Mystery Dungeon Franchise Wiki:Projects (Shiren 5 Vita Underground Manor)

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Project: Shiren 5 Vita
Proposal: Cleanup
Proposee: Jubilee
Date: February 14, 2025
Priority: Low

is bonus dungeon with two modes of play with different characteristics.

  • Mode 1: A set of 10 separate "districts" of 10 floors each, except the last one which is only 9 floors. The player chooses to start on floor 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81, or 91 and must survive and exit from floor 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, or 99 respectively. The player may not take any Items, Gitan, or List of Characters#Party Member Characters .28aka Companions.29 into the dungeon, but is given a starting gift of levels/experience and items for all districts except district 1, which scale up commensurate to the difficulty/depth of the chosen district. Upon success, the player may take up to 4 items out of the dungeon, none of which may be pots. The player may not request rescues and the dungeon is daytime only.
  • Mode 2: A "general district" which is a full 99-floor dungeon. This mode must be unlocked by completing all districts in mode 1. In this mode, [CONFIRM] the player again may not take any items, Gitan, or allies into the dungeon [/CONFIRM], and there are no starting gifts. However, the player may request rescues, and if the run is successful, the player can take all items/Gitan out of the dungeon. The dungeon is again daytime only.

Most bonus dungeons start with an easier goal floor (e.g. 50F), then once you beat it for the first time, the goal floor becomes 99F with no way to play the shorter version ever again. Underground Manor is not like that. You can play and replay any district in mode 1 whenever you'd like even after unlocking mode 2, and after unlocking mode 2, you can also play and replay it any time you'd like.

Gaining Access

Access to the Underground Manor is not restricted. You can play any district of mode 1 as soon as you can reach the entrance, which is in the Dungeon Center of Nekomaneki Village (NW desk). Access to mode 2 must be unlocked by completing all districts available in mode 1.

Unique Features

The set of items you can find here seems roughly the same as in the Tower of Fortune. So, this is not a great dungeon to find rare items in, at least not before 50F. The monsters start out like Tower of Fortune as well but get tougher as you descend to deeper depths than Tower of Fortune goes.

When playing in mode 1, each run begins in a small, safe "prep" room which has your starting gift items on the floor. There are no starting gifts for district 1 (floors 1-10), but the starting gifts get better for each subsequent district, such that the starting gifts for district 10 are quite substantial. IIRC the starting gifts for district 10 are a level 4 shoddy weapon and level 4 shoddy armor, with +27 bonus power each. Though these pieces of equipment degrade with use, they have massive attack and defense powers to begin with, and they resonate to provide rust protection for both pieces when wielded together. You're also given a Strength Bracelet, Revival Herb, Invincible Herb, and Fixer Scroll. (You also start with a Large Onigiri in your inventory, but I suspect this is due to unlocking something in the starting villages and is a gift available to all dungeons, not specific to the Underground Manor.) Lastly, you start district 10 at level ~70 with ~350 hit points. Regardless of which district you play, the prep room has no monsters to begin with and monsters do not spawn there, but you do consume food there. The prep room does not count as your first floor. When you exit the prep room, you are then on the floor you selected to play. If you make it past your chosen district's exit floor, you enter a small, safe "exit prep" room which looks identical to the entrance prep room, and all the items you are carrying are now identified. The exit prep room also does not count as a separate floor, no monsters exist there normally, nor do monsters spawn there, but you do consume food there. (It is possible to create new monsters and items e.g. via the use of a Presto Pot or Zalokleft Pot, and any items created this way are not automatically identified.) It has 4x 5-spot Ordinary Pots on the floor, presumably to help you organize your inventory so you can put everything down that you don't choose to take with you, because you're only allowed to take at most 4 items out of the dungeon, none of which can be pots. Exiting the "exit prep" room exits the dungeon with a victory. Other differences from "baseline" Tower of Fortune play:

  • All items start unidentified, except those given to you as starting gifts.
  • Identity Pots and Identity Scrolls may be more common than in Tower of Fortune, at least in the easier districts.
  • Daytime only.
  • All floors seem to use the same, innocuous indoor tileset.
  • No shops and no other Characters.
  • Monster houses and "great hall" monster houses (where the entire floor is one big monster house) begin appearing and become relatively common in later districts.
  • There are of course numerous differences in the types of monsters and items available at different depths. These differences are too numerous to mention and difficult to pin down precisely. (Every bonus dungeon has its own flavor/feel, largely based on the differences in the specific combination of elements available at different depths.)

When playing in mode 2, the prep room is empty and you get no starting levels/experience (as if you were playing district 1). If you exit from floor 99F, there is no exit prep room, you just win like other dungeons, you get to keep everything you were carrying, and it's all identified for you. Other differences from baseline Tower of Fortune play:

  • All items start unidentified.
  • Daytime only.
  • There are different types of specialty tilesets at different depths, such as a magma tileset beginning around floor ~20, where the magma occasionally erupts violently, causing damage to everything in the vicinity (e.g. hurting you, hurting monsters, destroying items on the ground).
  • There are shops but no other Characters.
  • Monster houses + great hall monster houses begin appearing, and become more common as you get deeper.

