Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Rousing Paradise

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Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	50F
Final Goal Floor	99F
Day / Night	Day
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	0
Pre-ID'd Items	Virtually none
New Items	No
Shops	All types, normal rate
Monster Houses	All types, normal rate, pop-ups possible
NPCs	No
Spawn Rate	Fast (every 10 turns)
Winds of Kron	Fast

Rousing Paradise is a bonus dungeon which appears to have been the inspiration for the "Redo dungeon" command. There are virtually no pre-identified items, monsters spawn much faster than usual, and the Winds of Kron blow much earlier than in most other dungeons. But hey, it's not like the game will start you right next to a monster that can kill you in one shot before you've had a chance to pick up a single item. Oh wait, it does that too. Rousing Paradise may well be the most difficult dungeon in the game.

Gaining Access

You can access this bonus dungeon from the Dungeon Center in Nekomaneki Village. Access is not restricted; you can play as soon as you can reach the Dungeon Center.

Unique Features

• Monsters spawn every 10 turns. This is likely the fastest spawn rate in the entire game.
• The monster table is substantially different than normal.
  • Some floors seem to have a designated "boss" monster, which is significantly tougher than you would normally find at that depth, and the bosses on early floors can kill you in one shot. According to the Japanese wiki, if you kill this boss monster, the next monster to spawn will be a new copy of the boss monster.
  • Every floor also seems to have one designated "mass" monster, which appears very commonly on that floor.
  • There are less opportunities to leverage Mixer monsters than usual.
  • The monster difficulty curve is steeper than in most bonus dungeons, and at deep depths, you can encounter monsters that are level 5 in their families—higher than you can normally find.
• The Winds of Kron begin blowing much faster than in most other dungeons. Only Warning Valley has faster winds.
  • You have about enough time to explore every room on a given floor twice if you were so inclined, but you certainly can't dawdle.
• The item table is also substantially different than normal, though it's hard to be precise.
  • You can find virtually the entire range of possible items in this dungeon, and on earlier floors than usual.
  • E.g. you can find Floramorph Pots, Grilling Pots, Upgrade Pots, Degrade Pots, Amnesia Grass, SuperUnlucky Seed, Angel Seed, Scout Bracelet, and many other rare items all before 20F.
  • You can even find a Floating Bracelet randomly placed on the ground. This is the only known location that can give a Floating Bracelet aside from wishing for it in Inori Cave.
  • A few items that seem to never appear: Klein Pot, Zalokleft Pot, Monster Pot, Shrine Maid Pot, Water Pot, Heavenly Pot, and Heal Bracelet. So if you find an open-type pot, it's either Heal or Hilarious, and it may be impossible to synthesize the Healing rune. There may be other items that do not appear but they are not common normally so it's hard to say for sure.
• Perhaps the one redeeming feature of this dungeon is that it seems to be a bit more generous with items than in some other bonus dungeons.
• There are no new items in this dungeon.
• There are no NPCs in this dungeon aside from shopkeepers.
• Shops seem to appear at normal frequency, but because of the wide variety of drops possible on early floors, you may be hard-pressed to find an Identify Scroll to give to a shopkeeper even when you find a shop, so will need to use other techniques to identify items.

Final Reward

After beating this dungeon for the first time, with a 50F goal floor, you get a Scout Bracelet, and the goal floor becomes 99F and stays there permanently. You probably get a Scout Bracelet every time you beat the dungeon, but this needs to be confirmed.

Farming Opportunities

This is not a good dungeon to try to farm valuable items out of. The difficulty level is very high, items are not pre-identified, and there is such a wide variety of items available, you're unlikely to get what you need when you need it. But it is theoretically possible. Undo Grass, Escape Scrolls, and Blank Scrolls can all be found in this dungeon, and the latter two are both pre-identified (as they are in apparently every dungeon). You can also find shops at about the normal frequency, and if you can scrap together 2,000 (which is not a given in this dungeon) you can tag a sword or shield and farm it out that way, even if you die.

