The Skull Cavern - how far is it possible to go?

Holliups

Greenhorn
My SO plays Stardew in a quite strange way, and has an insanely heavy focus on mining and combat. His main goal is getting as deep into the skull cavern as possible, and for a few days now he's been making crystalariums and duplicating jade, collecting a total of over 1000 fairly easily.

On his first attempt he got to level 869 (lol) by just spamming staircases next to him, often wasting several, at 1:50am. Obviously not useful for looting since you get literally nothing and waste thousands of staircases, but it got me wondering - how far down is it possible to go? I've seen some posts of other people getting to around 700 at least, but I'm not sure if there's an official record? Or a kind of tactic as to not waste too many staircases in your attempt to place them when going down?

And does luck affect the amount of rocks that spawn in the cavern? Would it be more efficient to try this on a low luck day, since less rocks spawning would mean a bigger chance that there's going to be a free spot where you want to place your staircase?


Thanks to anyone who can decipher my rambling lol.
 

Cptldsilver

Planter
Idk that a low luck day affects the number of rocks in a level. I could be wrong but I think luck effects the number of ore but not the number of rocks
 

Holliups

Greenhorn
Idk that a low luck day affects the number of rocks in a level. I could be wrong but I think luck effects the number of ore but not the number of rocks
Ore as in the amount of ore you get from each rock, or the amount of (ore stones? Idk the name) that appear on each level?

The details on this stuff are highly confusing, but also very important lol

But yeah 860 is super well done of him, I'm super impressed myself!
 

Cptldsilver

Planter
I was thinking of ore as the copper, iron, gold, and iridium nodes. So as your luck goes up the number of nodes that spawn on a level will increase but not the number of regular rocks. Regular rocks can still give you the resource "stone" as well as geodes (the type depends on the level in the mines or if in skull cavern).
 

Cptldsilver

Planter
The Wiki is kinda unclear about this as well. According to the luck page luck effects,

"Daily luck affects the following:

But according to the Skull Cavern page,

"The chance to find Iridium Ore increases steadily as you descend into the Skull Cavern. The monsters in the Cavern also have a chance to drop ore and Iridium Bars. It can be a good idea to bring the Lava Katana or Galaxy Sword, as enemies are particularly strong. High Luck increases the frequency of ore veins and the appearance of ladders/holes. Rapid descent to floors with a higher chance of spawning Iridium Nodes is often more efficient for acquiring ore than thorough exploration. With a full inventory of stone, it's possible to craft staircases to descend to floor 300+."

So its hard to say exactly what types of nodes, rocks, etc. is being increased or decreased by luck without looking into the code itself.
 

Holliups

Greenhorn
The Wiki is kinda unclear about this as well. According to the luck page luck effects,

"Daily luck affects the following:

But according to the Skull Cavern page,

"The chance to find Iridium Ore increases steadily as you descend into the Skull Cavern. The monsters in the Cavern also have a chance to drop ore and Iridium Bars. It can be a good idea to bring the Lava Katana or Galaxy Sword, as enemies are particularly strong. High Luck increases the frequency of ore veins and the appearance of ladders/holes. Rapid descent to floors with a higher chance of spawning Iridium Nodes is often more efficient for acquiring ore than thorough exploration. With a full inventory of stone, it's possible to craft staircases to descend to floor 300+."

So its hard to say exactly what types of nodes, rocks, etc. is being increased or decreased by luck without looking into the code itself.
Thanks so much! This was super helpful of you <3
 

tommybob

Planter
Well thinking about it from a data perspective, the minelevel is stored as a integer meaning the max it could possibly be is 2147483647

Minor spoilers ahead.

But in Stardew's code the quarry mine is marked as level 77377 so I am not 100% sure you can go past that.

Stardew codes mines in interesting ways,

1-120 normal mines
121 - 77376 skull caverns
77377 quarry mine


I haven't tested above that!

In terms of what is humanly possible in a day, I would say 869 must be in the higher end of the scale!
 

Holliups

Greenhorn
Well thinking about it from a data perspective, the minelevel is stored as a integer meaning the max it could possibly be is 2147483647

Minor spoilers ahead.

But in Stardew's code the quarry mine is marked as level 77377 so I am not 100% sure you can go past that.

Stardew codes mines in interesting ways,

1-120 normal mines
121 - 77376 skull caverns
77377 quarry mine


I haven't tested above that!

