Skull cavern dives and loot

[Pangaearocks]

If you need radioactive ore for bars, you can also buy a hopper for Qi gems and stuff it in a deconstructor.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Trying the pause buffering again. How are people like @FilthyGorilla able to pull off ~70 floors per 10-minute tick?! Do you have any tips that haven't been mentioned yet?

Doesn't feel like I'm bad at it, I'm pausing pretty quickly, and clicking both mouse buttons when placing stairs (to go down instantly), but can only pull off maybe 30 floors per 'tick'. This run I got to the cavern entrance at 06:20 (not sure how 'deep in the tick'), and at 07:00 (start of tick) I'm at floor 114. Managed 29 floors from 06:30 to 06:40. While in-game it seems to be pretty much instant to my eyes, but one problem is when your cursor is over a tile you can't place a stairs on (rock or wall). A few times the pausing fails and I end up spending half a second. For the most part I can pick up the red stairs during the initial pausing, but not always. Still, maybe going three times as fast as I'm able to seems otherworldly. How do you do it?

Spoiler: Floor 114 at 07:00

View attachment 11407

Can't wait to get to Ginger Island and be able to forge rings. Really hope to get another Lucky ring, and then would like to try out 2x Lucky Ring+Iridium Band. I imagine the "suck range" () will help a lot. Don't fight enough enemies (ideally) for the Burglar's ring to be worth it (but I like to use it in the regular mines, hello dust sprites), and with few enemies killed, much of the same goes for the Napalm ring.

(PS: This is embarrassing, but I just found out you can change tools/etc while paused. Before, I tried to e.g. unpause-select bomb-pause quickly to save a little time )

Btw: exactly how long does a magic rock candy last in the Caverns, in terms of in-game hours?

The haul
It ended up going okay, but actually ran out of stairs despite taking with 400+. There are simply a lot of floors that are pretty crap :-/

Bad ending, though. Harvey had harsh words... Must have lost health really quickly at the end when I was trying to get the last juice out of time left. Those bats are nasty.

Horrendous shard count, though, compared with the ore. 140 ore per shard is terrible. Early on had only 1 shard after 350 ores. Nuts. Thankfully didn't lose anything important due to dying. If that whole stack of ore had gone, would have had to redo the day, which would have sucked big time.

View attachment 11408

Almost the best thing about it is that I got another Lucky Ring!! It actually dropped from a totally normal serpent. Couldn't believe my eyes.

I have grossly underestimated the amount of stairs needed, though. Figured going down to floor 150-200 would suffice, and then roam around, but at least 90% of floors are bad. Not sure exactly how deep this was as it was too hectic at the end, but it was over floor 500. Maybe 520-ish. Shards aside, that's a nice haul for not using magic rock candy

29 isn’t a half bad start, here is how to become superior at it, I haven’t been running sc in months and even if you don’t get better at pause buffering I do believe you could get better as a whole than me, maybe I should fire up the old staircases and try grinding again, my main problem is I don’t have 2 hours to put into a single sc run.
There is a trick to it, the biggest timesave is going to be avoiding those rocks.
1. When you enter a floor, always have your cursor on the side, not up or down, left is usually my preferred, this is so that you have the most floors with open floor instead of wall or non placeable floor like on treasure floors.
2. When you have that cursor next to your character and enter a floor there will be a split second where you can see the place tile indicator flash red or green, if it flashes green you are good, if it doesn’t then you want to do only the first pause of the pause buffering cycle.
3. always hold down both mouse buttons, in order though, if you hold the right then left you will place faster than just the left, this can be used for filling machines too and is a lifesaver.
You have to press right then left though or you slow it down in turn, idk why this exists but I found out about I after experimenting with kegging a lot ages ago.
4. The most important, the others don’t even really have to be followed if you do this, it’s something I independently found on my own after pause buffering 1000s of floors and which I think most of the hood pause buffering players do.
It’s a triple pause, you pause on entrance, hold your buttons down and do a double pause, if it’s a viable tile you will place it and if not you will immediately be paused again, there is a certain perfect timing to this and it takes practice but it the far superior way to pause buffer, making it so that you are never unpaused.
This is very tiring on the fingers though as not only are you pressing 50% more on one hand and double the keys on the other but you are having to time each and every floor perfectly.
This is what I can give you now, I think I might start running again and if I do, do you mind if I post results and such over here?
Thanks and I hope this helps you reach that prestigious 60+ Buffering tick.

 

[Hill Myna]

Turns out bombs are actually pretty expensive when I thought about it. 60,000g for a stack of 100, and I used more than that. But since I'm not using the slingshot (ammo is expensive too, so there is that), I have found that placing a bunch of bombs on floors with loads of iridium nodes is so, so handy. The Dwarf must be the richest person in Pelican Town after all the bombs I've bought from him, and this is just the beginning of the madness.

But if you convert all that Iridium into Bars and sell them:

~1,000 ore / 5 = 200 bars
200 bars * 1500G = 300,000G
200 smelting operations * 250G for coal = 50,000G
300,000G - 50,000G = 250,000G

Plus other loot, you're probably still gaining.

Not sure if it was you who mentioned it or somebody else, but I've found that the big bottleneck for the crystalarium kingdom shed is gold, and to a lesser extent batteries. I'm bathing in iridium and have sold several hundred bars already.

Definitely. I never miss a chance to blow up Gold Nodes, they're more precious than Iridium ones to me!

