Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Creating Better Items

If you're not already familiar with secret pots and new items, read the Secret Pots and New Items page. Hardcore item crafters may also want to read the more detailed Magic Effects Model page.

At some point, you gain access to the first 2 secret pots in the Hotel Nekomaneki basement, and then later, you gain access to all 6 secret pots. When you put a "stock item" (any item built-into the game, not a new item) into a secret pot and let it "bake" for 1-7 real-world days (not game days), it may turn into a new item. Any magic effect the base stock item had will still be there, and new items will also have 1-3 additional "secret pot effects" added onto them. You don't control what secret pot effects are added, they're chosen randomly, so this sometimes results in useless or amusing junk, but other times it makes fantastic new items that are far superior to the stock items you can find normally. See the New Items page for a list of known effects that can be chosen.

In addition to the extra magic effects, new item swords and shields may also receive a power boost over and above the power of the base/stock item. Keep an eye on this power level when deciding whether or not to remove the new item and register it. According to the Japanese wiki page, the boost can be up to +15 base power, which is a substantial increase. (This is inherent power, not upgrade level, so you can still boost instances of these items with up to +99 upgrade power too!) Also according to that Japanese wiki page, new item swords and shields may also get boosts to their upgrade limits and rune limits, though if you're using a level 8 sword/shield as your base, they often have the max of +99 upgrades and +infinity runes already.

According to the raccoon that runs the secret pot place, the longer you leave the base item in the secret pot, the better your chances of making an awesome new item. You can look into the secret pot at any time to see (a) how many real world days the item has been baking, (b) what effects would be added if you were to take it out at that time, and (c) for swords and shields, how much the inherent power will be boosted, if at all. Sometimes the base item will be unchanged, in which case you can leave it baking longer or take it out again and get your stock item back unharmed, and then re-insert it if so desired to start the clock over again. Other times, you can see that the base item has 1-3 additional effects added on to it, and if you choose to take the item out at this time, the effects are now fixed and it becomes a new item registered in your game's save file. If you see that the additional effects aren't so great, you can leave the item in the secret pot for another day and the additional effects may change. If you leave the item baking for 8+ days, it will turn into Weeds. So, (a) if the item has terrible effects on day 7, you're out of luck and might as well discard it immediately so you can start using the secret pot to bake something else instead, and (b) don't put rare or valuable items in to bake then put down your game for more than a week. Also note that if you put an item in, you cannot take it back out again immediately, you must leave it for at least one day, and if anything about the new item changes, you can never get the stock item back out again, your only options at that point are to take the item out and register it as a new item, discard it, or let it bake longer and hope to get better effects.

Empirically, it feels like there's about a 1/3rd chance that the effects will change day over day. When the effects change, they are completely re-randomized, not based on what tentative effects were on the item the previous day. (The base item's effect is always there and never changes, but the secret pot added effects are re-randomized without regard to what secret pot effects were there previously.) Presumably, the RNG tilts towards better effects the longer the item bakes. A working theory about this is that each effect has a hidden price tag, and the RNG targets a higher total price for the item the longer it bakes. In any case, if you're crafting new items, especially if you're crafting 6 at a time, it's best to check the secret pots once a day to see what effects have changed on your baking items, if any, and pull out items that are great enough.

The date change in the GMT timezone appears to be what controls the clock, not the date according to your timezone, and not an arbitrary 24-hour period starting from the moment you put the item into the secret pot. Theoretically, you could save and quit, then advance the date on your PS Vita, then launch the game again to advance this process much faster. No one has yet tested this to prove it is safe, e.g. if it throws off anything else about your game. For example, it would suck if this disabled your ability to request rescues from other players on the internet. If anyone knows if this is safe, please update this wiki with details. (One page on the Japanese Shiren 5 Seasaw wiki seems to say that it's safe.)

