Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Identifying Items

Introduction

Like many roguelikes, going all the way back to Rogue itself, Shiren 5 has the concept of imperfect information about items. Depending on their situation in their game, the player will sometimes know everything, something, or virtually nothing about items they find. Being able to efficiently identify items is a key skill in Shiren 5 (and all roguelikes with the concept of unidentified items).

Items in Shiren 5 have two levels of identification: the item's type can be known or unknown, and its modifiers can also be known or unknown. You can often identify both at once, but it's also possible to identify an item's type without its modifiers, or its modifiers without its type. It's also possible for you to determine one or both of these things about an item without causing them to be identified within the game state. This guide covers fully identifying items, both their types and their modifiers, and revealing this information within the state of the game.

In this guide, I start with general tips/tricks/techniques for identifying items, then present step-by-step guides for specific item categories that are as mechanical and repeatable as possible. But don't skip directly to the step-by-step guides, as they won't be fully understandable without reading the techniques section first.

One final caveat: I do not yet perfectly understand how all levels of Mimic-style monsters work. For purposes of this guide, I pretend they don't exist. If and when I more fully understand the mechanics of Mimics (including calling them by their Shiren 5 name rather than their D&D name), I'll update this guide. Suffice it to say that it's possible an item that appears fully unidentified or partially identified (or possibly even an item that appears fully identified) may in fact be a Mimic monster instead.

Background Information aka Spoilers

If you're trying to identify items in the game, it helps enormously to spoil yourself rotten on the full extent of what items exist in the game. You can read all about all the items in Shiren 5 on the Items page. See the Categories and Checklists sections in particular. (A checklist, printed or otherwise, can be very helpful to keep track of which items you've identified in your current run.) If you don't want to be spoiled, be advised that the Items pages and this page contain MASSIVE SPOILERS about what items exist in the game.

Techniques

Here are all the known techniques for identifying items, from simplest to most complex:

The item's "category" is always known: An item's "category" is always known / knowable at a glance. (The word "category" is not used this way in the game, I'm using it here to avoid overloading the use of the word "type".) Each category has a unique icon which can be easily identified even remotely when the item is on the ground, provided the room has light. This can help you understand at a glance "is it worth the risk to try to get this item", which can be an especially important consideration deep in dangerous dungeons. The game has 15 item categories, which appear in this order in the Item Book: Sword, Torch, Shield, Bracelet, Grass, Scroll, Pot, Staff, Talisman, Onigiri, Peach, Arrow, Stone, Trap, and Other. Sorting your inventory in the game will sort items into these categories in this order as well, and items that have been fully identified may also be sorted into their Item Book order, and items that are the same type but unidentified will be sorted together as well, but otherwise, unidentified items within a category will not be sorted. (This is presumably to avoid giving away too much information about an item's identity just by sorting items.) In any case, the first 14 categories all have a single icon each, so you can tell which category they are from a distance but not which specific type. (E.g. you can tell it's a sword from a distance, but not tell the difference between an Ordinary Stick or a Red Blade until you get closer.) In the "Other" category, gitan bags have their own icon, the Points Card has its own icon, and there is one icon for all the colors of catstones as well. Dirt and flowers can appear as items inside pots only, and can't really be used in any way, so there's no concept of being able to find them on the ground and IIRC they don't have icons either. In any case, you can always tell an item's category even from far away.

Check your Item Book for unexpected information: Different dungeons have different sets of pre-identified items. The two most common types of dungeons are dungeons where everything is pre-identified except for equipment (swords, shields, and bracelets), and, dungeons where virtually nothing is pre-identified. The "virtually" caveat is important; there are frequently a few items pre-identified in every dungeon. If you're wondering if a given unidentified item might be X, it's worth a peak in your Item Book to see if X is pre-identified for you in this dungeon, and if so, your unidentified item in hand is not X. The set may not be the same for every location, but a common set of pre-identified items seems to be: Weeds, Escape Scroll, Tag Scroll, Gambler's Scroll, Blank Scroll, Recommendation Letter, Commendation Letter, Wet Scroll, Piece of Paper, Water Pot, and Heavenly Pot. [TODO: confirm this set against Primordial Chasm.] My guess is that these are either "non-magic" items (things that work exactly as they would in real life w/o magic such as Weeds, Tag Scroll, Water Pot, etc.) or items that the designers felt were too unfair not to be pre-identified (e.g. it would royally suck if you randomly read an Escape Scroll deep in a successful run with no way to abort out of your escape).

Use the item: Most items can be fully identified within your game state if you're willing to use them unidentified. A notable exception is bracelets. Needless to say, this isn't necessarily safe or a great idea, though it can frequently be your best option. Sometimes, you'll try to use an item only to find it's sealed, which is one of the few times the modifier status will be revealed in the game -- you'll see a little X on the icon -- even though the item's type is not revealed in the game. Likewise, you can put on an unidentified bracelet, discover it's cursed (the curse is revealed in the game), but you still won't know the bracelet's type. (Open question: if an unidentified bracelet is sealed, will the seal reveal itself when you put it on? I think the answer is yes but this needs double checking.) There are a variety of ways you can try to use items, not just by consuming them directly, but much more info is given about this technique in each category-specific step-by-step guide below.

Use an Identify Scroll: Needless to say, this is one simple way to identify items. It's also a particularly poor way, as there is usually a much better way to use an Identify Scroll (more on this below), and there are often ways to identify many if not most items without resorting to using an Identify Scroll in a non-optimal way. If you must use an Identify Scroll, consider trying to bless it first so you will still have it after using it. Sometimes (10% of the time? 25% of the time?), reading an Identify Scroll will give you a "lucky day" outcome and identify all items in your main inventory. For this reason, it's best to pack your main inventory with anything that isn't fully identified before using an Identify Scroll, and maybe even target the unidentified item at your feet to try to squeeze in one more identified item in your main inventory. As a habit, I recommend only putting identified things into Preservation Pots or other fully identified pots, so I never waste a "lucky day" Identify Scroll outcome. Bracelets are often the most difficult category of items to identify, so if you must use an Identify Scroll directly, it's probably best to use it on a bracelet.

Use a New Item Identify Scroll: I don't use this technique myself but it could theoretically be quite useful. If you've crafted a new item scroll with Identify on it (e.g. Identify was the base scroll, or any other item-targeting scroll was the base scroll and you got lucky to add Identify onto the new item scroll), you may be able to find these new items in a dungeon that doesn't let you take items in, which could be very useful. In practice, the dungeons where you are most in need of identification help tend to be dungeons that don't seem to allow new items, and even if they did, if I could have my choice of new items, a new item scroll with Identify on it would be way, way down on my priority list. (A new item bracelet with Identify on it, OTOH, would be fantastic.)

Insert the item into an Identify Pot: There is no known better way to use an Identify Pot than simply to put unidentified items into it. Works for anything except pots, as pots can't be put into pots in Shiren 5. Given that bracelets tend to be the hardest things to fully identify, try to reserve Identify Pot spaces for bracelets. But Identify Pots aren't super rare, so if you're starting to run low on safe grasses and scrolls, it's not such a bad thing to put them into Identify Pots just to be sure they aren't super evil. I will sometimes put swords and shields into Identify Pots too when it's deep in a dungeon run and most items are already identified, and I want to know if the sword/shield is worth carrying around to hopefully synthesize onto my main equipment, and I don't have the luxury of waiting to find a Strip Trap. It's usually not worth it to put talismans or staves into an Identify Pot. Talismans are trivial to identify via use, plus you know exactly how many uses you have, so there's very little reason to consider putting them into an Identify Pot. Staves are mostly easy to identify by use but they have an unknown number of charges. It's usually not critical to fully identify the number of charges in a staff because you can usually guess, or play conservatively (e.g., only use them in a pinch when you know they have at least one more charge, or only use them when they might be dry when you can afford for them to fail). Plus, there are other ways to identify the number of charges in a staff. So, in rough priority order, here's what to use Identify Pot spaces on: bracelets first, then grasses and scrolls, then most everything else that might need to be identified, then staves, then talismans last (or really never). (Note: it's not possible to create new item pots within the game, so there is no "Use a New Item Identify Pot" technique.)

Use an Identify Bracelet: Identify Bracelets are very rare but very helpful. If you plan to play a dungeon that lets you take items in, by all means, take in an Identify Bracelet or better yet craft your own new item bracelet with Identify on it and take that in instead. If you are in a dungeon that doesn't let you take items in, and you find an Identify Bracelet e.g. in a shop, you should strongly consider buying or stealing it, as it can radically improve your chances of winning the run. In any case, if you have one of these bracelets, wear it, and pick up everything you see to identify it. You can do this in shops and put the items back down again too without buying them.

Use a New Item Identify Bracelet: If you do any crafting at all, you should absolutely craft at least one new item bracelet with Identify on it. Unless you're deliberately trying to make the game harder, you should always take a new item bracelet with Identify on it everywhere that lets you take items.