It's almost certainly impossible to have a "correct" ratio of iridium:gold, so I just consider any excess to be my "profit".

Will focus more on expanding the jade crystalariums so I can do serious deep dives more often. Currently have 30, which is okay, but 50-100 would be better. However, gold+batteries is an issue. Had several thunderstorm days lately, but at best I'm getting only 10 batteries. 40-ish lightning rods was a little overkill... I know about the rain totem thing, but I have no way of getting truffle oil, and don't have any tappers on pine trees anyway. It's an awkward recipe.

You really only have two choices if you want sheds full of Crystalriums: Rain Totems or Solar Panels.

Rain Totems
Pros – Lightning Rods are comparatively cheaper, can harvest almost every day with the correct set up
Cons – The Rain Totem recipe has it's own issues, down to chance when the storms happen, requires a lot of setup

Solar Panels
Pros – Extremely consistent if placed in the Desert, only one recipe, still worth it in small amounts
Cons – Recipe requires MORE Gold, takes lots Iron and Refined Quartz too, random when the Island Ingredients quest appears

Personally, I think that the Rain Totem method sounds like it's too much effort and too unreliable for me.

So, assuming you have the recipe plus lots of Iron (Refined Quartz is easy enough to get), Solar Panels just end up being a Gold drain, making Gold even more valuable!

Unfortunately, whichever method you invest it, it'll be eyes on the Gold again afterwards.

–––––

It could be interesting to see the relative results of using the regular Mines as a source for Gold. I'd assume that Level 80 or 90 would be the best for it, and you'd almost certainly get more in one day than from an average trip to Skull Cavern. Maybe you want to try it out?

While checking the Wiki to see if there was a spawn chance difference the deeper you got the in regular Mines, I found this:

Gold Node

Gold Ore

Mines: Level 80+

Skull Cavern (10% chance of spawning at levels 60-79, 75% chance of spawning at levels 80+) Quarry Hill-top and Four Corners farm maps after Mining Skill level 7 Volcano Dungeon

I never knew that there was that much of a difference from 80+ onward in Skull Cavern. That's crazy!

Maybe it's because once I'm that deep, I'm distracted by all the !

Slingshots and explosive ammo is something I ought to try out, though, so am thinking about a test run of sorts with stone in the regular mine, just to try to get a feel for how it would work. The aiming is awkward.

Can I ask which Slingshot control scheme you're currently using? There was a new one added in 1.5, which might make it a little less awkward.

But yeah, definitely requires practice. It's biggest appeal is the fact that it explodes instantly, so it's super useful for nabbing small pockets of Ore near the entrance; great for getting PBs!

 

[Pangaearocks]

29 isn’t a half bad start, here is how to become superior at it, I haven’t been running sc in months and even if you don’t get better at pause buffering I do believe you could get better as a whole than me, maybe I should fire up the old staircases and try grinding again, my main problem is I don’t have 2 hours to put into a single sc run.
There is a trick to it, the biggest timesave is going to be avoiding those rocks.
1. When you enter a floor, always have your cursor on the side, not up or down, left is usually my preferred, this is so that you have the most floors with open floor instead of wall or non placeable floor like on treasure floors.
2. When you have that cursor next to your character and enter a floor there will be a split second where you can see the place tile indicator flash red or green, if it flashes green you are good, if it doesn’t then you want to do only the first pause of the pause buffering cycle.
3. always hold down both mouse buttons, in order though, if you hold the right then left you will place faster than just the left, this can be used for filling machines too and is a lifesaver.
You have to press right then left though or you slow it down in turn, idk why this exists but I found out about I after experimenting with kegging a lot ages ago.
4. The most important, the others don’t even really have to be followed if you do this, it’s something I independently found on my own after pause buffering 1000s of floors and which I think most of the hood pause buffering players do.
It’s a triple pause, you pause on entrance, hold your buttons down and do a double pause, if it’s a viable tile you will place it and if not you will immediately be paused again, there is a certain perfect timing to this and it takes practice but it the far superior way to pause buffer, making it so that you are never unpaused.
This is very tiring on the fingers though as not only are you pressing 50% more on one hand and double the keys on the other but you are having to time each and every floor perfectly.
This is what I can give you now, I think I might start running again and if I do, do you mind if I post results and such over here?
Thanks and I hope this helps you reach that prestigious 60+ Buffering tick.

Thanks a lot, this is wonderful info. And please, if you do have more gos of this, post in here with your hauls and findings

I'm doing some of what you say there, but not 4), which you mention is the main thing. Briefly what I've tried to do, is to pause as quickly as possible once a new floor loads (but too quickly and it doesn't pause at all, and you waste time). Then unpause and click both mouse buttons 'kinda' simultaneously (but probably not) and pause again. I use E+E. For the most part I also hold the mouse cursor to the left or right of the farmer, and usually can tell if the cursor is green or red, but sometimes it can be hard to tell. If it's red, I try to move it to the other side and do a quick unpause-pause to see if it's red or green there. Ideally it works where I have it, let's say right of the farmer, and I can get into a rhythm and go down like that many floors. Some floors are a little nasty though, and you start off kinda in a nook, and neither right or left of the farmer are valid tiles. But the worst is if you are totally surrounded and need to hack at a stone or even a barrel. Even a torch will make a tile invalid.

