Skull cavern dives and loot

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
Oh. What was your best run?


You know better than me how much extra ore a little extra luck can bring, but I'd rather have more speed when running back and forth on a floor you want to practically clear out. Different if you just shoot some ammo right at the entrance, but on "bomb floors" it's more imperative to move around, and then it's nice to have that extra movement speed.
I haven’t run more than once in 5 months irl lmao, like 60 shards and 1700 maybe? Still no miner as late game I don’t need iridium ore.
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
I haven’t run more than once in 5 months irl lmao, like 60 shards and 1700 maybe? Still no miner as late game I don’t need iridium ore.
That's still a great haul, particularly on shards, and I'm sure you can get back to your best pace with more practice. Like I said before, muscle memory probably matters here and will kick in if you have more runs. Have not had a lot of runs like this myself, but certainly more than one in 5 months, and have also tried to use the pause buffering (for practice) when in the regular mine back when I still visited that place.

Time will tell if this was just an outlier, or if I'm able to repeat the pace and haul. Was a lot of fun to move around in those floors with so much iridium 😃 And if I can get better with the slingshot, maybe it's possible to get even more ore out of it? Shard count is more down to luck of the draw. Oftentimes I've had about 100 ore per shard, which is poor, and this time it was around 65 iirc, which is more in line with what GodzillaFreak had in that incredible run with over 9000 ore and 140 shards.

Would love to know what he did differently in the run that got him 11.5k ore, tho. Even if it's impossible for me (or us) to get close to those wicked runs, it might be possible to learn something and improve a little. Did he go much deeper before mining for example? Would be interesting to know.

As an aside: Bought 200 megabombs from the Dwarf. Hopefully that will suffice for 2-3 runs, because it's very expensive. Ofc they could have been purchased with some of the iridium ore, but my thinking was that a bomb costs 1000g, while 5 iridium ore is worth 1500g when converted to bars, or 1250g if we detract the coal cost. For now I didn't want to make them myself with gold ore, because that is the biggest limiter, besides batteries.
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
Know how he feels. Wanted to punch stuff the other day 😭

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Would love to know what he did differently in the run that got him 11.5k ore, tho. Even if it's impossible for me (or us) to get close to those wicked runs, it might be possible to learn something and improve a little. Did he go much deeper before mining for example? Would be interesting to know.
GodzillaFreak mining start.png


That's that answered I suppose. Pretty deep. It's such a big increase from 9k, that it makes me wonder what else he did differently. Surely there must be something besides the deeper dive first? Going deeper takes more time, and he made 3500 more ore in the record run. Boggles the mind 😅
 
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Pangaearocks

Planter
New run. Despite an absolutely colossal howler because the computer/receiver turned off the monitor and I was left unpaused (without knowing) for upwards of 10 seconds... holy mother was I angry after that.
Screenshot from 2022-08-29 02-24-42.png
It just ticked over here, and I noted down 920 at 9:00. So that's a bonkers 80 floor tick. Rest assure the normal pace is much slower than that. For a long, long stretch there was barely a single floor without a need to move the mouse pointer, so naturally that slows down the pace considerably. When you get close to perfect ticks where you can mostly have the mouse in one place, it's much more comfortable. But all that moving about greatly increases the chance for making mistakes too. Plus ofc when you need to hack away rocks and such due to being completely locked in. That sucks.

Crikey. Am I doing something different, or just lucky? Another 80 tick. Floor 1080 at 9:20. Wasn't going to note down everything, especially here, but this has shocked me.

Certainly doesn't take much to suck. Locked in next to an iridium node. Tried to fire ammo at it 3-4 times, but it never blew up. Eventually gave up and walked around it to the stairs. That tick was only a 40 floors one. Probably the worst for the entire run, apart from the total standstill for 10 seconds, and not too many other mistakes really. So yeah, it doesn't take much going wrong before your pace is way off what it can be.

Still... it's 10:00 and floor 1326.

