Skull Caverns Make Me Cry

[P3achyxPanda]

So, I've read a few tips with the Skull Caverns about carrying bombs and stairs, falling down holes, etc. to progress. However, I can never seem to find time in the day to tend to the essentials of the farm AND make it very far in the caverns. Am I maybe just not leveled up enough? Or is there some other big secret I am missing?

[romy]

the secret is that there is no "essentials in the farm".

also use teleport (obelisk or totem) to go to desert in the morning instead of waiting for Pam.

[Sstavix]

I use a mod to add an elevator to the Skull Cavern. It helps more than you may realize.

[Maya-Neko]

If you want to farm as much iridium as possible, then the big secret is in fact just ignoring farming/animals for that sepcific day.

If you've set up an autograbber and even better, got autofeeders, then ignoring the animals for a few days isn't as devastating as you think. For farming, Sprinklers are optimal, so that you don't need to care about them as well and you could try to calculate, how many days you could just not harvest something to get some room for even going into the cavern on a harvest day (most multi harvest crops have a few days you could wait).

That said, prepare a warp totem and at a day you see the luck being very good, just warp over and do it until you pass out, that's usually the most optimal way to spend as less amount of time in the cavern. for solo, floor 200-300 is a good starting point. For MP it's best to have everyone go in and then start grinding on different floors (like 50+ floors apart and not taking holes unless it's a really annoying layout), starting with like 100-150 for the first player (for example when playing with my brother, i start at like 120 and he keeps on going down to 160).

Though in the end it's also possible to just do some farm stuff and then go into the caverns at like 10 am. Obviously wastes some potential to get more iridium, but in the end you you get so many iridum, that you can easily get a ton of new crystalariums and thus, farm more stairs way faster.

[DragonIV]

I didn't bother with Skull till I had the Galaxy Sword. Much faster to move through levels with that. The autograbber is a great suggestion, I need to get one of those.

[kingjames488]

I can generally manage to get my farm things done by about noon once I get it all set up, if I skip a few things I can push it back to like 10 when pam gets to the bus.

that being said there's nothing you really *have* to do on the farm, skipping it all for a day won't cause any problems. crops don't die if you don't water them, they just don't grow. you'll miss out on any milk you would have gotten from cows without an autograbber I guess.

[red255]

Originally posted by P3achyxPanda:

So, I've read a few tips with the Skull Caverns about carrying bombs and stairs, falling down holes, etc. to progress. However, I can never seem to find time in the day to tend to the essentials of the farm AND make it very far in the caverns. Am I maybe just not leveled up enough? Or is there some other big secret I am missing?

OK 1.) ignore the farm on skull cavern days
2.) get a statue of the dwarf king and use its bonus +1 ore per node is pretty good.

we want to go down with 1) a weapon (lava katana minimum but ideally a galaxy sword or dwarf blade) we can get a prismatic shard from floor 10 of ginger island cave and use that for a galaxy sword.

we want a pick, ideally iridium. again from clint, standard.
we want bombs, 1000 gold a pop from the dwarf, they raised the price those bastards. if you are crafting the mega bombs are easier IMO cuz its easy to get tons of gold ore.

a stack of buff food, ideally spicy eel dropped from the serpents or crab cakes dropped by the iridium ore crabs.

a stack of food with no buffs, (iridium star salmonberries, Salad, sashimi, etc) late game I just use a stack of greenhouse peaches, once they get to iridium quality.

a stack of staircases, (Purchased for 1 jade each from the desert trader on sunday)

a farm totem or return rod. so thats 6 items of your slots used up. the rest should be empty make a chest outside of skull cavern, store your cavern stuff in there, and have it ready, when you go in, dump everything else and get the stuff out of the chest.

you also want a warp totem desert or desert warp built so you can get there at 6AM and not wait until 10 AM for the bus. you can buy warp totems desert from the desert trader for some omni geodes. (which drop from the ghosts in the cavern.)

and now we descend.

since stairs cost us 1 jade and bombs cost 1000 now, its cheaper to descend with stairs unless you hope to find a shaft. the bombs are to quickly clear ore veins.

once I get there I'd spend 50 stairs to get down to floor 50 or so, and then mine there.

[Best Fox Ever]

If you can craft Crystalariums then create several of them, fill them with jade, wait until you have 50+ jade, the trade those at Desert Trader to Staircases (only possible at Sunday). Then you can skip very fast all the skull cavern floors where you can't find the staircase or shaft. Never use stone to craft staircases because you will probably regret that later (stone is used in so many crafting recipes while Jade is good only for trading them to Staircases).

Only go to the Skull Cavern when it is the best luck day (you see the Stardrop icon in the Fortune Teller TV channel). Then you should be able to find staircases easily. If you have built the Statue of Dwarf King (you get the recipe from Mining Mastery) then check if it has the option for greater chance to find ladders and shafts.

