Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Item Book

MDFW - The Mystery Dungeon Tree of Information.
(Redirected from Shiren 5 Vita:Item Book)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate has the concept of an Item Book. It is not an item itself (it never appears in your inventory), but it is a game state that players eventually unlock as they progress through the game. (Presumably the developers implemented it this way to avoid overwhelming the player with everything the game has to offer all at once when they first start their game.) The first time the player tries the Lots Game in the basement of Hotel Nekomaneki, they are given the Item Book by the Lots Game Character (their game state is changed permanently). Thereafter, any item the player identifies in any run is added to the Item Book. This allows the player to quickly reuse that name to name unidentified objects on any run. The Item Book also keeps track of which scrolls the player has ever read, which the player can then write on Blank Scrolls. If the player manages to add all 900 items to the Item Book, they are rewarded with a trophy.

Acquiring Items

Here's a summary of all the known ways you can acquire items.

Primarily in dungeons

  • Pre-Placed: Virtually every dungeon has at least some items pre-placed on the ground. This can be as few as 1 item per floor or as many as 8 (possibly even more).
  • Sparkly Ground: Sparkly ground does not show up on the map, but if you're strong enough to dig it up, you'll get either an item or a monster. 8 strength is enough for some sparkly ground, while 9 strength is required for other sparkly ground.
  • Monster Drops: Most monsters can drop items if you kill them. Some monsters always drop items. Some monsters drop specific items.
  • Monster-Generated: Some monsters can create infinite supplies of certain items. (E.g. Trowelies create Dirt, Field Knaves create Weeds, Carts create certain arrows, Mutaikons create certain grasses, etc.)
  • Monster Houses: Monster houses are rooms filled with all kinds of stuff. They sometimes appear spontaneously as you explore a floor, and you can also create them with a Mnster House Scrl.
  • Shops: There are 3 different kinds of shops aka stores, which let you buy, sell, or win items. (By design, it's also possible to steal items.)
  • Characters: Some wandering Characters can give you items or other advantages, sell you items, or improve your items.
  • Pots: Some pots can create items (e.g. Presto, Floramorph), while others can create monsters which can drop items (e.g. Zalokleft, Monster). Some pots are pre-filled with charges, though the charges themselves are not items.
  • Reward Items: Most dungeons give you a special reward item every time you beat them. The specific reward item is fixed for each dungeon.

Primarily outside of dungeons

Some methods that work inside dungeons can also be done outside of dungeons, such as in your storage unit in Nekomaneki Village, but the results are usually less than stellar. For example, using a Presto Pot to create items in your storage unit creates a very limited range of poor items. No one has yet documented what happens if you try each of the primarily-dungeon methods outside of dungeons. (Turn your storage unit into a monster house?!) But there are some unique ways to get items that are only possible in the starting villages.

  • Shops: There are several shops that sell items outside of dungeons, and they each tend to carry slightly different merchandise.
  • Characters: Other Characters besides the Special Enemies can help you improve items, or give you items as part of quests.
  • Lots Game: There is a vestigial "minigame" that lets you gamble money for random items in the basement of Hotel Nekomaneki. Button mashing for a long time can sometimes get you good items.
  • Crafting and New Items: It's possible to improve your items and even make new ones. This is a big topic. See Crafting for details.

Transporting Items and the Dungeon Barrier

Shiren 5 prevents you from bringing items into some locations. There are two common patterns (with some small exceptions in some locations):

  • Many dungeons let you take any items and Gitan in. Here, the challenge is to accumulate valuable items over the course of many runs, craft excellent gear in relative safety at home, then bring said valuable items and excellent gear into these dungeons to help you beat them. But if you fail, you risk losing your best items! (You can of course challenge yourself further and try to beat these dungeons without starting items.)
  • Many dungeons don't let you bring any items or Gitan in. Here, the challenge is to find a way to survive and thrive by building upon items you can find along the way. These dungeons require more skill, but if you fail here, you've only lost what you've found on that one run.

