pointing out.

So what did I do here this time around? I opted for a Defensive build. 5 Defense is used for this fight, obtained through P-Down D-Up, 2 Damage Dodges, and 1 Defend Plus. This is compounded with Perfect Stand and Zap Tap to ensure I only take 20 damage from Jr. Troopa's attack each time. Stellar Flowers allow me to consistently use my Star Power, and Pity Flower ensures that I'll have enough FP to use Shell Shot and Smooch every turn. The use of Shell Shot here gets enabled through Flower Burst, allowing it to cost only 1 FP instead of 4. Hammer Throw and Danger Saver are used here, but they're just filler; you can get by without it.

Now you may wonder why I'm able to use Smooch at this point, given that the last fight done was Fuzzipede. The reason it's possible is because the final badge in this build is what enables this strategy to work. The aforementioned badge is SP Plus and as its name suggests, it increases your Max Star Power by 1. Now you don't see this badge at all in the Standard Curse Challenge because it's not obtainable until Chapter 9, through completion of a certain dreadful fight. At that point, you basically have no need, or want, to have a max of 8 Star Power. In the Standard Curse Challenge, SP Plus is effectively a waste of BP as a result. Not even Full Pit with Curses and no badge swapping wants to use it. In that context, SP Plus is outclassed by Stellar Burst due to it only having a 1 BP cost instead of 3.

However with File Codes, SP Plus has a unique additional trait that no other badge possesses. When used between Chapters 1-6, SP Plus gives you access to the next Star Power ability even without having completed that particular chapter. This means that in Chapter 5, SP Plus gives you access to Misstar's Smooch ability even though Lava Piranha has not yet been defeated at that point.

With this build, this fight is very hilarious because you just need to do the same thing every turn and you'll eventually win. Attack with a Partner that is capable of damaging Jr. Troopa (optional, but will save a lot of time), use Smooch to get back to full HP, guard Jr. Troopa's attack (don't Super Guard!), and repeat. I lowered my HP and FP to 25 and 10 respectively because these were the lowest stats I could use that could still clear this fight using this strategy. You can make it even more impossible to lose with this strategy by swapping out Hammer Throw and Danger Saver in exchange for Auto Dodge. Regardless though, this badge build ensures that we don't have to use a single item to complete this fight.

The funnier thing though is that you could actually do this strategy in a Standard Curse file as well, so long as you've already obtained Perfect Stand prior to this point. You would just need to do the following things to make it happen:
Complete Chapter 5 to negate the need for SP Plus
Swap out this video's Hammer Throw, Danger Saver, and P-Down D-Up in exchange for the 2nd Defend Plus
Attack with Watt's Electro Dash instead of Parakerry's Shell Shot to negate the need for Flower Burst