Use a Special Onigiri / gain Knowledgeable Status: Eating a Special Onigiri may give you "Knowledgeable" status for the remainder of the floor. I'm not aware of any other ways to gain this status. Each subsequent Special Onigiri gives you a new helpful reward that you haven't already gotten on that floor, so you can increase your chances of gaining "Knowledgeable" by saving up several Special Onigiri and eating them one at a time until you hopefully gain this state. (One bonus dungeon specializes in Special Onigiri so this is particularly applicable there.) In any case, if you're Knowledgeable until you leave the floor, by all means drop anything unidentified and pick it back up again to fully identify it. Pick up everything you find or see in shops that you might possible want to fully identify it, too. If you've been saving a Monster House Scroll for a special occasion, this may be the right time to use it, esp. if the floor has a shop too so you can sell everything you don't need out of the looted monster house.

Use equipment resonance: Certain pairs of items "resonate" when equipped together. This shows via an audiovisual flourish when the combo is first active, and results in a bonus of some sort. This isn't a very practical trick, as you need the necessary equipment to check for resonances, but it can help narrow things down if you have the opportunity. Specifically, there are 6 bracelets which can be identified via resonance, though 2 of these bracelets can be identified more easily by just noticing their innate effects. The 4 remaining resonances that help identify bracelets are Nap Rattle + Alert Bracelet, Baffle Axe + Anti-Cnf. Bracelet, Violent Blade + Mojo Bracelet, and True Knife + Anti-Parry Brce.. So, if you happen to have any of these 4 swords and any unknown bracelets, you can try equipping them together to either identify the bracelet via resonance or at least rule out one possibility. (Needless to say, beware of curses on unknown equipment.) One practical trick related to this might be to deprioritize mixing these swords into your main sword to check for future bracelets. For example, an Alert Bracelet is one of the better common bracelets, so it might be worth keeping a Nap Rattle on the side until you find an Alert Bracelet, and only then mix the Nap Rattle into your main sword.

Win and/or escape the dungeon: Winning the game or otherwise escaping the dungeon fully identifies everything in your inventory, including items in pots. (This is true for almost every dungeon, though Underground Manor definitely interferes with this a bit.) Usually you want to identify the item so you can use it to help you win the run, but this technique can be useful if there are items you might need outside the dungeon, or that you might need to complete your Item Book and you're afraid you won't be able to survive to identify them in the dungeon before you die. For example, Fever Pots are particularly useful outside of dungeons, and you may have found a 3-spot pot late in a difficult dungeon (Fever Pots always have 3 spots by default), and with no other way to identify it, you might just carry it out of the dungeon and hope it's a Fever Pot. Or, maybe you've identified all but a few very dangerous grasses, and you really want a specific grass to fill out your Item Book, but it's too dangerous to try to eat it unidentified, so you take it out with you to see what it is at home.

Do a price check at a store: Here's some helpful background info. Items have a base buy price (what you could pay for them at a store) and a base sell price (what you could sell them for to a store). These prices are shown in your Item Book for every item you've previously identified at least once. The base sell price is always 35% of the base buy price. Both buy and sell prices are increased by 10% if the item is blessed, or decreased by 20% if the item is cursed or sealed. The prices of staves and pots are also +5% of the base price for each charge/space they have. [TODO: come back and fully re-verify these formulas. In particular, figure out if a filled space in a pot increases its price or if it's just empty spaces that increase the price.] The prices of swords and shields are also modified by their runes and their upgrade values, though the precise formula for this is not yet known; it's a moot point in practice as it's trivial to use a price check to determine if a sword or shield is safe to equip, and if so, equip it to fully identify it, and if not, just sell it if you don't need it for synthesis. The exact price appears to always be rounded down to the nearest gitan, never up. Needless to say, you can see the buy prices of any items for sale in the shop, but you can also find the sell prices of all your items by dropping them one at a time on the shop floor then talking to the shopkeeper and bailing out of the transaction once he tells you the sell price. OK, now that you know how prices are calculated and you can calculate the buy and sell prices of every item, both the shopkeepers items and yours, also notice that there are "price tiers" within each item category. That is, very few items have unique base prices within their categories, most items are in small groups or subsets of items within the category that all have the same base prices. Presumably this is by design so that you can't use a price check to 100% identify every item every time. Even so, price checks are extremely helpful for narrowing down the possible items that a given unidentified item might be, and you still might be able to 100% prove that it is a specific item if there are no other unidentified items remaining in the same price tier. Or, more commonly, you can narrow the list down considerably and make an educated guess based on previous game experience. For instance, if you see an unidentified (and empty) 5-spot pot for sale for 7,500 in a shop on an early floor, odds are very good it is a Synthesis Pot, not a Modder's Pot, as the latter is definitely more rare and usually never appears on early floors (at least for most dungeons). Also, because the price tiers are far enough apart, you can easily use a price check to determine if an item is blessed or cursed/sealed, and if you're willing to do the math, you can even calculate how many charges are left in every staff you own (even if you can't determine precisely which type of staff it is). Note that doing a price check doesn't identify the item in your game state, but you can name the item using the Item Book name quickly, and the game keeps track of which Item Book names you've already used, which is almost as good. If you can't narrow down the list precisely, at least name the item something like "5000-1", meaning, the 1st item you've found with a buy price of 5000, to help you keep track of this information later in your run. (If you want to get fancier, you can name the item to keep track of its price tier and its modifier if any and its charges if any. E.g. if your blessed Pinning Staff has 4 charges left and you've already used one, you could name it something like "Pinning B 5" to remind yourself that it's blessed and that it started with 5 charges. This isn't a perfect solution because names are per type, not per specific item, so every Pinning Staff you find from then on would have the name "Pinning B 5" and you might lose track of which one actually had 5 charges to begin with. Because of this, I recommend just naming things with the Item Book name if you can precisely determine what they are or with their price tier if not.) Using this information, you should name *every single unidentified item*, both yours and shopkeeper items that you don't want to buy/steal, before you leave the floor. Doing this at every shop will maximize your chances of winning the run. (Exception: don't bother if you're going to use the next identification technique.) Here are a few more specific tips related to the price check technique:

• Sometimes a price check can tell you it's not worth bothering to fully identify an item. E.g. if a price check shows a bracelet's base buy price is 2,000, I just name it "2000-1" or "2000-2" etc. and sell it -- I virtually never want any of these bracelets in my games, not even if I have no other bracelets to choose from. I would like an Alert Bracelet at the 3,000 price tier, but there are so many not great bracelets at the 3,000 price tier that I often just sell these too with a price tier name and without fully identifying them. Or, after I've found a Monster Detector and if I don't think I can do any fancy mixer recipes with other 5,000 tier bracelets, I might just sell them with a price tier name and without fully identifying them.
• For bracelets in particular, if they're cursed or sealed, they're *probably* one of the not great bracelets in their tier. For example, let's say you've figured out that a bracelet is in the 5,000 tier but it's cursed or sealed. Odds are it's Monsterphobic or Itemphobic. This could still be useful if you could find a way to remove the curse/seal (and let's be honest, it's super likely to be cursed not sealed) before you put it on. OTOH, you could probably name it something like "5000 bad?" and just sell it. Also, if you figure out that a bracelet is not cursed or sealed, might as well equip it briefly so it shows as obviously not cursed or sealed in your game, even if you can't identify it yet. But beware of putting on unknown bracelets while inside shops. You might blink/warp out with an unpaid debt and be screwed, or you might explode and destroy valuable merchandise. [TODO: someday try killing the shopkeeper with an Explosion Bracelet and seeing if you can safely loot his store that way.]
• I haven't done a comprehensive look through the Item Book base prices, but there is one item with a unique base price in its category that is definitely worth knowing about. The only scroll with a base buy price of 200 is the Identify Scroll. It's so useful to know this! Though it can be frustrating too. Sometimes you've figured out that a scroll is an Identify Scroll, and you've named it, but it's not identified in your game state. You'd *love* to use that Identify Scroll with the next technique (shopkeeper mass identification), but the shopkeeper can't use it because it's not identified in your game state! C'est la vie. But before you give up, look around his shop, look through your inventory, and look through the rest of the floor. If you find a 2nd Identify Scroll, great! Read one to identify some random item in your inventory -- and also to identify the Identify Scroll by using it! -- then, now that the Identify Scroll has been identified in your game state, use the 2nd copy with shopkeeper mass identification. Sweet!
• It's also worth pointing out that items in the same "price tier" are often very similar, but "good" and "evil" versions of the same thing. For example, Synthesis Pot and Modder's Pot behave almost identically and are in the same price tier, but the latter is basically a trap to lock your items away and is much harder to use safely. Lucky Pot and Unlucky Pot. Upgrade Pot and Degrade Pot. Likewise, most scrolls with an item target are in the same price tier, but you wouldn't want to mix up a Plating Scroll with an Onigiri Scroll. There isn't much info you can gain from this fact, just something to be aware of. I assume this was deliberately done to cut down on the power of price checking (because frankly, it's a very powerful technique even with these "trap / evil" items).