The game also makes it difficult to get items out of various locations. Typically, if you can't win your current run or find a way to escape, the items you've accumulated along the way are lost. Shiren 1 had the Storehouse Jar, which let you send some non-jar items out of the dungeon, but there is no direct equivalent in Shiren 5. Instead, Shiren 5 has 2 possible ways to get a limited set of items out of the dungeon even if you can't win or escape your run, both of which only apply to swords and shields:

  • Through various mechanisms, it is possible to add a tag to swords and shields. If you fail in your run, tagged items might be returned to you in the Sentry in Hermit's Hermitage. While the in-game documentation implies this is not guaranteed, it seems to happen every time, or at least no one has yet documented it failing. One player even reported getting a tagged item back via the Sentry even though it was destroyed when it was knocked off by one monster and flew backwards to hit another monster. But beware that the Sentry has limited inventory space so if you let items pile up there, extra lost items will probably be lost permanently. Also, you may have to buy your items back rather than just be given them back. Also beware that selling an item to a shopkeeper in a dungeon removes any tag, and thus sold items will never show up at the Sentry. (It's possible to make a lot of money by selling your best items to shopkeepers in dungeons then stealing them back again. This is dangerous for multiple reasons, but even if you succeed, keep in mind that your equipment will not be tagged afterwards so is at risk of being lost permanently on future floors, at least until you can find another way to tag your items, such as by paying a different shopkeeper to tag them.)
  • Untagged swords and shields that are lost on a run (not owned by a shopkeeper) have a small chance to appear in one of two places outside of dungeons: either by the stream in Inori Village (more common) or on a rooftop in Hermit's Hermitage (less common). It is not known what controls this or how often it occurs, but it can happen. Each location has a maximum inventory space (so to speak) of 1 item, so you should clear any items from these locations right away to make room for more to appear later. (You can just pick up the item near the stream in Inori Village, and you can talk to the Sentry in Hermit's Hermitage to fetch items off the town's rooftops.) (One theory is that the stream location can only trigger when an item is lost in water, while the rooftop location can only trigger when an item is lost in void. Another theory is that the rooftop location can only trigger for items lost in any way in Tower of Fortune floors beyond Hermit's Hermitage, while the stream location can trigger for any other location. Neither theory has been thoroughly tested.)

There are other, less common restrictions on bringing items into and out of other location types such as puzzle sets and minigames.

Any items you manage to take out of dungeons and other locations contribute to your "meta game stash" so to speak, which can then be discarded, sold, stored, used for crafting, or taken into locations that let you take items in.

Attributes

Throughout this wiki, the word category is used to refer to a group of related items, while the word type is used to refer to all items with the same base name, and the word instance is used to refer to one specific item. For example, Swords is a category, Red Blade is a type, and your blessed level 1 Red Blade +5 with 2 runes and a tag is an instance. (In object-oriented programming parlance, Swords is an abstract superclass, Red Blade is a concrete subclass, and your Red Blade is an instance of the subclass.)

Items have attributes (aka characteristics, aka features). Some attributes apply to all items, while other attributes apply only to specific categories of items.

All items belong to a category. Items are organized in the Item Book by category, and except for the "Others" category (which is basically a grab-bag of special case items), all items in a category share many of the same attributes. For example, all swords can be equipped and increase your attack power, all grasses can be eaten, etc.. Swords and shields are further sub-divided into families or sub-categories in the Item Book. (Is a level 1 Ordinary Stick the same item as a level 2 Ordinary Stick aka a Good Stick? They have different names, they count as different entries in your Item Book, and trying to mix and match them in a Fever Pot causes an explosion. So, they're different types, and one of the features of a level 1 Ordinary Stick is that when it gains enough experience, it transforms into a level 2 Ordinary Stick.)

Equipment

Some categories of items are durable and can be used indefinitely, while other categories of items are consumable and last only a certain number of uses or turns. Durables are usually called equipment because you use them by equipping them and they have certain effects on the player or game state while equipped, but they aren't fundamentally different than other types of items. Consumables are usually used in other ways (eating, reading, throwing, etc.) and have an immediate one-time effect. Torches are both equippable and consumable, though they typically aren't thought of as equipment by the player community. (Apparently consumability outweighs equippability in the minds of most players.) Torches cannot be cursed, but all other types of equipment (durables) are vulnerable to curses, which means they can't be unequipped voluntarily. See Blessings, Curses, and Seals in the Strategies section for more info.

As in many other games, equipment takes a virtual "equipment slot", limiting the number of items that can be equipped simultaneously. Normally, you can equip one Sword or Torch, one Shield, and one Bracelet, though there are ways to equip 2 Bracelets, and there are bizarre items such as a Sticky Pot that can interfere with the normal rules for equipment.

