Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Completed a Rescue

Not only does this game challenge you to manage your resources and plan every move correctly, it also allows you to be a good samaritan.

Unlike most roguelikes, when you die in Shiren, your character and items are not necessarily lost for good. Three times per game, you can request a rescue attempt. You can generate a password or post a request on an online server. Then, another person with the game can make a trek down to the dungeon level you got to and revive your character.

A friend of mine recently got the game in a short period of time managed to make it to level 20... where he promptly died. So I undertook my first rescue attempt. It's, uh, significantly more difficult than a normal run. You can take stuff from the warehouse in the first village, but skip past all the other towns. This makes food management a lot more difficult (also because I'm used to starting with a riceball). Additionally, you never find any companions so it's a completely solo affair.

Shiren began his journey in a bad situation - a mini-monster house right where I started on the first level. Shiren fell twice before grabbing the Armor Ward +1 from the warehouse in order to start in a better situation. Good weapons were easy for Shiren to come by in the beginning - the problem, of course, was food. He lingered around the rice changers to get a couple of big riceballs. Everything seemed to be going fairly well for Shiren up through Table Mountain. He didn't have an incredibly powerful inventory, but probably had enough. However, he was nearly out of riceballs. Finding a shop, proved to be the difference. Along with the riceball in their, the pair of postpone staves picked up proved to be the key to handling the tough monsters inside table mountain.

On level 19, Shiren knew he had only one more level to go. He was also dangerously low on food. He had eaten his last rice ball and didn't even have any more herbs. He reached the stairs up to level 20 with a fullness of only 2. He began in a small room, but knew he would have to remove his Armor Ward. A few steps through the corridor, he reached the starving point. Each additional step would drain him of hit points. Four steps later, he reached the monster house containing the traveler in need o rescue. But what made his eyes really wide was that he was only two steps from an herb. Reading his scroll of confusion to give him some breathing room, he ran to and ate the herb. He pondered gathering some treasure in the monster house, but knew he would be pressing his luck and the monsters' confusion would not last forever. Instead, he ran up to the fallen comrade and delivered the revival, transporting him out of the dungeon.

Now he had the pride of both finding the golden condor and rescuing a fellow traveler.

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Released the Golden Condor

Roguelike games lend themselves to stories. Sure, the games themselves have some sort of plot (retrieve the amulet of Yendor in Rogue, find the golden condor in this game), but since the levels, items, and enemies are randomly generated, each new game is a new story. Different things happen to your character each time you play and sometimes you have some narrow escapes and sometimes some spectacular failures. Nethack, one of the most famous of the genre, has created a trend of posting "ascension stories" of beating the game and YASD stories (Yet Another Stupid Death).

Last night, I finally made it through the main dungeon of the game and so, for those interested, here is my ascension story (my game save file is Gertrude, so I used that name for the story character):

---

Gertrude had made it to the Ravine of Illusions (level 26) on her last five journeys, twice getting beyond it only to die before reaching the Plains of the Sun. With two Big Riceballs in her pack, she began her new attempt. Things didn't look auspicious for her.

Right away, the fortune teller gave her a particularly grim fortune telling her that she would not get the help she needed. But who believed in those silly fortunes anyway, Gertrude thought. Ignoring the warning of Riva, the God of fate, she pressed on.

Despite finding all three companions, they all died prior to reaching the town of Cryptic Rock Valley. While feeling sad at their loss, she was sadder that her strategy would now be completely changed. She now wouldn't be able to send them off to take down enemies she didn't want to get near in the swamps. These enemies could confuse her, put her to sleep or rust her weapons. Especially because she had found precious few arrows up to this point, not having any companions would make things difficult.

She did manage to make it through the swamps relatively unscathed. All she lost was one item to a copter bird and a point of strength to a leech bug. She was lucky to always see purple slimes coming so she could unequip her stuff (pathetic as her Hide Shield +1 and Polearm +3 were) before taking them on.

Once in Table Mountain, without the help of any companions she took a lot of damage from the Great Hens and Chain Heads. She had found one Chiropractic Pot (which heals her) with 5 uses and it was quickly down to 2 after three dungeon levels. Due to her Hide Shield and plenty of rice balls found in her journey, she was able to use the tactic of hiding in a corridor and resting to restore hit points. Little did she know this would be her survival tactic from hereon out because she would never find another Chiropractic pot.

It took until floor 25 before she could upgrade her equipment. There she found a Master Sword +2 which she upgraded to +3 with an Air Bless Scroll. She now had that and (when she needed it) an Armor Ward +2 to help her out. Learning the lessons of previous adventures, she used a Power Up scroll immediately upon reaching the Ravine of Illusions and used a staff of postponement and eventually a dragon herb to take down the one Skull Wizard she saw. The Death Angels were slowed or shot at from afar to lessen their effect. The Armor Ward was now her default shield.