Oh boy... we just ladder past this, right? 🤣
Zoltan_8-29-2022_5790019.png
Allright then. Time to look around. With more than two stacks of stairs, could perhaps have gone deeper, but gotta have some hundreds left for sucky floors. Across the 25 ticks between 6:20 to 10:30, it was almost exactly 60 floors per tick. Not fantastic compared with the masters, but my fastest yet. And some of the ticks were really quite good (80, 80, 75). Floor 25 at the start of 6:20 tick, and then finally floor 1524 at the start of 10:30 tick.
Screenshot from 2022-08-29 03-44-52.png
Brought the magnet rings (2x Iridium Band+Glowstone Ring), but wish they were more differently coloured. Will be easy to mix them up in the chaos. Blue on the left side are the luck rings.
===============

Oh my, that was a nice run. Almost ran out of stairs, but it was okay. Time flies at the end, but glad I managed to sneak across the 6-stack limit :)
Barely beat the shards this time despite so much more ore, so it can vary rather a lot.


Shame I didn't have time to get those nodes too, but it was a good floor and I set off a bomb up north and east. Bunch of ores up north I didn't have time for either. Stressful finish. Dinos and speedy-bats didn't like the visit, it seems.

Screenshot from 2022-08-29 05-35-51.png

Da loot:

Skull cavern floor 1918 loot.png.png


Tried ring swapping, and I'd say it was worth it at times. The reach is considerably more with the 2 rings like that, so sometimes you get away with moving a bit less, and thus saving some time.

Went through 65 mega bombs and almost 600 explosive ammo. Kinda nuts, and expensive, but I kept missing stuff, so that's how it is. Tried the trick of putting down a ladder in the middle of the room and shooting at it, but I'd often miss if I was too close. Then the awkward routine of side stepping, trying to hit it again, and then needing to step back when descending. But I hope it was worth it at least some of the time.

Almost the best thing about the run is close to three stacks of gold. Ofc, it's batteries I'm short on now, but always nice to have that gold in the bank. And this allows me to make more solar panels.

Should probably bring three stacks of stairs next time, mind you. But on the other hand, it's hard to tell when it's best to stop stairing and start mining, because you get less and less time to mine ofc if you descend for too long.

Funny how little coal you get from this though. 11 puny pieces 😂
Hardly a mountain of stones either, but then almost no regular rocks are found down there. Mostly iridium + gold.
 
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FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
You are getting great!

I'd love to devote a lot of time to skull caverns but I am very busy irl every day and never have a consistent amount of time to be able to invest into one run.

80 ticks though, that's great, you are no officially better than I ever was! That's amazing, I feel great for you, glad that running this many times can really pay off, how many runs do you think you have done as of late?

My one in 5 months is not doing me any good, sad that I'm too occupied tbh, hope to see more.
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
80 ticks though, that's great, you are no officially better than I ever was! That's amazing, I feel great for you, glad that running this many times can really pay off, how many runs do you think you have done as of late?
Thank you :)

Have written about all the serious ones in here I think, so don't have a great deal of very deep dives. They take too much time and max luck day is needed to make it worth the effort. 5-6 serious deep dives maybe? But have had many others where I basically just go in and let loose with the pickaxe, plus SC invasions. Those didn't go very deep, like 70-120 floors, but I still tried to practice the pause buffering, after I learned about it in this thread and the others linked, plus those 2-3 YT videos by the pros. All in all I have gotten a lot of practice with the timing, so have gotten better, despite not having all that many truly deep dives. I don't reset days after runs like that, so need to gather resources again, which now also includes iron for explosive ammo. Not quite as easy with a non-farming farm, heh. Money is much tighter.

It's exciting going so deep, however, and trying to get more ores and shards. But I also get into trouble with perfectionism, and can easily get frustrated when I mess up.

The process itself is pretty straightforward: hold down both mouse buttons while double pausing, and then pausing as a new floor loads in. The difficult part is getting the timing right. Plus having fortune with floor layouts, not getting locked in, and ideally not needing to move the mouse cursor too much. In my case, possibly due to a somewhat old computer (GTX 770 card), I can't unpause too quickly after pausing on floor load, because the game needs to have time to load it in properly. Otherwise you pause on floor load, unpause too quickly, and are then still left wasting time while the game loads in the floor, so your guy/chick appears to lag with placing the stairs and going down.