In terms of what is humanly possible in a day, I would say 869 must be in the higher end of the scale!
Hmm, interesting! Thanks. So we don't have any official record out there anywhere? I would guess it's possible to calculate how far down you can technically go based on the amount of time it takes to place and go down a ladder if you do it the optimal way - but I'm not quite sure this performance could be achieved. But there must be some sort of max level you can technically go before running out of time, not counting the possibility of holes appearing since you don't really have time to take them anyway.

Wish I was a smart person and could do this stuff lol, I know it's possible to go insanely low with mods, but I wish we had a vanilla record or something.
 

SurfingMimikyu

Sodbuster
Stardew Valley uses 32-bit integers so the highest possible floor you could reach (with cheats at least) is 2,147,483,647. If you try to go any deeper in the skull cavern the value will overflow and reset back to 0.
 

Uzzlegorf

Farmer
Stardew Valley uses 32-bit integers so the highest possible floor you could reach (with cheats at least) is 2,147,483,647. If you try to go any deeper in the skull cavern the value will overflow and reset back to 0.
Someone actually tried that (with mods of course), and at the last floor it just won't go any further (stay on the same floor), but it wouldn't go back to 0...
 

SurfingMimikyu

Sodbuster
Someone actually tried that (with mods of course), and at the last floor it just won't go any further (stay on the same floor), but it wouldn't go back to 0...
Never tried it myself but in other games it'll usually overflow so I just took a guess. Nice to know it at least isn't an infinite loop and instead a literal bottomless cavern...
 

tommybob

Planter
Someone actually tried that (with mods of course), and at the last floor it just won't go any further (stay on the same floor), but it wouldn't go back to 0...
I assume CA has programmed it as such, knowing that people will hack the game to get to the bottom level of the mine it's best to create a way to handle such an event rather than the game break or loop.
 

Uzzlegorf

Farmer
I assume CA has programmed it as such, knowing that people will hack the game to get to the bottom level of the mine it's best to create a way to handle such an event rather than the game break or loop.
Yeah, just like trying to pass the bouncer by cheating (he thought about that too)
 

Holliups

Greenhorn
Stardew Valley uses 32-bit integers so the highest possible floor you could reach (with cheats at least) is 2,147,483,647. If you try to go any deeper in the skull cavern the value will overflow and reset back to 0.
Yes, but my main question is how far down it is physically possible to go without cheats or mods, only vanilla and a few thousand staircases. It doesn't really matter to me what the technical last level is, since it's literally physically impossible for one to get there without mods. I'm looking for whether or not we have a screenshot or something for a confirmed max level without mods, kind of similarly to how people do it with speedruns.
 

tommybob

Planter
Yes, but my main question is how far down it is physically possible to go without cheats or mods, only vanilla and a few thousand staircases. It doesn't really matter to me what the technical last level is, since it's literally physically impossible for one to get there without mods. I'm looking for whether or not we have a screenshot or something for a confirmed max level without mods, kind of similarly to how people do it with speedruns.
There's not actually a great deal of record attempts online. Maybe because it's not so entertaining to watch.
 

Luceat

Planter
I'm playing on Ps4,so without any mods i only got to Level 180 +/- 1 or 2 with the use of crafted staircases. I'm wondering how other players on console could reach levels beneath 250+.
 

Holliups

Greenhorn
I'm playing on Ps4,so without any mods i only got to Level 180 +/- 1 or 2 with the use of crafted staircases. I'm wondering how other players on console could reach levels beneath 250+.
I haven't personally tried playing on console, is it more difficult? I also recommend not crafting staircases, and instead trading them for jade at the desert trader.
 

Luceat

Planter
I haven't personally tried playing on console, is it more difficult? I also recommend not crafting staircases, and instead trading them for jade at the desert trader.
For me personaly yes. 800+ on console...impossible for my understanding. On PC with mods...very easy nor?
 

secretlondon

Farmhand
Well thinking about it from a data perspective, the minelevel is stored as a integer meaning the max it could possibly be is 2147483647

Minor spoilers ahead.

But in Stardew's code the quarry mine is marked as level 77377 so I am not 100% sure you can go past that.

Stardew codes mines in interesting ways,

1-120 normal mines
121 - 77376 skull caverns
77377 quarry mine


I haven't tested above that!

In terms of what is humanly possible in a day, I would say 869 must be in the higher end of the scale!
So what happens if you get to 77377?
 
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