Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Froggo's Fury

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	29F
Final Goal Floor	50F
Day / Night	Day
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	3
Pre-ID'd Items	All except swords, shields
New Items	No
Shops	All 3 types, much more common than usual (~3x)
Monster Houses	Normal
NPCs	Shopkeepers only
Spawn Rate	Normal
Winds of Kron	Normal (slow) (Per JP wiki: 1@1700, 4@2000)

Froggo's Fury is a a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 focusing on the Dirk of Debts and the Pauper's Plank. (Because let's face it: if this dungeon didn't exist, you might never try them out!) You can't take items, Gitan, or allies into the dungeon, but you can request rescue up to 3 times and you do keep any items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is daytime only and the initial goal floor is 29 F. After beating the dungeon for the first time, the goal floor becomes 50 F and stays at 50 F permanently.

Gaining Access

You can play Froggo's Fury 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

• Item distribution is very different from Tower of Fortune or other more "normal" dungeons. Here are some of the ways:
  • The only sword that can ever appear is the Dirk of Debts (except for the dungeon's final reward)
  • The only shield can can ever appear is the Pauper's Plank
  • The only pots that can ever appear are Sale Pots and Preservation Pots
    • And only Sale Pots are ever pre-placed on the floor
  • Other item types such as grasses, scrolls, and talismans may also draw from a smaller pool than normal but it's less obvious if this is true
  • Expensive but bad bracelets seem more common than usual
    • E.g. I found 2 Inacc. Bracelets on 1F in my first run
  • I never saw a new item in this dungeon so I assume they cannot appear here.
• IIRC all items except swords and shields are identified for you
• Shops are more common than usual—about as common as they are in Merchant's Hideout
  • Rough estimate is about 1 shop of some kind every 5 floors
  • Pick-A-Choice shops are way more common than usual. I averaged finding 1 about every 10 floors across ~100 floors of play.
  • Elite / secret / VIP shops can also appear
• Difficulty ramp is slower than usual
  • I virtually never felt in danger on any floor across any run

Final Reward

Every time you beat the dungeon, you're given a Frangible Edge. This is basically tied with Gorger's Manor as the single worst reward item of any dungeon that gives a reward item. I'm not sure which is worse. You can take items into Gorger's Manor, so you can very reliably get its near-worthless reward item, but you can't take items into Froggo's Fury, so you might have to try hard to get its near-worthless reward item. The Frangible Edge is the ultimate / level 8 form (L8) of the Glass Dirk. It does have the highest innate power value of any sword in the game, but it can break if used. Getting this item in its L8 form apparently doesn't even give you the L1-L7 forms of the Glass Dirk in your Item Book, which would have had some value and thus it would have made sense as a reward item, but at least you can achieve this using the Level 8 Equipment Easy Trick. (A certain wandering NPC may also be able to upgrade the rank of swords and shields, and, you may be able to use Upgrade Pots / Degrade Pots to rank up / down swords and shields.)

Farming Opportunities

If by chance the item(s) you want are Dirks of Debt, Pauper's Planks, and/or Sale Pots, you've come to the right place. Otherwise, this isn't a great place to try to farm because (a) the item variety is lower than usual so there's less stuff to try to get and (b) it's harder to find ways to escape out of the dungeon, so you may be forced to try to win the run in order to farm things out (but beating this bonus dungeon is easier than beating most other bonus dungeons). Gitan are not as tight here as the description leads you to believe, but other locations (e.g. Merchant's Hideout) are much better for farming Gitan.

The closest thing to a farming opportunity might be the fact that shops of all types are much more common here than in most dungeons. E.g., it might be interesting to see what kinds of things you could get out of a Pick-A-Choice shop in this dungeon. You wouldn't be able to radically abuse a Pick-A-Choice shop though (e.g. with loads of Collection Scrolls, Blank Scrolls, and a Blessing Pot), so at most you'd be able to get a few items out of any given Pick-A-Choice shop. My working theory is that Pick-A-Choice shops draw from the same pool of items as VIP shops, and VIP shops also appear more commonly than usual, so at least you could shop at VIP shops more easily here than in most dungeons (and it's probably not worth extraordinary effort to test Pick-A-Choice shops explicitly). But again, item variety isn't great. Across ~100 floors of gameplay, I found 1 Angel Seed, 2 catstones, and nothing else of note.

