Community:Shiren 5 2020 Dungeon Tips

This guide focuses on the Shiren 5 dungeons that don't let you take items or Gitan in, such as Primordial Chasm, although some of these tips apply to all dungeons in general.

Dungeon Tips - Basic

Go slow

Monsters don't take an action until you do. If you find yourself in a tricky situation, stop and think about all your options. You can do any or all of the following before making your next move:

• Check your inventory (including at your feet) to see if an item can get you out of the situation;
• Use the look around function to see if any monster can hit you from afar;
• Check the message log, Item Book, Monster Book, or an external resource for relevant info.

Once you have decided on your next action, take a second to make sure you are not missing anything. Do you have the Unmoving rune on your shield which will stop your Warp Grass or Pinning Staff? Have you used a Reflection Pot or Dodger Pot earlier on, which makes your staves or talismans ineffective, respectively?

Diagonal movement

Moving diagonally is often more efficient, as each diagonal move is, in a sense, two orthogonal moves. Whether you are running from a monster or just exploring the floor, look for places where you can move diagonally or cut corners. There is another subtle benefit to moving efficiently in a consistent way: you will walk on the same tiles every time you come back to the same room, thus minimizing your risk of stepping on traps.

Using corridors

If you just entered a room with many monsters in it, consider retreating into the corridor and wait for them to come to you. This way only one monster can hit you at a time. It is also a good idea to fight a ranged monster inside a corridor, since monsters cannot see you unless they are directly next to you.

Dealing with being surrounded

If you find yourself surrounded by monsters, a few items can help you escape.

• Warp Grass and Pinning Staff (and sometimes Swap Staff) can get you out immediately. These items don't work if you have Steady Shield or a shield with the Unmoving rune.
• Swift Grass and Invincible Grass can help you fight off the monsters and/or make your escape.
• Confusion / Fear / Slumber Scroll can create enough distraction for you to escape. Talismans are similar, but they can miss.
• Clone Staff can create some distraction. Try to fire at a monster as far away from the others as possible, as this will buy you the most time.

Beware that an Absorbiphant can drain positive statuses from you as well as clear negative ones from monsters around it, including itself, and Gyaza are immune to all status effects. Also, many status effects will cause monsters to kill each other, which means they will level up and be clear of all statuses.

Dealing with monster house

You can tell a room is a monster house by its many items and sleeping monsters. Try to see as much as possible, and decide whether you want to go in. Some monster types can make a monster house a lot more dangerous than usual (e.g. Fearabbits). See if you can wake up a few monsters from the doorway by firing projectiles at them. It is often a good idea to backtrack immediately after entering the room so you can fight the monsters in the corridor. If you have an Upgrade Seed, use it before entering the room.

Monster houses are generated with many Traps. Check for traps inside the room before you walk on each tile (by attacking over the tile), especially if the room is small. The entrance tiles as well as the tiles with items on them can never contain traps.

Some floors are grand hall monster houses which span the entire floor. Before your first move, look around the room for anything particularly dangerous, such as a Wizard on the same horizontal / vertical / diagonal line as you, and disable them at a distance.

Using projectiles

Use projectiles to damage a monster so you can win the fight more easily. You can Set projectiles in the item menu.

Approaching ranged monsters

For monsters with ranged attacks that fire in a straight line, the best way to fight them is to move to (or stay at) a tile a knight's move away from them. Since they cannot hit you, they will close in on you, allowing you to get the first hit on them. This applies to the Grass Kid, Metalhead, DJ Mage, and Yanpii famillies, as well as level 1 and 2 Pop Tanks, level 1 Mutaikon, and level 1 Dragon. Note that fast monsters such as Boy Carts require a different strategy, and also Pop Tanks can only be approached this way in wide open space, due to the splash damage.

If you are approaching them from many tiles away, walk in a zigzag pattern so they cannot hit you with a projectile. If you are really worried about traps, pace back and forth between two tiles, sideways to their approach, and wait for them to come.

