Pretty far in Skull Caverns ig (level 1100+)

[FilthyGorilla]

Wow... I must be the only person who is like, "I've already got 3 of that hat, so that's definitely the first to go come trashing time."

Idk, I hate the hats themselves, I just need them yk?

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Wow, over a thousand floors. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or a bit afraid. Maybe both.

I recall from the wiki, it said that after floor 50 (?) more and more rocks will become iridum nodes. Due to that line, I imagined a floor where every rock is an iridum node. Perhaps one day someone will experience it.

yeah, about 60-70% of the rocks were iridium nodes on a smaller lucky floor at that point, though some were nearer to 15-20%
Before 1.3.27 which patched iridium spawning, you could get floors with 100% iridium nodes besides the big rocks on about level 300-400.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Wow... I must be the only person who is like, "I've already got 3 of that hat, so that's definitely the first to go come trashing time."

Not the only person, I only keep 2 of each hat (1 for me and 1 for my horse) so Skull Cavern hats are instantly trashed on my side. I also still need another 7 Autopetters I think so I wish those could've been slid my way ;-P Ah well.

I also do think a shed or two of Crystalariums is certainly a late game sort of thing; for a full shed of Crystalariums it's 274 Iridium Bars (1370 Iridium Ore), 685 Gold Bars (3425 Gold Ore), 959 Coal, 137 Batteries, and 13,563 Stone. Certainly achievable, and depending on playstyle and preference significantly faster by some than others. The nice thing about Staircases (from Jade) though is they reinvest easily into getting the stuff needed to make more of them, so you start to gain benefits even after only crafting a few. Of course I think you were implying that with "a midgame strat extended into the lategame".

I know it's an unpopular use of the space but personally I like to put the initial ones in the basement.

The ones in the middle are diamonds, and the ones along the top and right edge are rubies. And yes I'm aware this isn't even close to an optimal layout, the gap in the middle is too wide. I'll get around to fixing it eventually :-)

I also keep some Crystalariums in the tunnel, all of these are jade, and between that and the basement I find I have enough to do whatever I want with them and haven't craved more. If and when I finish some other projects I have going though maybe my Jade consumption will increase with more frequent dives, and I'll eventually need more. I do like sheds of them on the Standard farm where I feel like there's more space I can / want to devote to that. I certainly haven't hit that point yet though on this save.

 

[imnvs]

Of course I think you were implying that with "a midgame strat extended into the lategame".

Exactly. Mid-game it's more like all my crystalariums, all 10 of them, pumping out jade. Later game it evolves into an entire shed.

 

[Elenna101]

yeah, about 60-70% of the rocks were iridium nodes on a smaller lucky floor at that point, though some were nearer to 15-20%
Before 1.3.27 which patched iridium spawning, you could get floors with 100% iridium nodes besides the big rocks on about level 300-400.

Pretty sure that change was actually version 1.4.1. (According to the wiki, there were some Skull Caverns changes in 1.3.27, but that's not one of them.)

Wow, over a thousand floors. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or a bit afraid. Maybe both.

I recall from the wiki, it said that after floor 50 (?) more and more rocks will become iridum nodes. Due to that line, I imagined a floor where every rock is an iridum node. Perhaps one day someone will experience it.

Not just after floor 50 - the probability of a rock being an iridium node increases as you go from floor 0 to floor 100, and then continues to increase but much more slowly after floor 100. As FilthyGorilla mentioned, it used to continue increasing at the same rate after floor 100, but then 1.4.0 added the ability to trade jades for staircases and the ability to stack up to 999 staircases in one inventory slot (as well as magic rock candy and desert warp totems), so then Skull Caverns became insanely profitable and a few min-maxers asked CA to nerf it. So that's why CA changed the spawn rate after floor 100 (as well as nerfing explosive ammo heavily and restricting magic rock candy to one a week). So in version 1.4.0 you could definitely have gotten to a point where the floors were all iridium nodes, but now I don't think you can do it without mods. At least not consistently - people might be able to get to a floor or two that's all iridium by luck, not sure.

This spreadsheet that Blade made has the probability of iridium on any floor, if you're curious.

 

[NullObjects]

Oh nice, that data is already there. That's pretty neat. It looks like internally skull cavern was/is treated as floor 121+ in the mines and I noticed that every 5 floors there are 0% chances. With both these points in mind, did that mean there used to be elevators in skull cavern too?