Alternatively, you could try to find rare items in this dungeon and identify them to add them to your Item Book. Rare items can be found before 20 F more commonly here than in most dungeons, but, opportunities to actually identify them are more limited than normal. E.g. it might be frustrating to correctly name a Grilling Pot but die before you can identify it to add it to your Item Book.

Difficulty of farming not withstanding, here are items confirmed to have been found pre-placed on the ground by ~20 F (maybe ~40 F):

• Floating Bracelet
• Scout Bracelet
• Gut Grass
• Repeat Grass
• Amnesia Grass
• SuperUnlucky Seed
• Angel Seed
• Nixer Scroll
• Modder's Pot
• Upgrade Pot
• Degrade Pot
• Grilling Pot
• Floramorph Pot

Strategies

You will need to be a master of Shiren to beat this dungeon. Trying to teach how to master the game is out of scope for this page. In brief, make sure you are fully versed in how to maximize the ROI of every item, monster, and trap. Be an expert at identifying items, leveraging shops in every way including theft, leveraging monster houses, and knowing when to run. It also helps if you have completed your Item Book before trying this dungeon, so you can easily name unidentified items as you figure out what they are. (TODO: link to appropriate pages once they are available.)

It's probably best not to care about a run until you've found or achieved something worth protecting. Some runs are literally impossible to win without cheating the RNG. For example, you often start 1F right next to a Cololum (light green + round), which can kill you in one shot. You will have only a Large Onigiri on you, and you'll need to get past the monster, letting it take two swings at you. Even if you manage to get extremely lucky and not die getting past it, it will follow you and you'll likely get in more trouble with other monsters or poor room layouts before you can find a single item, trap, or the staircase. And you probably shouldn't dive quickly even if you find the stairs, as swords and shields seem to appear more commonly on the first five floors, and you may really need those items to have a chance to survive longer term. So, don't take the run too seriously until you've found a decent sword and shield—just restart a few times if needed—then once you have a reasonable foothold, use every trick in the book to build upon it. (For example, you could pick up gitan bags to use them as projectiles. It's a PITA but it does work well. You can kill many early monsters with a single gitan bag, and, if you find any Froggo's while you're broke, their special attacks won't do anything to you. Should you bother going to such lengths, playing very slowly and carefully, when you haven't found a sword or shield yet? It may not be worth it.)

The first challenge you'll face is just surviving 1F - 5F. The "boss" monster on 1F and 2F is a Cololum, which can kill you outright when you're level 1 and have no equipment. There's not much point trying to fight them without equipment even if you've gained a few levels. (The XP you could gain isn't worth the risk, unless you've found a strong sword and shield. You'll have plenty of opportunities to gain XP in this dungeon.) As it's the "boss" for these floors, it will apparently respawn ASAP if you manage to kill it, so leave it be or find a way to bypass it. If it's sleeping, count your lucky stars and leave it that way. Note that the lesser yellow form is also on these floors and you can kill them without equipment. Then on 3F and 4F, the boss is a Metalhead, which can be managed a bit easier, e.g. by fighting in a hallway and getting lucky to have it charge up, letting you retreat one space. Needless to say, there is risk to trying to fight them, and again, they will respawn quickly even if you kill them.

On 1F - 5F, gather up as many items as you can, and aggressively identify them, talimans and staves in particular. Find a single easy monster in a room by itself, several steps away, and zap it. In other words, except the monster to be hasted, buffed, or leveled up, and if you can still kill it in that state, it's a good monster to test your item on. All talismans and the majority of staves can be identified in a single use. But you'll also need to aggressively identify other item types as well. In the spirit of not taking runs too seriously until you have something to lose, any time you find a better sword or shield on these floors, go ahead and equip it. (Later, once your equipment gets to be ~level 4-5 or higher, it's probably not worth switching it out, even if you find a better piece of equipment at level 1. But early on, it's best to take the risk of equipping the unknown sword or shield and hoping it's not cursed. Naturally, you should equip and thus identify all equipment anytime you find a Strip Trap, using the trap to remove it if it's cursed.) One great way to identify a pot is to put a named but unidentified staff in it after you've used up most or all of its charges. You can identify about half of all pots with this one insertion. Using an unidentified item with known limited utility, but one that can be cursed/blessed/sealed, can help identify a wider variety of pots, including Identify, Blessing, and Curse. See the identification strategy guide for more tips.

