What strategies have worked best for you in skull cavern?
- Thread starter Outerslar
- Start date
Lew Zealand
Helper
It depends on what you're there for. What I do:
Wait for high Luck day
Take ~200 Staircases, 3 Spicy Eel, 5 Ginger Ale, ~100 Bombs, ~50 Gold or Iridium Cheez
Eat Spicy Eel, drink Ginger Ale
Warp to Desert
Stairs down to ~Level 100
Bomb away, skip any Levels I don't like with more Stairs
Eat Cheez when I get hit, even if only down 30% Health from max. Cheez is cheap, just eat it!
sometimes remember to eat more Spicy Eel and drink Ginger Ale as the day progresses, I forget this a lot.
Return Sceptre home when I have enough or I've had enough
Fall over exhausted hopefully in the Farmhouse otherwise Marlon'll be rifling thru my pockets
Wait for high Luck day
Take ~200 Staircases, 3 Spicy Eel, 5 Ginger Ale, ~100 Bombs, ~50 Gold or Iridium Cheez
Eat Spicy Eel, drink Ginger Ale
Warp to Desert
Stairs down to ~Level 100
Bomb away, skip any Levels I don't like with more Stairs
Eat Cheez when I get hit, even if only down 30% Health from max. Cheez is cheap, just eat it!
sometimes remember to eat more Spicy Eel and drink Ginger Ale as the day progresses, I forget this a lot.
Return Sceptre home when I have enough or I've had enough
Fall over exhausted hopefully in the Farmhouse otherwise Marlon'll be rifling thru my pockets
PoppyForPenny
Farmer
Stairs! Using crystalariums to replicate jade, exchanging the jade for stairs at the desert trader on Sundays.
I enjoy fighting my way down with luck, speed, galaxy sword, space boots, bombs, explosive ammo. But stairs is how I do the level 100 quest, or look for prehistoric floors, or get deep enough to find lots of iridium!
I enjoy fighting my way down with luck, speed, galaxy sword, space boots, bombs, explosive ammo. But stairs is how I do the level 100 quest, or look for prehistoric floors, or get deep enough to find lots of iridium!
VampireCake
Rancher
I go on most max luck days, because my late game seems to be basically playing it like a dungeon crawler and gathering loot. 
Food: triple shot espresso and spicy eel for the buffs (total +2 speed and +1 luck), big pile of pizza for topping up health.
(putting the rest under spoiler tag just in case as it includes late game goodies)
Food: triple shot espresso and spicy eel for the buffs (total +2 speed and +1 luck), big pile of pizza for topping up health.
(putting the rest under spoiler tag just in case as it includes late game goodies)
Equipment: lots of staircases, Infinity Blade with x3 ruby upgrades for more attack plus the Crusader enchantment, master slingshot with explosive ammo - used mostly for mining by aiming at walls, because it's faster than bombs, though I do take a few bombs as well for large areas. I usually take only the (fully upgraded) pickaxe and drop off all other tools in a chest to free up inventory space.
Clothing: Mermaid Boots, combined rings - Immunity Band + Slime Charmer, Iridium Band + Burglar's Ring The bonuses from Mermaid Boots & Immunity Band together make you completely debuff proof without needing to eat Squid Ink Ravioli (I'd rather keep the +2 speed because anything less just feels too slow now, lol) except for the bug where stacked slimes you knock over will pinball into you and sometimes you'll get Slimed anyway, hopefully that gets patched.
Clothing: Mermaid Boots, combined rings - Immunity Band + Slime Charmer, Iridium Band + Burglar's Ring The bonuses from Mermaid Boots & Immunity Band together make you completely debuff proof without needing to eat Squid Ink Ravioli (I'd rather keep the +2 speed because anything less just feels too slow now, lol) except for the bug where stacked slimes you knock over will pinball into you and sometimes you'll get Slimed anyway, hopefully that gets patched.
FilthyGorilla
Local Legend
Luck helps massively with ladder chances. About a variance of 4% for the whole daily luck spectrum(4.5 with lucky charm) and daily luck having a considerably impact too.
That being said, speed buffs will matter more than low luck buffs, unless it’s a luck buff of like 3+ then use a spicy eel and don’t bother with ginger ale unless you’re going for treasure rooms.
Go on lucky days as while unlucky days aren’t too bad they can be annoying, demotivating, and a resource drain for newer players who don’t get much from skull cavern each run anyway.
Try not to fight stuff, the more you fight the most stuff will spawn, just run around them and fight serpents if you have to. Avoid waking bats as iridium ones are menaces with the amount of health they do.
Don’t try to kill mummies it’s really not worth it, ghosts suck but sometimes it’s worth it to take a hit or two just to get them away temporarily.
Max zoom out and start breaking rocks immediately, don’t look for a free ladder, there probably isn’t one, if it’s a floor that would conceal a free ladder (long corridors) just break rocks as you walk down.
One of the biggest tips I recommend is bomb materials. You can spend a single day in the mines and get yourself maybe 250-300 iron ore and 50 coal. This will make 50 bombs but because of the resources in skull cavern you only end up with a small deficit every run. Remember to craft 5-10 bombs at a time as you go and don’t be afraid to bomb just a handful of rocks, it might even be worth bringing some copper for cherry bombs (I wouldn’t recommend it though, iron is far easier to get than copper), anything is going to be faster than the iron/gold pickaxe you probably have right now.
Try to make it down 25 levels on your first dive, that gives a 10k reward from Mr qi which I personally always use to get more food. Also try and buy some desert warp totems your first time there as 4 hours makes a world of difference in skull cavern, because of the way you generally only collect ore at the end of a run, those 4 hours can be 2-3x the amount of ore a run.
