Community:Shiren 1 DS Final Puzzle Strategy

Final Puzzle Strategy guide for  Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer.

Teach a Man to Fish

A walkthrough is simply not possible for a randomly generated dungeon. You'll have to become an expert Shiren player to beat Final Puzzle. Or to put it another way, the strategy is simple, but executing that strategy depends on mastering a large variety of tactics and knowing how to put them together creatively. This page attempts to teach you what you need to know. Shiren has a seemingly infinite number of arcane tricks and possibilities, so this is no small feat.

At a high level, the strategy is:

• Scrape every possible advantage you can out of every situation
• * Construct the best equipment possible as quickly as possible
• * Switch equipment often, as the situation calls for it
• * Use every opportunity you can to safely create more Monsters and items
• * Avoid skipping levels (to maximize experience and items), but also avoid wasting time (to avoid starvation)
• * Avoid making mistakes and taking unnecessary risks
• * Research what you don't know / spoil yourself rotten
• Be lucky

The tactics you will need to master, in order from most important to least important, are:

• Identifying items as quickly as possible and with minimal waste
• Taking good notes
• Creating great equipment as quickly as possible
• Maximizing value and minimizing risk of monster houses, including creating your own
• Maximizing value and minimizing risk of every item, monster, and trap
• Knowing how to safely steal and when you should try
• Knowing generally what dangers to expect at what depths and how to prepare for them
• Creating your own luck
• Leveraging the community

We'll cover each of the tactics first, then return to general thoughts on putting it all together to execute the high level strategy.

Identifying Items

Read these pages first:

• Identifying Items
• Final Puzzle Printable Item Checklist

[Improve the above linked pages]

[Add content about tips specific to Final Puzzle.]

[highly favor jar id techniques that help id the strengthening jar earlier, and talk about ID technique when you have a jar that could be str/weak/vent]

Taking Good Notes

It's a good idea to write down the name of an unidentified item next to its true name (e.g, Jade Armband = Antidote Armband), especially when you don't have a single Scroll of Identity and have to use your identifying skills. This is also good to prevent a fatal event if you ate a Herb of Amnesia at those deep floors.

Staves have a set amount of charges depending on their type, for example, a Bufu's Staff usually has 2-4 charges, while a Switching Staff has 5 to 7 charges. This isn't very useful because you could just swing the staff and see what happens, though if you have two of a single type of staff and have some extra Melding Jars, you can combine them to see how many charges they have (to put it simpler, if you believe you have two Bufu's Staves and put them into the Melding Jar, you'll get a staff with 4-8 charges, given that this type of staff has 2 to 4 charges). This may help you discard options without having to use your staff, but still, it's better to plainly use it.

Naming items depends on you, I usually name an item once I know what it is, or name it with the initials of several items if it could be any of them (this is especially true when identifying at shops). Let's say you've found an unknown jar selling for 14,000 Gitan, it could be a Strengthening, Weakening or Venting Jar, but you can't buy it and plus you aren't sure you can identify it by use (because you don't have money). You can name the jar "SWV", which stands for Strengthening, Weakening and Venting, respectively, then if you find again this jar, either on the floor or in a shop, you know it's one of these options.

Also check out the Final Puzzle Printable Item Checklist.

Creating Equipment

Read these pages first:

• Melding Jar
• Strengthening Jar
• Extraction Scroll
• Blank Scroll
• Weapons (in particular, the section about different special abilities)
• Shields (in particular, the section about different special abilities)

Creating equipment quickly is a crucial skill, but it's also pretty straightforward and intuitive. Skip to the next section if you already know how to do it.

Melding 101: insert the item you want to improve in the Melding Jar first, then insert other items of the same type to merge their abilities onto the main item. Keep doing this until the jar is full, then break it and use the newly enhanced item. Melding 102: for 4 and 5 spot Melding Jars, you can improve 2 different types of item at the same time, just keep in mind that it's less efficient because you waste 2 jar spots on base items rather than 1. Given that you've unlocked access to Final Puzzle, you probably know all about melding, and have probably have done a ton of it, especially at Mountaintop Town.

The difference is that Final Puzzle is the only location in the game where there is both the need and the opportunity to construct great equipment on the fly / within the dungeon as you descend.

