However, I want to get to Level 100 to finish the Qi challenge (which I have never completed).
If this is all you want to do, if this is your sole reason for doing this, then get crystalariums up and running with Jade, then when you have 100 Jade, take them to the desert trader on a Sunday, and swap them for 100 staircases. You can then just ladder down to floor 100 with zero variance
I can easily raise around 30,000 in a few days to fund Skull Cavern runs.
That's more than enough. TBH, with a little patience it can be done for the 500g cost of the bus fare; unless you have a desert totem, in which case you don't need to spend any cash at all.
Good "free" foods include
- Gold cheese from your cows - a full deluxe barn of well fed 5-star cows will provide you with 12 Large Milk for gold cheeses every day - three days will give you enough for a skull run. You want about 5 days of regular cheese from regular milk
- If you lack cheese presses, but you also have a coop full of chickens, you can make omelet. The downside is that they won't heal you anywhere near as much as cheese, so at 12 omelets per day, you probably need a week's worth
- Sashimi - go to the sewers, catch carp all day and turn it all into sashimi. Turn the green and white algae into algae soup and pale broth respectively. Or just spam crab pots. Either way, you probably want around 75 sashimi to be safe. Pale broth is awesome considering the cost of the ingredients.
- Cactus fruit or purple mushrooms - if you have a bunch of either of these lying around, take them; they're both awesome, and the higher the quality, the more bang for your buck - iridium is the best, you'd want about 25 iridium purple mushrooms, or 35 iridium cactus fruit
But if you're buying, the easiest bet for food is going to Gus and buying 50 salads, which should easily last the day, and can be yours for just 11,000. Dont clog up your inventory with a dozen small stacks of food, just concentrate on having a large single stack countaining thousands of HP, maybe 2 stacks max. Also, don't choose foods that only heal small, for instance the field snack only heals 20HP, meaning you need to eat three of them to recover from a single hit from an iridium bat. You want to take food that heals in big chunks, which is why cheese and salad are the most popular choices,
I have 155 Health and 338 Stamina
Health is all the matters, you won't be using stamina. But keep an eye on that health bar and don't let it get low. Ever!
Level 10 Mining (Professions: Geologist and Gemologist)
You say you have money to put into this, well do yourself a huge favour - go to the sewer and use the statue to change professions, because Geologist sucks big time. You want to choose Miner/Blacksmith, which will give you an extra ore from every single node. On a good skull run, that's hundreds of extra ore for literally zero extra effort. Even an extra 100 iridium ore is 20 Iridium Bars, which is an extra 30 grand when you sell them, plus all the extra copper, iron and gold ore you'll get. This single thing will make the biggest difference to your loot
The higher combat is good, as it gives you higher HP, but try not to get caught up in combat. With coffee and Spicy Eel you will have +2 speed, which is enough to outrun even the green serpents. Only fight if it is absolutely unavoidable. Also, IMHO the Life Elixir is pretty pointless; it's ridiculously expensive to craft, and it's far too dangerous to let your health get so low as to take maximum advantage of them, so you're better off just having 2 salads if you lose 100 HP.
It's my last few days to buy stone from Robin at lower prices! Should I splurge all I can raise in 4 days? (I'm on Winter 26)
I'd say don't buy stone either. You'll probably have the best part of a full stack lying around from all your activity in the normal mines, and that's enough to get you started. For staircases, as already mentioned, you want to trade Jade.
If you want to be a cheapskate on Bombs as well, just keep revisiting floor 61 for iron ore, and while you're there, slaughter the coal sprites, then craft your own bombs. I'd say mostly avoid Megas, because it's hard to get out of blast range and you'll take a lot of unnecessary damage. There are only a few floor layouts I'd consider using them, offhand I think floor layouts 9, 13, 16, 23 and 38, basically all the wide open ones. Otherwise I just use normal bombs. Cherry bombs are too small and fiddly, and not worth wasting an inventory slot.
Overall, your inventory when you enter SC should look something like this
Weapon
Pickaxe
SIngle stack of big healing food (salad, cheese, etc)
Coffee
Spicy Eel (this is not for healing, just for speed and luck buffs)
Single stack of staircases or stones
Bombs
Slingshot loaded with explosive ammo if you are comfortable with using it
That's it, the other slots are all for the loot.
