Finally, Level 100

[Worblehat]

And the time taken to get there is quite annoying for an impatient person like me, so I'm just grinding for the Island Obelisk now.

Water Obelisk + Horse Flute is a pretty good substitute for having the Island Obelisk.

To not be completely off-topic in this post - I noticed my staircase stack is at 102, so I should probably do SC one last time to get to 100. But I'm thinking I'll wait for Skull Cavern Invasion to come up so I get some Qi gems for it too...

And when you wear a dinosaur suit, you're always dressed appropriately!

 

[imnvs]

But I'm thinking I'll wait for Skull Cavern Invasion to come up so I get some Qi gems for it too...

I would recommend doing it before Qi offers gems for it. Some folks have observed buggy behavior when doing both.

 

[Elenna101]

Water Obelisk + Horse Flute is a pretty good substitute for having the Island Obelisk.

Especially if you've gotten the key to the town - although I guess if the travel time is too annoying you probably haven't spent enough time there to find 100 walnuts?

 

[Worblehat]

I don't think the key to the town is relevant. From the wiki, "Once the boat is repaired, the store's doors unlock at 8AM, though Willy's own schedule is unchanged. He doesn't need to be in the shop to ride the boat." I'm not really sure what the value of the key to the town is supposed to be in general, to be honest, which is why I haven't bought it.

Good point about Lew Zealand's walnut count. Depends on what "grinding for the Island Obelisk" means exactly. Hitting the Volcano regularly for dragon teeth will also make substantial progress on the walnuts; visiting the pirate cave once to catch a stingray and then waiting for a fish pond to produce the dragon teeth, maybe not...

 

[imnvs]

I don't think the key to the town is relevant. From the wiki, "Once the boat is repaired, the store's doors unlock at 8AM, though Willy's own schedule is unchanged. He doesn't need to be in the shop to ride the boat." I'm not really sure what the value of the key to the town is supposed to be in general, to be honest, which is why I haven't bought it.

My favorite use is getting heart scenes with folks that are tricky to get to because of narrow time windows where they are at home and the door is unlocked. With the key to town, you get a bigger window of time to work with. You can get into Willy's at 6am now. You can also get in at 11pm if you want. Your window of time during which you can get to the island is dramatically increased.

Also, when I go to Clint's and break open a couple hundred geodes in one go, I put all the stuff into a chest there when my inventory fills up (not so much a problem if just opening one type of geode that isn't omni) and keep on breaking geodes until I have everything broken. Then I can take all afternoon and evening hauling that stuff back to my farm because I can get into Clint's after 4pm now... and because he's still standing at his counter until 5pm, and because the door isn't locked to me, it's as if his hours have suddenly extended to be open for another hour literally every day he's there.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I don't think the key to the town is relevant. From the wiki, "Once the boat is repaired, the store's doors unlock at 8AM, though Willy's own schedule is unchanged. He doesn't need to be in the shop to ride the boat." I'm not really sure what the value of the key to the town is supposed to be in general, to be honest, which is why I haven't bought it.

Good point about Lew Zealand's walnut count. Depends on what "grinding for the Island Obelisk" means exactly. Hitting the Volcano regularly for dragon teeth will also make substantial progress on the walnuts; visiting the pirate cave once to catch a stingray and then waiting for a fish pond to produce the dragon teeth, maybe not...

Yes, it's definitely grinding for the Dragon's Teeth though I don't even have the Bananas yet, so yeah there's still work to be done. At least the Walnuts are slowly showing up, too. I have no idea how many I've found so far but I'd put it at 60? I can't wait until I open the Stingray area (last Fish to complete the collection) and the Beach Resort so I can see everyone Elliot in, ehm..., a more casual atmosphere.

Casual is good. It's like Lazy, but with nicer clothing options.

 

[Boo1972]

Yes, it's definitely grinding for the Dragon's Teeth though I don't even have the Bananas yet, so yeah there's still work to be done. At least the Walnuts are slowly showing up, too. I have no idea how many I've found so far but I'd put it at 60? I can't wait until I open the Stingray area (last Fish to complete the collection) and the Beach Resort so I can see everyone Elliot in, ehm..., a more casual atmosphere.

