Mystery Dungeon Franchise Wiki:Projects (Shiren 5 Vita Lost Well)

Project: Shiren 5 Vita

Proposal: Cleanup

Proposee: Jubilee

Date: February 14, 2025

Priority: Low

(or "the Lost Well") is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 with multiple unusual characteristics. You can take Items/Gitan in, and the difficulty level starts high with high-level monsters, making it a great place to rack up points on your Points Card. Durable items are not available outside of shops, just consumables (with an apparent heavy bias towards torches and food), so this is a good place to max out your stomach capacity if you're so interested, but not a great place to hunt for special equipment. You keep what you have if you win or exit safely. You can take in up to 1 ally, which is unique; every other dungeon lets you take in up to 3 allies or none at all. You can request rescue up to 3 times if needed. The dungeon experiences both day and night, the initial goal floor is 30 F, and the goal becomes 99 F after first victory. The entry note says "Note: Can use upgraded items", but it should read, "Warning! You must bring in great equipment and plenty of emergency supplies!".

Gaining Access

Reach Sparrow's Inn and talk to a sparrow in the SW corner of this location, near a well and near the storage unit in Sparrow's Inn. You can then enter the Lost Well by examining the well or by talking to the sparrow again. Once you've unlocked this dungeon, you can also access it directly via the Sparrow Transport in Nekomaneki Village.

Unique Features

• Starts at a higher level than normal
  • Meaning that the monsters are perhaps 25 floors tougher than is normal for the same floor in other dungeons.
  • Meaning also that you get lots more points from Points Traps than is normal for the same floor in other dungeons.
    • You get [TBD] points per Points Trap on Lost Well floor 1. (For comparison, you only get [TBD] points per Points Trap on Destiny Road floor 1.)
    • By 67F, you get 180 points per Points Trap.
    • On 96F - 99F, you get a whopping 220 points per Points Trap!
  • I assume this also influences what items you can find, but it's less obvious because of the next difference.
• Items placed on the ground outside of shops will only be consumables, and highly biased towards food and torches
• Most floors have ~4 items placed under walls; these are usually just the same consumables, but can be catstones ~1% of the time

Final Reward

Before entering the dungeon, the sparrows of Sparrow's Inn beg you to find an old man who was lost in Lost Well and bring him home to Sparrow's Inn. Apparently he has some magic that could restore their feathers to their full colorful glory, but regardless of that, they're quite fond of and worried about him. (Not so fond as to call him by name, though; the character is only ever referred to as "old man" by the sparrows and everywhere else in the game. :^) )

The first time you beat the dungeon by exiting from 30F, you achieve victory and get some cutscenes related to this plotline. The first cutscene is of you finding the old man in Lost Well. He asks your help finding his way to Sparrow's Inn. The next cutscene is a tearful reunion at Sparrow's Inn with all the sparrows greeting the old man. It turns out he no longer has the magic to restore their colorful plumage, but they don't mind, they're just overjoyed to be reunited with him again. The old man was apparently near death and passes away. The sparrows are heartbroken but still very happy to have had one last chance to be with him. The sparrows then give you a Parry Shield as a reward.

Upon beating Lost Well again on the 99F version of the dungeon, you do not find the old man, nor do you get a cutscene in Sparrow's Inn, nor do you get another Parry Shield or any other reward item. Instead, you get a little cutscene at the bottom of Lost Well with Koppa saying we've done it again and that he hopes the old man can live happily with the sparrows "on the other side". Is there more to the story here? It's particularly odd that this bonus dungeon lets you take 1 ally in rather than the usual 0 or 3; is there a specific ally you need to take with you to the bottom of the Lost Well to trigger some other ending? In any case, there's no known way to rescue the old man again or get another Parry Shield as a final reward from this dungeon again. In the meantime, you can find more Parry Shields randomly on early floors of multiple difficult dungeons that don't let you take items in, such as Hunter Pond and Rousing Paradise. Trivia: "old man" is one of the possible mates you can get from the Mate Scroll. If you get him as a mate, there's a little dialog then the old man dies and leaves you a "large" inheritance of 1,000 Gitan. (Several mates from the mate scroll give you 1,000 Gitan for various reasons, but some mates give you very interesting gifts.)

Farming Opportunities

Definitely take your Points Card in, to take advantage of the massive numbers of points you can rack up in this dungeon.

