Draft:Shiren 5 2020:Monster Hotspot

Key Parameters
Initial Goal Floor	99F
Final Goal Floor	99F
Day and Night	Day
Bring Items In	No
Take Items Out	Yes
# of Allies	0
[[Shiren 5 2020:# of Rescues|# of Rescues]]	3
Pre-ID'd Items	All except swords, shields, and bracelets
New Items	No
Shops	Normal
Monster Houses	Normal + great hall MHs on floors that end with 9
Characters	Shopkeepers and wandering characters (but not allies)
Spawn Rate	Normal
The Winds of Kron	Normal (slow)

Monster Hotspot is a bonus dungeon in Shiren 5 with a non-trivial difficulty curve but also with high information, generous drops, and predictable monster houses. Overall, this may be the easiest bonus dungeon that starts with a 99 F goal floor and that doesn't let you take items in. You can't take items, Gitan, or allies into the dungeon, but you can request rescue up to 3 times and you do keep any items you have on hand if you win. The dungeon is daytime only. The initial goal floor is 99 F so, unlike most bonus dungeons, the difficulty does not increase or otherwise change after first victory.

Gaining Access

This dungeon can be accessed from the Dungeon Center in Nekomaneki Village. Access is not restricted; you can play as soon as you can reach the Dungeon Center.

Unique Features

• Floors that end in the digit 9 are always great hall monster houses.
• The difficulty ramp appears to be slightly steeper than baseline, but this may be just my imagination.
  • That is, the monsters seem to get tougher a bit faster than in baseline dungeons. (E.g., it may be steeper than in Tower of Fortune and Inori Cave.)
• All items except swords, shields, and bracelets are pre-identified.
• Item distribution seems very similar to the Tower of Fortune's item distribution, though it's hard to be specific. Some impressions:
  • "Bad" items are basically non-existent in this dungeon, while good items are plentiful.
  • You'll find plenty of (Herb, Life Grass, Swift Grass, Invincible Grass, Confusion Scroll, Pinning Staff, etc.), but I have never yet found (Bankruptcy Scroll, Monsterphobic Bracelet, Gut Grass, Curse Pot, etc.) in this dungeon.
  • You can definitely find Angel Seeds, but I have never yet found a SuperUnlucky Seed in this dungeon.
  • I have never yet found an Escape Scroll in this dungeon, but you can definitely find Undo Grass and Revival Herb e.g. in stores, and you can harvest the latter from F0-UZ monsters on deeper floors.
  • Monster House Scrolls can be found.
  • You can definitely find Lucky Pots and Upgrade Pots in this dungeon, but I have yet to find Unlucky Pots or Degrade Pots. (I haven't yet seen a Fever Pot in this dungeon, unfortunately.)
  • There appears to be a wider variety of swords and shields available as compared to baseline, and, they may appear more frequently than usual.
    • E.g. you can find Onigiri Shield, Anti-Gaze Targe, Kabura Katana, and Fuuma Shield.
    • I have never yet seen "bad" equipment such as swords/shields that cost money, Blink Bracelet, Explosion Bracelet, etc.
  • New Items do not appear in this dungeon.
• Similar to baseline:
  • Wandering characters can appear in this dungeon, though they seem to appear less frequently the deeper you go.
  • I *think* you can also find monster houses that are not on floors that end with 9s.
  • All types of shops (regular, VIP, and Pick-A-Choice) can be found in this dungeon, with normal frequency.
• The dungeon is daytime only.

Final Reward

Every time you beat this dungeon, you get a VIP Bracelet.