Thanks for all the good advice in here btw. When I can improve so much, then everybody else can too :)

What is much more difficult, at least now, is being efficient at gathering ore once you start mining/bombing. The two people who have been switching on the world record don't go all that much deeper or start mining all that much sooner than I've done in the last two runs, but have been able to gather +50% and even almost +100% more ore. That is a huge difference when we are mining for roughly the same amount of time.

I do wonder about your farm with so many crystalariums. And maybe this is why you have swapped over to using many coops now. But doesn't it take a huge amount of time to go around picking up diamonds and jade from all those thousands of crystalariums? Think you mentioned 2800 somewhere? I merely have a few sheds full, and it takes many hours each time. With thousands, you could probably go around emptying them every hour of every day and still not reach all of them.

Imagine if the magnetism from your rings could draw them in from the machines too. Would have saved rather a lot of time 😃

Edit: Have expanded the furnacing operation, but still have a little bit to work through... 🤪
Screenshot from 2022-08-29 22-46-42.png
 
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Pangaearocks

Planter
Good call keeping the Cave Carrots and Genie Shoes. :thumbsup:
For some reason I always find it difficult to trash food. Or maybe Marnie will ask for another in year 9 or something :D

Think I'll stick with the red cowboy hat this time, tho, as I don't like the colour-shifting versions. Would just be a distraction :-/ That's a lot of omni geodes, tho, and don't think we can sell them either. Keep collecting them forever, or spend a week at Clint's place :D He ought to do some work for all that coal I've bought from him. Somewhere he must have hidden that dragon's stash of gold...
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
Thank you :)

Have written about all the serious ones in here I think, so don't have a great deal of very deep dives. They take too much time and max luck day is needed to make it worth the effort. 5-6 serious deep dives maybe? But have had many others where I basically just go in and let loose with the pickaxe, plus SC invasions. Those didn't go very deep, like 70-120 floors, but I still tried to practice the pause buffering, after I learned about it in this thread and the others linked, plus those 2-3 YT videos by the pros. All in all I have gotten a lot of practice with the timing, so have gotten better, despite not having all that many truly deep dives. I don't reset days after runs like that, so need to gather resources again, which now also includes iron for explosive ammo. Not quite as easy with a non-farming farm, heh. Money is much tighter.

It's exciting going so deep, however, and trying to get more ores and shards. But I also get into trouble with perfectionism, and can easily get frustrated when I mess up.

The process itself is pretty straightforward: hold down both mouse buttons while double pausing, and then pausing as a new floor loads in. The difficult part is getting the timing right. Plus having fortune with floor layouts, not getting locked in, and ideally not needing to move the mouse cursor too much. In my case, possibly due to a somewhat old computer (GTX 770 card), I can't unpause too quickly after pausing on floor load, because the game needs to have time to load it in properly. Otherwise you pause on floor load, unpause too quickly, and are then still left wasting time while the game loads in the floor, so your guy/chick appears to lag with placing the stairs and going down.

Thanks for all the good advice in here btw. When I can improve so much, then everybody else can too :)

What is much more difficult, at least now, is being efficient at gathering ore once you start mining/bombing. The two people who have been switching on the world record don't go all that much deeper or start mining all that much sooner than I've done in the last two runs, but have been able to gather +50% and even almost +100% more ore. That is a huge difference when we are mining for roughly the same amount of time.

I do wonder about your farm with so many crystalariums. And maybe this is why you have swapped over to using many coops now. But doesn't it take a huge amount of time to go around picking up diamonds and jade from all those thousands of crystalariums? Think you mentioned 2800 somewhere? I merely have a few sheds full, and it takes many hours each time. With thousands, you could probably go around emptying them every hour of every day and still not reach all of them.

Imagine if the magnetism from your rings could draw them in from the machines too. Would have saved rather a lot of time 😃

Edit: Have expanded the furnacing operation, but still have a little bit to work through... 🤪
how many crystalariums we rocking, and you have no idea, you should see my valuable chest ;)
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
It's another max luck day on a suitable day, so I want to have another go at this madness. However, wanted to go back to this:
Luck buffs will make it more likely to find a ladder, and to find a treasure floor. It doesn't do anything when generating the contents of a floor.

