Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Staff

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Staves (Japanese: 杖) are usable items that appears in Shiren the Wanderer 5 and 5 Plus. There are twenty-four variants of them in total.

Summary

Staves are like magic staves or magic wands in other D&D or other RPG games. Magic bolts aka bullets aka shots travel in a straight line indefinitely until they hit something (if nothing else, then the exterior wall of the floor). They have between 4-7 shots by default, though this can be increased or decreased by various means from 0-99. For most staves, throwing them at a monster and hitting it acts just as if you had shot them, so you can get an extra effect out of the staff if you don't mind destroying it, or just sell it empty for most of its value.

Trying to use a staff drains one shot even if the shot doesn't come out, e.g. if the staff is sealed. Blessed staves typically have double or otherwise improved magic effect. When the number of charges is not identified, the game shows you how many charges you've used or tried to use as a negative number. Thus, if it had a normal range of charges and you've already used 7, it is definitely empty. See Identifying Items for details.

A few staves can be used as rune ingredients, and are equally useful with any number of charges. Hence, it's sometimes a good idea to use all charges in a staff first then save it as a rune ingredient. Not many staves make runes so this information has been added to Additional Notes rather than as a separate column. See Runes for details.

Magic bolts you fire always aggro NPCs, even if the bolt doesn't do any damage. Magic bolts fired by other creatures that hit NPCs do not aggro them, fortunately.

List of Staves

Here are all the items in this category, in Item Book order:

