Mushroom Guild (How To) - Guide for Kingdom Hearts

Author: Joey Stevenson
FAQ Created:2005
All rights reserved Joey Stevenson copyright©2005



Table Of Contents
------------------
I.   Intro to this FAQ.
II.  The White Mushroom (ƒzƒ²ƒgƒ}ƒVƒ‹[ƒ€)
    A. Intro
    B. How to Fight and Treasure
    C. Where to Find White Mushrooms and Mood Patterns
    D. Final Notes on the White Mushroom
III. The Black Fungus (ƒuƒ‰ƒbƒNƒtƒ@ƒ“ƒKƒX)
    A. Intro
    B. How to Fight and Treasure
    C. Where to Find Black Fungi
    D. Final Notes on the Black Fungus
IV.  The Rare Truffle (ƒŒƒAƒgƒŠƒ…ƒt)
    A. Intro
    B. How to Fight and Treasure
    C. Where to Find the Rare Truffle
    D. Final Notes on the Rare Truffle
V.  General Hints, Tips, Comments..

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I. Intro to this FAQ.
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First thing first, this FAQ has Japanese text in it, so if you see any garbage
text when looking at it, its cuz you don`t have Japanese fonts installed
correctly. Don`t worry tho this FAQ doesn`t have much raw Japanese, only where
certain names are concerned. As you may guess, I played the JP import version
of this game nearly a year ago now. My knowledge of the US release is imperfect
at best, but
with help I believe much of the US game regarding mushroom hunting is complete.

As such this will be the last update to this FAQ. I will not be adding anything
to, or updating this FAQ in anyway. While I appreciate the continued emails
for this section of Kingdom Hearts, I feel there is very little left to add. I
am aware of a few loose ends (i.e. Black Fungi Mystery Goo drops), but
I can not support the FAQ forever, and decided that this will be the final
update. Regardless, I am confident that the FAQ has thoroughly explored
the Mushroom Hunting aspect of KH to the extent that anyone reading it should
be able to find the Mystery Goo's and Mushrooms they need without
a great amount of effort. To all you who have come before and helped me with
this FAQ, a big thanks..to you people who are coming after and playing
for the first time the mighty fine game that KH is, have fun and hope this
helps you:)

Now the question? Why a Mushroom FAQ? Simple answer, only mushrooms give the
Mystery Goo item and you need it for item synthesis, namely Sora's Ultimate
Weapon. You want the Ultimate Weapon
don't ya? Not only that, mushroom hunting offers the best way to level up
quickly, as well as fill up on elixirs should you need
them. Right, well now that your interested, lets start this FAQ up then:)

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II. The White Mushroom (ƒzƒ²ƒgƒ}ƒVƒ‹[ƒ€)
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A. Intro
---------

This is the mushroom with the red hat and white robes who is the one that most
people will likely encounter first in the game, probably on the Tarzan
stage. Pretty much an enigma on how to beat them, until you hear/read someone
say, "Use Magic!". How obvious, considering they disappear very quickly if you
attack them normally, leaving you with no dropped items. But what magic to use?
And how many times?

B. How to Fight and Treasure
--------------------------------------------

Well, you need to cast 3 spells on it to send it away properly to get an item
(mess up once and it`ll go away with no items dropped). The magic you need to
use depends on the mushroom`s "moods" though..full list below..

Fire     = Use when it crosses its arms and looks like it is shivering.

Blizzard = Use when leans back and fans itself, or according to
CJayC, it looks like it is giving the "Bring it on" taunt.

Thunder  = Use when it has a light over its head which is casting a shadow on
its face. I believe this is to show that it`s depressed and needs some
encouraging as it looks very much like how manga characters sometimes are drawn
when depressed.

Cure     = Use when it has fallen on the ground. Note that you will need to get
pretty close to it in order for you to be able to cast on it. Normally, only
Sora/Goofy/Donald can be cast cure on, but if close to a mushroom a 4th option
named Contact(ƒRƒ“ƒ^ƒNƒg) will appear and you can use this option to cast on
the fallen mushroom.