The Strengthening Jar is the key. Many expert players believe it is impossible to beat Final Puzzle unless you find a Strengthening Jar, and find it early enough in the dungeon to take advantage of it. Whether or not that's true, an early Strengthening Jar makes a huge difference in the viability of your run. Of course, you can't construct great gear without Melding Jars, but in practice, you'll probably find 10 Melding Jars or more in 99 floors, whereas you might find 2, 3 or even 4 Strengthening Jars in 99 floors if you're lucky. [These are estimates based on 2 player's experiences. Anyone have any better data?]

Because Strengthening Jars are so rare, Extraction Scrolls are valuable too. Extraction Scrolls, of course, can extend the life of your Strengthening Jar, and a Blank Scroll can become an Extraction Scroll in a pinch to further stretch the Strengthening Jar. In addition, take every precaution not to lose this jar! Always carry a Staff of Stability in main inventory to avoid dropping it, and never risk letting a monster that can destroy inventory items take a swing at you. (For example, swing a staff at him that you know has enough charges, a staff like Sealing, Bufu's, Doppelganger, or sometimes Sloth, so the monster has 0% chance of destroying your Strengthening Jar.)

Ideally, you want to find and identify a Strengthening Jar as soon as possible.Then you want to fill it with secondary weapons and armor (maybe some staves, but usually equipment first) and let them "bake" until they are maxed out or until you find yourself getting outmatched by the monsters as you get deeper in the dungeon. Then you want to extract the baked items without breaking the Strengthening Jar, meld them onto your main equipment with a Melding Jar, and fill up the Strengthening Jar again immediately with the next set of items to bake.

You won't always be able to stick to the ideal plan. Here are some recommendations:

• If you have the option to extract and meld losslessly (i.e. you have a Melding Jar and an Extraction Scroll or Blank Scroll handy), you want to be melding every 8-20 floors or so. Many weapons and armor max out after +8, and even if that's not true, you'll start getting outmatched by the monsters if you go too far without melding.
• Obviously, it's more important to survive than to preserve the Strengthening Jar, so break it and meld if you're having serious difficulty with the local monsters.
• Always be planning your next batch of items to put in the Strengthening Jar (and the next batch beyond that if you can). Retain the right items accordingly, and adjust when you extract accordingly.
• If you have many Melding Jars, feel free to meld unbaked items with special bonuses to your main equipment while you let other items bake to max. This is especially true when you don't have an Extraction Scroll.
• If you have no Melding Jars, it's still worth it to extract fully baked items from the Strengthening Jar and begin baking your next set of items. This is especially true if you have plenty of inventory space and plenty of good meldables that you'd like to strengthen before melding.
• If you're lucky in finding many great items (or if you're unlucky and just haven't found many Jars of Holding), you'll be faced with the painful choice of breaking a Strengthening Jar and melding items that aren't fully baked just to free up inventory space, or, throwing away great items because you've run out of space. Unfortunately, there's no good answer to this dilemma. You can defer this decision, but odds are very good that you'll face exactly the same problem next floor; you'll find something you want to keep, but you won't necessarily find an Extraction Scroll, Blank Scroll, or larger Jars of Holding. The rule of thumb I use is if you just have 1 too many items you want to keep, triage and throw away your "worst" item and leave the Strengthening Jar intact. But if you found, say, 5 great new items on the current floor, it's time to say your tearful goodbyes, break the Strengthening Jar and meld all the meldables to free up inventory space for the incoming loot. (If you're close to full on inventory and there's a shop on your current floor, consider selling non-critical loot before diving deeper. And obviously, if you don't have a Melding Jar and thus have no way to free up inventory by breaking the Strengthening Jar and melding, there's no point in breaking the Strengthening Jar at that time.)
• Try to put items into the Strengthening Jar that are the same type (e.g. all armor together, or all weapons together), and/or, try to put items that will all max out at the same time. Melding just your weapon or just your armor at one time is the most efficient use of your Melding Jars, and, strengthening items with the same "baking time" together means you're maximizing the efficiency of your Strengthening Jar, too.
• In the rare event that you have two Strengthening Jars, segregate your loot into short term melds and long term melds.
• Usually, you should defer baking staves until later. Staves are generally pretty common throughout the dungeon, plus, if you were to bake only staves at first, you'd be much more likely to be overwhelmed by more powerful monsters because you didn't spend that time baking better equipment. However, you can also gain immense benefit from certain rare staves such as a Bufu's Staff, so if you prefer to spend a Strengthening Jar spot or two on rare staves, that's fine.
• If you get a Strengthening Jar and don't have enough great items to fill it, you're again faced with a dilemma: to waste strengthening time or to fill the jar with lame items. Filling with normal equipment like a Polearm or Bronzeward is not a waste; they have no special effects, but they have a much higher max bonus, which means you won't be wasting baking time later when you can't find an Extraction Scroll. High standard bonus is more important than most special effects anyway. OTOH, if the only items you can insert are common staves, hold off or at least save a few Strengthening Jar spots for better equipment to be found later.
• Take into consideration the ceiling values for your equipment. For instance, if your primary weapon is a Mastersword, and you're already up to +50, there's no point in baking 4 more weapons to +8 before melding as that would hit the bonus ceiling for your Mastersword. (OTOH, if your main weapon is a Polearm, you should plan to find a stronger main weapon later and bake accordingly, and/or bake your next main weapon for a few floors before melding your old weapon and other meldables onto it.)
• Regardless, this simple motto applies: Always Be Baking. (And Always Be Melding.)

