Draft:Shiren 5 Vita:Mass Production

I once wanted to create 8 fully-maxed out awesome swords and shields at the same time, without save scumming or otherwise hacking the intended play of the game. (I wanted a primary sword and shield, a backup set, a test set on which I would add bad runes, and 5 more sets just because.) There's no good reason to do this and it soaks up loads of hours. It started because it seemed a shame to sell loads of durable items that could produce good runes, even though I had those runes already, then devolved into irrational obsession and madness. In any case, I've learned a bit about how to mass produce great items in Shiren 5 w/o save scumming, so I'm documenting what I know here.

Prerequisites

You'll need these things before considering mass production:

• Game Progress:
  • You've unlocked the Points Shop
  • You've unlocked all 6 secret pots in the basement of Hotel Nekomaneki
  • You've beaten the Tower of Fortune at least once
  • Preferable: you've completed all Character ally side quests and generally unlocked everything it is possible to unlock
  • You've maxed out the Scrolls section of your Item Book—that is, you've found and read every scroll at least once, so you can write any scroll on a Blank Scroll
  • You've unlocked the Sparrow Transport and can travel directly to Hermit's Hermitage and Sparrow's Inn at will
• Items:
  • You have at least one great sword and shield (not necessarily "new items"), tagged, maxed out at level 8, upgraded to a very high level if not +99, with a bunch of great runes
  • You have at least 5 Blessing Pots
  • You have a wide variety of great bracelets including Scout, Identify, Time Stop, VIP, Alert, Strength, Wall Clip, Waterwalk, Floating, and others
• Skills & Knowledge:
  • You are a decently strong Shiren player (though you don't necessarily need the skill to beat every dungeon)
  • You know what items you should be keeping for dungeon runs, and you have appropriate emergency gear handy at all times
  • You're able to beat any dungeon that lets you take items in without difficulty
  • You know how and when to leverage Monster House Scrolls to create your own monster houses and how to clear them safely
  • Preferable: you know how to rob shops in dungeons safely, and, you know your limits and don't try to rob shops when you're not close to 100% confident of success
  • You know all about points, collecting points, spending points, etc., and in particular, you know you can always buy a Blank Scroll with points to fill in for any scroll you're missing
  • You know everything about Improving Existing Items and Creating Better Items
• Misc.:
  • You backup your game save state regularly, because putting in this much effort and having a game crash would royally suck
  • You understand that you could use save scumming, multiplayer tricks, and other hacks to duplicate items much more easily but for some strange reason you still want to do mass production w/i the game
  • You compulsively organize your Shiren inventory, both while carrying it and in every storage facility, and because of this you know where to find things you've stored

Getting Organized

There's no one perfect order in which the various steps must be done. You can go back and forth to different steps as needed. But the steps in this section can more or less be done up front. Some of this material was covered as the "upgrading factory" on the Improving Existing Items page, but needless to say, this article goes much further.

Decide # of copies: This article assumes you're making 5 great swords and shields at the same time from scratch. You can make as many as you'd like, and the more you make at the same time, the more efficiently you can do so, but it's best to make them in batches of 5, because the maximum size pot is 5, and you'll needs loads of Fever Pots to maximize efficiency. More on this later. In any case, decide on the number you're making up front and stick to it, else you'll get overwhelmed holding on to less valuable items you might want "just in case", and it can get messy and disorganized quickly. Any time you have more items than you need to make your target number of copies, sell the excess.

Empty your 3 dungeon-based storage units: This article assumes your 3 dungeon-based storage units (the 25-space unit in Nekomaneki Village, the 16-space unit in Hermit's Hermitage, and the 9-space unit in Sparrow's Inn) are all empty. It's not critical that they all be empty, but you must have at least 10 empty spaces in your Nekomaneki Village storage unit at all times, at least least 5 empty spaces near the middle of the left wall. Why? Because you'll be using a lot of Fever Pots maxed out to 5-spaces in the middle of this room, so you need to have 10 spaces open on the floor so the 10 replicated items can all land at your feet and none will be lost. You'll also be breaking a large number of Synthesis Pots against the middle of the left wall so you must have space for their contents to land. (You can use the top wall too, I just use the left wall myself and write from that perspective.) Get in the habit of always leaving at least 5 spaces free near the left wall, always leaving 10 spaces free overall, and always performing every action in the middle of this room while facing left. Why? Because at some point you *will* accidentally throw a pot by mistake, and you definitely do not want to throw the pot out a door, or against a wall where you don't have enough free space for the contents to land safely. Likewise, never wear a Cannon Arm Bracelet or any new item bracelet that has that effect on it.If you like using a Cannon Arm Bracelet effect while you play dungeons, you'll have to be extra careful to make sure you never throw any pot you intended to break while that effect is in effect. (Likewise, don't use Dracon Grass. There is a hidden achievement for throwing away a Synthesis Pot while you have Cannon Arm equipped, but it's way better to get this achievement deliberately than to lose great stuff because you forgot you had that bracelet equipped.)