Aero     = Use this when its spinning around. The same need to get close in
order to cast this like Cure applies.

Stop     = Use this when the mushroom has frozen in mid move.

Gravity  = Use this when the mushroom is floating in mid-air. Mind you, you
have to be quick in casting this, because the casting animation for Gravity is
long and often times will not hit the mushroom until it has changed into
another mood.

Summon   = I don`t believe there is a summon "mood" for the mushroom. I`ve
tried, but nada. Too bad. However, it IS possible to hit the mushroom with some
summons. Namely, the Mushu fire breath summon will act as a fire attack for
when the mushroom is shivering. Unfortunately, even after being hit 3 times
with Mushu, a mushroom still won`t drop items but niether will it disappear. A
bug perhaps?

Ok, so you hit mushroom with 3 spells, and it dropped an item, but not a
Mystery Goo item you needed, but  instead.
Tough,
right? Gotta find another mushroom. Well, yes and no. First there is an ultra
special catch to making it drop Mystery Goo's or rather there is and isnt't.
Here`s the deal..

If you hit the mushroom with 3 of the same spell, it will always drop a Mystery
Goo item. Always. That is, unless you are like most of the Western world and
you are playing the US release. The 100% drop rate is ONLY for the JP release
of KH. For the US release, the Mystery Goo's can still be dropped, but are
uncommon. Regardless if you get a Mystery Goo or not, if you hit with all 3 of
the same magics, a White Mushroom
will drop 1 of 7 different secret Arts items (–Æ‹–ŠF“`) dependant on which of
the 7 spells you casted. 3 x Blizzard will get a Blizaard Arts for instance.
In addition, a 3 x magic cast will also net a Gem item of the appropriate type.

As far as the Arts are concerned, these are useful in that if you collect all
7, and get all max level spells you will recieve the Shield of Dreams from
Merlin in Traverse Town if you go speak to him.

C. Where to Find White Mushrooms And Mood Patterns
---------------------------------

Below is a combined list of locations and mood locations. All Mushroom
locations normally have Fire/Thunder/Blizzard mood patterns, but only select
locations additionally have Stop/Aero/Gravity/ or Cure moods. Those locations
marked with only a (*) denotes only Fire/Thunder/Blizzard, locations that have
extra
moods will be listed along side the (*)..such as (*/Gravity). The list is
incomplete, but should be enough to find what you are looking for currently.

1. Deep Jungle - Outside of Tent (*/Cure)

2. End of the World - Room Before Last Rest Save Point
(*/Stop/Aero/Gravity/Cure)

3. Halloween Town - Graveyard (*/Aero) - This is the first section of the
Graveyard just past the gates into it.

4. Deep Jungle - Jungle Hideout - (*/Cure) This is the first area of this world
where you get attacked by and saved from a tiger.

5. Hades Cup - #7 Tier - (No Treasure Dropped)

6. Traverse Town Hotel - Red Room - (*)

7. Wonderland - Lotus Forest - (*)

8. Atlantica - Undersea Cave - (*/Stop) - Area on the way to Triton's palace,
markes with two tridents pointing into a small cave.

9. Agrabah - Treasure Room - (*/Gravity) - Cave of Wonders area, with the
mountains of gold.

10. Atlantica - The Shipwreck, Below deck - (*/Stop)

D. Final Notes on the White Mushroom
-------------------------------------

In ending the White Mushroom section, there are a few things to keep in mind
when going after them for the Mystery Goo's and Arts items. First, pick
one mushroom and stay with it spell-wise. Many of the spells will hit a large
area, and the mushrooms often spawn close together making you prematurely send
some of the mushrooms away. Don`t worry about it, center on one mushroom at a
time, otherwise the chance is high you will screw up, or you will run out of
time waiting for the mushrooms to move away from each other.

Second, not all spawn locations have the same "mood" patterns. Especially if
you are going after the Secrets Manuals, you will find that precious few places
places have Gravity/Stop "moods", while others like Fire moods are easily
found. See the listing above for mood locations (this is still incomplete but
should get you to where you are going.).

