Draft:Shiren 3 Wii:Karakuri Room

General Information

The Karakuri Room (Japanese: からくり部屋 ) is the seventeenth boss in the game. This room is located at the deepest section of the Inner Citadel. The room itself is another one of Karakuri mansion's machinations, and is comprised of a central Octagonal machine contraption that is capable of firing a laser and manipulating the entire floor of the room. Whether or not it contains any of its own sentience or is under the direct control of the crane god is unknown.

Strategy

This boss is probably the most gimmicky boss in the entire game. The main feature to it, is that Karakuri Room only has 1 location it can be hit from, which is the space directly in front of its main body. Any attack from the diagonals, even if the boss is currently facing in those directions will not work on it. This is coupled with it's insane defense rating of 999 to make sure that no matter what you do to it, it will only receive 1 damage. Thankfully it only has 10 hp. So lets discuss what this boss will do to you and then what you can do to it.

This boss only has two attacks. It will fire a penetrating laser beam in a straight line that always does a static 30 damage to everyone in that line. So you will want to not stack your characters to avoid more than one being shot at a time by this attack. It isn't very threatening by this point in the game as each of your characters should have enough hp to take 4 or 5 hits from this laser before needing to be healed.

The second "attack" this boss has is moving the room tiles around. This is a feature introduced in this game and one that will later become more prominent in future Shiren the Wanderer titles. The tiles of the room move randomly, and if your character is standing on a tile as it moves, they will have a high chance of becoming confused. This can be prevented by having Calm Armbands equipped, but in all honesty is a minor nuisance that can be ignored thanks to the fatal flaw of this bosses design.

So what is that flaw? Just throw rocks. All you have to do is get each of your 3 characters in range to chuck 10 rocks at the boss and it will die. (In case you aren't aware, rocks have a range of 3.) Thanks to the way Rocks are programmed in this game, they will always hit the boss as though you are attacking it from the front no matter where you throw them from. In a similar fashion, if you happen to be wearing a Kappa Armband, then your arrows will also work as they now lob with the same programming rules as rocks. Both of these methods circumvent the confusion status, as throwing items always work flawlessly despite being confused.

Currently we are unaware if it is possible to more quickly kill this boss with the likes of a cannonball explosion, which hypothetically should bypass its insane defense, or if a dragon herb works on it. So feel free to try those out if you can and let us know if either works. If for some reason you don't have rocks on hand, then just pick 1 character to walk up to the front of the boss and have them dual wield swords to kill the boss in 5 turns. If they get confused, cure that status with a Curing Scroll.

Icon	Monster	Japanese	Attribute	HP	AP	DP	SP	Exp
	Karakuri Room	からくり部屋	Boss	10	30	999	1	0

External Sources

Data via Akurasu.net, used with permission.

Echeclus11's GameFAQ's FAQ (copied with permission.)