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The Volcanic Cave is the dungeon that unlocks all of the Legendary dungeons. The guide covers gives recommendations on gear needed to idle this dungeon. Idling has a significantly higher skill and equipment requirements than manual clears.
The Volcanic Cave is the dungeon that unlocks all of the Legendary dungeons. The guide covers gives recommendations on gear needed to idle this dungeon. Idling has a significantly higher skill and equipment requirements than manual clears.

Revision as of 13:06, 4 June 2024

Template:DungeonGuide

This page was last updated for (v1.2.2).

The Volcanic Cave is the dungeon that unlocks all of the Legendary dungeons. The guide covers gives recommendations on gear needed to idle this dungeon. Idling has a significantly higher skill and equipment requirements than manual clears.

Why Clear Volcanic Cave?

According to simulations, to get the full ancient armour set it will likely take:

  • 640 clears with a 50% chance
  • 817 clears with a 75% chance
  • 1377 clears with a 95% chance

When to Clear Volcanic Cave?

There are no downsides to attempting Volcanic Cave early as you will obtain powerful gear if you manage to complete it. However, it will be a significant challenge if you attempt this dungeon under-levelled.

In general, you will want at least

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Level 70

so that you can equip the Ancient Armor and you should be able to complete

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Dragons Den

relatively easily before attempting this dungeon. Ideally, you will want sufficient

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Auto Eat

to survive the dungeon without resorting to manual eating, but if you take this route then see the last section for further recommendations on how to survive the dungeon the hard way.

Ancient Magicks

After you clear the Volcanic Cave 100 times you gain access to Ancient Magicks which are a more powerful form of magic. When you have a Ancient Magicks spell equipped, there are no curses available, but you can still use Auroras.

In general, the spells you receive are very powerful:

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    Winds
    is best used when your chance to hit is relatively low because you are guaranteed not to miss if your accuracy is 20,000+.
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    Ignite
    is a more powerful spell and has a good chance of killing monsters in one-shot.
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    Icicle Volley
    is a good all rounder, and can be used in all other cases.

Ancient Magick spells do not scale in the same way as standard magic (i.e. with equipment buffs and debuffs), but they are still impacted by the Combat Triangle in the normal way. Typically, when you first obtain Ancient Magicks it is more powerful than the regular magic and so should used in preference. However, late-game these spells will not scale with gear and so will become less useful.

Gear To Idle

The boss of

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Volcanic Cave

uses the

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Melee

style and so it is not recommended that you attempt to idle this dungeon with

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Ranged

due to the Combat Triangle penalties. This guide assumes that you have

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Auto Eat - Tier III

equipped which greatly reduces the DR requirements. The calculations in this guide assume

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Hardcore

/ Adventure modes, and so should work for most play styles, however if you have lower HP or DR than the guide recommends then check out Can I Idle or the Combat Simulator to see if you build will survive.

Melee

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Volcanic Cave

is often idled with

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Melee

because the dragon armor set can be obtained with

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Level 99

, further, the armour can be upgraded to provide 30% DR. This

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Melee

build requires

820
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Hitpoints

to idle the dungeon. However, this should be seen as a minimum DR/HP, and any less will push you below the max hit of Malcs. The Sandstorm Ring can be omitted, but at the expense of clear time.

Lower tiers of armor may be used if HP or DR is increased through other sources such as

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Agility

,

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Summoning

, or more

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Hitpoints

levels, etc.

Pre-Volcanic Magic

Idling with

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Magic

is recommended once you have stronger gear as it will ultimately speed up your clear times. To idle the dungeon with the build below, you need

780
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Hitpoints

and

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Weakening III

active.

Fire Robes have the exact same stats as Air Robes. The secondary effect of robes (+20 minimum hit for matching spells) outweighs the damage increase of higher level spells. However, you should use the highest level spell and robe combination available to you. For example, if available, use the Ring of Spirit Power instead of the Aorpheat's Signet Ring for more damage/second.

100+ Volcanoes Magic

After clearing the

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Volcanic Cave

100 times you will unlock Ancient Magicks which require a minimum of

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Level 72

. It is recommended that you have 20,000+ accuracy when using the

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Slicing Winds

as this means that the spell will never miss. This is important because you will want to keep a high DPS to make idling worthwhile. You can improve your Accuracy with:

  • Magic Assistance Potions
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    Astrology
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    Prayer
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    Agility
  • Increase
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    Magic
    , for example at
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    Level 93

For a magic build Prat, the Protector of Secrets will be the biggest hitter, and with this build it will be very close to your Auto-Eat threshold, so if you need to deviate, then check your setup with the Combat Simulator.

