Bad luck or bug in Skull Cavern?

[Farmer Rik]

Hi there!

New to this board so apologies if this topic is in the wrong place.

Currently on my second playthrough of SV and I'm having serious trouble finding treasure rooms in the Skull Cavern. I'm wondering if I've encountered some sort of bug.

On this playthrough, I have descended - as an estimate - close to 2000 floors and seen only one treasure room in Skull Cavern. The one treasure room I did see came on my 2nd (and ultimately successful attempt to get to Floor 100). I have tried increasing luck with food (not managed to find a lucky ring yet), have the Secret Note 20 lucky charm, and tend to go on good luck days, but I am simply not seeing any.

On my previous save, I got myself a full complement of 5+ auto-petters so I know how cruel the Cavern can be, but this is seeming really odd now.

The only thing I can think is that something happened when I passed out in Mr Qi's room at level 100 when I first got there as that was the last time I saw a treasure room.

Can anyone help?

 

[FilthyGorilla]

It sounds as if you haven't really gotten to level 100 more than once, level 100 is guaranteed to have a chest unless you have the qi snake milk cutscene.
The first 10 floors also cannot generate treasure rooms so if you aren't going past level 100 at all that's a massive chunk of your total floors traveled.
Treasure floors are linked to luck, there is a base 1% to find on per floor though low luck can literally make that 0%, luck buffs also influence the chance and you wan tot have as many of these as possible, the easiest luck sources to get are lucky rings and spicy eel. Later on you'll want to invest weekly into magic rock candy and have a little are set up for making lucky lunches.
With the highest luck buffs the chance for treasure rooms approaches 11.25% per floor, or on average a treasure room every 9-10 floors.

 

[Farmer Rik]

Thanks for the tips. I should mention that I have 200+ hours logged so am aware of the mechanics and how to increase my chances - the issue is that what is happening currently is well out of the range of normal probability. The estimated levels travelled at the moment comes from 15-20 runs of reaching probably an average depth of 80.

I'm in Spring, Year 2 at the moment, so I'm mostly using bombs rather than staircases, but I think I have reached level 100 once since and did not find a treasure room. I'll test reaching level 100 with staircases tonight to confirm.

P.S. I'm playing on the console version (Switch)

 

[Farmer Rik]

Just to follow up on this...I did some testing last night. I only had 50 staircases, so not ideal for testing, however the day I tested on was a Very Happy Spirits day. I found:

After approx. 600 more staircases, I finally found a non-level 100 treasure room in Skull Cavern. Another 300 and I still have yet to find another. As this is still feeling very much out of the range of normal probability, I decided to change some factors, starting with switching from Multiplayer (Split Screen, Switch) like usual, to just loading up on my own.

Almost instantly, treasure rooms started appearing more frequently and more in line with the suggested probability and my own previous experience. On each run (again, approx. 50 staircases) I would find on average one treasure room.

I know that time in Skull Cavern moves faster in multiplayer than if you are playing alone, but this didn't affect the results as I always used all my staircases in plenty of time in both instances. Is there a possibility that another aspect of multiplayer might have been decreasing the probability of the treasure rooms? My playing partner hasn't completed Secret Note 20, so their base luck is slightly lower. Is the base luck for SC treasure rooms pooled between players perhaps?