Field Bandit[edit]
This little guy isn't much of a force to fear in combat, but it prioritizes walking onto items on the field. Any item a Field Bandit touches, instantly turns into Weeds, thus leaving the original item destroyed and lost forever. For more advanced players, this little guy adds additional risk to sorting your inventory via placing items on the ground, something that is a bit of an art form in this game. Always respect higher level versions of this monster, especially if it levels up to 3 or 4. Those are the most dangerous enemies in the game to everything in your inventory. Now you might be thinking to yourself, why would I bother putting any items on the ground then while the Field Bandit is here? Well, you might be incentivised to do so because of our number one notorious monster that works in tandem with the bandit.
Rice Changer[edit]
You will come to recognize this oddball creature by it's unique design and bright, warning colors just like any dangerous animal of nature. It is an entity that you will come to either love or loathe, perhaps both. This is the 1st monster that you will want to consider learning how to handle appropriately, as doing so can greatly aid you in your runs. Its ability is simple. It may breath its transformative breath over Shiren and then change any one non equipped item in your inventory into a Big Riceball. This monster can instantly destroy anything on your person, but at least you will have a riceball out of it! When it comes to combating a rice changer, once you see one on screen you may want to consider spending a few turns dropping your very important gear on the ground to safe keep it from the changer. Just make sure you keep an eye out for those bandits! I will discuss common strategy regarding this entity in a later paragraph, for now I will discuss the other enemies to take note of.
Firepuff[edit]
This is the first enemy that can utilize fire damage. Fire damage bypasses your shield and defensive bonuses unless you have a fire protection seal. A single fire puff can be a serious threat to you, as it will chunk your life down by 10 hp potentially. They more often than not spam their fire attack, but it does have a small chance of not working. They also count as "float" monsters, and can fly over all of the open gaps of the ridge to reach you.
Evil Soldier[edit]
When this monster is defeated, it will spawn a Dead Soldier after a few turns where it died. This monster seeks out other monsters. Upon being adjacent with one, it will level up the monster. Evil Soldiers are the second enemy you will want to learn how to utilize to your advantage. They can easily put you in great danger by leveling up an undesirable enemy. Or they can give you great advantages in a controlled environment.
Egg Thing[edit]
Sometimes you may encounter an egg monster that can move twice per turn. They are useful to defeat as they usually drop a Riceball. Higher level versions can drop other useful items though are difficult to kill as they warp away from you.
| Monster | Floors | Experience | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Japanese | ||
| Bowboy Family | ボウヤー | 5 - 6 | 6 |
| Pickpocket Family | ガマラ | 5 - 6 | 8 |
| Field Bandit | 畠荒らし | 5 - 6 | 7 |
| Firepuff Family | ヒーポフ | 5 - 6 | 10 |
| Rice Baby Family | 妖怪にぎり変化 | 5 - 7 | 12 |
| Evil Soldier Family | 鬼面武者 | 5 - 6 | 15 |
| Dead Soldier Family | ぼうれい武者 | 5 - 6 | 4 |
| Egg Thing Family | ぴーたん | 5 - 6 | 7 |
A great Shiren player once claimed that the following 2 floors are the most dangerous floors in the entire standard game. I am inclined to agree with them to an extent. Pegasus Ridge introduces a handful of new enemies that are easily capable of sabotaging an inexperienced player and one upping experienced ones from time to time. If you respect your environment however, you can tame the danger present here. Or at least brace yourself to hold back those tears as you watch your precious items get destroyed.
Alright, lets discuss some strategy. Besides being a little more cautious on these floors but still exploring them in full for items, there are 2 objectives to accomplish here that while both are not necessary to do, can be tremendously useful to employ, especially for beginners.
The first strategy is to secure your food. The Rice Changer creates Big Rice Ball's out of items in your inventory. Having 5-6 is more than enough to make it through Table Mountain in full and keep your hunger in check so long as nothing happens to them. The first thing you will want to do is go about the floor and clear out as many monsters as you can. If you find a rice changer, consider keeping it alive. If you happen to have a Staff of Sloth or Poison Herb, that is all the better. Next, you will need some items that you are okay with sacrificing. If you happened to obtain at least 1 bundle of arrows, you can fire them all at a wall so each is on the ground. You can then walk on top of them without picking them up, and swap them with another item in your inventory. This allows you to store individual arrows. Each individual arrow can be hit by the rice changer to make a whole rice ball, so just finding one bundle of arrows is all you really need. Finally, you will want to put your important items on the ground. Anything you do not want to have changed. Make sure you keep an eye out for those field bandits! After this go get your fellow rice changer and let them breath on you. They may attack frequently so I recommend figuring out how many hits it takes you to kill one first so you know when your hp is in danger. While you let the changer do its thing, it is good practice to be standing on top of an emergency item you left on the ground. Your health will get low doing this more than likely. If you pass turns while standing on a Staff of Paralysis, Staff of Postpone, Knockback Staff, or any other useful item that can 100% deal with the rice changer in an emergency then you will be that much safer. You now have the knowledge to utilize the rice changer as much as you like. You can max out Shiren's fullness or increase it dramatically by eating a riceball while Shiren is full, so if you really want to go crazy with this strategy you can. The only other thing to keep in mind is that {{Shiren|The Winds of Kron will eventually force you to move on.
The second strategy is to buffer your level. Thanks to the combination of 2 things being present here, you can increase your level very quickly. First, find a Rice Changer and get it to follow you around. You may want a Staff of Sloth, Postpone, Paralysis, Knockback, or Switching Staff to keep you safe in an emergency. You will now want to find and kill Evil Soldiers to level up this Rice Changer. Always keep a safe distance away from high level monsters when you're doing this. Due to the layout of the ridge, it is not difficult to ensure that the rice changer levels up. You will want to do this twice, as most monsters grow to level 4 (the Rice Changer, already is a level 2 monster.) Once you have a Rice Master, now you just have to kill it. The reason why we want to make a high level rice changer is two fold. It provides the most experience to you out of all of the monsters here. It also suffers from a cool feature Chunsoft included. Any member of the rice baby family dies instantly when you hit them with a thrown riceball. This highly dangerous monster will be put down in no time this way, and you will reap enough experience to on average hit level 18, giving you an insane power boost that should without carelessness, guarantee you make it to at least the Table Mountain floors proper. Just make sure you have an emergency item or multiple riceballs on hand in case the thrown riceball misses the Rice Master. Take caution about not leveling up the Field Bandit enemy, or the other enemies. They are not so easily dealt with and each is a highly dangerous threat to you at this point assuming you started with low tier gear or none at all.
I should mention that you can do either of these strategies in any order you wish of course. I should also mention that you can absolutely succeed and win at Table Mountain without doing either of these strategies, though it will make it quite a bit more challenging! This is Shiren the wanderer after all, you should always consider abusing anything and everything you can to gain advantage over the game.