Give an Identify Scroll to a shopkeeper: IMO this is the single best way to identify things in the game, and a much better use of an Identify Scroll than reading it yourself. If you give an Identify Scroll to a shopkeeper, he will fully identify all items he owns, 100% of the time. Better still, if the Identify Scroll happened to be blessed, he'll even return it to you unblessed! I recommend selling every fully unidentified item to the shopkeeper first, and maybe every partially unidentified item too. (That is, it's probably worth it to sell him both that fully unidentified pot *and* the Pinning Staff that is partially identified but you don't know how many charges it has left.) Make sure he owns everything you want identified then give him the scroll. If you plan to loot the entire floor before moving on, loot it now before using this technique, to make sure the shopkeeper owns everything unidentified you can get your hands on. It may seem like a waste, but you can identify a huge number of items all at once this way, and most of the items weren't really as necessary as you thought they were anyway, so you can buy back a few if you really need them. Of course, this trick is especially useful if you're skilled at stealing from shops and if it's a good floor layout conducive to theft. A few exceptions to this plan: you can identify swords and shields "enough" with just a price check, so there's no need to sell them to the shopkeeper just to fully identify them. Also if you have multiple copies of the same unidentified item, you don't have to sell all copies to the shopkeeper first. E.g. if you have two identical pots, which have the same price check but are otherwise unidentified, you only need to sell him one for him to identify. Your other identical pot will have it's type identified but not it's modifier, however, since they had the same price check they have the same modifier status too. If the one he owns is sealed, you can safely try inserting something into your pot and sure enough, it will reveal itself as being sealed too. Likewise with staves. You can choose to sell him only one copy first before doing the mass identification, but then you won't know how many charges are on the staff you have left. (Though you can probably figure out how many charges it has with a price check.) If you do this a few times in a single run, you'll start to run very low on unidentified types of items, and price checks will be much more likely to 100% identify remaining items.

Use traps: Some traps can help you identify items. The most common trick in this category is using the Strip Trap to fully identify all swords and shields, and partially identify all bracelets. Strip Traps remove all equipped items, even if they're cursed. If you can safely do so, save up all your equipment without equipping it until you find a Strip Trap. Every time you find a Strip Trap, clear the area then check to see if you have any equipment that isn't fully identified yet, and if so, equip every item in sequence, using the Strip Trap to remove any cursed items. You should never leave a Strip Trap until every sword and shield you have is fully identified, and you at least know the modifier status of every bracelet you own. But there are other tricks in this category too. Sometimes you'll try identifying a staff by using it and still be unsure what it is. It might be a Balance Staff. Next time you find a Trip Trap, clear the area and put down all your pots for safekeeping, then deliberately trip the Trip Trap. If you have a Balance Staff (or Nagging Staff!) in your inventory, you'll figure it out. Though it's a bit more dangerous, you can also use Spin Traps and Sleep Traps to test if a bracelet might be an Anti-Cnf. Bracelet or Alert Bracelet. There may be other less common tricks in this category as well. (Theoretically, you could also try to identify an Anti-Curse Bracelet via a Curse Trap, but this is particularly hazardous as you might end up cursing or sealing something you didn't want to, or you might get caught by a monster when all your items are on the ground.) There are ways to turn some other traps into useful opportunities, but they don't have to do with identifying items so I won't go into that here.

intuition / item drop tables for specific locations

Use Synthesis Pots and Mixer monsters: Sometimes you can identify an item retroactively by trying to use it in a synthesis or mixer recipe, even though the game state itself will not be updated to reflect what you learn. Basically, assume/hope the item is what you want it to be and try using it in a synthesis or mixer recipe. If the recipe succeeds, you know the item was what you wanted it to be, and if it fails, well, at least you've ruled out one thing the item might have been. If you're going to try this with a completely unidentified item, I recommend naming it first with something like "Ing1" (short for "ingredient #1") so you know what you were testing when you find another copy of that item. There are a few different forms of this technique:

• Swords and shields are always identified in terms of their type, but their modifier status (blessed/cursed/sealed/none) and upgrade value are unidentified by default. (To the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to find swords and shields with runes pre-placed on them.) Sometimes, you know the sword/shield can create a great rune, but the modifier and upgrade value aren't known. Sometimes, the sword/shield can't create a great rune or it's a duplicate rune you don't need, but you might still want any upgrade value on the item, and you don't know what the upgrade value is. You may not have the luxury of waiting to find Strip Trap or a shop to use other identification techniques, and it may be too dangerous to just try the items on without a way to remove them if they're cursed. But if the only reason you want to fully identify them is to see if they're good synthesis materials, it may be worth it to just use them in synthesis unidentified. You'll definitely get the rune you want, if the item can make a rune, and you'll definitely get the upgrade value, which is at worst -1 and at best +3. In my experience, items seem to have a -1 upgrade value about 10% of the time, have a 0 upgrade value about 50% of the time, and a +1 to +3 upgrade value about 40% of the time. (This may be way, way off, but it seems about right, and of course it likely varies in different dungeons.) In any case, if you're full on inventory, you might as well take the risk of synthesizing the item in to your main equipment even if you can't fully identify it first. The most dangerous part is of course the modifier status. Is it cursed or sealed? There's a great way to manage down this risk. The modifier status of the resulting item will equal the modifier status of the last item added into the Synthesis Pot. So, put your base item in first, then put your unidentified items in, then finish the synthesis with some known item that doesn't have a curse or seal on it. Great!
• Similar to the above, you can synthesize staves together as well. It's usually lower priority than swords/shields, but if you have the spare synthesis capacity and are tight on inventory space, why not? It's certainly better than wasting synthesis capacity. Better still, if you merge together two staves and one of them was fully identified (that is, you could see its modifier status and charges), the resulting item will also be fully identified. Huzzah! You can merge those 5 Pinning Staves, only one of which was fully identified, and the resulting staff will have a huge number of charges and be fully identified! But what about blessing and seals? Again, the resulting item will have the modifier status of the last item in the synthesis. You could risk putting in an unidentified staff in last, hoping to preserve a blessing, but IMO there's not much point in taking this risk, just put in a fully identified staff last to ensure you don't end up with a staff with a huge number of charges that is also sealed. Naturally, if you do happen to have one staff that is blessed, by all means, put that one in last.
• But there are also a lot of great runes you can make via Mixer monsters and mixer recipes. This technique can be used with any mixer recipe and any item that might be one of the mixer recipe's ingredients, but it's particularly effective in single-item mixer recipes involving a single grass or a single staff. Note that, in particular, there are a huge number of good runes you can add via a single grass or a single staff, especially to swords. (I don't recommend trying this with unknown scrolls though, as IIRC, Mixer monsters may turn unused scrolls into Pieces of Paper aka mush. If you're 95% certain the unidentified scroll is the one you want, great, go for it, else, maybe don't risk destroying it unless the rune you might make is truly awesome and necessary.) In any case, name your unknown ingredient something like "Ing1", throw in the sword (or possibly shield) you want to enhance, then throw in Ing1. Kill the Mixer monster and see if 1 or 2 items came out. If just the piece of equipment came out, you know "Ing1" was an ingredient of some sort, and if you can tell which new rune appeared on the equipment, you can tell precisely what "Ing1" was. You'll have to track your notes separately though as you won't be able to rename "Ing1" to the correct name until you find another copy of it. If no new rune appeared, it was an ingredient all right and it matched one of the runes you already had on the equipment. Again, track your notes separately until you're able to rename "Ing1" appropriately. If, when you kill the Mixer, both the equipment and "Ing1" come out, you know "Ing1" was not a mixer ingredient, which can narrow down the list of possibilities considerable. Rename "Ing1" to help you remember that it's not an ingredient / with all the info you have about it (e.g. "!Ing1"). Needless to say, you can throw in multiple unidentified possible-ingredients into larger Mixers, and you may even end up adding multiple runes in one mix attempt, though this makes it slightly harder to tell which possible-ingredient created which rune. You can also of course try this with multi-item recipes. In this case, it's best to have fully identified items for all ingredients except 1, then try the recipe you have in mind. Some runes such as Healing are so valuable it's worth trying an unknown bracelet with a Healing Pot to see if you can make the rune. Likewise, if you're low on unknown pots, you can try mixing it in and hope it was an Upgrade Pot and create the Refining rune. If you use this technique, beware that your items may in fact be Mimic-type monsters, so a recipe can fail when you have all the right "types" of items. In other words, that grass you thought wasn't a mixer recipe ingredient and named appropriately may in fact be an ingredient after all, it's just that the copy you happened to be testing was a Mimic monster in disguise.

Get clues from item attributes or special item behavior: Some item attributes can help you narrow down the possibilities for what an item might be, at least far enough to help you make an educated guess. Here are some examples, but more info about these techniques are in the step-by-step guides below.

• Some pots are Insert-type pots while others are Open-type pots. Look at this first to narrow down the possibilities.
• Some scrolls target items and can be aborted. If you read an unidentified scroll and it asks you to select an item target, abort and think about it some more, as now it is one of a much narrower set of possible scrolls.
• Some scrolls trigger by being dropped on the ground outside shops, though you usually can't use them again unless the happened to have been blessed.
• Sometimes you may know an item is cursed (or probably cursed -- it could be sealed) without knowing what type it is, such as by using a price check at a store. Though I don't have a specific formula, some item types are vastly more likely to be cursed than others. E.g. Monsterphobic and Itemphobic bracelets are much more likely to be cursed than Monster Detector and Item Detector bracelets. Knowing this can help you narrow down to make an educated guess.
• Each type of pot has a different range of how large they can be by default, and sometimes that range is very narrow. Synthesis Pots are always 5 spaces by default. (IIRC, Modder's Pots may also always be 5 spaces, but I'm less sure of that.) Fever Pots are always 3 spaces by default. If anyone has mapped out the full range of possible sizes for all pots, please post that in the step-by-step guide for pots!

