The Skull Cavern - how far is it possible to go?

Yves

Greenhorn
I've gone through 1000+ floors without any mods, but I don't remember the exact number. After 800 floors you can see that the iridium bats have turned red, and they're going really fast.
 

Zamiel

Sodbuster
On his first attempt he got to level 869 (lol) by just spamming staircases next to him, often wasting several, at 1:50am. Obviously not useful for looting since you get literally nothing and waste thousands of staircases, but it got me wondering - how far down is it possible to go? I've seen some posts of other people getting to around 700 at least, but I'm not sure if there's an official record?
To my knowledge, there is no official record or previous world record attempt.

And does luck affect the amount of rocks that spawn in the cavern?
No. From how I understand the code, luck only affects the types of rocks that spawn, e.g. chance that a rock is an Iridium Ore node. (Blade can confirm one way or the other.)

Would it be more efficient to try this on a low luck day, since less rocks spawning would mean a bigger chance that there's going to be a free spot where you want to place your staircase?
No.

In general, 869 is not a bad attempt, but most certainly could be improved upon. As for how to get the furthest down, an optimal attempt at this would look something like the following:

1) At 6:00 AM, you immediately use a Warp Totem: Desert.
2) You immediately eat double speed food (e.g. Triple Shot Espresso + Crab Cakes).
3) You immediately summon your horse.
4) You go directly to the Skull Cavern.
5) As soon as you enter, you pause the game on the first frame that it is possible to do so.
6) Once the screen has faded in, you unpause and place a staircase and go down the staircase.
7) You repeat 5-6 over and over until you pass out at 2 AM.

The purpose of pausing the game is to prevent in-game time from passing, which will allow you get roughly twice as far as you would otherwise. How deep you are able to go down will simply be a function of:

1) How many floors you get "unlucky" on in the sense that there are no available tiles to place a staircase on next to the floor entrance.
2) How close you can get to frame-perfect pausing without making an input error.
3) How fast you can place a staircase.

In closing, I will suggest that there are much better things that you could be doing with your life.
 
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