That covers when to meld. Now, what should you meld?

• The single most important meld is the Spiked Ward. This item allows you to amplify your force. Better still, the more badly outmatched you are, the more this item helps you. It's not as powerful as a Pain Sharing Staff bolt, but it works on all monsters even if you're surrounded. Moreover, a Spiked Ward is just too weak to be main armor, nor can you effectively wear your main armor most of the time and switch to the Spiked Ward only for certain occasions, because the Spiked Ward's benefit is only gained in the most dangerous situations.
• The second most important meld is the Hide Shield. Food can be tight in Final Puzzle, but anti-hunger on your shield will help a lot. The Hide Shield is too weak to be a main shield, of course, but if you can't meld it yet, consider wearing it when things are safe to conserve on food.

You can likely win the game with just those two melds. Of course, having more positive special attributes is always better. But the order of which melds come next isn't that important. All else being equal, if you have multiple choices of what to meld, meld the one that's harder to use on its own via swapping equipment for specific situations.

Don't sell gold equipment until you've already got Gold melded onto your main equipment (and even then, consider holding on to a spare so you can re-add the Gold attribute if needed). Money isn't very helpful for survival but a Gold meld will not only protect you from rust but it's also the first meld to go when you get a specialty attribute slimmed off. (Attributes are lost from left to right, starting with gold plating. Losing a Gold meld is far better than losing the Dragon meld that comes after it!)

Don't meld a Pickaxe to your main weapon! Unfortunately, there's no way to get Unbreakable Dig melded to your weapon in Final Puzzle. Melding Breakable Dig to your main weapon could prove fatal. If you want to do some tunneling, save your Pickaxes as separate items.

It's generally better to bake only weapons/armor in the Strengthening Jar until you max out your main equipment, then switch over to only staves. There is one downside, in that you can use a strengthened staff right away but you may not always be ready to meld enhanced weapons or armor. But keep in mind that you need to descend many floors to fully bake meldable weapons and armor. If you start with staves, you risk being outmatched before you have any weapon/armor worth melding. Plus, staves are reasonably common, so you should generally have enough staff bolts to handle emergency situations whether or not you bake them. Once you do start baking staves, keep some good ones outside the Strengthening Jar for emergency gear, and try to bake Sealing, Sloth, Doppelganger, Bufu's, or Postpone. Most any staff is helpful, but those are a bit more helpful than others. (Postpone is most helpful in the late dungeon when staircase traps start appearing.)

Monster Houses

Read this page first:

• Monster House Strategy

That page covers anything you could want to know about how to get the max value out of a Monster House with minimal risk. It also covers the generic technique about how to create monster houses. Now let's discuss tweaks to monster house strategy specific for Final Puzzle. Specifically: when should you use your Monster Scroll?

Rule of thumb #1: the Monster Scroll is one of the best items in the game, you should buy / keep / use every copy you can get your hands on. In fact, the Monster Scroll is so valuable, consider turning some or all of your Blank Scrolls into Monster Scrolls. (See also Creating Equipment below -- the other great option for Blank Scroll is Extraction Scroll.)

Rule of thumb #2: you should generally use Monster Scrolls as soon as you have a good opportunity to do so.

Rule of thumb #3: treat all unidentified Scrolls as if they are Monster Scrolls until you know they aren't (e.g. if they ask for an item target, or if you've already identified the Monster Scroll).

