Community:Shiren 1 DS Monster House Strategy

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Monster houses are the best opportunities in all of Shiren, better than Shops, and much better than Vaults. Unless you're totally outmatched, don't run away from a monster house -- exploit it! This page will help you learn to minimize the risk and maximize the reward of a monster house.

Preparation

If you're not already familiar with the basics of monster houses, read the Monster Houses page first.

The first step to beating a monster house is preparing before you even see one. Most equipment is helpful, and more equipment is better than less, but here are some guidelines for the most useful items to carry in prep for a monster house:

• Highly Recommended:
  • Strong weapon + armor
  • Armband of Sight (to see the house before accidentally stepping inside it)
  • Chiropractic Jar
  • Herb of Revival
  • Air Devil meat (or meat of higher forms)
  • Staves of Sloth, Paralysis, Bufu, Doppelganger, etc.

• Recommended:
  • Unbreakable dig mod on your weapon
  • Plenty of Arrows (any type)
  • Positive mods for weapon + armor (the more the better)
  • Jar of Hiding
  • Sleepless Armband
  • Death Angel meat (or meat of higher forms)
  • Scrolls of Destruction, Confuse, Sleep, Blastwave, Power Up, etc.
  • Herbs of Victory, Sight
• Also Useful:
  • Trap Armband. If used properly, this could allow you to clear a monster house w/o lifting a finger. But this is not a good use of the Trap Armband. If a monster trips a landmine, it could destroy useful items in the house. A better use of a Trap Armband is to locate traps on the ground after you've cleared the house.
  • Evil Soldier meat (or meat of higher forms). Acts like a built-in Herb of Revival, but, you can't use inventory while you use this form so it's more dangerous.
  • Herbs of Sleeping, Confusion, Dragon, etc.
  • most items
  • Consider killing off your sidekicks. Seriously. They make the careful deconstruction of a monster house more difficult. If they get to the monster house before you, they'll rush in, die, and level up your foes. If they're in a hallway behind you, at least you can use them to slow down a line of monsters as you retreat down the hallway (by swapping places with them and letting them attack the monster while you flee), but then you'll still be facing tougher monsters than normal.

Finding and Approaching a Monster House

The point of this section is to help you avoid just walking into a monster house unaware. In general, you should find a monster house before you step into it.

If you are on a floor and notice that the game is lagging slightly, then one of the following should be true:

1. There is a monster house on the floor.
2. You are wearing a Happy Armband.
3. A double speed monster is stalking you most likely, one of the Death Reaper family
4. There is a Soldier Ant family member digging through some of the walls

If you have an Armband of Sight, whether or not you wear it constantly, put it on right away when you enter a new level as soon as it's safe to do so. You will easily be able to see if there's a monster house (or shop or vault) anywhere on the floor.

Take a swing at the entrance to new rooms to check for traps. This is good advice regardless of monster houses. If you see a bad trap, find another way in. Also, you can see the 3 squares immediately inside the room. If all three squares are empty, it's probably not a monster house. But if even 1 item/monster/trap is visible, it might be a monster house so be careful before stepping inside (e.g. make sure you're fully healed). Naturally, if you see 2 or 3 items/monsters/traps, then it's very likely a monster house.

There is some benefit to just stepping inside a monster house: you will immediately gain remote monster sight. You keep this even if you eat Monster Meat or otherwise change forms, much like the effect from the Scroll of Light. However, despite the gain of remote monster vision, I don't recommend you step into the monster house right away. See the next section for how to clear the monster house as safely as possible before even stepping foot inside.

There can only be 1 monster house per floor. (You also can't create another monster house with a Monster Scroll if the floor already had a monster house.) So if you've already cleared one, there won't be another.

As best you can, clear the entire rest of the floor of monsters before attacking the monster house.

Determine which entrance you want to use and your path of retreat. If you have a choice of approaches, choose one where you can fall back to the stairs or a shop. (You can pick up a shop item to cause the shopkeeper to block the entrance and rest in safety, which should cause the monsters to disperse throughout the floor.) Another consideration is that rock is a better wall than water -- only a few monsters can phase through rock, but several monsters can fly/float over water. So a passageway with rock on both sides is preferred.

