Glitch to defeat the Time Devourer

[PrincessNadia78]

So I read online earlier tonight that you can defeat the Time Devourer by HEALING it. The reasoning being that it has a HP of 32000 which is the max HP that the game can handle and when you heal it past 32000 it resets the counter and gives it a negative HP, hence defeating it. Tonight I tried this TWICE to make sure it really works and it does! Now honestly, I think it’s easier to beat it the normal way but it was still fun. I just had to share!!

[Mauron]

It seems that CT SNES has the same glitch, but Lavos's 30,000 HP would need to be healed by 2767 in one go to trigger it. It is a relatively easy fix, the max HP check just needs to happen before the negative (greater than 32767) check.

[Acacia Sgt]

Oh yeah, data overflow/underflow, that's the term for it, was it? Wouldn't say it's a glitch, more like, something that needs a failsafe in place. That's more common to happen than one might think. It's the cause of stuff like Ghandi's infamous aggresiveness in the Civilization Games, due to said stat underflowing into the negative it wraps back to the max value. Something like that.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

That sounds like that could be a neat way to implement a non-traditional boss fight in a fangame.

[Mauron]

Now that I think about it a little more, the fix is trickier than I originally suggested. Chrono Trigger treats all HP modification (healing and damage) the same way, so just switching the order would make everything immortal.

I did address this in hack that allows an HP cap of 65,535.

[Razig]

It's a fun little trick, but I agree that it's harder than just beating the Dream Devourer the normal way, since you have to rough it up enough to make it enter its second stage, then heal all the damage you just inflicted.

I seem to recall the final boss of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest could be killed by curing him.

[Kodokami]

That's pretty neat. Isn't there another data overflow glitch in Chrono Cross with poison damage or something?

That sounds like that could be a neat way to implement a non-traditional boss fight in a fangame.

I like the way you think.