Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Fever Pot

Introduction

Fever Pots are not the rarest item in the game, but they're one of the most valuable. A Fever Pot can replicate other items except for pots, which makes them key if you want to do serious Crafting. Replicating certain items helps with both Creating Better Items and Mass Production—see those pages if you want tips on how best to take advantage of a Fever Pot. Players who aren't interested in hardcore crafting may be able to trade a Fever Pot for other powerful items with other players online.

Using Fever Pots

If you fill a Fever Pot with identical items, it will break open and twice as many of those items will spill onto the ground around you. If you put 2+ items in it and they aren't identical, it will explode, destroying the Fever Pot, everything in it, and everything on the ground in the 9 squares around you, not to mention doing explosion damage to you. It's pretty simple but the devil is in the details. How precisely do the items need to match? Here's what's known:

Possible Difference	Example	Outcome
Rank	Wonder Pick (L1) and Wonder Wreckr (L8)	Explosion!
Blessing modifier	1 item is blessed, the rest aren't	Success! Resulting items have no blessing modifiers. *
Curse modifier	1 item is cursed, the rest aren't	Success! Resulting items have no curse modifiers. *
Seal modifier	1 item is sealed, the rest aren't	Success! Resulting items have no seal modifiers. *
Upgrade value	Gold Shield and Gold Shield +1	Success! Resulting items have no upgrade values.
Experience	1 Onigiri Shield has 3 bars of experience, the rest have none	Success! Resulting items have no experience.
Runes	1 sword has runes, the rest don't	Untested.
Tag	1 shield has a lost-and-found tag, the rest don't	Success! Resulting items have no tags.
Price Tag	1 item is for sale by a shopkeeper, the rest aren't	Untested. Tangent: items with price tags can't stack. Even if you throw one rock from a rock stack with a price tag, you can't combine those rocks again.
Charges	1 Clone Staff has 5 charges, the rest have 3	Success! Tested with 3x Swift Staves having 4, 5, and 6 charges respectively, one of which was blessed, one of which was sealed, and one of which was unmodified. All resulting items had 4-6 charges (the normal range for this item) and no modifiers.
Quantity	1 item is 5x Rocks, the rest are 1x Rock	Success! Resulting items are all stacks of 2x - 4x of the same item (normal range), regardless of how large or small the stacks were that you inserted.
Identification Level	1 item is yellow, the rest are salmon? (fully identified)	Untested. See "Other Gotchas" below.
Capacity	1 Upgrade Pot has 3 spots, the rest have 5	N/A. You can't put pots into a Fever Pot.
New Items	A set of perfectly identical new items	Untested.

* I haven't tried every combination, but I've definitely tried having a single blessed/cursed/sealed item in a mix of other items that have no modifiers, and that definitely works. I've also tried a mix of (nothing) + sealed + blessed in a single Fever Pot, and that also worked. I assume these modifiers don't negatively impact the replication no matter what combination of modifiers are on the items placed in the Fever Pot.

So the rules seem to be:

• The base names of the items must match and nothing else matters.
• All resulting items will be completely devoid of extras.

Other Gotchas

There are many ways things can go sideways. Given the Fever Pot and the items you're trying to replicate are all very valuable, beware of all these things:

