Chrono Trigger New Game Plus Guide: Best Endings and Carryover Items
How Chrono Trigger New Game Plus works: what carries over, all 13 endings, fast routes to each, the best speed-clear party, and the vortex extras.
Chrono Trigger didn't invent the idea of replaying a game with your old stats, but it did give that idea its name. New Game+ started right here in 1995. You beat Lavos, you keep your power, and suddenly the whole timeline turns into a toybox - you can walk up to Lavos ten minutes into a fresh file and splatter him with endgame gear. That's not a glitch either. The game was built around it, and most of the thirteen endings (twelve on the SNES cart, thirteen on DS, mobile, and Steam) basically require it. Here's what carries over, what doesn't, and how to sweep every ending off one save file.
What Carries Over Into NG+
What comes with you
The short version: almost everything. Character levels and stats carry over intact, along with every tech everyone has learned. Your inventory comes along too - weapons, armor, accessories, consumables, all of it. Even the little stuff survives the trip. The Petals, Fangs, Horns, and Feathers you traded for in 65,000,000 BC are still in the bag, and your jet-bike race record from the future stays on the books.
The characters themselves don't carry, obviously. The plot can't have you walking around with Ayla and Magus before Crono has even met Marle, so everyone rejoins at their proper story moment. Their stats are yours from the first save, though, so the early game turns into a victory lap. Bosses that once took three tries die in a hit or two.
What the game takes back
A short list, but worth knowing before you plan anything:
- Frog's Masamune and Masamune 2, plus Magus's Slasher and Slasher 2 - story weapons, so you re-earn them as the plot hands them out
- OzziePants, the Taban set (Taban Helm, Taban Suit, Taban Vest), Flea Vest, GreenDream, and the Hero Medal
- Every key item - the Pendant, Gate Key, Dreamstone, the broken Masamune pieces, Ruby Knife, Moon Stone, Sun Stone, the Clone, the Bike Key, all of it
- Your entire gold supply
None of this is a big deal in practice. The key items get re-handed to you at the right story beats anyway, and the unique gear comes back through its quests. The gold is the one that stings a little. You start the new file flat broke, so the smart move is to spend yourself down before your final save on the old file. Gold evaporates; stuff doesn't. Loading up on MegaElixirs or spare top-end gear is a perfectly good way to convert cash into something that survives the jump.
First-minute housekeeping
One quirk catches people off guard: Crono starts the new file wearing his day-one loadout, a Wooden Sword and a Hide Tunic, even though the Rainbow is sitting right there in the inventory. Equipment carries over as items, not as what's currently equipped. So open the menu the moment the game hands you control and dress him back up. Doing the opening fair section with a starter sword because you forgot is a very avoidable own goal.
Unlocking All 13 Endings
The one rule that decides everything
Endings in Chrono Trigger aren't chosen from a menu. They're decided by where the story stands when Lavos dies. It doesn't matter how you reach him - bucket, Epoch, Black Omen, that sparkle on the telepod - the game just checks the story flag, plays the matching ending, done. So ending hunting is really about fighting Lavos inside narrow little windows in the story.
Two footnotes. Losing to Lavos on purpose gets you the bad ending ("the future refused to change"), and it doesn't count toward the thirteen. Losing to Magus at the North Cape plays a short scene where he finishes the summon, and that doesn't count either. Every version's achievement list backs the thirteen: on Steam, all 13 achievements are endings, and none of them can be missed since you can always reload and try again.
The full list
Listed in story order, which also happens to be a clean sweep order:
| # | Ending | Beat Lavos during this window | |---|--------|-------------------------------| | 1 | The Dream Project | NG+ only. Right telepod sparkle, from the start of the file until you follow Marle through the Gate to 600 AD (or beat the powered-up Lavos at the Ocean Palace) | | 2 | The Successor of Guardia | NG+ only. Same sparkle, after rescuing Queen Leene and Marle at the Cathedral, before Crono's trial | | 3 | Good Night | After Spekkio teaches you magic at the End of Time, before taking the pillar back to 600 AD | | 4 | Legendary Hero | During the second trip to 600 AD, up until Tata gives up the Hero Medal | | 5 | The Unknown Past | Right after Tata hands over the Medal, before you get the Dreamstone in prehistory | | 6 | People of the Times | After recovering the stolen Gate Key, before the Masamune is reforged | | 7 | The Oath | After Frog rejoins for good with the repaired Masamune, before you storm Magus's castle | | 8 | Dino Age | After Magus falls, before Azala and the Black Tyrano | | 9 | What the Prophet Seeks... | After the Black Tyrano dies, before the Ocean Palace | | 10 | A Slide Show? | After Schala opens the sealed door, before you charge the pendant at the Mammon Machine | | 11 | Reunion | After the Ocean Palace disaster, while Crono is still dead | | 12 | Beyond Time | Any time after Crono is revived on Death Peak | | 13 | Dream's Epilogue | DS, mobile, and Steam only. Beat the Dream Devourer in the Darkness Beyond Time |
Two of those, the first two, are outright locked behind New Game+ because the telepod sparkle only exists on an NG+ file, and a first-run party could never survive Lavos that early anyway.
