Daily earnings limit? And Skull Cavern

Have to admit I do suffer a bit from HORDE-IT-ALL disease. And when I looked up the various professions in the skill 'tree', I wanted that 30% bonus on shinies. Finally got it now, so it may be time to get rid of a bit of this:


If I sell all that lot, will the game get a heart attack from overflowing gold or something?


Also, about the Skull Cavern: Went there on a rainy day with a pack of bombs and a few ladders, aiming to get to level 25 for a quest. Died at first due to flying devils, but on the second attempt it went better and I got to level 31. Think I used 3 ladders, found a few holes to jump into, and went through all 6 cherry bombs + 10 normal bombs. Only found 2 iridium ores, but as you see from the screen, a pack of geodes.

How are people able to get very far down so quickly, seeing as we only have around 12 hours at best, and time flies very fast?

This time I went there at 10:00 when Pam arrived, and only got back into bed at 01:20. But despite using a bunch of bombs and a handful of stairs, it's rather well short of level 100 or whatever you guys are able to pull off. Down to level 31 certainly wasn't enough to get much iridium (I've heard the chances get higher the lower you go).

 

Nice hoard of shiny-shiny, but not close to enough to worry the money counter. Go ahead and ship it


For the skull cavern, yes the deeper you go the greater the chance of finding iridium nodes.

Preparation is key for skull runs. First, I can heartily recommend leaving all unnecessary equipment at home. You don't need hoes, axes or fishing rods. You don't need strawberries or dandelions either. Why do you have them, you don't need them, they all just take up valuable inventory space.

IMO, you only really need your sword and your pickaxe, plus plenty of food, bombs and stones.

Go to Robin and buy lots of stones for crafting lots of staircases. By lots, we're talking about thousands. Ten full stacks will make you 100 staircases, but will set you back 200k. Making really deep runs is not a cheap business, and it does take practice.

Then go to the dwarf and buy lots and lots of bombs. Again you're going to need to spend money; bombs costs 60k per 100, and that's probably the minimum. It's better to buy some and not use them than run out and wish you had more

Finally, food. For energy, the simplest is to go to Gus and buy salads, they're 220g each, or on the sort of scale we're interested in, 22k per 100. Buff food is also good - I like Crispy bass for magnetism and Lucky lunch, for +3 Luck. A few coffees for an extra boost of speed once we get deep is also a useful option, because its speed buff stacks even if you already have two active buffs

Finally, to make the most of monster encounters - you want to wear your best purple Space Boots, and for rings you want the burglar ring and the slime charmer ring. Don't take iridium band IMO. No need for a glow ring, the crispy bass takes care of the magnetics and the attack boost isn't necessary. But getting extra stuff from kills, while being immune to slimes, is handy.

You get the bus at 10am sharp, and make the short dash across the desert to the skull cavern entrance. You've now got about 15 hours. Don't worry about getting home to bed, as long as you don't die in the mines. Exit just before 2am and pass out in the entrance. There's a small monetary charge, and you will wake up in bed the next day. Getting the extra time in the mines is worth far more than the money.

OK, now you're here, just start making staircases and placing them immediately, one after another for every level. Sometimes you'll see an exposed ladder, use that instead. Your pickaxe is in case you can't reach a space to put the bomb, and your sword is a last resort against swarms of green serpents, but mostly you aren't using them, just get staircasing. Don't go running off the other side of the level when you see a single iridium node on level 26 or something, it's not worth it, concentrate on descent as fast as you can, there'll be loads of the stuff when you get down there. Don't chase any gem nodes, they're not why you're here, you can easily get them in the Mines. That includes diamonds, just walk on by

Once you reach level 100 or wherever you decide has enough iridium to bother getting it, just run around spamming a few strategic bombs each level and pick up the goodies. You'll expose ladders and chutes often doing this, and move down further. Do this until just before 2am, then go up the exit ladder in time to pass out outside. Unless you want to exploit the glitch that allows you to stay up essentially forever. I prefer not to, it spoils the RP feel of the game a bit too much for me, but others do and as long as they enjoy, that's fine too.