Combat speed

If you are faster than a monster, you can avoid taking any hit by alternating between attacking and moving away from it. Some monsters, such as Zapdons, are naturally slow, whereas you can also become fast by eating a Swift Grass. (This strategy can be combined with the one above, for example when faced with a level 1 Pop Tank.)

On the other hand, fast monsters should be approached with caution. Move in a way that allows you to get the first hit on them. Retreat into a corridor if you have to fight multiples of them; this is usually the best way to deal with Boy Carts and high level Pop Tanks. Most fast monsters can move twice in a turn but only attack once, but a few can attack twice, most notably monsters with speed (yellow) aura.

Equipment-damaging monsters

Mudkin and Swordsmen can do permanent damage to your equipment, and they are especially threatening in a long dungeon run.

You can unequip both your sword and shield before fighting a Mudkin, but watch out for other monsters. If neither your sword and shield has the rustproof rune and a Mudkin ends up next to you, you can unequip both of them by multi-selecting them and inserting them into a Preservation Pot. You can also disable Mudkins by sealing or confusing them.

The first three forms of Swordman knock your sword or shield backwards, destroying it if it hits something behind you or falls into water or void. The safest way to fight them is with your back against the wall. (Swordmasters should always be disabled at a distance.)

Sleeping monsters

Monsters that start out sleeping (except the Naptapir family) have a chance of waking up when you enter the room. If it doesn't, it will not wake up as you take further steps inside the room, unless you walk next to it. They also have a chance of waking up when you exit the room. If you decide to leave a sleeping monster alone, watch out for things that can wake it up, such as Fearabbits and Absorbiphants.

Using traps

Many traps can be used to your advantage. You can lead a Karakuroid around and have it generate any of these traps for you.

• Strip Trap lets you test all your swords, shields and bracelets by equipping them. This will fully identify all swords and shields, and tell you the modifier status of each bracelet.
• You can generate arrows by throwing rocks onto an Arrow Trap. If you don't have rocks, you can still do this if the trap is next to a wall, by throwing any item onto the trap.

Check out the Traps page for more ways to use traps.

Food management

You can protect Onigiri and Peaches from random Rot Traps by keeping them in a Preservation Pot. Peaches will only ripen in the main inventory, so you may want to ripen them a bit before storing them, although all three types of Peach confer different benefits. You can turn any onigiri, including Rotten Onigiri, into Grilled Onigiri by taking any fire or explosion damage. Some common sources of fire and explosion damage are Pop Tanks, Firepuffs, and magma on volcanic themed floors.

Night strategy

If the dungeon has night, you should enter with a strong set of night abilities. Stairlight (1 slot) and Pot Party (3-5 slots) are the best ones, since making it to the exit quickly is the best way to survive at night. Chakra Cleansing (1-2 slots) activates automatically, and protects you from status effects such as Slow and Onigiri. Transmogrification (1 slot) is the best ability with a single target, useful against monsters that resist Pot Party, like Absorbiphants.

If you don't have all of these available yet, pick abilities that have a wide range, such as Concussive Cannon, since they double up as monster detection.

Use your best torch first, as it will help you survive as well as find more torches. Switch to a new torch whenever the light radius shrinks down to that of a basic torch. Walking diagonally or in a zigzag pattern will allow you to see more ground. When the day breaks, remember to switch back to your sword.

Dungeon Tips - Advanced

Synthesis and mixing

Main article: Improving Equipment, also Runes for a list of runes and Mixer recipes

In many dungeons, Mixers only appear on a few sets of floors, with wide gaps in between. It is important to get as much value as you can out of the Mixer floors. If you have enough food, you can stay on a floor until the third time The Winds of Kron blows ("The wind gusts vigorously!"), at which point you have to leave.

Grasses often make good runes on a sword or shield, and more grasses make runes on a sword than on a shield. For unidentified grasses, mix on a shield first, and then on a sword if it doesn't mix. If you don't have time, mix onto a sword directly.

