Mr. Qi’s challenge

[Florida Man]

Is there any advice you could give me to get to level 25 in skull cavern for Mr. Qi’s challenge. I’ve already failed 3 times

 

[One More Day]

24 staircases, job done

Granted, it's not much of a challenge to do it this way, but if you just want to check it off the list, it's ridiculously easy

 

[Lenora Rose]

Use speed boosters and luck boosts even more than attack/defense. (spicy eel ftw but lucky lunches and espresso/coffee too) and have lots of healing at hand.

Start in the early morning if you can.

Descend as soon as you have a staircase or hole (even if you have a really good treasure to claim, ideally, though we all know temptations), and favour holes over staircases. You can slow down if you're near or past 25. Use lots of bombs to get both holes and stairs faster. Don't pick fights with enemies but do smack down flying serpents at least enough to get down a staircase.

Drink the healing potions/tonics/etc when you're at a third or a quarter, not when you're getting warnings.

 

[ThePerfectGarden]

I did it recently without a staircase within one afternoon. The Galaxy Sword is very useful to make short work of those damned flying serpents and one or two ghosts. I don't engage with the mummies at all if it can be avoided, have a coffee or a Spiced Eel, carry a lot of bombs, thus dashing through every floor looking for an open staircase or - muchmuch better! - a shaft, and if there is none, I bomb my way through.
Of course it's a matter of luck. In my recent run-through I found at least three shafts, every one several levels deep. Which means you better go there on a lucky day (when the spirits are happy). But with a Galaxy Sword, a good many bombs and enough food (melons are good, cheese too) in your backpack and possibly some speed-ups such like coffee or Spiced Eel, you should be able to make it within a day.

 

[Lew Zealand]

If you're anything like me (then I'm sorry) you need to ignore all the wonderful things you might see on each of those floors and slap those horse blinders on to focus on the task. There will be time for all manner of alluring shiny collecty things later.

One More Day's advice is spot on. 24 Staircases and you're done.

However if you don't want to do the Stairs route, Leonora Rose and ThePerfectGarden both have great advice:

• Choose a day with High Luck
• Take Speed (Coffee/Espresso) or Luck (Ginger Ale) or both (Spicy Eel) Buffs. One each Food and Drink are active at a time. Coffee and Spicy Eel are mid game available.
• Take good Food (Cheese or Iridium Quality Cheese is my fave but Salads and lots of other things are good too)
• Take ~40 Bombs, your Pickaxe is too slow with Monsters about
• Avoid Monsters at all costs. Bomb near a spot with lotsa rocks and step back a few spaces. Food will help for both of these
• Take Shafts or Ladders as soon as you see them. Stop for nothing! (see my first sentence above). Shafts are wayyy better as you get 3-15 Levels with them!

Once you make it to Level 25, you can start collecting things with your remaining Bombs if you're still interested and calm. But if you just wanna get out then take that ladder up and goooooooooo!

Enjoy!

 

[NPop]

Is there any advice you could give me to get to level 25 in skull cavern for Mr. Qi’s challenge. I’ve already failed 3 times

I am so with you on this. I avoid Skull Cavern cause I am apparently just terrible at the part of the game. Wishing you luck!

What do folks mean when they talk about rubies = staircases? I know I can make staircases out of rock. How do you get them from rubies?

 

[Florida Man]

I found this out recently, if you get jades you can trade them with the desert trader for staircases on Wednesdays.

 

[Lenora Rose]

Jade can be used to buy the staircases on Sunday from the desert trader. Ruby can be traded for spicy eel every day.

 

[Elenna101]

Yeah everything everyone else said is good. Speed and luck buffs are super important, bring a lot of food, use bombs - ideally you should barely use your pickaxe at all, or at least only when bombs are going off. If you've got the resources, you can just plop down more bombs while waiting for the first bombs to go off.

A few more points:

• If you've got money but no food, salads are the most gold-efficient food you can buy.
• Even if you don't want to go the "24 stairs" route, bring at least a few stairs. At the very least, you want to skip any monster-infested floors (takes way too long to kill everything) and those annoying spiral-shaped levels.
• Especially when you're starting out, I'd advise eating when you hit half health, rather than 1/3 or 1/4. No harm in being careful. Salads are particularly good if you, like me, hate "wasting" food by eating when you don't need as much health as it gives - they restore enough to not be annoying to use, but not too much. But also, just eat the food, it'll be even more of a waste if you die when you had perfectly good food.
• Important - make sure you can access the food quickly! You don't want to be fumbling to click on the right slot as enemies dive-bomb you. A lot of people like to put the food next to the weapon/bombs, so that they can quickly use the mouse scroll wheel to get to it, or underneath the bombs to quickly switch inventory rows to get to it.
  • What I like doing it to pause (with E, on PC) whenever I'm getting low on health or feeling overwhelmed. My reaction time tends to be not great, so this gives me extra time to breathe and think about what to do. While paused, on PC, you can use the number hotkeys to switch which item you're holding. So switch to food while still paused, unpause, and quickly eat. You can switch back to your weapon by clicking it as you eat. Unfortunately this only works in single-player, and I think only works on PC.
• Actually that's important enough to be it's own point. It's easy, when you're not used to Skull Caverns, to panic and die. Remember, if you're in single-player, you can pause at any time! Train yourself to hit E (or whatever the pause button is on your platform) when you feel overwhelmed, it gives you time to breathe and think.
  • If you're in multiplayer, then sorry, SC is just way harder in multiplayer because of time not slowing down in SC or pausing when you eat, and multiplayer lag. The other tips mentioned in this thread should still help though!

EDIT: Here are a couple more advanced tricks. Feel free to ignore them if you're already overwhelmed by all the other advice - these are definitely not necessary for getting to 25 or even 100, and they take extra practice to learn. But the hammer thing in particular I recommend for basically everyone (unless you're on mobile).

• The hammer thing: if you take any hammer weapon, use the special ability (right click on PC) and then immediately mash the regular attack (left click on PC), you'll get a strong, multi-hit, AOE attack. By far the best attack in the game. This does knock enemies back a lot, though. For ground enemies like slimes you can negate that by pinning them between you and a rock or wall or something, but for flying enemies you just have to be fast to get multiple hits on them. But hey, knocking them back does give you some breathing room.
  • The other disadvantage of this is that it has a long cool-down. If you want, you can carry a sword as well, for faster hits in between smash attacks. Taking the Acrobat perk and/or enchanting the weapon with Artisan at Ginger Island will significantly decrease the cool-down time.
• Believe it or not, the slingshots are useful! There's a thing called Explosive Ammo, which you can craft or buy from the Adventurer's Guild at combat level 8. You shoot it from the slingshot and it detonates instantly upon hitting a wall, enemy, or ladder, which lets you go down a lot faster since you don't have to wait for bombs to go off.
  • Disadvantage: because it doesn't explode until it hits a wall, enemy, or ladder, you have to learn to spot good clumps of rock that are either next to a wall, or in a good spot to lure an enemy to. If you have a large open space with plenty of rocks, placing a bomb may still be better.
  • Disadvantage: it's very hard to aim, especially if you're trying to hit a moving enemy. Version 1.5 changed the slingshot so the default is aiming by clicking where you want to go and holding. This is easier to aim than the old method of "pull backwards from where you want to go", but it does shoot slower. YMMV.