As far as gathering badges goes, some methods are less time-consuming than others, and there’s no sense in spending hours upon hours waiting for a badge you could rack up several copies of by a more efficient method. With that said, I’ll describe the various means of obtaining extra badges here, and list all the badges that can be gotten by each method.
Method 1: Pianta Parlor (Moderate-Fast)
The game may not explicitly tell you this, but every badge available here can be gotten as many times as you want (well, until you hit the 200-badge overall limit, but that’s way higher than you’ll ever conceivably need). The Paper Game, playable after you get the Silver Card, will earn you 10 extra Piantas in a relatively short amount of time, but if you have at least one copy of Money Money, it’s probably at least as fast to gather coins from enemies and convert them into Piantas. The Hyper Goombas outside of Twilight Trail drop a good number of coins, are fairly easy to kill, and respawn really quickly, so they’re a favorite money-gathering strategy of mine. These are all the badges obtainable from the Pianta Parlor, as well as their price in Piantas (x3 for Coins):
- Available always: Super Appeal (34), Refund (34)
- Available w/ Special Card: Power Jump (34), HP Plus (100), FP Plus (100)
- Available w/ Silver Card: Power Smash (34), Multibounce (50), HP Plus P (200)
- Available w/ Gold Card: Power Rush (34), Power Rush P (34), Hammer Throw (50), Tornado Jump (67)
- Available w/ Platinum Card: Quake Hammer (67), Money Money (234)
Method 2: Kiss Thief (Slow-Moderate)
You probably already know that if an enemy is holding an item or badge in-battle, you can use Ms. Mowz’s Kiss Thief move to steal the item from that enemy. What you may not know, however, is that if an enemy can hold a certain badge, you have a slight chance of stealing that badge from them if you use the move, regardless of what they were originally holding. You can steal from an enemy repeatedly, in addition; unless you fill up your badge inventory, you can continue stealing from the same enemy over and over again! While this method works, it can be very tedious (and will pretty much destroy your audience count).
If you know of a battle that has a lot of an enemy that you know holds a badge you want, there is a faster way you can get the badge. Engage the enemies in battle, and if none of them are holding the badge, run away and leave the screen the battle is in. When you come back, the items that the enemies are holding will change. Repeat this as many times as necessary until you see the badge, then steal it with Kiss Thief! Still a bit harmful to your audience count, but in my experience, this is several times faster than the other method with a group of four enemies (the X-Nauts PhD in one room of the X-Naut Fortress got me seven P-Down D-Ups in a single hour).
EDIT (2016-09-14): Thanks to stebbdogg for this tip; if an enemy with a projectile attack on the overworld is holding the badge you want, you might be able to actually steal it twice without resetting the group! Simply engage in battle by a normal encounter or getting the First Strike, steal the badge, then run away. Then, if possible, get hit by a First Strike and you get to steal the badge again! This works even with Chill Out on, and you can do the encounters in reverse order as well (enemy First Strike, then your First Strike / a normal encounter).
Here’s a complete list of all the badges that can be gotten through either of these methods, and the enemies that hold them (taken from my GameFAQs guide on enemy item drops):
- Close Call: All normal Goombas, Koopatrol
- Close Call P: All normal Goombas, Koopatrol
- Damage Dodge: Red Chomp, Red Chomp*
- Damage Dodge P: Red Chomp, Red Chomp*
- Defend Plus: Bob-ulk, Chain Chomp
- Defend Plus P: Bob-ulk, Chain Chomp
- Happy Heart: Koopa Troopa, Shady Koopa, Dark Koopa
- Happy Heart P: Paratroopa, Shady Paratroopa*
- HP Plus: All Gloombas, D. Paratroopa, X-Naut
- HP Plus P: All Gloombas, D. Paratroopa, Magikoopa, All Fuzzies*
- Last Stand: All Hyper Goombas, Green Fuzzy
- Last Stand P: All Hyper Goombas, Flower Fuzzy
- Mega Rush: Hammer Bro, All Hammer Bros.*, Red Magikoopa*
- Mega Rush P: Dark Koopa, Hammer Bro, All Hammer Bros.*, Red Magikoopa*
- P-Down, D-Up: Dark Craw, X-Naut PhD
- P-Down, D-Up P: Dark Craw, X-Naut PhD
- Power Plus: Dark Wizzerd, Elite Wizzerd
- Power Plus P: Dark Wizzerd, Elite Wizzerd
- Power Rush: Paratroopa, Shady Koopa
- Power Rush P: Koopa Troopa, Shady Paratroopa*
- Pretty Lucky: All Bandits, All Spinias, Bandit*
- Pretty Lucky P: All Bandits, All Spinias, Bandit*
- P-Up, D-Down: D. Koopatrol, Elite X-Naut
- P-Up, D-Down P: D. Koopatrol, Elite X-Naut
* Held by the Glitzville version of this enemy.
