Luck and Skull Caverns

[qaija]

Background: After saving up over 200 staircases and waiting for a very happy day from the Fortune teller I decided to see how well I could do In Skull caverns. I had over 60 red bombs and 30 blacks. I even traded 3 prismatics for a magic rock candy. I began my descent on Pumpkin soup to get the additional +2 luck and immediately put down a stair case at each level until I got to 110. At that point I began to clear levels with bombs. If there were only a few scattered nodes I would staircase down to the next level, trying to use my bombs to open as many nodes as I could. When I got to level 125 I ate the candy. I got down to level 145 when 2AM arrived and I was teleported back to my bed. I always keep going until I pass out at 2am. I think the only cost to doing this, rather than porting back home alive, is that I pay 1000 gold. I wake up with full energy and all my items. My total "take" was 2 prismatics, 135 iridium, and 37 gold. Nothing of value from treasure chests or any of the other nodes I opened. I saw no mystic stones. I kept drunk on espresso for the speed gain and pumpkin soup for the luck gain except for the very brief period when the magic rock candy was in effect. Overall I considered the results of this "dive" abysmal. I have had better results on less fortunate days and never even getting as deep as level 100.

Questions:

Is the magic rock candy worth it? The duration I believe is supposed to be a bit over 8 minutes. It sure did not seem to me to last very long, certainly not anywhere near as long as I expected. The candy does not seem to be worth it to me. I go quite a few levels on one dose of pumpkin soup. I don't think I cleared more than two or three levels before the candy buff expired. Perhaps time was going by faster than I thought because of my excitement at running around dropping bombs everywhere (this is most likely what happened) but it certainly seemed to last only a fraction of the time my normal food buffs last.

It took approximately 2 1/2 game time hours to get to level 110 from when I entered the cavern. Would I have done better overall had I used up another 2 1/2 hours to staircase down to level 220 before I began clearing levels?

Did I just have bad luck, despite the very happy day? Should I have just started the day over again?

 

[qaija]

I just returned from my second "dive" into the caverns. This time the fortune was neutral and I staircased down to level 150 (at 12:30) before bomb clearing levels. I ported out at 1:20AM so could have stayed a bit longer and did quite a bit better than the run I initially posted about. I received 4 prismatics, 140 iridium, 100 gold, and two rain totems from a treasure room which is useful, unlike the first run. As in my first run, I saw no mystic stones. I think they must be pretty rare.

Two dives is too small a number to come to any conclusions about the impact of luck, but so far it appears that luck has very little impact on the items you receive and I am thinking that perhaps it really is pretty much a waste of time to wait until you get a good fortune day before diving into the caverns for some good loot.

 

[Elenna101]

Luck in Skull Caverns mostly affects a) the number of ladders you find, and b) the number of treasure rooms (but not the items in them). Specifically, ladders are affected by both daily luck and luck buff, treasure rooms are increased slightly by daily luck but mostly by luck buff.

Given that, I suggest using magic rock candy right at the start of a day, so that you have the luck on earlier floors where you're just looking for ladders, rather than floors where you may want to stay a while to get loot.
EDIT: just realized you skipped most of the initial levels with stairs. The above is still true but less so if you're starting at a level where there's already a lot of goodies.

(Also incidentally I prefer spicy eel over pumpkin soup - you still get +1 luck buff, and the +1 speed makes a big difference for running around getting stuff and avoiding combat.)

 

[MissDandy]

I'm no expert on SC deep dives because I've only ever done a few, but when I do I don't ever use the magic rock candy. Instead, I eat spicy eel and ginger ale for the luck buff(s) and the speed. The reason being is that rock candy seems like too high a price for what you get out of it for me (but maybe that's just my opinion.) Since you can stack the buffs for food and drink, you get a combined total of +2 from spicy eel and ginger ale. I know rock candy gives you luck of 5, but then again, I still think the price is too high. You can also stack lucky lunch (I make them because they're not too hard to make at all) and ginger ale which gives you luck of +4. You won't get the speed from that, though. You can use espresso as a fill in, which it sounds like you can do no problem. Then, you're only down a luck point of 1 compared to the rock candy.

 

[qaija]

(Also incidentally I prefer spicy eel over pumpkin soup - you still get +1 luck buff, and the +1 speed makes a big difference for running around getting stuff and avoiding combat.)
[/QUOTE]

I've considered eating spicy eel instead of pumpkin soup. And since the luck buff does not seem as important as I thought it was, I am going to start eating the eel. Thank you.