Free up space in your menu-based storage unit: It's not critical that you perfectly organize your 80-space menu-based storage in Nekomaneki Village, but you should try to keep at least 10 empty spaces as a working buffer when needed. I personally only store pots and catstone in this storage area, with the vast majority being 5-space Preservation Pots, and I have a system so I can always remember where things are located. This helps. I won't try to get into all the details, but I like keeping pots full of identical items if I need those items regularly, and for items that I need to use very soon or that aren't organized perfectly, I only store 4 items or less in those Preservation Pots, which causes them to be sorted separately from the full Preservation Pots.

Create some new item consumables: You should have at least one new item grass with the Undo effect on it, at least one new item scroll with the Extraction effect on it, at least one new item staff with the Balance effect on it, at least one new item staff with the Boring effect on it, and at least one new item staff with the Glorious effect on it. (It's fine if you have a single new item staff with multiple effects in this list on it.) Why? Because points are more valuable than Gitan, and it helps to be able to buy a few items with Gitan every now and again. You can only buy one new item per run though, so, you can save points if you remember to buy one new item every run. If you don't have a Balance staff and a Glorious staff (new item or stock item), buy them as new items. If you're missing a Boring staff and don't have the Max Wall Dig rune on your main weapon yet, buy a new item Boring Staff. If you don't have enough emergency gear like Undo Grasses, buy a new item Undo Grass. Else if you have no other new items you want to buy, buy a new item Extraction Scroll, because you'll be using a *lot* of these. (For each of these new items, it's assumed there are no unfortunate effects on them. E.g. a new item scroll with both Extraction and Sale or Extraction and Onigiri is worthless.)

Create some new item bracelets: This is not critical but it helps. At various times, it will really help to have Scout, Identify, Time Stop, VIP, Alert, Strength, Wall Clip, Waterwalk, and Floating bracelets, and that's a lot of bracelets to carry around. So the more of these effects that can you merge onto fewer new item bracelets, the better. Plus it really helps to be able to buy a replacement new item bracelet with any effect you're missing at will, so you should have these effects on at least one new item bracelet that you wouldn't mind wearing. (That is, the new item bracelet doesn't have any bad effects on it.) Why do these things help?

• Scout: Lets you see all monsters, Characters, and items, which helps you stay alive and safe, plus helps you easily find stores and vaults.
• Identify: Super helpful all around. One example of many: always know what type of pot you've just found.
• Time Stop: Lets you stay on day time permanently, or at least lets you control when day and night change.
• VIP: Lets you get into VIP/elite stores any time you want, w/o having to carry a Recommendation Scroll or spend a Blank Scroll to make a Recommendation Scroll
• Alert: Being put to sleep is one of the most dangerous status ailments, so it's good to be able to resist this.
• Strength: Occasionally you'll find something buried under sparkling ground that you can't dig up with the default 8 strength. This bracelet (or 2 of them!) might work to dig it up.
• Wall Clip: Lets you walk through walls though it damages you, which can help escape if you want to rob a store, or let you break into a vault.
• Waterwalk: Helps get items on islands, can sometimes help escape from theft attempts or break into vaults (either by walking down rivers or crossing rivers that block access to the vault).
• Floating: Generally better than Waterwalk in every way, as it lets you walk on water or void w/o getting scrolls wet and w/o damaging your food. May be needed for some vaults.

Prepare your Blessing Pots: Per the pre-reqs above, you should have at least 5 Blessing Pots. If they're not already maxed out to size 5, use Pot God Scrolls to make them all size 5. (Of course, any time a scroll is mentioned and you don't have it handy, you can buy a Blank Scroll from the Points Shop and write the scroll you need. There is at least one other way to increase the capacity of pots, via a new item bracelet effect, but it's way slower and less convenient than just using a Pot God Scroll.) If any of them (or any of your other items) are sealed, take them to the Curse Breaker in Nekomaneki Village and uncurse them all as a single batch for 500 Gitan. (Or you can wait for the mass blessing step below, so long as you have at least one un-sealed 5-spot Blessing Pot.) (Why 5 Blessing Pots? 1 to leave in each storage unit + 1 primary to carry with you into dungeons + 1 backup in case the primary is ever lost.)

