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[Dark_Shiva144]

I'm happy to see this topic kind of coming to life again, and it's interesting to have someone else here who has seen the butterflies. Vanmonky's description fits with most of the others, so I think by now we can assume that if this butterfly event exists, it takes places rather late in the game.

 

On that note, I tried some of the things I suggested in my previous post, since I coincidentally still had a save file in Hour VIII. In that file, I already had the Standing Girl and Seated Twins photos, so I just tried waking up and talking to Miku a couple of times. Unfortunately, she doesn't give you the information from her photo research until after the end of Hour VIII, so this is already different from what I experienced withe the Crawling Woman events. I didn't find the butterfly after getting the info from Miku in the next Hour, which didn't really surprise me in that case.

Now, I guess playing through that entire Hour again and trying different versions of what you could do there would be next, but I'm inclined to believe the trigger either isn't there or has some other requirement. Which brings me to something midwinter and I discussed here years ago....:

 

The encounter with Yoshino is definitely after she's already died. It happens immediately after the first fight with Yoshino and the Black Shadows, and Yoshino isn't an attacking ghost until she's turned to ash. In FF3 they do seem to be quite careful about showing the difference between living people and ghosts, so if Mio did start appearing in other places that would be pretty weird. So I'm inclined to think it didn't happen, but who even knows at this point?

 

This got me thinking again. If you don't save Kei, you also don't save Mio, right? What if we need to look at Hour X, where Kei's ending is determined, then? I said before that we might need to be on the path to a specific ending, and this actually makes it even more likely. If Mio really does appear as part of the butterfly event, it can only happen if we're on the path to Kei's bad ending. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise. So, that would be my next attempt at solving this, I think. Play up to that point and then, once I'm on the path to the bad ending, keep waking up after pretty much every little thing I do. It's also possible that this takes place a bit later, after Kei's death, IMO. Doesn't make it any easier to find^^"

 

Of course, this is assuming that everyone who believes to have seen Mio there did NOT confuse her with Mayu in the heat of the moment. There's a real possibility that the ghost seen after following the butterfly is Mayu, which would mean we can't take it as a time indicator at all, of course. But I'd suggest assuming it really is Mio for now and trying things out based on that.

 

EDIT: Actually...you can't get the good ending on your first playthrough, can you? That would be even more evidence for it playing a role, since most players who saw the butterflies reported doing so on their first playthrough, which means they were on the path to Kei's bad ending by default.

Edited by Dark_Shiva144, 29 October 2019 - 12:21 PM.

[Dark_Shiva144]

Sorry for double-posting, but I think editing my old post too many times sucks a bit, too

So, I‘ve tried a lot of things in the past two days, but found nothing so far. I‘m on the path to the bad ending, maybe I will find something eventually. Even picked the bad ending path for Miku, just in case. I also tested things out on multiple difficulties (Normal, Hard, Nightmare), though I doubt it makes a difference. I‘m starting to get the feeling that this search will come up empty again, unfortunately. I wish there was more info to go on, but since it‘s been such a long time since people saw the butterfly, it‘s understandable that no-one remembers any details.

Something else that‘s been bothering me, though: This is a bit off-topic and I actually mentioned it on one of my first posts in this topic before. I remember that a friend and I saw the curtain in Rei‘s living room moving unnaturally multiple times. I‘m not talking about the scripted event where it moves in the wind. I mean a strange movement that starts in the upper right corner and gradually spreads until the entire curtain is moving as if alive or something. Sometimes, we would encounter this almost every night we woke up. It even spread to other curtains, in Rei‘s apartment and also in the Manor of Sleep. I have played through FF3 countless times and, for some odd reason, I only ever encountered this phenomon when playing with that particular friend. Now, while looking for the butterfly, I kept looking at the curtain every time I woke up and it never moved. I can‘t get this triggered anymore and it‘s driving me nuts. Has anyone else seen this? I‘m starting to question my (and my friend‘s) sanity here