 

[qaija]

(Also incidentally I prefer spicy eel over pumpkin soup - you still get +1 luck buff, and the +1 speed makes a big difference for running around getting stuff and avoiding combat.)
[/QUOTE]

Elena, I want to thank you once again for your suggestion that I use spicy eel instead of pumpkin soup. I really didn't think +2 speed would make a significant difference vs +1, but it does!
I am still trying to get 10 dragon teeth for my Ginger island warp tower and the drops so far have been very stingy. As I'm sure you know, there are LOTS of mobs running around in the Volcano and stopping often to kill them slows down getting to level 10. With speed +2 I am able to run past them while I run around looking for dragon carcasses and the time it now takes me to run through there is reduced significantly.

 

[One More Day]

Here are some of my personal thoughts and preferences for improving SC results

• One stack of bombs only; separate stacks of different size bombs seems such a waste of an inventory slot to me
• Black bombs instead of red; they're cheaper and they're easier to craft too with what you find while mining, and the larger range of the reds isn't worth the extra imo
• Spicy eel instead of pumpkin soup; the second +1 speed on top of the coffee is worth more than the extra +1 luck
• Going home early is just burning money; the cost when staying out until collapse at 2am is only 1,000g, which is far less than the value that can be got in the time it takes to get back to bed
• I staircase straight down to about floor 200, not 100, before I start aggressively targeting iridium nodes
• Be selective about which floors to explore and blow up; don't do them all just because they are there. Go for it on ones with decent iridium and lots of open space, but continue to staircase straight past empty floors, monster floors, and layouts with lots of twisty narrow passages. Spending half an hour on a bad floor to get just one or two nodes is a waste of time when you could staircase through dozens of others in the same time looking for a good one. Most floors are bad imo

 

[imnvs]

If you have MRC, pop it as soon as you walk in the door. Luck adds to the quantity of treasure levels you find, and at the very least those are free stairs to the next level.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Luck in Skull Caverns mostly affects a) the number of ladders you find, and b) the number of treasure rooms (but not the items in them). Specifically, ladders are affected by both daily luck and luck buff, treasure rooms are increased slightly by daily luck but mostly by luck buff.

Given that, I suggest using magic rock candy right at the start of a day, so that you have the luck on earlier floors where you're just looking for ladders, rather than floors where you may want to stay a while to get loot.
EDIT: just realized you skipped most of the initial levels with stairs. The above is still true but less so if you're starting at a level where there's already a lot of goodies.

(Also incidentally I prefer spicy eel over pumpkin soup - you still get +1 luck buff, and the +1 speed makes a big difference for running around getting stuff and avoiding combat.)

Daily luck and luck buffs have the same name influence though you came have buffs in higher amounts which therefore leads to greater effects.

 

[Veracious]

I play on Switch so staircase down or looking for stairs/holes is very time consuming but I've managed to get to 160ish b4 bombing away but i tend to agree that most floors are not worth the stop to investigate.

I use the spicy eel, espresso and garlic oil.
I like to take lots of bombs generally i have 2 or 3 hundred of each but I think i might try with just the 1 style of bomb as I haven't often used them all in 1 run.
I have a shed full of crystalariums producing Jade, Ruby and Quartz just to buy stairs, spicy eel & bombs from the trader on Sundays,

I also have a lucky ring combo with slime charmer.

 

[Elenna101]

Daily luck and luck buffs have the same name influence though you came have buffs in higher amounts which therefore leads to greater effects.

Daily luck and luck buffs are treated as completely separate things in the code (coded as DailyLuck and LuckLevel). Some things (like mining ladders and treasure chests) use both. Some things are only affected by DailyLuck (e.g. multiple fish with wild bait), and some things are only affected by LuckLevel (e.g. Qi gems from monsters in the hard mode mines).

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Daily luck and luck buffs are treated as completely separate things in the code (coded as DailyLuck and LuckLevel). Some things (like mining ladders and treasure chests) use both. Some things are only affected by DailyLuck (e.g. multiple fish with wild bait), and some things are only affected by LuckLevel (e.g. Qi gems from monsters in the hard mode mines).

Oh I know their different effect, a lot of things are only influenced by daily, etc.

My comment was only regarding skull cavern ladder and treasure rooms chances, I should have specified.