The rules in Monster House Strategy about what makes for a good spot to create a Monster House apply equally well to Final Puzzle.

Unfortunately, there's no perfect answer about when to use the Monster Scroll, it's a judgment call. On the one hand, you usually need lots of loot as fast as possible to have a chance to win this dungeon. On the other hand, rarer items appear more frequently at deeper depths. In general, use it as soon as you can safely to so. But here are some factors that should influence your decision:

• Do you have a reasonable weapon and armor for your current floor? Were you barely hanging on by the skin of your teeth to clear this floor? If so, though you clearly could use more loot and more experience, you probably won't survive creating a monster house. Wait to create the monster house until you have better gear like a Power Up Scroll, Pain Sharing Staff, Chiropractic Jar, etc..
• Do you have good emergency gear? A Chiropractic Jar, Herb of Victory, Herb of Revival, or other healing gear? Do you have good staves and do you know how many charges they have left?
• Do you have the right armband for the monsters that might be created on this floor? (See the chart below for what status ailments tend to be found at which depths.)
• Is there a shop on this floor? You can use them for defense and to sell excess loot for cash.
• Have you found the right room, a nice big room with no staircase and multiple exits, and a nice retreat path?
• Are you able to create a monster house, because this floor had no other monster house?
• Are you on a very early floor? You don't have much progress to lose, you can afford to take a larger risk.
• Is this run disposable, e.g. because you have a low chance to win given the lame gear you've found so far?
• Are you crammed full of inventory that is just too useful to throw away? A monster house might create some jars for you to use, or it might just cause you to waste a half dozen good items.
• Are you close to beating the dungeon? The deeper you get and the more likely it is that you're going to win, the more conservatively you should play. It's not worth it to read a Monster Scroll past floor 70 or so. The radish family monsters get harder as they throw Kigny Seeds for which there is no defense [fact check?], but the other monsters aren't much more difficult to kill. In short, you probably won't need new gear beyond floor 70 in order to beat the dungeon. (Exception: if your goal is not to beat the dungeon but rather to find specific, ultra rare items, creating a late monster house might help.)

Items

Read this page first:

• Tips and Tricks

There's an enormous amount of material that one could cover here. Since most usages should be obvious, we'll only cover a few exceptional ways to use items, especially those that are unique to Final Puzzle.

[Create separate page about the best way to exploit various items and link to it here. OR, link to lots of individual item pages each with info about how best to use them. Specific tips to add either here or on subpages: creating items via Walrus Jar, Jar of Change + Arrows, using Gitan bags as items or as thrown weapons, etc.]

Monsters

If you think of Monsters as obstacles to success, you're thinking about things the wrong way. Monsters are opportunities, just like items and Traps, and not just because they give you experience. They just happen to have a pointy end, so you have to be careful about how you handle these living tools.

Some useful monsters are the obvious Gitan Mamel and Rice Master to gain experience, and Rice Changers to get food. However, these aren't the only ones. Field Bandits could be useful to get "food" if you're lacking on riceballs and don't want to let a Rice Changer breath on you (weeds fill up 5 fullness). Another good example is the Dremlas family, which can knock you back to safety. I personally was saved by one of these at the 70th floor or so (where the Hardremlas appears). The Dark Eye family is also good to block other monsters and get a recovery room, just have it follow you to one of those dead-end rooms and make it block to entrance. Level one Dragons, believe it or not, may save you from a super tough monster, though if it kills the monster you'll then have to deal with a Sky Dragon. Perhaps it's better to let the Dragon weaken the monster with its fire, then finishing it yourself.

[Create separate page about the best way to exploit various types of monsters, link to it here. OR, link to lots of individual monster pages each with info about how to exploit them. OR, organize by category of usage, e.g. turn these into meat, sloth these, etc.. There's a great tip in the comments section below about manipulating Rice Masters to gain lots of levels early in the game. IIRC, this is also mentioned on the great article linked at the top, but it's worth it to re-mention it in the body of this page, in the monsters section.]

Before creating a monster house, or even before entering the stairs it would be handy if you knew what enemy lied ahead

It might get you more aware on what items you should use

Such as using armbands for certain floors, or choosing what weapon to meld first.

Here is the list of all the monsters that will appear in Final Puzzle as well as when they will appear:

Final Puzzle#Monsters

Traps

Read this page first:

• Traps
• Trap Strategy

It may not seem like it, but traps are opportunities, too. The two pages above highlight these opportunities.

