Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Sleeping Lands

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	29F
Final Goal Floor	50F
Day / Night	Night
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	3
Pre-ID'd Items	All except swords, shields, bracelets
New Items	No
Shops	Normal (all 3 types)
Monster Houses	Normal (with pop-ups)
NPCs	Shopkeepers only
Spawn Rate	Normal
Winds of Kron	Normal (slow)

Sleeping Lands is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 focusing on night. This is the only dungeon in the game that features no daylight at all. You cannot bring items or allies into the dungeon, but you can request rescue up to 3 times, and you do keep the items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is nighttime only and the goal floor is initially 29F. After first victory, the goal floor becomes 50F and stays there permanently.

Gaining Access

This bonus dungeon is available from the Dungeon Center in Nekomaneki Village. Access is not restricted; you can play as soon as you can reach the Dungeon Center.

Unique Features

It's hard to be precise about all the differences because this dungeon plays very differently from others. In particular, note that it's harder to find items (at least pre-placed items) at night than it is during the day, so it's possible that (e.g.) the dungeon is very generous with all sorts of useful items, but they seem to be scarce or non-existent because it's so hard to find them in the dark. In any case, here are some obvious differences between this dungeon and a "normal" baseline dungeon:

• Permanent night.
• You start with a Fine Torch and a Large Onigiri.
  • I believe you always start with a Large Onigiri in every dungeon, and I believe you always start with a Fine Torch in every dungeon that has nighttime elements. You may need to unlock something trivial in the starting villages to get these starting items.
• The item distribution appears skewed towards items that help at night, such as Replenish Scrolls and Torches being more common.
• There don't appear to be any new items.
• Night Ward bracelet doesn't seem to appear either. Given it's one of the rare rewards for an Inori Cave wish, it's not surprising that it doesn't appear here, but it could radically change your options for facing this dungeon if it is available.
• Regular shops + VIP/Elite shops are available. No confirmed siting of a Pick-A-Choice shop yet, but the Japanese wiki says they can appear.
• There are no other NPCs besides shopkeepers.
• Most items are pre-identified but bracelets are not. (Swords and shields are presumably not fully identified either, but this needs confirmation.)

Final Reward

Every time you beat this dungeon, you get a Midnight Shield. This shield reduces damage from nighttime monsters but increases damage from daytime monsters. It's on the rarer side, but it can also be found in some other places, such as from Pick-A-Choice shops in dungeons such as Lost Well (IIRC).

Farming Opportunities

It's harder to find items at night than during the day, so this isn't the greatest place to try farming things. It is one good destination to find Midnight Shields, but OTOH, you can also find these along with other rare items by using (abusing?) Pick-A-Choice shops in other dungeons such as Inori Cave and Lost Well that let you take items in. (Short version: use blessed Collection Scrolls to guarantee getting the item out of the Pick-A-Choice shop, and use Blank/Extraction Scrolls and a Blessing Pot to re-bless your Collection Scrolls before reading them a 2nd time.)

Strategies

The most important thing to do by far is to unlock all your nighttime abilities, and in particular, to get Stairlight. Some abilities are hidden and tricky to unlock. [TODO: link to a page about nighttime abilities.]

Once you have a healthy set of abilities to choose from, configure them at the night abilities desk in Hotel Nekomaneki. There is no one perfect set of abilities to use, but it is strongly recommended to have Stairlight as exactly one of them. This external forum post discusses strong night ability configurations. (Aside from having 1 instance of Stairlight, having 1 instance of Pot Party is also highly recommended, as it can really help for those times when you suddenly find yourself surrounded by monsters, e.g. in a surprise monster house or when you start the floor in a monster house. As for the other 6 night abilities, there are many combinations that can work.)

The easiest strategy to beat this dungeon by far is to simply use Stairlight as soon as you can safely do so on a new floor and make a beeline for the exit, killing night monsters along the way if they block your way forward and you can't safely dodge around them or deal with them using items. This isn't particular satisfying but it works. If you use your abilities only conservatively, you can virtually always make it to the exit without ever needing to face a monster without abilities, even when the exit is at the far end diagonally away from your starting position.

It's probably best to use your largest and best torches first, as torches in general are relatively common, and using your best torch helps you find more items and thus more torches. Keep several more torches than you might otherwise be tempted to keep, because your torch can be extinguished by various traps such as the Rust Trap and Strip Trap. Having a larger area of view also really helps prevent being surprised by monsters, and also helps you avoid making mistakes as monsters come closer to you. Hasted monsters can be particularly dangerous so having a larger field of view can help you see them coming and prepare appropriately. Generally speaking, you should never use a plain torch, and if your torch has burned down to only show you 1 space around you, change it out for a better torch, because it's too easy to be surprised by monsters or make fatal mistakes with such limited visibility. (If you're low on Super Torches, maybe save 1 to deal with the last 3-5 floors of the dungeon, as those are likely to be the most dangerous. Or you can try to plan more carefully for when particularly dangerous monsters are coming up and save your best torches for those floors. See the Monsters section below for details.)

