Please help refine my Skull Cavern strategy

[Helga]

At first the Skull Cavern was bewildering . . . I wasn't really sure what I was trying to DO

But here is what I've come up with over time - please critique!

Goal: get through each floor as quickly as possible looking for Treasure Floors while trying to use minimal staircases

Plan: fill my backpack with espresso, spicy eel, and cheese - and bombs (so many bombs!) plus emergency staircases. Put my best boots on, touch the Dwarf King statue, and teleport to the desert.

Strategy: avoid monsters as much as possible and drop a bomb into the largest grouping of rocks I see - hope for a staircase or a shaft. If no, repeat once more, and if still no, drop a staircase. Repeat until 150am - teleport home!

Anything else I could/should be doing?

 

[Terdin]

I've got 24 crystallariums producing Jade to trade for staircases, used to have 44, but that proved too many. If you're after treasure rooms, you want to hit every floor, or you could fall past where you'd have found one.

More luck is better when it comes to encounter treasure rooms. Lucky lunch would be better than spicy eel, even if it doesn't boost speed. Magic rock candy would be even better but I find it too precious to use most of the time. Equip a lucky ring if you've got one. At least spicy eel is better than nothing. Pumpkin soup would also be a good option, with +2 to luck.

If you have the trinket slot, put a magic quiver there. A rapid or perfect quiver holds most monsters at bay while you either look for the way down or place a staircase.

 

[Helga]

Thanks!! I didn't know that shafts can make you miss treasure floors! I'll definitely refine my food selection too. Sadly, I've never been able to locate a lucky ring.

 

[Terdin]

Thanks!! I didn't know that shafts can make you miss treasure floors! I'll definitely refine my food selection too. Sadly, I've never been able to locate a lucky ring.

Luck is also a factor in finding a lucky ring. I find most of mine while panning on a lucky day, especially if my luck is boosted already. A "generous" enchantment on the pan could help, in that it rolls more times on the table of what you can find.

You could also find lucky rings in barrels or boxes in the Skull Cavern or Quarry Mine if you're lucky enough, but I think I've only found one or two that way in all my saves.

ETA: It's not so much that you miss treasure floors. It's more like it rolls for each floor you land on, and landing on more floors means more chances. I see it as if I fall 8 floors, that means 7 lost chances of a treasure floor. Shafts are really good if you're after iridium ore though, since you want to go deep for that.

 

[Helga]

Luck is also a factor in finding a lucky ring. I find most of mine while panning on a lucky day, especially if my luck is boosted already. A "generous" enchantment on the pan could help, in that it rolls more times on the table of what you can find.

You could also find lucky rings in barrels or boxes in the Skull Cavern or Quarry Mine if you're lucky enough, but I think I've only found one or two that way in all my saves.

ETA: It's not so much that you miss treasure floors. It's more like it rolls for each floor you land on, and landing on more floors means more chances. I see it as if I fall 8 floors, that means 7 lost chances of a treasure floor. Shafts are really good if you're after iridium ore though, since you want to go deep for that.

This is SO HELPFUL!!