Common items to use in a Mixer recipe include:

• On swords: Seal Staff, Paralysis Staff, Iron Arrow, Sleepy Grass, Confusion Grass, Blinding Grass, Warp Grass, Dragon Grass, Antidote Grass, Life Grass

• On shields: Dragon Grass, Life Grass

Rarer, but gives powerful runes: Sharing Staff, Lost Scroll (swords), Unlucky Seed, Cheery Grass, SuperUnlucky Seed, Angel Seed (both swords and shields)

A few other items also make runes, such as Herb, Otogiriso and Ordinary Staff, but they are usually not worth the rune slot. Having spare pieces of equipment can help you carry runes that can't fit onto your main equipment, so they can be merged onto your main equipment via a Synthesis Pot once it gains enough levels and rune slots.

Quick hitting is a powerful sword rune you can often obtain early, and it requires two different items out of Swift Grass, Swift Talisman, and Swift Staff. Since a level 1 Mixer only has 2 slots in its belly, you will need to either level it up or feed it a Stomach Expander. Note that if you have Glorious Talisman, you need to feed it two items first (say weapon + Swift Grass) before you can hit it with the talisman and feed the leveled up Mixer the third item (Swift Staff). The few other multi-part Mixer recipes also make powerful runes. If you find a Heal Bracelet or Explosion Bracelet, see if you can complete the recipe for Healing, Blue Flame or Anti-Blast (2) and take the items to the next Mixer floors.

A Mixer gains attack power every time you feed it, which can make them dangerous to fight, especially if you are trying to improve your main shield. Plan out the fight before you throw items at a Mixer; if you are going to zap it with a Slow Staff, first make sure you have enough space behind you to back away from it, and that said space is free of traps. Note that you can only hit the Mixer with a projectile (arrows, rocks, talismans) if its belly is full.

Prioritize mixing non-equipment items onto swords and shields before merging swords and shields together, since you can also merge equipment in a Synthesis Pot. If you have the luxury, use the Mixers to merge your staves together to save inventory space.

Identification and price check

Main article: Identifying Items

In the early game, identify some Grasses and Scrolls by using them, since the items that appear on early floors tend to be safer. Talismans and staves are easy to test via usage, and they should be tested and named as soon as it is safe to do so.

If you have access to a shop, you can do a price check by dropping a single item and asking the shopkeeper its price. It is a good idea to name every item (yours or the shopkeeper's) in a way that will remind you of its price, for example "500-1" and "500-2" for two different grasses with a buy price of 500.

A few prices to remember:

Scroll, buy 200, sell 70: Identify Scroll. If you have two copies early on, read one so you can give the shopkeeper the other copy for a mass identification.

Pot, buy 7500, sell 2625: Synthesis Pot. There is a small risk of a Modder's Pot.

Grass, buy 1000, sell 350: Revival Grass or Gut Grass.

Grass, buy 1500, sell 575: Undo Grass or Repeat Grass.

Before doing a mass identification, get as many as you can on the current floor and sell the shopkeeper anything you want identified. It is a good idea to always keep an Identify Scroll on you so you can do mass identification at a shop. If you have extra scrolls, put as many unidentified items in your main inventory before you read them to prepare for a "lucky day" outcome. If you have an Identify Pot, identify your bracelets first, followed by grasses and scrolls.

