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 the situation, 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.

Items in Shiren 5 have two levels of identification: the item's type can be identified or not, and independently, its modifiers can also be identified or not. 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 game state.

(Note that an item's category is always known and can even be determined at a distance via its icon. More info about category, type, instances, and modifiers can be found on the Items page.)

Part one of this guide is general tips, tricks, and techniques for identifying items. Part two is a set of step-by-step guides for each category of item. The step-by-step guides are as mechanical and repeatable as possible, but don't skip directly do them, as they won't be fully understandable without knowing the techniques 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. Suffice it to say that it's possible an item may in fact be a Mimic monster. This is definitely true for "items" that appear fully unidentified and for "items" that appear partially identified, but it may also be true for "items" that appear fully identified.

Background Information aka Spoilers

If you want to identify items in your game, it helps enormously to spoil yourself rotten on the full extent of what items exist. 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 both 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, roughly arranged from simplest to most complex.

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, as there are some item types (but not their modifiers) that appear to be identified in every location. So if you're wondering if a given unidentified item might be X, look in your Item Book while playing the game (not at the top menu) to see if X is identified at that moment, 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 in multiple dungeons.] Working theory 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, it isn't necessarily safe or a great idea to use an unidentified item, but it may sometimes be your best option. Sometimes, you'll try to use a consumable item such as a grass or scroll only to find it's sealed, which identifies the modifier status (you'll see a little X on the icon for "sealed") without identifying the type. Likewise, equipping an unidentified bracelet reveals its modifier status but not its type. Much more detail about identifying items by using them can be found in the category-specific step-by-step guides below.

Use an Identify Scroll: This is the simplest way to identify things and one the player will quickly learn if they don't know it already, but it's also not a very good technique, as there are more efficient ways to use Identify Scrolls if you can. 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 (including items you don't own) before reading an Identify Scroll, and maybe even squeeze in one more thing to identify by targeting an unidentified item at your feet as well. As a habit, I only put identified items into Preservation Pots or other fully identified pots, so I'm always ready to take advantage of a "lucky day" Identify Scroll outcome without rearranging my inventory. Bracelets are often the hardest items to identify, with pots being second hardest, so if you must read an Identify Scroll directly, target an unidentified bracelet or pot if you can.

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 allow new items, and even if they did, it would be much better to get other new items rather than a new item Identify Scroll, as it could normally only be used once. (A new item Identify Bracelet, 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. You can do this 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 there aren't many safe grasses and scrolls left unidentified, it's not such a bad thing to put them into Identify Pots just to be sure they aren't horribly dangerous items. 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. Staves are mostly easy to identify by use but identifying them by use won't reveal how many charges they have left. 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. (If you're on a losing trajectory in your current run, but you have a risky shot at stealing one of these, it might be worth the risk.) In any case, if you have one of these bracelets, equip it, then pick up every other item you see to fully identify those other items. If you're carrying something unidentified, you'll need to drop it and pick it back up again. And you can do this for items you don't own in a shop, too. (Ironically, it's possible to figure out that an unidentified bracelet is Identify, and use it to identify every other item, but the bracelet itself will still not be identified in your game state.)

