Volcanic Cave/Guide

The guide is written with the goal of idling the dungeon. If you want to do it manually, the requirements are much more relaxed, although the more DR you have, the easier it is to do anyway.

This page was last updated for (v1.0.4).

Summary

  1. Get the Sunset Rapier,
  2. Get the Sandstorm Ring,
  3. Do 100
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    Volcanic Cave
    clears as Melee,
  4. Do the rest of
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    Volcanic Cave
    clears with
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    Slicing Winds
    . Don't forget to enable the Surge aurora.

Why Clear Volcanic Cave?

On each clear, you get the Fire Cape that gives 2% DR.

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Volcanic Cave

is the place where you gear up in preparation for the

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Air God Dungeon

. According to the simulation - the average amount of clears it will take to get the full ancient set, is 640 clears. It takes 817 clears to get the full ancient set with 75% probability and 1377 clears to get it with 95% probability.

It is also a place to farm 10 Amulets of Fury for FEZ. Check the FEZ/Guide to see if it's the best option for you.

After you clear the Volcanic Cave 100 times, you will unlock Ancient Magicks -

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Slicing Winds

,

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Icicle Volley

, and

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Ignite

.

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Winds

are used when the hit chance of everything else is not high. They don't miss if you have more than 20k accuracy;

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Ignite

is used to one-shot;

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Volley

is used for everything else.

Ancient Magicks are not affected by damage amplification in any way except the Combat Triangle. No curses, no debuffs, no gear buffs. Following normal progression, it is generally stronger than the basic magic at this stage. However, due to the non-scaling nature of Ancient Magicks, it is very easy to outgear them and render them obsolete, generally this happens when the player obtains the Cloudburst Staff, but many new items and buffs - most notably the Ring of Spirit Power now exist that make it possible for normal magics to be more powerful than Ancients.

Gear To Idle

The main heavy-hitter of the

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Volcanic Cave

uses the

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Melee

style. Therefore, clearing it with pre-Volcanic

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Ranged

build is unfeasible due to the Combat Triangle penalties. It is assumed that you have

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Auto Eat - Tier III

. All calculations are done for the

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Hardcore

/ Adventure.
If you play

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Standard and have lower HP or DR, use Can I Idle or Combat Simulator to check if you can survive with your build.

Melee

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Volcanic Cave

is usually done with

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Melee

because the dragon armor set requires only

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Level 99

to produce. It then can be trimmed to provide 30% DR. Below is the melee build that requires

820
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Hitpoints

to idle the dungeon on any game mode. However, pay attention that even slightly less DR or HP will mean death for this build because it hangs a hair breadth away from the max hit of Malcs. Check with Can I Idle or Combat Simulator to see if you can idle with your build. Also, the Sandstorm Ring is very important for your clear time.

Pre-Volcanic Magic

The other possible option is

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Magic

. Clearing the Volcano with Magic from the start is not recommended because its adjusted clear time is slower and more complicated to set up than the available melee builds.

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, therefore, use the highest level spell and robe combination available to you.

If available to you, use the Ring of Spirit Power instead of the Aorpheat's Signet Ring

To idle the dungeon with the build below, you need

780
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Hitpoints

and

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Weakening III

active.

100-Volcanoes Magic

After clearing the

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Volcanic Cave

100 times, you will unlock Ancient Magicks. Your first goal with this build is to reach 20k accuracy for

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Slicing Winds

, which means the spell won't miss at all. Therefore, while the build only requires

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Level 72

at minimum, you will need at most level

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Level 93

or multiple Accuracy bonuses from various other skills to achieve 20k Accuracy Rating, including:

It's possible to farm the Volcanic Cave with the 20k-accuracy

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Slicing Winds

on the following build if you have

880
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HP

and a

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Stone Skin

prayer active. To farm the dungeon with 33% DR and without the prayer or potions, you need

910
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HP

. Your biggest threat is Prat, the Protector of Secrets with the monsters Max Hit being inches above your Auto-Eat threshhold Check if you can fulfil the accuracy quota with the gear available to you either with the Combat Simulator or by checking your out of combat stats. 20k accuracy is important because after that number

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Slicing Winds

cannot miss, becoming a top-DPS spell against the dungeon at this point of progression.

Weapon Choice

This table plots some Combat Simulator results adjusted by the time it takes to produce all of the required consumables with some assumptions made about the exact bonuses available for each skill.

You can view the spreadsheet here. Make a copy to tailor the resource values to match your own, there is also a column on each table that allows you to input your own Sim results. (link)

Weapon Adjusted Chests per Hour Potential Chests per Hour Buff compared to previous
Pre-Volcanic 3.8 20+ 0%
Dragon Sword 7.6 24+ 20%
Dragon Claw 8 26.3+ 9%
Ancient Sword 8.16 26.2+ 0%
Sunset Rapier 9.6 31.4+ 19%
Ancient Claw 10 34.7+ 10%
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Slicing Winds
23.5 25.8 0%
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Icicle Volley
18.1 28.3+ 0%

Magic builds using Ancient Magicks are generally better than their Melee counterparts when not using all buffs available to the player. Due to the large amount of runes required to cast, and the non-scaling nature of Ancient Magicks, eventually they fall behind Melee builds for adjusted clear times.

The usual food expenditure is approximately

200,000
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HP

to

250,000
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HP

per hour.

Gear Options

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

The Ancient vambraces drop from the

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Dragons Den

. You will very likely need them to idle the

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Air God Dungeon

, so might as well get them now.
The Red and Black vambraces can be either crafted with

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Crafting

or dropped from the

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Spider Forest

.

Or you might just farm some Paladins for their Gloves.

Cape
Item Upside Downside
Knight's Cape 1% DR
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Level 66
area unique drop
Skull Cape 3% DR Screws up
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Melee
accuracy
Firemaking Skillcape XP boost
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Level 99
, no DR increase
Obsidian Cape Spend less food Rare drop, no DR increase
Fire Cape 2% DR You need to clear
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Volcanic Cave
once
Boots

The choice of boots is small because we don't want to drop in DR too much.

Item DR% Requirements
(G) Dragon Boots 6%
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Level 60
(G) Rune Boots 5%
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Level 40
Ring
Item Benefit
Sandstorm Ring Solid DPS increase for Melee, falls off in power if using enough buffs from other skills.
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.

Conclusion

The suggested order of actions with the LEAST effort put into support skills is as follows:

  1. Get the   Sunset Rapier,
  2. Get the   Sandstorm Ring,
  3. Do 100
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    Volcanic Cave
    clears as Melee,
  4. Do the rest of
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    Volcanic Cave
    clears with
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    Slicing Winds
    .