Check your armband. Switch to Sleepless if you can. Once you have remote monster sight, the Armband of Sight isn't very useful. Many armbands can help in combat, but being put to sleep is far more deadly than other bad effects. (e.g., if you're confused, you can still shoot arrows and bolts in a straight line, and you can still use your inventory safely.) OTOH, if you know what monsters you're likely to face, you can switch to the appropriate armband first.

I don't recommend Herb of Victory yet -- it may be overkill or it may run out too early. I don't recommend Herb of Sight yet -- you may want to transform into a monster, which will undo the Herb of Sight.

Whittling Down a Monster House Before Stepping Inside

You can do a lot to clear the monster house before you even set foot inside. The general strategy is to lure out as many monsters as you can, 1 at a time, fight them in sequence not in parallel, and rest in-between as needed.

Monsters in the house will sleep until one of the following occur:

• You enter the house, which wakes them all up (even you're silent)
• You set off an alarm trap anywhere on the floor, which wakes them all up
• You stand adjacent to a monster in the house, which has a chance to wake him up
• You interact with a monster in the house (e.g. via sword, arrow, sidekick, and staff bolts), which will wake him upStepping in is the worst way to wake them up. Using an alarm trap isn't so bad especially if you're far away and you have an Armband of Sight. Sidekicks are a very unsafe way to wake monsters, as they may wake too many monsters at once, die, and level up the monster. So the best ways to wake these monsters is by standing adjacent to them and/or damaging them with arrows or other projectiles.

Standing just outside the room, you can wake the (up to) 3 monsters adjacent to you.If 1 wakes before the others, even better, lure him into the hallway and kill him by himself. If multiple monsters wake, don't fight them where you stand, because some monsters can cast spells or shoot arrows diagonally. Just retreat into the hallway so they can't see /shoot you and you can fight them one at a time. If there's a monster diagonally inside that just won't wake up, shoot him with an arrow and retreat into the hallway to do battle.

Once the 3 squares just inside are clear,shoot more arrows (or throw other projectiles other than a Venting Jar) in at all 3 angles, one angle at a time, to try to wake up individual monsters. Again, lure monsters into the hallway and beat them individually, resting afterwards if need be.

Consider repeating this same process from every entrance.

If you have the ability to dig (via normal or upgraded Pickaxes, normal or upgraded Pickaxes melded to another weapon, or Ant family meat), dig a path around the monster house and continue to wake monsters one at a time and kill them individually. It's safest to dig 2 squares away from the monster house, leaving a wall between your new passageway and the monster house, then dig a path in from your passageway to the monster house every 3 squares. Why leave a wall in-between? It leaves a safer line of retreat in case anything goes wrong, and, it avoids "room extension". (Trivia: did you know that if you dig an entire row or column adjacent to a room, that new row or column instantly becomes part of the room? So, if you're digging the rock immediately adjacent to the room, and if you aren't paying attention and complete the new row or column making the room rectangular again, you would suddenly be counted as being inside the new, larger room, and all the monsters would wake up.) OTOH, if your digging tool is breakable, just dig adjacent to the room and don't complete the row or column. This will allow you to clear the maximum number of edge monsters, and gain the maximum number of new angles to throw/shoot inside, before your pickaxe breaks.(You can also cut away the wall next to the entrance to the Monster House and then back into the hallway to shoot along the new diagonal from the hallway. This is very safe but doesn't give you the other diagonal or the straight shot into the House from the wall, though.) Either way, if you do accidentally wake the house, don't panic, just retreat to the hallway and use the tips in the next section. If you're clearing every monster possible as you dig around the room, this retreat will be straightforward.

One small optimization if you have the equipment. With an Armband of Sight, and a weapon that has unbreakable dig + razor wind melds, you can see where the monsters are sleeping near the wall inside the house. Dig a square diagonally next to them instead of directly to them. This way, you can hit him with your main sword's razor wind meld and get two swings on him before he can get 1 swing back at you.

During the whittling process, wear your defensive armband if you have one (e.g. Sleepless). If you also have an Armband of Sight, periodically put it on while you're resting to make sure no wandering monsters are sneaking up on you.

If you have unbreakable dig + enough arrows, you can clear the entire house of monsters before setting foot inside! If not, at least you can clear as many monsters as possible from the available entrances before waking the rest of the house.

Stepping Inside

Once you've whittled down the monster house as best you can, it's time to step inside and clear the rest of the monsters. Here are some tips.

When you step into the room, you will have the benefit of seeing the locations of all monsters on the floor on the mini-map. Make sure to be aware of any monsters in your path of retreat.

Step in to wake the monsters and gain monster vision. If there's a Field Bandit in the house, see the special circumstance below. Otherwise, step out of the house immediately. You are in danger for 1-2 turns. Remember, the monsters can see you (but you can't see them!) while you stand just outside the room. This means they can target you with spells, throw rocks at you, etc.. Retreat further into the hallway before turning to fight, to guarantee that monsters who aren't adjacent to you can't see you.

If you have a long hallway and no monster behind you, you can draw monsters from the house into a long line and use Silver Arrow to damage them all at once. A Pitcher's Armband and regular arrows or other projectiles has the same effect as a Silver Arrow, just remember to takeoff the Pitcher's Armband afterwards to prevent accidents like throwing away a great item. :^)

Another great trick is to use a Paralysis Staff on the first monster coming at you from the house. This plugs up the hallway, and all the other monsters will disperse throughout the dungeon (and you can see where they go) -- much safer.

Staves in general are good. A Staff of Sloth is a particularly good way to fight a monster without letting them swing back at you -- very useful against monsters with very nasty special attacks, and also generally a great way to conserve hit points. A Doppelganger Staff can be used in a hallway to at least confuse the first monster in the column/row, but Doppelganger Staves are best used in rooms with multiple monsters to distract the crowd from coming after you. Postpone and Lightning are other reasonable choices. Pain Sharing Staves are great if you're dueling a single very tough monster such as in corridors like this -- you can kill a much tougher monster than you ordinarily could kill with this staff.

If nothing else, at least the hallway allows you to fight one monster at a time. One exception to this is if some of your foes can phase through rock or walk on water. In this case, consider blocking the hallway with a Paralysis Staff shot and retreating further so you can at least block the normal monsters and only fight the monsters that phased through rock or floated over water.

If you step in and it's too dangerous to step back out, this would be a great time to use a Jar of Hiding or turn invisible by eating Air Devil meat. Air Devil meat is the atom bomb of monster houses -- you can clear an entire floor safely with just one Air Devil meat. See also the full set of tips under "Surrounded!" below.

Death Angel meat is another great way to clear the entire room with ease. Become a Death Angel, walk into the room to wake it, then walk out and stand on solid rock. Almost nothing will be able to touch you while you stand on rock, but they will helpfully walk up right next to you and be slaughtered. Two exceptions: other monsters who can phase through rock can at least attack you back -- kill them first. Also, Tanks can destroy rock and wound you in the process, and they make this strategy harder. Consider diving deeper into the rock so that no monsters can see you, then letting all the monsters disperse throughout the floor. Once dispersed, you can attack them individually at your leisure. When the tank is alone and you're healed and ready for it, rush up to it and kill it quickly.

Many other monster meats might be helpful. Become a Dragon and breath fire at remote monsters. Become an Evil Soldier and survive death. Become any monster and you don't have to worry about traps. (Fact check: what if you're wearing a Trap Armband at the time?) But don't just turn into a monster form lightly. If you get in danger, you can't access your inventory without spending an extra turn to revert to human form, and that can be fatal. Also, monster form causes you to forget what traps you've seen with the Herb of Sight (though traps you stepped on or swung to reveal will still be known). But there's more than one way to use monster meat: throw it at a monster you can't handle to turn it into one you can.

If you can defeat the monsters too easily, some players like to use a Kigny Seed (or Doppelganger Staff or Kigny monster meat) to intentionally get the monsters to kill one another and level up. You get more exp overall this way.

Special Circumstance: Surrounded!

(This section is for if you start the floor inside a non-Great Hall monster house, or if you're thrown into a non-Great Hall monster house by a Tiger, or are teleported into one, etc. This section is much less applicable to Great Hall monster houses -- see the separate section for Great Hall monster houses. However, many of these same tips are useful for monster houses in general, regardless of the type and regardless of whether or not you are inside them.)

So! You're in a room surrounded by monsters! In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, "don't panic!" Slow down your gameplay and check all your options thoroughly. You're in a lot of danger, but you'll make it a lot worse if you panic and act quickly. I've ranked some options for you in order of most likely to succeed down to least likely to succeed. Obviously, you'll have to decide if the level of risk is worth the items you might consume in order to save your hide. Just don't die with an inventory of useful items!

1. The extremely rare Scroll of Destruction is 100% effective in saving your life in this situation.
2. If you have it, eat Air Devil meat and you'll be able to kill off all the monsters in complete safety.
3. A Jar of Hiding works wonders to save your life in this situation. The monsters will all leave the room randomly and you'll exit the jar to (relative) safety. If you haven't yet identified the Jar of Hiding, try inserting an item into all your unidentified "insert"-type jars. If it's the Jar of Hiding, you'll hide instantly, and if it's any other "insert"-type of jar, you can abort the insert without wasting a turn.
4. Death Angel meat will *probably* be enough to save your life in this situation, but it's not a 100% sure thing. Death Angel meat allows you to move at double speed and phase through solid rock, so if you can "exit" to a wall, that will work nicely. Then you can use the trick mentioned elsewhere on this page to clear the monster house while standing on rock. But if you're surrounded or likely to become surrounded, being a Death Angel probably won't be enough to save your life, plus, you won't be able to use any inventory until you revert back. (And spending a turn to revert back is usually fatal if you're surrounded by monsters.)
5. If you've been saving a Herb of Victory, now might be a good time to use it. It may not be sufficient for you to beat the monster house, but it should be sufficient for you to work your way to an exit. Do *not* get cocky and start fighting in the room -- leave first, then start fighting. The Herb of Victory only lasts for 20 turns. (Just remember, there are usually lots of traps on open floor, so be careful where you step as you head to the exit.)
6. Evil Soldier meat might also be a good option. It's like having a built-in Herb of Revival, then you can possess the most powerful monster near you (or the monster that is closer to the exit). Still dangerous, though, because if you can't possess a useful monster, you still may need to spend a turn reverting to human form, which could be fatal.
7. A well-placed Doppelganger bolt can save your life, or at least distract monsters long enough so you can safely make your way to an exit (e.g. by swinging before walking over open ground). Just beware that you'll have to fight a leveled up monster later if you use this technique. If you have to use multiple Doppelganger bolts to be able to exit the room, you have to be very careful to not make your situation worse. (If you can Doppelgang the leveled up monster, that's great, because it can survive more attacks by more other monsters before it dies, and, you will still only have 1 leveled up monster to deal with afterwards. In practice, it's tough to hit the same monster again, because you've been busy heading towards the door whereas there now may be a crowd of monsters blocking a direct line of sight to the one you want to Doppelgang.)
8. A Scroll of Confusion does wonders. If there are only a few monsters, consider killing them quickly while confused (but again, don't step on open ground without checking for traps first). It's probably better to use this item to exit the room safely, though. If the monsters you're facing are much tougher than you, you could still be killed by a random confused monster swing.
9. Depending on your floor depth and the monsters you're facing, a Blastwave Scroll may or may not be safe. For weak monsters, it will clear the entire room. For tough monsters, a single Blastwave won't save your life. For monsters in-between, a single Blastwave might be enough to soften them up so that you can survive being surrounded. (This is especially true if your shield has spikes on it.)
10. A Scroll of Sleep is actually quite risky in this situation. If there are only a few monsters, maybe you can kill them before they wake up, but remember that any monster who wakes from this spell will move at double speed for a time! One way you can mitigate the risk is to sleep the monsters, make your way safely to an exit, let the monsters start coming to you, then use a Paralysis Staff on one to block the hallway. The rest will move at double speed the long way around to try to get to you, which is probably pretty safe.
11. Depending on your particular floor layout, a Switching Staff might be able to put you near enough to an exit so that you can exit in safety.
12. In a rare circumstance, you may be able to walk to an exit before you are surrounded. Be very careful if you're thinking of using this strategy! Open ground is very likely to be trapped. (And the smaller the monster house, the greater the density of traps.) Can you walk over items to get to an exit safely? That might work and you might pick up some useful items on the way. But beware that some monsters may act at double speed, or might be able to blast you remotely, or a Tiger might again throw you to another bad spot, or a remote Tiger might through a monster in your retreat path, etc. etc..
13. A Spring Trap or a Pitfall Trap can save your life if you can both find one and trip it. It helps if you can see the traps first, but odds are you won't even have a single turn to spare to be able to see the traps (and if you do have that turn to spare, you'll may have something more valuable you can do with that turn like using emergency gear). Given that there are more types of traps that can harm you than help you while surrounded in a monster house, you have two chances of this strategy working: fat and slim. Guess what? You're surrounded in a monster house, so you just aren't that lucky. (OTOH, if you truly have no better option, then you must take this incredibly slim chance and walk on open ground and hope to both find and trip the right kind of trap. A slim chance is better than none.) (Also note: a Landmine or Big Landmine trap also has an infinitesimally small but non-zero chance of saving your life. Just keep in mind that it will destroy nearby items on the ground, and, you'll be severely wounded afterwards.)
14. In a very bad pinch, consider walking to a corner and making a last stand there. This strategy is very risky. Even if you can immobilize some of your neighbors (e.g. with Paralysis Staff), they might be woken again by monsters that shoot bolts or cast spells. And of course you might step on a nasty trap as you're trying to reach what you think is a safe corner.
15. If all else fails, prioritize which enemies to fight. Fight low level Skull Mages last. Skull Mages can actually save your life by mistake. They can speed you up, or they can teleport you away, or they can transform you into a useful monster form. (I once read of a player where the Skull Mage turned him into an Evil Soldier. The player was then killed right away, but came back as a ghost, and he was then able to possess the Skull Mage!) I personally have survived 2 monster houses because I let the Skull Mages live, and they kindly hasted me and teleported me to safety. This isn't true for high-level Skull Demons, though.
16. Do you have any rescue requests left? :^) Just be very nice to a would-be rescuer and warn them of major risks they will face, such as starting a floor inside a monster house. Note that, if a rescuer dies, they really die, and really lose all their gear they were using to rescue you.

Special Circumstance: Field Bandit

The Field Bandit is the worst monster you can find in a monster house, as he can destroy every item before you have a chance to reach them. If the monster house has a Field Bandit, do NOT wake the house! Whittling (described above) is generally OK, but in a rare circumstance, whittling can still wake the house when you step on a square that used to be covered in rock.

If you do wake a Field Bandit in a monster house, or if a wandering Field Bandit gets into the house before you, consider taking a much riskier and faster approach. The experience from a house is great, but the main benefit from the house is all the loot, so you really want to protect it. Blastwave Scrolls often won't kill everything in the house, but will kill low-level Field Bandits. Sleep Scrolls and Confuse Scrolls may work well in this case, too. Obviously, if you can shoot the Field Bandit with a nice bolt like Postpone or Doppelganger, do so.

Special Circumstance: Great Hall Monster House

These are generally much safer than regular monster houses. Monsters, items, and traps are all considerably less dense. However, many of the items you might use don't work as well in GHMHs. Also, depending on the level disparity between you and your foes, you may take very different strategies.

If you're tougher than these monsters by a fair bit, you may be able to use a strategy of simply maneuvering yourself to take on as few monsters at one time as possible, but otherwise take no special actions. If you have the time, check for traps before moving. On the other hand, a remote Skull Mage or Tank can really mess you up if you take your time pussyfooting around, so it might be safer to keep moving in a zig zag pattern without stopping to check for traps, to minimize the chance of being shot. My recommendation is to ensure you are in a relatively safe position first, even if that means walking over ground that could have traps, then start checking for traps before you move when you have more time. If you have a Trap Armband or Herb of Sight and the time to use it, check for traps right away. Even if you want to switch armbands right after checking, you should at least get a good idea for what areas of the map are safe for maneuvers. If by any chance you see a Spring Trap, stay near this spot and use the trap to teleport to safety if you start to get overwhelmed.

On the other hand, if the monsters on this floor are tough for you, or if you're otherwise in danger of being overwhelmed, the strategies under the "Surrounded!" topic above will generally apply.

Regardless of a cautious or aggressive strategy, the recommendations for item usage are very different for normal monster houses and GHMHs. Here are some examples.

Scrolls of Sleep are Very Bad in GHMHs. You won't have time to kill everything before most of the monsters wake up, and in hasted form, you will likely be surrounded and killed. Scrolls of Confusion aren't dangerous, but generally won't be very effective right away, until you've drawn the monsters closer to you. Blastwave Scroll is usually a good idea, but it does carry a risk: after one Blastwave Scroll, you'll have a bunch of wounded monsters wandering around the room, and this makes for very easy pickings for Tanks and Kignys. Leveled up tanks in GHMHs are particularly deadly. The Power Up Scroll is an excellent choice for GHMHs.

Staff bolts also carry risk. You may be tempted to blast monsters off screen right away -- do not. If the level contains invisible Air Devils (even if you have an Armband of Sight and can see Air Devils on the map, you won't know precisely what type of off-screen monster you are targeting), you could very well reflect the staff bolt back on yourself and kill yourself. If you know for certain what you're shooting at (e.g. because it shot at you first, or because you shot at it with an arrow to check what it was), then by all means, shoot it with a bolt. Postpone, Doppelganger, and Bufu are good choices, but Sloth is much less effective here. (You can of course deliberately shoot yourself with a staff bolt such as Accelerating by reflecting it off an Air Devil, but in practice, this opportunity is pretty rare.)

Jars of Hiding won't really help unless you're surrounded and need some breathing room. If you have a Herb of Victory, wait to use it until you're near many enemies, as it will probably run out before you run out of enemies. However, Air Devil meat is still the bomb. If you're invisible, all the monsters will tend to move to the wall and circle the room; you can then stay near one corner of the room and swing as many as 5 times at a monster as it walks by.

Special Circumstance: Unusual Types of Houses

This section is not yet complete. Suffice it to say that some types of houses are better handled with some types of gear. Thief house -> Walrus Shield. Undead house -> Staff of Recovery + Sickle Slayer. Drain house -> Antidrain Armband + Drain Buster. One-Eyed house -> Cyclops Killer. etc..

Special Circumstance: Rolling Your Own

Monster houses are the best opportunity in the game, which makes the Monster Scroll one of the best items in the game. If you ever see a Monster Scroll in any shop, buy it immediately. At 200 gitans apiece, it's a bargain at 10x the price.

Throughout this section, when I refer to Monster Scroll, the same thing applies to any unidentified scroll that might be a monster scroll. Treat every unidentified scroll as if it's a Monster Scroll until you've identified the Monster Scroll.

Ideal time / place to read a Monster Scroll:

• After you've completed the floor, just before leaving
• When you have good equipment (revisit the Preparation section at the top!)
• When you don't have sidekicks (or are willing to kill them off first)
• Not in a Great Hall (walls are very useful, use them!)
• Not on a floor that already had a monster house (the spell fails and is wasted)
• Not in a hallway (you get teleported to a random room location first, ick)
• Not in a shop (you get teleported as above, and if you're carrying unpaid items you'll be marked as a thief - and the house will be full of Sherrifs and Guard Dogs!)
• Not in the middle of a room
• Not in a room that contains the staircase if possible
• Just inside a large room, the larger the better
• Near a hallway that leads to relative safety (such as a shop or the stairs in the next room)
• On a floor that doesn't contain monsters of a type you are particularly vulnerable to (e.g. if the floor had radishes that put you to sleep and you don't have a Sleepless Armband, don't create a monster house on this floor!)
• On a floor that has a shop preferably (but don't delay using the Monster Scroll for too long just waiting to find a shop)
• On a floor that is likely to create items of the kind you want (e.g. it might be best to use it right away in Final Puzzle so you can get more loot earlier, and it might be better to wait until 50F in Ravine of the Dead so you have the possibility of generating the rarest items that dungeon has to offer)

(Fact check: does anyone know what happens when you read a Monster Scroll inside a natural Great Hall shop? What if you had a normal level with a shop, then read Great Hall, then read Monster Scroll? Unless you're willing to waste your Monster Scroll (likely best case) or die for science (worst case), I don't recommend using your Monster Scroll in such weird circumstances. I'm just curious as I've never tried it.)

Some players recommend reading a Monster Scroll while standing on a staircase, so you can exit quickly in case of trouble. I disagree for multiple reasons. The monsters you create will have a turn before you get your next turn, and if the stairs are in the middle of a tiny room, you'll get pummeled before you can even dive down the stairs. But more importantly, a Monster Scroll is a great opportunity -- don't waste it by diving.

The ideal place to read a Monster Scroll is immediately inside a large empty room, a room that does not contain the staircase, where the adjacent hallway leads to a shop or the stairs for safety. Ideally, the floor has a shop on it somewhere. In a pinch, you want to be able to retreat to the shop and use the shopkeeper to block the door while you rest, and of course, you want to sell the extra or evil loot for cash before leaving. Failing that, you want to be able to retreat to the stairs in an emergency. Failing that, you want to be able to retreat to a non-dead-end. Do not create a monster house in a tiny room! If you do, the monsters will definitely start near you and hurt you before you can react, plus, tightly packed monsters are dangerous, plus, you'll probably get less items from a small room anyway. A nice big room gives you more time to react to monsters and more loot.

As noted in the "whittling" section above, there is a trick known as "room extension". If you can dig (via normal or upgraded Pickaxes, normal or upgraded Pickaxes melded to another weapon, or Ant family meat), you can make a large room out of a small one. Dig an entire wall 1 square deep, forming a new, larger rectangle, and as soon as you dig a full row or column, that new row or column becomes part of the room. Repeat on the same or different walls until the room is as large as you need to feel safe.

Check your armband. As above, put on Sleepless or other appropriate defensive armband. Consider eating a Herb of Victory, but it's probably not necessary. Then read the Monster Scroll and proceed with the "Step Inside" as above. (That is, take 2 steps back into the hallway and proceed as normal.)

If you're not comfortable creating a Monster House on this floor -- don't! You can always wait until you have better gear (Jar of Hiding, Herb of Revival) or a better floor layout before using it. Or if you're really paranoid, use a Scroll of Removal on the most dangerous type of monster before creating the house. Besides, if you don't need the extra experience or loot right now, you tend to get tougher monsters (for better experience) and rarer loot if you wait to create the monster house until deeper in the dungeon.

I personally prefer saving Monster Scrolls for the Ravine of the Dead. Items are so rare in that dungeon that monster houses are much more valuable than in other dungeons. Also, when in Fay's Final Puzzle, it's important to consume Monster Scrolls safely so you can get enough loot to beat the dungeon.

Despoiling the Room

This goes without saying, but for completeness, I'll say it. Nothing sucks worse than clearing a tough monster house only to fall through a pitfall trap before picking up any items. (OK, a lot of things suck worse, but you get the drift.) Use a Trap Armband or Herb of Sight to avoid traps while you loot the room. If you don't have either, I strongly recommend you swing before taking every single step at least until you finish picking up the loot, and even after you finish looting the room, it's still probably worthwhile to swing before every step every time you pass through the old, dead monster house. No point falling through a pitfall trap before you're ready to leave the floor. Better yet,if it's a small room, make a point of searching for traps on every single square of the room before doing anything else, then you know untrapped squares are safe every time you pass through the room.

Remember, not all traps are to be universally avoided. Since traps are so dense in monster houses, now is a good time to think about using some of them (even if you don't have a Trap Armband). Top candidates are the Unequip Trap, Summons Trap, Pitfall Trap, and Spring Trap, but others might also be useful. Read Trap Strategy for details on how to put traps to work for you.