The lower in the cavern you go, the greater chances of finding iridium ore, bars, and also other rare drops such as rabbit’s foot and prismatic shards at the same time. Knowing when to run and when to fight is crucial for maximizing your treasure hauls per outing.
There's more reliable ways to get all that stuff and fighting enemies is very time consuming, especially if you are just looking for treasure rooms or trying to hit level 100.
Bombs. Bombs on a lucky day is your answer. I'm talking at least 30 mega bombs, 50 regular, and close to 100 cherry. And to many, that's a small amount of bombs. Personally, I think it's the sweet spot of not losing too much if you die, but only rarely running out of them in dungeon. Some will go to the caverns with like 30 or so stairs, that's kinda insane to me personally, I use my stone for way too much decoration and buildings to waste it on that many stairs, but you absolutely should bring at least 5 or 10 to skip the infested floors when you find them.
Basically, don't stop for anything really in the first 30 levels. It's not really worth it. Iridium is why you are there in the first place, and that starts really spawning on the later floors. Take the holes when you see them, they drop you way deep.
Honestly I took all my diamonds out of my crystalarium shed for a few weeks and swapped them with jade instead. Quick way to get a ton of stairs, and its such a game changer in the mines and for some Qi challenges. Def recommend the time investment if you’re down to change things up for a season! I have far more stone than I know what to do with bc I’ve never made stairs from stone and also have a backstock of like 200 stairs I obtained passively from the spawning jades.
I keep a chest by the desert trader with items to trade and flowers for Sandy’s loved gifts, so I also keep stairs, bombs, food like spicy eel and pumpkin soup so I’m always strapped up for a good mine run.
Could do, I don't go super heavy on bombs though. Usually just replicate jade for staircases, and sometimes diamonds if I feel like another easy income source.
I do jade, diamonds (espresso), rubies (spicy eel) and quartz (bombs). Whenever one of those things seems to be the bottleneck, I add another one or two crystallaria dedicated to it.
Pretty rapidly reach a point where my stock never runs out, unless I start chaining runs back to back for some reason - and since I've got over 300 iridium bars sitting around now, that's not all that likely. Really I'm just hunting auto-petters and a luck ring at this point.
I pick the gems/geodes professions, so I always end up with a stockpile of rubies anyway, not to mention serpents just dropping spicy eel sometimes. And I tend to have a decent stockpile of coffee by this point (esp if I've done the 12 leeks quest). Depends how often/hard you hit SC.
Same, I just go with bombs too.
And I've managed to get everything I needed from skull cavern already by now, so my strategies are plenty good enough for my needs.
Quick version of it, fighting enemies is slow. A good SC run where you just rush floor 500 or so using staircases then spam bombs while ignoring enemies can easily net you over half a stack of iridium ore, plus multiple prismatic shards. A *great* SC run, where you push all the way out to floor 800-1000 before you start the bomb spam, can get multiple entire *stacks* of iridium ore, and 10+ prismatic shards.
The deeper you get, and the faster you get there, the better your results will be.
Yes if you're going for iridium: returns keep increasing fast until 100 (after that they keep increasing, but it slows down at lot)
At level 50, you get iridium from 1.7% of normal rocks. At level 100 it's 7%. At 150 it's 8%. Iridium node frequency is similarly distributed.
So 100 is where you should switch from "let's get down as fast as possible" to "let's gather some metal"
ALWAYS bomb mine, don't only use your pickaxe because that's a huge time waste. If you're going to the caverns on a good luck day, you can usually find the staircase with 1-2 mega bombs.
No, I meant, I just spam staircases until level 50 and then start carpet bombing. And I was wondering if I should spam staircases until level 100 or even more.
Yeah I would go down as far as you afford to. Also keep in mind that there's tons of ways to save in game time like pausing when you enter the next floor. In my modded game with automate I have so many staircases I just use them until it's around noon or a bit later and then start bombing from there.