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. (Gorger's Manor specializes in Special Onigiri so this is particularly applicable in that dungeon. That location page also has loads of details on how Special Onigiri work.) 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 gives via an audiovisual flourish when the combo first activates, and gives the player a bonus of some sort. This is not a very practical way to try to identify items, 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 doesn't allow you to take all items out on victory.) 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 need outside the dungeon, or that you need to complete your Item Book and you're afraid you won't be able to survive long enough to identify them in the dungeon. For example, Fever Pots are particularly useful outside of dungeons. If you've found a 3-space pot late in a difficult dungeon (Fever Pots always have 3 spots by default), and you've ruled out most other pots, and you have no 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: Refer to the Items page for background info on how prices work in Shiren 5. You can see the buy price of every item for sale, and you can find the sell price of any item you own by starting to sell it (by itself) to the shopkeeper then aborting out, and once you know either the buy or sell price, you can calculate the other by multiplying or dividing by 35%. Also note 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 radically narrow down the possible items that a given unidentified item might be. In some cases, you can prove that a given unidentified item must be X because you've already identified every other item except X in that price tier. More commonly, you can considerably narrow down the possibilities then make an educated guess based on previous game experience. For instance, if you see an unidentified (and empty) 5-space 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 usually rarer and usually not found on early floors in 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 "5K-1", meaning, the 1st item you've found with a buy price of 5000, to help you keep track of what you learned from the price check. (You can try to get fancier to name something to remind you of the item's price tier + modifier status + charges remaining, for example, but keep in mind that names are per type, not per instance, so any future items you find of the same type would also have that more specific name.) Given this technique, you should name *every single unidentified item*, both yours and the shopkeepers, before you leave the shop. It can be cumbersome, but doing this maximizes your chances to win the run. Here are some more specific tips related to this technique:

• If you're going to use the next technique (giving an identified Identify Scroll to the shopkeeper), obviously you don't need to bother naming anything that the shopkeeper will own when you give him the scroll.
• For swords and shields, the types are always known, so you can never name them. But you can use a price check to see if the item has a curse or seal. If so, just sell it without bothering to identify it further (unless you need it for a rune). If not, equip it once to fully identify it.
• Occasionally you can figure out what an item is from a price check (or what it's very likely to be), and rather than naming it, if it's something you don't mind consuming immediately, it's much faster to just consume it and identify it that way. (Obviously this only works for items that become identified upon consumption, such as grasses and scrolls. And, if you're not 100% certain what the item is, it can be fatal to consume it in a shop. E.g. eating a Warp Grass with an unpaid debt in a shop can be fatal, reading a Vacuum Slash Scroll will aggro the shopkeeper and likely be fatal, etc..)

• Sometimes a price check won't be enough to identify the item, but will be enough to let you know you shouldn't bother to identify it further. E.g. most bracelets with a base buy price of 2,000 aren't that great. Maybe Strength is the only one to bother with? It's a judgment call of course. But if the only 2,000 bracelet you want is Strength, you can test to see if it's a Strength Bracelet, and if not, name it something like "!Strength-1" and just sell it. There are many possible scenarios like this (e.g. sell any bracelet less then 5,000 when you've already found Monster Detector?), though of course they're all judgement calls. Even if you've decided not to identify it further, make sure to name it appropriately to help you if you see that type again.
• For bracelets in particular, you might find out that they are either cursed or sealed. In this case, they're *probably* cursed (curses seam more common than seals on equipment), and if it is cursed, it's *probably not a great item. (Some bad bracelets such as Nonary seem to be cursed 100% of the time.) 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 and cursed. This could still be useful if you could find a way to remove the curse (or seal) before you put it on. OTOH, you could name it something like "5000 bad?" and just sell it COME BACK HERE
• . 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 leveraging the Strip Trap. If you can safely do so, save equipment without equipping it until you find a Strip Trap, then try equipping everything you have that isn't identified yet. This will fully identify swords and shields and partially identify bracelets (it will show you if they are blessed, cursed, or sealed). If anything is cursed, you can use the Strip Trap to remove it. It's a good habit to never leave a Strip Trap until all your equipment is as identified as you can make it. But there are other tricks in this category too. A Trip Trap can be used to identify a Balance Staff. If you find a Trip Trap, put down all your pots for safekeeping then deliberately trigger the Trip Trap. If you have a Balance Staff (or Nagging Staff!) in your inventory, you'll figure it out. You can also use Spin Traps and Sleep Traps to test if a bracelet is Anti-Cnf. Bracelet or Alert Bracelet respectively. (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 may be other less common tricks in this category as well. (There are also other ways to turn traps into useful opportunities, like throwing rocks on arrow traps to generate arrows, but they don't have to do with identifying items so I won't go into detail here.)