You won't find items as easily as you do in daytime dungeons, as you won't be able to see the entire contents of rooms that you enter. Zigzag along your route to see more of the floor and get a few items that way. This works even better if you use a Super Torch. It's generally not a good idea to move away from the stairs to search rooms for more items, as there are very few items that can really make a difference during nighttime play, and, the longer you stay on a floor, the more chance you have of running out of abilities, and the more chance that you'll run into an uber monster that has leveled up 10 times before meeting you and thus can survive some of your first strike abilities.

The above being said, there are a few items that can make a big difference:

• Midnight Shield: Even though this is the dungeon's reward item, you can also find them in the dungeon too, such as for sale at shops. This can make a big difference, and it also resonates to make you even more evasive when you equip a torch (and you should basically always have a torch equipped in this dungeon, never a weapon). If the only way you can get this is to risk stealing it from a shop, look for a safe way to steal it.
• Monster Detector bracelet: Having the ability to see monsters (and shopkeepers!) from a distance makes a huge difference in any dungeon, but doubly so at night. I haven't yet found a Monster Detector bracelet in this dungeon, but I have found a Monsterphobic bracelet which is almost as good, and it radically simplified this dungeon. Monsterphobic seems to work a bit differently during the night than it does during the day; at night, it does 10 damage to you if a monster is in your torchlight, even if you're not in the same room as the monster. (Or maybe the rule is, if the monster is in light, you take damage?) It would help if the Monsterphobic bracelet is not cursed but even if it is, it might be worth wearing and stealing if necessary. Likewise a Scout Bracelet would be even better.
• Swap Staff / Knockback Staff: These are a little bit helpful against day monsters but much more helpful against night monsters. If you're running low on night abilities, or you're not 100% certain you can kill your monster opponent in a single ability shot (e.g. it might have leveled up a ton before you met it, and there's no way to tell this visually), consider just knocking it away, and maybe it will wander away from you rather than making a beeline back to attack you. Likewise with Swap, if you're using a Super Torch in particular, you can often swap places with a monster several spaces away in the general direction of the stairs, and odds are you'll be able to escape that monster rather than having to use an ability against it.
• Swords: You should basically never use a sword in this dungeon. Always equip a torch. So, as tempting as it is to go find out what that sword on the ground is, it's probably not worth the time or risk to explore it, and you won't even have a good opportunity to use it unless you farm it out of the dungeon. So far, I have not found any particularly rare or valuable swords in this dungeon, so there's no reason to try to farm them out either.

Starvation can be a problem, but provided you take reasonable precautions this likely won't end your run. Keep Onigiri in jars until you're ready to eat them, to avoid having them ruined by a random trap. Also, as you'll likely be exiting levels faster than normal, so keep in mind that Peaches will ripen more quickly than you're used to; check on them regularly and eat them or store them when they become Juicy. Between this and the occasionally grasses you'll find and the shops that may also sell food items, you should be fine.

Pay attention to the log messages! Even if you can't see it or know where it's happening, you can tell that (e.g.) one instance of a specific type of monster is leveling up a lot. If you see a monster of this type, be extra careful with it. Also, it's generally a good idea to always play Shiren 5 with the volume turned on, as this can give you clues about what monsters are doing in other parts of the dungeon (e.g. beating on doors) that don't appear in the log messages, which is extra important in a location such as Sleeping Lands where you can't see very much.

One of the most deadly things about this dungeon is game lag. Your vision range is much lower than normal, meaning you'll have have much less chance to react to things, and lag can often cause you to make the wrong move. Lag is especially deadly if you like to play with the volume turned off, as it's much harder to tell when all the other things going on on the floor are done without sound. So, play with sound on and play slowly. Don't run down corridors or across "empty" rooms. Running in general can be deadly in this dungeon.

I have never tried a more aggressive approach to killing more monsters and finding more items in this dungeon. If anyone has tips for how to make such an approach work, please update this wiki.

Expert Badges

Expert badges are not available for this dungeon.

Monsters

The types of monsters that can appear in this dungeon have not yet been replicated to this wiki. Here are good external resources:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1h9IRPQPLg9g7aE48wlyw8IudHIStawK4mR3kuggto/edit?usp=sharing
• http://seesaawiki.jp/w/shiren5/d/%cc%b2%a4%ea%a4%ce%c2%e7%c3%cf (Japanese wiki page for this location)

Open Questions

• Is it possible to find a Night Ward in this dungeon, such that you could take a more aggressive approach against the monsters? It seems unlikely that they'd allow such a rare item to appear randomly, but it also seems a shame to not have the opportunity to try to use this item in this particular dungeon. What about a new item bracelet with Night Ward ability on it? Can new items appear in this dungeon? It seems like the answer to both is no, but given you see less items per run than you would in any daytime dungeon, maybe try a larger sample of runs before you conclude that these items can't be found here.