It's in the desert.

Skull Cavern is in the dessert

If you don't mind mods, there's an elevator mod for the skull cavern. It helps a lot, and it works like the elevator in the normal mines.

To quickly find holes and ladders you need:

1. Bombs to clear out lots of rocks at once, and a pickaxe upgraded as much as possible to quickly clear out the rest
2. High luck - go on days when the TV says you're showered with luck, and use luck-enhancing food.

Also helps to start as early as possible. Have all your items (bombs, food, etc) in a chest by the skull cavern door so you don't have to gather them. Use a warp totem to get to the desert early so you don't have to wait for the bus, or use a tent to camp there and start right away.

With high luck, lots of bombs and a full day, you should be able to find lots of ladders and holes to jump in, and get to level 100.

All of the previous commenters have great advice (high luck day, lucky foods, bombs, staircases)

I usually only take 20 or so staircases, and I ensure I save some for “infested” floors. Mastery helps so you can add your daily blessings to your chances.

The good I have on me the most is Spicy Eel. Run fast and high luck. You can buy those from the desert trader for rubies.

Also, make sure you have a Farm Totem or the Return Wand so you can push the day right to the end and/or can safely return home if you need to. Buy potions from the dwarf shop or make tons of them with mushrooms.

Craft all three types of bombs and use them correctly. And run from the blast!

From what I’ve read. It skull cavern has no bottom. It’s endless. You can craft the steps, get the crystal duplicator thing and keep duplicating some jade crystals and use those to buy some from the merchant at the desert. Only on Sunday’s I think.

Take some bombs with you as well, some cheese and go on a day when you have the best luck.

I haven’t done it. When I read it’s endless I just gave up lol. But that’s what I learned as I was getting ready to do it lol

there are some really helpful youtube videos on this! salmence has a great one

You have to get to level 120. So take the elevator to 115, and chop your way down.

Enter the mine at level 95, and then make your way to 100. That did it for me

You need a very lucky day, food that gives you additional luck. you need to get there early in the day. Use a totem or grind up for the obelisk. If you want to use stairs, go ahead, but Mr. Qi will give you crap for it. You need to take bombs, and use them to look for shafts, not just the ladder. I used rubies to trade with the desert trader to get more spicy eel, which gives you luck and speed boost.

There are a few things to help:

Grind combat skills- You get extra hp as you level, not to mention the perks.

Get a better weapon- if you have a prismatic shard hold it over your head between some pillars in the desert, if not then check the adventure guild as you may still have a better weapon to purchase.

Stockpile foods- Plenty of people like to use cheese, I personally use sashimi as it is super easy to get if you can fish and have a kitchen.

Get crystalaiums- You can give it a jade and it will dupe jades every couple days, these can be traded 1 to 1 for staircases on Sundays at the roadside merchant in the desert, the stairs will help you get deeper.

I personally did the same. I started and left so fast, so I set out to get 100 staircases because I don’t normally like combat in games. I did what needed to be done to get to Mr. Qi and only stopped to get some iridium and fight some pepper rex dinos for an egg. Bring lots of bombs and food with you (even if you have the staircases)

Easy method, get rich. Thats really it. Once you're rich, buy lots of bombs or homemade lots of bombs. Bring lots of food ie salad or your farm cheese. Or just bring lots of stairs via trading your jades to the desert trader on Sunday. You got this. Its easy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/search/?q=skull+cavern+tips&cId=5f1c21c7-db05-4327-a643-57bcba97752d&iId=770c80fe-358c-4593-a8c3-b1ffe511aa9b

Every piece of advice you get here will be on any number of these search results. It's a challenging dive but it's possible if you prepare and practice!

It sounds like you already looked up the basics on how to prep for it, now it's a matter of how you actually behave in the cavern. If you're only getting into the 30s, youre probably spending too much time on each floor. If your goal is to get to Lv100, you need to ignore monsters and mining as much as possible. Ignore all the ore, it'll slow you down. As for getting holes, well that's luck. Bombing large clusters of rocks is more chances all at once to uncover one. If you hit infested floors, use a stairwell.

Deepest I’ve got is like level 40. No idea how to get to 100. Dropped a prysmatic shard to the right of the cave’s entrance to get the sword and the iridium pick axe. Made life a lot easier

First time I went into Skull Cavern I took one serpent hit saw my health drop and ran to the exit screaming and crying" I gotta get outta here!" I didnt go back for a while lol

Went into Skull Cavern once-my husband charged me for the emergency surgery.