Each Shiren 5 save file can have at most 64 new items registered. You can keep crafting new items after that, but when you choose to save another new item, you must choose an existing new item to delete. When you do this, any copies of the deleted item that exist anywhere in your save game world are discarded. It's basically impossible to make 64 "perfect" new items, and you'll almost always have tons of good + extra stock items lying around, so if you're interested in creating better items, it's generally a good idea to keep all your secret pots working all the time. As soon as you empty a secret pot, put another base item in right away and keep the process moving. (Newer Shiren 5 players / save game files may be more constrained on good items, but the more you play, the more you accumulate an embarrassment of riches in terms of Gitan and items.)

The new item naming and description interface is clunky. It's not critical that you make the perfect name, because you can always see what combination of effects the new item has in the item's detailed description. OTOH, you can never rename the new item later, and having the right name can help you remember what the new item is at a glance. Some possibilities:

• You could name the new item "base item name" and append a + sign for every additional magic effect on it. This won't be unique if you make several new items based on the same base/stock item, and doesn't help you tell at a glance if one of the added effects is one you really need, but at least it's very simple and consistent.
• You could name the new item with a concatenation of short names of the effects, like FloStrID for a bracelet that is a combination of Floating + Strength + Identify. This can help you see which effects are on the new item at a glance, but the names might be a bit ugly, and, if the item has a full 4 magic effects, it can be hard to jam 4 stock names into 10 characters.
• Or maybe it's best to come up with unique and memorable names like "Doom" -- but it can be hard to remember what 64 unique names mean, over and above the 900+ normal items in the game.

Each time you return to Nekomaneki Village after a dungeon run, you can buy a single copy of any one new item you have registered in your game file from the raccoon who runs the secret pot place. Since you can only buy one new item per run, if you've crafted some amazing consumable new items, don't forget to buy one every time you pass through so you can build up greater stock of said items.

The new items you've created can also begin appearing in many but not all dungeons. This can help tilt the balance of power in those dungeons in your favor, esp. in those dungeons that don't let you take items in. They don't appear very commonly, and it's rare that you'll get just the new item you need, but on the other hand, some of the new items you can make are truly phenomenal, so finding them at all may be enough to secure a victory.

Only Swords, Shields, Bracelets, Grasses, Scrolls, Staves, and Talismans can be turned into new items in secret pots. Sorry, no new item Onigiri, Peaches, Arrows, Pots, etc.. You also can't use a new item as a base to make a newer new item.

Pros and Cons

Pros

The upside possibilities are enormous. Here are some ideas:

• Make a bunch of new items based on an Undo Grass, so you will tend to find new item Undo Grasses more frequently in many dungeons. Plus, you can buy one per run at the new item shop, and buy it with Gitan rather than with points. You can use this to always ensure you have an Undo Grass on every run, or, it works great if you want to go shopping in a remote town then warp back home by eating the new item Undo Grass (in the remote town's storage area).
• It is possible to make a new item scroll that summons all monsters to be near you, then blasts them with Vacuum Slash twice, then puts any survivors to sleep where you can mop them up easily. You can clear an entire dungeon floor trivially with this, and any item drops would be at your feet, too.
• Or how about a new item scroll that creates a monster house, then deletes all traps, then blasts the room with Vacuum Slash, then confuses the monsters?
• Or a new item scroll based on the Fixer Scroll plus any other scroll you want, so you can read it at night without a light?
• Using 200 points for a Blank Scroll as an Extraction Scroll is pricey, so how about just making a new item with Extraction on it, so you can at least buy one of them every run with Gitan instead of points?
• Make a new item grass that gives you Swift, Invincible, Power Up, and Antidote all at once. The power!
• Make a new item bracelet with 4 of the strongest and best effects on it, and be able to equip them all as a single bracelet. Make 2 awesome bracelets and get 8 magic effects so long as you equip items that resonate to let you wear 2 bracelets. And should you ever lose one of these awesome bracelets, no problem, you can buy a replacement from the new item shop.
• Make a new item sword based on a level 8 Kaburagi, with awesome extra magic effects added on it, and use this as your new base weapon. Not only could this be your best weapon for dungeons that let you take items in, but you might also find this same weapon lying on the ground on floor 1 of a dungeon that doesn't let you take items in and dominate the run with it.
• Some secret pot effects on swords and shields cause them to have a chance to increase their upgrade value when you change floors, or to always increase their upgrade value when used. If you see an effect like this, register the new item! If you find a new item with this added effect in a dungeon where you can't take items in, you'll have a much easier time of winning the run.
• And note that, even if you had (e.g.) the 4 scrolls you want to read with you, reading them all would take 4 turns. But reading a new item scroll with 4 effects only takes 1 turn.