If you've managed to survive to 5F, you'll likely start filling up on inventory. Try to avoid eating unknown grasses, as Amnesia is a real possibility even at this depth. Moreover, a large portion of grasses can turn into helpful runes, and mixing a sword/shield with a grass in a Mixer monster identifies both the equipment and the grass. If you need to compress inventory, it is probably better to read unknown scrolls first instead. Bankruptcy is not such a big risk as you likely won't have much money yet anyway. The real dangers are Monster House, Gathering, and Attraction. Unfortunately, the best place to be when reading an unknown scroll that happens to be Monster House is right inside a large room where the nearby hallway leads to the room with the exit, while the best place if the scroll happens to be Gathering/Attraction is probably in a dead end hallway. If you have a way to survive being swarmed by monsters, great, if not, reading the unknown scroll might be the end of your run. Regardless, wait to read your unknown scrolls until after you've looted everything you want out of the floor, as Grounding and Muzzled are also possible, and if you hit one of those, you can simply exit the floor to clear the bad status.

There are L1 Mixers on 10F and 11F—less floors than normal. In addition, you can't take a long time on any floor due to the Winds of Kron being more aggressive than in most dungeons, not to mention that you can easily run short on food. But the next opportunity you'll have to find Mixer monsters is 45F and 46F, so it's critical that you do all the mixing you can squeeze in now. If you have the time/opportunity (e.g. you have lots of food and the floor layout allows finding Mixers easily), it's great to try to mix unknown grasses onto shields first, as you typically have more rune room on shields and many common grasses make HP-enhancing runes on either sword or shield. This saves more rune space on your sword, at the risk of wasting time due to trying to mix a grass that doesn't produce a rune. Glorious staves and talismans are useful to level up Mixers and thus let you mix more items with a single Mixer, and Slow or other items used on the Mixer can help you beat it without taking damage. (Needless to say, if you have a Glorious Talisman, you'd need to throw it on an adjacent monster to affect the Mixer, or, throw it on the Mixer after it's full with 2 other items first.) Just beware that, if the unknown grass is Stomach Expander, the Mixer may swallow a thrown item you didn't expect it to swallow, and, unfortunately, throwing Stomach Expander or Stomach Shrinker at a Mixer doesn't identify those grasses (as they don't produce runes). Also, it's best to prioritize mixes that can't be done in a Synthesis Pot. That is, mix one piece of equipment with one non-piece of equipment, as you can't do that without Mixer monsters, whereas you will likely find a few Synthesis Pots along the way on a normal run. If you know one of the two items doesn't have a curse or seal, mix that one 2nd, to remove any curse/seal on the other unknown item. (The unknown item could have a blessing, too, but blessings on equipment fade very quickly anyway, so it's not worth trying to save them, esp. given curses/seals are more common.) Lastly, if you have a ton of great runes to mix, don't just blindly mix them onto as few pieces of equipment as possible. For example, let's say your main weapon can take 6 runes, and you max out, then you start compressing all your other runes onto a 2nd weapon which also maxes out at 6 runes. Great! You've just compressed your inventory beautifully! Except, when will you be able to merge weapon 2 onto weapon 1 without losing runes? You'll need to survive until ~45F or maybe 50F before your weapon #1 reaches L8 and (probably) has infinite rune capacity, and you may not be able to survive. If you keep 1-2 runes on multiple swords, you can merge them in over time as you find Synthesis Pots. So, prioritize turning useful items into runes but not necessarily compressing them as much as possible. After rune-ifying all the grasses you can, and rune-ifying all the other correctly named items you wanted to turn into runes (e.g. Paralysis Staff, Seal Staff, Sharing Staff), if you still have more time and rune space, it might be worthwhile trying to mix unknown pots as well, as there's a chance on of them is an Upgrade Pot.