Use Synthesis Pots and Mixer monsters: You can identify some items by trying to use them in synthesis or mixer recipes. 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, it will be identified in your game state, and if it fails, well, at least you've ruled out one thing the item might have been. 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 not identified by default. (To the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to find swords and shields with runes pre-placed on them.) Maybe you want a sword or shield for your base equipment, or maybe you just want it for it's rune and/or it's upgrade points, but it's not identified yet, there's no Strip Trap handy, and it's dangerous to put it on to identify it that way. In this case, it may be beneficial to just synthesize or mix it anyway. The type is known so you know if it will make a good rune or not. The upgrade points will be between -1 and +3, and empirically speaking, you're much more likely to gain or at least stay neutral than you are to lose upgrade points. (In my experience, -1 seems to come up about 5% or 10% of the time, 0 comes up about 40% of the time, and +1 to +3 comes up about 50% to 55% of the time. It may vary by dungeon.) The modifier status of the resulting item will equal the modifier status of the last item synthesized or mixed, which you can use to your advantage to eliminate the chance of getting a curse or seal on the resulting item. For example, with a Synthesis Pot, you can put in your base sword first, then 3 unknown swords, then finish with a 5th sword that is known not to have a curse or seal.
• 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 the single best trick in this category is to try to use a Mixer to make a rune. This technique can be used with any Mixer recipe and any item that might be one of the recipe's ingredients, but it's particularly easy to test single-item recipes because you don't have to juggle as many items around. In terms of single-item recipes, it's particularly great to try this technique with unidentified grasses, especially on swords, because a huge portion of grasses make good runes on swords. (Beware trying this with unidentified scrolls though, because IIRC, Mixer monsters turn scrolls that don't get converted into runes into Pieces of Paper aka mush.) Throw the unknown item in first then the sword or shield, which should get rid of any seal if the unknown item had one. If the recipe succeeds, the unidentified item will be gone, transformed into a rune, and its type will be identified in your game state. (I think this also identifies the sword or shield too, though this needs confirmation.) If it fails, then you know which types the unidentified item isn't. (If a grass doesn't mix with a sword, you've ruled out about half the grasses -- and it might be one of more valuable grasses like Undo or Revival.) Certain runes are so valuable that it may be worth testing for them even if the unknown item has a very low chance of being the item you need. (For example, you could make a Refining rune if the unknown pot is an Upgrade Pot, or a Healing rune if you have a Heal Pot and the unknown item is a Heal Bracelet.) Beware that your items may in fact be Mimic-type monsters, so a recipe can fail even 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 were 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.
• Different pots have different possible capacities by default. Some can have a capacity of 3-5 by default, some can have a capacity of 2-4 by default, and two pots have specific capacities only. (Synthesis Pots are always 5 spaces by default and Fever Pots are always 3 spaces by default.) So, an unknown pot's capacity is a clue as to what type of pot it might be.
• Different staves seem to have different ranges for charge capacity as well, but you usually can't tell how many charges a staff has until you've identified it via other means anyway (plus, many of them are easy to identify via a single use).
• 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 seem to be more likely to be cursed than Monster Detector and Item Detector bracelets, and Nonary is either cursed all the time or it just seems like it. Knowing this can help you narrow down to make an educated guess.

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 your unknown pot wasn't a Synthesis Pot you might still be able to get your items out because it was a Preservation Pot instead. (But never place multiple items into an unknown pot in a single action! Go slow, one at a time!) If you found several copies of an item-targeting scroll early on, odds are they are Identify Scrolls, because they seem to be the most common of the item-targeting scrolls in most dungeons. 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.) The odds of finding different items 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. In addition to using intuition and experience to identify what items might be, you can also rule out what they are not. E.g. it is 100% impossible to find a stock Floating Bracelet in the Tower of Fortune. Unfortunately, it's hard to be more precise than this without a data dump or experiment. The Locations page 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. You could then revive and name the items based on the information received from your rescuer(s). The player community used a similar trick 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 slow and potentially error-prone, 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 I don't rely on this technique 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?)