Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Aksys Challenge

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Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor 10F
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 All? (confirm)
New Items No
Shops None? (confirm)
Monster Houses None? (confirm)
NPCs None? (confirm)
Spawn Rate Normal
Winds of Kron Normal (slow)

Aksys Challenge is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 focusing on the better part of valor. Virtually every monster can "OHKO" (one-hit knock out) you, so you must run away and try to find the stairs. You can't take items or allies into the dungeon, nor can you request rescues, but you can keep the items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is daytime only and the initial goal floor is 10F. After first victory, the goal floor becomes 99F and stays there permanently.

Gaining Access

You can access this bonus dungeon 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

This bonus dungeon uses a small subset of the capabilities of the game to create a radically different experience:

  • Virtually every monster, even on 1F, can kill you in a single shot (aka OHKO you)
  • The item distribution is so small that you can itemize it pretty easily. These are all the items I have ever seen in this dungeon (so far):
    • No swords, shields, or new items
    • I also haven't yet seen talismans, onigiri, peaches, torches, stones, arrows, etc. -- nothing except what's listed below
    • Bracelets: Scout Bracelet, Can. Arm Bracelet
    • Scrolls: Navigation Scroll
    • Grasses: Perception Grass, Warp Grass
    • Staves: Swap Staff, Pinning Staff, Knockback Staff, Paralysis Staff
    • Pots: Hide Pot
  • Shiren starts with 3 Hide Pots of various capacities in his inventory
  • All items are pre-identified for you
  • It's possible that there are more pre-placed items than usual (needs more testing).
    • There are certainly more pre-placed items here than in sparse bonus dungeons.
  • There are apparently no shops and no other NPCs (needs more testing)
  • There are apparently no monster houses (needs more testing)
  • The rooms may have water / ponds in them more commonly than in other places (needs more testing)
  • Per an automatic/imperfect translation of the Japanese wiki page, you apparently can't gain experience for killing monsters even if you can find a way to kill them (needs more testing)
  • The dungeon is daytime only

Final Reward

The final reward from this dungeon is unique and clearly intended to be a secret. Maybe it shouldn't even be documented in this wiki at all. The initial goal floor is only 10F, and there are plenty of items you can try to collect to help you exit every floor, so you should probably just go beat this dungeon to experience the unique final reward yourself! But this is a wiki after all, so you probably came here hoping to learn the secrets of the game, and this most definitely qualifies. Here's the secret, with spoiler protection:

If you want to know the secret, expand this box.

When you beat this dungeon for the first time, you get a unique item that doesn't appear in the Item Book at all! It's called the Aksys Pot. It's an open-type pot, not an insert-type pot (if indeed it is a real pot at all, because it doesn't appear in the Item Book and thus is not necessary to complete the Item Book, but it does sort with the normal pots in your inventory). It has a capacity of 1. When you open it, the capacity drops to 0 and you get a lot of text. It's like the Drama Staff or Hilarious Pot, except the text is much longer and there are no character images included. The text is about how the company has great things planned for the next game, so tell all your friends how much you love Shiren, so more people will buy the game and the company will be able to continue making games in this great series.

You definitely get this special reward once if you beat the 10F version of the dungeon. It is not yet known if you get it again if you beat the full 99F version of the dungeon.

Farming Opportunities

It is virtually impossible to farm anything of value out of this dungeon on an ongoing basis. The item pool is incredibly small, there are no known items that can help you escape early without winning the dungeon, it's very challenging to beat the 99F version, and shops don't appear so you can't tag items to get them out that way (and besides, there are no swords or shields in this dungeon anyway which are the only items you could tag).

But there is one farming possibility that is definitely worth considering. All of the other items are too common to be worth farming, but the Scout Bracelet is an excellent item and appears more commonly here than in any other dungeon. It's also not very hard to beat this dungeon on the easier 10F goal, but once you beat 10F, you can never play the easier goal again. So, it's a good idea to collect at least one and preferably more than one Scout Bracelet before you beat this dungeon for the first time. You can then throw this Scout Bracelet into a secret pot to create a new item out of it (hopefully with all good attributes and no bad attributes), so you can buy more new item Scout Bracelets at any time. In fact, it might be worth doing this very early in a new game diary so you have access to Scout Bracelets / new item Scout Bracelets ASAP. Alternatively, if you can collect 3 of them, you can try to find a Fever Pot and replicate them.

But this is not a critical farming opportunity by any stretch, so don't worry about it if you've missed this opportunity in your game diary, because you can also purchase Scout Bracelets from the Points Shop for 10K points. 10K points is not a trivial amount, but once you have decent equipment, you can grind for points easily in places like Lost Well or Gorger's Manor.

Strategies

Be strategic and careful about how/when/where you use your items. If you can use 1 item to get 2 more, great, but if you have to use 5 items to get 1, it's very likely not worth it.

Navigation Scrolls can help a lot, but they aren't so common that you can afford to burn them wantonly. The best time to use them is when you start a floor in a tiny room with no exit stairs, as this is likely a dungeon with many small rooms and it may be harder to explore safely.

Be careful about using a Hide Pot to get away from a Pumphantasm, as they just wander randomly rather than leaving the room. If you exit the Hide Pot with any monster right next to you, the monsters will take their turn and kill you. Monsters can't walk over the Hide Pot with you in it, so you could theoretically use this to (e.g.) block an exit (for monsters other than rock phasing monsters such as the Pumphantasm).

Prioritize getting bracelets when you can, at least until you get a Scout Bracelet, as this helps your planning immensely.

Don't forget that most items can be useful both when used directly by Shiren or when thrown at monsters. IIRC, throwing a Hide Pot causes the monster to be sealed in the pot—re-confirm this. Another example is that you can throw the Warp Grass at a monster to send it away rather than eating it to warp away yourself. But of course if you throw an item it can miss.

Expert Badges

[TODO: confirm 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:

Open Questions

  • Do you get any reward item for beating the longer 99F version of this dungeon?
  • Is it possible to kill any monsters or otherwise gain any experience, e.g. using a Knockback Staff on a low-level monster? And if so, does this mean you might be able to actually engage a few monsters now and then and actually gain levels?
  • Are there any expert badges?
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