Will need to practice this more, but currently I really only have enough stairs for one solid go (around 500), so probably best to save up a bit. Takes many days to get those 1200+ iridium ores through the furnaces anyway. I thought 25 furnaces was a lot, but suddenly it isn't!

There was also talk about the pause-unpause with E+F. But I couldn't get that working right. Then the journal simply comes up (but the whole thing seems inconsistent). I shall try out the advice you have given, provided I understood it correctly. Hopefully I can improve a bit on the ~30 floors per 10-min tick.

Another thing, due to how briefly we're looking at the floor, it can be tricky to see if there are many iridium nodes or not, particularly very close to where you start. More than a few times I've instantly placed a stairs and gone down, and then notice 4 iridium nodes or a pre-placed shaft while watching the animation. Can be frustrating!

 

[Pangaearocks]

But if you convert all that Iridium into Bars and sell them:

Definitely a good point, and I touched upon it at some point in one of my many posts. After quickly firing up the game, so far in this save I've sold 616 iridium bars. Which corresponds to 924,000g with Blacksmith profession (which I now see is superior to Prospector), or almost half of total earnings in this save.

You really only have two choices if you want sheds full of Crystalriums: Rain Totems or Solar Panels.

In a normal game, rain totems would be the preferred choice I reckon. Never been able to try this myself, but I have read that you can chain them once you get a normal thunderstorm, so I imagine that would work very well, particularly during summers. But without farming nor animals, I'm sh** outta luck on the ingredients. Not been for sale yet at the Cart in two years, so Lewis' quest for a "fun night" out with Marnie will have to wait. No farming makes solar panels nigh impossible too, but think I will relax that restriction a bit on Ginger island. Which in theory could allow me to get the recipe. The gold pinch will get even rougher though, so I don't know what to do... :-| What is for certain, is that I'm buying up all batteries the Cart lady brings!

Btw, with the line about the desert, do you mean that solar panels are more effective there, and will produce batteries faster than if they are located on the regular farm? I thought they had a set production time like most other things, and that was that

It could be interesting to see the relative results of using the regular Mines as a source for Gold. I'd assume that Level 80 or 90 would be the best for it, and you'd almost certainly get more in one day than from an average trip to Skull Cavern. Maybe you want to try it out?

Have thought about this actually, but not done so systematically yet. Do you mean doing floor 80 or 90 over and over again btw? When I've been there hunting for monsters for the eradication goals, I've simply gone through the floors naturally, taking stairs when they show up. Going up and down the stairs 100 times a day takes time too, and is very boring and repetitive.

Can I ask which Slingshot control scheme you're currently using? There was a new one added in 1.5, which might make it a little less awkward.

Honestly, I haven't done it at all yet. Whatever setting it's on now, is the default one. Tried the slingshot game at the Fair, and kinda sucked at it, with a 69% precision. Which method do you prefer, and do you find it easy, and enables you to grab more ore and shards than without it?

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Definitely a good point, and I touched upon it at some point in one of my many posts. After quickly firing up the game, so far in this save I've sold 616 iridium bars. Which corresponds to 924,000g with Blacksmith profession (which I now see is superior to Prospector), or almost half of total earnings in this save.


In a normal game, rain totems would be the preferred choice I reckon. Never been able to try this myself, but I have read that you can chain them once you get a normal thunderstorm, so I imagine that would work very well, particularly during summers. But without farming nor animals, I'm sh** outta luck on the ingredients. Not been for sale yet at the Cart in two years, so Lewis' quest for a "fun night" out with Marnie will have to wait. No farming makes solar panels nigh impossible too, but think I will relax that restriction a bit on Ginger island. Which in theory could allow me to get the recipe. The gold pinch will get even rougher though, so I don't know what to do... :-| What is for certain, is that I'm buying up all batteries the Cart lady brings!

Btw, with the line about the desert, do you mean that solar panels are more effective there, and will produce batteries faster than if they are located on the regular farm? I thought they had a set production time like most other things, and that was that


Have thought about this actually, but not done so systematically yet. Do you mean doing floor 80 or 90 over and over again btw? When I've been there hunting for monsters for the eradication goals, I've simply gone through the floors naturally, taking stairs when they show up. Going up and down the stairs 100 times a day takes time too, and is very boring and repetitive.


Honestly, I haven't done it at all yet. Whatever setting it's on now, is the default one. Tried the slingshot game at the Fair, and kinda sucked at it, with a 69% precision. Which method do you prefer, and do you find it easy, and enables you to grab more ore and shards than without it?

For slingshots, the pullback is much faster but harder to use and ive pretty much master using the slingshot with hold and release.
Sometimes if I’m in one of those nooks as you say I will pause very fast and swap the slingshot mode to shoot one shot at myself very fast and then swap back.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Definitely a good point, and I touched upon it at some point in one of my many posts. After quickly firing up the game, so far in this save I've sold 616 iridium bars. Which corresponds to 924,000g with Blacksmith profession (which I now see is superior to Prospector), or almost half of total earnings in this save.


In a normal game, rain totems would be the preferred choice I reckon. Never been able to try this myself, but I have read that you can chain them once you get a normal thunderstorm, so I imagine that would work very well, particularly during summers. But without farming nor animals, I'm sh** outta luck on the ingredients. Not been for sale yet at the Cart in two years, so Lewis' quest for a "fun night" out with Marnie will have to wait. No farming makes solar panels nigh impossible too, but think I will relax that restriction a bit on Ginger island. Which in theory could allow me to get the recipe. The gold pinch will get even rougher though, so I don't know what to do... :-| What is for certain, is that I'm buying up all batteries the Cart lady brings!