Using this build you may need extra DR:

  • At 910
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    HP
    and with 33% DR, you can farm the dungeon without without extra DR.
  • At 880
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    HP
    you can equip the
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    Stone Skin
    prayer to provide extra DR.
  • Below 880
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    HP
    it is not recommended that you attempt to idle this dungeon.

In addition equip:

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    Slicing Winds
    and
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    Surge II
  • Optionally, equip
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    Yak
    and
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    Dragon
    to not take any damage from burning (if you have enough marks)

Once you have sufficient accuracy rating, the Miolite Shield cam be swapped out for a ranged or melee shield with more DR such as (G) Dragon Shield to lower other HP/DR requirements.

For this build, food usage is

200,000
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HP

to

250,000
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HP

per hour.

Weapon Choice

Weapon choice makes a big difference to the number of chests that can realistically be obtained per hour when idling. This table shows how the weapons compare when adjusted to include time required to produce consumables, with reasonable assumptions:

Weapon Adjusted Chests/Hour Potential Chests/Hour
Pre-Volcanic 3.8 20+
Dragon Sword 7.6 24+
Dragon Claw 8 26.3+
Ancient Sword 8.16 26.2+
Sunset Rapier 9.6 31.4+
Ancient Claw 10 34.7+
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Icicle Volley
18.1 28.3+
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Slicing Winds
23.5 25.8

Magic builds using Ancient Magicks generally produce more drops per hour than the Melee equivalents. However, due to the number of runes needed, and the non-scaling nature of Ancient Magicks, as you progress

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Melee

builds will eventually give faster clear times.

This table uses data obtained from the Combat Simulator, and was adjusted by the time it takes to produce the required consumables with some assumptions made about the exact bonuses available for each skill. Use a copy of this spreadsheet to compare with your builds (link).

Gear Options

This section gives some alternative gear suggestions, in descending order of preference, based on the equipment available while idling the

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Volcanic Cave

.

Gloves

Item DR Requirements
Paladin Gloves 4% none
(U) Red D-hide Vambraces 4%
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Level 60
(U) Black D-hide Vambraces 5%
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Level 70
(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces 6%
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Level 80

Note:

Cape

Item Provides Notes
Skull Cape 3% DR Reduces
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Melee
accuracy, so best for
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Magic
builds
Golden Fire Cape 3% DR Upgrade of the Fire Cape
Fire Cape 2% DR After clearing
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Volcanic Cave
once
Knight's Cape 1% DR
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Level 66
Firemaking Skillcape XP boost
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Level 99
and no DR increase
Obsidian Cape Reduce food/hour No DR increase

Ring

Item Benefit
Sandstorm Ring Solid DPS increase for Melee, but can increase clear time for stronger builds.
Silver Diamond Ring 1% DR
Aorpheat's Signet Ring 5% chance to double Elite Chest and 100% more money.
Ring of Wealth 7% chance to double Elite Chest.
Ring of Blade Echoes Powerful melee DPS increase, costs more prayer/potions per hit.
Ring of Spirit Power Powerful magic DPS increase, does not affect Ancient Magicks.

Manual eating

The gear needed for a manual run through the dungeon is significantly lower than needed for idling. However, it also depends on how well you time your eating as this will interrupt your attack and lengthen the combat time.

In general, if you are considering a manual run it is recommended that:

  • You have
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    Level 70
    so that you can equip the Ancient armor as soon as it becomes available.
  • You have the highest
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    Auto Eat
    tier possible to avoid accidental deaths
  • You use a
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    Melee
    build with a fast weapon, such as Sunset Rapier, so that you can recover quickly after eating.
  • You start with the highest DR and HP so that you have an easier time.

For example, in theory, this build could work with a hard cap of 40 for all skills (i.e.

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Level 40

):

In addition:

  • Optionally, equip
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    Ultimate Strength
    and
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    Safeguard
  • Optionally, equip
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    Wolf
    and
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    Yak

However, any improvements on this equipment set would be highly recommended as clearing the dungeon with this build would take around 13 minutes.

TL/DR

In summary, the suggested order for idling is:

  1. Obtain the Sunset Rapier and the Sandstorm Ring
  2. Perform 100
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    Volcanic Cave
    clears as Melee to unclock
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    Slicing Winds
  3. Do the remainder of
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    Volcanic Cave
    clears with
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    Slicing Winds
    with the Surge aurora.

Manual eating has a significantly lower requirement, but requires skill to not die.