Some thoughts on the Chroma Quaternion Shop dungeon

[Victar]

Chroma Quaternion has a Shop dungeon that is worth experiencing for its quirky side-story about the Curie sisters. Usually Ark is the "straight man" of the party in comedy scenes, but whenever the Curie sisters show up, EVERYONE else is "normal" compared to them!

Like most Exe-Create Shop dungeons, the first floor is intended for the early game, the second floor is for the midgame, and the third and final floor is for the endgame. The party shouldn't need to grind on any postgame enemies to clear the Shop dungeon.

The treasures in the Shop dungeon are decent, but I can't recommend them over the Storehouse treasures. Overall, it isn't very efficient to spend Shop currency gaining access to the dungeon until all the better things are purchased - Storehouse keys, One-Step Boots, and boosts to Arena currency and role experience.

The disadvantage to waiting until late in the game to visit the Shop dungeon is that the enemies and bosses on the first two floors will provide no challenge at all.

The special prize for clearing the Shop dungeon is a unique summon. This summon does not do any combat damage or healing, does not buff the party, and does not debuff enemies. Instead, this summon steals a drop item from the enemy - which the party gets in addition to the enemy's regular drop!

So, the true value of the Shop dungeon is to get the summon and use it on endgame bosses, especially sub-bosses in the final main game dungeon, the final postgame dungeon, and the final dungeon of the optional superboss quest. Some of these bosses drop uniquely powerful or useful weapons or armor, and the special summon will get an extra copy - which can be turned into a ring if desired!

There is a big risk/reward tradeoff in this. The player must set their desired summon outside of combat, so the player is sacrificing the benefit of other powerful summons to have the "steal" summon available.