Casual is good. It's like Lazy, but with nicer clothing options.

Ugh, Dragon’s Teeth. I feel like the volcano dungeon is my own personal inferno “Abandon all hope of finding dragon teeth ye who enter here”. Are they the rarest item in the game? And don’t get me started on my stingray fish pond. They keep giving me batteries- Batteries!?! I don’t need your stinkin’ batteries!

But Elliot in his bathing suit is a fine sight to behold. Sam was just complaining to me that Willy won’t let them leave the resort area on Ginger Island. And it got me thinking, maybe I could find a way to sneak Elliot to my Ginger Island farmhouse. Then he never would have to change out of his bathing suit. I have enough money to run 2 households. And what Sam doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right?

 

[Worblehat]

Are they the rarest item in the game?

Heh, it sure feels like it! My pond has produced one so far, and I've found four in my Volcano expeditions. So five total; whereas I've found six prismatic shards, which are supposed to be the rarest item in the game from what I understand... Wait, no, I have one in a chest (don't really care about enchanting the rest of my tools), so that's seven shards.

Expanding definitions slightly, for me the Volcano Common Chest is the rarest. That's where the 130th walnut is hiding in my game, and I have yet to see a single such chest. Found three Volcano Rare Chests, the second of which contained that walnut (#129).

Re: use cases for the key to the town; OK, very different play styles. I've never wanted to go to the island before 8am or after 11pm. And I did my geode opening in smaller batches, often hopping on the minecart to put one in the geode crusher (maybe the mine wasn't the ideal place to put that, in hindsight) to exploit the fact that the crusher is one geode behind Clint in the sequence.

 

[Elenna101]

I don't think the key to the town is relevant. From the wiki, "Once the boat is repaired, the store's doors unlock at 8AM, though Willy's own schedule is unchanged. He doesn't need to be in the shop to ride the boat." I'm not really sure what the value of the key to the town is supposed to be in general, to be honest, which is why I haven't bought it.

Good point about Lew Zealand's walnut count. Depends on what "grinding for the Island Obelisk" means exactly. Hitting the Volcano regularly for dragon teeth will also make substantial progress on the walnuts; visiting the pirate cave once to catch a stingray and then waiting for a fish pond to produce the dragon teeth, maybe not...

I brought up the key to the town because it lets you get into Willy's shop after he closes (or before he opens, although I didn't do that much). So the idea was that water obelisk isn't exactly identical to island obelisk, because you're still limited to going when Willy's shop is open, but water obelisk + key to the town (+ horse flute if you have it) is almost the same as island obelisk.

Re: use cases for the key to the town; OK, very different play styles. I've never wanted to go to the island before 8am or after 11pm. And I did my geode opening in smaller batches, often hopping on the minecart to put one in the geode crusher (maybe the mine wasn't the ideal place to put that, in hindsight) to exploit the fact that the crusher is one geode behind Clint in the sequence.

Not sure why you're saying "after 11 pm" - you can't get into the shop after 5 pm without the key to the town. I wanted to go there after 5 pm somewhat often, to check the island farm for artifact spots or look for walnuts or do a quick volcano run after doing stuff on the mainland. YMMV.

My other main use case for the key to the town was buying coal from Clint, because he stands behind his desk 6am to 5pm most days, and 6am to ~8am Friday (before going to the completed CC), even though he only opens 9-4. So if I went to Skull Caverns the previous day, I like to pop in right at the start of the day and buy a bunch of coal to immediately start smelting all the iridium ore I just got. It's particularly nice to be able to buy from him on Friday just by getting there early enough.
Like you said, it's definitely a playstyle thing, if you're not doing much with Clint I can understand it not being very useful to you.

 

[Worblehat]

Not sure why you're saying "after 11 pm"

You can also get in at 11pm

Re: coal from Clint, I have a very large excess of coal from grinding the burglar ring a while back, plus all the bouncing mushroom monsters dust sprites are replaced with in the dangerous mines. Never had the need to buy coal from Clint, and I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future...

 

[Elenna101]

Re: coal from Clint, I have a very large excess of coal from grinding the burglar ring a while back, plus all the bouncing mushroom monsters dust sprites are replaced with in the dangerous mines. Never had the need to buy coal from Clint, and I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future...