Cons

The upsides vastly outweigh the downsides, but there are downsides to be aware of:

• You can't turn new items into runes. E.g. a new item based on the Shockuto cannot be turned into the Paralyzing rune. [TODO: re-confirm this.] So, if you find a super rare item that can either make a good rune or make a good base for a new item, you'll have to choose. (Playing the long game, maybe defer until you can collect 3 of them and use a Fever Pot to replicate them?)
• You can add runes onto new item swords and shields, but you can't move those runes off onto another item. If you use a great level 8 sword or shield as a base item, and the new item has great additional effects on it, why would you ever want to move your runes off of it? Because you might make an even better new item in future, and there are at least a few great runes that are very hard to come by.
• If you ever see a new item for sale, e.g. in a dungeon shop, it will be the full lofty price that you might expect. But if you go to sell a new item, the shopkeeper will pay a paltry 10 Gitan, no matter how phenomenal the new item is. If you've enhanced the new item e.g. with runes or upgrade points or a blessing, that may affect the price, I'm not sure, but either way you still won't be sell it for a "fair" price. The price difference can be enormous. For example, a stock VIP Bracelet can be purchased for 50K Gitan or sold for 17,500 Gitan, but a new item bracelet based on the VIP Bracelet can only be sold for 10 Gitan, and if you do sell it, the shopkeeper will ask something well above 50K to buy it back. As bad as this sounds, it's really trivial, because over time, you'll have way more Gitan than you can possibly spend. But if you're used to scouring the dungeon floor to sell everything you can find, you'll start to make a little bit less money this way over time as there are more new items thrown into the mix.
• A corollary to the above is that if you like selling your primary equipment to shopkeepers than stealing it back, this trick may be less profitable or even virtually worthless if you use new items as a base. I use stock L8 Red Swords and L8 Red Shields for my main equipment, buffed out to the max with massive upgrades and runes. I can sell the pair for ~60K. I have no idea how much they would sell for if they were new items based on the Red Sword / Red Shield but otherwise identical. [TODO: test this.]
• If you've created even one new item, the balance of items that you can find in certain dungeons (those that allow new items) is slightly different compared to baseline. Empirically, it feels like, with a full 64 new items to choose from, every item generated has ~1% chance to be one of your new items—actually it's probably even less than 1%. In any case, if you've created a ton of weird new items for testing purposes that aren't particularly helpful towards beating dungeons, you might make it ever so slightly harder to beat dungeons. This effect is so small it's almost not worth mentioning.
• It's not clear which dungeons allow new items. E.g. IIRC I've seen them in Pitfall of Life but not in Master's Footprint. So, new items aren't a panacea for helping you beat every dungeon.
• You cannot delete a new item from your list of registered new items. The only thing you can do is overwrite it with a different new item, and only then when you have the full 64 new items registered. So, if you generate weird and terrible new items e.g. to do research then write wiki pages, those weird and terrible items will pop up from time to time in your dungeon runs.
• You also can't sort the new item list by base item type or name, so it's a PITA to find the item you're looking for, but no big deal.
• The descriptions of new item effects are very terse and in some cases buggy. Beware the bracelet effect that says "Items thrown at you will miss"! This is completely wrong! The description should say "Items thrown by you will miss"—it's the effect built-in to the Innac. Bracelet! When in doubt, refer to the New Items page.
• Some secret pot effects are mostly good but have subtle downsides. For example, you can cause monsters to drop Onigiri more often. Woohoo! Never starve again! But if you do this, you may find that you have more Onigiri than you need, and, it can block drops of other more useful items. E.g., you might kill a Zalokleft hoping for a good random drop, but instead the random drop was overridden with an Onigiri. Caveat emptor.
• I assume you cannot trade new items with other players. [TODO: confirm.]

