Draft:Shiren 3 Wii:Princess Karakuri (boss - Outer Shrine)

Shiren 3 Wii:Princess Karakuri (boss - Outer Shrine) からくり姫
Information
Location	Outer Shrine
Attribute	Boss
Stats
Experience	0
HP	1,000
Attack	40
Defense	18
Movement Speed	1

Princess Karakuri (Japanese: からくり姫) is the sixteenth boss in the game. This imitation of the princess is another machination spawned by the mansion itself. It only bears the deceptive appearance of Princess Kaguya, and lacks a lot of information as it shares her memories but only up to the point of its creation. This entity appears to have been slowly losing its sanity and purpose over time. As in a lot of dialogues it seems uncertain of events that it should in theory be certain of. The Kaguya you have seen in all of the cut scenes up to this point was actually this boss, whose only goal was to protect the mansion and "guide Shiren." Despite this however, It attempts to kill Shiren and his cohorts when they reach the depths of the Outer Shrine.

Strategy

Princess Karakuri only has a few things that it can do, but it culminates to make a decent challenge if you don't understand how the fight works. The first thing it will always do before your turn is give birth. This attack spawns 4 Femto Spider into the room at the bosses sides. This is the main gimmick of the fight. Should you ever kill all 4 Femto Spiders, the boss will immediately use give birth to spawn more. Since you have useful minions here, just like with previous bosses with susceptible minions, you can use them to your benefit by Confused them and they may help you kill off the boss. If you don't want to risk them leveling up by killing each other, there are other good strategies to utilize. You could use a Paralysis Staff or Exile Staff to permanently ignore them. So long as you don't kill them all, the boss will not spawn any more. You can also kill 3 of them and then just deal with the last one as you see fit, or ignore it entirely if you lack resources to debilitate it. However you want to approach the minions, make sure you deal with them first.

Once you understand not to kill all of the minions, this fight's difficulty should ease up on you. The next skill that Princess Karakuri has is Spider Web, which is exactly identical to what the Femto Spider enemy does. It is a low damage move that may cause Grand Paralyze, and is the preferred move to see her utilize due to how weak it is along with the fact it does not guarantee a paralysis. Actually it seems to be quite a low chance of happening.

The last thing she will do is her basic attack Foot Thrust, which is the most dangerous surprisingly. This boss does respectable amounts of damage even to shielded characters, and her Foot Thrust always strikes twice. With this, the boss can do an alarming amount of damage to any character without a shield. This fact along with the higher HP value of 1000, means it might be wise to keep Sensei in the back to support, and make sure Asuka has a shield on as opposed to one of her character specific weapons which are all two-hand weapons. Of course as usual, if you have beneficial herbs and healing items in spades (which you probably will.) then you can be more aggressive in fighting the boss. Just make sure you keep your health up and back off anyone who is weak away from the boss. Thankfully, it is fairly safe to run someone away since the boss will always just stay still and attack anyone adjacent to it as opposed to chasing a weaker character.

Icon	Boss		Dragon Orbs	HP	AP	DP	Speed	Experience
	English	Japanese
	Princess Karakuri	からくり姫	Boss	1,000	40	18	1	0

References

Data via Akurasu.net, used with permission.

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