If neither of these methods is available for a certain badge, and you’re certain it can be stacked, then this last method is virtually guaranteed to work for some enemy:
Method 3: After-Battle Drop (Painfully Slow)
Alas, although practically every badge is attainable in bulk, some badges got the shaft (most notably Flower-related badges). For these, the only way to obtain infinite copies is to get them as a badge drop after a battle. Item Hog does increase the chances of these badges dropping by at least 33% (despite giving you a bunch of other comparatively worthless drops), and piling on extra power badges speeds up the battles, but it can still take several hours and hundreds of battles before you finally get the badge you want. Even worse, some of the real breadwinners, notably All or Nothing, Jumpman, and Hammerman, can only be dropped by enemies exclusive to the Pit of 100 Trials, so you’re likely never going to see these drop. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, the results can be oh, so sweet (ironically, I was trying to get Flower Saver, which I never got in 900+ battles). Take due note that only the front enemy in a battle can randomly drop items/badges!
EDIT (2016-04-08): As an alternative, if the enemy you’re trying to badge-hunt has a high susceptibility to Fright, Fright Masks can be a quicker way of emptying out battles, with equivalent chances of item drops (Crazee Dayzees, normal Goombas and variants, Spinias / Spanias, and Piders have a 100% chance of running, so they’re particularly effective on them).
At any rate, here are all of the possible enemy/badge combinations for this method (in addition to this list, everything I listed for Method 2 works as well):
- All or Nothing: Dark Craw, Arantula
- Charge: Hyper Goomba, Hyper Paragoomba, Hyper Cleft
- Charge P: Hyper S. Goomba, Hyper Cleft
- Damage Dodge: Bob-omb, Bulky Bob-omb
- Damage Dodge P: Bob-omb, Bulky Bob-omb
- Fire Drive: Koopatrol, All Embers/Bubbles
- Flower Finder: X-Naut PhD
- Flower Saver: Piranha Plant, All Dayzees
- Flower Saver P: Piranha Plant, All Dayzees
- FP Drain: Flower Fuzzy, Dark Puff
- FP Plus: Poison Pokey, Pale Piranha, Putrid Piranha, X-Naut
- Hammerman: Dark Bristle, Wizzerd
- Hammer Throw: Hammer Bro, All Swoopers
- Happy Flower: Koopa Troopa, Paratroopa, All Dayzees
- Head Rattle: Fuzzy, Ruff Puff, Bob-omb
- Heart Finder: Shady Koopa, Elite X-Naut
- HP Drain: Fuzzy, Green Fuzzy, Swooper
- HP Drain P: Swooper, Swoopula
- HP Plus: Dull Bones, Dry Bones
- Ice Smash: Parabuzzy, Frost Piranha, Ice Puff, Poison Puff
- Item Hog: D. Koopatrol, Dull Bones, Dry Bones
- Jumpman: Poison Puff, Wizzerd
- Lucky Day: Swampire
- Money Money: Dark Boo, All Blasters
- Multibounce: Paragoomba, Paragloomba, D. Paratroopa, Parabuzzy, S. Parabuzzy, Swoopula, Swampire
- Piercing Blow: S. Parabuzzy
- Pity Flower: Piranha Plant, Arantula
- Power Jump: Goomba, Gloomba, Buzzy Beetle, Spike Top
- Power Smash: Buzzy Beetle, Spike Top, All Spinias
- Quake Hammer: Parabuzzy, S. Parabuzzy, Cleft, Moon Cleft
- Refund: All Bandits
- Shrink Stomp: Buzzy Beetle, Spike Top, X-Naut
- Sleepy Stomp: Fuzzy, Dark Puff, Boo
- Soft Stomp: S. Goomba, S. Gloomba, Ice Puff
- Super Appeal: All Lakitus, Magikoopa, All Boos
- Super Appeal P: All Lakitus, Magikoopa, All Boos
- Tornado Jump: All Lakitus, Ruff Puff
So this concludes my explanation of the various badge-hunting methods. Next post, I’ll list the effects of stacking these badges, as well as clearing up any common misconceptions and confusion over how the badges actually work.
For more info:
Part 1 – Badge-Hunting Introduction
Part 2 – Badge-Gathering Strategies
Part 3 – Badge Effects and Stacking
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