Projectiles / Stackables

Some categories of items (typically projectiles) are stackable. Stackable items tend to be immutable. That is, one Wooden Arrow is identical to every other Wooden Arrow, instances can never be modified with blessings, seals, upgrades, runes, or any other form of customization. They also tend to either be pre-identified for you or are not hard to identify. When you have a stackable item in your main inventory and pick up more of the same, they are automatically merged unless you deliberately takes steps to prevent the two stacks from merging. Stacks max out at 99 quantity. Trying to pick up more than that results in an additional inventory space being taken up with those items, or excess items are left on the floor if there are no inventory spaces left. (Because stacks you pick up automatically merge with stacks in main inventory, and because stackables cannot be ruined in some common ways such as via Curse Traps, it's most convenient to leave stackables in your main inventory where possible.)

Other Attributes

Almost all items have prices. See the Prices section for details.

Pots have a capacity of 0-5 spaces, though they have 2-5 spaces by default. Staves have a capacity of 0-99 charges, though they have 4-7 charges by default.

Some item attributes are less obvious and not spelled out in the UI. For example, Grasses, Onigiri, Peaches, and Scrolls apparently all have a hidden attribute such as "requires the use of your mouth". Reading a Muzzled Scroll prevents the use of your mouth (so you can't use any item in any of these 4 categories) until you change floors. No attempt has been made to fully map out all these smaller attributes.

Type Attributes vs. Instance Attributes

Most items can have their instances modified in various ways.

Example #1: swords and shields have experience and can level up, and they can gain or lose upgrade points, runes, and tags. (Understanding how to improve your equipment is a key Shiren skill. See Crafting for details.) Example #2: many item types can be cursed, sealed, blessed, or have none of these modifiers. (Understanding how to use and manage these modifiers is another important skill. See Blessings, Curses, and Seals for details.) Note that when you name an item, it applies to the type not the instance. Naming a bracelet "Cursed1" because it was cursed means the next instance you find of this bracelet will also be called "Cursed1" even though it may not be cursed. (That being said, instance attributes can help you identify items. E.g. some types of bracelets seem to be either always cursed or at least cursed much more frequently than normal. So if you find an unknown bracelet and figure out it's cursed, it may be good to name it "Cursed1", and when you later find a 2nd copy of the same bracelet, if that is also cursed, odds are very good it's one of the very-frequently-cursed types of bracelets.)

Identification

As in most roguelikes, there is the concept of imperfect information about items. Different attributes of an item can be identified or not in the current game state. Mastering the art of identifying items is key to mastering Shiren 5. This is a big topic covered in the Identifying Items page.

Names

It is possible to figure out some or all attributes of an item without causing them to become identified in the current game state. For example, let's say you equip an unknown bracelet. Equipping it identifies the modifier state but not the type, and you can now see that the bracelet has no modifier. You then try to walk through a wall and find that you can! You have no other bracelet equipped and there is no other way to walk through walls in Shiren 5, so you know the unknown bracelet you have equipped is Wall Clip. But the type is still not identified in the current game state.

The game offers multiple convenience features for this situation. The player may name (and rename) the item type so long as they have an instance of that item available and so long as that type is not identified in the game state. Any future items found of the same type will show this name as well. Naming replaces the placeholder description permanently. For example, an item in a shop is called "Glass Bracelet"—a placeholder description. You see that it has a base buy price of 10K, so you name it "10K-1" (to distinguish it from other bracelets in the 10K tier). You then try it on and confirm it's a Growth Bracelet, so you rename it "Growth Bracelet". You can name and rename that type as often as you want so long as you have one available (even if it's owned by a shopkeeper), but you can never delete your name and go back to showing the earlier "Glass Bracelet" description (nor would you really want to). You rename it to "Foo" just for fun. Later, you fully identify it and your name is overwritten, and it now shows as "Growth Bracelet" permanently.

The game also makes it easy for you to choose a name from the list of types in the same category that you've ever identified at any point in the past (in any run). The game also keeps track which of these "real names" you have used already in your current run. These are both very helpful features not commonly found in older roguelikes. (You need to play the Lots Game in the basement of Hotel Nekomaneki to win the set of books before book-based features become available.)

Names are per type, not per instance, so naming something like "Pinning 7 Charges" (which you might be able to figure out via price identification and the process of elimination) doesn't help you much because the next instance of the same type will also be named to have 7 charges which isn't necessary true.

Prices

Almost every item has a base buy price (the price at which you can buy an unmodified copy of the item from a vendor) and a base sell price (the price at which you can sell an unmodified copy of the item to a vendor). A small number of items (such as a Points Card and all traps) are "priceless" and cannot be bought or sold. For almost all items with prices, the base sell price is 35% of the base buy price; catstones and Crafting crafted by the player are notable exceptions that break the 35% rule. For items you have previously identified at least once in any run, you can see buy and sell prices in your Item Book.