Btw, with the line about the desert, do you mean that solar panels are more effective there, and will produce batteries faster than if they are located on the regular farm? I thought they had a set production time like most other things, and that was that


Have thought about this actually, but not done so systematically yet. Do you mean doing floor 80 or 90 over and over again btw? When I've been there hunting for monsters for the eradication goals, I've simply gone through the floors naturally, taking stairs when they show up. Going up and down the stairs 100 times a day takes time too, and is very boring and repetitive.


Honestly, I haven't done it at all yet. Whatever setting it's on now, is the default one. Tried the slingshot game at the Fair, and kinda sucked at it, with a 69% precision. Which method do you prefer, and do you find it easy, and enables you to grab more ore and shards than without it?

@Hill Myna you will need to know this too.
Also solar panels work on 8 days of sunlight including the harvesting and placing day.
There is a common misconception that putting them in the desert where it is always sunny is superior and faster but sadly it follows the same weather cycle as the mainland and if there is rain on the farm then, even if sunny in the desert, the solar panels will not count it as a sunny day.

 

[Hill Myna]

No farming makes solar panels nigh impossible too, but think I will relax that restriction a bit on Ginger island.

Barring the obvious roadblock that you'd have to go Joja to get to the Island, if you waited until the quest popped up with Ginger as the ingredient, you could fulfil it because harvesting Ginger counts as foraging.

Btw, with the line about the desert, do you mean that solar panels are more effective there, and will produce batteries faster than if they are located on the regular farm? I thought they had a set production time like most other things, and that was that

@Hill Myna you will need to know this too.
Also solar panels work on 8 days of sunlight including the harvesting and placing day.
There is a common misconception that putting them in the desert where it is always sunny is superior and faster but sadly it follows the same weather cycle as the mainland and if there is rain on the farm then, even if sunny in the desert, the solar panels will not count it as a sunny day.

Well, turns out I was one of those people! :D

That explains why they are so "inconsistent"! Thanks @FilthyGorilla!

Have thought about this actually, but not done so systematically yet. Do you mean doing floor 80 or 90 over and over again btw? When I've been there hunting for monsters for the eradication goals, I've simply gone through the floors naturally, taking stairs when they show up. Going up and down the stairs 100 times a day takes time too, and is very boring and repetitive.

Now that I think about it, Floor 90 would be better than 80, 100, or 110 (the other options), because Floors 12, 52, and 92 are the ones with the minecart at the end, and thus a free ladder.

So yeah, here's what I'd do:

1. Take the Lift to Floor 90
2. Take the down ladder to Floor 91
3a. Bomb any gold, if there's none or you don't uncover a ladder, then leave via the exit ladder and return to step 1
3b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, take it down to Floor 92
4. Run to the end of Floor 92, bombing/mining any gold
5. Take the down ladder next to the minecart
6a. Bomb any gold within sight, if no ores or you don't uncover a ladder, then leave via the exit ladder return to step 1
6b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, take it down to Floor 94
7a. Bomb any gold within sight, if no ores or you don't uncover a ladder, leave via the exit ladder and return to step 1
7b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, either take the exit ladder or the down ladder (whichever is closer) and return to step 1 (if you took the down ladder the Lift is right next to you)

I agree it'd be repetitive and probably more boring than a Skull Cavern run, but it'd probably get you more gold, plus advance you in Monster Eradication Goals that you might not've completed yet.

Although if you're being careful, the profit from Skull Cavern might get you more Gold (bought from Clint) than this method, I'm not sure.

Also related:

I recently bought a chest of gold ore which cost a bit over 26 million

Never. Buy. Gold. From. Clint.

Quote from the Wiki:

At Mining Skill 7, it is cheaper to purchase Iron Ore, smelt Iron Bars, and use the Transmute (Au) recipe to create Gold Bars than it is to purchase Gold Ore and smelt it into Gold Bars. This also cuts the smelting time from 5h to 2h per Furnace. This saves 350g per Gold Bar in the first year and 1,000g per Gold Bar in year 2+.

I don't even want to do the math on how much you lost, although maybe it's not super significant when you're spending 26 million G!

 

[Pangaearocks]

Came over a discussion about gold mining here.

Certainly not an early game method, but in this save I'd like to try out the "treasure hunter in deconstructor" method. Not something you can easily scale up to industrial methods, which is probably required if you're willing and able to spend 26 million at Clint's just to buy gold, but for my purposes it will suffice I reckon. Would have helped a great deal if tackles were stackable, but they aren't (surely due to the x/20 usage aspect of each tackle). Anyway, when spending that much on gold, getting enough batteries is probably the biggest hurdle anyway.

Edit: Wasn't able to find info on this on the wiki (maybe I looked at the wrong pages), but does the increased Mining skill from Magic rock candy enable you to get more ore per broken node, similar to for gathering berries? Because we'll have an effective level of 12 instead of 10.

 

[BlaDe]

Here is the spreadsheet that I used for the graphs in my Stardew University Skull Caverns video: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SoFnH5NuVYct9Uz5q1KLWgTU9zaTBr0IMl2ykf2kJWA/edit#gid=0

You get a miningLevel% and a LuckLevel% chance of getting additional pieces of ore.

