Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Monster Hotspot

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Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor 99F
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 except swords, shields, and bracelets
New Items No
Shops Normal
Monster Houses Normal + great hall MHs on floors that end with 9
NPCs Shopkeepers and wandering NPCs (but not allies)
Spawn Rate Normal
Winds of Kron Normal (slow)

Monster Hotspot is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 with a non-trivial difficulty curve but also with high information, generous drops, and predictable monster houses. Overall, this may be the easiest bonus dungeon that starts with a 99F goal floor and that doesn't let you take items in. You can't take items, gitan, or allies into the dungeon, but you can request rescue up to 3 times and you do keep any items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is daytime only. The initial goal floor is 99F so, unlike most bonus dungeons, the difficulty does not increase or otherwise change after first victory.

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

  • Floors that end in 9 (where the 1s digit is a 9) are always great hall monster houses.
  • The difficulty ramp appears to be slightly steeper than baseline, but this may be just my imagination.
    • That is, the monsters seem to get tougher a bit faster than in baseline dungeons. (E.g., it may be steeper than in Tower of Fortune and Inori Cave.)
  • All items except swords, shields, and bracelets are pre-identified.
    • Basically, things that can be cursed are not fully identified.
    • That being said, cursed items are not common.
  • Item distribution seems very similar to the Tower of Fortune's item distribution, though it's hard to be specific. Some impressions:
    • "Bad" items are basically non-existent in this dungeon, while good items are plentiful.
    • You'll find plenty of (Herb, Life Grass, Swift Grass, Invincible Grass, Confusion Scroll, Pinning Staff, etc.), but I have never yet found (Bankruptcy Scroll, Monsterphobic Bracelet, Gut Grass, Curse Pot, etc.) in this dungeon.
    • You can definitely find Angel Seeds, but I have never yet found a SuperUnlucky Seed in this dungeon.
    • I have never yet found an Escape Scroll in this dungeon, but you can definitely find Undo Grass and Revival Herb e.g. in stores, and you can harvest the latter from F0-UZ monsters on deeper floors.
    • Monster House Scrolls can be found.
    • You can definitely find Lucky Pots and Upgrade Pots in this dungeon, but I have yet to find Unlucky Pots or Degrade Pots. (I haven't yet seen a Fever Pot in this dungeon, unfortunately.)
    • There appears to be a wider variety of swords and shields available as compared to baseline, and, they may appear more frequently than usual.
      • E.g. you can find Onigiri Shield, Anti-Gaze Targe, Kabura Katana, and Fuuma Shield.
      • I have never yet seen "bad" equipment such as swords/shields that cost money, Blink Bracelet, Explosion Bracelet, etc.
    • New Items do not appear in this dungeon.
  • Similar to baseline:
    • Wandering NPCs can appear in this dungeon, though they seem to appear less frequently the deeper you go.
    • I *think* you can also find monster houses that are not on floors that end with 9s.
    • All types of shops (regular, VIP, and Pick-A-Choice) can be found in this dungeon, with normal frequency.
  • The dungeon is daytime only.

Final Reward

Every time you beat this dungeon, you get a VIP Bracelet. Not super valuable but not terrible either.

Farming Opportunities

This is not a great place to try to farm items out of, but it's definitely not the worst either. You can find a wider variety of less common items (including Onigiri Shield, Anti-Gaze Targe, Kabura Katana, Fuuma Shield, Angel Seed, Lucky Pot, and Upgrade Pot), and it's not a particularly dangerous dungeon (e.g. most items are pre-identified for you), but it's also not very trivial to extract items out. You can find Undo Grass, so you can get items out that way. No one has yet reported finding an Escape Scroll, but those are probably included as well. And of course you can tag your swords and shields at a shopkeeper and hope to get them back from the Sentry in Hermit's Hermitage if you die, and if you want (e.g.) a Refining rune more than you want the Upgrade Pot, you could mix the Upgrade Pot onto a sword or shield to make the rune then farm it out via tagging it. If all else fails, you can do your best to win the run and farm out items that way, but there are very likely better, easier, and faster ways to farm out these items somewhere else rather than completing a full 99F run. (For instance, many less common items can be farmed out by (ab)using Collection Scrolls, a Blessing Pot, and Blank/Extraction Scrolls from Pick-A-Choice shops in dungeons that let you take items in, such as Inori Cave and Lost Well.)