Prepare lots of other materials: You'll need a lot of 5-spot Preservation Pots, unsealed, and lots of scrolls of various types. (Unless otherwise specified, all pots mentioned throughout this article should be increased to size 5.) You can collect all this stuff over time across many dungeon runs, or just buy everything you need from the Points Shops with a lot of points. There's a section below about how to refill your Points Card if you need to.

• Preservation Pot with 5 Fate Scrolls
• Preservation Pot with 5 Earth Scrolls
• Preservation Pot with 5 Blessing Scrolls
• Preservation Pot with 5 Pot God Scrolls
• Preservation Pot with 5 Collection Scrolls
• Preservation Pot with 5 Gambler's Scrolls
• 2x Preservation Pot with 5 Escape Scrolls
• 5x Preservation Pot with 5 Blank Scrolls

Bless most of the scrolls: Now bless all the scrolls except the Blank Scrolls. The Blank Scrolls are earmarked to become Extraction Scrolls, and Extraction Scrolls can only ever be read once even if they're blessed. But it's best to leave them as Blank Scrolls in case you need to use them as something else in a pinch.(Did you know that writing on a Blank Scroll does not take a turn? So you can e.g. write Escape on a Blank Scroll and read the Escape Scroll in a single turn if you're in danger in a dungeon.) In any case, bless all the scrolls that aren't Blank. Have an unsealed 5-spot Blessing Pot in your inventory, take out all the contents of one of the pots mentioned above, put them all into the Blessing Pot, then read an Extraction Scroll on your full Blessing Pot. Don't use one of the Blank Scrolls listed above as your Extraction Scroll, as those are slated for other things, so yes, you will likely need even more Blank Scrolls on which to write Extraction to complete this mass blessing effort.And again, make sure to perform these actions while in the center of your Nekomaneki Village storage unit and while facing left, so the blessed scrolls will fall on open tiles and not be lost, and nothing will be lost if you accidentally throw a pot. Collect your blessed scrolls, put them back in their pots, then repeat the process to bless the next batch of scrolls.

Bless most items in main inventory: Now bless all your pots, bracelets, and staves, or at least bless all the ones you will ever carry into dungeons.I bless every pot and bracelet I own, except for those that are destined to be destroyed or otherwise consumed soon. Why is this important? Because blessed items have a very high chance to be protected against curses, seals, and onigiri-morphing, so you'll want everything you will be carrying in main inventory into a dungeon to be blessed. (Exception: there's no point in blessing your sword, shield, or points card, because the blessings run out on those items very, very quickly with use.) But you should definitely bless the Balance Staff too (or new item staff with Balance on it) and you should always carry this in main inventory too to help protect against broken pots when you hit a Trip Trap.

Top off regularly: The point of having all these blessed scrolls (Fate, Earth, Blessing, Pot God, Collection, Gambler's) is that you can read them whenever you need them, without even taking them out of their pots to keep them organized, and just consuming the blessings never consuming the scrolls themselves. When you have no more blessed copies, bless the entire batch again in a Blessing Pot, use a Blank/Extraction Scroll to extract them again, and put them back into their Preservation Pot to keep things organized. Regularly top off your blessings and your Blank Scrolls as needed. Blessing and re-blessing your base scrolls without ever consuming them is a lot more efficient in terms of points, as a single Blank Scroll can in effect be used to create 5 other scrolls rather than just 1.

Setup transit between rest areas: Now take a Blessing Pot, a pot of Escape Scrolls, and a pot of Blank Scrolls with you and use the Sparrow Transport to warp to Hermit's Hermitage. (You can also take 100K Gitan with you for shopping, e.g. to buy Synthesis Pots, upgrade a sword/shield, and/or remove a bad rune.) Put the Blessing Pot in the SE corner of the storage unit, the pot of Blank Scrolls in the middle of the E wall, and the pot of Escape Scrolls in the NE corner. Read one of the blessed Escape Scrolls (while leaving it in it's pot on the ground!) to return home, or better yet, eat a new item Undo Grass if you have extra. (Using a blessed Escape Scroll to return home effectively costs 40 points—1/5th of a Blank Scroll—whereas eating a new item Undo Grass costs ~2500 Gitan, depending on what effects are on the new item grass, and Gitan are far less valuable than points. Just make sure to buy another new item Undo Grass from the new item shop whenever you don't have any other more important new item to buy that run.) Now repeat the process with Sparrow's Inn, putting the same set of pots in the same places in that storage unit as well, then returning home. For symmetry and to help keep things organized, put a 3rd Blessing Pot in the SE corner of your Nekomaneki Village storage unit. You don't need Escape Scrolls there of course, but you can of course keep a pot of Blank Scrolls above the Blessing Pot if so desired. As usual, refill the blessings on the Escape Scrolls whenever you run out, and top off the pot of Blank Scrolls with more Blank Scrolls as you use them. You now have the ability to travel back and forth between any of these 3 rest areas at will, at the cost of just a few points or Gitan per trip. (Why 5x Preservation Pots with Blank Scrolls in them? Because you'll leave 2 of these behind in each of the remote storage units, and you may need up to 3 of them for the Level 8 Equipment Easy Trick, and/or to fully suck out all the valuable stuff you might need from Pick-A-Choice shops.)

