Changes

There is no practical limit to the number of floors, or levels, in the Skull Cavern.<ref name="integerlimit" /> Similar to [[the Mines]], the player advances through floors in the Skull Cavern by finding a ladder on each floor, either by mining rocks or defeating enemies.  

There is no practical limit to the number of floors, or levels, in the Skull Cavern.<ref name="integerlimit" /> Similar to [[the Mines]], the player advances through floors in the Skull Cavern by finding a ladder on each floor, either by mining rocks or defeating enemies.  

The player can sometimes find a shaft, or hole, which makes it possible to skip 3-15 floors. There is a 20% chance for a rock to spawn a shaft instead of a ladder. The way this works is that a pseudo random integer x between 3 and 8 inclusive is chosen with a 10% chance that the player will drop 2x-1 levels instead of x. The amount of levels dropped is predetermined based on the mine level, game day, and game seed. In particular, [[Luck]] does not affect the chances of jumping down a certain number of levels. In addition, this means that if there are multiple shafts on a given level, they will drop the player the same number of levels, so it does not matter which shaft is chosen. Jumping down the shaft causes [[health]] damage equal to 3x the number of levels skipped (although jumping down a shaft will never reduce health to less than 1). Note that if the player has not reached floor 100 in a given Skull Cavern run and a shaft is calculated to drop the player past floor 100, it will be modified to only drop the player to floor 100. <ref name="shaftlevels"/>

The player can sometimes find a shaft, or hole, which makes it possible to skip 3-15 floors. There is a 20% chance for a rock to spawn a shaft instead of a ladder. The way this works is that a pseudo random integer x between 3 and 8 inclusive is chosen with a 90% chance that the player drops x levels and a 10% chance that the player drops 2x-1 levels. The amount of levels dropped is predetermined based on the mine level, game day, and game seed. In particular, [[Luck]] does not affect the chances of jumping down a certain number of levels. In addition, this means that if there are multiple shafts on a given level, they will drop the player the same number of levels, so it does not matter which shaft is chosen. Jumping down the shaft causes [[health]] damage equal to 3x the number of levels skipped (although jumping down a shaft will never reduce health to less than 1). Note that if the player has not reached floor 100 in a given Skull Cavern run and a shaft is calculated to drop the player past floor 100, it will be modified to only drop the player to floor 100. <ref name="shaftlevels"/>

Unlike the Mines, there is no elevator to save progress, but on every floor there is a ladder at the starting point where the player can leave the Skull Cavern. Each visit must start again from the first floor. If [[The Player|the player]] runs out of health while exploring Skull Cavern, they will wake up sometime later on the same day in [[Harvey's Clinic]]. A fee of {{price|1000}} will be deducted for emergency surgery. Some items may also be lost. Passing out at 2:00 am will cause the player to lose {{price|1000}} or 10% of funds, whichever is less.

Unlike the Mines, there is no elevator to save progress, but on every floor there is a ladder at the starting point where the player can leave the Skull Cavern. Each visit must start again from the first floor. If [[The Player|the player]] runs out of health while exploring Skull Cavern, they will wake up sometime later on the same day in [[Harvey's Clinic]]. A fee of {{price|1000}} will be deducted for emergency surgery. Some items may also be lost. Passing out at 2:00 am will cause the player to lose {{price|1000}} or 10% of funds, whichever is less.