An extra note on "mood" behavior, there is a "mood" that is common to all
mushrooms that may throw off some people. This is the action where the mushroom
stops for second
(not freezes) and look around as if for rain or something before going on to a
new "mood". Any attack/magic during this time will make a White Mushroom
disappear. You can see this "mood" also in the animation used for the 3D view
of all mushrooms in the notebook, if my above explanation was unclear.

Next, make use of the respawn tricks noted in my "General Hints" section. This
will get White (and other types of) Mushrooms spawning faster. If you simply
run back
and forth between two areas you will not get any Mushroom spawns. Some spawn
points use different
spawn tricks better..i.e. End of The World and Deep Jungle - Outside the Tent
spawn points use the Gummi Ship spawn trick well, while Traverse Town Hotel -
Red Room is one of the best spots for the 2 area, leave and come back spawn
trick.

Finally, I have recieved a few unconfirmed reports about the difficulty of
finding mushrooms, post-Hallow Bastion clearing.
Apparently, as was explained to me, it is only possible to find one White
Mushroom spawn in any particular world before you need
to move onto a new world after you have cleared the Hollow Bastion (unconfirmed
but keep it in mind).

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III. The Black Fungus (ƒuƒ‰ƒbƒNƒtƒ@ƒ“ƒKƒX)
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A. Intro
---------

Ah, the mushroom monsters are cunningly dressed up in different color
palettees, say hello to the black-robed, purple-hatted mushroom! Unlike the
White Mushroom that we have already discussed, the Black Fungus is relatively
straight forward battle, kill it before it dissappears using any means
possible. However, also unlike the White Mushroom, since there is no special
way to take them down, the devs decided to let these mushrooms fight back in
the form of turning to stone (read invincible) as well as giving them an area
poison attack that is more powerful than many bosses normal attacks. Have fun!

B. How to Fight and Treasure
--------------------------------------------

Well, as far as a catch goes, I don`t believe there is one. Sometimes the Black
Fungus drops Mystery Goo's and sometimes it does not (most of the time it does
not actually). I have a theory that if it is beat with only physical attack
combo chains it will always drop Full
Waters. Its also been theorized to me that the key is to hit Black Fungus' with
Critical Hits to make them drop stuff. Another theory holds that you have to
hit them while jumping, and yet another that using your
limit break type skills like Strike Raid. YMMV, this is another unconfirmed
section.

Now, the Black Fungus will uncommonly drop an item named Mystery Mold
(—Ž‚Æ‚µ‚à‚́H). If there is a special way to get it to drop this item, I don`t
know, perhaps one of the above theories. Regardless, this item like the Arts
item seems useless. Its item description however says that it can be sold for a
decent price, and behold (when you get one) it can be sold for 9999 cash in
Traverse Town, making it the most sellable item in the game. Useful if you
happen to actually beat some of these guys during the midgame, but mostly
useless otherwise.

As noted above you need only to fight these things normally, but there are
a few tactics that work better than normal.

1. Use the Trinity limit, if you have it. Of the few enemies in the game, you
can actually hit a group of Black Fungi with this and kill them wholesale.

2. If you find them in Halloween Town, you will have access to exploding
pumpkins which can kill them in 1-hit.

3. Apparently if you keep your distance, but are close enough for Donald/Goofy
to target them, Donald/Goofy can attack them without fear of being poisioned or
attacked.

4. A mass area Gravity can deal with them pretty decently.

5. Use Stop magic, attack.

C. Where to Find Black Fungi
------------------------------

1. Halloween Town - Pumpkin Patch - This is the area with the twirly bridge
thing that three little kids walk over. The spawn rate isn`t so hot here, but
the Black Fungus does spawn here, and using the respawn trick for the levels
(See my "General Hints, Tips, Comments.." section at the end of this FAQ), you
can get enounters at decent enough pace.

