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

Idling with

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Magic

is only recommended once you have stronger equipment because it will often end up with a slower clear time, or a more complicated setup. 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 weapon	0%
	(G) Dragon Shield	6%
Total		37%

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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Air Expert Wizard Hat	Fire Expert Wizard Hat
	Air Expert Wizard Robes	Fire Expert Wizard Robes
	Air Expert Wizard Bottoms	Fire Expert Wizard Bottoms
	Ring of Spirit Power	Aorpheat's Signet Ring

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
Or, if you
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Level 93 or higher

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 threshhold, so if you need to deviate, then check your setup with the Combat Simulator.

For example:

At 880
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HP you will need to equip the
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Stone Skin prayer to provide extra DR.
At 910
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HP you can farm the dungeon with 33% DR and without the prayer or potions.

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.

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%

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+
Error creating thumbnail: File missing Icicle Volley	18.1	28.3+
Error creating thumbnail: File missing 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%	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

Note:

Get the (U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces from the
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Dragons Den and these provide a good mid-game DR.
Craft the (U) Red D-hide Vambraces and (U) Black D-hide Vambraces with
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Level 73 or higher, or as a reward from the
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Spider Forest
Get the Gloves from the Paladin

Cape

In order of preference:

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

Boots

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.