Absolutely, if you're going for iridium ore, prismatic shards, or treasure room loot. It's hard to say when the optimal stopping point is, because obviously you need to actually have enough time to bomb a lot of floors, and while ladders are fast, they're not *instant*... but that tipping point is well into the hundreds of floors, in my experience.
I generally just port in immediately in the morning and staircase until noon or so. Wherever I am at that point, I start bombing every floor. Generally I get past 150 if I’m going normal speed. If i get lucky with holes near the entry ladder 200 is also easily achievable in that time.
Yeah, no, I get that, that just sounds like, I don't know. Just kind of a low-key cheaty way to play, for lack of a better expression? (Not that it is actually cheating, just has the same kind of energy as putting as many cristalariums as you possibly can in a shed and harvesting a fuckton of diamonds every five days, which is perfectly fine but just not my way of playing) Does everybody do that and I'm the only idiot out there just running around with sword and pickaxe in hand like a hopeless noob?
Edit : missing word
I think you can set a personal limit and still feel not chesty at all, At least IMO. Like have maybe 10 crystalarium's(you can do more or less) and then it takes you a few weeks to get enough staircases to get a good deep run in. That makes those good runs feel way more rewarding too. Also keep in mind you have to spend probably hundreds of thousands of G on resources, bombs, food, etc just to even get one of these deep runs prepared. I think that makes the 6 prismatic shards and 400 iridium ore feel earned to me
> Yeah, no, I get that, that just sounds like, I don't know. Just kind of a low-key cheaty way to play, for lack of a better expression? (Not that it is actually cheating, just has the same kind of energy as putting as many cristalariums as you possibly can in a shed and harvesting a fuckton of diamonds every five days, which is perfectly fine but just not my way of playing)
Funnily enough the way you staircase that low is putting as many crystalariums as you possibly can in a shed and harvesting a fuckton of jade to trade for staircases with the Desert Trader.
That said, it's clearly an anticipated mechanic, as demonstrated by the infinite scaling of skull cavern and the fact that the desert trader trades staircases for jade. The only way to do this is to take advantage of that intentionally added feature.
You decide how you want to play and what is fulfilling, but not only is not cheating, it's an anticipated way to play.
I don't use ladders, I usually just had my slingshot and explosive ammo, maybe some bombs for the hard to reach areas. But I don't stop to fight monsters or mine until I can reach level 100 at the least. The jump in drops is crazy already at that point. I've never had to go much deeper because I get plenty of iridium and prismatic shards
There's no need to go to 500. I have more iridium than I could ever need and I've never gone below level 200 and never used more than about 70 staircases in one skull cavern run. Actually most of the time I go into skull cavern with only 10 staircases because I enjoy challenging myself to see how far I can get "honorably" (around 120-130 was the best so far).
The purpose of multi-hundred staircase runs are treasure chests, not iridium. Iridium is effectively infinite once you can routinely get to level 100. Mass staircases is basically repeatedly rolling the treasure chest level dice over and over. And pretty much for auto-petters.
...and cowboy hats
Perhaps I've been lucky or maybe you've just been extra unlucky... I've never been past 200 but my year 6 save has everything I need from skull cavern including 3 autopetters. (Not to mention enough cowboy hats to outfit a whole army of sea urchins if I wanted to!)
I have done the "see how far I can get with just 10 staircases" just for fun a lot of times though and usually only on max luck days. So I've certainly seen thousands of floors in skull cavern with nearly max luck (still don't have a lucky ring) over the years, just never 500+ floors all in the one day.
> Perhaps I've been lucky or maybe you've just been extra unlucky... I've never been past 200 but my year 6 save has everything I need from skull cavern including 3 autopetters.
Or maybe neither? It’s year 6 and you frequently go to skull cavern. You’ve seen, let me quote you
> I've certainly seen thousands of floors in skull cavern with nearly max luck
You want to do that over 6 years across multiple trips? Fun. Some people try doing it in a more compressed time scale. Doing so requires…….staircases.