Final Reward

Other than the items you can take out of the dungeon as described above, there is no extra bonus / final reward item for completing each mode. Completing mode 1 unlocks mode 2, and completing mode 2 unlocks expert badges, but you don't get any special items for the feat. You also get a little icon on your Top Menu when you beat mode 2 for the first time, as well as a Trophies.

Farming Opportunities

This is probably not the best dungeon to farm in, but it is a possibility in mode 1. Each district is at most 10 floors, you're given some useful equipment and consumables for all districts except district 1, and you can pick up more interesting stuff along the way. So, in theory, you could replay a district with a high chance to produce a specific item to extract copies of said item for your main inventory at Nekomaneki Village. But, given the difficulty of the higher-level districts, and given that your equipment is Shoddy in the higher-level districts, and given you can only take at most 4 non-pot items out of the dungeon, there are likely better farming opportunities in other dungeons. (E.g. Explosion Rocks is one good way to get certain consumables and synthesize-able materials if you're good at Minesweeper logic puzzles.) There are no obvious items that stand out as being especially valuable, especially plentiful, and especially trivial to get in this dungeon. That being said, if others find specific districts to be great ways to farm specific items, definitely update this wiki with that information, as the districts are super short.

Players who see mode 2 as an excellent farming opportunity should rewrite this wiki with their wisdom, or at least record playthroughs with commentary so the rest of the community can learn from them. :^)

Strategies

Mode 1 seems to be intended as a practice mode, so players can gain experience with the different monsters, items, and play styles appropriate to different "districts". If this is the intent, it is of only limited help, because both the floors themselves and the optimal strategy to play differ between modes 1 and 2, even at the same depth. For example, you never see shops or exploding magma tilesets in mode 1, but both are common at some depths in mode 2. Likewise, in mode 1, the optimal play is often to just dive as quickly as possible to the exit, whereas in mode 2, it is more important to muster all available items and identify them as efficiently as possible in early floors. Starvation is also a non-issue in mode 1 but an important consideration in mode 2. However, the monsters and items seen at different depths appear to match in both modes, so you may be able to use this to your advantage to practice in mode 1 to prepare for mode 2.

Beating mode 1 is relatively easy. The early districts are pretty trivial, but the difficulty definitely ramps up. Districts 5-10 all give you a Shoddy weapon and Shoddy shield, with increasing levels and amounts of bonus the deeper you start. Shoddy equipment is very powerful to start with, and equipping both resonates to give both rustproof protection, but each piece of shoddy equipment degrades with every use, even while resonating. Thus, it becomes very challenging to try to power through and completely clear all the monsters in every room of every floor in those districts, as your equipment will degrade too quickly. On the other hand, while it may be a less appealing way to play, each district is only 10 floors (and only 9 for the last district), so you can relatively easily beat every district by diving as quickly as possible and avoiding fights to the greatest extent possible. Since the only real benefit to beating mode 1 is to get a little check mark next to each district and to unlock mode 2, diving is definitely the faster, safer, less error-prone strategy. (It's worth noting that, for the most difficult dungeons in Shiren 5, and for many expert badges, mustering resources on the earlier floors then diving as quickly and safely as possible past the later floors may be the only viable strategy, so perhaps the starting gift of Shoddy equipment is to help the player learn not to rely on power, especially on deep floors. Note that this is reinforced even further by the fact that your HP regeneration rate goes *down* as you level up / as you have more max HP. At level 1 with 15 HP, you regain HP very quickly, but at level ~35 with ~200 HP, your HP recovers only slowly, and it only gets worse as you level up further.)

Mode 2 is more challenging. Standard gameplay techniques for long dungeons with a large variety of unidentified items apply. [TO DO: make sure this is documented somewhere and link to it! Worst case, there are some tips and tricks for Fay's Final Puzzle in Nintendo DS Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer that are largely applicable.] Generally speaking, you will only find the most common items early on in this dungeon, so it's usually safe to just consume them right away to learn what they are. (This is not a great habit for some of the more fiendish dungeons.)

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

  • It is a safe assumption that you cannot get expert badges at all while playing mode 1. This has not been confirmed.
  • It is assumed that you can't get expert badges on your 1st successful run of mode 2. This has not been confirmed.

Discussion

"You're also given a Strength Bracelet, Revival Herb, Invincible Herb, and Fixer Scroll." - Shiren 5 item names should be used. All instances of IIRC and [TO DO] need to be removed. Jubilee (talk) 17:21, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Solution

Solution comments:
Solution provided by: Jubilee
Project finished on:
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