best way to make it to lvl 100 in skull caverns without cheesing?

[Booker T-Witt]

so I did a minor amount of research and found someone who basically said you have to load up on stone, I assume to create staircases, avoid large rooms, go on a lucky day etc. My method is this: have a totem go there right when I wake up, have plenty of spicy eels. My loadout is galaxy sword, iridium boots, explosive ring and slime ring which imo is OP since most enemies in the game are slime. plenty of regular and mega bombs. however even at my fastest pace I've only made it to like level 60. Am I missing something crucial, is there a tried and true method besides what I assume is just saving up on rocks so you can just "dig straight down" essentially?

[Radiosity]

Yep, staircases and just dive straight down to 100. Assuming you're just doing it for Qi rather than actually looting stuff. Assuming you have the money, buy stone from Robin, and reproduce jade to trade in for staircases at the desert merchant. Farming stone in the mines is tedious as hell.

[Geargut]

I have tons of bombs, lucky day, luck food, stairs, and lots of explosive ammo. I tried to break as many rocks as I could in a reasonable amount of time to find holes. Used stairs when I came to extermination levels, and a few more right at the end and made it un under 10 staircases. It took two tries, I only got to 93 the first time. I'm not always so lucky, other days I don't seem to find many holes at all.

[Linkedwulf]

In my opinion the most important thing when going deep in the Skull Caverns is to prioritize. Luck and Staircases help for sure but you can certainly reach 100 with with only a few sets of stairs or even without any at all if you don't get a lot of monster infested rooms.
The most important things for me are explosives (bombs, mega bombs or explosive slingshot. whatever you feel most comfortable with and have plenty from), any kind of active speed buff (spicy eel, crab cakes and/or coffee) and food.
For food i would recommend gold/iridium star cheese, cactus fruit or pineapples. They heal for a lot don't mess with active buffs and depending on your farm at least one of those should be easy to replenish in large quantities.

As i said what you do is key here. I know it's hard to get used to but if you want to go deep you actually should mostly ignore enemies, ore and loot, My order of logic is as follows

1. Heal whenever you have little health.
2. Whenever you see a hole jump down. Beeline ignore everything else.
3. Whenever you see stairs use them. Again beeline ignore everything else.
4. If you do not see a hole or stairs bomb/pick as close to you as possible. Don't go too far into the levels if you can avoid it. There are often stairs closer to the entry than you think.
5. While you wait for a bomb to explode or if you are swarmed by enemies for some reason feel free to kill/hit enemies next to you but usually it is faster to just heal through the damage while you look for the next stairs/hole.

Obviously that is only my opinion but after i managed to "switch" my mindset in that direction i got A LOT deeper into the mines and 100 really didn't seem that hard anymore.

[h3idi9000]

You can trade jade for staircases on Sundays in the desert which is how I keep myself supplied with stairs for the Qi quests. But you likely can't make (enough) crystalariums yet for that to be super viable.

[I Kinda Fail]

It is, quite literally, luck. Bombs are for finding holes, not staircases... but a hole can either drop you 3 floors, or I think 15. If you get the 15 5 times, you'll be almost to the bottom. If you get the 3 5 times, you're only like 20% of the way there.

[Talilover]

I actually created a similar thread not to long ago asking the same question and got a bunch of helpful information, and I was able to get to floor 100 so let me tell you the main thing that lead to that

Bombs, alot of bombs.

For whatever reason I was stingy with bombs only ever using them to kill mummies but they're actually ridiculously easy to churn out so there's no reason not to use one when there's a big cluster of rocks. Staircases were more for infested floors and if the layout of the floor looked annoying (like no clusters of rocks and wide open)

I didn't even bother checking the tv to see if my luck was good that day but I do have a luck ring and that little charm that increases your luck, oh and I warped to the desert as soon as I woke up with a totem than ate a spicey eel

[Radiosity]

As I Kinda fail mentioned, luck is super important as it's what determines how easily you find staircases down when using bombs/pickaxe (and killing enemies).

[TheCollector]

I think the "to load up on stone" is from the old times when stair cases did not stack, so players filled the inventory with stacks of 999 stones. In actual version stair cases stack and if you have 100 jade you can trade these for 100 stair cases which usually last for many skull cavern runs. (Jade takes about 2 days to reproduce in a crystalarium.

Sometimes you miss the level 100 even on good luck days just because you have bad luck with the location of holes and the floor layouts or you did the wrong decisions (dig or bomb). Depending on the loot (prismatic shards, iridium, etc) you can abort a day and reload and play the day again. This is also a good way to practice skull cavern runs.

I use spicy eel and triple espresso since the speed boni stack.
see https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Skull_Cavern

[red255]

Escrito originalmente por Booker T-Witt:

so I did a minor amount of research and found someone who basically said you have to load up on stone, I assume to create staircases, avoid large rooms, go on a lucky day etc. My method is this: have a totem go there right when I wake up, have plenty of spicy eels. My loadout is galaxy sword, iridium boots, explosive ring and slime ring which imo is OP since most enemies in the game are slime. plenty of regular and mega bombs. however even at my fastest pace I've only made it to like level 60. Am I missing something crucial, is there a tried and true method besides what I assume is just saving up on rocks so you can just "dig straight down" essentially?

obsolete.

you get jade and load up on staircases. loading up on stone was back before you could stack staircases and carry 999 in a slot. so you get some jade and put it in crystalariums and buy staircases. buy them from the desert merchant.

as for without cheesing. what is what? I mean you can find holes that drop you down 15 floors at a time if you are lucky. bomb and find holes. and get lucky.

which is more cheesing?

[ChrillBill]

For me cheesy is using something like the tractor mod, which I have done now
for a while and it is fabulous! I am obliterating every floor within seconds ^.^

[Roest]

Escrito originalmente por ChrillBill:

For me cheesy is using something like the tractor mod, which I have done now
for a while and it is fabulous! I am obliterating every floor within seconds ^.^

I use the skull cavern elevator mod. Cheese that.

[Booker T-Witt]

you know what its funny i thought this would die, but I actually did it the day I posted this lol. minimal cheese, only used a few staircases. By sheer dumb luck too. Managed to find the right pitfalls and landed there after midnight, since I had a farm totem I didn't have to worry about stayin up late. Thanks for everyone's input tho.


minor spoilers here, but I scoffed at the award. I thought it would be a little...more. given the effort put in.

[TheCollector]

Escrito originalmente por Booker T-Witt:

... landed there after midnight, since I had a farm totem I didn't have to worry about stayin up late.

There is only a minor penalty capped at 1000 Gold if you pass out at 2am due to fatigue in the skull caverns or mines, no loss of items etc. So if you can get more iridium, prismatic shards, etc in the last minutes of the day, go for it ...

[Wintermute]

Only go on max luck days, with luck food and maybe with luck ring. Megabomb the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything, never use pickaxe, have a few stairs to get out of monster levels, heal with pots from Dwarf. Reliable way to 100, never fails.

[ChrillBill]

Escrito originalmente por Booker T-Witt:

minor spoilers here, but I scoffed at the award. I thought it would be a little...more. given the effort put in.

I agree. I was super horrified when ! first got it!
But congrats on finishing the challenge. Now that you know, perhaps
you will consider double cheesing it on your next playthrough.