That reply turned out longer than I planned, hope it helps!

 

A lot of people use stacks of rocks to quickly get down the Skull Caverns, but for people who don't have the money to buy that many rocks (like me), here are some other tips:

-

Galaxy sword.

If you have access to the Desert (which you do) and a Prismatic shard, you can get it. This is one of the fastest and strongest weapons, and it has helped me a lot to fend off the flying serpent things. You can learn more about it here
- As soon as you see a ladder, take it. The first couple of floors don't have a lot of ore/gems, and the farther you progress, the more iridium you will find. I never use staircases, but by immediately climbing down/jumping into ladders and holes as soon as I find them, I can get to level 40-50 (it's not that far compared to how far you can get with the staircases, but it works if you want to get to level 25 quickly). If you find a hole and then a ladder, take the hole because it will usually drop you down a few levels and it can help you a lot. Just be careful of your health when you jump into a hole because if you fall 8 levels it might kill you if you don't have enough health left. If you see a diamond/gem/ore thing in the corner of the screen, it's your choice to run and get it before returning to your ladder, but there's probably more the faster you get down.
- You can buy bombs from Dwarf. You can use the mine cart on the way to the bus stop to buy some more from Dwarf in the mines if you're out of them. Personally, I don't use a lot of bombs and just break every rock I see with my pickaxe, but this usually takes longer and most of the time I'm mostly looking to get more rocks than getting farther down into the mine.
- If you have PC, there's a mod for getting an elevator. I think it's this one: https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/963 - but I don't have this mod (PS4) and can't guarantee it works, but it does seem like a helpful tool.
- Bring a farm warp totem OR the return sceptre. They will return you to your farm (the warp totem will place you in front of the totem statue on your farm, but the sceptre will put you right on your doorstep). Using them is a lot faster than having to run to Pam and then from the bus stop back home. It won't give you a lot of extra time, but it's reassuring to have one so you know you can go home if you're close to dying and have no food left.


I hope this helps! And if you find a way to get down in the mines quickly without spamming stairs, post your experiences

 

As @One More Day said, don't take staircases, take stacks and stacks of stone. And until your down deep do nothing but go down deeper. I pause a lot. I keep the top row of my inventory just for a pickaxe, a sword and staircases. I Craft 10 staircases, go down 10 levels, pause to craft more staircases, rinse, repeat.

I also take either a farm warp totem or the return scepter if I've got it.

If you're really having problems with it or you just want to practice, if you're on PC with SMAPI installed, without installing any mods you can type "world_freezetime" in the SMAPI console to pause the game clock. Just make sure to give it the command a second time, to restart the clock or things get confused.

 

Thanks for the replies. After posting I managed to find some other threads that talked about this too, and it seems like the only solution (short of outright cheating) is to "buy" your way down with as much stone (stairs) and bombs as you can carry. As @One More Day says, that's going to be mighty expensive. So then I ask myself: Is it really worth it?

Sure, you'll get much more iridium, but it's not like I need a ton of that stuff. Already have around 12-14 iridium sprinklers. No iridium tools, but haven't felt the need either. If it's going to cost 200-400k to get deep enough to get a very solid supply of iridium, I'm really not sure it's worth it. Admittedly I don't have the magic statue that spits out iridium yet (presumably I need 4 Grandpa candles for that? I have 3 now, yet to complete the Community Centre). It kinda looks like the main reason for going so deep in the Skull Cavern is for the accomplishment of actually getting down there.

I have made around 50 bombs from some of the spare iron ores I had laying around, so maybe I'll try to get to level 50 or so with more stairs. But honestly, spending in excess of 200k? Maybe 4-500k?

Sorry if this sounds a bit offputting now; guess I got a little disillusioned by the whole thing, after seeing how hard it is to get far down by normal means, and how expensive it is with bought stones and bombs.

