- "You must defeat me to earn my musical note."
- — Dragon
The Dragon is a mandatory boss in EarthBound Beginnings. It can be encountered in Magicant's Crystal Cavern. It attacks physically and sometimes lowers a member's DEFENSE or either uses PK Fire β or PK Thunder γ. This enemy's battle theme is Battle with a Dangerous Foe. When first encountered, the Dragon simply displays a silent "..." message, if spoken to, but checking it will reveal that Ninten's PSI power is short of awakening the Dragon. However, when Ninten is at least at level 25, the Dragon will awaken once Ninten checks him and will begin to fight. Once the battle is over, he lets out his tune, the Sixth Melody, without hesitation, then falls into a deep sleep.
Defensively, the Dragon has 650 HP and 200 DEFENSE. Offensively, it has 200 PP, 180 OFFENSE, 60 FIGHT, and 60 SPEED. Its resilience to Status Ailments is 20 WISDOM, 100 STRENGTH, and 60 FORCE. It drops 500 EXP and $1200 when defeated.
Strategy
If Ana is in your party, she can use PSI Block and force the dragon to waste half his turns on PSI moves, effectively making it significantly easier. Alternately, using the Super Bomb with Lloyd or using PK Freeze γ from Ana (Learned at level 22) will reduce the Dragon's HP to single digits and allow a follow up blow to defeat it easily.
Trivia
- The Dragon, Lamp, Doll, B.B. Gang Member, Starman Jr., PseudoZombi, and Giegue are the only enemies in the game with overworld sprites.
- The Dragon is reminiscent of the Green Dragon (just called "Dragon" in the Japanese version) from Dragon Quest in the sense that both appear in caves that the player must traverse to continue the adventure, but are likely severely underleveled for the fight the first time they do so. In both cases, the player won't meet the condition to fight the beast at first - in Earthbound Beginnings' case however, The Dragon will also not fight the party until a certain level is reached, making this match it less likely for the player's party to be obliterated, contrary to its kin series.
- The Dragon is unique in that it holds one of 2 melodies in the game that require the player to defeat a boss (The other being R-7038XX), is the only one found in Magicant, and by extension guards the only melody outside the physical world.
- In the companion guide, he is called "Dragon" in all versions of the game.
- His description reads, "A wondrous dragon who slumbers deep within the Magicant Underflow, he's a strange one who won't attempt to fight while the protagonist is weak. They say he holds some unbelievable secret. Uses PK Fire β and PK Thunder γ. Will cry out some kind of mysterious yell.".