• This might be a fantastic time to backup your save game, before trying to use the Fever Pot.
• Beware using an item that isn't fully identified (e.g. yellow or green items). Note that items can occasionally be monsters in disguise, which can definitely cause Mixer recipes to fail, though it's not known if you can ever put one of these mimic-type monsters into a pot. Regardless, even if it's not a mimic-type monster, the item that isn't fully identified may differ in some way that matters that you can't see. Either don't use the item in a Fever Pot until you've fully identified it, or use it at your own peril.
• The above chart is incomplete. You're dealing with very valuable items. If you're not certain that your items are identical enough, and you're not willing to explicitly test if they're identical enough, spend the time to make them identical first. (E.g. remove extraneous runes at the Hermit's Hermitage blacksmith, equalize the upgrade value, remove any curses and seals, etc..)
• All items created upon success are always basic, stock, unmodified items. So even if you can (e.g.) replicate that super upgraded sword with 30 powerful runes on it, don't do that unless you're OK with losing all those upgrades and runes.
• Make sure you have enough space on the ground around you for all the items to land safely. If you're using a maximum size 5 Fever Pot, 10 items will try to land around your feet, and if they can't all land on open ground, the remainder will be lost.
• Make sure there are no traps nearby either. Items won't land on hidden traps, but if they can't land somewhere, they will be lost. Items *can* land on visible traps and trigger them, which can suck even worse (e.g. explosion trap destroying lots or all of the items you're trying to replicate). This stuff is valuable; spring for an extra Blank Scroll and use it as a Trap Deletion Scroll first.
• Don't insert things into a Fever Pot if there are any items on the ground that you care about in the 9 spaces around you. A successful execution of the Fever Pot does not cause an explosion trap effect, but if you make a mistake, there will be an explosion effect and everything on the ground around you will be destroyed. This can be especially devastating if you like to use Fever Pots in your storage units surrounded by your most valuable loot rather than in dungeons.
• Don't use a Pot God Scroll on the Fever Pot unless you're certain you want to. Fever Pots are always size 3 by default and there is no known way to shrink them, so you'll need at least 3 copies of your super valuable item to replicate them at all. (But like all pots, you can increase them to a maximum of size 5. So a single Fever Pot can be used to replicate a batch of 3-5 identical-enough items.)
• Likewise, beware of a bracelet secret pot effect with the name "Boosts # of items that can be carried". This can expand pots in your main inventory when you change floors. Having a Lucky Pot in your inventory may also increase the size of the Fever Pot (not 100% confirmed).
• Beware dirt-throwing monsters. They can throw dirt at you even when they're far away and not lined up with you, which can fill up the remaining empty spots of any pot in your inventory. If they hit your Fever Pot, and there was nothing else in it, it will fill with dirt, replicate the dirt, and shatter/waste the Fever Pot. If they hit your Fever Pot and it has some items in it already, it will of course trigger the explosion effect and the pot and all its contents will be lost along with any items on the floor around you. Consider taking strong countermeasures whenever you see a dirt-throwing monster, or even before you see them if you know they can spawn on the current floor. Some options:
  • Put the Fever Pot on the ground.
  • Carry a Dodger Pot with you and burn an unimportant item in it, so all thrown items (yours and monsters) will miss. If you go this route, you may need to also carry Pot God Scrolls or use Blank Scrolls as Pot God Scrolls so you can expand the capacity of an empty Dodger Pot, as you may need to use this trick multiple times on multiple floors.
  • Throw an Extinction Scroll at a dirt-throwing monster to eliminate them from the entire dungeon. If you're hunting Fever Pots via the Pick-A-Choice shop, you may even get an Extinction Scroll as a prize from the Pick-A-Choice shop, else use a Blank Scroll for it.
  • I've never tested this, but in theory you could seal your Fever Pot e.g. using a Curse Scroll, which should block dirt from entering it.
  • You may be able to add certain secret pot effects to shields or bracelets which might help you dodge items thrown at you. I have not tested all possible secret pot effects, but beware a bracelet effect that says "Items thrown at you will miss"—this is a bug! It is the description of the Innac. Bracelet, the description should read "Items thrown by you will miss", and it won't help you dodge dirt.
  • Escape the dungeon immediately. Honestly, Fever Pots are so valuable (if you're interested in crafting) that it may be worth it to stop whatever else you're doing and ensure you take that Fever Pot home safely immediately.

Identifying Fever Pots

See Identifying Items for complete information on how to identify all kinds of items. This summary is not a replacement for the full article! But here are a few summary tips to keep in mind when hunting for Fever Pots.

Empirically, it seems that Fever Pots are much more common than usual in Pitfall of Life and Bizarre Tower, somewhat more common than usual in Inori Cave, and very rare or non-existent in other dungeons.

Fever Pots are insert-type pots, not open-type pots.

Fever Pots are always size 3 by default. Many other types of pots can be size 3 by default but they aren't always size 3.

The base buy price of a Fever Pot is 1,000. So, since a Fever Pot always has capacity 3 by default, if it is not blessed or sealed (pots can't be cursed), it can be purchased for 1,150 gitans or sold for 402 gitans. The game designers made many items have the same price tier so you couldn't perfectly identify items just by looking at their prices, but the only other insert-type pots in the same price tier are: Sale Pot, Presto Pot, Black Hole Pot, Sticky Pot, Unbreakable Pot, and Floramorph Pot.

If you find a shopkeeper, besides using price hints to help identify items, you can also sell all your unknown items to the shopkeeper then give him an Identify Scroll. You can reliably identify a large number of items with a single scroll this way.