This may be the best place to use/abuse Pick-A-Choice Shops to accumulate a large number of catstones all at once (via Blessing Pot and Collection Scrolls). See the Inori Cave page for details. [TO DO: consider reworking these pages to put the Pick-A-Choice technique on its own page and linking to it from everywhere appropriate.] If this is your goal, again, take in an Escape Scroll or be able to write one on a Blank Scroll, and take your Points Card to rack up points along the way. Floor 9F seems to have something interesting (shop, other Character) more often than not, though this may have just been chance. You can also find catstonese for sale in elite/special shops if you have a way to get in (e.g. Recommendation Letter or VIP Bracelet) and the funds to buy them (8,000 gitans each). And, there are buried items on every floor which seem to have a ~1% chance of being catstones.

Each floor has ~4 items pre-placed under walls. [CONFIRM] This is apparently unique to Lost Well; buried items have not yet been sited in any other dungeon. [/CONFIRM] There's no point trying to find these buried items unless you're properly equipped.

• Finding buried items:
  • The best way is to have a Scout Bracelet, Item Detector Bracelet, or the equivalent of one of these on a new item bracelet.
  • A Navigation Scroll can help you for a single floor (or more if you extend its life via a Blessing Pot, but it's really not worth it to do so). Obviously a Blank Scroll will also work provided you can write a Navigation Scroll.
  • You can of course dig blindly with any of the digging options listed below, but it's a bad idea; you'll likely break your equipment or starve before you find anything useful.
  • If the floor happens to have the dig-happy Character, you can give him a Rusty Pickaxe and he will dig randomly forever without the Rusty Pickaxe ever breaking, but this is not the best use of the Rusty Pickaxe because it can only help you with a single floor and again you'll likely starve before finding anything useful this way.
  • When the buried item is adjacent to a hallway, you can find them by running down the hallway. If there's a buried item diagonally in front of you, you'll stop running. So if you're running down a hallway in this dungeon and you stop for no known reason, first try swinging your sword left and right to see if you uncover any hidden passageways, and if there are none, then there's an item buried diagonally in front of the direction you were running.
• Getting buried items:
  • A Wonder Pick is your best option. It can dig walls and never break. You can obtain a Wonder Pick by beating Merchant's Hideout. You can also synthesize a Wonder Pick onto your main weapon if you prefer, turning it into the Max Wall Dig rune, but just be aware that it can sometimes be annoying to always destroy walls when you swing at them even though you may not have intended to destroy them. It's particularly annoying when you're trying to find secret passageways. (That being said, between sometimes getting annoyed by destroying walls you didn't intend to vs. carrying a separate item, it's probably best to not have a separate item to preserve inventory space.)
  • A Rusty Pickaxe may work but of course it may break. (So, never synthesize these onto your main weapon. "Max Wall Dig" is a great rune, "Wall Dig" is a terrible rune or a great way to destroy your equipment. But, at least if you have the rune on your main weapon, the weapon apparently has no chance to break unless you swing it at a wall.)
  • A Boring Staff will work if you have enough charges.
  • [CONFIRM] Nearby explosions, e.g. 4-2-8 Pot, will destroy the walls as well as the buried items. [/CONFIRM]
  • You will likely also need a Floating Bracelet, Waterwalk Bracelet, Desert Scroll, or other way to cross water and void tiles in order to get all the buried items.
  • [CONFIRM] You can also get buried items with a Collection Scroll. [/CONFIRM] The problem with this is that you'd need to be prepared to read 99 of them in order to check all the floors for catstones. Maybe you've entered the dungeon equipped to abuse a Pick-A-Choice shop, so you can indeed read lots of Collection Scrolls, but if you start using them just to collect buried items, you'll use them up pretty fast without getting catstones very quickly.
• Should you bother:
  • There appear to be an average of ~4 buried items per floor, and ~99% of buried items are the same, common consumables found on the floor normally.
  • Approximately ~1% of the time you'll find a catstone.
  • No other rare loot has ever been reported.
  • So the only reason to consider it is if you're hunting catstones. If you are hunting catstones, the Pick-A-Choice trick and elite/special shops mentioned above are probably faster ways to get them in bulk. OTOH, a full 99F run may have ~4 catstones in walls across all the floors, but a full dungeon might have only 1 or 0 Pick-A-Choice shops and ~1-2 elite/special shops. I once went into this dungeon hunting catstones, prepared to abuse Pick-A-Choice shops, but between digging out catstones + finding 2 elite/special shops, I was totally full on catstones by 50F without finding a Pick-A-Choice shop.