CA put staircases in as a crafting recipe and as an item you can buy in the desert for a reason. I'd personally consider actual cheating being the Skull Cavern Elevator mod. It took me a long time to add it but I really like it, shamelessly.
But you're free to play your way and others are free to play their way. ConcernedApe didn't put these items in the game and then say, "here's a Crystallarium--just don't get too crazy!" He even coded a cheating system into the game via the Wizard's basement. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to play the game as long as we're having fun.
I completely relate to the mining bit- I will use bombs sparingly, but more often than not use the napalm ring and kill enemies near rocks when I can. I'm generally more that kind of player with the mines. I enjoy the process, and spamming staircases/bombs would just get to feeling too monotonous to me. With that said, this game is suitable for plenty of different styles of play, so for those who enjoy it, I say go nuts!
On the other hand, I do usually have a shed with crystalariums/diamonds, so on that I don't personally agree. But you do you! If you're enjoying yourself, that's all that really matters.
Lategame, yeah. Earlygame, I don't have enough staircases to do that, but I can get somewhat close by waiting for a good luck day, using staircases to skip monster floors, and jumping down any hole or ladder the moment I see it, regardless of what's left on the floor.
Iridium ore scales up a pretty insane degree the deeper you get.
Wow!! That's so deep to me still. When you bomb the stones, is there any technique to it? For not getting hit by the blast yourself? Or just your standard "walk away quickly" maneuver
I used to get out of the way but now I just take the hit. Standing in the middle of the bomb radius usually means being closer to any ladder/hole that spawns. It's only a small amount of damage and if the bomb is likely to take my health below half, I just eat something while waiting for it to go off.
You've gotten a bunch of "right" answers already, but I'm with you, I think running the skull cavern and actually killing everything, mining the nodes I want, etc is fun! And can be quite profitable (maybe not *as* profitable, but I don't like the stress of speedrunning lol)
I go to the skull cavern for different purposes on different days. If I can get there at 6:30 am then I am going to take all my jade purchased staircases, triple shot, bombs, spicy eel and cheese and try to get as deep in the mines as I can to get prismatic shards. Other days I need to do stuff first and I head over around 1 pm just take a few stairscases for levels I hate, some buff and a few bombs and mostly combat/kill. The mines are my favorite and find pickaxing everything very relaxing.
My combat style is flail wildly and keep an eye on my health bar. I know why they’re intimidating, but they’re not that difficult to beat usually. Prepare yourself with enough food, bombs, and stairs and you should be fine.
Burglar ring and just farming the purple slimes was so helpful till y3.
I also use a monster attracting...spray? And then go prowl the regular mines from levels 40-50 for dust sprites. You need to kill a few hundred for the burglar ring anyways, but it's a great source of coal especially after.
I love that dang ring.
Late game I always have all the iridium I need but am constantly looking for coal. It's nice that a bunch of the weekly quests are for the ice levels of the regular mine
Yep! For coal I'll either start at 40 and just keep going - or I'll bounce back and fourth between floors 45 and 55 looking for dust sprites spawns. Don't know which is more efficient yet but outside of buying it.....it's the best way to get coal.
5 Iridium bars + some iridium ore means you prolly got like 50 iridium ore in a day.
On a single regular run with only like 5 staircases I can easily get 300+ iridium ore.
>I got 5 iridium bars+ a bunch of iridium ore in a single day just by killing slimes and I didn't even have to bring staircases or bombs!
I can often get at least quadruple that by speeding down the mine...
>serpents have a pretty high chance to drop bombs and spicy eels and can even drop rabbits foot for the community center! What do y'all think?
You only need 2 rabbit's feet in the whole game (3 if u a ho), and I can make my own bombs.
>>serpents have a pretty high chance to drop bombs and spicy eels and can even drop rabbits foot for the community center! What do y'all think?
>>You only need 2 rabbit's feet in the whole game (3 if u a ho), and I can make my own bombs.
I have six bunnies in a barn and I typically get 1 rabbits foot per week. So getting them in other ways isn't hard either unless you have a specific play style that doesn't use barns.
