Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Sleeping Lands

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	29F
Final Goal Floor	50F
Day / Night	Night
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	3
Pre-ID'd Items	All except swords, shields, bracelets
New Items	No
Shops	Normal (all 3 types)
Monster Houses	Normal (with pop-ups)
Characters	Shopkeepers only
Spawn Rate	Normal
Winds of Kron	Normal (slow)

Sleeping Lands is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 focusing on night. This is the only dungeon in the game that features no daylight at all. You cannot bring items or allies into the dungeon, but you can request rescue up to 3 times, and you do keep the items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is nighttime only and the goal floor is initially 29 F. After first victory, the goal floor becomes 50 F and stays there permanently.

Gaining Access

This bonus dungeon is available 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

It's hard to be precise about all the differences because this dungeon plays very differently from others. In particular, note that it's harder to find items (at least pre-placed items) at night than it is during the day, so it's possible that (e.g.) the dungeon is very generous with all sorts of useful items, but they seem to be scarce or non-existent because it's so hard to find them in the dark. In any case, here are some obvious differences between this dungeon and a "normal" baseline dungeon:

• Permanent night.
• You start with a Fine Torch and a Large Onigiri.
  • I believe you always start with a Large Onigiri in every dungeon, and I believe you always start with a Fine Torch in every dungeon that has nighttime elements. You may need to unlock something trivial in the starting villages to get these starting items.
• The item distribution appears skewed towards items that help at night, such as Replenish Scrolls and Torches being more common.
• There don't appear to be any new items.
• Night Ward bracelet doesn't seem to appear either. Given it's one of the rare rewards for an Inori Cave wish, it's not surprising that it doesn't appear here, but it could radically change your options for facing this dungeon if it is available.
• Regular shops + VIP/Elite shops are available. No confirmed siting of a Pick-A-Choice shop yet, but the Japanese wiki says they can appear.
• There are no other characters besides shopkeepers.
• Most items are pre-identified but bracelets are not. (Swords and shields are presumably not fully identified either, but this needs confirmation.)

Final Reward

Every time you beat this dungeon, you get a Midnight Shield. This shield reduces damage from nighttime monsters but increases damage from daytime monsters. It's on the rarer side, but it can also be found in some other places, such as from Pick-A-Choice shops in dungeons such as Lost Well (IIRC).

Farming Opportunities

It's harder to find items at night than during the day, so this isn't a good place to try farming things. Midnight Shields are common in this dungeon, but you can also find these in Pick-A-Choice shops in other dungeons such as Inori Cave and Lost Well. (Use blessed Collection Scrolls to guarantee getting the item out of the Pick-A-Choice shop, and use Blank/Extraction Scrolls and a Blessing Pot to re-bless your Collection Scrolls before reading them a 2nd time.)

Strategies

The most important thing to do by far is to unlock all your nighttime abilities, and in particular Stairlight. Some abilities are hidden and tricky to unlock. [TODO: link to a page about nighttime abilities.]

Once you have a healthy set of abilities to choose from, configure them at the night abilities desk in Hotel Nekomaneki. There is no one perfect set of abilities to use, but it is strongly recommended to have Stairlight as exactly one of them. This external forum post discusses strong night ability configurations. (Aside from Stairlight, Pot Party is also highly recommended, as it can really help for those times when you suddenly find yourself surrounded by monsters, e.g. in a surprise monster house or when you start the floor in a monster house. As for the other 6 night abilities, there are many combinations that can work.)

The easiest strategy to beat this dungeon by far is to simply use Stairlight as soon as you can safely do so on a new floor and make a beeline for the exit, killing night monsters along the way if they block your way forward and you can't safely dodge around them or deal with them using items. If you use your abilities only conservatively, you can virtually always make it to the exit without running out of abilities.

It's better to use your largest torches first, as torches are relatively common, and using your best torch helps you find more items and thus more torches. Keep several extra torches around, because your torch can be extinguished by various traps such as the Rust Trap and Strip Trap. Having a larger area of view also really helps prevent being surprised by monsters, and also helps you avoid making mistakes as monsters come closer to you. You should never use a plain torch. If your torch has burned down to only show you 1 space around you, change it out for a better torch. It is very easy to be surprised by monsters or make fatal mistakes when your vision is limited. If you're low on Super Torches, consider saving 1 to deal with the last 3-5 floors of the dungeon, as those are likely to be the most dangerous.

You won't find items as easily as you do in daytime dungeons, as you won't be able to see the entire contents of rooms that you enter. Zigzag along your route to see more of the floor and get a few items that way. It's generally not a good idea to move away from the stairs to search rooms for more items. Few items make a difference during nighttime play, and the longer you stay on a floor, the stronger the monsters will get, and the more likely you run out of abilities.

The following items are useful:

• Midnight Shield: This can make a big difference, and it also resonates with any torch to make you more evasive. If the only way you can get this is to steal it from a shop, it can be worth the risk.
• Monster Detector, Monsterphobic, and Scout bracelets: Having the ability to see monsters (and shopkeepers!) from a distance makes a huge difference in any dungeon, but doubly so at night. Monsterphobic does 10 damage to you if a monster is in your torchlight, even if you're not in the same room as the monster. It would help if the Monsterphobic bracelet is not cursed but even if it is, it might still be worth wearing . A Scout Bracelet is even better. (can all three appear in this dungeon?)
• Swap Staff / Knockback Staff: These can help you get to the stairs safely, especially if you're running low on night abilities, or you're not 100% certain you can kill your monster opponent in a single ability shot (e.g. it might have leveled up a ton before you met it, and there's no way to tell this visually). A night monster often loses track of you once you knock it back a few spaces.

Even though swords appear in this dungeon, you should never use a sword. Since there isn't any particularly rare or valuable swords in this dungeon, there is no reason to check them.

Starvation can be a problem, but provided you take reasonable precautions this likely won't end your run. Keep Onigiri in jars until you're ready to eat them, to avoid having them ruined by a random trap. Also, as you will likely be going through the levels quickly, Peaches will ripen more quickly than you're used to, so check on them regularly and eat them or store them when they become Juicy.

Pay attention to the log messages! Even if you don't know where it is happening, you can tell which type of monster is leveling up a lot. If you see a monster of this type, be extra careful with it. Play the game with the volume turned on, as this can give you clues about what monsters are doing in other parts of the dungeon (e.g. beating on doors) that don't appear in the log messages, which is extra important in a location such as Sleeping Lands where you can't see very much.

One of the most deadly things about this dungeon is game lag. Your vision range is much lower than normal, meaning you'll have have much less chance to react to things, and lag can often cause you to make the wrong move. Play slowly, and don't run down corridors or across rooms that appear empty. Running can be deadly in this dungeon.

I have never tried a more aggressive approach to killing more monsters and finding more items in this dungeon. If anyone has tips for how to make such an approach work, please update this wiki.

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:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1h9IRPQPLg9g7aE48wlyw8IudHIStawK4mR3kuggto/edit?usp=sharing
• http://seesaawiki.jp/w/shiren5/d/%cc%b2%a4%ea%a4%ce%c2%e7%c3%cf (Japanese wiki page for this location)

Open Questions

• Is it possible to find a Night Ward in this dungeon, such that you could take a more aggressive approach against the monsters? It seems unlikely that they'd allow such a rare item to appear randomly, but it also seems a shame to not have the opportunity to try to use this item in this particular dungeon. What about a new item bracelet with Night Ward ability on it? Can new items appear in this dungeon? It seems like the answer to both is no, but given you see less items per run than you would in any daytime dungeon, maybe try a larger sample of runs before you conclude that these items can't be found here.