However, there is a LuckLevel% chance of getting an additional piece of ore from an ore node.
Does it really matter a whole deal if we go on max luck days, compared with 'pyramid' luck day? From how I've understood this, on a max luck day you can get 1% luck, which is the same as a luck ring. Which then means you have a 1% extra chance than otherwise of getting +1 ore for each node you break. If we for easiness' sake compare with 0% luck, that should mean that if we get 1000 ore, that could mean an additional 10 ore from max daily luck vs neutral luck. That doesn't exactly strike me as a colossal difference.

Perhaps more correct to write +1 ore after breaking 100 nodes.

Maybe we are too restrictive in only going on max luck days? Ofc it is preferably because then everything is as good as it can be, but doesn't seem like it would matter a great deal -- provided I understand these luck influences correctly.
 

BlaDe

Farmer
DailyLuck and LuckLevel are different.

Both help in finding ladders, and in finding treasure floors

High DailyLuck means you are more likely to find clumps of ore. Though there is only a 2% chance that this is iridium ore.

LuckLevel is gained exclusively through food and rings. Only LuckLevel is used in getting an additional piece of ore from a node.
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
Does indeed sound like for deep dives like this, where treasure rooms and ladders are immaterial, luck matters relatively little.

Is the game's source code available somewhere? Would be nice to have a look, see if my code understanding is still up to scraps :blush:
 

Ilune

Planter
The gold is an absolute killer, I’m working on covering the whole map of stardew with crystalariums which including my farm is probably like 20-30k.
I recently bought a chest of gold ore which cost a bit over 26 million
TRICK TO BUY 2 GOLD BARS AT 750g!
Buy some treasure bobbles, and then decostruct them for 2 gold bars each one!
750g and you have 2 bars!
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
TRICK TO BUY 2 GOLD BARS AT 750g!
Buy some treasure bobbles, and then decostruct them for 2 gold bars each one!
750g and you have 2 bars!
Oh yeah I know that but I don’t want to spend 26 hours (already calculated) just buying treasure hunter tackles.
For context I’m crafting between 25-30000 crystalariums.
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
Trying another dive, but it's not going as well as I hoped. Wanted to try to keep a 60-floor pace, but I simply can't. The peaks aren't high enough, and although I'm not noting down everything, many ticks are closer to 50 than 60. On floor 936 at 9 o'clock, but with 80-80-60-71-75 ticks coming up in the last run, there is zero chance of keeping up with that pace until 10:00. The only reason I'm currently ahead (vs 920 last run) is due to a fortunate 15-floor hole, and the howler in the last run where the receiver turned off the sound+monitor and I was left unpaused for upwards of 10 seconds.

Brought 3 stacks of stairs this time, so the plan was to descend to floor 2000-ish before mining, but it depends on what pace I can keep going forward. It's tiring on head and fingers, and it takes soooo little off of the timing for the pace to be considerably worse than under ideal circumstances. Doubt I have a single 70-floor tick this time, but I know there was a 67. That is probably the best tbh.
Screenshot from 2022-09-02 11-28-10.png

Crikey! Sure fell behind allright, by 75 floors. And that was despite the last run only having 40 in the last tick before 10:00. But it was incredibly good before that. Think I'll just treat this as a practice run. Go much deeper, maybe to 2000, and see how the ore count is there, and try to compare it with the last run. If the ore count is much worse, going that deep probably won't be worth it. Even if I could maintain a higher speed.

As an aside, found this image from the last run. Most likely a frame perfect pause, because the serpenty friend hasn't unfolded yet. It looks cut in half.
Screenshot from 2022-08-29 01-00-51.png

It's 12:00 and time to abort all this descending. Did have some good ticks, like a 72 and 70, but overall I'm disappointed. Simply couldn't get near keeping a 60-pace. Now at noon I'm at floor 1960 (one floor too late in the image, but it ticked over at 1960). That leaves 14 hours for mining, which is 1.5 less than last run, where I started around floor 1500 at 10:30. Between 10 and 12 o'clock I actually almost managed 60 floors (59.2), but overall it's not even close, at 56.7. Probably shouldn't be discouraged as the world record holder does ~70, but I hoped to get more stable between 60 and 70 since some patches of the last run was so good :(
Screenshot from 2022-09-02 13-24-46.png
Hmmmrphgr. Not a bad haul exactly, 5.5 stacks is definitely nice. But worse across the board than the last one. Less iridium, less gold, and less shards. More floors, tho, but that was a given. Floor 2343 in the end. Perhaps I was unlucky with the floors down there, hard to tell, but felt like I staired past better ones than what was down there. Too many with poor layout, little ore near the stairs, or poor angles.