2. End of the World -  Room Before Last Rest Save Point - Spawns all mushrooms
so it drops the chances of getting only Black Fungi. Still fairly quick.

3. Agrabah - Bazaar - This is the far right and back area accessible only via
one route. Maybe you can find
them there, I did. A little bit out of the way for the respawn trick but its
your choice.

4. Pegasus Cup - #5 Tier - Ah, the annoying battle which makes the speed battle
for this cup rather annoying at times. Again no dropped items here tho, only
practice.

5. Hallow Bastion - Dungeon (Is this the proper name for this area?)

D. Final Notes on the Black Fungus
-----------------------------------

Nothing really. There is not much to the Black Fungus. Just be careful of the
poison cloud attack, as it can be ultra deadly to a mid to lower level Sora,
and inevitably Goofy and Donald will just let themselves get killed by it
because of their lame AI.

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IV. The Rare Truffle (ƒŒƒAƒgƒŠƒ…ƒt)
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A. Intro
---------

Ah, the last and perhaps least understood mushroom of the bunch, weighing in
with a blue robes and a yellow hat. If you are like me, you perhaps only fought
two, during the Hercules/Hades Cup, before the the first time you beat the
game. They are that rare, unless you know where to look for them. But before I
get to that, the main focus of this truffle is the jumpy. It jumps up and down,
up and down and will dissappear over time (the same with all mushrooms). What
you need to do, as the notebook explanation in game suggests, is to keep them
in the air with "air combos", until they decide to throw down Mystery Goo on
you. But this is easier said than done, especially when I first started out to
beat one of these mofo`s down.

Bar none, for Mystery Goo's and associated extra items and experience this is
the mushroom you want to fight.

B. How to Fight and Treasure
--------------------------------------------

Like the White Mushroom, they are however, pretty easy once you know the trick,
and that trick is to bounce them up in the air over and over and over again of
which there are a few ways. First the way I first found.

UpperCut Trick-

1. When you come upon a Rare Truffle spawn, you must first lock on to one of
the Truffles with lock on, abosultely needed.

2. Watch as the Truffle jumps, when it lands, run up to it and smack it once
and only once. You notice that when you hit it, it bounces into the air,
despite the fact it was on the ground before (in fact, all attacks will bounce
it in the air, unless it lands again, at such time it will disappear and give
you no [more] items).

3. Anyway, you have just smacked the truffle in the air. What you want to do
now is wait a split second then jump after the truffle and attack it in the air
before it comes back and hits the ground.
Read this carefully, I will put it in bold letters for you. You need to JUMP
and then TAP the ATTACK BUTTON ONCE. This will have you attack with an
uppercut attack, and not the aerial spin attack (if you have that ability
equipped). If you attacked with an aerial spin, it`s because you didn`t jump
before hitting the attack button.

4. Once again, after #3, you will notice the Truffle bounce back up in the air.
Whee! This is where you repeat processes #1-3 over and over again for the
mega-combo items...jump, uppercut attack, land, wait a split second, jump,
uppercut, attack etc..

Flying Neverland Trick-

Getting a bit ahead of myself here, but you can find Black Fungus on the deck
of the ship in Neverland where you fight Hook,
and since you can fly here, you can simply fly up and keep smacking Truffles
with impunity. Some limitations apply, i.e. you have a little less control
of which way a Truffle will bounce up, and you have to watch out for running
into background scenery.

Aero Trick-

This is perhaps the easiest one, cast your version of Aero (you will need
Aerora/ga actually to have this work) and run up and touch
the Truffle. Into the air it goes. Stand under it, bounce it, recast Aero
as needed before it runs out to extend bounce sessions as needed and reap easy
rewards.

Ragnarok Trick-

Use in conjunction with the Uppercut Trick, select Raganarok and let it rip on
a Truffle. Make sure you pull off the entire combo. Good finisher, lots of
hits.

Speaking of hits, you get treasure based on how many times you hit and bounce a
Truffle..as follows..