The final price of an item is affected by modifiers. The precise formula has not been fully mapped out, but here's what's known:

  • Blessed = +10%
  • Cursed or Sealed = -20%
  • Each staff charge = +5%
  • Each empty pot space = +5%
    • Working theory: filled pot spaces do not add to the pot's price, but, the content item's price is added to the pot's price.
    • In other words, you can *decrease* the price of a valuable pot by putting a cheap item into it.
    • Which kind of makes sense if it's true, because the real value of a pot is its potential -- being able to choose what you put in and when -- and you usually can't remove items at will from most types of pots.
  • Runes and upgrade points on swords and shields also increase the price, though no one has yet determined by how much.
  • It is assumed that tags and experience on swords and shields do not affect the price.
  • A stack of items is priced as you'd expect: the base item price times the quantity. (There are no bulk discounts.)
  • Any decimal amount is truncated (not rounded).

In dungeons, an item's price is usually not visible unless it is owned by a shopkeeper. You can also ask shopkeepers to tell you how much they would pay for all the items they don't own that are on the floor of their shop. You can place a single item on the ground and ask the shopkeeper for a price check, and thus get an important clue as to what it is. The game designers seem to have deliberately made only a few price tiers per item category, and to have deliberately placed "good items" and their "evil twins" in the same price tier, to prevent players from using a price check to get too much useful information about items. See Identifying Items for details.

There are no concepts of haggling, item quality, or item wear and tear in Shiren 5. Every item of the same type with the same modifiers is identical and will always buy or sell for the same price.

Crafting

Shiren 5 has the most complex crafting model of any game in the series, though it is not as complex as that of craft-heavy games like Minecraft. There are a large number of ways to improve items and you can even create up to 64 new items. Mastering this topic is key to winning both dungeons where you can take your best items in, and dungeons where you can't take items in at all but must craft on the fly. See Crafting for details.

Items not in the Item Book

Monster Licenses are items in every other respect except they don't appear anywhere in the Item Book and thus aren't required to complete the Item Book. As they aren't in the Item Book, there is very little about them in this section.

There are a handful of other things that are probably implemented as items within code but which don't appear in the Item Book, such as the contents of open-type pots (water, magic charges, etc.).

There is also one known secret item that doesn't appear in the Item Book and again is not required to complete the Item Book. It's an Easter egg! Information about this item has been deliberately omitted from this page to avoid spoiling readers, but if you really want to learn about this item by reading about it on this wiki rather than by playing the game, try reading the Final Reward sections of the various Shiren 5 Locations pages.

Non-Items

Shiren 5 has a gameplay element called Secret Pots and New Items. Despite the name, these are not actually items and can never appear in your inventory.

Shiren 5 occasionally refers to "Items" such as "The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (plot)" or "mom's special onigiri". These are not actually items per the game mechanics and they do not show up in your Item Book. Some of these are tracked as achievements / trophies in your game diary, while others are only mentioned in various text output and have no bearing on game state. See Top Menu Icons and Trophies Version Differences for more info.

There is also a family of monsters called N'dubba in Shiren 5 which are similar to mimics in D&D. They pretend to be other items and appear as those other items in the UI in every respect (including on the minimap), only revealing themselves as monsters when you try to pick them up or use them. Higher forms can exist in your inventory and even appear to be identified for extended periods of time. These are not tracked in the Item Book but are tracked in the Monster Book.

Checklists

Item checklists can be very handy both to keep track of which items you have left to register in your Item Book across all runs, as well as to keep track of which items you've seen so far in a single run (to help narrow down the possibilities for what an unidentified item might be). Some players just like having a quick reference card to remind themselves of what a given item might be, while other players like an editable checklist so they can cross off items they've already found. (You can see which items have been identified or named in the current game state within the game itself, but doing so is significantly slower than having a separate checklist.)

External Checklists

These excellent external references may have better and more complete information that has not yet been replicated to this wiki. (These links have also been added to all sub-pages for item categories for the same reason.) They also have very useful checklists, with prices and other info.

This post links to two additional useful item checklists. These lists are more condensed, suitable for either printing and carrying with your PSVita, or viewing on a mobile phone especially in low light.

Retrieved from "https://mysterydungeonwiki.com/index.php?title=Draft:Shiren_5_Vita:Item_Book&oldid=904090"