Ah. Yeah, I missed that line from imvns - I guess they were just using 11 pm as an example. The coal thing is definitely just a playstyle difference, I do SC quite a bit, and I'm usually using several hundred explosive ammo per trip, so the coal is needed for that as well as to smelt iridium ore.

 

[LoveElliotsHair]

You know, this dynamic reminded me of the dynamic my spouse and I have. See, she loves fishing... but she's never completed Master Angler on her own. I have more than once. On the other hand, I can't complete the "simon" puzzle on Ginger Island without her help.

I also can't play darts to save my life. My daughter said, "Do you know how many video games have basically this same dart game?" She grew up playing all kinds of games and this is my first one. SO, I answered, "No, my sweet daughter....I really have no idea." LOL!

She got me Stardew during Covid lockdown...I'm an old lady and it's really been a blessing to me. I'm grateful she can help me with some things. I just don't have the eye/hand coordination for some of it. I play on Steam and a laptop.

 

[Worblehat]

Returning to the original topic - I finally did SC to level 100 just now, using 47 staircases but gaining 57 iridium ore and a prismatic shard. Made it to Qi with 20 minutes to spare, because once the iridium nodes start showing up it's soooo tempting to stop and bomb them all. Even though my severe struggle finding iridium in Year 2 has become a complete non-issue now that I'm well into Year 3 (I don't think I was quite into "I have more iridium than I'll ever need" territory yet, but I probably am now...).

Almost died a couple times because I've gotten out of the habit of keeping an eye on my health since I've had top of the line gear for so long, but I caught it before it was too late both times.

I'd say "Whew! Never going in there ever again!", but ... freakin' Monster Eradication Goals, sigh. Need 140 more serpents, in particular. (and 33 Pepper Rex and 67 mummies, which shouldn't be too bad in comparison).

 

[Lew Zealand]

Woooooo, Level 100 Club! Round of Snake Milk for everyone on me! Gus owes me for all the Oranges I bring him! Wow only 20 minutes to spare, how were those last 3 levels or so? Nailbiters or just plonk down staircases and wave goodbye to the Ghosts?

 

[Worblehat]

Oh, the last ten levels or so were just madly dropping staircases. I don't think any of them had obvious goodies like iridium nodes in line of sight, but I couldn't stop to look carefully at that point anyway.

 

[Worblehat]

Following up on the Dragon's Teeth tangent from a week ago - the deconstructor correctly recognizes that as the most valuable ingredient in a Warp Totem: Island. I don't remember how I got them, but I had two totems as random drops. So that's effectively two more Dragon's Teeth drops.

That still leaves my Dragon's Teeth count equal to my Prismatic Shard count. So yay, they are equally rare!

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Congrats!

I've gotten to 100 many times, but never without a significant amount of bombs, a significant amount of stairs, or a significant amount of both. The use of gold star cheese for energy instead of salads is one I've never done, probably because I get into a habit with salads and don't have cheese early due to feeding my endless addiction to pepper poppers. That being said I'll definitely be making that switch, that's way more efficient!

Something fun for those who are unaware, in multiplayer, it's virtually impossible to get to 100 without stairs due to the lack of time pausing during eating, level transitions, etc, which also means you can't cheese the bomb animations for additional time saves. However, when my wife and I were playing, I was carrying the stairs, she was not, we got to 100, and though I got the cutscene where he calls you out, she got the stair free one! So it tracks stair usage per player, and thus if you each use 9 or less you'll still be eligible. I don't know if 18 is adequate in Multiplayer, we haven't tried for that yet, but with 4 players 36 seems like it would definitely suffice.

 

[Boo1972]

Following up on the Dragon's Teeth tangent from a week ago - the deconstructor correctly recognizes that as the most valuable ingredient in a Warp Totem: Island. I don't remember how I got them, but I had two totems as random drops. So that's effectively two more Dragon's Teeth drops.

That still leaves my Dragon's Teeth count equal to my Prismatic Shard count. So yay, they are equally rare!

My stingrays finally came through with my 10th dragons tooth. I was so excited I built the Island Warp tower right away. The next morning my stingrays gave me another dragons tooth.

I’m considering serving the family broiled stingray this week.