Get clues from context / experience / intuition: To my knowledge, no one has yet reverse engineered the code to dump out the item distribution tables used in dungeon generation. Nor has anyone run a controlled experiment to try to determine exactly how likely a given item is to appear in a given location. (If this last sounds impossible, the original author of this webpage did precisely this experiment for Fay's Final Puzzle in Shiren 1, and it helped him understand what kinds of items he was likely to find on future attempts of FFP. Crazy, perhaps, not the most useful experiment ever run, perhaps, but impossible, no. He hasn't bothered trying this for Shiren 5 because there are a huge number of bonus dungeons that might benefit from such effort, rather than a single final challenge dungeon as in Shiren 1.) Short of reverse engineering or careful experimentation, the next best thing is intuition based on experience. For example, in most dungeons, you're vastly more likely to find cheap but helpful consumable items on early dungeon floors, so don't worry about them being Amnesia Grass or SuperUnlucky Seed. Items relevant to nighttime play, such as torches, Night-Day Scrolls, and Light Scrolls, apparently cannot appear in daytime-only dungeons. (I suspect but have not yet confirmed that Night-Day Scrolls also cannot appear in the single nighttime-only dungeon.) In most dungeons, early 5-spot pots have a very high chance to be Synthesis Pots, and failing that, most "kind" dungeons have generous helpings of Preservation Pots so even if it didn't turn out to be a Synthesis Pot it might still be a reversible and safe Preservation Pot. (But never place 5 items all at once into an unknown pot! Go slow, one at a time!) If you found several copies of an item-targeting scroll early on, odds are they are Identify Scrolls. Also, you might be able to specifically identify a handful of grasses if they were thrown at you by specific monsters and they happened to miss you. (If you need a reminder in these cases, you probably have the information you need in your Monster Book.) There odds of finding different items definitely depend upon the dungeon, depth, and how it was found (pre-placed on the floor, monster drop, normal shop, elite/VIP shop, Pick-A-Choice shop, Presto Pot, etc.) and possibly on other variables as well, and it is definitely the case that it is sometimes 100% impossible to find some items in some situations.Unfortunately, it's hard to be more precise than this without a data dump or experiment. The Locationspage for each dungeon has some specific tips. Hopefully others will contribute the benefit of their wisdom to this wiki with some great tips on where to find specific items and how item distribution/generation is controlled in general.

Use rescues: This is not yet confirmed to work in Shiren 5, but it worked in Shiren 1. It's also a bit borderline / sketchy, but I'm listing it here for completeness. Theoretically, you could die with unidentified items and request rescue. Then a 2nd player (or multiple other players, or you under a 2nd profile) could try to rescue you and in the process identify the items in question. Then, the 2nd player(s) could convey this information to you and rescue you. The player community used a similar trick somewhat extensively in Shiren 1 to map out Rescue Passwords for Items, in effect performing community item farming via rescue passwords. Whether or not this method would interfere with your sense of personal achievement in the game, it is undoubtedly too slow and error-prone to be worthwhile, even if you were playing both profiles yourself.

Save scumming: This is even more borderline / sketchy as it's clearly bypassing the design of the game, but one could use save scumming to backup one's save file, identify all their items potentially in destructive ways such as just consuming them, then restore to the older game state and have extra information about their unidentified items. I list this for completeness, but don't rely on it for any step-by-step guides below.

A Note About the Step-By-Step Guides

Each of the below sections pretends that a given unidentified item could be any possible item in the same category. This is absolutely not true. Where and how the item was generated has a huge impact on what the item might be, and how likely that possibility is. But, we don't have access to great info about these probabilities, so the step-by-step guides assume anything is possible and help you deterministically narrow down the choices. These guides do not duplicate the techniques listed above, so it's strongly recommended that you read all the techniques first. And again, I'm ignoring the possibility of a Mimic-style monster at this time until I understand them better.

Identifying Swords/Shields

The techniques to fully ID swords and shields are identical.

The type of a sword/shield is always fully ID'd. E.g. you can always see the difference between an Ordinary Stick and a Red Blade. So the only thing to ID is the modifier and the upgrade value. (To the best of my knowledge, randomly-generated swords/shields cannot have runes, the only way these items will have runes is if you put them there, or possibly if you traded them with other players.)

By far the best techniques are the Strip Trap, Price Check, and Synthesis Pot / Mixer Monster techniques listed above. If you don't need to equip these items, wait until you find a Strip Trap then fully identify all of them, or wait until you find a shop and price check them, then fully identify the ones that aren't cursed and sell the ones that are. You can also try to create a Strip Trap via leaving a Mecharoid family monster alive. Alternatively, if you have synthesis / mixing capacity, consider using it even on unidentified items.

Early in a run, when you don't have much to lose, it's safer to equip more items and just take the risk, and you'll likely need to equip something when you can anyway just to stay alive. Later in a run, when you have a lot to lose, it's best not to risk this, and hold out for a way to positively identify it doesn't have a curse before equipping it to fully ID it. (Strip Trap, Price Check, Synthesis Pot / Mixer Monster, giving an Identify Scroll to a shopkeeper, extra Identity Pot capacity, etc..) Another possibility is just put it into an Exorcism Pot or Blessing Pot before putting it on, if you have spare capacity in such pots.

If you're stuck with a cursed sword/shield equipped, and you have unidentified scrolls you don't mind identifying by reading them, wait until you're done with the floor and about to leave and there are no monsters or NPCs around, position yourself just inside a large room (in case the scroll is Monster House), then target the cursed item with any many scrolls as you can. Exorcism, (Fate or Earth), Plating, Sale, Onigiri, Blessing, and Fixer Scrolls will all fix your problem -- that's 7 scrolls out of 52 that will fix the problem! -- not terrible odds, and you were planning on just reading those scrolls to identify them anyway. Over and above a Curse Scroll has a 50% chance of converting a curse into a seal, and there's a chance a Darth Scroll might also work though this is less clear. See Blessings, Curses, and Seals for the zillions of ways to deal with this challenge.

Identifying Bracelets

Refer to the Bracelets page to see all the different items in this category.

ID'ing bracelets is probably tougher than any other category of item (possible exception: pots) and very important to winning your run. Bracelets can be cursed as well as sealed, and can't be ID'd by use. Worse, there's a vast difference in utility between the worst and best bracelets. Prioritize putting them into Identify Pots whenever possible, and of course use all the other techniques listed at the top of this document. If you have an Identify Scroll and can't wait to do a mass ID at a shop, prepare for a "lucky day" outcome and target an un-ID'd bracelet with your Identify Scroll.

For the rest of this step-by-step guide, I'm systematically narrowing down the possibilities of what an unknown bracelet might be. It is virtually impossible to find these bracelets randomly, so let's just rule them out now: Trapper, Night Ward, Floating.

First tricky question: should you equip an unknown, possibly cursed bracelet when you have no other bracelets? Unclear. Most bracelets aren't really that helpful, but a handful are very helpful. If it's early in your run and you don't have much to lose, why not? But if you're starting to have something to lose, maybe hold off at least until you can find a Strip Trap or create one via Mecharoid monster. Whenever you find a Strip Trap, of course, equip everything you can before you leave the floor and use the Strip Trap to remove any cursed items. Don't rush to exorcise your cursed but un-ID'd bracelet though, as the curse is actually a decent clue as to what it might be. Maybe don't just toss it immediately either, because there are at least a few bracelets that are often cursed by default which can be helpful to your survival. Specifically, test if your cursed but un-ID's bracelet is Monsterphobic or Itemphobic if you're at a Strip Trap. That is, see if you see remote monsters or remote items in locations you've never visited with this bracelet. If it is one of these, hold on to it, it might be worth exorcising or blessing and using sparingly, at least until you can find something better. If it's neither of those, it's probably not worth using, so potentially just name it something like "Curse-Bad" and toss it or save it to sell later. There's a decent chance it was Nonary or Mojo, but we may never know. If you're stuck with an equipped, cursed bracelet, see Blessings, Curses, and Seals.

