Volcanic Cave/Guide

Revision as of 19:00, 27 April 2024 by Cottrela (talk | contribs) (→‎Melee)

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.

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

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 80

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.

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 are against the

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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, as any less will be 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

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.

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

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.

TL/DR

In summary, the suggested order of equipment 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.