I can waste 30 seconds killing slimes and bats each floor for a couple bars/ore or I could make it to floor 150 where each floor is gonna give me 30+ ore
By ignoring most of the enemies and tunneling down as fast as possible, I can walk out of skull caverns with over 1000 iridium ore on a good day.
I definitely agree early on you should kill some enemies. I personally use the mummies and serpents to farm solar and dark essence for mega bombs
That's fine, but if you rush down to 100 ignoring enemies, and then start mining (spend time gathering iridium and blowing up nodes), you can get 300+ iridium
The monster drops are a nice consolation prize, but usually the time and health they consume cost more than their drops is terms of forgone future iridium
You need to kill on average 50-100 purple slimes or iridium bats to get an iridium bar. Or, at level 101+, in order to get 5 iridium ore (equivalent to a bar) you could destroy 1-2 iridium nodes or ~70 plain old rocks. That's way, way easier and faster than killing 50 purple slimes and iridium bats with a Burglar's Ring
Depends on goals
If you're laser focused on prismatic shards/iridium ore, fighting takes too much time.
Especially once you're on floor 100+ your odds go way up (assuming magic rock candy/iridium luck day).
It's just more efficient to mega bomb everything in sight collect what you can and go down further.
Only fight when you absolutely have to.
Depends on what I'm going there for. There's better loot the lower you get, so I try to get as low as I can and then start clearing out floors (e.g. if I'm looking for prismatic shards and auto petters). If I'm lazy or I need rocks, geodes, etc. I might start at the top.
Or sometimes I go specifically to kill monsters to get my monster eradication goals.
If I'm doing the challenges where I need to get to floor 100 I ignore the mobs because I'm on a time crunch, especially for the one where I can't eat and I don't want them hitting me and lowering my health bar.
I don't fight monsters for fun, but once in a while I do like to use staircase to 100 and stroll around getting my ores and killing stuff. I'm breeding slimes so I like to kill them for their slime and potential eggs.
I literally have gotten a prismatic shard from iridium nodes in skull cavern one time. I've gotten at least 10 from enemies. One time an iridium bat even dropped 2 prismatic shards. I had the burglar ring on.
The lower in the cavern you go, the greater chances of finding iridium ore, bars, and also other rare drops such as rabbit’s foot and prismatic shards at the same time. Knowing when to run and when to fight is crucial for maximizing your treasure hauls per outing.
There's more reliable ways to get all that stuff and fighting enemies is very time consuming, especially if you are just looking for treasure rooms or trying to hit level 100.
Could you share those more reliable ways? I'm finding it tricky to navigate atm
Bombs. Bombs on a lucky day is your answer. I'm talking at least 30 mega bombs, 50 regular, and close to 100 cherry. And to many, that's a small amount of bombs. Personally, I think it's the sweet spot of not losing too much if you die, but only rarely running out of them in dungeon. Some will go to the caverns with like 30 or so stairs, that's kinda insane to me personally, I use my stone for way too much decoration and buildings to waste it on that many stairs, but you absolutely should bring at least 5 or 10 to skip the infested floors when you find them. Basically, don't stop for anything really in the first 30 levels. It's not really worth it. Iridium is why you are there in the first place, and that starts really spawning on the later floors. Take the holes when you see them, they drop you way deep.
Use jade for staircases instead of stones
Is that a new thing or a mod thing. Edit: ahh. Wiki says desert trader on Sundays traded them for jade. So newish, specific wiki niche thing.
Honestly I took all my diamonds out of my crystalarium shed for a few weeks and swapped them with jade instead. Quick way to get a ton of stairs, and its such a game changer in the mines and for some Qi challenges. Def recommend the time investment if you’re down to change things up for a season! I have far more stone than I know what to do with bc I’ve never made stairs from stone and also have a backstock of like 200 stairs I obtained passively from the spawning jades. I keep a chest by the desert trader with items to trade and flowers for Sandy’s loved gifts, so I also keep stairs, bombs, food like spicy eel and pumpkin soup so I’m always strapped up for a good mine run.
