3rd/4th Layer

[Shiro]

Any advice how to survive this nightmare?
I've spent 4 hrs down there only to be forced to give up with no food and no weapons left.
Any link to full map would be helpful

[Eoun]

guide on map category, please provide feedback if there's any, thank you for being interested on the maps, I really like these maps despite everything x)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2906362798

[Mr.I]

For survival, the most important thing to understand is resource conversion.

There are small creatures in the 3rd/4th layer that drops tail meat which means that you can always acquire edible meat from local fauna, as long as you have weapon. In order to make basic weapons, you will need stone and bone. All creatures that can drop tail meat can drop bone as well, which means you can convert stone into food.

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Next, you need to understand the renewability of resources.

As you can see, once you enter a region, all creatures in the region will respawn. This makes all types of resources dropped by "enemies" renewable.

All the gatherable natural resources will not respawn during your expedition, this includes plants, rocks, (fishing) baits, and relics. This makes them non renewable. So do be conservative, if you take things from the environment and then drop them because of overweighting, then you are essentially wasting non renewable resources.

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Last, efficiency.

All weapons (including fishing pole, which is a weapon for killing fish) in the game have fixed durability, which means they have a stable weight-to-food conversion rate. But not all weapons are good for survival. High level weapons have higher damage but they also come with more weight. Higher damage doesn't bring extra benefit when it doesn't result in less hits required to kill something.

For example, as a level 30 moon whistle, both moon whistle pickaxe and blue whistle pickaxe requires 2 hits to kill a Neritantan. But the moon whistle pickaxe is twice as heavy as the blue whistle one. So it's obvious that the blue whistle pickaxe is much more efficient than the moon whistle pickaxe.

You can always carry a whole bag of weapons (or materials for making weapons) with you, but then you wouldn't have the space for relics. So you need to find a balance between survivability and profitability that suits your skill level.

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With these knowledge combined, we can come to a few conclusions:

1. As long as you have stone, you won't starve
   
2. A region that costs little to enter allows you to stock up food supply
   
3. Stone is the most important resource for survival

With this, I introduce you the special survival technique: The Weasel Loop.

In the 4th layer, between Nanachi's backyard and the hidden hot spring, the travaling requires 0 fullness and both of these regions spawn Man-toyers (weasels, the most efficient food source that only takes one hit to kill with any weapon). You can go back and forth between these 2 regions and convert your stones into food. On average, one stone can be converted into 6 - 8 pieces of tail meat (without the double gathering skill). So if you carry 10 stones to the 4th layer, then you will be able to create around 70 pieces of tail meat, and a lot of soft meat if you have salt.

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I didn't take the infinite mob spawning into calculation because some players have disabled the spawning, including me. If you are playing the game without modding, then you can use the infinite spawning for infinite food. There are laser beams in the 4th layer, you can use them to kill infinite amount of birds. That's rather dumb in my opinion.

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As for the map, the 4th layer is rather easy to navigate so I assume that you were stuck in the 3rd layer. The key area to return from the 3rd layer is the dark cave in the Quadruple Pit region, the place where you meet Detchuanga to progress the main story. There is a huge slope in that cave, follow the slope and you will find a small room with a few Neritantans in it. The wall in that room is climbable, climb straight up to the top and you will see there is small chasm on the ground, that leads to the exit of this cave and the entrance to the Hexagon Pillars region is at the left side of the exit, 3 meters away.

Once you've entered Hexagon Pillars, you can safely travel to Cold Heat Layer, which links the 2nd layer. The navigation in these 2 regions is very simple, the entrances to the adjacent regions are very close to each other.

The cave in Quadruple Pit region is directly accessible through Glass Layer, if you travel to Quadruple Pit from Glass Layer, then you will find your self inside the cave. The entrance to Quadruple Pit is inside Crimson Splitjaw's chamber.

So, the optimal route to return from the Goblets of Gaints to the 2nd layer is:

Freezing Hot Mines --> Glass Layer --> Quadruple Pit --> Hexagon Pillars --> Cold Heat Layer --> Updraft Wasteland

[Shiro]

Thank you.
I guess wasting relic pickaxes for food hunt was stupid.
I will also try the spawn mod. The amount of birds/butterflies attacking me whiile climbing is ridiculous.
Just one more question. How to climb back to the second layer? The Madokajack flying around just kills me in one hit when I am trying to climb back up.

[Eoun]

The zero* Madokajack route starts at Glass Layer: Destroy the ceiling of the Crimson Splitjaw arena by climbing to the very top through the wall, then ascend from Quadruple Pit to Hexagon Pillars to Cold Heat Layer to Updraft Wasteland to fast travel as Moon Whistle.

*Note: You might get unlucky and have to face a mandatory Madokajack when you're about to transition from Quadruple Pit to Hexagon Pillars, in that case bait the Madokajack's dive attack before you exit so you have sufficient time to reach the tunnel leading to Hexagon Pillars.

Bonus: If you lack the decreased stamina skill for climbing, you can still climb Hexagon Pillars, make sure you leap up after climbing up three times before stamina's deducted and try resting on top of some destructible wall stones, there are wall stones that only allow resting on top of them when you reach zero stamina.

[Shiro]

Thank you!
You really helped me. Now I am pushing past the 5th layer.
3rd and 4th now feels easy.

[Rizgis]

From my observations, Madokajacks have a specific manner of attacking you when they will fly in the direction you are moving when it locks on. so you can simply jump up or down on your climb, or sideways to avodi them.
Since the game's a bit jank, you can actually stand on the mining outcrops on the wall's surface to recover your stamina and even attack back.
I learnt that the hard way, luckily was not forced to give up the delve. I just start from layer 3 to lay down the ropes or get to the shortcuts.
Then return is a breeze.
About to do Black Whistle quest myself so I will see what options that will open.