How to survive the desert mine?

[KennaIsKursed]

I seem to only be able to stay alive until level 5 or 10 in the mine. Am I doing something wrong? I keep trying to eat fast enough to raise my health but the monsters are so damn hard and they just so damn powerful. I have the Lava Katana and plenty of bombs but it just doesn't seem to make much of a difference. When does the prismatic shard show up in the mines because that's all i really care about so I can get the Galaxy Sword.

[MobiusPizza]

You can always use staircases to go down some levels. Go in a lucky day and with the bombs you should be able to go down many levels.
Also, get some good food that fully heals you every time you eat it, and when you're half health eat it. If you equip it at the first slot, you can fast press 1 and eat it

[Pixel Peeper]

Eating is instantaneous and stops time. Just eat when you're at half HP (don't wait until you're nearly dead) and eat until you're full. There's no reason you should die.

Prismatic Shard is a 4% drop chance from Iridium Nodes. If you blow up a bunch of Iridium Nodes you're likely to get one or two. I got two on my last visit to the Cavern.

Of course, that requires getting fairly deep. 100+ is a successful run, 150+ is an excellent one.

[I Kinda Fail]

- Eat when there's not a monster touching you, and as your character is chewing, hold right-click to eat another piece of food as soon as you finish the first one. If you eat while a monster's touching you, and keep eating, you'll keep taking damage as you keep eating.
- Use a sword's right-click ability to block the charging snakes and slimes.
- Use GOOD food - don't bring crap like salmonberries or hops, bring food that heals 40+ health per bite.
- If you can't keep up with the swarms of snakes when the room fills with mist, drop a stone staircase as soon as the mist appears.

[Hondra]

Just to give you a heads up the Galaxy Sword is very underwhelming. For a sword thats hard to get and is end game, it isn't that much more powerfull then the lava sword.

[I Kinda Fail]

Originally posted by red255:

a stack of irridium berries heals significantly. Not sure why you'd knock it

iridium salmonberry heals 29 health
the serpents have a base hit of 23, and they're the most likely thing to kill someone

I was just making the point that food that's easy to make and heals 50+ will let you tank at least 2 hits instead of just 1
Salad is forage food + vinegar and heals 50 health
Farmer's Lunch is egg+milk+parsnip and heals 90 health
You can buy pizza at the saloon and it heals 3x as much as a salmonberry
Fried Mushroom heals double what a salmonberry does AND makes you hit harder
Pumpkin Soup is quadruple the healing from a berry, makes you more likely to find staircases and holes in the mines, AND gives added defence

My point was that if someone's struggling to survive the mines, then suggesting they use the bare minimum food might not help them

[Joshua]

@spaz, are you talking about the insane swarms of flying serpents? Everything else is pretty straight forward. Sometimes you just get unlucky with the swarm levels. They can really knock you out and are really the only thing I worry about. If you get 5ish coming at you... can get risky.

Especially if you are dodging mummies and trying to blow them up w/ a bomb and walk into your own explosion while getting piled by a bunch of serpents. I get rekt sometimes... just no way around it lol.

Only getting to floor 5 or 10 is strange too. If you use the shortcuts you should get a lot farther pretty quick. Sometimes I can skip tons of floors without much effort. Since you blow all the rocks up w/ bombs it is pretty easy to uncover the "hole" shortcuts.