There isn't much to add that's unique to Final Puzzle. Beyond 80 Fl, you will begin to see "staircase traps", e.g., false staircases that are actually traps, just like in Ravine of the Dead. The same techniques as documented above can help you deal with false stairs. (Namely, use a pitfall trap to leave the floor instead, or postpone a monster onto the real stairs, or walk onto the trap as a monster then transform and try the underground menu to go downstairs, or use a Trap Armband.)

Theft

Read this page first:

• Thievery

Now lets talk about theft in Final Puzzle.

Rule of thumb #1: don't try to steal in Final Puzzle, it's generally not worth it.

Rule of thumb #2: don't steal for money in Final Puzzle. If you make it to the end of the dungeon, you'll have way more money than you can spend anyway, and that only helps your score, not survival. Only consider stealing for survival.

As with most things, deciding whether or not to steal is a risk/reward trade off. I personally have never needed more money in Final Puzzle. The two times I won, I had 100K+ Gitan at the end and nothing to spend it on. On another run, I found a 30K Identity Armband on ~50 Fl, and was able to buy it without blinking. If you're a strong enough player to care about maximizing your score / Gitan by risking theft in dangerous situations, stop reading this document and start writing it! :^)

Here are some factors to consider when contemplating theft:

• How safe is your plan? Breaking a Bottomless Jar in the shop is very safe. Great Hall Scroll + Switching Staff is very safe if you've cleared the floor first. Monster meat that can phase through solid rock is pretty safe. Plans that rely on digging a 2nd exit with a breakable Pickaxe and making a run to the stairs are not safe.
• How many spaces is it, walking, from shop to stairs? 10 spaces good, 100 spaces bad. How much of that path is lit vs. unlit? (Halls are mildly safer than rooms, because enemies can't see you but you can periodically shoot arrows down the hall to verify the path is clear, or, waste a Switching Staff bolt to hopefully jump a lot closer to the exit.)
• How much experience do you have with theft? If your adventure log shows that you've tried theft 20 times and succeeded 10 (or higher numbers), you probably have a decent feel for what's safe and what's not. If you're less experienced, maybe now isn't the best time to experiment.
• How deep have you gotten on this run, and how good is your loot? If you've just started your run and have no valuable loot to lose, taking a bigger risk isn't so bad. Are you < 10 floors away from winning? Maybe you don't need to take that risk.
• Remember, you can't request rescue if you've been labeled a thief. OTOH, wounding or killing the shopkeeper in and of itself doesn't count as theft.
• How good is your equipment? Do you have a strong weapon and armor? Do you have an Armband of Sight, so you can see where the ~30 dogs and guards appear? Do you have lots of helpful staves (Postpone, Paralysis, Doppelganger, but NOT Bufu -- it doesn't work on guards or dogs.
• How much emergency gear do you have? Do you have a Herb of Revival? How about Air Devil meat or Death Angel meat? Unless you're super buff, a Chiropractic Jar won't do much good. A Herb of Victory also likely won't really help as it only lasts 20 turns.
• What, really, are you trying to steal? How critical is it to your survival? Can you sell other items to cover the cost? Do you have a Walrus Jar and is the item you want something other than a jar? The item most worth stealing (IMO) is a Strengthening Jar, as the rest of the great items in the game are more affordable (e.g. 200 Gitan for a Monster Scroll -- a bargain!). And even with a Strengthening Jar, I'd gladly strip down and sell the shirt off my back to buy the thing if it meant not taking an unnecessary risk like stealing.
• Are you suffering from confirmation bias? Are you * wanting* it to be safe to steal so you're clouding your own judgment? Will you be satisfied losing your game and not being able to request rescue knowing that you made a sound decision to risk theft?
• Have you at least cleared the floor and done all legitimate business with the shop first? Sell what you need to sell, name what you need to name, kill what you need to kill, because you won't be able to do this after you've been labeled a thief.

Researching the Road Ahead

[Add content describing generally the various dangers you face and what armbands you should use at each section of the dungeon. Ex.: Armband of Sleep in the 40's & 50's, Antidrain Armband in the 60's and 70's, Armband of Calm or Antidote Armband in the early floors, fake stairs in the 90's, Kigny Seeds thrown at you by Fear Radishes in the 90's.]