Next tricky question: you have an unknown bracelet that is neither cursed nor sealed -- should you wear it? Also unclear. At this point it's worth a few quick tests for specific bracelets. These tests are in priority order and in order of how simple the tests are; bail out if you're tired of testing the bracelet, if you're worried about starvation, etc.:

• Strength: you can see your strength go up/down as you equip/unequip it. Name it and wear it until you find something better!
• Growth: you can see your exp. necessary for the next level go down by 1 for each step you take. Name it and wear it until you find something better!
• Monster Detector or uncursed Monsterphobic: you can see remote monsters with it on. Super helpful! Continue testing to see if it's Monster Detector or Monsterphobic -- if it causes you 10 damage every turn while you have a monster in the same room it's the latter. Monsterphobic is still very helpful, but you have to manage it carefully and only wear it to detect remote monsters and take it off as they get closer.
• Item Detector or uncursed Itemphobic: you can see remote items in places you've never been with it on. If you've already visited every room on the floor, you'll either have no items on the floor or they'll still be on your map, and the test will be invalid, so try it again on a new floor. As with the above pair, these can be quite helpful. Again, test further to tell the difference between Item Detector and Itemphobic -- the latter will cause you 10 damage every time you pick up an item. Itemphobic is great to use when you first start a floor, though of course Item Detector is better (and Monster Detector is better still).
• Can. Arm: shoot an arrow or worthless item at a wall, not in a direction where it might hit a remote shopkeeper or other NPC, and see if it hits the wall or flies off into infinity. If the latter, name it and take it off or carefully manage how you use it. While there are definitely some good reasons to use a Can. Arm bracelet, including a little-known tip of hitting 5+ monsters in the same turn (e.g. with an arrow down a hallway) to heal yourself, I generally don't like taking the risk, as it's too likely I'll throw something off to infinity by mistake. Never throw a valuable item while wearing an unknown bracelet without first checking if the bracelet is Can. Arm! E.g. it can really suck to throw that full Synthesis Pot off into infinity, or to throw your main weapon at a Mixer only to have it fly away forever.
• Waterwalk: try walking on water. IIRC, you can tell the difference between this and Floating via the graphics, via the fact that scrolls and food can go bad if you stand in water, and of course via the fact that Floating is virtually impossible to find randomly so it's not Floating. If you're going to test for Waterwalk, put all your scrolls and food into pots or on the ground first. IMO, it's not worth performing this test because I don't bother using Waterwalk. Yes, it can be useful in various situations like looting treasure islands or possibly looting treasure vaults with no entrances or possibly escaping while robbing a store, but I don't love having to keep all my scrolls and food in pots and these situations aren't common enough to bother. So, I don't test for this and just sell these bracelets when I find them. If you find it, name it, use or it or not at your pleasure.
• Wall Clip: try walking through a wall. No special prep needed except make sure you have more than 10 HP. I also don't bother using these, but if you find it, name it and use it or not.
• Identify: there's no way you found this first, but it's easy enough to test for it. Drop an unidentified item and pick it up again. Name it and *definitely* use it. Maybe even bless it too to help it avoid getting harmed.
• Scout: ditto, there's no way you found this first, but again it's easy enough to test for it. If you can remotely see both monsters and items where you've never been, fantastic, name this bracelet and *definitely* use it, and again, maybe bless it if you can to keep it safe.
• Floating: It is very rare to find a Floating Bracelet aside from wishing for it in Inori Cave, but it can happen! (Floating Bracelets have been confirmed to be findable both pre-placed on the ground and in shops in Rousing Paradise at least.) So, just to rule it out, try seeing if you can float over water, void, or traps. Nope! You couldn't, that wasn't it.

We've now named or ruled out 14 types of bracelets out of 34 possible types. If you still don't know what it is, IMO it's best to not wear it and wait for a price check or mass ID via shopkeeper. If you really, really want to try more tests, obviously there are more you can do, but they'll likely contribute to your starvation more than to your success. Here are some possibilities, again, in priority order:

• Heal: one of the best bracelets you might be able to find via a more extensive test is the Heal Bracelet. Carefully watch how fast your HP regens without the bracelet on, then put it on after a big fight and watch how fast your HP regens now. If you regen much faster than normal, it's Heal. Great! Don't wear it often else you'll starve, but you can wear it as needed in a pinch, and save it for a super helpful rune.
• Anti-Cnf.: try stepping on a Spin Trap when it's safe to do so.
• Alert: try stepping on a Sleep Trap when it's safe to do so.
• Inacc.:try wearing it and throwing some projectiles at monsters. If you miss 5 times in a row, or even just 3 times in a row, it's probably Inacc.
• Critical: try wearing it and letting several monsters hit you, to see if any of them crit. Yuck, definitely not worth testing for this.
• Dozer: try wearing it and taking 10-20 turns to see if you fall asleep suddenly. Not a super expensive test but can kill you and really not worth it.
• Blink: same test as Dozer and you can test for it at the same time. If you warp suddenly, it's Blink. This can be a nice bracelet if you're going through dangerous areas. Don't test this with an unpaid bill at a shop!
• Explosion: same test as Dozer and you can test for it at the same time. If you suddenly explode, it's Explosion. Can be useful as a mixer recipe ingredient, though in practice it's hard to collect everything you need on a single run so I usually just sell this.
• Nonary: this is very likely to have been cursed. But if you're a masochist and testing a bracelet that you uncursed and couldn't figure out (or if you're stuck with a cursed, equipped bracelet), this one will explode as you go through doors.

You shouldn't have tested the above things, as you may starve if you did, and even if you did test them, you're only up to 23 types of bracelets out of 34 possible types. There are no other tests that are worth considering at this point. Sure, if you can find a Swordsman, you can test for Anti-Parry, but odds are you'll find a way to ID the bracelet before then. And testing for Anti-Crs. or Cleansing is likely to be more harmful than helpful. And the effects of some bracelets are so subtle that they're virtually impossible to detect. So at this point in the guide, I'll assume you've only ruled out the 1st 14 bracelets mentioned, and you're at a shop and can do a price check, but you may or may not be able to (or want to do) a mass ID via the shopkeeper. Here's where we stand. The green ones are the ones I find most useful for winning the run (IMO -- other players may disagree) and that aren't too difficult to acquire, though some are temporary. E.g., Growth is great for a bit but becomes less helpful the longer your run, while Monster Detector and Identify are always awesome.

Base buy price	2,000	3,000	5,000	10,000	30,000	50,000
Bracelets we haven't ruled out yet	Innac. Bunch	Cleansing Anti-Cnf. Alert Anti-Crs. Staunch Mojo Critical Trap Monster Summoner Dozer	Heal Alleyway Blink Explosion Nonary	Anti-Parry Time Stop		VIP
Bracelets we have ruled out already	Can. Arm Strength		Monster Detector Item Detector Waterwalk Wall Clip Monsterphobic Itemphobic	Growth Floating	Identify Scout Trapper Night Ward

Are there any in the bottom row that you haven't ruled out yet? Rule them out now per the tests mentioned above. Don't try leaving a shop with an unpaid debt / unpurchased bracelet though! I once absent-mindedly thought I'd test an unpurchased bracelet to see if it was Wall Clip -- and it was and I lost the run.

OK, you've ruled out everything in the bottom row already. What's left in the top row? If the base buy price is 2,000, 10,000, or 50,000, you don't really need this bracelet to win, so can just bail on trying to ID it. (OK, if it's 50K, you can name it VIP then bail on it. Or maybe you want to steal it just to sell it back to another shopkeeper later, or just in case there's a VIP shop later?) There are only 2 bracelets in the "not ruled out" row that might be useful: Alert at 3,000 and Heal at 5,000. So if you own any base-buy-price 3,000 bracelets, test them for Alert if you can, else maybe just name them something like "3000-1" as in a bracelet with a 3,000 base buy price, and sell it unidentified. Likewise with any 5,000 bracelets you own -- test them for Heal and sell them if they aren't. Either way, if you have no better info, it's always good to name un-ID'd bracelets with their base buy price or other equivalent clue, so you can see that info if you find another copy later.

Another tricky part: the shopkeeper is selling something for 3,000 or 5,000 and it might be Alert or Heal. Should you guy it? Unclear. Since you're at a shop, if you can do a mass ID, this is definitely a good time to consider it, esp. if there are tons of other things you could ID at the same time. If not, but you're rich, might as well buy them and try them out when you get the chance. OTOH, if you already have a great bracelet or two such as Monster Detector -- perhaps the single most useful bracelet at helping you win the run which is also not that difficult to find -- maybe don't bother trying to get an Alert Bracelet. I'd still rather have it even with a Monster Detector (e.g. to wear during great hall monster houses), but it's less critical when you have other excellent bracelets to use. Heal on the other hand is one ingredient for the super helpful Healing rune recipe, so it's definitely worth trying to ID it even if you have Monster Detector.

Beyond this, there's nothing else practical I can think of to help you name a bracelet without actually ID'ing it. If you still want to ID it, re-read the techniques section at the top of this doc and use. (Really, your best best are mass ID via shopkeeper, Identify Pot, or Identify Scroll.)

Identifying Grasses/Scrolls

Techniques for fully ID'ing items in these categories are similar, so I'm writing about them together. Refer to the Grasses and Scrolls pages to see all the different items in these categories.

Practically speaking, the best way to fully ID these items is just to consume them. This is especially true early on when you might fill up your inventory with a large number of unidentified items, and most items found early in dungeons aren't that dangerous anyway, nor are they likely to be super useful such that you need to avoid consuming them haphazardly. Clear out the floor, stand just inside a room that isn't a shop (in case the scroll is a Monster House Scroll), make sure you have room in your stomach (so you don't waste the food value of grasses), face away from any possible NPCs (e.g. don't face a hallway that leads to a room that could have a shopkeeper in it -- in case the grass is a Dragon Grass). Then eat your grasses and/or read your scrolls one at a time. You don't have to eat/read them all -- bail out when you have freed up enough inventory space, or you're starting to get worried that you've found all the mostly-benign, mostly-not-super-useful items. It's great if you can knock out something really dangerous before you have much to lose (e.g. Bankruptcy Scroll when you're nearly broke anyway, or SuperUnlucky Seed when you're less than level 5 anyway). If you get something nasty like Grounded Scroll or Muzzled Scroll, just exit the floor to clear up the negative status.

