Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Bizarre Tower

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	45F
Final Goal Floor	45F
Day / Night	Both
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	0
Pre-ID'd Items	All except Bracelets, Scrolls, and Staves
New Items	No
Shops	Normal (all 3 types)
Monster Houses	All types can occur, and pop-ups are possible; they are forced on some floors
NPCs	Shopkeepers + emergency NPCs only (confirm)
Spawn Rate	Normal (1 monster every 30 turns)
Winds of Kron	Normal (slow) -- 1@1700, 4@2000

Bizarre Tower (or "the Bizarre Tower") is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 where the player chooses the order in which they face 15 mini-dungeons, each of which has known, unique attributes. You can't take allies or items into the dungeon, nor can you request rescue, but you get to keep the items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon has both day and night elements in it, but time does not cycle in the normal way. The goal floor is 45F. Unlike most bonus dungeons, the goal floor does not change after first victory, so this dungeon does not get harder after you beat it for the first time.

Opinion: At least 2 players love this bonus dungeon. :^)

Gaining Access

You can't access the Bizarre Tower until you've unlocked it. The details of Tao's storyline / sidequest are not perfectly documented, but basically you must complete it before you can get access to this dungeon. At a high level, you must beat the Tower of Fortune first, then reach the top of the Tower of Fortune again with Tao alive in your party. You must also see the event related to Tao at Sparrow's Inn. It's not known if this must occur in a separate run or if it can occur in the same run where you eventually take Tao to the top of the Tower of Fortune, but in any case, you need to do both. Tao's side quest can be a bit confusing if you experience things in the wrong order, which can happen. At one point, there may be no obvious way to find Tao and thus no obvious way to advance the quest. But if you play and re-play the Tower of Fortune, trying to take Tao with you whenever you can, and talking with NPCs at rest areas along the way, especially at Sparrow's Inn, you'll eventually complete it. If you can't find Tao, make sure you've checked both the Beginner House in Inori Village (building 4) and the Tower of Fortune Entrance, as she appears in both places at different points in your game state progression.

There's apparently another gotcha that can interfere with unlocking this dungeon. There are at least two side quests that can trigger events at Sparrow's Inn -- the lost sparrow side quest and Tao's side quest -- and if you happen to have met the conditions for both of these events to trigger, the lost sparrow event will trigger and will block the event related to Tao. If this happens, it's not a big deal, because the lost sparrow quest will now be completed and never needs to be or can be done again, so just return to Sparrow's Inn under the same conditions to trigger the event related to Tao's side quest. If your primary objective is to trigger the event related to Tao, you can avoid escorting the lost sparrow on that run and look for him on a future run, but be aware that completing the lost sparrow quest is very helpful. Once you've rescued the lost sparrow, any time after that (or at least on any future run), if you're ever critically wounded, the formerly-lost sparrow will come to you and offer to heal you to max HP (and IIRC he also restores strength to max and removes any status ailments) for 500 gitans. The formerly-lost sparrow can't reach you in every dungeon, but he can reach you in many dungeons (including the Bizarre Tower), and he'll only offer once per run the first time your HP goes red (confirm). If you don't have enough money, he'll apologize profusely that he's not allowed by the Sparrow code to help you for free and then leave you to die. :^) In any case, the point is, if you meet the conditions for both of these events to occur at Sparrow's Inn on your current run, only the lost-sparrow-completion event will occur on that particular run.

Once you've completed Tao's side quest, return to the Tower of Fortune Entrance, and there will now be a raccoon (tanuki?) on the right side near the Tower of the Future's entrance. Speak with this raccoon to access and play the Bizarre Tower.

Unique Features

This dungeon is definitely unique. The game attempts to teach or remind you how this dungeon works three times:

1. The raccoon / tanuki explains how the Bizarre Tower works, via a series of text boxes only, the first time you speak to him, then never again.
2. He explains basically the same material again, but this time with more detail and visual aids, the first time you play the dungeon. (Confirm: can you see this explanation every time you try to play this dungeon, or is it also only available the first time you play?)
3. There is also the usual reminder one-line description of the dungeon on the "begin dungeon confirmation" screen

If you missed or forgot #1 or #2 above, fear not, you can read all about how this unusual dungeon works here. But be advised that #3 above is buggy or at least confusing/misleading. The text displayed is, "Note: Reach the Floor 15 stairs, which lead to a special floor". There does not appear to be anything special about the exit stairs on 15F, or anything special about floor 15F at all. What it's probably trying to say is that you need to beat the 15th mini-dungeon to win and thus earn a special reward. (Is there something special about 15F after all? As always, if anyone reading this page knows any more secrets about anything in this game, please update the wiki!)

You begin this dungeon in a "launch room" (rest area) with 15 staircases arranged in a grid of 3 rows of 5 staircases each, which are in effect 15 mini-dungeons with different attributes. The attributes of each mini-dungeon are fixed, but you choose the order in which you play them. Each time you beat a mini-dungeon, you return to the launch room, that mini-dungeon's staircase is now gone, and you must choose to play any other mini-dungeon that you haven't already beaten on this run. If you beat all 15 mini-dungeons, you don't return to the launch room but are instead returned to the Tower of Fortune Entrance for a cutscene with the raccoon/tanuki you spoke with to launch this dungeon, then you're returned to Nekomaneki Village with a victory as normal.