Along with crafting bombs, take all the stone you have with you, if you don’t have much spend a day resetting level 1 of the mines and break convenient boulders, that tends to give something like 1000-2000 stone a day, lots of staircases. Just place a staircase if you are in any infested floor, if you get the high spawn rate pink mist, etc. if you feel unsafe about fighting stuff. 100 stone is NOT expensive, you’re using bombs anyway you’ll get it back in a few explosions.
Don’t stand out of the way of bombs, they deal negligible damage and the ladder the bomb uncovers isn’t going to be outside the bomb radius so neither should you. Eat if you need to, there is no harm in eating more.
As we talk about eating, get used to navigating your hotbar, even the weakest foods can basically heal you from 1000 monsters attacking at once due to the game pausing when you eat and invincibility frames when you get damaged. You can outheal the most dangerous monsters with some salmonberries. Sometimes eating and running is better than attacking, especially if you know your weapon won’t cut it.
Also please don’t “fight to the death”, the monster might win and even if not another monster might snipe you. There is no reason to fight until you or the horde is dead, you can eat, they can’t. Just stop attacking, eat until you are full health, and run away or resume fighting.
Those are the biggest tips as someone who has probably spent close to 500 hours doing just combat and mining alone.
That being said, speed buffs will matter more than low luck buffs, unless it’s a luck buff of like 3+ then use a spicy eel and don’t bother with ginger ale unless you’re going for treasure rooms.
Go on lucky days as while unlucky days aren’t too bad they can be annoying, demotivating, and a resource drain for newer players who don’t get much from skull cavern each run anyway.
Try not to fight stuff, the more you fight the most stuff will spawn, just run around them and fight serpents if you have to. Avoid waking bats as iridium ones are menaces with the amount of health they do.
Don’t try to kill mummies it’s really not worth it, ghosts suck but sometimes it’s worth it to take a hit or two just to get them away temporarily.
Max zoom out and start breaking rocks immediately, don’t look for a free ladder, there probably isn’t one, if it’s a floor that would conceal a free ladder (long corridors) just break rocks as you walk down.
One of the biggest tips I recommend is bomb materials. You can spend a single day in the mines and get yourself maybe 250-300 iron ore and 50 coal. This will make 50 bombs but because of the resources in skull cavern you only end up with a small deficit every run. Remember to craft 5-10 bombs at a time as you go and don’t be afraid to bomb just a handful of rocks, it might even be worth bringing some copper for cherry bombs (I wouldn’t recommend it though, iron is far easier to get than copper), anything is going to be faster than the iron/gold pickaxe you probably have right now.
Try to make it down 25 levels on your first dive, that gives a 10k reward from Mr qi which I personally always use to get more food. Also try and buy some desert warp totems your first time there as 4 hours makes a world of difference in skull cavern, because of the way you generally only collect ore at the end of a run, those 4 hours can be 2-3x the amount of ore a run.
Along with crafting bombs, take all the stone you have with you, if you don’t have much spend a day resetting level 1 of the mines and break convenient boulders, that tends to give something like 1000-2000 stone a day, lots of staircases. Just place a staircase if you are in any infested floor, if you get the high spawn rate pink mist, etc. if you feel unsafe about fighting stuff. 100 stone is NOT expensive, you’re using bombs anyway you’ll get it back in a few explosions.
Don’t stand out of the way of bombs, they deal negligible damage and the ladder the bomb uncovers isn’t going to be outside the bomb radius so neither should you. Eat if you need to, there is no harm in eating more.
As we talk about eating, get used to navigating your hotbar, even the weakest foods can basically heal you from 1000 monsters attacking at once due to the game pausing when you eat and invincibility frames when you get damaged. You can outheal the most dangerous monsters with some salmonberries. Sometimes eating and running is better than attacking, especially if you know your weapon won’t cut it.
Also please don’t “fight to the death”, the monster might win and even if not another monster might snipe you. There is no reason to fight until you or the horde is dead, you can eat, they can’t. Just stop attacking, eat until you are full health, and run away or resume fighting.
Those are the biggest tips as someone who has probably spent close to 500 hours doing just combat and mining alone.
FilthyGorilla
Local Legend
4.25 with lucky charm*
Njin
Planter
If you have all the goodies then have at it jade/staircases. Tasty snacks that heal you up. buy a bunch of bombs I got boxes full of all of them goodies on my 900+ hour farm.. but if you don't have all that you can still make it to 100.. I made it down to 100 recently without staircases It took a few goes just to get supplies but I think the most important skull cavern trips are the ones you take to build up to a deep dive. Use that first crystalarium to get that jade going. Take a burglar ring and a napalm ring and you can get pretty far on a good day even if you focus on killing monsters and that can net you bombs, Crab cakes, Spicy eel and even a prismatic shard, Found a lot of ladders just killing enemies near clusters of rocks. got to 100 hundred and qi told me Iam honorable for "Not using that many staircases" but proves how much qi knows as I didn't use any. Few days later I did use them staircases 150 of em the fifty bombs or so and spicy eels I found on my previous cavern missions came in extra handy. got to like 190 came out with 290ish iridium ores, some shards and some other good stuffs. Netted me all my upgrades for tools and more crystalariums to get me more stairs faster another deep dive later and I had half a shed of crystalariums and enough sprinklers to water 1000 crops. but I owe it all to those first trips with pretty much nothing.. 10 salads.. espressos.. berries.. good rings, you can net a lot even if you start with a little:)