She progressed through floor 27, making judicious use of equipping the hide shield and waiting until her hit points were back over 100. Floor 28 was a huge monster house (is it always? it was the last time she made it there) She was relatively close to the exit so she decided running was the best option. A Death Angel would have gotten in her way, but she used a Switching Staff to switch places with it and made it to the next floor with 2/3 of her hit points.

On floor 29, she started in a room with five monsters and so used her last scroll of confusion. This allowed her to take down the monsters one by one. Every time she faced more than one enemy at once, she had to use an item like a Dragon Herb, a Staff of Postpone, or Bufu's Staff to even the adds. After every battle she needed to hide in a corridor and wait while she healed. She had a very close call when she was fighting a dragon and an Armor Knight came along and knocked off her sword and shield. She used two blasts of a Staff of Postponement to deal with the two of them.

Despite her lacking of healing items, she made it up the stairs to the plains of the sun! Where was the gold that was supposed to cover the city? Where was the Golden Condor that would grant wishes? She found markers left by the former inhabitants, explaining how a terrible evil had come and eaten the gold and trapped the condor. Exploring and heading into the final floor, she double-checked that she was ready. She took down the first two tigers she encountered with Dragon Herbs. Suddenly, she heard a clicking sound behind her and turned to find what must have taken down the Plains of the Sun - the tainted insect! When it got near her, she wasn't taking any chances and threw the Running Egg meat at it that she had picked up in Stream Village, turning it into a harmless egg with legs. Without that to worry about, she picked off the rest of the tigers before finishing the egg and ending the curse on the Golden condor.

Checking the back of the hall, she cleared the webs away and encountered the Golden Condor. On its back, she returned to Canyon Hamlet, looking down at the caves, woods, and villages she had passed along the way.

---

Now I'm really curious to change my Wi-Fi encryption so I can use my DS on it and see where I rank (I'd imagine not too high - I got about 1.5million points on that run)

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Made it to level 20

Rogue is one of the most venerable of computer games. Created back when computers (mainframes) didn't have any graphical capabilities, it relied entirely on the ascii character set to display its dungeon-crawling adventure. But the use of pure ascii text isn't necessarily what defines Rogue as a game. No, what is more important are the three main characteristics of the dungeons it generates: 1) They are randomly created every time. Their layout is never the same twice, nor are the monsters or items that populate them though you can generally count on the fact that tougher monsters and better items occur in lower dungeons. 2) Items found in the dungeons are not immediately identified. Weapons and armor are obvious in their application, but any curses or blessings they may have are not known. Wands and potions give less information - all you have from them is a descriptor such as brass or murky and their function can only be determined by magically identifying them or taking a risk and trying them out. 3) When you are dead, you are dead. You can save your game, but once you resume it your save is gone so you cannot go back to an old save. Once you die, you must begin again at the top floor of the dungeon at level one and with no items.

As brutal as this sounds, Rogue has spawned many imitators over the years (called roguelikes, naturally). Quite a few have been released for consoles and Shiren the Wanderer for the Japanese Super Famicon (SNES) is generally considered the best. It was recently re-released for the Nintendo DS and I snapped it up quickly.



I am totally digging this game. It is hard for me to describe it better than Jeremy Parish did in his review and blog post follow-up.

I've played several roguelikes in my time (mostly Nethack) and so far this is my favorite. The big problem I have with Nethack is one of its selling points - there is so much going on. Too much for me to wrap my head around and remember all the item interactions and resistances and monster traits, etc. Shiren, still has all the trappings of a roguelike, but it seems tractable to me. There are only eight different types of items and they each only have about eight different types within them so it all seems managable. Unlike in Nethack, I feel like I am actually making progress and learning what to do as I go.

That's really the key with roguelikes. The more you play them, the more you learn and master the mechanics. Parish made the analogy to Super Mario Bros. in that you refine your basic gameplay skills each time you play and each time you get a little further. Of course, here you can't memorize the level layout, but that's okay. You learn how to deal with each type of enemy, and when to use the right pots, wands, and herbs.

I also love the innovations this game adds to the roguelike genre. While your character starts anew each time he dies, the world is affected by his actions. You can cause new shops and rooms to open and new items to appear in the game by undertaking different actions. You can even help others and have them join you as companions.

I don't know if it is the cute graphics, the beautiful music, the deep but not overwhelming variety of objects and monsters, or a combination of all of them but this game has had me hooked since I picked it up a week and a half ago. I keep wanting to play thinking that next time I can finally make it to the golden condor at the top of Table Mountain.