Eating My Way Through the No-Carry-In, High-Difficulty Dungeon "The Essence of Serpentcoil Island" on Riceballs and Monster Meat

According to the streamer, the Essence of Serpentcoil Island has a standard design: no items can be brought in, there are 99 floors, and items start unidentified. Enemies on the shallow floors are relatively weak, but in the latter half the enemies that appear become extremely strong. For that reason, the streamer said it is important to get prepared while on the lower floors, and adopted a strategy of identifying items during the safe early game to make the later part of the adventure easier.

Early on, they picked up a shield with many open slots. It had a seal that slows the decrease of fullness, plus a seal that seemed to be for dealing with dragons, among others. Removing the seal-lock would give it six open slots, and they judged the first two seals to look extremely good.

What the streamer called "the most important task of this expedition" was making riceballs on floor 2. Facing a monster that turns items into riceballs, they split their stones up one by one, treated the Gitan lying on the floor as items too, and turned every item except the shield into riceballs. As the streamer explained, with a suitable shield equipped they take only 1 damage per hit, and natural regeneration restores 1 point every turn, so they won't go down no matter how many hours they're attacked. This monster rarely uses its special skill, but this way they could keep working safely.

In this way they made 13 large riceballs and kept eating them. Continuing to make riceballs on the next floor as well, their fullness exceeded 150 and they reached the "Dosukoi state." The streamer declared they would proceed all the way to floor 99 in this state. The advantage of the Dosukoi state that the streamer repeatedly cited is the ability to dig through walls. On floor 10, they felt something was off about the corridor layout, dug through a wall, and found a hidden shop.

At the floor 10 shop, they found a sword with seven open seal slots. The streamer explained that the monsters this sword is effective against are spread across a relatively wide range, making it especially useful from the early to mid game. It was priced at just barely what they could afford by selling off their staffs and pots, so they bought it. The idea was to build an advantageous position early and snowball the gains.

After that, they found a Wish Shrine leading to a special floor and chose weapon and armor enhancement. This floor has many equipment-enhancement items, such as scrolls that raise enhancement values, scrolls that increase the number of seals, and pots that gradually raise the enhancement value of equipment placed inside. The streamer said that because equipment modifiers have a big effect in this game, they wanted to raise them even if it meant taking some risks. They also had a Mazerun that appeared on the same floor fuse the equipment they had brought along.

On floor 19, they had a Mazerun fuse a Giant Paper Fan. Since its attacks hurt, they drank a Haste Grass to deal with it safely and alternated feeding it items. Partway through, a sound like a flute echoed from somewhere, and the powered-up Mazerun sped up. To be safe, the streamer took the cautious route and defeated it, completing a sword that knocks enemies flying.

At a shop they found afterward, a katana was for sale, and the streamer rejoiced, saying "I love katanas." It had three seals: one that triggers critical hits depending on the last digit of your HP, one that restores 10% of the damage dealt, and one that turns defeated monsters into meat. The price was 20,000 Gitan. The streamer said "I absolutely want this katana" and "I'm going to go jog around a bit and lose some weight." Afterward they said "That was a good sweat" and "I feel lighter in body and soul," and proceeded to the next floor with the katana. This meat-conversion seal became the backbone of the eating-their-way-through run from then on.

The Strengthening Pot they had carefully carried from floor 10 broke, and the modifiers on the sword and shield inside became +10. On floor 24, they played around with a mechanism that bounces back thrown pots by throwing a Storage Pot at it, and succeeded in gaining one extra Storage Pot.

On floor 29 they got tangled up with tough enemies, but the streamer said it was no problem since their equipment had grown strong. They used a scroll they picked up to remove the seal-lock on their weapon, and once the meat-conversion seal took effect, they immediately obtained Kid Tank meat.

The streamer blocked the room's entrance with a staff, creating a situation where enemies wouldn't spawn, and then ate the meat. Transforming into a Kid Tank lets you fire iron arrows endlessly. According to the streamer, iron arrows will be an important resource from here on, so it's good to farm them now. Joking that "all us poor folks do this," they stopped once they had farmed about 300 and the transformation was about to wear off.

Floor 38 was a maze-like map where large numbers of items could be farmed. The streamer said that since they could break walls anytime in the Dosukoi state, it was practically a bonus stage. Here they put three bracelets into a pot together, which revealed a Sense Bracelet that shows where enemies are, a bracelet that lets you fire two arrows, and a terrifying bracelet that explodes just from walking. The streamer reflected that it was a good thing they hadn't tried equipping them.