In reading order, the mini-dungeons are:

1. 1 floor where the only pre-placed items are swords and shields
2. 3 floors where the only pre-placed items are swords and shields
3. 3 floors where the only pre-placed items are grasses
4. 1 floor where the only pre-placed items are scrolls
5. 3 floors where the only pre-placed items are scrolls
6. 1 floor where the only pre-placed items are pots
7. 3 floors where the only pre-placed items are pots
8. 4 floors where the only pre-placed items are gitan bags
9. 2 floors where HP regeneration is disabled and there are lots of traps
10. 4 floors where HP regeneration is disabled and there are lots of traps
11. 3 floors at night (all the other mini-dungeons are daytime-only)
12. 2 floors with some kind of store on every floor
13. 5 floors with lots of Mixer family monsters
14. 3 floors with some kind of monster house on every floor
15. 7 floors with some kind of monster house on every floor

The difficulty curve/ramp for this dungeon appears to be the same as baseline for other bonus dungeons. E.g. it seems to ramp up at the same pace as (say) Underground Manor. Note that the mini-dungeon attributes are independent of the difficulty ramp. E.g., mini-dungeon #15 will have very different monsters and items (and maybe traps too) if you choose it first as opposed to choosing it last.

This dungeon seems more generous with pre-placed items than the average bonus dungeon. Each floor seems to have roughly 5-8 pre-placed items. Pre-placed items seem to ramp up at roughly the same rate as they do in other dungeons as well, modulo the fact that they may be constrained by mini-dungeon constraints. New items do not appear in this dungeon.

Both day and night appear in this dungeon, but they don't cycle like they normally do. Instead, 14 of the mini-dungeons are daytime-only, and 1 is nighttime-only. There doesn't appear to be any way to force day and night to switch (e.g. I've never found a Night-Day Scroll, Blank Scroll, or Time Switch Trap). However, you can find torches, peaches, and probably other items that are relevant to night time play in the daytime-only mini-dungeons. (Usually, dungeons that are daytime-only have no items that are only used at night or only used to control the flow of day and night.)

Unlike most bonus dungeons, this dungeon only has one level of difficulty, and after beating it for the first time, the difficulty / goal floor does not increase. You can also win expert badges on your first run! (This happened to the original author of this wiki page, so it's definitely possible.)

I have never yet seen a store or monster house outside of the mini-dungeons that explicitly compel them, though it is possible to create a monster house with a Monster House Scroll. More testing would be needed to determine if monster houses and shops can be found randomly outside of the mini-dungeons that compel them. However, you can find Mixer family monsters at their "normal" floors even if you're not in mini-dungeon #13. (#13 seems to override a portion of normal monster randomness with Mixer family monsters, so theoretically, if #13 overlapped with floors in which Mixer family monsters normally appeared, you'd see an exceptionally high rate of them.)

In mini-dungeon #12, you can definitely get regular shops or VIP/Elite shops. I have never yet seen a Pick-A-Choice shop but the description and the Japanese wiki imply they can appear.

Wandering NPCs do not appear in this dungeon, but both emergency NPCs do. If you ever fall critically low on HP, the formerly-lost sparrow will warp to your side and offer to rescue you in this dungeon, provided you've already completed his side quest once. Also, if you saved the young woman more recently than she saved you, she will appear to revive you once in this dungeon. (But unlike most things in Shiren 5, the side quest involving the young woman and her younger brother can be completed multiple times. It's like a toggle switch. First you rescue her, then she rescues you, then you must rescue her again, etc.. The only problem is, wandering NPCs do not appear in this dungeon, so you can never find her to rescue her and thus reset your own future rescue in this dungeon. If this happens, you can play some other dungeon -- Lost Well maybe? -- and complete their side quest, then the toggle is reset and you have a free revive waiting for you, which can be redeemed in this dungeon.)

Final Reward

Every time you beat this dungeon, you receive a Sturdy Hammer. This appears to be the only way to acquire this item in the game aside from trading with other players. The Sturdy Hammer destroys traps and items on the ground without ever breaking, and can be synthesized onto another sword as the "Trap Killing" rune to do the same thing.

Expert Badges

1. You conquered a dungeon without eating any food!
2. You conquered a dungeon without using any grass!
3. You conquered a dungeon without using any scrolls!
4. You conquered a dungeon without using any staves!
5. You conquered a dungeon without using any talismans!
6. You conquered a dungeon without using any pots!
7. You conquered a dungeon without collapsing even once!
8. You conquered a dungeon without synthesizing!

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
• https://seesaawiki.jp/w/shiren5/d/%b0%db%bc%a1%b8%b5%a4%ce%c5%e3 (Japanese wiki page for this location)