Stuck at Cavern Mouth

[Daniel.Kiwi]

I can auto beat the Desert maps.
But the Cavern Mouth even with spells etc I'm dying

Fire-Poison are Lvl 28, Mind Primary is 39
Snake Staff (Will go into Icicle knife when I get the silver), Spectral Plate, Soul Stone/Silver Shield
3x Health Potions, Evasion, Accuracy, Toughness, Venomous
Retirement is 82 (+28%), 2.68 (+7%), game suggests not to retire.

Anyone able to provide some tips?

[Serpentarius]

Its likely the mantis, it has an ability that burns all your poison essence then deal damage to you depending on how much you have, have little its barely a clap, have a ton and you die every time. Since it's a burn effect it ignores evasion. as such making sure your total poison essence is down is imperative to live, you'd also want to upgrade your Enhancements since you just unlocked Monstium Paper, that shoudl give you more options for surviveability too.

[Carnwennan]

when in doubt, assassins baselard and cloak out. those two, short of one boss, can carry you all the way through the next few zones. you may also want to look at ninja gear and/or the dodge cloak as well. it wont make you immune or anything but stacking pure armor/dodge has severe diminishing returns you can't beat yet. other than that, keep studying and retiring, and make sure to keep your buffs up.

[Dragola7]

I agree with Carnwennan, Assassin baseland will carry you far. Change your boosts to attack delay and armor. You will dig deeper with that. Also keep retiring even if it doesn't recommend it, to get more stories unlocked.

[Daniel.Kiwi]

Thank you all, I've swapped to the assassins baselard and cloak and the 75 poision damage is helping.
And going from high defence to evasion helps a lot to

[archmag]

Fire-Poison are Lvl 28, Mind Primary is 39

Reaching 10x levels each time increases the power of all previous spells of that element significantly and you were already so close to that (must have reached that now). You don't even need to do anything special - quit the game, come back next day, spend some offline points to push research and reach those milestones. Or just focus all researchers on these elements to research them a little earlier.