Beating IGNISTONE with Firepower Instead of Just Guards: A Build Log of Mine Floor 100 and the Shadow Cave

In the story, the village where Yukari, a swordswoman, lives is bustling with a festival when its precious stone is stolen by masked warriors. To get it back, Yukari descends into a mine whose layout changes every time she enters.

According to the player, the game is thoughtfully designed so it can be played with just a mouse. All the player can do is attack and guard. The core mechanic is the just guard: guard at the exact moment you would be hit, and the enemy is stunned, letting you attack freely. The player says this moment feels the best.

In the mine, you can return home temporarily every 10 floors. The price, however, is having to watch a mysterious dance. In the village, you can craft accessories and new weapons from the stones you've collected, and you can also read posts from other players on a bulletin board.

Each of the masked beans in the mine has its own tell to read. The player introduces them as follows:

• To Bean: aim for the moment its head touches you
• Pata Bean: leaps up, then swoops down
• Spear Bean: backs off, then suddenly charges
• No Bean: the moment you see it jump is your cue to guard

The player admits that the video only shows the cool moments, and that behind the scenes they got beaten up quite a lot.

After returning to the village once, the player obtains two charms. One makes you 1.5 times stronger only when the enemy's level is even; the other makes you 1.5 times stronger only when you aren't holding any mushrooms. When both conditions are met, the bonus reaches up to 2.25 times.

Various events also happen in the mine. Some let you gain ore at the cost of HP, while others let you pay money to restore HP. Because of this, the player explains, the route choices that appear every five floors turn out to be surprisingly important.

When returning home at floor 30, Yukari is stopped by a smoothie stand and takes on a minigame where she makes a smoothie by shaking the mouse. After 82 shakes in 10 seconds, her attack was boosted 1.3 times for the next run. Combined with the charms, that's a boost of up to roughly 3 times. In this state, the newly appearing Sleepy Bean didn't even require guarding, and the Lanky Bean could be crushed before it got an attack off.

The player points to the decision of whether to keep attacking or stop as the game's central tension. Because of screen shake and hitstop, you're tempted to hold off attacking if you're going for a just guard. On the other hand, sometimes you can just barely finish off an enemy before it attacks. The player says this choice is what gives the game its depth.

On the floor-40 trip home, the player crafted a sword that grants 1.5 times damage only while the special-move gauge is full. They also equipped a charm that doubles attack in exchange for reducing defense to 0.7 times, heading back into the mine with a total of 4.5 times firepower. The player's logic goes like this: if you take hits with a just guard, you don't need defense. If you kill enemies before they hit you, you don't need just guards either. So attack power is all you need. Right after that, though, they took some pretty painful hits.

From there, they kept pushing through new enemies like the Flying Bean and the tough-looking Rock Bean with sheer firepower.

On the floor-70 trip home, they stacked even more boosts. The main ones were:

• A potion that boosts attack 1.5 times
• A shield set bonus that raises the sword's attack bonus from 1.5 times to 2 times
• 3.5 times attack after three consecutive just guards
• Attack always doubled, in exchange for HP not recovering above 40%
• Attack doubled when HP is at half or below

When an easy-to-read bean appeared, the player deliberately stopped attacking to earn the three-consecutive-just-guard bonus. As a result, attack power reached 42 times.

With that, they cleared floor 100 of the mine. Looking back, the player notes that despite this being a just-guard-focused game, they pushed through with firepower, joking that in the end, power is what you can rely on. The village's stone is recovered and the story reaches a stopping point, but six new dungeons are unlocked here. According to the player, everything up to this point was the tutorial.

Next up is the Shadow Cave, which the developer apparently recommends most. Since you can't bring equipment into this dungeon, you start by picking up gear from treasure chests. Early on, the player found a shield and a healing sword, instantly raising base firepower 5 times.

In this dungeon, you can sometimes receive charms after battles. This time, the player got a charm that will pay out 2,000 berries in the future. There was also a charm that doubles firepower in exchange for spending money, and the player judged that if keeping double firepower all the way to floor 100 costs only around 2,000 berries in total, that's not bad value.

The player states that the basic idea of this game is to defeat enemies before they attack you. Enemies gradually get stronger, so you need to get stronger faster than they do. However, you can only hold up to eight charms. Just stacking charms with flat multipliers has its limits.

That's why the player focuses on scaling charms. The example they give is an effect where firepower keeps growing, 2 times, 4 times, and beyond, as your money increases. The idea is to hunt for charms like these at shops and exchanges before the enemies' growth catches up. The player sees this as one winning strategy that doesn't depend on just guard precision.

With the healing sword and shield together, the player could now fully restore HP at any time by paying about 300 berries. They then combined a charm that makes chance-based effects trigger more easily with an effect that gives a 10% chance to quadruple attack on hit. The synergy pushed the trigger rate up to 30%, and most enemies could now be defeated in about three hits.

Next, they found the charm they had just been talking about, the one that increases attack according to how much money you have. With 2,600 berries on hand, attack was at +130%. The player says all money had started to look like attack power. Selling one mushroom works out to +2.5% attack, and getting the charm that pays out 4,000 berries works out to +200% attack.

There are places where you can upgrade weapons, but spending too much money lowers this charm's effect. The player says deciding how far to upgrade is the tricky part. There were also fortune-telling events where you receive one of two effects, and an effect that raises attack by 15% every time you open a treasure chest. Actively choosing routes that boosted attack, the player had reached 12 times attack by floor 44.

At a shop, the player also found a charm that gets stronger the more mushrooms you eat. There was also a place where you could pay to upgrade charms themselves, and they further boosted the money-scaling charm. After the upgrade, an effect that had been +400% at 8,000 berries became +444%. By the player's calculation, even after paying 300 berries for the upgrade, it came out to a net 27% firepower increase, making it a decent investment.

While opening treasure chests for money, they got a sword slightly stronger than their current one. At this stage, the player decided they no longer needed healing. They also cited as an advantage that switching to a weapon with a higher base value allows upgrading it at low cost.

At a shop, they also found a charm that quadruples only the first hit. The player buys it to avoid giving enemies a chance to demand a just guard. The reason, they say, is that missing a just guard makes them sad, so they'd rather not be asked to just guard in the first place.

By floor 95, the player had 10,000 berries and attack power had reached roughly 1,000 times. They pushed on through to floor 100, clearing the Shadow Cave, and the video ends there. Even though it's a game built around the just guard, what the player chose to the very end was a build that defeats enemies before a just guard is ever needed.