Choose swords and shields to upgrade and collect them: The earlier topics Improving Existing Items and Creating Better Items can help you decide which swords and shields to use as your base items. If you can't decide, just use Red Blades and Red Shields, as they're decent choices, they're easy to collect, they are the strongest pair that resonates to let you equip 2 bracelets, and you can always migrate the runes and upgrade value you add to them to other swords and shields (which won't be true if you use new item swords and shields as your base items). It can be easier to stay organized if you use all different swords and shields, so you can easily tell them apart, but if you do that, make sure all the items you choose can have the maximum +99 upgrade value and the maximum infinite runes, which is not true for every sword and shield. I like using all Red Blades and Red Shields, even though this means I could mix them up. I keep them organized by always storing them in the same order within Preservation Pots, and, I also keep their upgrade values ~10 apart from one another, so I can re-sort them by upgrade value if I get mixed up, until I'm done adding all the runes I want to add, then I max them out to +99 upgrade value. If you need to collect more Red Blades and Red Shields, you can do 1+ runs through Merchant's Hideout now, collecting synthesis ingredients you'll need later, and money, and the Red Blades and Red Shields you'll need as base items.

Max out base swords and shields to level 8: Now, use the Level 8 Equipment Easy Trick to bring all the swords and shields you plan to max out up to level 8. If you are trying to do more than 20 items all at the same time, congratulations, you've officially gone further overboard than I have. :^)

Setup rune tracking system: Make a soft copy of the Runes reference charts (it might be easier to copy the Runes section of this external reference), or if you prefer, print out hard copies. Add columns on the right for each of the 5 sword/shield sets you'll be improving. Delete or hide any rows for runes you don't want to bother creating. (E.g., might as well delete the bad runes and the Fox runes, as that's just clutter in terms of crafting great stuff.) Go through your base swords and shields now and note down exactly what runes you already have on each of them. I like using a Y for having the rune, and an N for not having the rune, then using a COUNTIF formula to check for Ys or Ns to act as a sanity check. E.g., counting the number of Ys in a given section should exactly match the number of runes you have on the item, and/or counting the number of Ns in a given section should exactly match how many runes you still want to add to a given item. Keep this spreadsheet in sync with the reality of what runes are actually on your items as you add them. This is a critical organization step if you want to mass produce great items as efficiently as possible. If you've chosen any base swords and shields that have innate abilities in conflict with any runes, note this down in your spreadsheet somehow so you don't accidentally keep trying to add a rune to an item that won't accept it. For example, I sometimes fill in "N *" for a rune that can't be added, so my COUNTIF formula doesn't count it as an N for a missing rune, nor does it count it as a Y for a rune that I already have for my sanity check formula.I also recommend deleting the rows for the Refining rune at this time (delete from both the sword section and the shield section). It is unquestionably a good rune, but it is basically worthless on equipment you max out outside of dungeons, it's extremely expensive to add even one copy of this rune to any piece of equipment, and there is no way to scale up adding this rune more efficiently to multiple items via Fever Pots. This rune is so expensive to add that it really hurts if a stray high-level Muddy monster jumps on you and strips it off. (Or I should say, it hurts in terms of time lost. It doesn't hurt at all in terms of your items deadliness.)

Grinding For Materials

There's no one perfect order in which the various steps must be done. You can go back and forth to different steps as needed. But the steps in this section assume the steps in the previous section are done. This section will also take much longer.