Stealing from shops

There are a few ways to steal from a shop:

• Zalokleft Pot can be used to steal items from the shop. You will need to open the pot from outside the shop, so move the items inside the shop so the Zaloklefts can reach the items you want. Zaloklefts can only travel horizontally or vertically, and they will not pick up pots. You can also sell a valuable non-pot item and then steal it back with a Zalokleft Pot.
• If you have a Black Hole Pot, you can sell the shopkeeper everything you have, pick up everything in the shop, and smash the Black Hole Pot against the wall. This will create Pit Traps inside the shop, letting you escape without consequences.
• While not technically theft, with a Blank Scroll you can sell everything, then write Coupon Scroll, provided you have read Coupon Scroll before on this save file. This will let you get everything in the shop, including the items you sold him, for free. Note that you will need to buy a Blank Scroll before you can write on it, but you will most likely have the necessary 5,000 Gitan after selling everything.
• Finally, you can simply walk, warp, or Pinning Staff out of the shop. Before the heist, map out the entire floor and plan out your route to the stairs. Clear out the surrounding area, as all monsters will turn into shopkeepers, some of which will move at double speed. Try to make it to the stairs in as few turns as possible: Pinning Staff is a great movement option, especially when combined with Boring Staff. A few other items, such as Swift Grass, Swap Staff, Invincible Grass, and Confusion Scroll, are situationally useful. Combat items are not always the best, as even a sleeping or paralyzed shopkeeper can block your way. Note that you cannot use an Escape Scroll or Undo Grass once the shopkeeper sounds the alarm, and that a random room, possibly the exit room, will be populated with many shopkeepers.

Diving

When you are on the last 10 or 20 floors in a difficult dungeon, it is time to stop accumulating items and start moving through the floors as quickly as you can. Locate the stairs using Navigation Scroll or Transient Staff (if you have Monster Detector). Use Pinning Staff and Swap Staff for fast movement, and various combat items to get monsters out of your way. Shops can provide some extra items to help you push towards the stairs, but they are not worth going out of your way for.

Grand hall monster houses on late floors can be extremely dangerous, especially those with high level Gazers. Reflection Pot protects you from Gazers. Clone Staff, Confusion Scroll, Immunity Scroll are few ways you can disable or distract the Gazers, hopefully for long enough that you can Swift Grass and Pinning Staff your way to the exit.

A Zen Pot protects you from Abyss Dragons and Cranky Tanks that often reside on the final few floors of a dungeon. You can throw an Extinction Scroll at a dragon so you don't have to deal with them, although depending on your situation Gazers or Mesmerikons could be better targets for the scroll. The Anti-Blast (either version) and Anti-Fire runes can also do the trick, perhaps with the aid of a few blessed Revival Grasses.

Making a Good Build

Sword and shield

Some good choices for base swords and shields:

Bladite / Targite and Red Blade / Red Shield: These two pairs have high base power, and are common in most dungeons. Both pairs let you equip two bracelets.

Kabura Katana / Fuuma Sword / Fuuma Shield: Higher base power, but a bit harder to find and levels up slower.

Day Shield: Level 8 form gives you a massive damage reduction (60%). Strong choice for daytime only dungeons.

Binary Shield: Level 8 form gives you 85% damage reduction when last digit of HP is 0 or 1. When fighting monsters in a corridor, backtrack a few steps until you have the right amount of HP.

See also the first few sections of Improving Equipment.

Bracelets

Strength and Growth are good in the early game. Alert, Item Detector, Monster Detector are good bracelets to finish the run with, although Itemphobic and Monsterphobic can perform a similar role as the Detectors. Scout and Identify are very powerful but both are rare.

Healing

Revival Grass and Undo Grass can be used twice if blessed, and they are usually the first items to put in a Blessing Pot. Extraction Scroll (used on a Blessing Pot) and Blessing Scroll can both give you extra revives. Heal Pot is efficient as it can heal you multiple times. A Preservation Pot full of Heal Grasses is about as good as a Heal Pot.

Combat items

Keep a diverse set of combat items, as they have different strengths and weaknesses.

• Staves are guaranteed to hit, but they can only hit one thing at a time in a straight line. They are good in situations where you cannot afford to miss (a Gazer that could destroy your entire build in a turn, a Mudder about to remove runes from your equipment)
• Talismans can miss, but they can hit multiple things at a time. They are an efficient way to deal with multiple monsters in a non-urgent situation.
• Status-inducing scrolls are guaranteed to hit the whole room, but they do not stack and can only be used once. Items like Warp Grass, Invincible Grass, Immunity Scroll and many others are similarly inefficient in terms of inventory space, but they can get you out of some particularly difficult situations.
• Arrows are very efficient if you have a large stack of them, obtainable from Arrow Traps or a Boy Cart. Rocks are a good way to deal with Cave and Gitan Mamels.