[Queen Droxxanna]

Skull cavern survival kit:
1, Elevator mod, lets you continue on from any level you reached the last time you were there.
2. the Tractor mod, Ride your tractor in the mines, lets you be invincible and zip thru really fast and with ease.
3. CJB Cheat mod, lets you stop time while in the mines any time you want.

I have gone down as far as level 1700 in the skull cavern that way.

[Gold Dragon]

I use a mod that stops time while in the caves. Can make for some unusual situations, tho...

[Keeper Of Monsters]

On top of all that was said already - don't forget that you can craft bombs!
Cherry is easy - but very small radius, still can be useful, need 4 copper ore + 1 coal.
Regular bombs - 4 iron ore + 1 coal.
Mega bombs - 4 gold ore + 1 of each void and solar essence.
You get enough ores during regular and Skull mines dives, and at some point you don't need copper or iron bars anymore. And gold is plentiful in Skull mines too.
Coal is precious, but 1st year you can buy it from Clint, and any time you can just process wood in kilns, so just set up your tree farm and deal with it as needs be.

Also, you can trade quartz for bombs with desert trader - 5:1, any time.
And when you have surplus iridium - you can trade that for mega bombs too.

During Desert festival - you can also trade Calico eggs for mega bombs. I still think you should save enough for Rock candy on the 3rd day, but all the surplus can be traded for whatever you want, so - why not those bombs if/when you need them?

[StillNinja]

First things first.

Only go down on a day where you have a lucky day.
Take lots of stairs (100+), non boost food (I use glazed Yams), and 2/3 boostable foods.
I usually bring coffee for speed boost and spicy eel, once I'm deep I'll use a lucky lunch and if you can, make it with Qi spice to gold star it. Equip lucky rings, preferably combined with iridum bands. Bombs - regular or mega, and slingshot with explosive ammo.

Use stairs and take shafts if you see them. At 70+ (130+ if you have loads of stairs) you can eat the lucky lunch, continue using stairs but if you see several iridium use a bomb, if you see 1 or 2 use the slingshot if you can otherwise skip the floor.

With 2 lucky rings, gold lucky lunch, and lucky day you should have a luck boost of +9.
Bring 1 farm totem and use it at 1:50 am. If you pass out on your farm you'll at most lose a tiny amount of money.

If done correctly you should be able to get 500+ iridium in 1 dive and about 20-30 prismatic shards along side loads of gold/iron/copper and you'll probably get some auto-peters and auto-collectors from chests.

Edit: once you've done a deep dive use the iridium to make crystalariums and clone jade to buy stairs and sometimes ruby to buy spicy eels.

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by red255:

2.) get a statue of the dwarf king and use its bonus +1 ore per node is pretty good.

Mid to end game, bomb immunity is just so much better. Yeah, you get less per node, but you get a LOT more nodes in the available time.

[=M$= Oroberus]

Originally posted by P3achyxPanda:

So, I've read a few tips with the Skull Caverns about carrying bombs and stairs, falling down holes, etc. to progress. However, I can never seem to find time in the day to tend to the essentials of the farm AND make it very far in the caverns. Am I maybe just not leveled up enough? Or is there some other big secret I am missing?

For the casual Skull Cavern dip, doing some work on the farm before you head to the desert is fine but if you're specifically planning to deep dive to maximize your high value loot like iridium, prismatic shards, a ♥♥♥♥ ton of other ores etc, then you don't farm that day AT ALL

You get up, grab your prepared food (spicy eel, ginger ale, lucky lunch, whatever gives you luck + speed/damage/defense), grab your bombs and staircases and immediately use a Desert Warp Totem and head down there.

Buuuuuuuuut I think it's less a problem of you not being proficient enough in terms of doing the dive but instead lack proper farm management.

Let's say it just turned summer 1, you spend the whole day preparing the farm and seeding, day is done ... now it's actually 3 full days until you need to do ANYTHING on the farm except one of the below is true:
- your stables are not upgraded to their deluxe version but already fully staffed so you need to refill the hay manually (this one doesn't even matter, just leave the doors open over night and the animals graze outside)
- your crops need manual watering

As soon as you got your crops properly watered by sprinklers, there's literally nothing you have to do on your farm during Season Day 2 and 3 and this time span even widens if you only go for 6 day + grow time crops etc

At which point of the game are you actually?

[P3achyxPanda]

You guys are AMAZING. Thank you for all the advice and strategies <3 <3 <3

[noelle.wolfpack]

something i've found that helps is stockpiling stones from other mining trips/cleaning up the farmland for staircases, and getting my routine so streamlined that i'm often beating Pam to the bus
i also keep warp totems to the farm i get from mystery boxes/treasure chests/etc in case it's getting really late and i'm still there