 

[Elenna101]

Now that I think about it, Floor 90 would be better than 80, 100, or 110 (the other options), because Floors 12, 52, and 92 are the ones with the minecart at the end, and thus a free ladder.

So yeah, here's what I'd do:

1. Take the Lift to Floor 90
2. Take the down ladder to Floor 91
3a. Bomb any gold, if there's none or you don't uncover a ladder, then leave via the exit ladder and return to step 1
3b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, take it down to Floor 92
4. Run to the end of Floor 92, bombing/mining any gold
5. Take the down ladder next to the minecart
6a. Bomb any gold within sight, if no ores or you don't uncover a ladder, then leave via the exit ladder return to step 1
6b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, take it down to Floor 94
7a. Bomb any gold within sight, if no ores or you don't uncover a ladder, leave via the exit ladder and return to step 1
7b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, either take the exit ladder or the down ladder (whichever is closer) and return to step 1 (if you took the down ladder the Lift is right next to you)

Haven't tested myself, but I'd expect 80 to be better than 90. Firstly, the ladder on 92 can be nice but it takes a fair bit of time to run through 92, and all you get from it is another floor that could have ore, when you could get the same thing faster by just going back up the stairs and going back to 81 or 91. (Plus, isn't 93 the layout with the big sandy area in the middle? That adds some more running around without getting ore.) Secondly, 80 is a lot smaller, which sounds like a bad thing but the advantage is that you can very quickly see if it doesn't have any ore and reset it again, whereas because 91 is a longish passage, if you don't get a ladder you have to spend more time running back through it to the exit.

I'll agree that resetting 80 over and over is the boring way to do it, though.

 

[Hill Myna]

Haven't tested myself, but I'd expect 80 to be better than 90. Firstly, the ladder on 92 can be nice but it takes a fair bit of time to run through 92, and all you get from it is another floor that could have ore, when you could get the same thing faster by just going back up the stairs and going back to 81 or 91. (Plus, isn't 93 the layout with the big sandy area in the middle? That adds some more running around without getting ore.) Secondly, 80 is a lot smaller, which sounds like a bad thing but the advantage is that you can very quickly see if it doesn't have any ore and reset it again, whereas because 91 is a longish passage, if you don't get a ladder you have to spend more time running back through it to the exit.

You make good points!

However, like you said, it'd probably be less interesting. So I'd be curious to see the difference in results between the two strategies, maybe it's not such a large gap after all! Although, after reading your post, I do expect 80 to provide the higher yield per day.

With my playstyle, I'd probably do 80 until I'm bored, then swap to 90!

 

[Pangaearocks]

Tried that a little while ago, for half a day or so (from 3PM-ish), but had forgot Crab cake for a speed boost. Going to 90 looked like a bad idea, so I quickly gave up on that tbh. The floor is too big and you kinda start off in a hallway (it's the same each time, right?). If you get a ladder down early it's okay, you can check out the next floor too, but that goes for wherever you start really. In any case, I found that 80 was a better start. Just annoying to need to go down yet another floor first, but no escaping that with grinding like this I think. Think I read somewhere that all floors that end with 5 are naked of ores, so no use going there? Otherwise that might be better, so you avoid the extra ladder down from the tiny elevator floor on 80. Don't recall how much I gathered, but it was a pretty decent amount actually, like 150-200 ores. It's boring as sin, but seems quite effective, and unlike most SC runs, cost-free.

Those 7 stacks of stone I bought from Robin just before year 1 ended has practically run out, so am thinking of doing the early-game casual SC runs I did before, just starting off at floor 1 and hacking away at rocks. This was on a worst luck day (better stay at home), but still managed to get to floor 115 without any stairs, and somehow ended up with 3 prismatic shards with 'only' 184 iridium ore. That's a more normal count I suppose, but lately I'm used to needing 100-150 ores per shard.

Tried out the master slingshot with self-crafted explosive ammo, but it was pretty difficult to use, with pullback method. Not entirely sure what I did wrong, but seems like I need to pull back more than I expected or something? Oftentimes the sling didn't work at all, or there wasn't that pullback sound. Or ofc, I end up aiming in the wrong direction. Haven't got a clue how GodzillaFreak and suchlike people are able to pull the trigger without us even seeing that the screen has loaded, in between super-quick pauses. Compared with what I experienced, that seems completely impossible

Gold count for a casual run like this wasn't very good, though, only got 122, so unless going for the serious SC deep dives (I tend to get 250-300 gold), I reckon doing the boring grind in the regular mines is the better method.

PS: Am wearing two Iridium Band+Lucky Rings now, and that felt better than Iridium Band/Lucky Ring + Lucky Ring/Burglar's Ring. Look forward to using that setup on a serious deep dive, because it felt like I had to side step less often to "suck in" the loot. GodzillaFreak used 2x Iridium band+Glowstone ring, which has pretty extreme magnet range, but that requires ring swapping, and that's a bit too much for my taste. Besides, I prefer to have those two extra backpack spots for loot.