[keep important armbands and weapons in main inventory if possible, so you can switch quickly]

Making Your Own Luck

In general, the more tactics, tricks, and tips you learn, the more you can convert haphazard situations into controlled ones. But the main point I want to mention here is about the importance of acting as if you're lucky.

In Bridge and many other games, you are frequently faced with the fact that you cannot win unless X is true, but X is low probability. Also, the best play of your hand is very different if you know X is true vs. if you know X is false. (If you know X is false, you will lose, but through defensive play, you might minimize your loss.) Your payouts might look like this:

	X is true	X is false
Play as if X is true	10	-10
Play as if X is false	-8	-8

What should you do? X is unlikely, so should you play defensively and lose by a lesser margin? Experts generally agree that you'll do much better in the overall tournament if you play for the win. You must assume X is true and go for it.

Shiren is rarely that cut and dried, but occasionally, you'll realize that you really need something unknown to be a certain way otherwise you'll die. The same rule applies: play for the win.

Examples:

• I was on 13 Fl and had not yet found any Strengthening Jars, Weakening Jars, or Venting Jars. My equipment was below average, and if I didn't get a Strengthening Jar soon, I'd never make it to the end. Then I found a shop selling a 4-spot jar for 14K -- it could have been any of the three and I had no way to identify it. These 3 jar types appear to be equally likely (see "Updated checklist with item rarity" on Final Puzzle Printable Item Checklist). I decided to play as if this was a Strengthening Jar. I ended up hocking most of my valuables and buying it and inserting a few items. It was in fact a Strengthening Jar and I went on to do very well (I believe this was the 1st time I won the game). But note: I didn't risk a winning game on a 33% chance; I took the risk to convert a losing game into a game with a fighting chance. Also note that I didn't take the unnecessary risk of filling the jar completely with items to strengthen, because it could have been Venting, and all I needed was to try to bake 1 item for 1 floor to confirm what type of jar it was.
• I started a floor in the middle of a small monster house, densely packed with monsters. Most tactics would lead to my death. Ultimately, whether ideal or not, I decided my best course of play was to head to a corner, picking up 1-2 items on the way, and to see if those items might save me. None of them helped, and I now had 5 monsters around me, including a double striking death reaper and a low level skull mage. I came to the conclusion that the only way I could survive was if the skull mage helped me, so I focused on killing the double attacker first. Sure enough, the skull mage hasted me, and I at least had a fighting chance. I killed several monsters, only to have others replace them, but eventually, the skull mage teleported me to safety. This strategy had perhaps a 95% failure rate, but it was better than the 99% failure rate of anything else I could think of, so I played for the win and got lucky.

This stratagem can NOT replace strong play. Here are some examples of bad ways to apply this rule:

• Get into trouble dueling a single monster, then assume you need to read a random scroll and hope it will help you. If a high risk option truly is your best option, sure, go for it. But dueling a single monster, you should have many, many options, including just plain running away to rest. Moreover, with proper play and preparation, dueling single monsters should never lead to a situation where wild leaps of faith are your best course of action.
• You really need item X, which you find in a shop. You'd have to sell half your loot including some great items you are hoping to meld someday, or, try your hand at a risky theft. It would be an incorrect application of the "assume you'll be lucky" rule to try theft in this situation. Note that the stakes are much higher this time -- if you die under normal circumstances, you can request rescue, but dead thieves are not allowed to request rescue, their game is truly over. Also, it's very clear that you can absolutely survive this situation without stealing -- both buying the item and skipping it are clear survival strategies. You may still elect to attempt theft for other reasons (e.g. perhaps you have nothing of consequence to lose) but this is not a life or death situation so don't evaluate it as if it is.

Another way to make your own luck is of course to learn from your mistakes. Anytime you die, you should do an "after action review" / debrief / postmortem and determine how this death could have been avoided. In most cases, I find that I could have played differently during or before the crises to have improved my chances of survival. Don't just think about it yourself: ask the community for options, they'll usually think of several great and retrospectively obvious ideas for you. :^)

Leveraging the Community

Read these pages first:

• Rescues
• Rescue Passwords for Items

Congratulations! You're already doing the best thing you can do to leverage the Shiren community: you're reading a fan site. If you want to play better Shiren, spoil yourself rotten. Read this site inside and out, then start participating in various forums. Read old forum posts, then start posting questions and answers. As of July 2008, there are still many hard-core players actively reading, writing, and responding to posted questions. Here is a (very partial) list of good resources:

• This wiki
• gamefaqs.com
• Reddit Page

Obviously, rescues are another way to leverage the community. If you feel cheap accepting a rescue, that's between you and your demons. But if you want the option, it's there, and it makes it significantly easier.

