Dark and Light - Ice Cave Farming Guide

Ice cave run using the Vicious Bargesh.

The Run

All credit goes to Chaac!

By now, many of you already know about this, but I want to share some of my tips that make Ice cave farming easier.

First thing, you’ll need a good Vicious Bargesh (prefer +300% dmg, +10k hp). In my routine, I don’t need to bring meat to heal it, but depend on what you have, you should bring few 1000 raw meat to heal it.

Other stuff you need to have and I presume you already know, but I’ll give some of my own experience:

Brimstone set: you’ll be comfortable with 2500 cold resist, the new warmth (lvl II) gives you ~350, the mandrake soup gives you ~200 (you can get the soup from the ice goblin drop)
Pickaxe to mine the crystal node.
Food (50 meat should be fine) and water (the pond inside the cave won’t let you drink from it)
The frozen gateway is use to teleport (only you, not your creature, even with remote use) back to the cave entrance.
Spawn point infront of the cave. I have an outpost there with resurrection altar, summon pool, Ice Imp to keep the food and storage.
So after you have what you need, mount the Bargesh and go through the broken door. I think it’s not the way you supposed to do it, but since the Brimstone set so fragile and need a lot of maintenance, the Bargesh is the best way to go, I also tried horse & spear (with the sheep polymorph spell) but the spear hit box is so off and the horse can’t be heal by meat. Savage cyclop: can’t bring it it, since it can’t jump over the broken door.

Enemy: There’re 7 types of mob you have to fight there, since this is about using the Bargesh, my advice here is not for fighting on foot:

Ice goblin: thread lvl – high, they’re speed hacker, can rapidly hit you. So to fight them, you have to go backpedal while hitting them, or other way is go to a higher ground that they can’t climb up but not too high so you can still hitting them. Drop 1 square cast and food. Location: right after you drop down and later when you cross the bridge.
Cave yeti: thread lvl – low, just trading blow with them. Drop: frozen gateway, boss body part, blueprint. Location: right after you drop down and later in the room right before boss room.
Cave Ice Imp: thread lvl -high, speed hacker, use the same strategy as you do with goblin. Drop: crystal, frozen gateway. Location: after you destroy the two first ice barricade.
Ice golem: thread lvl – medium, just trading blow with them like the yeti, but they can reflex damage back, so you’ll hurt yourself a lot. Drop: I don’t know, they stop spawning in my server (official PvE). Location: same as the Imp.
Cave spider: thread lvl – low, trading blow with them, don’t get hit when you’re not on the mount or they destroy your stuff. Drop: acid (about 5 each). Location: on the small room, on the left of the first Ice barricade, be sure to kill them first before you break the barricade.
The boss: thread lvl – low, again, just trading blow, it’s can barely hurt you. Drop: frozen gateway, crafting parts.
Ice minion: thread lvl – low, spawn by the boss, they’re speed hacker too, but their hp is low, so I don’t worry about them. Ice minion also drop some parts, so if you want to farm them, don’t kill the boss. But the drop rate is low and also the spawn rate for them is low too, so it’s not worth it.

Basically, this is how me and other ppl do now. Here are my other tips to make thing easier:

The Bargesh can go through the small tunnel leading to the boss room, it can’t be stuck, just wiggle a little, go back and forward, use the orbit camera and then you can go through. But I also find out that the Bargesh can also jump back to the tunnel and go out. I saw many ppl end up killing the Bargesh and revive them outside because they think it will stuck there. But you can actually jump up and go out, go back to the drop point, and put them their, I did it a dozen time and it’s still safe there for the next run.
Don’t dismount if you are in the tunnel, you might be stuck there. (I guess you can make the Bargesh to follow you through the tunnel, but I ‘ve never try that)
The hammer is the best weapon for breaking the ice that block the way. For crystal node, use the pickaxe.
If you fall of the cliff or the bridge, it will not be an instant death. So if you see some mobs down there and want to finish them off for loot, you can jump down and fight, but be sure to prepare the teleport rune, and use the summon stone for you pet.
Put the pegasus at the broken gate to heal your pet after the fight (I’m not sure if the unicorn healing range can reach the pet, but he pegasus does).
Upgrade you item in the new workbench: for my epic/legendary brimstone pieces, I needed about 1600 energy, 50-60 metal alloy for each update, so if you don’t have enough, don’t do the update, or you’ll waste all of it (the progress will be reset next time). The layline will explode, deal huge dmg when its energy reached 0, so clear out. Nidhog is your friend to easily fly around.
The boss will spawn in about every 4hours, with other mob can be shorter time.