Skull Cavern difficulty toggle

[TheShady]

Hello!

I'm a bit confused as to how the two difficulty-versions of the Skull Caverns work, as all the information about it that I could find was contradictory. My situation: I've completed the Danger in the Deep quest. The Shrine of Challenge toggle for the regular mines works for the mines. I have now accepted, but not completed the Skull Cavern Invasion quest. The Skull Cavern has right now its dangerous state.

Now I have several questions:

1.) If I don't complete the challenge, do the Skull Caverns revert back to the normal difficulty? (Some posts suggest that is not the case.)
2.) If I successfully complete the challenge, do the Skull Caverns revert back to the normal difficulty? (Some posts suggest that is not the case.)
3.) Is there a way to toggle the difficulties on and off as it is possible with the regular mines?
3a.) If so, how? Does the Shrine of Challenge then toggle it for both?
3b.) If so, do I have to complete the Skull Cavern Invasion challenge for the toggling to be possible?

Particular 3b is important right now since I won't be able to complete the challenge without stairs (I'm a farmer, not a fighter!) and to get the required stairs I would have to buy stone. For several reasons: I am actually just aiming for perfection now only need the gold clock still - I have pretty much sold all my saved up materials in my "I'm gonna stop playing soon anyway"-mode of playing. But since I'm not ultra-power-gaming I still need 2.5 million and the stone would cost me 1 million. I'd like the regular skull cavern difficulty as an option for farming iridium to get the best fertilizer, but farming it in the difficulty skull caverns seems impossible to me. So I'm basically wondering whether I made a mistake by accepting the challenge since I'd like my regular skull caverns back. If it is only possible by completing the challenge now and then using a toggle, I'd invest the stone.

So, can anyone help me out with some information? As I said, the information I found so far was not clear enough or contradictory.

 

[imnvs]

1 ) If you do not complete the quest and the 7 days pass, on Monday the quest will disappear and you will have to try again later. The Skull Caverns will also return to normal difficulty.

2 ) If you complete the quest in the 7 days, upon completing the quest the Skull Caverns do not instantly revert to normal difficulty. Come back the next day, however, and it will be reset to normal.

3 ) The ONLY way to toggle the Skull Cavern difficulty on is by accepting the Skull Cavern Invasion quest.

Now, to staircases. What you want to do is farm jade. At this early stage of the game, every crystalarium I get has a jade put in it and I store all my jade for trips to the desert when I trade them to the Desert Trader for staircases. Eventually, in my advanced saves I'll have a big shed full of crystalariums all full of jade pumping out over 130 jade every at least 2 days (average of 4 times a week for 520 staircases I could buy a week, or what I called my "infinite staircase hack"). I always have the staircases for all 3 of Qi's quests that can use them. I can complete any of the three in an evening that way whenever I get one if I so wanted. I'll still have stacks of stairs to use for when I'm actually trying to mine for radioactive or iridium ores.

 

[TheShady]

Thank you for the clarifications!