However, once you've found an Identify Scroll, it might be better to wait until you can find a shop, sell all your grasses/scrolls to the shopkeeper, then give him an (identified) Identify Scroll. This is definitely safer than consuming unknown items, plus, odds are you don't get much benefit out of consuming an unknown item anyway so at least this way you get money out of it and identify it. One exception: if you're worried about starvation, eating the unknown grasses might still be a better way to identify them than selling them.

If you find a shop, whether or not you've already found an Identify Scroll, you can price check your grasses/scrolls. Practically speaking, I don't always bother with this, because it is so common to get mostly-benign and mostly-not-super-useful grasses and scrolls early on. But you can definitely learn a ton of info about your grasses/scrolls from price checks, either 100% identifying them outright or narrowing it down considerably. Some noteworthy info:

• The only grass with a base buy price of 200 is Healing Grass. Makes a decent rune, or can give you 3 extra max HP if you're at max, or can heal you in a pinch.
• The only grass with a base buy price of 10 is Weeds, but IIRC this will always be pre-identified for you anyway. BTW, this can be used to make an Anti-Plant rune on a sword, so don't necessarily just eat it for food value.
• The only 2 grasses with a base buy price of 1,000 are Revival Grass and Gut Grass. Revival Grass is super helpful for winning your run, and Gut Grass is Revival Grass's evil twin that doesn't work. It's important to not eat these outright until you can tell which one it is. Revival Grass is more common but don't count on it being that in a particularly nasty dungeon. Prioritize fully identifying this within your game state, even if that means selling it to a shopkeeper and buying it back again at full price after a mass identification. If it's Gut Grass, eat it or sell it quickly; I don't know what happens if you collapse with both Gut Grass and Revival Grass in your inventory, but I suspect the Gut Grass might prevent you from reviving. If it's Revival Grass, prioritize blessing it ASAP, both to prevent it from being sealed or turned into an onigiri, and also so that it will protect you twice. If it loses the blessing, bless it again! If it's not blessed, it's safer to keep it in a Preservation Pot though don't put all your most valuable things in a single pot of course. If it is blessed, it's safer to keep it in main inventory rather than to keep it in an unblessed Preservation Pot.
• The only 2 grasses with a base buy price of 1,500 are Undo Grass and Repeat Grass. Identical handling to Revival/Gut as mentioned above.
• The only 2 grasses with a base buy price of 5,000 are Angel Grass and SuperUnlucky Seed. Both make decent runes, though Angel Grass is a bit more common and makes the better rune IMO. But because they both make decent runes, it's not super critical that you fully ID them within your game, just avoid consuming them and do use them as mixer ingredients to make runes.
• The only scroll with a base buy price of 200 is the Identify Scroll. Yay! If you've found one of these, you'll still need to identify it before you can give it to the shopkeeper to identify a ton of other things. Scour the floor and your inventory to try to find another one, so you can identify one via use (preparing for and hoping for a "lucky day" outcome so you may not need to mass sell unidentified items to the shopkeeper), and if you don't get a "lucky day", just go ahead with the mass identification via shopkeeper if so desired. If the scroll happens to have a buy price of 220 / sell price of 77, congratulations, it's a blessed Identify Scroll and you can read it once then still give it to the shopkeeper. Or if you happen to have a way to bless it, great, bless it then read it to identify it then use it identified if so desired.
• The only scroll with a base buy price of 10,000 is the Extinction Scroll. It might be worth buying or stealing this. You can throw it at a shopkeeper if a theft attempt goes awry and hope it hits -- don't worry, this won't kill you and there will still be shopkeepers on later floors, but do hurry off the floor because new shopkeepers can still appear -- or save it for a nasty monster type like dragons.
• The only scroll with a base buy price of 5,000 is the Blank Scroll, but IIRC that will always be pre-identified for you anyway.
• Most item-targeting scrolls have a base buy price of 500.

I don't recommend this technique, but it is possible to name an unidentified grass something like "Test1" and throw it at a monster to see what it does. Many grasses have unique magical effects, so you may be able to tell what it was without risking eating it yourself, then you'd have to keep notes outside the game (or a screenshot) so you could rename it correctly the next time you see it. This is unlikely to be your best use of a grass though.

Throwing unidentified scrolls at monsters is a bad idea, as there are very few scrolls that can be identified this way. One bizarre and rare exception: if you throw a Squid Sushi Scroll at a Squid monster, you'll turn it into food. The odds of your random unidentified scroll being a Squid Sushi Scroll are very low and maybe even zero, as I can't recall ever seeing this scroll outside of unusual situations.

It is possible to drop scrolls on the ground (outside shops) to see if they do something special. This is non-destructive in most cases but destructive for 3 scrolls: Light Scroll, Sanctuary Scroll, and Oil Scroll. (Did I miss any in this category?) I don't recall if this identifies the scroll for you, and if it doesn't, you'd need to do a bit more work to disambiguate between the 3, though it wouldn't be hard to tell which is which if you can lure a monster to the scroll. Practically speaking, since you didn't know what the scroll was when you tried dropping it, you weren't in an ideal situation to use it, so it will be wasted anyway and may not be fully identified either, so it would have been better to have just read it and fully identified it anyway.

Later, you'll find more copies of grasses and scrolls for which you know the type but don't know the modifier. Practically speaking, it's probably not worth it to try to figure out if it's blessed or sealed (it can't be cursed) before you need to use it. But if it's particularly valuable such as Revival Grass or Undo Grass, by all means, proactively put it into a Blessing Pot to ensure it's blessed, or into an Exorcism Pot to ensure it's at least not sealed. As usual, it may be worth your time to at least price check your items when you come across shops, selling those that are sealed that you don't care to unseal, or again, do a mass identification with a shopkeeper just to reveal the seal/blessing in your game state so you don't have to remember it. Later in the game, esp. after a few successful theft attempts, money won't be much of an object anyway so it's worth the loss of some gitans to reveal the modifier state in your game, or you might have a super safe theft opportunity.

Identifying Pots

Refer to the Pots page to see all the different items in this category.

Pots are one of the most difficulty category of items to identify, 2nd possibly only to bracelets, and ID'ing them is very important to your ability to win the run. You can't put them into an Identify Pot either making it just that much harder. [TODO: re-visit this section when you've refreshed your memory on how refillable pots work (Water, Heavenly, and possibly Shrine Maid too).]

One easy and obvious visible clue to differentiate pots is if they are Insert-type pots vs. Open-type pots. There is also a big difference in terms of the probability of finding different kinds of pots in different locations/situations. Here's a chart which helps break down these categories:

	Insert-type Pots	Open-type Pots
Not Rare. These are not all equally likely to be found, but you can find them in many places. . If you're not in an especially difficult/evil dungeon, consider this to be the full set of possibilities and ignore the rare category.	Preservation Ordinary Synthesis Sale Presto Identify Exorcism Blessing Curse Black Hole Fever Sticky Hide Unbreakable 4-2-8 Zen Dodger Perceptive Reflection Modder's Floramorph	Heal Hilarious Zalokleft Klein Monster Water *
Rare. It's impossible to find these pots anywhere in "easy" dungeons. It's exceedingly unlikely to find these pots on early floors of any dungeons. You probably don't have this. . If you're in an especially difficult/evil dungeon, consider the full set of possibilities to be this category + the not rare category.	Upgrade Degrade Lucky Unlucky Grilling	Shrine Maid Heavenly

Another visible clue about what a pot might be is the number of spaces it has. No one has yet documented the full set of spaces each type of pot can have by default, but here are some things that are known. (If you have more info about how many spots each type of pot can have by default, please add it, as that would be super helpful to know!)

• Preservation always has 3-5 spots by default.
• Synthesis always has 5 spots by default.
• Fever always has 3 spots by default.

By all means, use price checks to narrow down the choices if you have access to a shop. Some relevant tips:

• Only Water and Heavenly have a base buy price of 2,000, and Heavenly is extremely rare. But, Water is very frequently pre-identified for you, even in dungeons for which most items are not pre-identified. (Why? My guess is that a Water pot is basically a real pot, not a magical pot, so like Weeds, it's always pre-identified.) So, if you find an unknown pot with a base price of 2,000, definitely check your Item Book to see if Water is already pre-identified, and if so, you've got yourself a rare Heavenly Pot.
• Only Synthesis and Modder's have a base buy price of 6,000, and Synthesis is vastly more common in most locations, esp. on early floors. Double check your Item Book to see if either type has been named or identified already. If not, it's still mostly (but not entirely) safe to treat it as if it's a Synthesis Pot, esp. if you don't have much to lose yet on your current run. Name it Synthesis, synthesize all your great equipment together, try to break it against a wall, and if it doesn't break, rename it to be Modder's (or just quit your run :^) ). (And if you threw it off into the distance because you didn't realize you had Cannon Arm e.g. via wearing an unknown bracelet, at least you get a funky trophy/achievement.)
• All of the not-rare Open-type pots have the same base buy price of 3,500, so, you can't learn anything from just a price check. (Possibility: maybe Heal is more likely to have 5 spots, and Hilarious are more likely to have 3 spots??)
• All of the rare Insert-type pots have a base buy price of 10,000, so you can't learn anything from just a price check. (Possibility: maybe Grilling is the only one that is likely to have more than 3 spots??)
• All 4 of the pots that produce scents (Zen, Dodger, Perceptive, Reflective) have the same base buy price of 2,500. You can't tell which is which via price alone, but at least you know that inserting an item will destroy the item and produce a scent.

