I finished the Hole of Tonfan dungeon! It was a pretty fun dungeon, now that I look back on it. Your first few runs will always be devoted to getting Nfuu to eat the best meats you can find – first finding out what those best meats are and then obtaining some and feeding it to him. Piggo meat is great, the healing bunny meat helps a lot and my life has been saved a few times by the meat that cuts enemy ATK or HP in half.

After that it’s all up to your luck. The run I finally finished was one where I was lucky not to encounter a monster house. Those are hellish because Nfuu always insists on staying and fighting no matter what, and he usually gets himself killed. I was also lucky enough to pick up lots of mamel meat on level 1, which I used liberally on the enemies lower down. And I was lucky again when killing those transformed mamels gave me back the meat half the time, letting me reuse them at all. After that it was all a matter of arriving on floor 15 and I was done. Yay! It took me a while to believe I’d actually cleared that dungeon. ^_^

Clearing Tonfan unlocked the Trap Dungeon. That’s where they give you a Trap Armband that lets you walk on traps without triggering them. It also lets you pick them up and set them where monsters will land on them. This is important because all enemies you defeat give you 1 EXP unless they’re standing on a trap when you beat them. If they land on two traps in succession then you kill them, x2 EXP, etc etc. So for example you could lay down a slow trap, then a rock fall trap then a sleep trap then defeat the enemy that comes through that gauntlet for x3 EXP. It’s very satisfying when you finally get the hang of it.

The best thing about the Trap Dungeon is that you don’t actually have to go down to level 15 like the instructions say. Or rather you do have to, but not necessarily by conventional means. On my successful run what I did was use a Trap Scroll and spawn a ton of pitfall traps on level 1. I had about 5, IIRC. I struggled through the first 10 dungeons normally, then used the pitfall traps in quick succession to go all the way to the bottom and clear the dungeon. Yay~!

Up to that point I was having fun, more or less, but I was also somewhat frustrated. The bonus dungeons are all good and nice, but with one exception (which sucks anyway) they all make you start over from level 1 with no money or equipment.  I’m not complaining because I want things to be super-easy or anything. It’s just that I have a whole storehouse full of all kinds of weapons and items that I’m just dying to use, but the game just isn’t giving me the chance to. Then the next dungeon turned out to be no fun at all and that was the killer blow that made me put the game away once and for all.

And that’s the end of the line for me and… hmm? you want to know about the next dungeon? It’s a Jar dungeon with only one kind of jar: the kind where you toss monsters in and keep them trapped. You stay at level 1 from start to finish so there’s no way you can fight enemies one on one. You have to trap and toss, trap and toss and trap and toss them until you can make it to level 6. I know rogue-likes are all about brains over brawn but that doesn’t mean I’m up for an entire dungeon of running around with my tail between my legs.

So that’s the end of it for me and Fuurai no Shiren DS 2. It’s the first Shiren I’ve ever finished, much less done any of the bonus dungeons for, so I’ll always have fond memories of it, but I’m done now. I’ve given up on the original game as well, so my next Shiren project will be either Shiren 3 or a retry of Shiren 4. Adieu to Shiren till then!