Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Destiny's Descent

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	99F
Final Goal Floor	99F
Day / Night	Both
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	3
Pre-ID'd Items	None
New Items	No
Shops	Normal (all 3 types)
Monster Houses	Normal, pop-ups possible (but not on 1F or 2F?)
NPCs	Shopkeepers only
Spawn Rate	Normal (1 monster per 30 turns @ day, 1 per 20 turns @ night)
Winds of Kron	Accelerated—1@1200, 4@1500

Destiny's Descent is the ultimate, most difficult dungeon in Shiren 5. It is so difficult that you need to complete multiple other dungeons and finish a pretty lengthy, grindy quest just to unlock access to it. It's also one of the few dungeons that forces you to experience the full difficulty of day and night cycles, as it has both day and night and doesn't let you take items in, though it may be possible to find time controlling items within the dungeon itself. (See the Strategies section for a comparison of night across multiple dungeons.) If you're looking for the most challenging daytime-only dungeon, try Primordial Chasm instead. Here, nothing is pre-identified, and item distribution is relatively wide even on early floors. You can't take items, gitan, or allies into the dungeon, but you do keep items on hand if you win or escape and you can request rescue up to 3 times if needed. The goal floor starts at 99F and stays there permanently [TODO: confirm this].

Gaining Access

Access to this dungeon is locked. You must first beat the Tower of Fortune, collect all 7 different colors of catstones, beat Inori Cave with the 7 differently-colored catstones in your possession, then wish to play a tougher dungeon. When you do, you get a cutscene of a new staircase opening up, leading down from the middle of the Tower of Fortune Entrance location, and you can never wish to play a tougher dungeon again.

After this, you can launch Destiny's Descent whenever you want from the new staircase in the middle of the Tower of Fortune Entrance.

Unique Features

• Easily the most difficult dungeon.
• One of thew few dungeons that forces you to experience both day and night cycles, because it has day/night cycles and doesn't let you take items in.
• Virtually nothing is pre-identified except a handful of always identified items.
• There seems to be a wider variety of items available on earlier floors than baseline, though it's hard to say for sure.
• Items seem to have a higher likelihood to be cursed or sealed than baseline, though it's hard to say for sure.
• Monster distribution seems roughly in line with baseline, perhaps a bit harder, but there are definitely no Mixer monsters available during the day.

Final Reward

[TODO: find this and document it.]

Farming Opportunities

As this is the most difficult dungeon in the game, and as you can't take items in, and as there are no obvious great items that appear particularly early or easily, this is the single worst place to attempt farming.

Strategies

This is the most challenging dungeon in the game. If you haven't already done so, learn everything you can from others strategy pages and location pages on this wiki (and from every source you can find) before attempting this dungeon. Be an expert player before trying this dungeon.

This is one of the few dungeons in the game that forces you to experience the full difficulty of day and night cycles. Multiple dungeons with day/night cycles allow you to take items in, so you can take in items that allow you to control the flow of time, such as a Time Stop Bracelet. Sleeping Lands is night-only, but it's pretty easy to race through night floors with a strong set of night abilities, and since there is no day time, you can race through the entire dungeon without much difficulty. Old Road has day/night cycles but allows you to pass turns quickly without burning food, so you can bypass day and/or night fairly easily if so desired. Bizarre Tower has both day and night sections but time doesn't cycle (each section is one or the other) so it's much easier to deal with. Heavenly Lake is the closest to this dungeon in that it has normal day/night cycles and also doesn't let you take items in, but it's a much easier dungeon. But for this dungeon, you'll need to master both day and night and be able to handle them changing on a normal cycle without the ability to control it. (Stock time control items/traps -- but definitely not new items -- can probably appear in this dungeon [CONFIRM], but even if so, they don't appear commonly enough to give you regular, meaningful control over the flow of time. Also, if you're looking for the most challenging dungeon that doesn't have nighttime, try Primordial Chasm.)

If you haven't already done so, unlock all night abilities and configure a set of 8 strong abilities. Opinions differ on what the "perfect" set of night abilities should be. (Here's one external link that discusses it.) Some possibilities include:

• 1x Pot Party -- can save your life when surrounded, and especially useful for great hall monster houses
• 1x Stairlight -- to have a hope of beating this dungeon, you'll need to do a lot of rushing to the exit, and this really helps
• maybe multiple copies of Concussive Cannon -- this can help clear a long straight path, such as found on many dungeon layouts (e.g. the C. H. U. N. S. O. F. T. floors); however, it doesn't kill more powerful monsters in one shot, making it less useful on deeper floors
• maybe multiple copies of Kaboom Bullet -- almost always kills one monster, even at a distance
• maybe Transmogrification -- always turns the monster into an item, but without giving you experience -- guaranteed kill + item, and experience isn't very helpful beyond a certain level/depth
• maybe Three Screams -- instantly kills up to 3 monsters in front of you, which can save your life when surrounded, even in hallways
• maybe Mine! Mine! Mine!

The monsters seem to be about the same difficulty at the same depths as other difficult dungeons, but this dungeon may be a bit less generous in terms of drops. E.g., you will often get horrible bracelets, Rage Grasses, cursed gitan bags, and other less useful items on early floors. (At least the floors have a decent number of pre-placed items.)

