Volcanic Cave/Guide

From Melvor Idle

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?

Ancient Armour is not required for
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Air God Dungeon
if you're willing to Manual Eat that dungeon 2-5 times.

It is hotly debated what the correct course of action would be in many circumstances. This guide will not recommend either way and will merely present the options to the Player.


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.

The spells you receive are:

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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, these fall off relatively quickly.


Standard Guide

The following Setups were calculated without any Pets,
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Astrology
or Potions.
These Guides will only assume the required
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Hitpoints
and
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Agility
based on not having any of those, if you do have Pets like
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Leonardo
or Finn, the Cat, you may be able to get away with slightly less.


Melee

The following table shows a Rune Armour setup. Both sets have roughly the same 13 clears per hour.

  • Rune Armour will require:
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      Level 77
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      Level 70
      .
  • Dragon Armour you will require:
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      Level 74
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      Level 50

Gear

A Sandstorm Ring can be equipped for around 3.5-4 more clears per hour. This will require 1 more level in
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Hitpoints
.

Agility

Pre 100 Clear Volcanic Magic

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Magic
is slightly higher than Melee at this point at roughly 15 clears per hour. Yet they are lower if Melee uses Sandstorm Ring.

The requirements are however lower.

You will only need either
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Level 72
and
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Level 50
or
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Level 78
and no
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Agility
. Either Skill combination will still require you to use
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Weakening III
.

Gear

  • Spell:
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    Fire Surge
  • Curse:
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    Weakening III
  • Prayers:
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    Mystic Lore
    &
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    Mystic Might



Agility


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.


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 70
.
We will however be using
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Icicle Volley
which requires
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Level 74
.
You will also require
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Level 77
,
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Level 80
and
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Level 80
.

You can play around in the Combat Simulator to find your optimal skill and prayer combination. This has an average clear speed of 32 per hour.

Gear

  • Spell:
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    Icicle Volley
  • Aurora:
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    Surge II
    (Optional)
  • Prayers:
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    Mystic Might
    &
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    Stone Skin

Agility


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.

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.

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

Ancient Relics Guide

Suggestions assume no Pets, Relics,
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Agility
,
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Cartography
or
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Astrology
.

Just like all the previous Dungeons this will require you to Manual Eat again.


It is suggested you get either Adamant Armour or Rune Armour at this point.

Whichever Armour tier you choose, you will be using the same for
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Air God Dungeon
.
If you wish to continue with
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Magic
that is possible to, you will need a Fire Adept Wizard Gear Set as well as skill cap
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70
unlocked.


Make sure you spam Eat through Prat, the Protector of Secretss Volley Attack, this attack hits 3 times.
Also be mindful of Malcs, the Guardian of Melvors Double-Claw attack, this hits twice for a large amount of damage.

Melee

Melee is the slightly slower version of the 2, however it does not have a Rune cost, the Food cost is about the same.


The average clear time of this dungeon is roughly 5.5 minutes with Melee You can use Ice Sword as an alternative, this will however take about 2.5 minutes longer to clear.

The clear speed of Adamant Armour and Rune Armour is about the same.
Adamant Armour uses roughly 390 Lobster for a single clear.
Rune Armour uses roughly 345 Lobster for a single clear.

Swapping in a Sandstorm Ring will greatly increase your kill speed, this may however take up to 5-8 hours to obtain and won't be used for that long. This is not recommended.

Using
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Occultist
SynergyIcon.png
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Minotaur
will greatly increase your clear speed.



Magic

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Magic
has a clear time of roughly 6 minutes with the provided setup.
This will require
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Level 60
so the
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Level 70
cap unlock needs to be obtained.


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Witch
SynergyIcon.png
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Yak
has a large impact on both Food consumed and clear speed due to having to eat less.

This setup uses roughly 330 Lobster per clear.

  • Spell:
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    Fire Wave
  • Aurora:
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    Surge II
    (Optional)
  • Prayers:
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    Mystic Will
    &
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    Mystic Lore