Grasses, Scrolls, Staves, and Talismans

For these types of items, new items are very straightforward. The set of effects that exist on stock items is the same as the set of effects that can be added via secret pots. For example, everything that can be done with talismans can appear as an added effect on a new item talisman, and everything that can be done with grasses can appear as an added effect on new item grasses. The item's innate effect is always first, followed by 1-3 effects available for that type of item. This is true for every item in these categories. For example, you can sometimes get a new item grass with "has no particular effect" as the added effect—this is the effect that corresponds to Weeds. Because these new item types are so straightforward, they aren't explicitly listed on the New Items page.

A given effect can appear on a given new item more than once. The order that effects appear is the order in which they will be executed. But the base item's effect will always be included and will always be first. So, for example, if you want a grass that restores your strength to maximum then increases your strength 1-3 times, you might be able to create this if you start with Antidote Grass as your base item. Another strange side effect of this is that, if you throw a new item scroll that has 4 total effects at a monster, you'll see it do 2 damage 4 times in a row for a total of 8 damage. :^)

I have a new item staff that has Balance + Trap Deletion + Cloning. I carry this around all the time, as it is very useful both to negate Trip Traps, to disable virtually any monster by turning it into my clone, and to clear the path to said monster of any traps. You'd think this staff would run out of charges and I'd need to buy a new one often, right? Nope! Though I do find one of these staves occasionally on my travels, my one staff always has loads of charges due to a new item bracelet that sometimes adds charges to my staves in main inventory as I change floors!

When a new item in these categories is blessed, every effect is blessed.For example, reading a blessed new item scroll will consume the blessing, not the scroll, letting you read it twice or bless it again. And if you have a blessed new item staff that has Electricity then Paralysis on it, the staff will do 50 HP of electricity damage first, then apply S-Paralyzed status to the monster if it survives. (That is, both the Electricity effect and Paralysis effect were the blessed variety.)

I tried (only once) to bypass the blessed Extraction scroll restriction using new items. That is, I created a new item that had Extraction as one of the effects on it, blessed it, and read it. Sure enough, the game consumed the scroll, not just the blessing. This restriction exists to avoid letting the player create infinite value with just a handful of scrolls and a Blessing Pot. It's worth trying again though, with Extraction as the base item and Extraction as an added effect, as a low chance at creating infinite value is worth a bit of research. :^)

Bracelets

Bracelets are a lot like the consumables above, except there are a handful of bracelet effects that are apparently blocked from ever getting added to any other bracelet, and, there are a handful of secret bracelet effects that don't exist on any stock bracelet but can be added to a new item bracelet. For example, the Floating Bracelet has a pretty awesome and useful effect, which is so powerful that the game designers apparently prevented this effect from ever getting added as an effect on a new item. (You can still have a new item bracelet with Floating though! You just have to use the Floating Bracelet as your base item.) Also, there is an effect with the description "You can withstand a fatal strike", which doesn't exist on any stock bracelet but which gives you a chance to survive with 1 HP if you ever take fatal damage, and this effect can appear randomly on a new item bracelet. (Sweet!)

Unlike the consumables above, a given effect can appear at most once on a new item bracelet. It is not known if the order in which effects can appear is fixed or random, other than the fact that the base item's effect is always listed first. But it probably doesn't matter either way, as there's no concept of bracelet effects triggering in sequence like there is for consumables. The effect either exists or it doesn't exist, and either way it doesn't interact with other effects.