File:Shiren 5 - Staff.png Staves		Shops		In-Game Description	Usage Tips	Finding Tips	Additional Notes
English	Japanese	Cost	Value
Swap Staff	場所がえの杖	600	210		Hit a creature with this and Shiren will switch places with it. If you or the creature land on a tile where you/it can't stand (e.g. water or void), you/it will warp. Can be useful to escape bad situations or swap to unreachable places like 2x2 islands. Very useful in heists.	Common.	A Steady Shield / Unmoving rune negates this effect. No known bonus when blessed.
Knockback Staff	吹き飛ばしの杖	600	210		Hit a creature with this and it will be knocked back up to 10 spaces. If it hits a wall or other obstruction, it generally loses 5 HP. If it lands on a tile where it can't stand (e.g. water or void) it will warp.	"	If you push one monster into another, both take 5 HP damage.
Pinning Staff	飛びつきの杖	600	210		Shiren will jump ("pin") to the tile immediately before whatever the staff bolt hits. If you land on a tile where you can't stand (e.g. water or void), you'll warp. Pinning out of a dangerous room down an empty hallway can be an excellent way to escape danger, as can deliberately pinning on top of water only 1 tile away, but pinning blindly can be dangerous as you might end up next to a powerful monster. Very useful in heists.	"	A Steady Shield / Unmoving rune negates this effect. No known bonus when blessed.
Transient Staff	一時しのぎの杖	900	315		Hit a creature with this and it will warp onto the stairs and become paralyzed (temporarily blocking the exit). If you use this on multiple creatures, they will pile up near the stairs, all paralyzed. The paralysis is broken in the usual way, e.g. if some action is taken against them or a wandering Digestiphant comes near. If you have remote monster vision, you can use this to find the stairs or distinguish between fake stairs and real stairs.	"	An elaborate but very safe heist mechanism is to read an Immunity Scroll or otherwise become immune to status ailments, use a Reflective Pot, then zap any creature with a Transient Staff bolt. The bolt reflects back at you, warping you to the exit, but you don't get parayzed. No known bonus when blessed.
Seal Staff	封印の杖	1,500	525		Hit a creature to give it "Sealed" status, preventing it from using special skills and removing latent/passive effects as well. (For example, Cave Mamel and Gitan Cave Mamel lose their insanely-high defense.)	"	. Useful as a rune ingredient; see Runes for details.
Clone Staff	身代わりの杖	1,500	525		Hit a creature to make it a clone of Shiren. All enemies will try to attack the clone instead of you. Serves as a great distraction to make a getaway, but some other monster will very likely kill the clone and level up. If you use this staff again while there's already a clone, the first clone reverts to original form with Confused status and the second creature becomes a clone.	"	This item was called Doppelganger Staff in Shiren 1..
Paralysis Staff	かなしばりの杖	900	315		Hit a creature to give it Paralyzed status. It will be unable to act until some action is taken against it, or until the status is removed in some other way (e.g. a wandering Digestiphant). Paralyzing a monster in a doorway or hallway can be a great way to make a perfectly safe room, e.g. if you want to rest for a long period of time to change day/night. As with many other staves, this one is also very helpful with heists.	"	When blessed, creatures get S-Paralyzed (super paralysis) status instead of regular paralysis, which means they don't wake up from paralysis after being acted upon. [TODO: test and document how can monsters wake up from S-Paralyzed status.] Useful as a rune ingredient; see Runes for details.
Empathy Staff	痛み分けの杖	900	315		Hit a creature to give it Empathy status, which means it will take the same damage Shiren takes whenever and wherever Shiren takes damage. Can help kill or whittle down powerful monsters, though of course it's dangerous. E.g. if you must fight a powerful creature toe-to-toe, zapping it with Empathy first might let you win quickly with minimal HP loss.	"
Slow Staff	鈍足の杖	600	210		Hit a creature to reduce its level of speed by one (Swift -> normal or normal -> Slow; nothing can go slower than Slow in this game).	"	When blessed, the creature is slowed for twice as long as normal. Note that the effects of slowness on all creatures seem to last longer than they should, because apparently the status ailment countdown timer only ticks down as the creature takes a turn., but 10 monster turns while slow == 20 Shiren turns at normal speed.
Swift Staff	加速の杖	600	210		Hit a creature to increase its level of speed by one (Slow -> normal or normal -> Swift; nothing can go faster than Swift in this game). There is no known good reason to do this to any creature, but combined with a Reflective Pot, you can use it to speed yourself up.	Found in some bonus dungeons. Merchant's Hideout might be a good choice.	Useful as a rune ingredient; see Runes for details.
Glorious Staff	しあわせの杖	1,800	630		Hit a creature to increase its level by one. For night monsters, this just increases the numeric suffix / power level. For day creatures, this causes them to change to the next higher form or increases the number/power as with night monsters if already at max form. Either way, the monster is fully healed and has all status ailments removed, but at least it loses its turn. Can be very useful on certain monsters such as Mixers.	"	More uses: (1) level up a Swordsman so it can knock off a cursed bracelet, (2) level up a grass-throwing monster because you're not immune to the grass it currently throws but you are immune the grass thrown by the next higher form, (3) level up a Gitan to higher forms which can still be killed with a single rock for a massive XP + gitan boost, (4) level up a monster then clone it so the clone survives longer, giving you a better chance to flee.
Unlucky Staff	不幸の杖	1,800	630		Hit a creature to decrease its level by one. For night monsters, this reduces the numeric suffix / power level down to a minimum of zero (no suffix). For day creatures, this changes them down to the next lower form. It also fully heals the monster, removes all status ailments, and causes the monster to lose its turn. Lets you kill or otherwise defang a monster that would otherwise be very dangerous, and there may be specific cases where the lower form of a monster is more useful to you.	"	Areas of further research: what happens to items in Mixer monsters when they level up/down? What if their belly was full and they level down?
Mage Staff	魔道の杖	600	210		Hit a creature to do one of 4 effects chosen at random: Confuse, Sleep, Slow, or Warp. All of these help if you're just trying to escape the creature, but they don't all help if you're trying to kill it (e.g. to get the contents of a Mixer out again).	Common.	If you're identifying staves by usage, Confuse, Sleep, and Warp are all unique to this staff and cannot be done by any other staff. (Transient does Warp + Paralyze, but this staff only does Warp, and you can tell the difference by paying attention to the log output.) If the effect is Slow, it could either be the Slow Staff or this staff. In practice, just name it Slow and rename it later if you find out it does multiple different things, or name it Slow? if you prefer. See Identifying Items for more info.