Prepping for a dungeon run to gather materials: Stuff to bring with you when hunting for materials:

• Strong sword and shield
• Several blessed bracelets (specific bracelets depends on the situation, but the more capabilities you can take with you, the more opportunities you can exploit)
• Blessed Balance Staff (to avoid losing pots to Trip Traps)
• Points Card (to rack up points along the way)
• Standard emergency gear (e.g. multiple ways to escape a dungeon)
• Blessing Pot, 1x Preservation Pot with Collection Scrolls, 2-3x Preservation Pots with Blank Scrolls (to fully exploit Pick-A-Choice shops when you find them, destroying items you don't need)
• Possibly some blessed Monster House Scrolls & Trap Deletion Scrolls as well (to create your own monster houses esp. on floors with store and hope to create more items you're looking for)
• Possibly some additional empty Preservation Pots to hold more items
• 100K Gitan

A note about shop types: If you can safely do so, it virtually always a good idea to visit every shop. It's not important to try to steal from them, as you're carrying a lot of great gear and it would be a shame if you lost it. But they often have better stuff than you can find elsewhere in the dungeon, and that's particularly true for elite/VIP shops. When you find a Pick-A-Choice shop, find a good place to destroy items (e.g. by throwing them down a river and having them disappear forever) as close to the Pick-A-Choice shop as you can, and destroy all the items you don't want on the floor. Then pay the shopkeeper to reset the shop and use a blessed Collection Scroll to get the item out w/o taking either path. If you want it, keep it, else consume it or destroy it (or just pay the shopkeeper to reset the shop without ever picking it up), because you may go through a very large number of items before you find what you want. As usual, when none of your Collection Scrolls are blessed any more, re-bless them as a batch in your Blessing Pot and put them back into their original Preservation Pot. Elite/VIP shops and Pick-A-Choice shops are both less common than regular shops, and both draw from rarer and more valuable items than regular shops, but Pick-A-Choice shops can create an endless supply of them one at a time. Incidentally, never face towards a shopkeeper unless you're right next to them and want to talk to them, never cause them damage, never hit them with a magic bullet, and never afflict them with a status ailment unless you want to fight, which is very dangerous. This is particularly important to remember when you have the Flame Shot or Blue Flame runes on your weapon, as you can accidentally swing and hit them with your fireball, but it's just as bad to accidentally throw an item at them. Just get in the habit of never facing them to avoid such mistakes. When you have a Monster Detector or Scout Bracelet, and when you have a fireball rune, try not to swing at all when facing them, even when on the other side of the map, because even that can sometimes make them go aggro. Note that a shopkeeper going aggro is not the same thing as triggering "the plan" and summoning tons more shopkeepers. Both are bad and to be avoided unless it's intentional and you really know what you're doing.

Get Gitan as needed: The Merchant's Hideout page has a bunch of tips for getting rich. As you're collecting money in Merchant's Hideout, you can also collect points, collect less rare synthesis materials, and if you go all the way to the bottom, you can get 1 rare synthesis item as well.

Get points as needed: The Gorger's Manor page and the Lost Well page have good tips for collecting points. Gorger's Manor is probably the fastest place to collect points, plus you can get plenty of talismans there which can help with getting money faster as well (see the above tip for more info). Lost Well is also a good place to get points as well as catstones and some consumables.

Get less-rare ingredients as needed: Merchant's Hideout is a great place to collect lots of durables (e.g. swords and shields) that can be turned into valuable runes, plus you can get a fair amount of money as you go and a rare synthesis item if you go all the way to the bottom. If you're collecting durables for runes, odds are you'll max out your inventory before making it to the bottom, but you might want to push on to the bottom anyway to get the rare item. As for the other non-sword non-shield mixer recipe ingredients that are not particularly rare, they're probably easiest to get from the Tower of Fortune itself, but you may also find plenty of Inori Cave and Lost Well as well.

Get every Fever Pot you can find: Fever Pots are an essential part of mass production. In fact, they're so essential, and they're so rare in their own right, that you should literally stop whatever you're doing whenever you find one, buy it or grab it, and immediately escape the dungeon to take it home to safety. The next best thing to do is to always carry a Dodger Pot into dungeons with you, as well as Pot God Scrolls (or Blank Scrolls that can become Pot God), so you can always add capacity to the Dodger Pot then immediately burn a worthless item in it. This will prevent dirt-throwing monsters from throwing dirt into your hard-won Fever Pot and breaking it. I prefer just bringing the Fever Pots home immediately over carrying the Dodger Pot. Fever Pots are always 3 spots by default. Do *not* increase the capacity of the Fever Pot until you're certain you should, because there is no known way to shrink it again. See the Fever Pots page for ways to farm large numbers of Fever Pots and other related tips and tricks. (If you've disregarded some earlier advice and are trying to add the Refining rune to your mass production effort, the Upgrade Pot is even more rare than the Fever Pot, so you'd again need to treat it with extreme caution as well, but an Upgrade Pot won't break if filled with dirt. Upgrade Pots can be found in many difficult dungeons. The best way I have yet found to farm Upgrade Pots—or at least farm the Refining rune—is in Monster Hotspot. It's not an easy dungeon, but it's very generous with item creation, with fixed great hall monster houses to boot. If you mass-identify items a few times by selling everything unknown to a shopkeeper then giving him an Identify Scroll, you may eventually be able to find an Upgrade Pot, esp. in a shop. Buy it, mix it onto your main sword or shield, and tag it (also at a shopkeeper), so if you die, at least you'll get the Refining rune out. And remember, if you sell your equipment to a shopkeeper and steal it back, it won't have a tag on it anymore, so you'll need to pay for a new tag at the next shopkeeper.)