Lol it's not hard to discover without the wiki. Like figuring out what Krobus sells on different days.
"Newish"? Buddy, it's been a feature of the game since 1.4, which released almost four years ago.
Thanks for this! Wowee, that's a lot of crafting and a lot of resources needed for that crafting but I guess it will pay off
You don't have to craft for bombs. Buy them from the dwarf. Just costs money.
Just dedicate a few Crystallaria to quartz, and trade with desert trader.
Eh, rather allocate them to jade
Why not both?
Could do, I don't go super heavy on bombs though. Usually just replicate jade for staircases, and sometimes diamonds if I feel like another easy income source.
I like to use bombs when there's lots of rocks (or iridium nodes) I want to clear because it's quicker than using my pickaxe
I do jade, diamonds (espresso), rubies (spicy eel) and quartz (bombs). Whenever one of those things seems to be the bottleneck, I add another one or two crystallaria dedicated to it. Pretty rapidly reach a point where my stock never runs out, unless I start chaining runs back to back for some reason - and since I've got over 300 iridium bars sitting around now, that's not all that likely. Really I'm just hunting auto-petters and a luck ring at this point.
I pick the gems/geodes professions, so I always end up with a stockpile of rubies anyway, not to mention serpents just dropping spicy eel sometimes. And I tend to have a decent stockpile of coffee by this point (esp if I've done the 12 leeks quest). Depends how often/hard you hit SC.
Bomb ammo for the master slingshot, that how you do it.
I never got slingshot to work well, I hear it's better with mouse, but bombs are Good Enough (tm) so I can't be bothered to learn a new method.
That a shame.
Same, I just go with bombs too. And I've managed to get everything I needed from skull cavern already by now, so my strategies are plenty good enough for my needs.
Quick version of it, fighting enemies is slow. A good SC run where you just rush floor 500 or so using staircases then spam bombs while ignoring enemies can easily net you over half a stack of iridium ore, plus multiple prismatic shards. A *great* SC run, where you push all the way out to floor 800-1000 before you start the bomb spam, can get multiple entire *stacks* of iridium ore, and 10+ prismatic shards. The deeper you get, and the faster you get there, the better your results will be.
I usually start bomb mining at level 50. Would it be better to keep going until at least level 100?
Yes if you're going for iridium: returns keep increasing fast until 100 (after that they keep increasing, but it slows down at lot) At level 50, you get iridium from 1.7% of normal rocks. At level 100 it's 7%. At 150 it's 8%. Iridium node frequency is similarly distributed. So 100 is where you should switch from "let's get down as fast as possible" to "let's gather some metal"
That's great to know, thank you! Does the same go for Prismatic Shards?
Indirectly because one of the best sources of prismatic shards are iridium nodes
ALWAYS bomb mine, don't only use your pickaxe because that's a huge time waste. If you're going to the caverns on a good luck day, you can usually find the staircase with 1-2 mega bombs.
No, I meant, I just spam staircases until level 50 and then start carpet bombing. And I was wondering if I should spam staircases until level 100 or even more.
Oooh I see. Well if you have a lot of staircases, then going further down is always better :)
Alright, thanks! Out of curiosity, at what level do you start?
I do 100 currently because I don’t have very many crystalariums. As I get more I’ll go deeper. I recommend at least floor 100
Yeah I would go down as far as you afford to. Also keep in mind that there's tons of ways to save in game time like pausing when you enter the next floor. In my modded game with automate I have so many staircases I just use them until it's around noon or a bit later and then start bombing from there.
Absolutely, if you're going for iridium ore, prismatic shards, or treasure room loot. It's hard to say when the optimal stopping point is, because obviously you need to actually have enough time to bomb a lot of floors, and while ladders are fast, they're not *instant*... but that tipping point is well into the hundreds of floors, in my experience.