Should you jump to trying to ID pots by use, or hold off? Difficult question. I prefer holding off until I'm tight on inventory and I'm forced to either ID something or abandon something. Then I usually choose ID'ing grasses or scrolls by using them first. I prefer to mass ID pots and other items at a shop if I can.

But it's not horrible to ID pots by use. Here's my technique. I'll start with Open-type pots because that's very straightforward. Using an Open-style pot once is enough to ID it in your game state. Ideally, treat unknown Open-type pots as Zalokleft until you know it's not Zalokleft. Wait until you find a shop, put the best non-pot item you'd like to steal near a shop exit, leave the shop and face the item (horizontally or vertically, not diagonally) while in a hallway. Make sure you're in a place where there is at most 2 hallways spaces adjacent to you. Have some emergency gear on you if possible (e.g. Warp Grass, Confusion Scroll, etc.). Then open the pot once. If it's Zalokleft, congratulations, you just figured that out and ID'd it within your game state, and, stole a great item to boot. Heal, Hilarious, and Klein are mostly innocuous -- the worst thing is that you just wasted a charge. Monster is the most dangerous one, but since you're in a good location, there are at most 2 monsters adjacent to you, so you can either fight them or use your emergency supplies if needed. If you don't want to wait until you find a shop, at least find a place where there are at most 2 hallway spots around you, and preferably only 1. Then put an item down in front of you that is not something you need, just something you're holding on to to sell (in case the pot is Zalokleft), and open the pot once to ID it.

ID'ing Insert-type pots by use is significantly more challenging. Clear the area of monsters and make sure nothing you care about is on the ground around you, including shopkeepers/NPCs. (If it's Fever, you don't want it destroying anything valuable around you.) Choose a non-pot item to sacrifice for the test. It should definitely be something you don't care about, but, something that can be either sealed or blessed (so, don't use an arrow or stone). Should the test item be ID'd or not ID'd? I recommend an ID'd item, as it's good to ID everything you can and this test item might be destroyed before being ID'd. Ideally, I choose a sealed, ID'd onigiri if possible. But for purposes of this document, I'll assume you've chosen an ID'd grass that is neither blessed nor sealed. Insert this 1 item into the pot. (Never insert multiple items into an unknown pot at the same time, of course.)

From this 1 test, you can immediately ID these types of pots. Most of these are self-evident so I won't bother spelling out all of them, but only some of these will ID the pot in your game state, so you may have to name the pot.

• Preservation (you'll have the option to take it out again)
• Sale
• Presto (theoretically, it might be possible for the item to be changed into the same item, throwing off the test, but the odds of this happening are so low I'll pretend they are zero)
• Blessing
• Curse
• Black Hole (the item will be gone and the pot shrunk without producing a scent)
• Sticky (you'll have to go around and fight some monsters to break it and get your item back)
• Hide
• Zen
• Dodger
• Perceptive
• Reflection
• Floramorph

That's about half of the possible pots with a single test item -- not bad.The best thing to do at this point is to probably wait to find a shop to price check or mass ID items, but if you prefer continuing to test the pot, here's what I might do next.

There are only 4 more common types of pots at this point: Ordinary, Synthesis, Identify, Exorcism. If it wasn't 5 spots to begin with, it's not Synthesis, so skip this paragraph. If it was 5 spots to begin with, frankly, it very well might be Synthesis, but it's still too risky to try testing this with great equipment. Again, wait for a price check, or plan to put in a pair of items that could synthesize that you don't really care about. Maybe use this opportunity to hopefully get rid of a curse or seal on a piece of equipment that makes a great rune, or maybe don't risk it on equipment and instead try to merge a pair of not-super-valuable staves. Either way, if at all possible, choose an item that is either sealed or unID'd or preferably both as your next item to insert. If it gets unsealed or ID'd, you know it's Exorcism or Identify and can bail out of assuming it's Synthesis. If neither, it's still probably Synthesis but could be Ordinary (or a less common pot). Put in your next item and see if it synthesizes.If the items synthesize, odds are very high that it's Synthesis not Modder's. Name it Synthesize now, use the last 2 spaces to synthesize right away if possible, and try to break it. If it doesn't break, rename it Modder's, cry, and/or quit your run. (But hey! You didn't try synthesizing your best stuff, right? So you'll probably be fine, and can just sell the Modder's, as it's very unlikely you'll find an Extraction Scroll in good time to use it.) If you've put in 3 items to your 5-spot pot and still can't ID what it is, it might be Ordinary or something less common. At this point, you really ought to wait to price check (which is now more complicated due to having contents) or mass ID via shopkeeper.

If it's not a 5-spot pot, we're down to 3 common types of pots, though there are still many more uncommon/rare pots it might be. If possible, choose something that is both sealed and un-ID'd as your next item to insert. If it unseals it's Exorcism, if it ID's it's Identify, else stop there and don't risk inserting any more items, just wait for a mass ID at a shop or other means to ID it. (You weren't standing near any important items or NPCs on the ground, right? So it didn't just blow up because it was a Fever Pot and you didn't just destroy great stuff, right?)

By this point, you should have ruled out everything in test 1 above as well as Synthesis, Identify, Exorcism, Fever (because it would have blown up by now or because it wasn't 3 spots to begin with), and Modder's, The only remaining choices now are Ordinary, Unbreakable, and 4-2-8 (all of which are not rare), as well as Upgrade, Degrade, Lucky, Unlucky, and Grilling (all of which are rare). 8 choices left. If you can at all wait until you find a shop, you should do so, as you'll easily be able to tell the difference between the 3 not rare and the 5 rare with a price check. Because it's pretty important to make this distinction now, I'll assume you will do so. You'll have to do a bit more math because the pots have contents, or maybe you can just tell them apart by estimating, because there are only 3 price tiers possible at this point:

• Base buy price of 600: Ordinary, 4-2-8
• Base buy price of 1,000: Unbreakable
• Base buy price of 10,000: Upgrade, Degrade, Lucky, Unlucky, Grilling

If it has a base buy price of 1,000, name it Unbreakable, test it by throwing it against a wall and seeing that it doesn't break, and you're done.

4-2-8 is almost like the evil twin of Ordinary. Ordinary can be pretty useful, e.g. to carry around synthesis/mixer ingredients until you're ready to use them, or to carry around expensive items you just want to sell. It's terrible to put items in 4-2-8 as you can't get them back without a rare Extraction Scroll, and it's a great projectile weapon too (though dangerous in that it can destroy items or harm NPCs). How do you tell them apart? I'm not aware of any way to do so via usage. You must ID them via one of the many techniques at the top of this document, my recommendation being mass ID via shopkeeper. Alternatively, you can name it something like "428Test", throw it at an innocuous wall, and see if it explodes. You won't be able to rename it to the correct type until you find another, though, so take notes or save a screenshot to help you remember.

By this point you're down to only the 5 most valuable and rarest pots. Again, great time to ID these via other means like mass ID via shopkeeper, esp. if you need these items in your Item Book. But there are some additional tests you can try to do if you really, really can't or don't want to ID them in some other way.

• Upgrade: If you happened to have put an ID'd sword, shield, or staff into this pot, or are willing to do so now, you'll notice it gain upgrade value / charges as you change floors. Another great possibility is to name this pot Upgrade and try mixing it onto a piece of equipment. If it mixes, and you now see the Refining rune, great, you know it was an Upgrade Pot, and the Refining rune is pretty awesome so you're done.
• Degrade: If you happened to have put an ID'd sword, shield, or staff into this pot, or are willing to do so now, you'll notice it lose upgrade value / charges as you change floors. I'm not aware of any rune you can make with this pot (though it might be worth testing again), but it's safe to break it and get your stuff out if you don't want it to degrade further. It's also safe to use remaining spots in this pot to store things that can't degrade. Or just sell it for a ton of money.
• Lucky: If you carry this around for several floors, you should spontaneously see an item in your main inventory gain a blessing, or maybe one of your pots grew when you weren't looking (not confirmed). Great! You have a Lucky Pot.
• Unlucky: If you carry this around for several floors, you should spontaneously see an item in your main inventory gain a curse or seal, or maybe a pot shrank when you weren't looking (not confirmed). Great! You have an Unlucky Pot.
• Grilling: If you have a non-grilled onigiri that you don't mind grilling, try putting it into this pot and see if it becomes a Grilled Onigiri. But this type of pot is super rare, esp. outside of Onigiri Hollow, so odds are you just trapped an onigiri in some other super valuable pot.

If you tried to use your pot and found it sealed, pots are valuable enough that it's probably worth carrying around until you can unseal it or at least price check it if you can manage the space. Unlike a curse, a seal doesn't tell you anything about the probability that the underlying item is "good" or "bad".

