Paper Mario: Master Quest - Lava Piranha EX

One of the most intense and nerve-wracking fights in the entire game. The big change to this fight is that at the beginning of the 2nd phase of the fight, the Lava Piranha will burn up all your items after its first attack hits you. What makes the fight more difficult is that you need to knock the Lava Buds down to drop the Lava Piranha's defense to 0. This makes the battle harder in the sense that you need to use Flower Points to knock down both at once with a very expensive Tidal Wave. Without any methods of healing, the second part of the battle turns to a race against the clock kind of fight, as you need to beat the Lava Piranha before you run out of resources to do any damage to it.

The only way to heal Mario in the second half of the fight is to use Star Powers. I used the Star Gift badge in this fight so I could re-generate enough Star Energy to use additional Star Powers, which helped become a difference by the end. With Smooch, you can recover 20HP during the second part of the fight and with Refresh, you can recover 7HP and 7FP as well (however, in Master Quest, Refresh has a diminishing effect with each use in a single battle, so the next Refresh would only be a 5/5 HP/FP recovery, then 3/3, and so on). I have two Happy Flowers equipped so I could also regenerate some FP back during the second part of the fight, which proved to be a big difference maker as well. I had Power Rush equipped if I was in Danger on my last turn and could deal extra damage if needed. With a Flower Saver Badge, Power Jump only cost 1FP as well and I could deal decent damage for almost no cost.

I also unequipped Quick Change for this fight because you only need to use Sushie in part two. In Part 1, where I can use items to heal if needed, I used Bow to inflict maximum damage while I could. In setting up for Part 2, I switched to Sushie near the end, put up a Water Block, and got a full heal in. Not needing Quick Change also freed up 3BP that I could use elsewhere.