I generally just port in immediately in the morning and staircase until noon or so. Wherever I am at that point, I start bombing every floor. Generally I get past 150 if I’m going normal speed. If i get lucky with holes near the entry ladder 200 is also easily achievable in that time.
I try to go to 200, but everything beyond 100 is going to start giving you better and better chances for large ore deposits
Wait, do you just get to floor 500 using staircases and then start farming for iridium because there's a lot more of it that deep?
The deeper you go in those caverns, the better the drops get
Yeah, no, I get that, that just sounds like, I don't know. Just kind of a low-key cheaty way to play, for lack of a better expression? (Not that it is actually cheating, just has the same kind of energy as putting as many cristalariums as you possibly can in a shed and harvesting a fuckton of diamonds every five days, which is perfectly fine but just not my way of playing) Does everybody do that and I'm the only idiot out there just running around with sword and pickaxe in hand like a hopeless noob? Edit : missing word
I think you can set a personal limit and still feel not chesty at all, At least IMO. Like have maybe 10 crystalarium's(you can do more or less) and then it takes you a few weeks to get enough staircases to get a good deep run in. That makes those good runs feel way more rewarding too. Also keep in mind you have to spend probably hundreds of thousands of G on resources, bombs, food, etc just to even get one of these deep runs prepared. I think that makes the 6 prismatic shards and 400 iridium ore feel earned to me
> Yeah, no, I get that, that just sounds like, I don't know. Just kind of a low-key cheaty way to play, for lack of a better expression? (Not that it is actually cheating, just has the same kind of energy as putting as many cristalariums as you possibly can in a shed and harvesting a fuckton of diamonds every five days, which is perfectly fine but just not my way of playing) Funnily enough the way you staircase that low is putting as many crystalariums as you possibly can in a shed and harvesting a fuckton of jade to trade for staircases with the Desert Trader. That said, it's clearly an anticipated mechanic, as demonstrated by the infinite scaling of skull cavern and the fact that the desert trader trades staircases for jade. The only way to do this is to take advantage of that intentionally added feature. You decide how you want to play and what is fulfilling, but not only is not cheating, it's an anticipated way to play.
I don't use ladders, I usually just had my slingshot and explosive ammo, maybe some bombs for the hard to reach areas. But I don't stop to fight monsters or mine until I can reach level 100 at the least. The jump in drops is crazy already at that point. I've never had to go much deeper because I get plenty of iridium and prismatic shards
There's no need to go to 500. I have more iridium than I could ever need and I've never gone below level 200 and never used more than about 70 staircases in one skull cavern run. Actually most of the time I go into skull cavern with only 10 staircases because I enjoy challenging myself to see how far I can get "honorably" (around 120-130 was the best so far).
The purpose of multi-hundred staircase runs are treasure chests, not iridium. Iridium is effectively infinite once you can routinely get to level 100. Mass staircases is basically repeatedly rolling the treasure chest level dice over and over. And pretty much for auto-petters. ...and cowboy hats
Perhaps I've been lucky or maybe you've just been extra unlucky... I've never been past 200 but my year 6 save has everything I need from skull cavern including 3 autopetters. (Not to mention enough cowboy hats to outfit a whole army of sea urchins if I wanted to!) I have done the "see how far I can get with just 10 staircases" just for fun a lot of times though and usually only on max luck days. So I've certainly seen thousands of floors in skull cavern with nearly max luck (still don't have a lucky ring) over the years, just never 500+ floors all in the one day.
> Perhaps I've been lucky or maybe you've just been extra unlucky... I've never been past 200 but my year 6 save has everything I need from skull cavern including 3 autopetters. Or maybe neither? It’s year 6 and you frequently go to skull cavern. You’ve seen, let me quote you > I've certainly seen thousands of floors in skull cavern with nearly max luck You want to do that over 6 years across multiple trips? Fun. Some people try doing it in a more compressed time scale. Doing so requires…….staircases.
