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Three Tonberries attack with multiple Cleavers, which could wipe out the party. Prepare your defenses with Vanish, Golem, and Safe.

Final Fantasy VI PlayStation Bestiary entry

The Tonberries, also called Pugs, are bosses in Final Fantasy VI. They should not to be confused with the single enemy Tonberry. They are fought as a monster-in-a-box in Yeti's Cave, and there are three of them in the chest. Just like the singular Tonberry, they do not inflict the party with the Imp Imp status condition.

Stats[]

Battle[]

FFVI IOS Tonberries

Tonberries in the 2014 version.

The Tonberries attack by slowly advancing towards the party. When they reach them, they will use their special attack, Knife, to deal massive damage to the member in front of whom they are standing, usually killing them. They will then return to the far side of the battle screen. They counter magic with the powerful Holy spell. They have high evasion.

Locke can steal valuable Minerva Bustiers from them, and they sometimes drop Minerva Bustiers as well.

Strategy[]

The player should stick to normal attacks to defeat them. A great technique is to cast Invisible Invisible on the party. Using only physical attacks can be tedious since the Tonberries have a high evade rate; therefore equipping a Sniper Eye relic to at least one of the characters can help. Special techniques, such as Blitz, Tools, and Bushido, will also work well. Slowga is effective for delaying the Tonberries' turns and thus their Knife attacks.

Alternatively, one can silence them, and use magic (which can include poisoning them with Bio). Another strategy is simply to Imp them; it hinders their physical attack power and stops them from counter-attacking with Holy.

The easiest strategy to defeat them is to spam Ultima.

Rage[]

Tonberries is one of the four Rages that cannot be learned by Gau. In the case of the other three such monsters (Siegfried, Typhon, and Death Warden), this is because they do not appear on the Veldt, and thus using a cheating or hacking device to make them appear there will allow Gau to learn their Rage normally. This is not true of Tonberries, who do appear on the Veldt. The reason their Rage cannot be learned is different: there are 256 Rages available, but because of a bug in the way the game accesses this data, the Tonberries Rage, which is the 256th Rage, does not work properly and was removed from the game. In the GBA version, the Rage can be added to Gau's Rage list in the main Abilities menu if he "learns" it on the Veldt, but it will not appear on his list when in battle and thus cannot be selected.

Formations[]

Number Enemies Encounter flags Introduction flag Musical theme Magic AP
Normal Back Surrounded Side
235 Tonberries x3 Y N N N Sides, individual Battle 5
575 Tonberries Y N N N Sides, individual Battle
590 Abaddon, (Tonberries x5) Y N N N Sides, individual Battle

AI script[]

If monster has taken 8 steps:

Knife (100%)
Monster moves back to the right side and starts walking towards party again

Every Turn:

Attack (100%)
Move one step closer

If attacked by "Attack":

If monster has taken 2 or more steps already:
If monster has been attacked with "Attack" 3 or more times:
Monster takes one step backwards

If attacked by "Magic": Holy (100%)

Etymology[]

Pug is an obsolete term for an "elf" or "hobgoblin".

Related enemies[]

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