Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Pitfall of Life

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Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor 25F
Final Goal Floor 99F
Day / Night Day
Bring Items In No
Take Items Out Yes
# of Allies 0
# of Rescues 3
Pre-ID'd Items All
New Items No
Shops Normal (all 3 types)
Monster Houses Normal, including pop-ups
NPCs Shopkeepers, wandering non-allies
Spawn Rate Normal
Winds of Kron Normal (slow) -- 1@1700, 4@2000

Pitfall of Life is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 in which you cannot gain experience or level up. It is otherwise notable for being an equipment upgrading paradise and for the valuable reward item you can win. You cannot take items/Gitan or allies in, but you can request rescue up to 3 times, and you get to keep the items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is daytime only and the goal floor is initially 25 F. After beating the dungeon once, the goal floor becomes 99F and stays there permanently.

Gaining Access

This dungeon is hidden and you must first unlock it.

  • Beat the main dungeon (Tower of Fortune)
  • Recruit Kojirouta (the rich man's son) from his home in Inori Village (left-most house) and bring him to the top of the Miracle Alcove at the top of the Tower of Fortune
    • Unlike most allies, he tends to wander off and engage awake monsters on his own, and thus dies more easily
    • So you'll likely need to recruit him many times on many runs and level him up a bunch
    • And you'll need to actively try to protect him, sometimes by stepping between him and harm, or swapping places with him to move him away from a monster
    • In particular, don't change floors when he's chasing a monster or he may not follow you to the next floor
    • At the Miracle Alcove, he's pretty cocky when he talks to the god and rolls the Dice of Fate, and gets burned to a crisp (but is not dead permanently)
  • Return to the rich man's house in Inori Village and talk to the rich man (Kojirouta's father)
    • He tries to trick you into opening the big red box at the N end of his house
    • This springs a big Pitfall Trap, but you manage not to fall in
    • The rich man explains the dungeon mechanism of not being able to gain experience, and dares you to dive in

After the above, you can access and play the Pitfall of Life whenever you want via the same big red box at the north end of the left-most house in Inori Village.

Unique Features

  • You cannot gain experience or level up.
    • Killing monsters does not give you experience
    • Student Shields and Growth Bracelets are not available, while using Cheery Grass and similar items do nothing.
  • You cannot take items, Gitan, or allies into the dungeon.
  • New items don't appear in this dungeon.
  • Items that help improve your build appear often.
    • Fate Scroll, Earth Scroll, and Strength Grass are very common.
    • Blessing Scroll, Extraction Scroll, Gambler's Scroll, Plating Scroll, Upgrade Seed, Blessing Pot, Fever Pot, Synthesis Pot, and Modder's Pot appear more often than in most dungeons.
  • All items except for swords and shields are pre-identified. Cursed swords and shields are nonexistent or very rare.
  • The dungeon is daytime only.

Final Reward

Every time you beat the dungeon, you get a True Knife, a sword that never misses. This effect can be synthesized onto another sword to make the "Accurate" rune. Completing the dungeon is the only way to obtain this weapon.

Farming Opportunities

Beating this dungeon is the only known way to get a True Knife in single player mode.

This dungeon has a high spawn rate of Fever Pots. But it is not easy to take them out, since neither Escape Scroll and Undo Grass appear in this dungeon. (Blank Scrolls are only available if you get the best fortune from the wandering fortune teller.) Pick-A-Choice shops in Inori Cave are an easier way to get Fever Pots. However, if you do Adventure While Awaiting Rescue in this dungeon, you can easily get plenty of these.

Strategy

TODO: write about

  • Late game strats: 90-99F Mesmerikon, 86-91F Ultra Gazers
    • Mesmerikon + Swordmaster (90-97F) can end the run in a single turn
    • Dodger Pot, Anti-Parry, Confusion Scroll, Reflective Pot
    • Use Extinction Scroll on either Gazer or Mutaikon (latter is preferable)
    • Use Gambler's Scroll to jump (1/7 chance of moving ahead 5 floors), read on exit stairs
    • Zen can be useful against Cranky Tank (98-99F)
  • 36-38F Grass Guy farm (no bad grasses similar to Underground Manor; 36 has Polygon Shaka but 37-38F is safe) - useful for 250 HP expert badge, Strength limit of 50 can be reached, Grass Gramps on 61-62F

---

Because you don't get experience for killing monsters, don't kill monsters unless you really need the experience for your equipment, or unless you're reasonably certain to get an item from them.