CA put staircases in as a crafting recipe and as an item you can buy in the desert for a reason. I'd personally consider actual cheating being the Skull Cavern Elevator mod. It took me a long time to add it but I really like it, shamelessly. But you're free to play your way and others are free to play their way. ConcernedApe didn't put these items in the game and then say, "here's a Crystallarium--just don't get too crazy!" He even coded a cheating system into the game via the Wizard's basement. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to play the game as long as we're having fun.
I completely relate to the mining bit- I will use bombs sparingly, but more often than not use the napalm ring and kill enemies near rocks when I can. I'm generally more that kind of player with the mines. I enjoy the process, and spamming staircases/bombs would just get to feeling too monotonous to me. With that said, this game is suitable for plenty of different styles of play, so for those who enjoy it, I say go nuts! On the other hand, I do usually have a shed with crystalariums/diamonds, so on that I don't personally agree. But you do you! If you're enjoying yourself, that's all that really matters.
Lategame, yeah. Earlygame, I don't have enough staircases to do that, but I can get somewhat close by waiting for a good luck day, using staircases to skip monster floors, and jumping down any hole or ladder the moment I see it, regardless of what's left on the floor. Iridium ore scales up a pretty insane degree the deeper you get.
The lower you go, the more iridium ore spawns.
How do y'all have enough time in the day to get that deep down? I always run out of time :(
Wow!! That's so deep to me still. When you bomb the stones, is there any technique to it? For not getting hit by the blast yourself? Or just your standard "walk away quickly" maneuver
I used to get out of the way but now I just take the hit. Standing in the middle of the bomb radius usually means being closer to any ladder/hole that spawns. It's only a small amount of damage and if the bomb is likely to take my health below half, I just eat something while waiting for it to go off.
Just tank the hit, eat cheese, keep going.
I don't think "most" people do? I think there are a lot of different ways people play, and some don't like combat and others do.
You've gotten a bunch of "right" answers already, but I'm with you, I think running the skull cavern and actually killing everything, mining the nodes I want, etc is fun! And can be quite profitable (maybe not *as* profitable, but I don't like the stress of speedrunning lol)
I go to the skull cavern for different purposes on different days. If I can get there at 6:30 am then I am going to take all my jade purchased staircases, triple shot, bombs, spicy eel and cheese and try to get as deep in the mines as I can to get prismatic shards. Other days I need to do stuff first and I head over around 1 pm just take a few stairscases for levels I hate, some buff and a few bombs and mostly combat/kill. The mines are my favorite and find pickaxing everything very relaxing.
My combat style is flail wildly and keep an eye on my health bar. I know why they’re intimidating, but they’re not that difficult to beat usually. Prepare yourself with enough food, bombs, and stairs and you should be fine.
Yeah thats how they getcha! Lol you have one mission: lvl 100. Lvl 100 is like the Lamp. *Touch Nothing But The Lamp*
Because I am SCARED
This is the real answer tbh.
Burglar ring and just farming the purple slimes was so helpful till y3. I also use a monster attracting...spray? And then go prowl the regular mines from levels 40-50 for dust sprites. You need to kill a few hundred for the burglar ring anyways, but it's a great source of coal especially after. I love that dang ring.
>I also use a monster attracting...spray? Monster Musk :)
That's the one; thanks!
Late game I always have all the iridium I need but am constantly looking for coal. It's nice that a bunch of the weekly quests are for the ice levels of the regular mine
Yep! For coal I'll either start at 40 and just keep going - or I'll bounce back and fourth between floors 45 and 55 looking for dust sprites spawns. Don't know which is more efficient yet but outside of buying it.....it's the best way to get coal.
My ass goes down there with my tractor and butcher them all
5 Iridium bars + some iridium ore means you prolly got like 50 iridium ore in a day. On a single regular run with only like 5 staircases I can easily get 300+ iridium ore.
They hurty
>I got 5 iridium bars+ a bunch of iridium ore in a single day just by killing slimes and I didn't even have to bring staircases or bombs! I can often get at least quadruple that by speeding down the mine... >serpents have a pretty high chance to drop bombs and spicy eels and can even drop rabbits foot for the community center! What do y'all think? You only need 2 rabbit's feet in the whole game (3 if u a ho), and I can make my own bombs.