According to the 1.4.1 data, it looks like at floor 1780 there is 100% chance of ore for each rock and blindly extrapolating it out, floor 5700 would be 100% chance of iridium?

Even with a script to automate (borderline cheating? ), I wonder if it is possible. I just learned about pause buffering, but wonder if there is some minimal amount of game ticks it requires in putting that staircase down and fading the screen out, etc.

 

[Elenna101]

Oh nice, that data is already there. That's pretty neat. It looks like internally skull cavern was/is treated as floor 121+ in the mines and I noticed that every 5 floors there are 0% chances. With both these points in mind, did that mean there used to be elevators in skull cavern too?

According to the 1.4.1 data, it looks like at floor 1780 there is 100% chance of ore for each rock and blindly extrapolating it out, floor 5700 would be 100% chance of iridium?

Even with a script to automate (borderline cheating? ), I wonder if it is possible. I just learned about pause buffering, but wonder if there is some minimal amount of game ticks it requires in putting that staircase down and fading the screen out, etc.

Yep, SC is treated as floor 121+. As far as I know there were never elevators, though - the "every 5 floors" stuff is just carrying over from the regular mines code.

Looking again at GodzillaFreak's youtube video about his record-setting Skull Caverns run, he mentions that he's going 50-70 floors per 10 minute interval with really good pause buffering. Doing that the entire day (119 10-minute intervals, assuming you get in before 6:10) would get him to floor ~7000, so I guess I was wrong about not being able to get that far without mods.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Pretty sure that change was actually version 1.4.1. (According to the wiki, there were some Skull Caverns changes in 1.3.27, but that's not one of them.)


Not just after floor 50 - the probability of a rock being an iridium node increases as you go from floor 0 to floor 100, and then continues to increase but much more slowly after floor 100. As FilthyGorilla mentioned, it used to continue increasing at the same rate after floor 100, but then 1.4.0 added the ability to trade jades for staircases and the ability to stack up to 999 staircases in one inventory slot (as well as magic rock candy and desert warp totems), so then Skull Caverns became insanely profitable and a few min-maxers asked CA to nerf it. So that's why CA changed the spawn rate after floor 100 (as well as nerfing explosive ammo heavily and restricting magic rock candy to one a week). So in version 1.4.0 you could definitely have gotten to a point where the floors were all iridium nodes, but now I don't think you can do it without mods. At least not consistently - people might be able to get to a floor or two that's all iridium by luck, not sure.

This spreadsheet that Blade made has the probability of iridium on any floor, if you're curious.

I'm pretty sure you are right, I was recalling another updated/added feature that was on my mind at the time.
The level of full iridium is about 1800 I'm pretty sure.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Oh nice, that data is already there. That's pretty neat. It looks like internally skull cavern was/is treated as floor 121+ in the mines and I noticed that every 5 floors there are 0% chances. With both these points in mind, did that mean there used to be elevators in skull cavern too?

According to the 1.4.1 data, it looks like at floor 1780 there is 100% chance of ore for each rock and blindly extrapolating it out, floor 5700 would be 100% chance of iridium?

Even with a script to automate (borderline cheating? ), I wonder if it is possible. I just learned about pause buffering, but wonder if there is some minimal amount of game ticks it requires in putting that staircase down and fading the screen out, etc.

No, It just meant that the 120 levels of the integer limit were taken up so the maximum depth in the SC is 121 less than the 32-bit integer limit.
The hard limit while disregarding time is somewhere around 767677 or something weird around that area, it is where CA placed the quarry mine.
I think the minimum is 0.0125 game ticks to pause then place after if you get optimal placement and perfect timing, this would allow you to go about 80 floors per game tick, I have no math to support and am only going from experience, I can get 40-50 and I'm pretty good at pause buffering in the mines.
You could write a script and I might? have seen someone TAS a record in the SC but not sure.

 

[NullObjects]

Haha, that would be amusing to reach floor 767677, go down the stairs and suddenly see that skull cavern was just all in the quarry mine at the very end.

I think one of the main challenges of writing such a script is trying to figure out how to place the stairs. I know there are a few spots at the starting point of each floor where it looks fine, but the stairs can't be placed/don't spawn there. Also, a few times I've started at a floor where I was blocked off by rocks/crates from all sides, including diagonals.

