Volcanic Cave/Guide

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?

Clear 1 time:
- To unlock
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  Air God Dungeon and
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  Infernal Stronghold
- To get the Fire Cape which grants 2% DR
- To get the Elite Chest
Clear 50 times:
- For a Township Task that gives Dragon Bones, and
- To start obtaining ancient armour in preparation for the
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  Air God Dungeon
Clear 100 times:
- To unlock Ancient Magicks which gives you powerful spells such as
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  Slicing Winds,
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  Icicle Volley, and
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  Ignite.
Clear 100+ times:
- To farm for the full ancient armour set and
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  Ancient Crossbow
- To farm for the 10 Amulets of Fury needed for the Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs (FEZ). Check the FEZ/Guide for more details.

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.

Slot	Item	DR%
	(G) Dragon Helmet	6%
	(G) Dragon Platebody	6%
	(G) Dragon Platelegs	6%
	(G) Dragon Boots	6%
	Paladin Gloves	4%
	Knight's Cape	1%
	Elite Amulet of Defence	2%
	Sandstorm Ring	0%
	Sunset Rapier	0%
	(G) Dragon Shield	6%
Total		37%

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.

Slot	Item	DR%
	Air Expert Wizard Hat	5%
	Air Expert Wizard Robes	5%
	Air Expert Wizard Bottoms	5%
	Air Expert Wizard Boots	5%
	(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces	6%
	Skull Cape	3%
	Elite Amulet of Magic	2%
	Aorpheat's Signet Ring	0%
	Any Error creating thumbnail: File missing Magic	0%
	(G) Dragon Shield	6%
Total		37%

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:

Magic Assistance Potions
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Astrology
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Prayer
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Agility

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.

Slot	Item	DR%
	Ancient Wizard Hat	5%
	Ancient Wizard Robes	5%
	Ancient Wizard Bottoms	5%
	Ancient Wizard Boots	5%
	(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces	6%
	Skull Cape	3%
	Elite Amulet of Magic	2%
	Aorpheat's Signet Ring	0%
	Magic Wand (Powerful)	0%
	Miolite Shield	2%
Total		33%

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%
Error creating thumbnail: File missing Slicing Winds	23.5	25.8	0%
Error creating thumbnail: File missing 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%	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 60
(U) Black D-hide Vambraces	5%	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 70
(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces	6%	Error creating thumbnail: File missing 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	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 66 area unique drop
Skull Cape	3% DR	Screws up Error creating thumbnail: File missing Melee accuracy
Firemaking Skillcape	XP boost	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 99, no DR increase
Obsidian Cape	Spend less food	Rare drop, no DR increase
Fire Cape	2% DR	You need to clear Error creating thumbnail: File missing 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%	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 60
(G) Rune Boots	5%	Error creating thumbnail: File missing 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:

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