Pit of 100 Trials

The Basics

The Pit of 100 Trials has made appearances in previous Paper Mario games, but this is the first time they’ve been played out in real-time, and this is also the first time that a Paper Mario game has featured two of them. There’s one each in Flipside and Flopside.

When you enter one of the Pits, you’ll be asked to wander through 100 rooms full of nasties. Each room will have a number of enemies inside of it, as well as a locked door. You have to defeat the enemies one by one until you find the enemy that drops a key, then use that key on the door to move on. You might find the key after killing the first enemy in the room, or you might not find it until you kill the last. It might be on the weakest enemy in the room or the most powerful. It’s all pretty random, but yeah: you need to kill stuff.

Every tenth room will contain a treasure chest with a card in it, as well as a pipe leading back to Flipside or Flopside. If you exit through the pipe, your progress is not saved, and you’ll have to repeat all of the rooms that you went through if you enter the Pit again. Thus, to complete a Pit, you’ll have to go through 99 rooms, then enter the 100th room and defeat the end boss without dying. The whole process will probably take at least an hour, and probably more than that, especially if it’s your first time.

Flipside Pit

Wracktail is annoying the first time you encounter him, but with a bit of practice (and healing), he'll go down for the count.

The Flipside Pit of 100 Trials can be found by first flipping into 3D mode outside of Merlon’s house. Head from there to the Flipside 2nd Floor Outskirts, then drop down a pipe to reach the Flipside 1st Floor Outskirts. There’ll be a pipe here covered with blocks, so you’ll need to have the Boomer Pixl to unlock this area. Head through that pipe to reach the Flipside B1 Outskirts, and find another pipe there that leads down to the Flipside B2 Outskirts. There are some blocks you can jump on here; use Tippi and point your remote at the screen to find more blocks that you can jump to. When you reach the set of large blocks above the pipe you came in through, morph to 3D and walk through the passageway. Hit the blue switch here to open the path to the Pit.

The end boss of the Flipside Pit is Wracktail, a more powerful version of Fracktail, the boss you faced at the end of Chapter One. Defeating him will net you the Dashell Pixl, who will let you move more quickly when used. He's tough, however, as the small crawley creatures on his back will deal five damage to you when they run into you, and ten damage when they shoot you with their little bullets. Apart from that, though, this is a fight that's quite winnable.

Flopside Pit

The Flopside Pit is found in the mirror image location of the Flipside Pit, and is reached via the same route as the other one. It won't be accessible until you complete all 100 rooms of the Flipside Pit, however; at that point, a star crack will appear above it, allowing you to use Fleep to flip it and reveal the switch leading inside.

There is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit….

The Pit here is much the same as the Flipside Pit; kill enemies until one of them drops a key. However, all of the enemies here are Dark enemies. They function exactly the same as their normal counterparts, save for the fact that they all have double health and double their normal attack power. They're also all pitch-black, preventing you from telling what kind of enemy they are at a glance. You can tell from their outline that you're facing a Goomba, for instance, but you won't be able to tell if it's a normal Goomba or one of those Goombas that jumps up and attempts to headbutt you, at least not until you're closer to it.

Flopside is much more difficult than flipside, mostly because you'll be taking twice as much damage as you normally would when you enter it. While skilled players will probably be able to finish it off without too much of a challenge, the rest of us won't want to plunge into its depths without an inventory full of powerful healing items.

One enemy in particular that might confuse you is a large ball that exudes a forcefield that can't be pentrated. To get inside if it's on an upper level, use Fleep to confuse it, then run to it and kill it. There's also another very confusing enemy that spends most of its time in the 3D plane and attempts to use a Dayzee music beam on you when you get close; it'll deal 20 damage to you and put you to sleep! The only way we managed to kill it was to chase it in the 3D plane, nab it with Thoreau, then warp back to 2D world, throw it, and quickly jump on it. You might also try bombing it in the 3D plane.

At the bottom of the pit, you'll face off against Dark versions of Mario, Luigi, Bowser, and Princess Peach. The catch? You have to do the entire thing twice to fight these guys. When you clear the dungeon the first time, a pipe will pop up in Room 100 that will bring you back to Flopside itself. You have to descend through all 100 rooms again in order to finally conquer the dungeon. Laaaaaaame.

General Tips On The Pits

Before you head inside, you’ll want to stock up on healing items from the shop. Catch Cards and such can be stored away at the store; just get yourself some shroom shakes and the like! You will occasionally get item drops from your enemies, so get used to performing the item shuffle. If your inventory is full of high-powered healing items, but you could use the 10-point heal of the Shroom Shake that someone just dropped, run over to it, drop one of your more powerful items, then quickly use the Shroom Shake in the menu and pick up the item you dropped before it fades away. You can also do this for attack items that you don't necessarily want to carry around.

Dropping Boomer on enemies below you will often be the safest way to proceed here.

Be careful moving up and down while inside the Pits, as sometimes jumping up to a platform above you will result in an enemy falling on your head that you had no opportunity to see. Likewise, try to avoid moving through the pipes that connect the sides of the room unless you have to; sometimes you'll come out at the far end of the screen while an enemy is waiting right in front of it, resulting in unavoidable damage. You can use Mario's 3D powers to flip through walls on the ground floor of these areas, and even get safely to a door if you can see it on the bottom level.

You have a five minute time limit to get through each room, so there's no sense in rushing things. (Although most rooms can be completed in 30 seconds to a minute; our record for getting through a room is a whole three seconds.) While the first few rooms will usually be easy, things obviously get more difficult as the fights go on. Use all of the Pixls at your disposal as needed, but for the most part, your go-to guys will be Thoreau, Boomer, and Cudge. Boomer will likely be the safest choice for most people; try to get up to the top of a room, drop Boomer over ledges at enemies below, and blast them. Repeat as necessary. Don't forget that you can use Fleep to temporarily stun enemies in problematic positions!