Skull Cavern strategy

Food

Eating a food that has buffs replaces the buffs you already have. A food with no buffs leaves the old buffs in place. Coffee, Triple Shot Espresso, and Ginger Ale stack with food buffs. They do not stack with each other.

In the cavern, buffs expire faster on the game clock than they do outside. Eat after you are inside if you want the clock to match the run, and keep a non-buff food for healing so you do not wipe a luck buff.

Shafts

When a ladder drops from a rock, 20% of the time it is a shaft. The drop is an integer from 3 to 8, each equally likely. There is a 90% chance you fall that many floors, and a 10% chance you fall twice that number minus one. The possible drops are 3 through 9, then 11, 13, or 15.

The distance is chosen from the floor, the day, and the seed. Luck does not change it. Every shaft on the same floor drops the same distance, so the one you jump is the same as the one you skip. The fall costs 3 health for each floor skipped and never leaves you at 0 health. A shaft above floor 100 that would pass floor 100 stops on floor 100.

Staircases and bombs

Mining level 2 teaches the staircase: 99 stone, one floor, and it cannot be picked up. The Desert Trader takes one Jade for one staircase on Sunday. A crystalarium full of jade is the usual way to stock Sunday. In year 1, buying the stone from Robin costs 1,980g a staircase. From year 2 it costs 9,900g.

Bombs clear packed rocks and ore, and they are how you finish a mummy after you have knocked it down. A bomb that deals enough damage to knock the mummy out destroys it as well. The Dwarf sells bombs. Crafting uses mining levels: cherry bombs at level 1, bombs at level 6, mega bombs at level 8.

Luck is for finding the next hole. It is not a faster shaft and it is not a promised hour to reach floor 100. On a good-luck morning, spend the extra ladders on depth. On a bad-luck morning, staircases cover the floors that refuse to drop a hole.

• What to pack before you leave the farm
• Quests, time, and monsters