Lets talk caving.

[SCORCH]

Hello,

I want to start to get into caving, and was interested to hear from communities about how they run caves such as methods or equipment or even dinosaurs and their successes and fails with caving.

[Sphere]

Good idea to learn how to make hooks, and use a crossbow to move around caves.

Probably a good idea to breed up some good wolves to get good mutations, or see about purchasing via trade a good set of wolves to breed with, to make your 100% imprint cave dog.

[SmokeyB]

Forget wolves no saddle,  breed up some high level baryonyx they can get in every cave and can even swim for the water parts.

Fill em full of fish and they heal rapid,  find a good saddle BP to get more armour,  take food and a canteen and your good to go.

Wear ghilie armour unless it's a ice cave then wear fur. Take grappling hooks just in case.

You can even use weapons from their back if you feel like it

To be honest only the over leveled caves with lvl 350 + dinos are a problem,  the other caves are easy to run through you don't even need  150 kibble tames. Only swamp cave and snow cave on the island really need a beast of a mount 

[SCORCH]

I am interested to hear some good loot stories or maybe some fails or something.

[yekrucifixion187]

Wolves, Thyla's, Frogs, Carno's, and Bary's are the best cave mounts (though I have heard of some good success with Terror Birds too)

It really depends on the cave though. Always go during the day (to avoid megalosaurus being OP). Wolves can get into every cave and while they don't have a saddle they just seem like the prefer mount for versatility. The Bary has made ground on them, has the saddle (though advanced saddles are still pretty rare, might need to go caving to get one  ) and has a little more base damage. Where you can get them into, Thyla's usually dominate (carno island cave, Thyla vs megalosaurus and megalania's) except the swamp cave. best method i have seen there is a Carno/Frog combo. Frog demolishes insects as they come through and the Carno handles everything else. 

Grappling hooks, appropriate armor (Ghillie for Lava is good, Desert is better except for the actual armor rating though they just nerfed Ghillie Armor so may be on equal ground now). Grappling hooks, Croosbow, Longneck rifle (pick off Onyz before they even get a chance), simple shotgun (demolishes spiders and Scorpion's), Bary is great for anything you have to enter water for. That stun lock will freeze Sarco's and Piranha's and titanboa's and centipedes. 

Kill centipedes faster than anything else. They will shred any armor you have with their acid attack. 

health potions, blood bags, couple canteens, jerky (now that they implemented effects on flowers and mushrooms) and for swamp cave specifically a couple scuba tanks and ghillie pieces. 

That's a pretty good basic starter pack to do the caves ( I can't give personal knowledge on snow cave yet but you're going to want advanced Fur armor or a lot of the fria curry's because it's apparently very cold. 

 

Good loot/fails. Coming out of lava cave, noticed a drop overhead I hadn't seen before. I start firing indiscriminately up in that general direction and lured a couple dilo's out into the lava. I disrobe except for my crossbow (use a cheap one for grappling hooks, not going to use for killing anything) and two grappling hooks and a pike in case there is another dilo up there. I grapple up and yep there is another dilo, so I grapple a little higher to get better position when I drop and aggro 3 bats that apparently didn't care about the rifle shots 30 seconds earlier. 

I spawned at a sleeping bag back outside. Grabbed my wolf and decided that drop probably had a compass in it (my buddy went in and got it, it was a ramshackle crossbow, smh). 

Best loot I've gotten in a cave was only eh actually. A MC 181 simple shotgun BP ( The JM we used at the time was a 194 damage) but lots of people have gotten good saddles (ASC Rex BP, ASC Quetzal Platform premade) and weapons (ASC Crossbow BP, ASC Pickaxe BP). The most unique thing I got was just the other day. I got a premade 47.8 armor apprentice Yuty saddle but that was from the easy water cave. Deep sea drops have rewarded me with some of my most unique items (premade Apprentice Theri saddle) and the desert drops on scorch too (JM Megalania Saddle BP).