Success in this dungeon depends on how well you can maximize Blessing Scrolls, Extraction Scrolls, and Blessing Pots.

  • You can use a Blessing Scroll or Blessing Pot to bless a Fate Scroll, Earth Scroll, or Strength Grass. Effectively, each Blessing Scroll or Blessing Pot spot gives you +1 upgrade point or +1 strength.
    • Blessing a Blessing Scroll lets you conserve space without losing any value.
  • Blessing an Extraction Scroll gives you up to 5 upgrade points (or strength or "blessing units"), assuming you have any pot with 5 items you want to bless.
    • A blessed Extraction Scroll can only be read once, but it blesses everything extracted from the pot.
    • Items to include in a blessed extraction: Fate Scroll, Earth Scroll, Strength Grass, Revival Grass, Extraction Scroll, Blessing Scroll, Monster House Scroll, among others. If a scroll (except Extraction) is already blessed, you can read it then insert it into the pot.
      • The blessed extraction is the reason to keep some of these items around, instead of using them right away.
    • The pot doesn't have to be a Preservation Pot; you can use a Synthesis, Ordinary, or Modder's Pot.
      • If you have a Blessing Pot with 4-5 spots, then you can skip blessing the Extraction Scroll, freeing up 1 blessing each time. You can increase the capacity of a pot with a Pot God Scroll.
    • Watch out for traps and monsters when you extract items. You will also need up to 5 spaces around you for items to land.

Fever Pots also let you double up Fate Scrolls, Earth Scrolls, or Revival Grasses.

On late floors, you can keep Gitan bags from Gitan Mamels and Ultra Gazes as projectiles to take out instantly a monster that is giving you trouble. Bags of 2,000 and 5,000 Gitan can kill anything in one hit, and even more if they are blessed.

Once you get level 8 equipment, killing monsters becomes practically useless; you'll probably want to avoid them at all costs, especially at floors 81-99 where Ultra Gazes and Fear Radishes appear (Gaze Shields and Immunity Scrolls don't seem to appear in this dungeon, and these monsters can ruin your day from a long distance).

Having a strong shield here is far more important than a weapon, you don't have many hit points and monsters can take you out easily. Strength is also important as it lets you do more damage even while being level one. Some useful runes include the Day Shield, which can considerably reduce damage from monsters, and because this dungeon is daytime only you should really get one. Also, extra damage runes and the Breeze Blade rune for your weapon can greatly help you.

As for bracelets, try to switch them constantly as you change floors (for example, a Staunch Bracelet on floors where Polygon Spin monsters appear). Having a sword and shield resonance that lets you equip two armbands also helps, you can equip them when the situation calls for it, protecting you from two different status ailments at once.

Of course, you'll want to make great use of Synthesis Pots and Mixer monsters. This applies to the majority of dungeons under normal circumstances but applies here as well. When it's safe to do so, it's a good idea to test every sword and shield by putting it on once. This lets you determine if it has any modifier (cursed, sealed, or blessed) and it's upgrade value. You should also do this for bracelets, though putting them on won't immediately tell you their type nor do they have upgrade values. Knowing the modifier status and upgrade value of every sword and shield allows you to maximize synthesis. It may seem pointless to test an Ordinary Stick, but even an Ordinary Stick can have a +3 upgrade value, which is definitely worth synthesizing onto your main sword. And it may seem pointless to test a Glass Dirk, but if it's a Glass Dirk +1, it's still worth synthesizing onto your main sword when your main swords is maxed out on good runes already. And even a plain Ordinary Stick or Glass Dirk with no modifier (no curse, seal, or blessing) and no upgrade value can still be used to remove the curse or seal off another item by synthesizing the cursed/sealed item first then the item with no modifier. In any case, the point is, fully identifying all your swords and shields when you get the chance allows you get all the good runes you want, avoid all the bad runes, get all the upgrades you can hold, and never waste an upgrade by hitting your max.