On floor 41, they used a Mazegon, the upgraded form of the Mazerun, to do some fusing. In their previous attempt, when they reached floor 70 for the first time, they had been beaten by an enemy called the Miracle Chicken. As a countermeasure, they fused an axe and Confusion Grass into their main weapon. Another one came right after, so they also fused a different shield into their main shield.

On floor 44, they picked up a Paralysis Staff and a Dragonkiller, which works against the dragons that would likely torment them in the latter half. There were no more Mazerun-type monsters around, but they transformed using meat they had on hand. As the streamer explained, when transformed you swallow the items at your feet and can fuse up to three. They "taste-tested" the katana, the Dragonkiller, and the Paralysis Staff in order, then undid the transformation to complete the fusion.

At the halfway point on floor 51, they entered a Monster House. The streamer judged that the enemies in the room didn't look like much and fought normally while using Haste Grass. They dealt with enemies from the wall side so as not to get attacked from behind, figuring that since none of the enemies had ranged attacks, they could win just by hitting them. Thanks to the Dragonkiller, some enemies went down in a single hit. After turning all of them into meat, their inventory was full.

On floor 61, they thought they had entered a normal room, not a Monster House. But inside were an enemy that inflicts hypnosis, an enemy that turns items on the floor into weeds, an enemy that curses held items, a Nigiri Boss that turns items into riceballs, and more. Sarcastically telling the developer "Thank you, Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd.," the streamer read a Confusion Scroll. Partway through, an enemy evolved and the confusion wore off, and there was also an enemy that hypnotizes the entire room. The streamer was wary that if you neglect countermeasures, hypnosis could make you throw your weapon or the like, and in the worst case your run could end here. They did in fact get hypnotized, but "one thing led to another" and they survived, then made their way to the stairs.

At the floor 65 shop, they found a shield that uses fullness to reduce damage. The streamer judged it would pair well with this run, since on a journey of eating meat along the way they wouldn't run short of food. This shield also had the Battle Counter seal, which the streamer described as "greatly buffed in this installment." With the shopkeeper watching, they ate Mazegon meat and swallowed the shop's shield right there to fuse it.

Since they hadn't picked up a Magic Shield by floor 71, they burned incense as a countermeasure against enemies that use sleep magic. According to the streamer, taking a single one of this enemy's spells can mean dying while asleep. Its habitat spans a very wide range of floors, so dealing with every encounter using incense is difficult, but they said it is safest to burn incense immediately at the slightest sense of danger.

From floor 80, Arch Dragons appear, attacking from anywhere on the floor. When their flames kept them from moving forward, the streamer burned barrier-type incense to nullify the fire. When an enemy was across a river and out of reach, they used Lord of the Underworld meat. The streamer described the Lord of the Underworld as having the strongest specs, moving at double speed through walls, and said they used it luxuriously here merely as transportation to cross the river.

On floor 97, you tend to get surrounded by enemies right after descending the stairs. But since the accompanying Lord of the Underworld defeated them, the streamer put it as just lounging around in the room while food got delivered to them. Eating Purgatory Monk meat makes you immune to fire attacks, so even Arch Dragons look cute, they said. Arch Dragon meat let them breathe fire at every enemy on the floor, which made them feel "absolutely amazing the first time." That said, when they actually tried it, it apparently ended surprisingly quickly.

On floor 98, while something flew at them and they took fire, they used a Guidance Staff to find the stairs and descended. The fire was nullified by the meat's effect.

On floor 99, the streamer looked back on the journey. They said it was a journey of eating riceballs starting from floor 2, succeeding at a diet just once but immediately rebounding, and eating riceballs and meat from start to finish. The tastiest was Mazerun-type meat, which lets you eat equipment too, and they said that thanks to the equipment they had painstakingly fused, they gained the strength to eat their way through even the deepest floors as they pleased.

Their final inventory included seven Revival Grasses and four Blank Scrolls, and the rest was "junk that's handy to have." The streamer summed up that they rampaged around in the Dosukoi state from the early game, rolled that early advantage forward, and ran all the way to the end.

At the very end stood a mysterious stone monument closely resembling the one in the village. The adventure lasted eight hours, and the clear came on the seventh attempt. The streamer rated it a dungeon with real substance, one that made them feel this was exactly the kind of dungeon they had wanted to play.