If you've made it this far, you'll likely have strong equipment with multiple good runes and plenty of inventory space to pick up more items. You now officially have a decent foothold so should start playing more cautiously. And even though you have decently strong equipment for this depth, don't get complacent, as this is still a very deadly dungeon.

Note also that any unknown grasses you have at this point that didn't turn into runes could possibly be Revival or Undo—or Amnesia or Strength of SuperUnlucky etc. etc.. The point is, it becomes more important to safely identify them once you've filtered out the ones that make runes.

If you're not already Super, with your stronger equipment, you should have an easier time becoming Super. Becoming and staying Super is key to beating this dungeon. It helps if you can attain Tinkerer via Super, so you can get your equipment up to L8 before 45F. See the Super strategy page for more details.

Boy Carts appear on 20F-22F. If you have a Dodger Pot, by all means stock up on hundreds of arrows. Again, you'll likely be forced onward by the Winds of Kron, even if you have plenty of food, but having lots of non-magical projectiles really helps against high-level Digestiphants.

One of the next serious challenges you'll face is the high-level Fearrabbits on 28F-33F. Getting repeatedly yanked into the middle of a large room filled with high-level Fearrabbits is a recipe for failure. Consider rushing past these floors. If you happen to have a Steady Shield, consider equipping it even if it's not a rune and it's significantly weaker than your normal shield. If you had the opportunity to mix the Steady Shield to make the Unmoving rune, on balance, it's better to have it as a rune even though you need to give up easy use of Pinning Staves, Swap Staves, and Warp Grasses.

Another serious challenge are swarms of high-level Digestiphants on various floors. Again, skipping past these floors is safer, and you'll have loads of opportunities to gain XP elsewhere. The next best thing is probably non-magical projectiles or possibly a Fort. Staff to block them away from you if you have one.

OTOH, rushing past the 20s and 30s means your equipment likely won't be L8 by the time you reach 45F, which is the next mixing opportunity. 45F may be the last safe-ish floor to do any mixing. 46F has L2 Mixers, but also has high level Digestiphants, making it much harder to safely mix, and below 46F, the next Mixers are at 59F, and at that depth, if you've rushed past many floors, you may have fallen behind the power curve and may need to keep rushing to try to make it to 99F.

One item that can help a ton is a Floating Bracelet, which can be found both on the ground and in shops in this dungeon. Using Floating makes it vastly easier (or at least faster and less cumbersome) to stay in Super mode, which makes it much easier to continue harvesting floors rather than running past them. Make sure to soften up monsters with an arrow or other projectile or staff bolt to minimize the damage you take going toe-to-toe, and with Floating + judicious use of items, you can continue harvesting floors down to the 60s. But beware that there are really nasty monsters on deep floors. Ultragazers can ruin your run if you don't have the Anti-Hypno rune. Sleep Grass throwing monsters can also ruin your run if you don't have an Alert Bracelet or Dodger Pot. And perhaps worst of all, note that 91F-99F have Abyssal Dragon 2s—an upgraded form of the highest form of Dragon monsters—which can zap you with a never-missing fireball from many rooms away. You'll likely be unable to survive this gauntlet if you haven't found a way to deal with mass remote fireballs by this point (e.g. Zen Jar, or at least an Anti-Fire rune).

Expert Badges

Expert badges are not available for this dungeon.

Monsters

The types of monsters that can appear in this dungeon have not yet been replicated to this wiki. Here are good external resources:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1h9IRPQPLg9g7aE48wlyw8IudHIStawK4mR3kuggto/edit?usp=sharing
• http://seesaawiki.jp/w/shiren5/d/%a4%ef%a4%af%a4%ef%a4%af%a5%d1%a5%e9%a5%c0%a5%a4%a5%b9 (Japanese wiki page for this same dungeon—confirm)

Open Questions

None at this time.