This dungeon might be a particularly fun one to practice heist techniques though, as you'll find a variety of useful heist items and most items are pre-identified for you. You may need to steal to have a decent shot of winning the dungeon, or at least it dramatically raises your chances if successful, and the only items you're risking are the items you found in this dungeon run. (In dungeons that let you take in uber gear, (a) theft risks your best gear and (b) theft is much easier given you have amazing gear, so you're not pushed to find more creative ways to safely steal.)

Strategies

Though this dungeon is far more difficult than (e.g.) the Tower of Fortune, compared to some bonus dungeons, it's almost a vacation. There is virtually no struggle to identify items. Yes, swords, shields, and bracelets aren't identified for you, but cursed items seem pretty rare, so it's not super dangerous to just try them on, esp. early on when you don't have much to lose in your run. Of course, make sure to try on every unidentified item you have any time you find a Strip Trap, to figure out which of them if any are cursed. But you'll also find a decent number of Identify Pots and Exorcism Pots, to either safely figure out if the item is cursed or ensure that it's not cursed. You also have access to the usual number and type of shops, so can use price identification to determine if anything is cursed and just sell it if it is. And if you really want to, you can save an Identify Scroll to give to a shopkeeper to identify everything he owns all at once. In some other bonus dungeons where most items are not pre-identified, this trick is pretty crucial, but here, it's not very important. The only items that are mildly tricky to identify are bracelets, and you should have enough Identify Pot slots to identify them. I did once have 3 unidentified bracelets at the same time, and I came across a shop and I had an Identify Scroll on me, but after using price identification and finding that they could all be purchased for 2000 or 3000 gitans each (I could sell them for 700 or 1050 gitans each respectively), I decided not to bother giving my Identify Scroll to the shopkeeper, and instead just named them with their prices, sold them, and left them unidentified. (It's good to have an Alert Bracelet handy, which is one of many bracelets that can be purchased for 3000 gitan, but when you can only equip one bracelet and you already have a better bracelet such as Monster Detector and you're tight on inventory space, it's less important to go out of your way to find and identify an Alert Bracelet. IMO, it's more important to identify bracelets that you can buy for 5000 (sell for 1750) as these might be Monster Detector.) And as if it isn't easy enough to deal with identification in this dungeon, you can also find an Identify Bracelet in deeper shops for good measure.

You will likely be inundated with swords and shields to choose from, which makes it relatively easy to get a good pair (with a good resonance) early on and start leveling them up. But don't get rid of the extra swords and shields so easily, as they're one of your best sources of upgrade value even if they don't yield good runes. You'll find a decent number of Synthesis Pots, and Mixer family monsters at roughly the usual depths you might expect to find them, so you'll have plenty-ish opportunity to synthesize things together. In fact, you'll have so many things you'll want to synthesize together that, if possible, it's best to save up 5 of a single kind (either swords or shields) so you can get the full value of the Synthesis Pot. That is, merge 4 other swords onto your main sword, or 4 other shields onto your main shield, rather than mixing some swords and some shields in the same pot as that only allows you to merge in 3 items. You can find Pot God Scrolls in this dungeon, which can help you merge even more things, but if you find a Synthesis Pot and you have 6 things to merge together, it's not worth it to wait for a Pot God Scroll as they aren't that common; just merge 5 of the items to free up inventory space and keep moving, as you'll find plenty more items you want to merge in later anyway, and it's good to keep on top of the power curve as best you can.