I remember this EXACT feeling. No elevator + scary dragon noise and damage made me so anxious and reluctant to ever go there. With time and good tips/weapons/items I gladly go and sometimes make it past 120

There are a few ways:

1: Bombs, explode rocks quickly

2: Take the crystal duper and give it a jade, on Sundays trade jades for staircases at the roadside trader. Use Iridium to make more crystal dupers for more stairs. WIth enough dupers you can get a good stockpile of stairs for each run and instantly leave each floor you don't want to be on.

3: Better weapons, higher damage weapons means less time fighting each creature.

Bombs and staircases. You can craft both or purchase bombs from dwarf for gold and stair cases from desert merchent for jade (only on sundays). If using staircases I highly recomend buying them since it's 1 jade to buy one vs 200 stone to craft. Also go on lucky days and use whatever you can (food, drink, rings, ect.) to increase your luck further so you're more likely to find holes

Lucky day, spicy eel, triple shot espresso, good weapon, gold star cheese, bombs, bombs, and more bombs. Find holes not ladders.

Bombs away!!!

(No seriously, bring all the bombs)

• crystalariums for jade buys lots of staircases from the desert trader on Sunday I used about 30 on my first run to get to level 100, but 100 makes it a sure thing.
• Rubies buy spicy eel from the desert trader too. (+1 speed, +1 luck)
• 3 Omni geodes buys a desert warp totem, and that gives you more time. (Just take 1 to use so it's not filling inventory slots)
• Tents also let you camp out, but I tend to prefer to go opportunistically on a lucky day.
• you can with a fish pond and a couple of garden pots always have the ingredients for a lucky lunch available.
• your first Prismatic Shard should be taken to the pillars in the desert, which will make it easier.
• bombs to clear floors fast. Bomb if there's enough rocks, staircase if not.
• don't get distracted by iridium nodes. On your first dive they look tempting, but there will be time enough after you get to 100 and there will be higher density of ore the deeper you get.
• seriously the deeper you go, the more there is, so even if you aren't going for floor 100, it's still a good idea to race down a bunch of levels first.
• don't get distracted by monsters. Only fight the ones you must.
• >!Trinkets in 1.6 give you options for "crowd control" which makes it considerably easier to not get overrun. E.g. magic quiver, ice rod. I prefer these over the fairy box in general, but in particular for this purpose you shouldn't be wasting time faffing about, so magic quiver is really good!<
• you can buy both elixir and bombs from the dwarf. They look expensive, but a bombed floor can easily pay for itself.
• You can also buy essences from Krobus and likely have plenty of gold ores spare to make your own mega bombs.
• >!1.6 also made manufacturing elixir a load easier with mushroom logs!<
• cheese works pretty well as healing food though, if you have a steady supply.
• berries look tempting, but don't really heal fast enough when your health is low and a serpent is coming. They're ok for staying topped up out of combat though.
• put your primary items on easy hotkeys. I usually have 1,2,3,4,5 as sword, pickaxe, bombs, staircase, cheese.
• falling asleep only costs gold, you don't lose items. But maybe a single farm warp totem is the way to go anyway.
• you lose items if you run out of health, but this is reduced by luck. And you went on a high luck day with lots of buffs. Marlon can recover one stack for you - but only one. But often enough I don't lose any, or only one I care about, so it's still a good deal.
• empty your inventory before you go, and then the worst case loss is "some of your profit"
• Spicy Eel gives +1 speed and luck. Lucky Lunch is +3 Luck. Magic Rock Candy is a whopping +5 luck, +5 Defense, +5 attack, +1 speed, and +2 mining.
• drinks stack with food. Triple espresso initially (+1 speed), ginger Ale when you have acquired the recipe. (+1 luck)
• the boost from the chef at Calico festival stacks with both. Rare fruit and spicy sauce will get +3 luck +1 speed which makes a whopping +11 luck possible.
• that one magic rock candy you got from the museum eventually might be worth using. It looks expensive, but it does a lot. You get to a point where most trips you can afford to buy more MRC than you use.
• You can buy more Magic Rock >!for 3 prismatic shards from the trader on Thursday, or 20 Golden Mystery Boxes from the Racoons!<
• rings from adventurer's guild quests are potent. Crab shell boosts your endurance quite significantly. Burglar's ring increases your haul of loot. Napalm ring explodes rocks to find more ladders, and slime charmer ring stops you from being hurt by slimes.
• High ish Immunity from your boots also significantly reduces danger from debuffs. Mermaid boots for +8 means 80% chance to resist. (And +5 defence)
• luck rings if you have them also help with finding ladders and loot. (They show up from panning mostly)
• you can fuse rings in >!the volcano and in the mini forge from mastery!< and wearing 4 rings at once is very handy. (sic)
• you can also upgrade and enchant your primary weapon. (Eventually. It can get pretty expensive)
• Mastery unlocks >!the anvil, which lets you reforge trinkets. Perfect Magic Quiver or Ice Rod are amazing (higher level fairy box might be ok)!<
• >!Late game the mining and farming statues can apply useful boosts to luck, ladder rates, ore quantities!<
• the deeper you go, the more ore there is. The reason floor 100 is a goal is because deeper than there's huge piles of Iridium.
• Iridium nodes have a 3.5% chance to drop a Prismatic shard. That's about 1/30. More nodes means more shards
• only take the items you need. Loot slots will fill, and you can miss out.
• weapon, pickaxe (maybe), bombs, food to replenish health (gold cheese?), food/drink to buff.
• a day in skull Cavern is 18m long - so you only need a few doses of timed buffs. Using them up means less to lose if you go down, and also more space for loot. 2x 8 minute buffs (magic rock) and 3x 5 minute buffs (espresso, ginger beer) is usually plenty.
• if you fall asleep in the mines - due to time not health - you never lose items, only money. An extra slot for loot instead of a talisman/sceptre can easily pay for itself.
• high luck reduces odds of item loss when you get knocked out. With 2 luck rings ginger ale and lucky lunch it's almost never losing items.
• Prepare a chest of your 'skull Cavern stuff' and another chest of 'dump my inventory', so on the days you decided to go, you can 'just' unload everything, grab the stuff you need and go.
• You can buy a Dwarvish Safety Manual from the Dwarf, for reduced damage from Bombs, and then it means blowing yourself out isn't quite so inconvenient.
• when you want the really good loot setting both Mines and Cave to dangerous mode means the monsters can drop Qi Gems, Galaxy Souls, pressure nozzles and Auto Petters.