Farming Opportunities

This is neither the best nor the worst place to try to farm items out of. You can find a wide variety of uncommon/rare items (including Onigiri Shield, Anti-Gaze Targe, Kabura Katana, Fuuma Shield, Angel Seed, Lucky Pot, and Upgrade Pot), and it's not a particularly dangerous dungeon (e.g. most items are pre-identified for you), but it's also not trivial to extract the items out. You can find Undo Grass, so you can get items out that way, but they aren't so common that you can get items out on demand. No one has yet reported finding an Escape Scroll, but those are probably included as well. Your best bet for getting items out is probably to tag your swords and shields at a shopkeeper and hope to get them back from the Sentry in Hermit's Hermitage if you die. You can only get swords and shields this way, but of course you can add runes to them first. (For example, you might want to farm Upgrade Pots because they make a great rune (Refining) on both swords and shields. You can't farm Upgrade Pots out of any dungeon directly via tagging, but if all you really care about is the Refining rune, you can mix the Upgrade Pot onto a sword or shield to make the Refining rune, then tag the sword/shield to get it out that way.) If all else fails, you can do your best to win the run and get your items out that way, but there are usually better, easier, and faster ways to get uncommon and rare items than to try to win a full 99F run. (For instance, many uncommon/rare items can be farmed out using Collection Scrolls, a Blessing Pot, and Blank/Extraction Scrolls from Pick-A-Choice shops in dungeons that let you take items in, such as Inori Cave and Lost Well. Because you can take items in, you can also bring in a way to trivially escape the dungeon with all your loot, such as a Blank/Escape Scroll or an Undo Grass.)

This dungeon might be a particularly fun place to practice heist techniques. You can't bring items in, so you won't be risking your best gear on heist attempts, nor will you have such overpowered stuff that stealing is trivial. You will be motivated to try to steal, though, because doing so dramatically raises your chances of winning the run. You'll also find a huge variety of useful raw materials for heists, and conveniently, almost every items is pre-identified for you. But you won't always have the ideal items for a heist, so you'll have to find creative ways to leverage what you do have, and weigh the risks and rewards appropriately.

Strategies

Though this dungeon is far more difficult than the Tower of Fortune, it is easier than most other 99F dungeons. Identifying items isn't really an issue in this dungeon. Only swords, shields, and bracelets start out unidentified. Cursed items seem pretty rare, so it's not super dangerous to just try them on, esp. early on when you don't have much to lose in your run. Of course, make sure to try on every unidentified item you have any time you find a Strip Trap, to figure out which of them if any are cursed. But you'll also find a decent number of Identify Pots and Exorcism Pots, to either safely figure out if the item is cursed or ensure that it's not cursed. You also have access to the usual number and type of shops, so can use price identification to determine if anything is cursed and just sell it if it is. And if you really want to, you can save an Identify Scroll to give to a shopkeeper to identify everything he owns all at once. In some other bonus dungeons where most items are not pre-identified, this trick is pretty crucial, but here it's not very important. The only items that are mildly tricky to identify are bracelets, and you should have enough Identify Pot slots to identify them.

You will likely be inundated with swords and shields to choose from, which makes it relatively easy to get a good pair (with a good resonance) early on and start leveling them up. But don't get rid of the extra swords and shields so easily, as they're one of your best sources of upgrade value even if they don't yield good runes. You'll find a decent number of Synthesis Pots, and Mixer family monsters at roughly the usual depths you might expect to find them, so you'll have plenty opportunity to synthesize things together. In fact, you'll have so many things you'll want to synthesize together that, if possible, it's best to save up 5 of a single kind (either swords or shields) so you can get the full value of the Synthesis Pot. That is, merge 4 other swords onto your main sword, or 4 other shields onto your main shield, rather than mixing some swords and some shields in the same pot as that only allows you to merge in 3 items. You can find Pot God Scrolls in this dungeon, which can help you merge even more things, but if you find a Synthesis Pot and you have 6 things to merge together, it's not worth it to wait for a Pot God Scroll as they aren't that common; just merge 5 of the items to free up inventory space and keep moving, as you'll find plenty more items you want to merge in later anyway, and it's good to keep on top of the power curve as best you can.