There are several websites with active communities performing rescues via passwords, including the 3 sites at the top of the list above. For example, easy password rescue requests tend to be turned around within a day on gamefaqs.com's message board. However, Nintendo WFC rescues are superior for several reasons:

• You tend to get rescued faster via Nintendo WFC
• No long, cumbersome strings, which are nasty even without typos
• You can send and receive items via Nintendo WFC rescues, but not for Final Puzzle

Though extremely rare, there are some situations where dying intentionally is your best option. I was once blinded, slowed, and turned into a riceball by a black Skull Demon. He can also drop you * 3 levels* in a single shot. After losing 3, 6, then 9 levels, I quickly realized that my best course of action was to die intentionally. I had a Herb of Revival at the time, but the strategy works either way. I had been running away from monsters with higher attack power, but now I turned around and headed back, and died quickly rather than slowly. I revived and was no longer blind, slow, or a riceball, and was finally able to kill that Skull Demon. I was ultimately able to recover my 9 levels and went on to win that game. But if I had stubbornly kept trying to flee danger and had lost another 6 or 9 levels in the process, I might not have been able to recover.

This method of leveraging the community may best be categorized as abuse: yes, it's perfectly legit within the rules and design of the game, but it's probably not what the designers had in mind. It is possible for you to take copious notes on your game (e.g. which items you found where), then die intentionally. A confederate can then play through your rescue request up to 5 times, fully identifying every item along the way. (That is, the confederate would be free to consume or use the items with abandon because it wasn't a real game for them. This would help identify the items, which are still unused and unidentified in your real game.) Because rescuers face the same dungeon as the original player (with some caveats mentioned in Rescue Passwords for Items), the items identified by the rescuer would be the same ones in the original game. Example: let's say you found a herb that could either be Kigny Seed or Herb of Revival on the previous floor. You could stow it, die intentionally, and your buddy could identify the item for you as they rescue you. (I didn't say it was a very practical means of abuse, but it is possible.)

Putting It All Together

Napoleon once stated that it was more important for his generals to be lucky than good; you can't teach luck. Dungeons in Shiren are randomly generated, and Final Puzzle in particular ranges from "very hard" to "impossible." You need to be both a strong player and lucky to beat Final Puzzle.

I've had games where I never got a weapon or armor -- I lasted about 8 floors. Who knows, maybe it I were a little bit better and made it to 9 Fl, a great weapon and armor would have been waiting for me. I've also had games where I started 1 Fl in the middle of a monster house populated with monsters normally found much deeper in the dungeon. Maybe if I had tried a different tactic, like using any item I could get my hands on, then maybe I could have survived, or maybe I should have just asked for a rescue, and if it worked, I would have started the game with much better loot than normal at the cost of 1 life. (Rescuers don't always see the same types of monsters in monster houses. Even though I saw level-inappropriate foes, a rescuer might have seen a room full of Mamel's and been able to survive.) Then I've had games where I was given all the best equipment on a silver platter -- and I still managed to die because I got sloppy because it was so easy.

When does a tadpole become a frog? When does an impossible situation become possible through superior play? There's no easy answer to that question. I consider myself a strong player, and I've won less than 10% of my attempts. I doubt it is possible to beat Final Puzzle more than 25% of the time. (For all other dungeons, the victory ratio for the best possible prep and play might approach 100%, because you can take equipment and/or experience in.)

My point: through careful and strong play, you can increase your odds of winning, but unlike every other dungeon, Final Puzzle is dominated by luck.

So the question is: how much effort should you put into each run? Careful note-taking, being as thorough as possible about identifying items as early as possible, thoroughly evaluating all options in dangerous situations, researching every new situation you find before proceeding -- these tactics can improve your odds of survival, but will also dramatically slow your play. I personally like to play fast and sloppy until I find something very helpful (e.g. Kabra's Blade, Windshield, Strengthening Jar), then I start playing much more conservatively. But it's your game, play it however you will enjoy it!

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this far! Note that I created a wiki page instead of a FAQ intentionally: I would love to see this document grow and improve over time. If you see an error of fact or any improvement you can make, please do so!

Good luck, and happy wandering!