Needless to say, if you've named a pot that you don't have in your Item Book yet, prioritize fully ID'ing it. There are many techniques at the top of this document. Since they can't be put into pots, my favorite methods are mass ID via shopkeeper, or escape the dungeon (completing your Item Book is more helpful than any one particular run IMO), or in a pinch use an Identify Scroll on it after preparing for a hopeful "lucky day" outcome.

Identifying Staves

Refer to the Staves page to see all the different items in this category.

Most staves are trivial to identify via use, so it's best to try this first before resorting to more expensive methods.Do this as early as you can, to identify items as early as possible before you need them in a pinch. Find an isolated monster many spaces away, a monster you can beat trivially even if it levels up or is otherwise enhanced, a monster that is not maximum level, make sure you have at least 26 HP and preferably at least 51 HP, and wave your staff at it one time only. If the staff is sealed, the seal will reveal itself and you'll have to try again later or try with another technique -- more on this below. But usually it's not sealed and it will hit the monster. I won't bother writing all the details as most of these are very self-explanatory, but you can positively identify all of these staves in a single shot:

• Swap
• Knockback
• Pinning
• Transient (important detail: the log will say that the monster warped *and was paralyzed*)
• Seal
• Clone
• Paralysis
• Slow
• Swift
• Glorious (the monster will level up and lose all status ailments)
• Mage (the monster will either be warped away *and not paralyzed*, confused, or put to sleep -- none of which can happen from other staves)
• Electric (the monster will take 25 electric damage, or 50 if the staff is blessed)
• Trap Del. (the monster will take 2 damage, or 4 if the staff is blessed)
• Boring (the monster will take 10 damage, or 20 if the staff is blessed)
• Fort.
• Drama
• Sacrifice (you'll get hit from the side with a log)
• Shocking (you'll get hit with 25 electric damage, or 50 if the staff is blessed)

Congratulations! You've just immediately identified 18 out of 24 possible types with a single shot! [TODO: revisit this section when you're certain you have a complete list of possible Mage Staff effects, as there may be some disambiguation required between the Mage Staff and other staves.] But you're not done there. Try letting the monster hit you once. If it takes an identical amount of damage that you took, the staff was Empathy. (The monster will take some damage from a Counter Shield or Retribution rune, but not the same amount that you took.) Try hitting the monster once. If you take an identical amount of damage the monster just took, the staff was Sharing. (Be careful not to kill yourself while trying to kill a monster hit with a Sharing staff! Be safe, heal up if needed! And save that Sharing Staff to make a great rune.) You've now positively identified 20 different types from a single monster encounter. You'll know what it is but it's not ID'd in your game state, so name it.

OK, if you've made it this far, there are still 4 different types the staff could be: Unlucky, Balance, Ordinary, or Nagging. Next time you find a Trip Trap, clear the area, put down all your breakables (pots), and deliberately trigger the trip trap. This will reveal the identity of both Balance and Nagging staves, though again, you'll have to name them, they won't be ID'd in your game state.

You're down to just 2 possibilities: Unlucky and Ordinary. Find a level 2 monster and again zap it with a bolt. If it's an Unlucky Staff, the monster will level down, and if not, by process of elimination, you have an Ordinary Staff. Again, name it, because it won't be ID'd in your game state yet.

After a single test against an early monster and getting it down to just 4 types, you may be more likely to find a shop before you can complete the other tests. Of the 4 that you can't identify from a single monster encounter, the Unlucky has a base buy price of 1800, while the rest have a base buy price of 900, so you can easily identify the Unlucky Staff that way. If you've already found a Trip Trap to test for Balance/Nagging, your unidentified staff is Ordinary if it's at the 900 tier.

OK, you know the type and you've named it, but it's still not ID'd in your game state so you don't know the number of charges. In practice, this isn't really a problem. All staves have 4-7 charges by default, so you know you have at least 4 shots total (unless it was eaten/pecked at by a monster, which drains it). Just be conservative and don't use if when you need it to have another charge and it might not. (I think different staves have different ranges of charges actually, but have never tried to map out the amount. If someone were to map it out, you might be able to tell that (e.g.) it's always safe to use staff type X up to 5 charges.) If you really want to fully ID it to see the number of charges, a mass identification at a shopkeeper is your best bet, though you can of course use many of the other ID methods documented above. A mass ID via shopkeeper may be a great idea even if you don't really need to know the specific number of charges if you're rich or if it's a trivial theft opportunity or if you don't really need the staff anyway (e.g. it only has at most 1-2 charges left). If you have at least one ID'd staff of the same type, you can merge them together via Synthesis and the resulting staff will have all the charges and be identified. Don't risk putting an unidentified staff in last if it could be sealed as then the resulting staff would be sealed, but do put in a blessed staff last to have a blessing on the merged staff. Merging a set of staves where none of them are identified is probably a good idea, but you'll likely lose track of how many charges it has if you don't take good notes, esp. if you find another copy.

If you don't have this staff type in your Item Book yet, it's more important to prioritize identifying it. Again, mass ID via shopkeeper is your best bet, but if you have no other things that are harder to ID left such as bracelets and pots, might as well use an Identify Pot space or possibly an Identify Scroll on it.

I recommend keeping your staves that aren't fully ID'd in your main inventory, in case you get a "lucky day" outcome from reading an Identify Scroll, or in case you hit a Trip Trap and one of them happens to be Balance or Nagging.

If you know it's sealed but don't know it's type, how important is it to ID it? It depends. I wouldn't call any staff critical to a successful run, but a few such as Pinning and Cloning can make big differences. Personally, I carry them around until I can do a mass ID at a shop if I have space, or I occasionally use them as fodder to help ID pots and hope the pot is Identify, Exorcism, or Blessing.

Identifying Talismans

Refer to the Talismans page to see all the different items in this category.

Talismans are trivial to identify via use, so its virtually never important to try to identify them any other way. Note that talismans can't have modifiers (can't be blessed, cursed, or sealed), so it's just a question of identifying their type. Find an isolated monster several spaces away (but within 10 spaces so you can reach them with a thrown talisman), a monster that you could beat trivially even it levels up or is otherwise enhanced, and throw a talisman at them. Do this as early as you can, to identify items as early as possible before you need them in a pinch. Since talismans never appear as single items, so you can always name one of them that didn't hit the monster with what you learned, though maybe you'll have to retrieve a missed talisman to name it.

Using a talisman lets you know its type, but won't identify it in your game state. This is completely not a problem, but if it bugs you, you can eventually sell 1 of your talismans (or the entire stack if they're not really useful) to a shopkeeper when you plan to give that shopkeeper an Identify Scroll. If you haven't completed your talismans in your Item Book yet and this is a type of talisman you're not familiar with, spoil yourself with the Talismans page, name it appropriately, then up the priority of fully identifying it within your game. Still the best way to do so is to sell 1 to a shopkeeper when you plan to give the shopkeeper an Identify Scroll and mass identify lots of things. Short of that, put 1 (not the whole stack) into an Identify Pot, keep them in main inventory when you read an Identify Scroll on something more important like a bracelet and hope for a "lucky day" outcome, or just win the run / escape the dungeon to identify your "mystery" talisman.

The only gotcha that might trip you up when identifying a talisman by use is that a Sleep Talisman gives the monster Asleep status, while a Slumber Talisman gives the monster Sound Asleep status. There are other minor name differences as well (e.g. a Fear Talisman gives Afraid Status), but they're easy to figure out.

If you keep missing the monster with your talisman, are you wearing an unidentified bracelet which happens to be an Inaccurate Bracelet? After 3-5 misses in a row, that's strong enough evidence in my book to name the bracelet and unequip it.

Identifying All Others (Torches, Onigiri, Peaches, Arrows, Stones, Traps, and Others)

For all items in these categories, the item type is always known and they cannot be cursed. So the only possible unknown information is whether or not it is sealed. Talismans, Arrows, Stones, and probably Traps as well cannot be sealed either, so there is 100% nothing that can be unknown about them. For the rest of these items, practically speaking, it's not important to determine if they are sealed in advance, so it's best to just try to use them when you need to use them and if they're sealed the seal will be revealed in your game state at that time. Needless to say, do not try to use an item that could possibly be sealed when it is 100% critical that it not be sealed. E.g. maybe don't wait until you're starving and at 1 HP before trying to eat that Onigiri that might be sealed -- go ahead and try to eat it earlier than that. If you have the opportunity to reveal the seal early (e.g. Price Check, Identity Bracelet, Knowledgeable status), by all means use it, but in practice, it's not worth spending anything of value to determine if these items are sealed in advance.

It's rarely important to try to remove seals from these items, but see Blessings, Curses, and Seals for ways to deal with them. (Most of those techniques are focused on curses, though; an Exorcism Pot or Exorcism Scroll is usually your best bet if you really need to recover access to these items. Blessing Pots and Blessing Scrolls tend to be too valuable to use on items in these categories.)

(Open questions: As a peach ripens/rots, will that remove the seal because it's now a different item? Does a sealed Onigiri become an unsealed Grilled Onigiri when you take explosion/fire damage?)