Under normal circumstances in the majority of dungeons, you usually have to wait to do all this equipment testing until you find a safe way to deal with curses, such as a Strip Trap, a shop (where you can price check items), a Blessing Scroll, or an Exorcism Scroll. Or you just throw caution to the wind and risk getting stuck with a bad cursed item and possibly losing the run because of it. But in this dungeon, you have far more opportunities to deal with curses/seals than normal. Nymph Grass, ordinarily quite rare but more available in this dungeon, will also let you remove any cursed items. You can also use a Fate Scroll or Earth Scroll to remove a curse/seal from a sword or shield respectively, or a Plating Scroll to remove a curse/seal from either a sword or a shield, and these scrolls are so common in this dungeon that you can virtually test equipment any time you want to. And while it might seem like a waste to use a good scroll to remove a curse, odds are high you'll be able to find a way to synthesize the formerly-cursed item onto your main equipment soon, so it's really not much of a waste or a big risk, especially if that item makes a good rune. So, knock yourself out, test everything you want to test. See Blessings, Curses, and Seals in the Strategies section for more info.

Alternatively, there are so many ways to deal with curses/seals that you can just synthesize blindly. This risks waste—that Ordinary Stick may in fact have no upgrade value or even a negative upgrade value, or, it may put you over your upgrade limit wasting some of the upgrade value—but odds are extremely good that you'll be able to deal with any unexpected curses/seals you end up even if you blindly synthesize. So long as the last item you synthesize is not cursed or sealed, the resulting item won't be either. You may want to do this if you have an abundance of Synthesis Pots and things to synthesize and are limited on inventory space, or if you're starting to fall behind the power curve, so aren't willing or able to wait for a safe opportunity to test everything.

As usual, make sure you have room for the runes and upgrade values you're trying to synthesize onto your main equipment. In fact, you may want to hold off on mixing in lesser runes such as Lively to ensure you have plenty of room for more important runes. And given how many opportunities you will have to remove curses/seals, don't throw away equipment that has a good rune but is also cursed/sealed.

If you're tempted to throw away equipment that you don't plan to synthesize, but you're not tight on inventory space, hold on to it anyway. For one, you might find a Bunch Bracelet, which increases the value of your equipment if you have more pieces of the same family of equipment in your main inventory, and for two, Curse Girl family monsters can randomly curse items in your main inventory so it's good to give them some useless targets to hit if you're not 100% tight on inventory space, unless you have a Curseless Bracelet handy.

Even if you do wonders upgrading your equipment quickly, it's difficult to survive for long at just level 1 with just 15 HP. Remember that you can use Herb, Otogiriso, Heal Grass, and Life Grass in multiple ways. Using them to heal yourself is the worst way to use them in this dungeon unless you're truly in a bind and have no other choice. Also, note that Life Grass doesn't heal but adds max HP instead. It's better to either mix them onto your equipment (via Mixer family monsters) to make good runes that give you a lot more hit points when those items are equipped, or to eat them while full on HP to give yourself a few more hit points. Assuming you don't have a disaster and lose your primary equipment, you only need to save at most 2 of each type of grass to mix into runes and you should eat the rest while full on HP to raise your max HP. And odds are good that you'll be tight on rune space in your primary equipment, so it might be better to just use them right away to raise your max HP rather than saving them. Odds are decent you'll find more of them later anyway, when you have more rune space to mix them onto your equipment, but not if you die before you can get that far

Expert Badges

  1. You conquered a dungeon without equipping any weapons!
  2. You beat a dungeon without using a shield or bracelet!
  3. You conquered a dungeon without eating any food!
  4. You conquered a dungeon without using any talismans!
  5. You conquered a dungeon without using any pots!
  6. You conquered a dungeon without collapsing even once!
  7. You conquered a dungeon without doing any direct attacks!
  8. You conquered a dungeon with your max HP at over 250!

Monsters

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

Open Questions

  • Do Growth Bracelets not exist in this dungeon, or do they just not give you experience here?
  • Itemize all the possible ways to get experience and test them all in this dungeon.


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