 

Oh yes, don't have the Galaxy Sword btw, but bought the Lava Katana. Trying to stay clear of too many spoilers since it's my first playthrough. Presumably I'll be able to buy or get it at some point by just playing, and also fill out the missing pieces in the museum. Don't have the Slime Ring either, so those big blue slimes that turn into a pack of smaller ones can be quite dangerous, as they seem to have a pack of hitpoints and the lunges often go through my swordswings.

To a comment above, I didn't actually bring the hoe and such with me. They were stored in a chest by the mine entrance, and then I picked them up on the way out. But then I probably had plenty of spare inventory space anyway, since I didn't bring a (literally?) mountain or rocks.

 

If you want Iridium, but don't want to mess with the Skull Caves, there's another option:

Omni-Geodes have an okay-ish chance of dropping iridium. So instead of spending 200k on stone, you go to Sandy on a Wednesday and spend it on a couple hundred Omni-Geodes. This will do several things for you:

* Whole bunch of gems to donate to Gunther, with the remainder selling to recoup at least some of your losses
* Pretty good shot at a Prismatic Shard
* Some artifacts can come out of an Omni-Geode, selling excess.
* Some Iridium, gold, iron, copper, and coal.

 

go on very lucky days in the mines..it matters

 

If you've only got one save you're playing on, yeah, don't mess it up by cheatin it. But if you're into the game and want to get good at it, use whatever method is necessary to get good at it. You can bet that the folks doing "1,000 Iridium in a day!" videos on YouTube aren't on their first playthrough. There are methods in the game to make ridiculous amounts of cash. And spending ridiculous amounts of cash for ridiculous amounts of Iridium is just part of the game for some. Everybody plays it differently and if you've got enough Iridium for today's needs go with it. The statue from Grandpa at four candles and sprinklers from Krobus is really all a person needs. It just takes some time to fill out your stuff at just a few ore a day and a sprinkler a week.

 

I made a go of it, sort of. Hadn't prepared by buying thousands of stone, but a day with thunder and top luck came up, so I brought with me the around 50 bombs and 25 cherry bombs, all the stone I had (only around 400) and a few ladders, plus the good food I got from earlier visits.

Got to level 74. Lucky with some rabbit holes (including dropping 11 levels one time), but at other floors several bombs failed to turn up a way out. Worst luck was sadly right at the end, when I used a ladder to go down due to lack of good spots to set off bombs (one of those long spiral levels), then ended up in an infested area -- without enough stone to make another ladder. Set off some bombs and got rid of a pack of enemies, but not enough time to clear it and get further down. Probably bad luck with iridium tbh, as I only got 15 ores. But more importantly, I came across another shiny rock.



All in all I'm sure it could have gone better, especially if I had the huge heaps of stone that people recommend, but it wasn't too bad either. Should be able to get that sword people are raving about now, so that should help out compared with Lava Katana for later visits I should think. Perhaps I should splash out and upgrade the pickaxe to iridium too? Think I'll have 5 bars now. Does an iridium pickaxe crush stones in there with 1 swing? That could help when in a bind.

In hindsight I kind of regret running past the odd iridium node I saw, because I tried to get further down asap. Also placed a cherry bomb next to what I thought was 5 iridium nodes, but it must have been something else. Brought with me all the iron ores I had in case I needed more bombs, but as you see I had plenty left.

The biggest issue is the very short timeframe we have. Admittedly I did have big problems on a few floors, but overall didn't waste that much time (found quite a few rabbit holes).

Apparently I passed out on the bus. Boarded it just before 02:00 and woke up in bed without any messages from anybody. Shouldn't that happen? I've never passed out like this before, only from dying.

 

That's a really useful summary - thank you.

I've never plucked up the effort to go lower than about 40 levels. I get plenty of iridium from my two statues and from geodes, so I haven't seen a need. But this game I was wondering about going lower. I think I would have done exactly the same as you, running out my staircases in an inconvenient way! I will make sure to always keep a reserve of at least two staircases when I start mining.