Level 2 Mixer monsters appear on floor 1. This makes it a fantastic place to mix runes where the rune ingredient is not a sword or shield (or frankly, to mix anything at all without needing to buy or find a Synthesis Pot). Bring in a way to escape after you're done mixing of course, and it may also be prudent to have a Time Stop Bracelet or equivalent new item bracelet so night never falls on you unexpectedly taking your great items in the bellies of day mixers when they vanish. At level 2, Mixers can only hold 3 items in their bellies, so for the largest recipes, you'd need to shoot them with a Glorious Staff once to increase them to level 3 (and thus they can hold 4 items in their bellies).

Strategies

Take in very strong equipment as well as multiple emergency backup items. Equipment should be tagged and you should have at least 2 ways to leave the dungeon in a hurry in case of emergency (e.g. Undo Grass, Escape Scroll, or Blank Scroll provided you can write your own Escape Scrolls), which should not be stored in the same pot for greater safety. Properly equipped, you should have no trouble beating the easier version of this dungeon, or at least escaping without losing your best gear.

To beat the 99F version of the dungeon, you will need very strong equipment indeed, or at least ways to mitigate the usual large number of things that can go wrong. Given you can take equipment into the dungeon, you've hopefully crafted at least one set of ultimate gear, including a maxed out sword with ~30 positive runes, a maxed out shield with ~25 positive runes, and a new item bracelet or two (or more) with several positive benefits. Going this route, you can power your way through the dungeon, but even with said ultimate gear it's not trivial. By 99F, the monsters will be hitting you for ~150 damage even with your ultimate gear on! In particular, it will help to have the runes that let you gain HP when you attack monsters, be immune to hypnosis, be 100% immune to explosive damage (not just 50% resist!), halve fire damage, etc..Taking 5-10 Blank Scrolls in and having the ability to write any possible scroll doesn't hurt either. Simplifying this goal somewhat is the fact that there is virtually nothing of value (except Points Traps!) to be found on most floors at any depth, though you can find a wider variety of useful things in monster houses and shops. Make sure all your items are blessed (to avoid them being turned into onigiri, e.g.) and carry a Balance Staff or new item staff with Balance on it (to avoid pots breaking when you hit a Trip Trap). Or just use a Floating Bracelet or Trapper Bracelet or equivalent to avoid triggering traps altogether. If you are tempted to walk across a large room on a deep floor to look at the item on the ground, this is probably a very bad idea. Use the scan feature to see what type it is from a distance; odds are very high that it will be a torch or food, and it's really not worth the risk to try to go get it.

It is possible to find new items in this dungeon, and you can apparently even find durable items (aka equipment) outside of shops provided they are new items. But given you can take item in with you, you shouldn't need to rely on finding any great items along the way, new items or stock items. If you've crafted a great new item, fantastic; buy all the copies you want before you enter this dungeon (which might take wasting a few runs as you can only buy 1 new item per run).

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
• https://seesaawiki.jp/w/shiren5/d/%cc%c2%a4%a4%a4%ce%b0%e6%b8%cd (Japanese wiki page for this location)

Open Questions

• Why does the dungeon allow you to take exactly one ally? Will something special happen if you manage to keep the right ally with you alive all the way to the end past the 99F staircase? Would this cause some new ending or at least give you another Parry Shield?
• Do other dungeons have pre-placed buried items? When you give Digger Don (the dig-happy Character) a Rusty Pickaxe in the Tower of Fortune and let him go for a long time, he'll dig up a lot of items including catstones, but I don't recall ever seeing a lot of buried items via the Scout Bracelet. Does Digger Don actually create items as he digs, or are there actually other buried items that I've just never noticed because I didn't have a Scout Bracelet at the time? I don't have enough info or clear memories to confirm but my working theory is that the dig-happy Character actually creates more items as he digs, that these items were not pre-placed so you couldn't have dug them out yourself. There's a big more info about Digger Don on the Inori Cave wiki page. [TODO: centralize info about Characters onto a Character page or specific pages for specific Characters then move this info there.]
• What happens if you give Digger Don a Sturdy Hammer instead?

Solution

Solution comments:

Solution provided by: Jubilee

Project finished on: