Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Merchant's Hideout

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	50F
Final Goal Floor	99F
Day / Night	Day
Bring Items In	Yes
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
# of Rescues	3
Pre-ID'd Items	No
New Items	No
Shops	All 3 types
Monster Houses	Normal + pop-ups are possible
Characters	Shopkeepers only
Spawn Rate	Normal
Winds of Kron	Normal (slow)

Merchant's Hideout is a bonus dungeon focused on shops and equipment items. A great place to find a wide variety of equipment materials, and the best place to make large amounts of money.

You can take items and Gitan into the dungeon, but not allies, and you get to keep anything you take out of the dungeon. You can request rescue up to 3 times if needed. (Warning: you cannot request rescue if you died while trying to steal from a shop.) The dungeon is daytime only and the initial goal floor is 50 F. After first victory, the goal floor becomes 99 F and stay there permanently.

Gaining Access

You can play Merchant's Hideout as soon as you reach the dungeon center in Nekomaneki Village.

Unique Features

• Items pre-placed on the floor outside of shops will only be swords, shields, bracelets, and pots.
  • A wide variety of items in these categories can be found.
• Shops are more common than usual (about 3x more often).
• Shops only sell consumables (grasses, scrolls, talismans, and food items).
• Point Switches appear in this dungeon.
  • The amount of points are higher than other dungeons, starting with [TBD] points per Point Trap on floor 1 and ending with 220 points per Point Trap on 96-99F.
• You can take items and Gitan into this dungeon.
• This dungeon is daytime only.

Final Reward

Every time you beat this dungeon (either version), you get a Wonder Pick. This is the only way to get this item in single-player mode. The Wonder Pick has unbreakable dig capability and can be synthesized onto other swords, appearing as the "Max Wall Dig" rune.

Farming Opportunities

This is one of the best farming locations in the game.

Base Equipment and Rune Ingredients

This is a fantastic place to hunt for equipment. You won't have enough room to carry all of it, so use Synthesis Pots and Mixers to combine some equipment, and sell or leave the rest.

Some equipment items, such as Parry Shield, Onigiri Shield, Fuuma Sword, Trapper Bracelet, and Floating Bracelet, cannot be found in this dungeon.

In shops on deep floors, you can find rare consumables such as Angel Seed and SuperUnlucky Seed. You will also find a large number of Huge Onigiri, which can be used to feed Superspy Daisaku back in Nekomaneki Village to get hints.

Gitan

This dungeon is the best place to make loads of money, especially if you are trying to max out your bank in Nekomaneki Village with 99,999,999 Gitan for the PSVita trophy and (minor) reward item.

Bring in all your best gear and your most valuable pots of items to sell, such as 5-spot Preservation Pots filled with 495 talismans. Sell them all, and get / steal them back safely using a Black Hole Pot or a Blank Scroll (as Coupon Scroll). The Coupon Scroll method is repeatable as long as you have enough Blank Scrolls, and can result in the maximum 999,999 Gitan at the first shop you find. You can further improve the efficiency using a Blessing Pot to bless the Coupon Scrolls, then use another Blank Scroll as an Extraction Scroll to get more uses out of each Coupon Scrolls, but this is only necessary if you don't have much valuable stuff to sell. (Blank Scrolls are available at the Point Shop for 200 points.) If you decide to sell your main equipment, you should pick it up and re-equip it right away. Note that it will not have its tag when you get it back.

Alternatively, you can grab all the items (that were formerly yours) and run for the exit. Use a Monster Detector Bracelet to make sure the way to the exit is clear.

• You will find many shops, so decide which ones have the easiest layout for theft, rather than trying to steal in a high-risk situation.
• If you have the Max Wall Dig rune and either a Fort. Staff or a Wall Clip Bracelet, dig a hidden tunnel that leads directly from the shop to the exit before you commit theft. If you have Wall Clip, leave the walls at the entrance and exit tiles intact. If you have Fort. Staff, seal off both ends of the tunnel.
• Escape Scrolls and Undo Grasses don't let you escape the dungeon if you're in thief mode, but Undo Grass can still revive you. You cannot request rescue if you died while branded a thief; however, tagged items can be retrieved from the Sentry as normal.

Strategy

You can take items into the dungeon, but the monsters are about normal difficulty at any given depth. So as long as you take reasonably strong equipment into the dungeon, you should have no problem surviving and being victorious. See the Improving Equipment page for details on building up good equipment.

As with any dungeon that lets you take items in, bring sufficient emergency items, including at least two Undo Grasses and a few Blank Scrolls stored in different Preservation Pots. Balance Staff will also help, if you are bringing in many Preservation Pots. Bless all your items to help protect them against curses from monsters and traps. Bring in new item bracelets if you have them. Some of the best bracelet effects are Identify, Floating, Alert, and Scout / Monster Detector. Identify Bracelet in particular simplifies things greatly, as you won't have to identify the large variety of items. Bring in some money to buy items in the early shops, but this is not crucial as you will find a lot of stuff to sell.

Since consumable items are rare, it is best to have the CR Diet rune on your shield to ward against starvation. If you don't have the rune, consider taking some food in with you, although both Undo / Revival Grasses and Blank Scrolls (as Fixer Scroll) can restore fullness. Use Preservation Pots to keep your food from spoiling or being damaged in various ways.

If you are down to your last Undo Grass, always choose to escape. Escape Scroll and Undo Grass will not let you escape the dungeon if you are stealing from a shop.

Expert Badges

Expert badges are not available for this dungeon.

Monsters

The types of monsters that can appear in this dungeon have not yet been replicated to this wiki. Here are good external resources:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1h9IRPQPLg9g7aE48wlyw8IudHIStawK4mR3kuggto/edit?usp=sharing
• http://seesaawiki.jp/w/shiren5/d/%be%a6%bf%cd%a4%ce%b1%a3%a4%ec%b2%c8 (Japanese wiki page for this location)