Small note here that's irrelevant for people with a pile of cows, but for me it may prove a nice idea. Bought 50 plain cheese from the desert trader with emeralds (on a Friday iirc), and put them in casks in the cellar. The aging process isn't too slow, so maybe that will be okay (especially when I bother to craft more casks than the 33 we start out with ). Magma caps are also nice food, though also valuable, so better to just sell them I suppose. Otherwise, with access to Ginger Island, you have pi**-easy access to plain mussels, which you can make sashimi out of. A little more healing than the iridium berries (33 vs 29), for those who don't want to go with that.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Barring the obvious roadblock that you'd have to go Joja to get to the Island, if you waited until the quest popped up with Ginger as the ingredient, you could fulfil it because harvesting Ginger counts as foraging.


Well, turns out I was one of those people! :D

That explains why they are so "inconsistent"! Thanks @FilthyGorilla!

Now that I think about it, Floor 90 would be better than 80, 100, or 110 (the other options), because Floors 12, 52, and 92 are the ones with the minecart at the end, and thus a free ladder.

So yeah, here's what I'd do:

1. Take the Lift to Floor 90
2. Take the down ladder to Floor 91
3a. Bomb any gold, if there's none or you don't uncover a ladder, then leave via the exit ladder and return to step 1
3b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, take it down to Floor 92
4. Run to the end of Floor 92, bombing/mining any gold
5. Take the down ladder next to the minecart
6a. Bomb any gold within sight, if no ores or you don't uncover a ladder, then leave via the exit ladder return to step 1
6b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, take it down to Floor 94
7a. Bomb any gold within sight, if no ores or you don't uncover a ladder, leave via the exit ladder and return to step 1
7b. If your bomb uncovers a ladder, either take the exit ladder or the down ladder (whichever is closer) and return to step 1 (if you took the down ladder the Lift is right next to you)

I agree it'd be repetitive and probably more boring than a Skull Cavern run, but it'd probably get you more gold, plus advance you in Monster Eradication Goals that you might not've completed yet.

Although if you're being careful, the profit from Skull Cavern might get you more Gold (bought from Clint) than this method, I'm not sure.

Also related:

Never. Buy. Gold. From. Clint.

Quote from the Wiki:

I don't even want to do the math on how much you lost, although maybe it's not super significant when you're spending 26 million G!

Using a slingshot and only “self bombing” is the best way to get gold; resetting on only level 81, this is vastly superior to anything else.
And yeah, I could use iron and transmute to save 1000 g per bar but it’s more than twice the effort and I’ve already decided to work on speedrunning the money then do side quests instead of scrambling for money with actual manual labour first. It just slows everything down.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Tried that a little while ago, for half a day or so (from 3PM-ish), but had forgot Crab cake for a speed boost. Going to 90 looked like a bad idea, so I quickly gave up on that tbh. The floor is too big and you kinda start off in a hallway (it's the same each time, right?). If you get a ladder down early it's okay, you can check out the next floor too, but that goes for wherever you start really. In any case, I found that 80 was a better start. Just annoying to need to go down yet another floor first, but no escaping that with grinding like this I think. Think I read somewhere that all floors that end with 5 are naked of ores, so no use going there? Otherwise that might be better, so you avoid the extra ladder down from the tiny elevator floor on 80. Don't recall how much I gathered, but it was a pretty decent amount actually, like 150-200 ores. It's boring as sin, but seems quite effective, and unlike most SC runs, cost-free.

Those 7 stacks of stone I bought from Robin just before year 1 ended has practically run out, so am thinking of doing the early-game casual SC runs I did before, just starting off at floor 1 and hacking away at rocks. This was on a worst luck day (better stay at home), but still managed to get to floor 115 without any stairs, and somehow ended up with 3 prismatic shards with 'only' 184 iridium ore. That's a more normal count I suppose, but lately I'm used to needing 100-150 ores per shard.

Tried out the master slingshot with self-crafted explosive ammo, but it was pretty difficult to use, with pullback method. Not entirely sure what I did wrong, but seems like I need to pull back more than I expected or something? Oftentimes the sling didn't work at all, or there wasn't that pullback sound. Or ofc, I end up aiming in the wrong direction. Haven't got a clue how GodzillaFreak and suchlike people are able to pull the trigger without us even seeing that the screen has loaded, in between super-quick pauses. Compared with what I experienced, that seems completely impossible

Gold count for a casual run like this wasn't very good, though, only got 122, so unless going for the serious SC deep dives (I tend to get 250-300 gold), I reckon doing the boring grind in the regular mines is the better method.

PS: Am wearing two Iridium Band+Lucky Rings now, and that felt better than Iridium Band/Lucky Ring + Lucky Ring/Burglar's Ring. Look forward to using that setup on a serious deep dive, because it felt like I had to side step less often to "suck in" the loot. GodzillaFreak used 2x Iridium band+Glowstone ring, which has pretty extreme magnet range, but that requires ring swapping, and that's a bit too much for my taste. Besides, I prefer to have those two extra backpack spots for loot.

Small note here that's irrelevant for people with a pile of cows, but for me it may prove a nice idea. Bought 50 plain cheese from the desert trader with emeralds (on a Friday iirc), and put them in casks in the cellar. The aging process isn't too slow, so maybe that will be okay (especially when I bother to craft more casks than the 33 we start out with ). Magma caps are also nice food, though also valuable, so better to just sell them I suppose. Otherwise, with access to Ginger Island, you have pi**-easy access to plain mussels, which you can make sashimi out of. A little more healing than the iridium berries (33 vs 29), for those who don't want to go with that.

Also you can farm stone by resetting level one of the mines over and over and only mining the large stones to save energy and time. You can get 100s of stones a day with this, more than a thousand probably with just a pickaxe, literal only resources being expended are time and food.