Save at least 3, then 5, of every more-rare ingredient: The ingredients listed below are rare or at least more grindy to acquire. Get at least 3 of them first, then consider using a Fever Pot to replicate them to have 6. Ultimately, save 5 of each of these items, never using them for runes directly. Instead, save your first 5 copies for possible replication in a Fever Pot, and use any copies above 5 for runes.Which items are so rare and difficult to acquire that you should use a Fever Pot to replicate them? That depends on your skill level and which dungeons you can beat with decent regularity. This chart shows everything you'll need that can be difficult to acquire, roughly force-ranked from most difficult to least difficult. The "Use Fever Pot?" column is a guideline, not a perfect formula, and it means a few different, related things. It means, "it will probably be faster to only collect 3 of these items up front then use a 3-spot Fever Pot to get the full 5 copies plus 1 more that can be used for a rune". It also means, "these are probably the best choices to replicate using a 5-spot Fever Spot once you have the full 5 ready to go". A 3rd meaning of that column is, "the items marked Y require more skill to acquire and are usually only found in dungeons where you can't take items in, whereas the items marked N can be acquired with grinding and less skill from dungeons that let you take items in". The copies needed column is 1x if you need it for just a sword or just a shield, and 2x if you need it for both.

Rank	Item aka Ingredient	Copies Needed	Best Known Ways To Find	Use Fever Pot?
1	True Knife	1x	The only known way to get these is to beat Pitfall of Life and receive it as a dungeon reward item, so, you can't find them mid-run and tag them or escape with them. Pitfall of Life is embarrassingly generous with upgrade materials compared to most dungeons, but extracting this item is not easy or reliable, and is of course much more difficult from the full 99 F version of this dungeon.	Y
2	Onigiri Shield	1x	These can be found in Aura Ruins, Hunter Pond, Storm Forest, Primordial Chasm, Monster Paradise, and maybe in other dungeons as well. It's not trivial to farm them out of any of these locations, but for me personally, I find Aura Ruins the easiest followed by Hunter Pond. Ask a shopkeeper to tag them as soon as you can, so even if you die you can probably still get it from the lost-and-found in Hermit's Hermitage. Also keep the fields in Inori Village clear, as your equipped sword or shield can show up here if you die, even if it's not tagged.	Y
3	Trapper Bracelet	1x	You can get at least one of these for beating Gen's Turf for the first time, and possibly every time you beat it, and you can get them in Trapper's Sandbox. It's not trivial to farm them out of either location and they can't be tagged.	Y
4	Hatchet	1x	These can be found in Aura Ruins, Old Road, Rousing Paradise, and maybe in other dungeons as well. As with the Onigiri Shield, it's not easy to farm them from any location but Aura Ruins might be the easiest. Again, tag them as soon as you can, and keep the fields at Inori Village clear to allow for the possibility of them showing up there. These can also be found in a VIP shop in Inori Cave, which is far easier to farm out of but not very common.	Y
5	Parry Shield	1x	These can be found in Aura Ruins, Hunter Pond, and Rousing Paradise, so again, Item Tagging them and keep the fields at Inori Village clear. You can get one of these as a reward item for beating Lost Well the first time only, but that's not enough to bootstrap into Fever Pot territory. Though 3 players / profiles working together could collect enough this way and begin replicating them.	Y
6	SuperUnlucky Seed	2x	These can be found in many dungeons, both deep in dungeons that let you take items in, and in dungeons that don't let you take items in usually on earlier floors. There is no known way that is super fast and super reliable to grind for these. If you're doing a full run of Merchant's Hideout to get a Wonder Pick, odds are you'll find 1 of these per full run in a deep shop somewhere. Buy / steal / grab these every chance you'll get, because you'll need 10 to fully max out the runes on 5 swords + 5 shields. Odds are you'll find enough Fever Pots to replicate these before you'll find 10 of them.	Y
7	Angel Seed	2x	Same as above. These seem ever so slightly easier to acquire than SuperUnlucky Seeds, so I put them 1 rank lower.	Y
8	Wonder Pick	1x	The only known way to get these is as a reward item for Merchant's Hideout. I've read that they can sometimes be found deep in other dungeons, but I've never found one aside from the Merchant's Hideout reward. Merchant's Hideout is one of the easiest bonus dungeons in the game, so you can definitely grind your way to get 5 of these. That's 495 floors of grinding. Yuck. Fever Pot if you have one to spare.	N
9	Unlucky Seed	2x	These are vastly more common than SuperUnlucky Seeds and Angel Seeds. I like saving the first 5 I find in a Preservation Pot rather than using them for runes, in case I ever have an abundance of Fever Pots. Any I find after that I use for runes. I saved 5 then added one to every sword and shield in my mass production effort, and was never once tempted to use a Fever Pot on them given all the other things I might want to replicate. But I still save 5 of these just in case.	N
10	Cheery Grass	2x	Same as above. These seem every so slightly easier to acquire than Unlucky Seeds, so I put them 1 rank lower.	N
11	Sharing Staff	1x	You can find these deep in various dungeons that let you take items in, so, not so terrible to acquire. But again, I like keeping 5 handy and not using those 5 for runes in case I have enough Fever Pots to go around.	N
12	Swift Staff and/or Swift Talisman	1x or 2x	You need 2 of (Swift Grass, Swift Staff, Swift Talisman) to make the Quick Hitting rune on swords. Swift Grass is common so not listed in this chart. But which other ingredient should you use? Both the Swift Staff and Swift Talisman seem to appear with about the same frequency, and again, deep in various dungeons that let you take items in. I like saving 5 of the staves just to have them in case I ever want to replicate them. But in practice, when you find talismans, you find a stack of them, so you tend to build up talismans faster, plus, you can store 99 talismans in a single inventory space! In any case if you ever see either the Swift Staff or Swift Talisman, grab it. Odds are very low that you'll have enough Fever Pots to consider replicating either Swift Staves or Swift Talismans.	N
13	Heal Bracelet	1x	These are not very rare. You can find them in various dungeons that let you take items in, and as a reward item every time you beat Hunter Pond, and you can also get them fairly reliably for beating the hardest mode of Explosion Rocks. There's virtually no chance you will have enough Fever Pots to bother replicating these.	N
14	Fort. Staff	1x	These are not super common but definitely not rare either. You can find them in various dungeons that let you take items in. There's virtually no chance you will have enough Fever Pots to bother replicating these.	N
15	Explosion Bracelet	2x	These are not super common but definitely not rare either. You can find them in various dungeons that let you take items in, in Merchant's Hideout in particular, and, you can also buy these for points at the Points Shop. This is the last item I might consider replicating in a Fever Pot, the rest are way too common to consider it, and frankly, the Explosion Bracelet is just not rare enough to ever replicate in a Fever Pot either. You will need 1 of these for each sword + 1 for each shield. If you're farming for other items in Merchant's Hideout (e.g. Wonder Picks), just be patient, and odds are you'll collect enough of these to use on all your equipment before you're done collecting the more rare rune materials. In a pinch if you really aren't finding enough of these, you can always buy them for points.	N