It is probably more important to craft new item bracelets than to make any other kind of new item. You can only equip 1 bracelet at a time normally, 2 with some resonances, but there are dozens of useful bracelet effects available. Sure, you can carry a huge variety of bracelets with you wherever you go, and hope to wear the right ones at the right times, but it's vastly better to have (e.g.) 4 great effects on a single bracelet at all times. And there's nothing to stop you from having a variety of great new item bracelets with several great effects on each of them. (I have 30 new item bracelets with multiple great effects on them, and carry 6 of them everywhere I can take them. The hardest part is figuring out which ones to delete when you make more than 64 new items, because each one has a different, cool combination of effects. This external spreadsheet has a worksheet to help track and manage new item bracelets..) Moreover, for certain rare types of bracelets, it's great to be able to buy replacement copies from the new item shop any time you'd like, and to find them randomly in dungeons that don't let you take items in.

What is the ideal set of effects to aim for on a new item bracelet, or set of new item bracelets? There's no one perfect answer to that question, it largely depends on what you're trying to do and what other new item bracelets you've already made. This external forum post attempts to explore this question, but mostly it will be up to you as you look through the New Items page and decide what you'd like to aim for. Besides, even if you have decided what your perfect set of bracelets would be, the odds are stacked against you ever creating that exact set of effects on a given new item bracelet. Hence, hardcore item crafters may spend more time baking new item bracelets than anything else. All this being said, here are a few considerations that aren't mentioned in that external forum post. (It's archived now so no one can add ideas to it.)

• The Anti-Parry Bracelet (effect written as "Prevents items from being blocked") can save your equipment from being destroyed via a careless mistake vs. a Swordsman or Field Knave. It's definitely worth considering making it part of your normal bracelet line up, or at least having it handy to equip when Swordsmen or Field Knaves appear.
• The Innac. Bracelet's effect is written in a buggy way. The effect is written as "Items thrown at you will miss", which sounds great, but what it actually does is "Items thrown by you will miss". This is a really bad effect, make sure you don't include it by mistake!
• The effect "Boosts buff rates and # of usable items" (not associated with any stock bracelet) is pretty amazingly valuable. It can add charges to staves in your main inventory and also add upgrade points to your swords and shields in main inventory when you change floors. It seems to only trigger about 25% of the time or maybe less, but still, it can be super helpful. It may also increase stacks of items like arrows, stones, or talismans, though these possible effects aren't confirmed. In any case, having this equipped can really help your survivability, not to mention the sell price of items.
• The effect "Increases weapon and shield growth rate" (not associated with any stock bracelet) could be very nice to have in dungeons where you can't take items in. It would act like a permanent Upgrade Seed, allowing your found weapons and items to level up much faster. (OTOH, if you're able to find a new item bracelet in a tough dungeon, then you're also able to find a new item sword and/or shield in that same tough dungeon, so maybe it's best to just make several kick-ass new item swords and shields.)
• The effect "Monsters will drop Onigiri more often" (not associated with any stock bracelet) sure sounds good. I assume this is the same thing as carrying a Silver Onigiri in your main inventory. In practice, I found this annoying, as I got more Onigiri than I knew what to do with and was never even remotely in any danger of starving. Worse yet, it apparently can interfere with other monster drops which may be more valuable. E.g. with this equipped and killing Zalokleft or Chow monsters, they dropped more Onigiri than they ordinarily would have, so it apparently blocked better item drops. Likewise, IIRC, this can also cause a Froggo to drop Onigiri instead of Gitan, and if you're drowning in Onigiri, you'd probably prefer the Gitan. (Most things in Shiren have both upsides and downsides.)
• The effects "Raises miss rate of items launched at you" and "Recover quicker from status ailments", neither of which is associated with any stock bracelet, sound like they could be very helpful in a broad set of circumstances.

Swords and Shields

Like bracelets, there are some innate effects of swords and shields that appear to be blocked from every appearing as added effects on new items. For example, if you want the ability to dig walls with no chance of the sword breaking, it seems that you must use any level of Wonder Pick as your base item (or add it as a rune). Also like bracelets, secret pots can add some effects that can't be added to your sword or shield any other way. For example, one secret pot effect is "High evasion if you miss on your turn", which sounds pretty great and there is no known way to add this to your shield other than by having it appear randomly by baking a shield in a secret pot.