To add to this I don’t even play with the skull cavern now until I have the slime charmer and burglars ring as those two fundamentally change the game imo

Wow thanks for this. Looks like level 100 on Skull Cavern will be my endgame content

Ye! It's very important. I remember going to the Skull Cavern my first time without checking my luck and I died 15 secs after just entering lol. Then Iearnt about luck (the TV check and food/ring for extra luck) and my 2nd run was completely different. Another important thing is to farm Jade on the duplicate machine (I use 6) to trade it for stairs with the desert trader on Sundays.

How do you know where the ladder is? I just hit every stone until I find it 😭

Working towards a 2 year perfection rn and I'm still 540 slimes off from the goal. Do you have a specific spot where you like to farm slimes quickly? I've just been using the large purple slimes in skull caverns.

After I discovered this ring, I always grind out enough slimes to get it before attempting the cavern lmao No thank you sir

I have never completed this quest without staircases. I can make 50 or so levels with all of the other suggestions, but always end up using staircases.

I think the warp totem is to escape when you’re surrounded by monsters and are about to definitely die and can’t get to a staircase in time. Then warping out of there saves you from losing potentially a lot of loot. I keep getting killed and losing my whole food supply and my actual sword or something ridiculous and needing to restart my day. Lol. I’ve been playing with the tractor mod and Skull Cavern elevator mod for too long, but just removed all my mods to do a 100 day challenge and I’m remembering what pain Skull a cavern is!

Don’t hoard stone, just put a jade into your first crystalarium (I usually get it from bundles the first season), if you can make more, make more (also recommend to keep one for rubies for spicy eels). By the time you get to skull cavern, you should have a lot of jades to trade for stairs. Stone is needed for more important things

How I get through the Skull Cavern. Only go on extra lucky days, Galaxy Sword, Big Bombs, Life Elixirs, Warp Farm Totem and praying for good RNG.

Go into this sub, use the search bar at the top, read any of the 500 posts on this subject.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/s/tiPWHpO8ET

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Delve deep, watch out for serpents and ores lurking.

Deep dive, bring bombs, coffee, luck.

Go on lucky days if you can bring food that modifies your luck. Use bombs over the pick axe. If you see a hole jump into it. As soon as you uncover a staircase take it. Avoid fighting at all costs

Have a plan on why you're going to the skull cavern. Do you need ore? Iridium? Loot? Getting as deep as possible? Just focus on one thing at a time.

Also good to know time moves slower in the skull cavern so do not feel as rushed. The only exception to this is dinosaur floors get through those quickly by using staircases.