 

[Pangaearocks]

Using a slingshot and only “self bombing” is the best way to get gold; resetting on only level 81, this is vastly superior to anything else.

Also you can farm stone by resetting level one of the mines over and over and only mining the large stones to save energy and time. You can get 100s of stones a day with this, more than a thousand probably with just a pickaxe, literal only resources being expended are time and food.

Using a slingshot and bombs does cost a fair whack, though. I'm sure it's more effective in terms of ore and stone haul, but with my limited economy at least, would prefer to spend those resources on serious SC runs. The casual one before got me almost 600 stone, so that was allright. Later on, there is also the option of tossing stairs into deconstructors and get back the stones, which is a little cheaper than buying them at Robin's for 100g a piece

 

[Pangaearocks]

Time for another report

Max luck day so off to the Skull Cavern I go, with 2x Iridium band/Lucky rings. Grabbed 2x Magic rock candy on the way in, and got there some point during the 06:10 tick (ate Spicy Eel and Espresso upon landing in the Desert). Wanted to see exactly how quick I could descend. Some ticks were pretty decent, but others were not. Sometimes I failed the 'virtual' double-click on placing stairs and going down, so the dude is left there with a stair, but haven't gone down. Other times the layout is awkward, like when the stairs show up 2 tiles to your left, or I made other mistakes. These are the floors per 10-min tick:
67, 99, 143, 164, 185, 213, 234, 274, 300, 335.

Some of those are really quite good, like the 40 and 44 floors ticks, but around half aren't all that wonderful. Forgot to take a screenshot at the 08:00 mark, but at 07:00 I was at floor 143. Filthy and Freak would be there around 06:20 or 06:30, but for my pace this was by far the best. Earlier I was at floor 200 around 08:30 or something like that.

At 15:30 (03:30 PM), had already descended further than in the previous best (527), with close to a PB on shards as well.

Unsure exactly when I ate the first Magic rock candy, but it was early, and at 05:30 PM it expired, and I ate the second one (still have 10 in the chest).

The pace looked really nice, both for floors, shards and ore, even gold. Tried to focus and do my best, but didn't have the slingshot (forgot it in a chest on the Island). Had taken with the full stack of ~150 bombs, and they started to run out, so on fitting floor layouts I used some mega bombs instead, and also was able to craft a few more of them. Even at these depths there are quite a lot of poor floors, or with iridium nowhere near the ladder, and I tried to be selective. Only 'take on' the floor if there were 3+ nodes nearby. Some were crazy, though, with probably 20+ nodes.

In total all the previous PBs got crushed, but I really wish the bomb I was standing on top of had gone off just before 2AM... would have gotten two full stacks of ore.

Still, really very pleased with that!! In raw value the total haul is worth almost exactly 300,000g. Keep in mind I did start out with a full stack of stairs, tho, so now I need to save up again (had around 1250). Also, 30 prismatic shards!! Just about doubled the previous record of 14 or 16 or whatever it was

Time to fire up the furnaces again. Iridium ore --> bars alone has a value of ~600,000g :)

PS: Fell asleep on floor 768 (just checked on the Checkup site, as I didn't exactly keep my focus on the top left corner all that much :P )

 

[FilthyGorilla]

We are getting so much better at this, can't wait for you to get faster and faster at SC. I would recommend actually increasing your regular farm productivity, like a couple hundred to a thousand crystalariums is absolutely great, that's 1.4 million a week with gemologist or 3-4 thousand stairs a week which is pretty much your average 700 level runs every day.
This will help with money problems as being able to throw tens of millions of g at sc to train for times in other saves when you need it is a godsend, 1k crystalariums or even 1/2 is not that hard too, and will benefit you tremendously.

Time for another report

Max luck day so off to the Skull Cavern I go, with 2x Iridium band/Lucky rings. Grabbed 2x Magic rock candy on the way in, and got there some point during the 06:10 tick (ate Spicy Eel and Espresso upon landing in the Desert). Wanted to see exactly how quick I could descend. Some ticks were pretty decent, but others were not. Sometimes I failed the 'virtual' double-click on placing stairs and going down, so the dude is left there with a stair, but haven't gone down. Other times the layout is awkward, like when the stairs show up 2 tiles to your left, or I made other mistakes. These are the floors per 10-min tick:
67, 99, 143, 164, 185, 213, 234, 274, 300, 335.

Some of those are really quite good, like the 40 and 44 floors ticks, but around half aren't all that wonderful. Forgot to take a screenshot at the 08:00 mark, but at 07:00 I was at floor 143. Filthy and Freak would be there around 06:20 or 06:30, but for my pace this was by far the best. Earlier I was at floor 200 around 08:30 or something like that.

At 15:30 (03:30 PM), had already descended further than in the previous best (527), with close to a PB on shards as well.
View attachment 11422

Unsure exactly when I ate the first Magic rock candy, but it was early, and at 05:30 PM it expired, and I ate the second one (still have 10 in the chest).

The pace looked really nice, both for floors, shards and ore, even gold. Tried to focus and do my best, but didn't have the slingshot (forgot it in a chest on the Island). Had taken with the full stack of ~150 bombs, and they started to run out, so on fitting floor layouts I used some mega bombs instead, and also was able to craft a few more of them. Even at these depths there are quite a lot of poor floors, or with iridium nowhere near the ladder, and I tried to be selective. Only 'take on' the floor if there were 3+ nodes nearby. Some were crazy, though, with probably 20+ nodes.