Secret pot effects appear to be virtually the same thing as rune effects. See Magic Effects Model if you want all the gory details. The short of it is, you can't get a near duplicate effect on the same new item twice. For example, if you use a Gold Shield as a base item, you can never get "Upgrade value will never decrease" as a secret pot effect, nor can you ever add the Rustproof rune to it. Likewise, if you create a new item shield based on the Plain Targe and get the secret pot effect "Upgrade value will never decrease" on it, you can't add the Rustproof rune to that shield either. So, base item can cancel out duplicate secret pot effect, base item can cancel out duplicate rune, and secret pot effect can cancel out duplicate rune. Obviously, this isn't a big deal, but it's worth knowing, e.g. so you don't try to add a rune that can't be added. This may be why you sometimes see a "new item" sword or shield that has 0 effects added onto it; maybe the game randomly added an effect which would be a duplicate, and still treats it as a new item, but doesn't show you any duplicate added effects. (Actually, in this case, the new item sword/shield probably has an inherent power boost but no added effects.)

So unlike new item consumables but like new item bracelets, you should never be able to see the same effect or a near duplicate of that effect twice on a given new item sword/shield. It is not known if added effects can appear in any order or are always in a fixed order, but the item's base effect always appears first. Since secret pot effects seem to draw from the same set of possibilities as rune effects, they may well have an inherent order to them just like runes. Working theory is that effects trigger in this order: item's innate effect, then secret pot added effects in order listed, then runes in order listed. (But if secret pot effects are the same thing as rune effects, it may be: item's innate effect, then a mixture of secret pot effects and runes in their pre-determined order.) Regardless, however it works, it doesn't seem to have a huge impact on how you'd use the item.

You can add runes onto new item swords and shields, but you can never convert new item swords/shields into runes, nor can you transfer runes off of new item swords/shields to other items. So, don't add a rare rune to a new item sword/shield if you might want to move it to a different sword/shield later. You can presumably still strip runes off of new item swords/shields at the Hermit's Hermitage blacksmith (needs confirmation), but there is no known way to strip off an added secret pot effect that you don't like, so don't register it as a new item if it has a terrible added effect. [TODO: try stripping off an added secret pot effect at the Hermit's Hermitage blacksmith.]

It's best to use level 8 swords/shields as your base items, because the resulting new items will also be level 8. This way, there's a chance you can find a kick ass level 8 new item on floor 1 of that difficult dungeon that's been vexing you. In a similar vein, it may help to create many great level 8 new item swords/shields with great added abilities, to raise your chances of finding said new items in said difficult dungeons. The shield effect "May be upgraded when you are attacked" is particularly awesome! If you ever see this, take it, because the shield's upgrade value goes up really fast! The sword and shield effect "Might upgrade when you change floors" is also quite nice. This latter corresponds to the Refining rune (made with the Upgrade Pot), but it's so rare to be able to make this as a rune that having it built-in would definitely be a nice bonus. And of course there are dozens of other great effects that you could bake into your new item swords and shields that could give you a major leg up in any dungeon that doesn't let you take items in.

Repeating some information from the Introduction section of this page, in addition to magic effects, new item swords/shields can also get a boost to their inherent power level. Pay attention to the power level of an item as it's baking in a secret pot and compare it to the base item's power level. The maximum possible boost (according to the Japanese wiki) is +15, which makes a substantial difference. The Japanese wiki also states that the upgrade limit and rune limit can be increased as well, but it's generally best to use a level 8 sword or shield as your base item, and most level 8 swords/shields have the max of +99 upgrades and +infinity runes already. (Sometimes as a sword/shield is baking in a secret pot, the game seems to treat it as a new item but it has no added magic effects; double check the inherent power, upgrade limit, and rune limit of the new item as compared to the base/stock item, as one or more of these values is probably higher than normal.)