10  times - 1 Mystery Goo + 1 Elixir
50  times - 1 Mystery Goo + 1 Elixir + Shiitake Scroll (’Bl‚̏Ø)
100 times - 1 Mystery Goo + 1 Last Elixir + Matsutake Scroll (–¼l‚̏Ø)

The scrolls items, like the other special items are again, not much worth, the
game explanation simply noting that these scrolls show
your ability in being a master of bouncing the Truffle 50 or 100 times
(sellable for 100 and 500 respectively). Perhaps not worth it, but you know
you want the honor of this victory, you know it! An interesting extra, the
scrolls (Shiitake/Matsutake) are names after actual types of Japanese
mushrooms..
clever huh?

Finally, juggling Rare Truffles nets huge amounts of experience. Where N equals
the number of times you bounced a mushroom, you gain N(N+1)/2 experience
for each juggling sessions. What that means is, for a 100 hit juggle, you will
gain 5050 experience! Easily the fastest way to level up in the game should
you get ahold of enough Rare Truffles. Combine this with fighting Rare Truffles
in the Collesieum (as well as hitting pause right before a battle ends
to redo a Rare Truffle battle) and you can make max level in less than an hour
or two:0

C. Where to Find the Rare Truffle
----------------------------------

Again in order from easiest to hardest in order to get items from it.

1. End of the World - Room Before Last Rest Save Point - Again, the save reload
or respawn trick here. Easiest place to fight the Truffles outside of the
Collieseum with the Uppercut trick.

2. Neverland - Deck of Ship - This is the area you fight Captain Hook, tho of
course you will not see Truffle`s here the first time you get there. The ship
structure makes straight up truffle fighting really not easy, but there is
always the
option of flying for a real air combo as per the above trick. Spawn rates are
seemingly good.

3. Halloween Town - Area Right Before Boogie`s House - This is the area with
the short bridge and the water passage which leads back to the fountain in
Guillotine Sqaure. Spawn rates seem very small, but its possible to find Rare
Truffles here. Geography can make fighting here easy or hard. Easy because you
can trap Truffles in the corners of the sewer area where the spawn. Hard
because the
camera can go crazy in those areas. Note, if you hit a Truffle onto a slope,
and it slides
down and you hit it before it hits the water it DOES NOT count as the Truffle
touching
land and disappearing.

4. Hercules Cup - #6 Tier - I highly recommend beating the time attack for this
cup so you can freely select to battle Truffles here. Of course no dropped
items, but practicing here is mad exp and is good for training for the Uppercut
Trick.

5. Hades Cup - #46 Tier - You can fight this one fairly easily without having
to do time attacks to get the selectable battle option. But really, if you have
the Hades Cup open, the Hercules time attack should be doable.

6. Monstro - Throat - They appear here, in the area before the Monstro main
fight.

D. Final Notes on the Rare Truffle
-----------------------------------

This is the Truffle that once you got your jump then attack rythym
down (assuming using the Uppercut Trick), you will have the Mystery Goo's
rolling in. I was fighting them once and checked how many I had, and my count
was at 22! Enough to make enough
Attack Point items to max out Sora`s attack level at
100;p During a typical fight don`t expect to get much more than 4-6 Mystery
Goo's however, as getting the 100 combo limit takes some time, and you only
have
enough time to combo two Truffles up to 100 before the others dissappear (this
is assuming no mistakes on your part, and not accidently hitting other Truffles
as you combo the Truffle you have locked onto..a fairly common occurence. But
as with White Mushrooms, centering one mushroom at a time is important for
success). Still, it`s much faster than beating up other mushroom Heartlesses.

Third, a note on combo`ing the Truffles. You can bounce them fairly high, but
you don`t really want them flying too high, which is what happens when you hit
them offscreen (the uppercut attack, especialy with the longer keyblades has an
insane vertical attack range from somewhere at Sora`s knees to 2 body lengths
above him and can easily hit off screen Truffles). Now, The auto-tracking for
attacks (not the camera strangely enough) in game is superb and will often
track things way over your head in battle, but its still possible to lose
Truffles you bounce too high. So when you combo a Truffle, make sure he is on
screen when you hit him. Don`t worry, you will hit a Truffle if you let him
drop in altitude before you swing, as Sora`s uppecut hits a larger area than
you may think (as written above). Less of a problem if you are flying in
Neverland, and less if you are using the Aero trick. Something that will likely
happen if you use Ragnarok though.