Electric Staff	感電の杖	1,200	420		Hit a creature to do 25 fixed damage regardless of creature strength. The effect has a chain reaction, spreading in all eight directions to any adjacent creatures including Shiren, until all enemies in contact with one another have been hit (once each). Very useful for day monster houses as well as day monsters that normally reduce variable damage down to 1 HP. Be sure you're not adjacent to enemies when you use this or be ready to lose 25 HP.	"	When blessed, does 50 HP damage instead.
Trap Del. Staff	ワナ消しの杖	900	315		The magic bolt destroys any traps it travels over, whether they are hidden or not, though it won't destroy "device" style traps (see Traps for details). If it hits a creature, it does 2 damage.	"	When blessed, does 4 HP damage to target creature if any, but no extra effect on traps traveled over.
Balance Staff	転ばぬ先の杖	900	315		The magic bolt has no effect, but if you carry this staff in your main inventory (not in a pot) and if it has any charges and it's not sealed and you trigger a Trip Trap, it will spend a charge and prevent you from tripping. This is a great way to keep your pots from shattering due to Trip Traps. If you hadn't identified it yet, you can still see that it spent a charge to keep you from tripping.	"	This staff has one or two "evil twins" ("good" items that are hard to tell apart from "bad" items with some identification techniques): Ordinary Staff and Nagging Staff.
Boring Staff	トンネルの杖	1,800	630		If the magic bolt hits a creature, the creature takes 10 damage. If it hits a normal (diggable or collapsible) wall while traveling horizontally or vertically (the effect does not work diagonally), it digs a tunnel in a straight line into the wall. The tunnel will stop after 10 tiles or when the first non-regular-wall tile is hit, whichever comes first. Very useful for heists. E.g. dig a 2nd exit from a shop, letting you pin with a single shot of a Pinning Staff from inside the shop to right next to the exit.	Found in some bonus dungeons. Merchant's Hideout might be a good choice.	When blessed, creatures hit will take 20 damage instead.
Fort. Staff	土塊の杖	1,800	630		This staff does not shoot magic bolts. If waved horizontally or vertically, it will create a wall tile directly in front of Shiren. The wall will be "collapsible" type, meaning you don't need special equipment to dig through it, but any hit by Shiren will cause it to revert to open floor terrain, and this effect has a chain reaction with all orthogonally-connected collapsible wall tiles.. Very useful for blocking chokepoints to create safe rooms or just give Shiren breathing space, as well as for converting water tiles into open floor tiles e.g. to reach 2x2 islands. If used properly, also very helpful to secure getaway routes before heists.	"	No known bonus when blessed. (If it actually does do 2HP damage to creatures, then this is likely doubled when blessed.) There are also rare cases where a "mysterious power" prevents it from creating a wall tile; the cause of this is unknown but it may because a trap is on that tile. [TODO: Can this staff be used to convert void/air tiles into floor? Can you cover traps or other items with walls with this staff? Double check if a bolt flies out diagonally, and what happens when you try to make walls on top of creatures, when blessed and when not blessed.] Useful as a rune ingredient; see Runes for details.
Ordinary Staff	ただの杖	900	315		The magic bolt has no effect. Best normal use is just to throw it and hope to hit to deal 2 damage, or sell it.	"	No known bonus when blessed. The primary purpose of this staff seems to be as an "evil twin" of the Balance Staff, making it harder to identify the latter. [TODO: Given the rune this item can make, it may be worth re-testing to see if the staff bolt (or the staff itself when used as a projectile) has any magic effects on magic-type monsters.] Useful as a rune ingredient; see Runes for details.
Drama Staff	かなしばいの杖	900	315		Joke item. Wave it and a short play will be acted out (in dialogue boxes). There are a few different ones to watch. Waving the staff does not shoot magic bolts and has no in-game effect, but if you throw it at a creature and hit, the creature will be blinded. (This is another aspect of the joke: the audience members who watch the plays complain that they're so horrible that they go blind.)	"	.
Sharing Staff	しわよせの杖	1,800	630		This is the opposite of the Empathy Staff. If you hit a creature with a bolt from this staff, any damage done to that creature will also be done to Shiren, no matter how far apart. This can probably only be true for one other creature at a time, but this needs more testing. It's probably also true if you throw the staff at a creature and hit it. There is no known way to turn this effect to your advantage.	"	This is in effect an "evil twin" of the Empathy Staff, except you can tell the two apart via a price check at a shop. Useful as a rune ingredient; see Runes for details.
Staff of Sacrifice	身伐わりの杖	1,500	525		This staff does not shoot magic bolts. Waving it acts as if you triggered a Log Trap, except the log comes from Shiren's left side. This is hard to use well but it can be helpful to escape a bad situation provided you can orient yourself correctly so the log hits you and knocks you away rather than hitting another creature towards you. You could theoretically use it to land on a 2x2 island provided you have a way to travel exactly 10 tiles and land on the island or provided there's a creature on the island you can bump against and still land on the island. Throwing this staff does 2 damage to the target.	"	No known effect when blessed, though it's possible it knocks Shiren 20 tiles instead of 10 when blessed. While this staff is not unlike the Knockback Staff, it isn't fair to call it an "evil twin" because they are in different price tiers (you can tell them apart via a price check at a shop). [TODO: The description of this item says something about angering the trees. Is there some connection between this item and the Arbor Scroll? And will it knock you into/through walls if you have a Wall Clip Bracelet equipped?]
Shocking Staff	盛電の杖	1,200	420		This staff does not shoot magic bolts. Waving it causes a chain reaction of 25 damage to all adjacent creatures, like the Electric Staff, except the chain reaction starts with Shiren and there's no known way to avoid taking the damage yourself. This *may* still be a good option if you're surrounded in a monster house. Throwing it at a creature and hitting will cause the chain reaction to start with that creature, though again it will still travel back to you if you're adjacent to any creature in the chain.	"	When blessed, does 50 HP damage instead. Because this staff exists and does so much damage, it's not perfectly safe to test unknown staves in difficult dungeons when Shiren is low level and doesn't have at least 51 HP. This is effectively the "evil twin" of the Electric Staff.
Nagging Staff	転ばぬ先生の杖	900	315		Joke item. It's like the Balance Staff, except instead of saving you from a Trip Trap, it consumes a charge and berates you for being so irresponsible.	"	No known bonuses when blessed. This is effectively one of two "evil twins" of the Balance Staff.