Which ones are actually the best
Beyond Time is the real ending, the full Moonlight Parade send-off, and it's also the one that bends around your choices more than any other. Crash the Epoch into Lavos and you get the balloon scene with Crono and Marle drifting off together. Enter on foot instead and you get the chaos version where Crono's mom and however many cats you've collected tumble through the Gate. Kill Magus at the North Cape and Frog shows up in the parade as human Glenn. Finish the Rainbow Shell quest and the real Chancellor appears instead of Pierre. Do Lucca's Fiona's Forest scene right and her mom Lara is standing instead of wheelchair-bound. Same ending, half a dozen flavors.
Dream Project is the cult favorite - it's a jokey dev-room ending where the game's designers hang out at the End of Time and the credits scream past because you "beat the game so fast." Successor of Guardia is just strange, in a good way: the king finds an old wedding reel and it's Frog marrying Queen Leene. Worth seeing once so you know it exists.
Fast Routes to Each Ending
Four doors into 1999 AD
You've got four ways to reach Lavos, and picking the right one saves real time:
- The telepod sparkle (NG+ only) - a sparkling spot on the right telepod at Leene Square. This is the only route for endings 1 and 2.
- The bucket at the End of Time - available from your very first visit. Works for every window from Good Night onward, and it's usually the fastest since you can warp to the End of Time from anywhere.
- Crashing the Epoch - fly to 1999 AD and ram the shell. This skips the entire nine-boss gauntlet and the shell fight itself, dropping you straight into the inner body. It wrecks the Epoch, and it changes the Beyond Time and Reunion variants, so use it when you want the balloon scene or just raw speed.
- The Black Omen - fight up through the dungeon, beat Queen Zeal at the top, and you drop right into Lavos. Slowest route, but it's the story-intended one.
The Ocean Palace fight deserves a mention too: it's shell-only, no gauntlet, but that shell has triple the normal HP (30,000 instead of 10,000) and hits harder. On an NG+ file it's still a pushover.
The fight itself, on fast-forward
Since the gauntlet bosses reuse their old stats, your carried-over party one-shots most of them. The real fight is the back half:
| Part | HP | Notes | |------|-----|-------| | Gauntlet bosses (9 of them) | their original stats | Dragon Tank, Guardian, Heckran, Zombor, Masa & Mune, Nizbel, Magus, Black Tyrano, Giga Gaia - heal and swap party between each | | Lavos shell | 10,000 | after the gauntlet | | Inner Lavos | 20,000 | with a Right Arm (8,000) and Left Arm (12,000) | | Lavos Bit (left) | 2,000 | soaks up magic - kill it with physicals | | Center Bit | 10,000 | sturdier than it looks | | Lavos Core (right) | 30,000 | the actual target, and the actual fight |
Two things the game doesn't advertise. After the outer form dies you walk into Lavos's body and find a save point plus a Gate home. You can leave, restock, come back, and you will not have to redo the outer form. And once you're past the inner body fight there's no more saving, so this is where the MegaElixirs you hoarded earn their keep.
The core fight has a rhythm to it. The Lavos Core on the right sits behind a guard that only drops when it pauses to revive one of its dead bits. So the loop is: kill the left bit with normal attacks, chip the center while the core's armored, and the moment the core drops its guard, dump everything into it. Kill the core and the fight ends, bits standing or not.
Sweeping all thirteen off one file
The loop is simple. Walk the story to the edge of a window, save, jump to Lavos through the fastest door, win, watch the credits, reload your save, keep playing. Nothing is consumed. On Steam the ending achievement pops the instant you earn it, and the DS version keeps a browser of endings you've unlocked, so reloading costs you nothing.
Work down the table in order and you'll grab 1 through 10 with barely any detours, since each window is just "play until the story beat, dip out to the bucket." The last three need a decision. Before you go up Death Peak, with the Black Omen era underway and Crono still dead, beat Lavos once for Reunion. Reload, do Death Peak, beat Lavos again for Beyond Time. That's twelve. Then the Dimensional Vortex content on your cleared file hands you the thirteenth.