Last, you may want to pre-kit your character ability-wise for fighting Rare
Truffles if you expect an encounter. Namely, un-euipping the Glide party
ability helps (Fast Glide is ok, but the normal Glide is bound to the jump
button tho). Also, un-equipping the Aerial-Sweep ability from Sora`s list can
help as you will want to be hitting with an upper-cut, not an aerial spin
anyway. This
assuming Uppercut again, for all the other tricks no kitting is really
nessecary.

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V. General Hints, Tips, Comments..
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Ok, this is the section for general hints/tips applicable to finding/beating
all of the mushroom Heartless.

-All of the mushroom Heartless are timed battles. If you take too long they
will dissappear. Doesn`t usually happen with Black Fungus, but is something you
will happen with White Mushroom hunting a lot.

-White Mushrooms and Rare Truffles will, 100% chance, dissappear without
dropped items if you don`t use the proper attacks.

-You may want to summon something when fighting some mushroom (especially White
Mushrooms). Reason being, Donald and Goofy will often do a superb job of
blocking your view on whats going on, and thus aught to be removed. At decent
level, a single summon will last you long enough to take out 1-2 mushrooms.
Recommendations go to Mushu (white mushrooms) or Bambi.

-In order to help spawn some mushrooms in the world areas, realize that once
you beat completely beat a battle in one small area of the game (i.e. outside
the tent area in the Deep Jungle world), a new battle will not respawn until
you run 2 areas away from area you want respawned with new monsters. So in the
tent area case, running to the first bamboo forest area and back will not
respawn the monsters at the tent, but running to the area where you fight
Clayton and back will. An easy way to get new monsters. Also an easy way to
level up in certain places of the game which allow you to run in circular
patterns, thus constantly spawning monsters.

The only area in the game where this works differently is at the the room
before the last save at End of The World. This room will ALWAYS spawn new
monsters, whether you ran 1 or 2 areas away from it.

-The End of the World room before the last save is most easily taken advantage
of spawn-wise for mushrooms by first saving the game at last save. Then run
into the room before this. If the desired mushrooms aren`t there, simply reset
with the quick reset option. This is NOT the reset button on the PS2, rather
push and hold START + SELECT + R1 + R2 + L1 + L2. This will take you straight
to the New
Game/Load Game screen. For some reason, tho you can use the area respawn trick
for this room, reloading over and over again is almost always quicker. I
believe there is something in the coding for how the game parcels out mushrooms
encounters, in that it gives a higher chance of a mushroom encounter if you
have just arrived at the world, and not if you have been actively looking for
mushroom encounters.

-Alternately, for Mushroom Spawn points that are close to save points, you can
respawn monster areas without fighting by checking out and area, leaving,
riding your Gummi Ship then
re-entering the world with the spawn point you are trying to hit up for world
areas like End of the World, or
the Deep Jungle White Mushroom spawn point.

-There is seems to be alot of random chance in finding a mushroom encounter.
Knowing this will help you tear out less hair.

-Finally, if you do end up fighting for mushrooms at the End of the World alot.
Be aware that mushrooms aren`t the only special items you can collect there.
The devil and angel monsters which spawn the most at End of the World will
infrequently give out Orichalcum (ƒIƒŠƒnƒ‹ƒRƒ“) and Mythril (ƒ~ƒXƒŠƒ‹) in
addition to their normally dropped Gale(‚r‚ê‚é‚©‚º). So doing the normal
respawn fighting while looking for mushroom spawns may make
sense, if you are keen on maxing out your level/attack/defense/AP parameters,
rather than relying on the quicker save/reload trick for mushroom only
encounters.