Consider other rare items: Note also that there are other super-rare-and-difficult-to-collect items not on the above list. E.g. the Nirvana Board and Sturdy Hammer are very difficult to collect. Should you try hard to collect 3 of them then start replicating them with Fever Pots? I've classified those runes as Bad—things I don't want on my main equipment—but you may want them. Likewise, Floating Bracelets and Night Wards don't make any runes at all, but take a lot of grinding to acquire, and are good choices as a base items for new item bracelets. You might want to save a Fever Pot or two for items like those.

Consider other common items: If you ever happen upon a Fate, Earth, Extraction, or Blank Scroll in your travels through various dungeons, you might as well take them even if you have to buy them. Gitan are less valuable than points, so the more of these items you can get for Gitan, the better. For Fate and Earth scrolls, these may or may not be worth the inventory space to carry for long periods of time, so another possibility is saving a random sword and shield you find along the way, one that doesn't make a bad rune, and upgrading those on the fly with any Fate or Earth Scrolls you find. These level 1 items tend to have low upgrade limits, but this can let you carry around (e.g.) ~16 upgrades in just 2 inventory spaces. Likewise, you'll probably be using plenty of Synthesis Pots, so might as well take them with you, even if you need to buy them from shops, assuming you have space for them. I occasionally hold on to 5-space Preservation Pots I find along the way, too, blessing them when convenient, as I store a huge amount of stuff in my various storage areas. It can also help to hold on to any Stomach Expander grasses, to help with Mixer monsters later, though this isn't strictly required if you have a new item Glorious Staff ready to go.