The final haul:
Skull cavern floor 2343 loot.png
 
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FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
Looking great so far, wondering what type of hardware you are using, doesn’t have to be specific but wondering if different types influence it much, like a laptop keyboard or a regular wired/Bluetooth one.
Thanks I’m advance and good luck on any near runs.
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
Looking great so far, wondering what type of hardware you are using, doesn’t have to be specific but wondering if different types influence it much, like a laptop keyboard or a regular wired/Bluetooth one.
Thanks I’m advance and good luck on any near runs.
Thanks. That last run was actually disappointing. Maybe madness when compared with the start of this thread, but hoped I could keep improving. But if I kept that pace for a whole stairs-only run, 55 floors per tick, that would correspond to about 6500 floors (using 118 ticks x 55). Definitely deep, and a little tempting to try, but if one of those two WR chaps had a go of it, they'd easily crush it.
(plus, I only have around 7000 staircases currently, so wasting all on such a run would be silly)

Hardware... not much to brag about there I'm afraid. Use wired keyboard + mouse, not bluetooth. Had a wireless mouse before, but it was infuriating when it kept disconnecting or lagging, so a couple of years ago I bought a wired one instead. Otherwise the PC is ripe for an upgrade, but with current hardware prices, particularly for graphics cards, it's almost a choice between buying a new computer or a private jet. Therefore I'm stuck with this for the time being. The graphics card is an Nvidia 770. Usually not a problem for the games I play, but definitely outdated. Had to look up the other stuff because I didn't recall. CPU is an old-ish Intel i5 with 4 cores at 3.4GHz. 16GB memory, probably DDR3. I'm running the game on a Linux Mint 20.3 system. Game version is 1.5.6, which is the last one I believe.

Everything works well really, I can run Witcher 3 on pretty decent settings too. However, there is a noticeable lag on loading new floors, now that I'm more able to spot such things, which is why I need to be slow about the descending and not unpause too quickly (I wrote about it above somewhere). If I unpause while the level keeps fading in, there is probably loss of time. It then looks like there is a lag while going down the stairs. But in reality it's probably because the level hasn't loaded in properly yet, and therefore I can't go down the stairs yet.

In my experience, what is required to get 60-70+ floors per tick, is very tight timings. And this is really difficult. Small lags on each floor does add up, and maybe that is why I sometimes get 40-50 floors instead of 60-70. Other times I get into a really nice rhythm of pausing really fast on floor loads, over and over again, and that is probably why I managed 75-80 floors a handful of times. Ofc there are factors we can't control too, like being locked in by rocks/barrels/torches/tiled floor, and needing to move the mouse pointer for almost every floor. But among the things we can control, seems to me that very strict timing is required to truly go fast.

I am a bit confused about the whole thing, though. Because sometimes it doesn't look like GodzillaFreak has THAT immaculate timing, and he even gets locked in from time to time. Yet almost without fail, he can pull off 70+ floors per tick. Perhaps there is something I'm missing, or maybe I'm not aggressive enough. But a problem with being too aggressive is that you "miss" the pause chance entirely, and will then watch the floor load in normally. That does happen quite often with me tbh, but I'm still trying to be aggressive because that seems like the only way to get anywhere close to the pace these masters are putting up.

Would love to see more videos by them btw. To my knowledge there isn't anything about his surreal 11500 ore run, nor anything really from that other guy (I keep forgetting his handle, and it was different on reddit vs YT). Getting to such a "nosebleed" level isn't realistic, but if we could stabilise around 7000-8000 ore, that would be really cool. And I suppose it would have been WR pace if we go back a year or two.