Other items

An Exorcism, Fate or Earth Scroll, Nymph Grass, or Fixer Scroll can be useful if your main sword or shield becomes cursed or sealed. Fixer Scroll can also be used as a healing, combat or food item, or all of these at the same time.

Food items tend to become less important later on since you have higher max HP, and Revival Grass and Undo Grass restore your fullness.

Tips and Tricks

• Gitan bags can be picked up and used as projectiles. To put Gitan in your inventory, you will need to hold down the run button while walking onto a Gitan bag on the floor (so you don't pick it up automatically), and then swap the Gitan bag with another item in your inventory. A non-sealed Gitan bag does damage equal to one tenth of the Gitan amount, whereas a blessed Gitan bag does damage equal to the Gitan amount. One advantage of putting early Gitan in your inventory is that Froggo cannot steal it from you or teleport away.
• A Dodger Pot can be used to farm up as many arrows as you want on any floor with a Boy Cart monster. Aim for at least 300 arrows if you are trying to beat a 99 floor dungeon. The same trick can be used on a Porkon.
• A Blank Scroll has many uses, and you don't have to write on it until you need to, since writing does not take a turn. Note that to be able to write a scroll, you need to have read it during a run in this save file. (Check the Item Book and see if there is a checkmark next to a scroll's entry.)
  • Extinction and Expulsion are good escape items .
  • Mnstr House can create many items and give you a lot of weapon and shield experience, especially in combination with an Upgrade Seed.
  • Extraction Scroll lets you reuse a Blessing Pot.
• Many monsters can be used to your advantage, besides the ones already mentioned:
  • In some dungeons, Grass Kid family monsters can be farmed for Revival Grass, Undo Grass and Strength Grass.
  • Scoopie family monsters can fill your pots with Dirt items, which eventually turn into random grasses. This lets you get value out of pots that are otherwise not very useful, such as Sale Pot and Ordinary Pot. Make sure you don't risk them filling valuable pots like Blessing Pot; you can place them on the floor before you approach the Scoopie.
  • Mutaikon family monsters generate unlimited grasses, so you can use them to refill your belly. You will need a way to deal with the negative effects: Cleansing Bracelet for Mutaikon, Anti-Cnf. Bracelet for Dazikon, and Alert Bracelet for Dozikon. Immunity Scroll deals with all four variants.
  • Level 1 Field Knaves can turn rocks or arrows into Weeds, letting you refill your belly. This can also be done with higher level versions, but they are more dangerous.
  • For more information on ways to use each monster, see the individual monster pages accessible from List of Monsters.
• A Breeze Blade or Tri-Direction rune lets you hit a monster around the corner, giving you an advantage if the monster does not have a ranged or area attack. It is often worth retreating into a corridor so you can set this up.
  • Wall Clip Bracelet lets you do the same, as well as letting you cut corners yourself so you can outrun monsters.
• If you find an early Glorious Staff or Glorious Talisman, use it to level up a Mamel or Pit Mamel so you can kill the Cave Mamel or Gitan Mamel for large amounts of exp.
  • Cave Mamel has 6 HP, and Gitan Mamel has 12 HP. Normal attacks only do 1 damage to them. A rock will always kill them if it hits. You can also use Knockback Staff, Boring Staff, or Electric Staff.
• Similarly, the Kid Squid Family and Nigiri Morph Family can be defeated with a thrown Onigiri of any type.
• A Presto Pot can generate random items from a stack of rocks or arrows. To split a stack, throw them one at a time and walk onto them without picking it up (by holding down the run button), then insert the rock or arrow directly from the floor.