In total all the previous PBs got crushed, but I really wish the bomb I was standing on top of had gone off just before 2AM... would have gotten two full stacks of ore.
View attachment 11423

Still, really very pleased with that!! In raw value the total haul is worth almost exactly 300,000g. Keep in mind I did start out with a full stack of stairs, tho, so now I need to save up again (had around 1250). Also, 30 prismatic shards!! Just about doubled the previous record of 14 or 16 or whatever it was

Time to fire up the furnaces again. Iridium ore --> bars alone has a value of ~600,000g :)

PS: Fell asleep on floor 768 (just checked on the Checkup site, as I didn't exactly keep my focus on the top left corner all that much :P )

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Also somthien I have to consider with skull caverns and the game as a whole now is my much better computer, everything loads so much faster, this might have ruined my beautiful and self loved 70 floor ticks for a while, going to run some sc today though, will post results but I'm not going that hard to start.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Ok gosh, have I gotten rusty, only 107 by 7am, used to get that by 6:30 as about 14-15 minutes are wasted getting to sc, that's depressing.
Getting the hang of this new computer, much too fast tbh, the first ticks I did were all bad but got a 40-or so level tick as my last (6:50), my previous were just that bad.
Also do you mind these little update posts I do as I go down or would you rather me compile and send at the end of the run, I just like the break from key mashing to be frank.

Going to try for the 60 tick at least, maybe a 70 though I doubt it, new computer and rusty fingers, I'd be happy with a measly 50 right now.
I will update for each tick, that will be fun to see
poorly executed 35 tick for 7:00 (142)
meh 49 tick for 7:10 (191) got messed up by harvesting a fire quartz which was a 1-2 minute timeloss
another even more meh 42 for 7:20 (233), this is taking a while to get into the groove of it
40 again for 7:30 (273) 40-50 is seeming to be my upper limit as of now, only the first run in though so I'm not worried or anything
another 41 for 7:40 (315) this is fine for me as I am able to upkeep it, we will see if this remains so as I go further down
holy that was a bad tick, only like 26 for 7:50 (341)
ok I'm doing something weird, 22 for 8:00 (363)
is this thing miscounting? odd, 22 for 8:10 (385)
eh a bit better with a 34 for 8:20 (419) also remembering I only brought 2k staircases as most are in my deconstructors and I only have 500 crystalariums running jade atm.
another only 30, for 8:30 (449), idk, finger fatigue? I need to practice more though for sure.
25 for 8:40 (474) nothing to say, just... disappointment, jk, it's practice for a reason. Realized this is also the farthest I've ever gotten on a non staircase run, funny
38 for 8:50, (512) not horrid, but my ideal was to stuck above the 40 mark consistently
had 3 floors where I had to bomb myself, not ideal. 20 for 9:00 (532)
35 for 9:10 (567), maybe getting back into that space, in my experience there is a difference between when you are pause buffering with used fingers and non, though finger fatigue is less than usual, nice keyboard now
45 for 9:20 (612), getting there, getting there, at least it's maintaining a good pace, haven't collected anything yet, might just burn on staircases then bomb the place, getting a disproportionate amount of "trapped" floors which I need to bomb myself though which is an absolute pain, wondering if I enchant my pick with speed then anim cancel if it's faster, probably not if I flawless the bombing
another 40 for 9:30 (652), expected a lot worse as I fumbled a wee bit
42 for 9:40 (694), I am trapped in a scuffed floor though with a boulder and torches to expect a bad next tick
messed up and didn't get the exact tick so the next two got 45 together ending at 9:50 (739) oof that's sad, both were the second lowest time so far
41 for 10:00 (781), just an average one so far, no comment
39 for 10:10 (820)
38 for 10:20 (858), getting better at maintaining a 40 average, nothing like the near consistent 60 I could hold with rare 70s
48 for 10:30 (906), I've gotten better at being happy with what I have, still waiting for that beautiful 50 though, not even expecting nor wishing for a 60+ anymore, at least not yet
36 for 10:40 (942), you can't be let down if you have no expectations
38 for 10:50 (980), what that guy said ^
32 for 11:00 (1012), honestly this was probably the worst tick so far, had to bomb myself 4 times and had to use my hammer to break a crate.
43 for 11:10 (1055) thought this would be worse tbh, I did not expect that, I had to actually walk because of an impossible floor with a boulder and non placeable tiles, wow, that's actual pain
44 for 11:20 (1099)
47 for 11:30 (1146), thought I'd get the 50 but messed up the last 5 floors bad enough to lose it, without that probably could have gotten a 53 which is what my old minimum was
49 for 11:40 (1196), this is definitely the farthest I've gone with an empty inventory
38 for 11:50 (1235) I think after 12 I will start actually mining, I realize that I still have gemologist active so rip me for iridium, doesn't really matter though as I am going to go for money then actual crystalariums so I'll just buy a few more hundred soef instead, that's like 250 iridium bars a day with only like 1000 of them so it's not too bad.
42 for 12:00 (1277) the last straight spree before I start actually mining, I think I will stop writing and recording now but there was my first endevour into pause buffering in 4 months.
An average of 38.5 floors all the way until floor 1300, not horrid actually, glad that balanced out near the end, definitely could have pushed the 40 though.