Best Party for Speed Clears
Early windows lock the roster
You can't always pick your team, and the earliest endings are the pickiest. Dream Project can literally be Crono alone if you hit the sparkle before bumping into Marle at the fair - grab her first if you'd rather have a second body. The Successor of Guardia window has Crono, Marle, and Lucca. By Good Night you've got Robo too, so pick any three. From The Oath onward you're choosing from whoever the story has rounded up, and by the late windows it's a free-for-all.
The go-to trio
For everything from the midgame windows on, Crono, Ayla, and Robo is the speed file. Falcon Hit, the Crono and Ayla dual tech, shreds the multi-part gauntlet fights in one cast. Crono's Luminaire is your nuke for the core's guard-drop window. Robo's Shock hits everything, and his Heal Beam patches the whole party in a panic without spending items. It's a blunt, effective toolkit.
Ayla's the sneaky one, because she doesn't equip weapons at all - her fists upgrade with her level, and levels carry into NG+. At level 72 she gets the IronFist, which adds Chaos to her criticals. At level 96 she gets the BronzeFist, and from then on her criticals do 9,999 damage a pop. You will never see level 96 on a normal run. On a New Game Plus file grinding to it is trivially easy, and she turns into a wrecking ball no gear required.
Swaps are fine if the mood strikes. Keep Magus alive at the North Cape and Dark Matter is a second Luminaire. Lucca's Flare hits like a truck and the WonderShot's fun, though its damage rolls off your play-time seconds counter and swings from a tenth of normal to triple, so it's a gambler's weapon. Marle's Haste and Life 2 are great training wheels if your file is on the weaker side, but a maxed-out party barely needs a healer.
Gear worth carrying
Crono's Rainbow is the whole reason to do the sidequests on the old file - Melchior forges it (along with the Prism Specs, which crank up attack power something fierce) during the Rainbow Shell quest, as long as you've finished the Sun Stone quest first. The Sun Stone itself also nets Lucca's WonderShot. The Prism Dress and Prism Helms come out of the shell quest too. None of that is story-locked, so all of it rides into NG+, and the Prism Specs in particular turn Luminaire into a war crime. Put them on whoever's casting the big spell.
New Game Plus Exclusive Content
The sparkle
The one thing hard-locked behind New Game+ is that sparkle on the right telepod, plus the two endings behind it. Nothing else in the game checks for NG+.
The Dimensional Vortex
The DS, mobile, and Steam versions carry three bonus dungeons, and they open the moment Lavos dies on a file - you can roll straight into them on your cleared save without starting a formal NG+, though the carried levels make it painless. Three gates appear: one in 12,000 BC beside the Last Village huts, one in 1000 AD east of Leene Square, and one in 2300 AD out on the Geno Dome island. You'll need the flying Epoch to reach two of the three.
Each gate runs you through five random rooms pulled from areas you've already played, then a Nameless Cave with a save point, then the real dungeon capped by a Shade boss. Clear all three and a new Gate opens at the End of Time leading to the Darkness Beyond Time - and the Dream Devourer waiting in it.
One trap to know about: the 1000 AD gate forces Crono into the party for its boss. On a file where Crono is still dead, that gate simply cannot be finished, so do Death Peak and revive him before you start the vortex run.
The loot's worth the trip too. There's an Angel's Tiara hidden in the 12,000 BC gate (the only accessory that packs status immunity and Auto-Haste into one slot, usable by Marle, Lucca, and Ayla), plus a Regal Gown, a Shadowplume Robe, a Venus Bow, and a handful of stat capsules across the gates. The Wonder Rock enemy in the 12,000 BC gate drops a Lumicite Shard if you kill it fast, and the Reptite by the save point in the 600 AD Lost Sanctum village trades that shard for the Elemental Aegis - 92 defense and immunity to all four elements. That's about the best armor in the game.
The Dream Devourer
Deep in the Darkness Beyond Time sits a crimson fusion of Lavos and Schala, and it's a legit superboss, harder than anything in the base game. Beat it and you get Dream's Epilogue, the thirteenth ending, which follows a stranger version of Magus to a conclusion that hands the story straight to Chrono Cross. If you've played Cross, you already know where Schala's story has to go, and this is the connective tissue.
For prep, it's the same playbook as Lavos plus volume: Prism gear, Prism Specs, MegaElixirs, and as many capsules as you scraped up. Grinding Ayla to 96 first is the cheat code - her BronzeFist criticals chunk it for 9,999 apiece, and no boss in the game stays scary through that.