 

[Elenna101]

No, It just meant that the 120 levels of the integer limit were taken up so the maximum depth in the SC is 121 less than the 32-bit integer limit.
The hard limit while disregarding time is somewhere around 767677 or something weird around that area, it is where CA placed the quarry mine.
I think the minimum is 0.0125 game ticks to pause then place after if you get optimal placement and perfect timing, this would allow you to go about 80 floors per game tick, I have no math to support and am only going from experience, I can get 40-50 and I'm pretty good at pause buffering in the mines.
You could write a script and I might? have seen someone TAS a record in the SC but not sure.

Technically 767677 or whatever isn't the hard limit, because you could get a shaft and skip past that floor and keep going. But yeah, I like the idea of someone getting to that floor (presumably with mods) and suddenly being like, welp, guess it was the quarry mine this whole time. :D

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Haha, that would be amusing to reach floor 767677, go down the stairs and suddenly see that skull cavern was just all in the quarry mine at the very end.

I think one of the main challenges of writing such a script is trying to figure out how to place the stairs. I know there are a few spots at the starting point of each floor where it looks fine, but the stairs can't be placed/don't spawn there. Also, a few times I've started at a floor where I was blocked off by rocks/crates from all sides, including diagonals.

Yeah, it would be funny.
It isn't actually the end but it is impossible to place or find ladders/chutes so there is no way to go down further on a level by level strategy.
You can teleport there and farther with mods and if you think that finding the quarry is cursed then when you go to the real bottom, the monsters stop moving and animation sequences become permanent so with something such as the swinging of the sword, the swinging sword will stay there. Ladders also don't work at all.
You could write the script to try three or two times to place a ladder then use explosive ammo on itself, that's what I do when trying to go deep.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Technically 767677 or whatever isn't the hard limit, because you could get a shaft and skip past that floor and keep going. But yeah, I like the idea of someone getting to that floor (presumably with mods) and suddenly being like, welp, guess it was the quarry mine this whole time. :D

No, you can't get the shaft nor staicase because it isn't like the quarry, the floor is replaced by the quarry mine so anything you do there is exactly the same as the quarry mine itself, because it is the quarry mine. You can't place/find ladders/chutes in the quarry and you won't be able to there.
This also means that you can go there with mods and then just waltz out into the quarry and it also means that anytime you go to the quarry mine, you are going to level 767677 or whatever.
There was a glitch previously that exploited something not exactly but similar to this where you could bomb the bottom of the reg mines and you would garunteed find a staircase to the 1st level of the SC.

 

[Elenna101]

No, you can't get the shaft nor staicase because it isn't like the quarry, the floor is replaced by the quarry mine so anything you do there is exactly the same as the quarry mine itself, because it is the quarry mine. You can't place/find ladders/chutes in the quarry and you won't be able to there.
This also means that you can go there with mods and then just waltz out into the quarry and it also means that anytime you go to the quarry mine, you are going to level 767677 or whatever.
There was a glitch previously that exploited something not exactly but similar to this where you could bomb the bottom of the reg mines and you would garunteed find a staircase to the 1st level of the SC.

No, I mean you could get a shaft on, say, level 767670 for, say, 10 floors, and skip straight to level 767680, bypassing the quarry mine.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

No, I mean you could get a shaft on, say, level 767670 for, say, 10 floors, and skip straight to level 767680, bypassing the quarry mine.

No, It would do as it does when near level 100, you ever gotten 1 level shafts?

 

[Elenna101]

No, It would do as it does when near level 100, you ever gotten 1 level shafts?

Hmm - I've never actually tried skipping the quarry mine with a shaft (for obvious reasons), but I don't see why it would act the same way as level 100? The level 100 thing is something CA specifically added in 1.4 because people were annoyed about skipping the level 100 reward with a shaft. I don't see any reason why he would want to prevent people from skipping the quarry level with a shaft?

 

[NullObjects]

Heh, we're crossing into 'theoretical valley'. I guess the only way to really know (aside from actually doing it) is to look at the game code. Development-wise, I can see it being one of those far ultra niche edge cases that can slip through allowing a shaft to spawn that can 'break though the barrier' but I can also see it being the case that such a thing is also being inadvertently caught/prevented just by good design in the code.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Hmm - I've never actually tried skipping the quarry mine with a shaft (for obvious reasons), but I don't see why it would act the same way as level 100? The level 100 thing is something CA specifically added in 1.4 because people were annoyed about skipping the level 100 reward with a shaft. I don't see any reason why he would want to prevent people from skipping the quarry level with a shaft?

Perhaps not but there could be some code preventing shaft skipping of the quarry mine floor.
You def could be right, I was thinking and mixing it up in my mind with the last level of the SC (Integer limit), so there is the possibility.