Trade items if possible: Note also that you can trade with others online to collect these items, if you can find someone else who is willing to part with them. One way to do this is to have both players put the items they want to trade in their menu-based storage in Nekomaneki Village, then one player dies intentionally with nothing valuable on them except a Blank Scroll (which can later be turned into an Escape Scroll) on floor 1 of Lost Well. You need to die in a dungeon where you can take items in, and Lost Well is convenient. Player 2 then rescues player 1 and sends the item to trade along with the revival spell. Player 1 then revives on floor 1 of Lost Well and send their trade item as a thank you. The trade item sent with the revival spell will be on the ground under the feet of the player who died—do not forget to pick this up!! There will be no monsters anywhere around, so you have time to pick up the trade item, then write Escape and escape. Don't do more, though, because monsters will start spawning again!

Adding Runes

There's no one perfect order in which the various steps must be done. You can go back and forth to different steps as needed. But the steps in this section assume the steps in previous sections are done. This section is very fast compared to the other sections, it's more a question of deciding the best / most efficient way to do it.

Don't add runes while collecting materials: If you have super-human organization skills, you can merge runes in Synthesis Pots and Mixer monsters you find along the way while your primary mission is to gather more ingredients. In practice, I've found this more confusing than helpful. I find it much easier to stay organized if I keep my materials gathering runs separate from my synthesis/mixing efforts. Else you'll spend a fair amount of your time checking and re-checking which runes are on which blue items, and which runes are needed on which destination items, etc..

Update your tracking system: Make sure to keep your tracking spreadsheet up to date any time you add a rune. This way, you can always tell if you should hold on to that less-than-perfectly-rare ingredient item or toss/sell it.

Use Synthesis Pots—or not: There's a tradeoff to be struck between convenience and cost. Obviously, if you've collected any Synthesis Pots on your travels to collect ingredients, great, use them first, but you will likely need more Synthesis Pots than that. The most convenient way to get more Synthesis Pots is to buy them from the Points Shop. This is spendy in terms of points, and there are many things you'll need to spend points on (namely huge numbers of Blank Scrolls), but it's definitely fast. The 2nd fastest way is to just warp to Hermit's Hermitage and see if there are any for sale there, as they frequently can be found for sale there. Again, Gitan are less valuable than points, so this is a decent tradeoff between cost and convenience. Any time I visit Hermit's Hermitage, I look for Synthesis Pots for sale, and if I find them, I store them in the local storage unit or I bring them back to Nekomaneki Village right away. I don't recall if Synthesis Pots can also be found commonly at Sparrow's Inn, but I do check every time I pass through. Or you can save the most money/points at the cost of more time by just doing all your mixing in Mixer monsters. Obviously, you can mix both 1 sword and 1 shield as base items in the same Synthesis Pot if so desired, just make sure to never accidentally put 2 base swords or 2 base shields in by mistake! That would suck. I have the habit of only ever putting 1 base item into any Synthesis Pot or Mixer monster, just to make doubly sure I never combine items by mistake. And don't forget that you can increase the size of a partially used Synthesis Pot with a Pot God Scroll, which can be useful if you need to (e.g.) synthesize 6 items together.

Use Mixer monsters: Of course some recipes require Mixer monsters. Level 2 Mixer monsters appear in Lost Well 1 F and 2 F, which is super convenient, because you can warp directly there via the Sparrow Transport, or stop in at Sparrow's Inn first to do some shopping. Since you'll want to escape this run quickly after you're done mixing, buy an extra new item Undo Grass before you leave Nekomaneki Village if you don't have any other new item you need to buy. Either way, make sure you have at least 1 and preferably 2 ways to escape the dungeon at will (2 as a backup). Lost Well has day/night cycles, so wear a Time Stop Bracelet if you can, and either way, be careful not to let night fall while you have valuable items inside any Mixer monsters. With a Time Stop Bracelet, you can wait on 1 F for a very long time as needed to spawn more Mixer monsters, and if the Winds of Kron ever start to blow, you can do the same thing again on 2F. If you really have a ton of mixing to do, you can always escape the dungeon and come back. Always mix during the day; to the best of my knowledge, there is no good reason to ever mix at night. Don't try to mix multiple base items in the same Mixer monster, it's just not worth the risk of making a mistake, but it is OK to add multiple runes to the same base item using a single Mixer monster. Use your new item Glorious Staff to level up the Mixer monster if you need to mix a 3-ingredient recipe, or you can also use Stomach Expander grasses if you saved any on your earlier ingredient-gathering runs. If you recently used a Fever Pot to replicate a set of 5 rare items, and are bringing in (e.g.) all your base item swords to merge the 5 rare items onto all of them, this might be a great time to save your game, quit, and backup your save state. Escape when you're done mixing, don't go searching for more materials on that run when you have a lot of valuable base item swords and shields with you.