Strong Shiren players should be able to stay ahead of the power curve for the first 25 floors or so. Use this relative respite to aggressively identify items. If you can handle burning the food, stay longer on floors with item-producing monsters such as Grass Boys and Zaloklefts to collect more useful items. Another great time to stay longer on a floor is when you have the ability to dodge e.g. with a Dodger Pot and can farm unlimited arrows from Cart monsters. Likewise, farm arrows from traps when you find them by throwing items on them, especially rocks as you only need to stand 3 spaces away from the trap to throw a rock onto it. Take more risks with theft than you might ordinarily take; odds are likely against you winning the run without stealing the shopkeepers items, so you might as well try to steal. Remember to prepare your escape as well as you can, sell everything to get cash, then steal back everything you want before making your escape attempt.

Mixers only appear at night in this dungeon. If you want to do any mixing, look up what monsters appear at what depths in this dungeon and adjust your dive speed accordingly to maximize the overlap between night time and the floors that have Mixers. (E.g. level 1 Dark Mixers appear on 14F - 16F only at night.) Mixing opportunities are so limited it may be worthwhile to burn an entire day on a single floor just to experience night on that floor multiple times and thus harvest more Mixers. Definitely confirm this before relying on it, but IIRC, when day/night changes, all monsters drop the items they would have dropped if you had killed them, so it should be safe to mix with Dark Mixers even if it's close to break of day.

In dungeons with night such as this one, it may be preferable to steal at night. A Super Torch allows you to see up to 3 spaces ahead of you in corridors, which makes evading shopkeepers easier. Having a weapon equipped when you're trying to steal is kind of pointless, so if you can spare a powerful torch and if you don't have remote monster detection, you should always equip the powerful torch before starting your heist attempt. However, there is a foible with torch implementation that makes them slightly less useful during the day, which is that you do not gain vision range from the torch when you're standing in a lit room. So, torches work as expected in hallways and in dark rooms, but if you're in a lit room during the day, you won't be able to see down a hallway even with a torch equipped. (If appropriate, you can of course try firing a projectile or shooting a staff bolt down said corridor.) This benefit aside, the downside of stealing at night is that you can't see the full contents of large rooms. It is unknown what happens if day/night switches while you're in heist mode. Regardless, since there are plenty of other times you might want to spend more time on a floor (e.g. for Mixers or item/arrow farming), it's probably best to not wait for day/night to change before attempting a heist.

Beyond 25F, here's a theoretically simple 3-step winning strategy:

1. Find a Monster Detector / Monsterphobic bracelet. Unfortunately, these are not as common as in other dungeons.
2. Somehow survive during the day. If necessary, lock yourself up in a room using a Fort. or Paralysis Staff. Just make sure you're not stopping on a floor with high-tier dragons/pigs/kappas. Of course, this is not possible when walls are replaced with chasms.
3. Dive as quickly as you can during the night. Due to the previous point's limitations, speed up or slow down depending on which floors you absolutely want to avoid during the day.

There is no single obvious "best" set of equipment in Shiren 5. Cases can be made for several equipment choices, and different equipment might be optimal in different locations/situations. You obviously won't get your full pick of any possible equipment you might want in any given run of Destiny's Descent anyway, and you'll be forced to make due with what you can find most of the time. But you will get to choose between different equipment from time to time, so it's important to use these opportunities wisely. A case could be made for trying to get to a Red Sword / Red Shield pair, as it's the strongest set that resonates to let you equip two bracelets. But at least one expert player recommends using gitan-eating equipment (Dirk of Debts / Pauper's Plank) as your base equipment. This equipment spends your gitan on each hit taken/dealt to increase the equipment's power rating, but if you run out of gitan, the power of this equipment drops to zero. Because of this, many players may have written off gitan-eating equipment as effectively useless and never experimented with it out, either as a rune or as base equipment. But if you can ensure you don't run out of funds, the power increase is substantial and can make a big difference in your run. It's helpful to amass ~10K gitan as a buffer before switching to this equipment, and of course it's helpful to pull off a few heists (selling everything you own first to maximize the value of the heist) to ensure you have plenty of funds. If you use one of these items as your base equipment, at max level, it will consume 240 gitan per hit taken/dealt. However, the power bonus from this equipment is well worth the risk and the lost gitan. And, if you have both, they resonate to cause monsters to drop gitan more often, making it easier to stay liquid. Once you get beyond a certain point in the run, and when you're strong at theft, the gitan drain is basically completely irrelevant. (But beware that, when an item causes something to drop more often, this can overwrite normal drops. E.g. you'll always get an item drop from a Zalokleft or Chow, but with increased gitan drops in effect, you may get a gitan bag instead of the item that would have otherwise dropped, which might have been better than a gitan bag. But since most monsters rarely drop items, it's usually better to have the increased drop rate, and this is particularly true when you're using gitan-eating equipment and need to ensure you don't run out of gitan.)

Expert Badges

1. You conquered a dungeon without equipping any weapons!
2. You conquered a dungeon without using any scrolls!
3. You conquered a dungeon without using any staves!
4. You conquered a dungeon without using any talismans!
5. You conquered a dungeon without using any pots!
6. You conquered a dungeon without collapsing even once!
7. You conquered a dungeon without synthesizing!
8. You conquered a dungeon without doing any direct attacks!

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/%b1%bf%cc%bf%a4%ce%c3%cf%b2%bc (Japanese wiki page for this location)