Paper Mario Dark Star Edition: Tubba's Heart Fight with Super + Mega Curse (4.5x)

0:00 Badge and Item Build
0:51 Tubba's Heart Fight
5:44 Tubba's Heart runs away, fight ends. Remove Curse Badges
6:36 Defeat Tubba Blubba with no Curse Badges

Another fight I previously wrote off gets promoted up the Tier List!

Tubba's Heart has 30 Base HP, scaling up to 135 on 4.5x, and has 0 Defense. His Tackle has a base Attack Value of 6 (27), and his Charged Swarm has a base Attack value of 24 (99).

You probably noticed that Tubba's Heart has a much lower Base HP compared to the base game (30 instead of 50). And as you'd probably guess, there is more to the story. In this case, it's because Tubba's Heart recovers 6 HP after every round. But just like the base game though, the fight ends once Tubba's Heart has 5 HP or less remaining.

I had actually previous written Tubba's Heart off on 4.5x in the standard Curse Challenge, but not because of the consistent regen that it gets. The regen was something I knew about going into this. Rather, it was because of a deviation in the AI Script that occurs once Tubba's Heart falls below 60% HP. At that point, it can attack with Tackle and prep for the Charged Swarm in the same turn. This really hinders your ability to damage him at that point, making things just kind of fall apart. However I've gotten a lot better between then and now, so I went ahead and gave this one another shot too, just like I did with Tutankoopa. Lo and behold, the results bore fruit here as well! And once again, the shoutout goes to Early Pit for enabling this possibility too!

At first, I was fearful that I would need to defeat the Emperor Beetle on Floor 90 to get access to Head Start for this fight (yes, this is possible in Chapter 3). But fortunately, there was a way around this. And the answer once again brought me back to Floor 80. Not for Perfect Stand this time, but rather for Hustle Drinks! See, Chapter 3 is where we get access to Boo Leaves; these give you 1 turn of invisibility, but in return they make you Dizzy for the following turn. But wait, we have Feeling Fine since we've already beaten Floor 70! So the significance to the Hustle Drinks? They are compatible with Boo Leaves, giving you 2 actions on the following turn while Feeling Fine prevents you from being Dizzy for those 2 actions. And as I stated when defeating Jr. Troopa 3, access to Strange Leaves in Chapter 3 makes reaching Floor 80 so much easier than it would've been in Chapter 2. So with 2 Hustle Drinks alongside Boo Leaves, we can pump out a lot of damage in a single turn to overcome the consistent regen. Thanks to Double Dip being available, we can use both a Hustle Drink and a Boo Leaf in the same round now.

We need to go all in with Danger Strats for this fight due to the demand for higher damage. Power Bounce is our attack of choice, and this is boosted by both Perfect Rush and Power Rush. Double Dip is the enabler of the big damage, and Quick Change lets me flexibly change between Parakerry and Bow for damage/utility, respectively. Happy Flower and both FP Plus Badges ensure that we don't run out of FP, especially with Perfect Saver, Danger Saver, and Flower Saver equipped. You could use Flower Fanatic instead, but Flower Saver is good enough. Lastly, Feeling Fine ensures that we don't worry about the Dizzy that we inflict on ourselves with the Boo Leaves. Note that I didn't mention Happy Heart, and that's because it's not needed here. I didn't really have anything better to equip.

4 Boo Leaves are used to give me invisibility to dodge the attacks necessary, with 2 Hustle Drinks being used so that I can take advantage of Merlee's Spell on those double action turns. The Life Shroom allows me to revive from any 1 attack that Tubba's Heart hits. Lastly, the Special Shake and the Big Cookie (both which can be gotten by cooking Mysteries with Tayce T) give me good FP Restoration while also giving a temporary discount on move costs. The Stop Watch is pointless for Tubba's Heart, but you need it against Tubba Blubba in order to get out of this area afterwards since you can't restock your items in between. Note that Tubba's Heart is immune to all status with the exception of Shrink. As such, you can't really count a true attempt here unless you can defeat Tubba Blubba afterwards (though you can remove your Curse Badges in between).

With the advent of this video, you now need specialized builds in order to deal with Tubba's Heart and Tubba Blubba separately with Curses. You can no longer fight both of them back to back without making any changes in the Standard Curse Challenge. This was able to happen on Mega Curse previously, but now with both fights at 4.5x, this is no longer a realistic possibility (that is, unless maybe getting the Void Stone in Chapter 3 would change things again).

Overall though, I'm very satisfied for being able to finally get through this fight after previously writing it off!