Strategies

Though the hint before you start the dungeon says that "Gitan will be tight", I was never tight on Gitan in any meaningful way, across any of my runs. My normal technique is to explore every room and get every pre-placed item possible, and to fight the monsters I find as I go, then leave the floor as quickly as I can when I know there are no more pre-placed items to find. (Note: this is not a suggestion that everyone should play this way, as I know other experts do not do this and for good reasons, I'm just stating this methodology to explain how this worked out for Gitan gain for me.) In this dungeon, I modulated my normal technique a bit to let sleeping monsters stay sleeping, even knowing they would sometimes wake up and follow me as I left the room. Also, given this dungeon was shorter than the usual 99 F (both in its easier form and in its harder form), I made more of an effort to use my consumables more quickly than I might otherwise do so. I also of course made use of Sale Pots and shops to sell anything I didn't need, especially durables such as duplicate swords, duplicate shields, and not-super-helpful bracelets. And, I used Pick-A-Choice shops to the greatest extent possible. After clearing the floor, instead of using the normal stairs, I would play the Pick-A-Choice shop as often as I could until I fell. I would occasionally buy items out of normal and VIP shops. All this being said, I was never in danger with money, I pretty consistently gained cash over time, beating the 29 F version of the dungeon with nearly 20K Gitan remaining, and beating the 50 F version of the dungeon with nearly 90K Gitan remaining. This isn't to say you can spend freely and not be careful with your money, but it looks like I could have bought that pair of catstones I found once in a VIP shop and been fine.

I did not attempt to nail down the exact formula of Gitan loss per Dirk of Debts hit or per Pauper's Plank block. I think the formula is (30 Gitans x the item's level) per hit either way, but this definitely needs confirmation. If someone figures out the exact formula, please edit this wiki to correct it! (Also note: the items' descriptions state that their power levels drop to zero if you ever run out of Gitan.)

I made heavy use of Sale Pots of course, but even so, I often accumulated more Sale Pots than I could use, so ended up selling many completely unused Sale Pots to shops. Once you start using it, you should finish using it rather than sell it partially used (because IIRC you don't get the full value of Gitans in it that you try to sell—needs confirmation), and of course, you should never use it on a floor that has a shop—just sell to the shop instead and keep the leftover spots in your Sale Pot for future floors that don't have shops. Durables usually sell for higher prices than consumables, and you'll have plenty of extra Dirks of Debt and Pauper's Planks to sell, and virtually no opportunity to use them for anything except to sell them. There are no Synthesis Pots in this dungeon, so you can't synthesize their extra upgrade values (if any) onto your main equipment, and there are apparently only two floors that ever have Mixer monsters, 30 F and 50 F. (See Monsters below for details.) So, you might want to equip a few copies of swords and shields when you first find them, hoping to find one with a good upgrade value and hoping not to get hit with one that's cursed, then just sell all the others you find. You'll also find lots of mediocre and bad bracelets to sell. If you run out of those to sell, stacks of talismans can sell for a lot, but OTOH, they are useful consumables and they can grow (merge) over time as you find similar stacks. Staves can sell for a better price and you won't be able to recharge them, so maybe use them up then sell them when they have zero or just a few charges left if you're full on inventory and need to sell something. (BTW, inserting a sealed Gitan bag into a Sale Pot leaves it unchanged, but inserting other cursed or sealed items converts them into Gitans like normal.)

You can beat the first 2-3 floors pretty easily without using a sword and shield, and the experience you might gain for your equipment is negligible. So, might as well just fight with nothing equipped for those floors to avoid wasting Gitans and to build up your nest egg a bit. Remember that you can walk on top of Gitan bags without picking them up, then swap items with an item in your inventory to put the Gitan bag into your inventory rather than putting the Gitans into your wallet. Just don't auto-sort your inventory or those Gitan bags will be put into your wallet. This lets you collect all the money you find on earlier floors w/o putting it into your wallet, and thus never be at risk for you having your Gitan stolen by Froggos, and since you don't have a Dirk of Debts or Pauper's Plank equipped, you don't really need the money in your wallet anyway. By 4F if you haven't already done so, might as well auto-sort your inventory and equip both items.

