How do you 'Complete' a cave?

[Coq_Pwner]

I figured fully exploring one would do the trick, but apparently not. Do you need to pick up every single piece of loot in there, maybe?

[old_Navy_twidget]

Yes.
Every single piece.

[Key]

Tip: a drone with a speed multiplier of 1 takes 2min to move 1 node and to return i will take another 2min

[Key]

if you divide 120 by the speed multiplier of a drone you will know how many seconds it takes for a drone to move one node

[Dragon Leftovers]

Once in awhile you will get lucky and get a cave with very few branches on it.

[ShiftySky]

Yup, gotta grab everything. What helped me was I had upgraded my drones as much as possible, same with fuel reserves and fuel regen and spammed the basic drones, sending them in deep to explore as much and collect what they could and then cleaning up after. Having 6 drones explore at once really helps.

[old_Navy_twidget]

Originally posted by ShiftySky:

... What helped me was I had upgraded my drones as much as possible, same with fuel reserves and fuel regen ... 6 drones explore at once really helps.

Preach it brother.

Instead of sending basic drones, I'll send a flying drone deep. It can 'see' 3 nodes to either side and ahead of itself. And it's faster, covers more mine in less time. Initially I only send basic drones on branches longer than 3 nodes or to collect a reward that a mag drone would drag onto a hazard.

I have level 4 drones (all 4 types), start with 650 fuel and that same level of fuel regen and can clear any cave (as long as I don't screw up).

[aidennqueen]

I always send a magnetic drone into very longest branch, just to check out what's there and pull some stuff out for the following drones (and hope there's no lava or radiation on a node with lots of branches and treasures on them).

After that I go for aerial drones to pick up a bit of the stuff lying around (as far as they go, I got them at lvl 2 currently). I send some basic drones afterwards to slowly pick up the rest (always carefully timed so they don't get into each other's way and pick up stuff they shouldn't).

If there's some stuff I can see lying around on branches an I got the fuel, I send more aerial drones into the branches as soon as I have the fuel.

And nearing the end I make sure to keep some fuel more more aerials if I need to quickly rescue some lost treasures if a drone died close enough.