I've probably rambled on here, sorry about that 😊
 

Pangaearocks

Planter
Yet another one. Sad with all the batteries that were ready, but let's do this.

Pace looks really nice so far. At 08:00 I'm on floor 695, which I believe is the fastest I've managed from the beginning so far. Not writing down all ticks, but try to do it at whole hours. Only have a few notes from earlier 8 o'clocks, but they were 427 (one of the earlier runs I think), 590 and 605. Only got to floor 19 by 6:20 this time, which means an average speed of... WTF? 67.6? 😲

Went back to 100% zoom this time, so maybe that helps for some reason? Or I merely mess up less often. Fudge it if I know, but hope I can keep this up for a couple more hours.
[Edit: there was a 75-tick from 7:40 to 7:50, which was probably the best, maybe 50-ish the worst then?]
Screenshot from 2022-09-05 10-01-18.png

Yikes! Had an 82-tick. At least I think so. If there was an overtick it certainly wasn't by much. The next one was relatively poor (felt horrible at least), with rocks all around me on most floors, and lots of too-early pauses. Still, it ended up at 65, which is definitely not too shabby. Anyway, at 9:00 now I'm on floor 1112. Which means the pace from 8 to 9 o'clock was 69.5 (417 / 6). By far the best pace so far. Earlier runs had 768, 914, 920, 936.
Screenshot from 2022-09-05 10-48-41.png
The initial espresso will probably run out soon, but not sure it matters much as long as I'm just laddering down. Perhaps it would be 'safe' to eat Magic Rock Candy at 6AM and still two pieces would last the whole day, but I haven't wanted to risk it, so usually gobble one down when I start mining instead.

Unfortunately 3 awful ticks in terms of obstacles until 09:30, and I barely managed 60 per tick. You lose a lot of time just by needing to move the mouse pointer between each floor, because it often involves a double pause without going down. Add rocks that requires bombing out too, and it's impossible to keep perfect pace I think. I'm starting to hate that floor where we start off in a nook in the south, with only one possible escape route 1W of us... Thankfully the next tick was a good one at 76 (1298 to 1374). Not sure how much further I should go. Almost 10:00 now, which is starting to feel late. Perhaps I could wait until 10:30 and hopefully get close to floor 1700. From the last run, it seemed like going all the way to 2000 wasn't worth it.

Eventually floor 1503 at 10:00. Slowdown compared to before, too many crap floor layouts and too many mistakes on my part. But it did end up with slightly over 65 floors per tick, which is still really good. This is as deep as I went in some previous runs, but at 10:00 the floor count in those runs were: 1017, 1165, 1326, 1250.
Screenshot from 2022-09-05 11-27-17.png

Haha, this is really not cool :(
Crap floor.png


Allright then. Last stretch went super fast, with 74 floors average across three ticks. Floor 1725 at 10:30, and it really is about time to look for mining. Think the best approach (short of the incredibly tedious thing of taking screenshots for every floor) is a double-pause, and if you glance a good amount of iridium, or much iridium outside the inventory UI, you "take on" the floor. At least with some explosive ammo near the entrance ladder. Will change to 75% zoom now. The view near the entrance is actually worse, but ofc you see more of the floor.

Wish me luck, haha. I hope to be able to copy the 6k run, where I also started mining at 10:30, but from 200 floors higher up (1524).
The last tick was actually an 81. Crazy!

Screenshot from 2022-09-05 11-52-08.png

Holy crap! Across 25 ticks between 06:20 and 10:30, the average pace is 68.2 floors per tick!!! That is super fast, and will be very, very difficult to reproduce. Seems like I'm getting the hang of this 😂

The run is done!
Allright, the run is over. Got a little more ore than the best run, but didn't get 7 stacks like I hoped for towards the end. Crushed the prismatic record, tho 😃

Got one floor deeper than this, but fell asleep while ammo was on the way towards a couple of nodes. Actually, almost went through a full stack of ammo this time. Nuts!

Skull Cavern floor 2262 loot.png


Kinda funny how little stone, coal, iron and copper you get this deep down. Almost every node is either iridium or gold.
 
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