Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Perilous Rocks
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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 | No |
| New Items | No |
| Shops | All 3 types |
| Monster Houses | Common, including pop-ups |
| NPCs | Shopkeepers only |
| Spawn Rate | Every 30 turns (normal) |
| Winds of Kron | Normal (slow) |
Perilous Rocks is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 with a higher rate of monster houses, including "pop-up" monster houses. You can't take items, Gitan, or allies into the dungeon, nor can you request rescue, but you keep the items if you win. The dungeon is daytime only and the initial goal floor is 50 F. After the first victory, the goal floor becomes 99 F and stays there permanently.
Gaining Access
This dungeon can be accessed 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
- Monster houses are more common than normal, and especially "pop-up" or "surprise" monster houses.
- Shops are more common than normal.
- Item distribution differs but it's hard to be specific:
- You can apparently find the full variety of items in this dungeon, though not uniformly spread across all the floors.
- Earlier floors tend to have less expensive and less harmful items.
- The dungeon is daytime only.
Final Reward
Every time you beat this dungeon, you get a Worthy Shield, the level 8 form of the Shoddy Plank, which isn't particularly useful.
Farming Opportunities
Strategy
Like with other dungeons where you cannot take items in, many tips related to beating this dungeon can be found in Dungeon Tips.
This dungeon is very generous with items, due to the higher rate of monster houses and shops.
Maximizing monster houses: The usual tricks apply here as well. Never fight in the middle of the room, but retreat into a hallway. Use Pinning Staff to escape, use Cloning Staff to distract, use a Confusion Scroll if you need the entire room disabled for a few turns. If at all possible, avoid walking on any tile that you don't 100% know is untrapped. Note that the hallway entrances to all rooms including monster houses are never trapped to begin with, but if you dig your own entrances, those entry tiles may be trapped. Of course, you can swing your sword over every tile to check for traps, which is especially helpful in small monster houses and especially tedious in large ones. In "great hall monster houses" (as they were called in Shiren 1), the density of traps is so low it's not really worth it to check for traps with every step; it's more important to move into a strong defensible position if possible so you can control the rate at which you face incoming enemies. Again, Pinning is super helpful to escape problems. As a corollary, the Steady Shield and Unmoving Rune can be very good (e.g. they can save your life from being yanked into the middle of a monster house by a Fear Rabbit), but it's debateable if you should use them, as it's also very helpful to be able to use a Warp Grass or Pinning Staff when in trouble without having to remove your shield first. Make sure *not* to step on the trap that turns all items into monsters, at least not until you've despoiled everything you want from the room. And lastly, learn to skip monster houses when you have virtually everything you want already, as beyond a certain point of wealth, the upside of risking a monster house becomes less and less worth it, esp. as you get deeper and the danger increases. So sometimes the best way to maximize a monster house that is great hall (full floor / single room) on a deep floor is to pin your way to the exit as fast as possible. [TODO: find ExNihilo's tips about how best to clear out monster houses on GameFAQs.com and work that info in here.]
Maximizing shops: (TODO: rewrite and shorten this paragraph / outsource everything via links. topics covered: mass ID, price check, stealing from shops, detail about what happens when you steal, selling a valuable thing and stealing it back with Zalokleft, and Boring Staff (all three should be summarized and moved to Dungeon Tips))
One of the best things you can do with a shop is sell the shopkeeper everything unidentified then give him an Identify Scroll. You can of course drop a single sword or shield on the floor and ask the shopkeeper it's sell price to determine if it's cursed or if it has a bonus upgrade value, then decide to sell it or equip it and thus fully identify it. And of course, theft is a critical part of the game. Keep in mind that, when the shopkeeper executes "the plan", all existing monsters turn into shopkeepers, some of which move at double speed, and, one room at random (other than the shop itself) becomes populated in bulk with monster-house levels of shopkeepers. If this room happens to be the exit room, your escape just became much more difficult. One of the safest ways to try to steal is to use a Boring Staff to dig a passageway in the right location(s) then pin or swap as close to the exit as possible, minimizing the number of turns you need to take in thief mode. If you manage to pull off a few successful thefts earlier in your run, it really helps you keep ahead of the power curve and ultimately win your run.
This dungeon has a high frequency of "pop-up" or surprise monster houses. A room marked as a surprise monster house has a chance of popping up every time you take a step in the room, and there is no way to know it in advance. (For some theories on how these are triggered, see the comment.) However, you can still prepare for them. Warp Grass and Hide Pots are both good prep items. Keep both a Pinning Staff and Swap Staff to help you escape the room as quickly as possible if a monster house pops up while you're in the middle. Walk in a straight line every time you enter a room lets you pin out most easily. It's also useful to keep at least one Confusion Scroll on hand if possible. Confusion lasts much longer than Slumber, and the monsters don't "wake" from Confusion hasted. Fear Scrolls and Fixer Scrolls aren't bad but only work on your immediate neighbors rather than the entire room. And of course, Swift Grass and Invincible Grass are definitely useful emergency items. It's always a good idea to keep at least one Heal Pot on hand if you can. Of course, when a monster house first pops up, immediately stop and check what monsters you're dealing with (and don't forget that tiles you walked over already may now have traps on them). If there are particularly dangerous monsters (e.g. monsters that can put you to sleep by hitting you, monsters that can inflict bad status ailments by throwing things at you, monsters that can yank you to their location and surround you with other monsters), this might be an excellent time to pin completely out the room and a fair ways down a hallway if you still have an open line of site to do so, or to use a Hide Pot or Warp Grass if you don't have a direct line of site for escape via Pinning Staff.
Expert Badges
[TODO: confirm that there are no expert badges.]
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/%c7%c8%cd%f0%a4%ce%b4%e4%be%ec (Japanese wiki page for this location)
Open Questions
- Check if there are monster badges.
- Flesh out the tips and strategy section.