As with most bonus dungeons where you can't take items in, your odds of winning the run go up substantially if you're willing and able to rob some shopkeepers. (Don't feel bad about this -- this is a deliberate part of the game design!) You'll definitely find all the materials for a safe heist. One of the safer heist methods is to use a Boring Staff so you have a straight path either directly to the stairs, very close to the stairs, or 1-2 pins away from the stairs. If you have enough Boring Staff and Pinning Staff charges, you can usually transform any dungeon into an easy theft dungeon, but in general, it's safest / best to pin out of the shop directly to the exit room and very close to the stairs. Navigation Scroll can help a lot if you don't have a Monster Detector Bracelet yet, so you can ensure the destination room is as empty as possible before trying the theft. Using a Swift Grass just before the heist isn't a bad idea, and Confusion Scroll, Slumber Scroll, and/or Invincible Grass make excellent emergency items in case the heist goes sideways. Apparently, the game supports a maximum of 20 living beings on the floor at once time, so the more monsters you leave sleeping/paralyzed far away from the exit room, the better. But keep in mind that, once you are branded a thief, more shopkeepers will spawn, and they may spawn in the exit room, hence it's critical to minimize the time/turns/path from shop to stairs. (Working theory is that the game always spawns more shopkeepers up to the limit of 20 living beings as soon as you're branded a thief, and all these new spawns happen in the same randomly chosen room. The randomly chosen room cannot be the shop, but it can be the exit room. So, if there are 20 beings on the floor already, no more can spawn!) Also as usual, if you're going to go for it, you might as well sell the shopkeeper all your stuff and steal it back first, and you might as well not pay for anything in the shop. But don't get hooked on theft. If you have strong equipment and 100K gitan on hand, do you really want to risk your entire run to steal 5K of merchandise, even if the theft looks safe? After completing 1, 2, or maybe 3 thefts, you'll probably have too much to lose and it's no longer worth the risk, it's easier and safer to just buy what you want in future shops. (Some people like using Zalokleft Pots to steal items. You can steal any non-pot item with a Zalokleft Pot, by placing the items in a straight line with a shop entrance, leaving the shop, facing the item you want to steal, then opening up the pot. This is great esp. when there's one super expensive item in the shop that you feel you really need to have and the opportunity for theft in this dungeon layout is just too risky. But I personally like using Zalokleft Pots by just throwing them against walls, killing the confused Zaloklefts that come out, and getting new items that way. More than once, I've gotten something pretty valuable this way, e.g. a badly needed Synthesis Pot. But your mileage may vary.) [TODO: migrate this content to a strategy page about theft and link to it.]

Monster Houses are more predictable than usual in this dungeon, given there is always (or at least virtually always) a great hall monster house on floors ending with 9. Save a Perception Grass or Trap Deletion Scroll for these floors if you can. Save any room affecting scroll you can get your hands on for these floors, too, as it really helps to (e.g.) confuse an entire room full of golden Gazers so you can pin to the exit without getting trapped in a hypnotism death spiral. Don't get seduced into trying to loot every monster house you come by. In early monster houses, the monsters aren't that dangerous, and you need more equipment, so great, loot them as safely as you can to your heart's content. A Pinning Staff again works wonders here to let you travel far away when you're in trouble, though beware of Fearrabbit monsters that can yank you right into the middle of lots of trouble. (In a pinch, if you've used a Perception Grass, you can also retreat to a Spring Trap to hopefully land in a safer spot.) But for monster houses on later floors, it's probably best to just leave as quickly as possible. If you've been saving an Invincible Grass, Swift Grass, Immunity Scroll, or Confusion Scroll, late great hall monster houses are good choices for where to use them. Regardless, *always* do a full sweep to look at every monster and item before taking your first step in a great hall monster house, so you know what kind of remote danger you're going to be in right away. Look for any sparkly ground while you're at it.

Unfortunately, no one has yet mapped out which monsters you'll face on which floors, making it harder to prepare for specific upcoming situations. But on a victorious run, you'll eventually face Archdragons which can fry you remotely, high-level piggy monsters which can crush you with big rocks remotely, high-level Gazer monsters which can hypnotize you remotely, high-level squids which can blind you remotely, etc.. Get as many great runes onto your primary equipment as possible, extinct the dragons if you can find an Extinction Scroll, save a Dodger Pot if you can spare the room, etc. etc.. All very normal tactics.

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:

Open Questions

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