As with most bonus dungeons where you can't take items in, your odds of winning the run go up substantially if you're willing and able to rob some shopkeepers. You'll definitely find all the materials for a safe heist. One of the safer heist methods is to use a Boring Staff so you have a straight path either directly to the stairs, very close to the stairs, or 1-2 pins away from the stairs. If you have enough Boring Staff and Pinning Staff charges, you can usually transform any dungeon into an easy theft dungeon, but in general, it's safest / best to pin out of the shop directly to the exit room and very close to the stairs. Navigation Scroll can help a lot if you don't have a Monster Detector Bracelet yet, so you can ensure the destination room is as empty as possible before trying the theft. Using a Swift Grass just before the heist isn't a bad idea, and Confusion Scroll, Slumber Scroll, and/or Invincible Grass make excellent emergency items in case the heist goes sideways. Apparently, the game supports a maximum of 20 living beings on the floor at once time, so the more monsters you leave sleeping/paralyzed far away from the exit room, the better. But keep in mind that, once you are branded a thief, more shopkeepers will spawn, and they may spawn in the exit room, hence it's critical to minimize the time from shop to stairs. (Working theory is that the game always spawns more shopkeepers up to the limit of 20 living beings as soon as you're branded a thief, and all these new spawns happen in the same randomly chosen room. The randomly chosen room cannot be the shop, but it can be the exit room. So, if there are 20 beings on the floor already, no more can spawn!) If you are stealing from the shopkeeper, you might as well sell him all your stuff first.

Zalokleft Pots can also be used to steal items. You can steal any non-pot item with a Zalokleft Pot, by placing the items in a straight line with a shop entrance, leaving the shop, facing the item you want to steal, then opening up the pot. This is great esp. when there's one super expensive item in the shop that you feel you really need to have and the opportunity for theft in this dungeon layout is just too risky. But I personally like using Zalokleft Pots by just throwing them against walls, killing the confused Zaloklefts that come out, and getting new items that way. More than once, I've gotten something pretty valuable this way, e.g. a badly needed Synthesis Pot. [TODO: migrate this content to a strategy page about theft and link to it.]

Monster Houses are more predictable than usual in this dungeon, given there is always (or at least virtually always) a great hall monster house on floors ending with 9. Save a Perception Grass or Trap Deletion Scroll for these floors if you can. Save any room affecting scroll you can get your hands on for these floors, too, as it really helps to (e.g.) confuse an entire room full of golden Gazers so you can pin to the exit without getting trapped in a hypnotism death spiral. Don't get seduced into trying to loot every monster house you come by. In early monster houses, the monsters aren't that dangerous, and you need more equipment, so great, loot them as safely as you can to your heart's content. A Pinning Staff again works wonders here to let you travel far away when you're in trouble, though beware of Fearrabbit monsters that can yank you right into the middle of lots of trouble. (In a pinch, if you've used a Perception Grass, you can also retreat to a Spring Trap to hopefully land in a safer spot.) But for monster houses on later floors, it's probably best to just leave as quickly as possible. If you've been saving an Invincible Grass, Swift Grass, Immunity Scroll, or Confusion Scroll, late great hall monster houses are good choices for where to use them. Always do a full sweep to look at every monster and item before taking your first step in a great hall monster house, so you know what kind of remote danger you're going to be in right away.

Unfortunately, no one has yet mapped out which monsters you'll face on which floors, making it harder to prepare for specific upcoming situations. But on a victorious run, you'll eventually face Archdragons which can fry you remotely, high-level piggy monsters which can crush you with big rocks remotely, high-level Gazer monsters which can hypnotize you remotely, high-level squids which can blind you remotely, etc.. Get as many great runes onto your primary equipment as possible, extinct the dragons if you can find an Extinction Scroll, save a Dodger Pot if you can spare the room, etc. etc.. All very normal tactics.

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/%a5%e2%a5%f3%a5%b9%a5%bf%a1%bc%bd%b8%b2%f1%bd%ea (Japanese wiki page for this location)