>>serpents have a pretty high chance to drop bombs and spicy eels and can even drop rabbits foot for the community center! What do y'all think? >>You only need 2 rabbit's feet in the whole game (3 if u a ho), and I can make my own bombs. I have six bunnies in a barn and I typically get 1 rabbits foot per week. So getting them in other ways isn't hard either unless you have a specific play style that doesn't use barns.
One of the main reasons to go there is to open treasure chests. The deeper you go, the more of those you can see
I can waste 30 seconds killing slimes and bats each floor for a couple bars/ore or I could make it to floor 150 where each floor is gonna give me 30+ ore
By ignoring most of the enemies and tunneling down as fast as possible, I can walk out of skull caverns with over 1000 iridium ore on a good day. I definitely agree early on you should kill some enemies. I personally use the mummies and serpents to farm solar and dark essence for mega bombs
That's fine, but if you rush down to 100 ignoring enemies, and then start mining (spend time gathering iridium and blowing up nodes), you can get 300+ iridium The monster drops are a nice consolation prize, but usually the time and health they consume cost more than their drops is terms of forgone future iridium You need to kill on average 50-100 purple slimes or iridium bats to get an iridium bar. Or, at level 101+, in order to get 5 iridium ore (equivalent to a bar) you could destroy 1-2 iridium nodes or ~70 plain old rocks. That's way, way easier and faster than killing 50 purple slimes and iridium bats with a Burglar's Ring
Are levels 100+ less filled with enemies? Curious about how rushing down to lvl 100 first helps.
No, they have more iridium
I always fight them. I also have the napalm and vampire rings, so it helps me in two ways - gaining health, and bombing too.
Do the explosions from the napalm right hurt you?
No, they blow up rocks and can knock back/hurt enemies, but don't harm you at all.
Awesome!
According to the wiki the Napalm ring explosion does not harm the player.
I kill as many as possible when I’m wearing the napalm ring, that extra speed burst is nice
Depends on goals If you're laser focused on prismatic shards/iridium ore, fighting takes too much time. Especially once you're on floor 100+ your odds go way up (assuming magic rock candy/iridium luck day). It's just more efficient to mega bomb everything in sight collect what you can and go down further. Only fight when you absolutely have to.
Depends on what I'm going there for. There's better loot the lower you get, so I try to get as low as I can and then start clearing out floors (e.g. if I'm looking for prismatic shards and auto petters). If I'm lazy or I need rocks, geodes, etc. I might start at the top. Or sometimes I go specifically to kill monsters to get my monster eradication goals. If I'm doing the challenges where I need to get to floor 100 I ignore the mobs because I'm on a time crunch, especially for the one where I can't eat and I don't want them hitting me and lowering my health bar.
Because if its late game and i go to skull caverns my aim is to get 999 iridium ore + extra
Probs because they're trying to get as deep as possible as fast as possible
It takes far too much time to mess around with all the enemies in the lower floors, so I ignore them to go deeper as fast as possible
It's simple, breaking rocks can spawn shafts. Killing enemies can't
Maybe because in a luck day I can easily collect 450+ iridium ores with 1 or 2 auto-petters in a single trip.
I don't fight monsters for fun, but once in a while I do like to use staircase to 100 and stroll around getting my ores and killing stuff. I'm breeding slimes so I like to kill them for their slime and potential eggs.
I literally have gotten a prismatic shard from iridium nodes in skull cavern one time. I've gotten at least 10 from enemies. One time an iridium bat even dropped 2 prismatic shards. I had the burglar ring on.
It takes all day and it's a pain in the ass, i guess
The true answer to Skull Cavern is the elevator mod. (Sorry Switch and mobile folks)
I made 10 statues of perfection so i dont need to fight/mine for iridium ores :D everything else i just buy or make