If you must try to identify a Fever Pot via usage, narrow down the possible pots your unknown pot can be via insert/open type, size, and price (if known) first. Then insert a single item. Chose an item that is not fully identified, that you don't mind losing, and that is able to be both blessed and sealed. (Not all item types can have blessings/curses/seals. It doesn't matter what modifier the item has so long as it can have blessings and seals.) If the item doesn't become identified, or disappear, or change in any way, this is the set of pots you're down to:

• Fever Pot, Upgrade Pot, Degrade Pot, Lucky Pot, Unlucky Pot, Grilling Pot: these are all rare.
• Blessing Pot, Curse Pot, Exorcism Pot: these are all common-ish. Have you identified any of these already? You can rule out 2 of them right away because they would have changed the item's modifier status.
• Preservation Pot: super common. If you can take the item out again, it's not a Fever Pot.
• Ordinary Pot: super common.
• Unbreakable Pot, 4-2-8 Pot, Modder's Pot: uncommon.

Farming Fever Pots

There are four known ways with a reasonable probability of letting you farm a Fever Pot back to Nekomaneki Village. In order from requiring the most skill to requiring the least skill:

Playing Pitfall of Life: If you're a strong player, you can find Fever Pots much more frequently than usual in Pitfall of Life. You can't take items into Pitfall of Life, and while it's not the most difficult bonus dungeon by any stretch I wouldn't call it particularly easy, so farming items out is non-trivial. The goal floor starts at 25F which isn't so bad but becomes 99F after first victory. If you haven't beaten the dungeon yet, and you've found Fever Pots and a way to escape the dungeon, consider escaping, so you can replay the easier version of the dungeon to hopefully get more Fever Pots out again later. Else, you can play this dungeon as often as you want on the harder version and hope to both find 1+ Fever Pots and a means to escape, or beat the dungeon. (As a bonus, if you do manage to beat this dungeon, you get an incredibly rare and valuable True Knife, which you in turn may want to save up to replicate in a Fever Pot.)

Playing Bizarre Tower: Fever Pots can also be found more frequently than normal in Bizarre Tower, which is significantly easier to beat (and beat multiple times) than Pitfall of Life. If you save the pots mini-dungeons and monster house mini-dungeons for later in your overall run, you might have a better chance of finding a Fever Pot. (I've successfully farmed 2 Fever Pots in a single run using this technique.)

(Ab)using Pick-A-Choice shops in Inori Cave: One relatively easy and relatively reliable way to get Fever Pots is to grind in Inori Cave. You can take items into this dungeon, so take in very strong gear + emergency supplies as normal. Also take in at least 100K gitans, a 5-spot Blessing Pot, a 5-spot Preservation Pot filled with blessed Collection Scrolls, and multiple 5-spot Preservation Pots filled with Extraction Scrolls or Blank Scrolls upon which you will later write Extraction. (To the best of my knowledge, a Lucky Pot doesn't help with the Pick-A-Choice game.) Empirically, it seems that there is about a 1% chance of finding a Pick-A-Choice shop on any given floor of Inori Cave, so in a full 99F run, you may find one. Then, each time you play the game, use a blessed Collection Scroll to get the item out safely rather than choosing a path. Destroy it if it's not something you want and play again. You can throw the item up the left or right path to destroy it quickly, or if you haven't picked it up yet, you can also just pay the Pick-A-Chioce shopkeeper to reset the game, causing the item to disappear even though you moved its location via the Collection Scroll. Use your Blessing Pot to re-bless your unblessed Collection Scrolls, and use your Blank Scrolls as Extraction to extract the blessed Collection Scrolls from the Blessing Pot, and keep the cycle going. You can do this in multiple dungeons, and some dungeons have Pick-A-Choice shops more commonly than Inori Cave does, but I've had the best luck farming Fever Pots out of Inori Cave. It seems like you have a 2%-5% chance of getting a Fever Pot every time you play the Pick-A-Choice game in Inori Cave specifically, and a lower chance in Pick-A-Choice shops in other dungeons. (Perhaps the variety of items you can get from Inori Cave is smaller than the variety from other dungeons. OTOH, if you also want other rare and valuable items not just Fever Pots, Merchant's Hideout or Lost Well might be better choices.) This method is definitely a grind but if you take loads of Blank Scrolls in with you, you may be able to get multiple Fever Pots out in a single run. (And you can occasionally get a Blank Scroll, Blessing Scroll, or Blessing Pot from the Pick-A-Choice game, too, which can extend the number of times you can play.) You may also just randomly find a Fever Pot in Inori Cave, e.g. for sale in a regular shop. But per the gotchas above, beware of dirt-throwing monsters.

Button mashing the Lots game: This method requires the least skill. If you start with 100K and button mash for an hour on the lots game in the Hotel Nekomaneki basement, selling everything you don't want when your inventory gets full, you'll probably end up with one or more Fever Pots. This method seems particularly hard on your hardware, so it may not be worth the real-world cost!