Congratulations on the prismatic shard

 

The iridium pickaxe can crush stones with one swing, yes, but it still takes 2-3 hits to break the gold ore stone and more to break the iridium one. It definitely helps to get it upgraded - if you keep upgrading things and speeding things up, you'll be speeding through the mines in no time! Just be careful of the flying serpents (my mortal enemies)!

 

Another thing to note, is that while using explosives to clear stone/ores you can eat to A) temporarily pause the game while the bomb explodes (this saves a great deal of time, actually) protect yourself from the bombs explosion

 

This mod works great, in my experience. There are some floors where the elevator is in a bit of a wonky spot, but IIRC, I've gotten down past floor 1,000 with no problems. Most floors are 90% Iridium nodes at that point. 30-45 Prismatic Shards per run. Good stuff.

 

Have had a few 'normal' trips recently, which can also be quite profitable. Found 13 iridium ores just by smacking up those big purple slimes that sometimes turn into a bunch of small ones. Each one can drop iridium, although the chance is probably low.

Just came back from another such trip. Top luck day, but my goal was just to get some more slime kills, working towards the 1000 goal (~800 now), and picking up some loot. Enter level 1, and see something I've never seen before....


Out pops:
- 1 Prismatic shard (woot!!)
- 3 gold ores
- 1 iridium ore

Got a handful of ores through enemies too. So although you certainly can't rack up iridium in the hundreds from the top levels, with some luck you can get a few on each trip, and without spending several hundred thousand on stone. Admittedly this was a luckier trip than most, with the mystic stone, and I also came across two iridium nodes a little further down.

I do kinda wish there was a reward for killing mummies though. Some floors have heaps of them (like around ~10), and it would be nice to have more incentive for actually blowing them up.

Timing with the Galaxy Sword is different so it takes a little getting used to compared with Lava Katana, but it's a good sword =) Also upgraded the pickaxe to iridium quality, which helps for these regular trips. Still took 4 swings on an iridium node, but normal stones get smashed in one go. Finally completed the Community Center now (had to wait for fruit trees to mature in the greenhouse), so with the Grandpa statue getting ore is a non-issue. Looks like from now on, the main reason to go to the Skull Cavern is for the challenge, and perhaps eventually see if I can get down to level 100. I want to do it the non-cheesy way though, so no gameplay changing mods or exploits. But as you can see from the above screenshot, I have installed a mod now, the UI Suite. Useful to see when crops are done, and to identify what's what. Thankfully this modding business worked well on a Linux system.

Anyway, hopefully this can give others some hope for finding a decent chunk of ores too, without needing to go deep into the abyss.

 

I kill them because they drop Solar Essences, which I invest right back into Mega Bombs. I do try to gather up at least two of them around some ore nodes before dropping a bomb. If you do ever plan on delving deep and would rather not buy bombs, it's never too early to stock up on essences!

 

Solar Essences are also very useful when trying to win the affection of the Wizard, I never sell them.

 

I use the void essence for that. I always seem to have a million of those compared to the solar ones. On a bright note, you can buy up to 5 at a time (or is it ten) from Krobus, both the solar and the void essences, once you have the sewer open. That's been handy.

 

Nice move! I never realized void essence was also loved by him, or I would probably have done the same as I too get a ton more of those than solar essences.

 

In the new map I put effort into killing 500 dust sprites for the loot-boosting reward, which certainly helps. Went into Skull Cavern on a lucky day with no special preparations. Didn't bring any bombs, only the stone I had on me (2-300), but did bring a few food items. Poor luck with getting stairs as I removed almost every single piece of rock on several floors before finding a way out. But got to level 59 in the end. This did help a tad though!



No Prismatic Shard, but got 25 iridium ore, so all in all not a bad run. Think I prefer doing Skull Cavern runs like this instead of spending silly amounts of money on stone. Doesn't feel so cheesy either. However, I have collected 40 bombs in loot by now, so will bring them in a later visit and see if I can get down to level 70-80, maybe 100 if lucky with manholes.