Note that it's best to equip either both items or neither, because with both equipped, there's a nice resonance that causes monsters to drop giten more frequently, which is very helpful to sustain using this equipment. So, if you only have one of them so far, and you're not in a lot of danger yet, might as well just not equip either one until you get both.

I haven't found a Bunch Bracelet in this dungeon yet. If it's blocked from appearing, that seems like a wasted opportunity, because it could really, really help in a dungeon where you can only find 1 type of sword. Or maybe the developers tested it out for a bit and found that it broke the gameplay balance they were going for. In any case, if you find one, this dungeon would be an excellent place to try using it. The Bunch Bracelet increases the attack power of your equipped sword for every other sword of the same type you have in main inventory.

Make an extra effort to kill all Froggo monsters without giving them any chance to steal Gitan from you. You won't be able to find a Safe Shield or synthesize it onto your main equipment anyway, so you will be at greater risk of having your Gitans "licked" (stolen). But you'll have plenty of chances to stop them in other ways, such as Sleep Talismans, Slow Talismans, Seal Staves, Paralysis Staves, etc.. A Paralysis Staff isn't as safe as putting them to sleep, but it's better than nothing. Froggos seem to have about a 1/3rd chance of "licking your Gitans" on any given turn, so it's not the worst thing in the world if you have to fight them hand-to-hand. But the consequences of having Gitan stolen in this dungeon are worse than usual, because you need to not run out of Gitan in order for your equipment to keep functioning. (If you are "licked", you lose Gitan, and you lose the opportunity to gain Gitan from that monster, and you may feel the need to go chase after them to get your stolen Gitan back, which costs a lot of time (and lets more monsters spawn), and it's a PITA to track them down if you don't have Monster Detector or the equivalent, and trying to chase them down also means you have a greater chance of starvation. All in all, it's way, way better to use some of your consumables to try to guarantee that you will gain Gitan rather than lose Gitan/time/food. (I once found an Electric Staff and 2 Froggos dancing around a single Gitan bag. It took 2 charges of the Electric Staff to kill them both, but it was well worth it to gain 3 Gitan bags quickly.)

Since you'll only really be able to use Mixer monsters on 30 F (there's not much point trying to use them on 50 F given that's the last floor of the harder version of this dungeon), plan out and save up some items that you can mix on 30 F. E.g. there are plenty of grasses you might want as runes, and you'll only have one floor to use them on. Even if the grass is unknown, there's a good chance it will make a good rune on sword or shield or both, and turning it into a rune identifies it in your Item Book. It doesn't hurt to save up a bunch of food to make sure you can stay longer on 30 F to let more Mixers spawn too. (It's not clear how best to leverage the three healing grasses and Life Grass. I used to always prioritize turning them into runes, but the higher max HP value from using those as runes may slow down your HP heal rate, so I'm no longer 100% convinced that using them as runes is always best. If someone has brilliant info on this, please update the wiki to post your insight. TODO: confirm if it's your experience level or your max HP level or both that affect your HP heal rate.)

Lastly, what should you do about sealed Gitan bags? In other dungeons, I'd just leave them and forget about them. Here, it's worth carrying them around a bit at least so long as you have extra inventory space to see if you can ever unseal them. Plus, if you're making more of an effort to use your consumables, you should have space for a hefty sealed Gitan bag or two. (Confirm: IIRC, a sealed Gitan bag only does 2 HP of damage so doesn't make a good projectile. Confirm: IIRC, Gitan bags are terrible projectiles against Froggos anyway; I think they might heal Froggos.)

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/%a5%ac%a5%de%a5%e9%a4%ce%b5%d5%bd%b1 (This is probably the Japanese wiki page for this location)

Open Questions

• What is the exact formula of gold usage for each hit on a monster, and for each monster's hit on you? Does it change as your equipment levels up?