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Strategies and Tips for EarthBound Ancient Cave

Not all of this information is vital, but the most important information is at the beginning.

Cave Layout

  • The most important thing to understand is the layout of the cave. Every “cluster” in the game (clusters explained soon) has been connected into a giant maze, divided into 9 different floors. There is a Shiny Spot at the end of each of the first 8 floors, and Giygas is at the end of the 9th floor. The goal of the game is to walk to Giygas and beat him, powering up along the way.

    • A “cluster” is a group of doors that can be accessed from each other normally, without taking any special action. If an NPC or an obstacle is blocking your path, getting around them is an “elevator” or a “skip”. No skips are ever required to beat the game. Skips will take you to a different floor. For instance, a skip could take you from the 4th floor to the 9th floor, or back to the 1st floor. Also, game events that move you between rooms are skips.
    • If you do not take a skip, the only connection between floors is at the Shiny Spot. So, once you pass the 1st Shiny Spot, every cluster you enter will be a 2nd-floor cluster until you take a skip or find the 2nd Shiny Spot. If you don’t need to backtrack, you can forget all unexplored doors behind you when you pass a Shiny Spot.
    • Examples of skips: giving Monkey Cave items, moving the theater attendants, beating Master Belch, buying the Onett cliffside house. Check the list on the website for more. Scripted enemies in the middles of rooms, like the Sentry Robots, are not skips. Some skips are one-way so you will not be able to return without dying or reloading save.
    • Skips will take you a minimum of two floors away, and a maximum of five (i.e. Floor 1 to Floor 6).
    • For a first-time run at the Ancient Cave, I highly recommend avoiding all skips, to get a feel for the game. However, to get the best possible times, taking skips smartly is one of the best strategies.
    • With default settings, each floor has its own overworld music that is consistent throughout the floor.

  • As an example of how Clusters work: Onett is divided into a large number of different clusters, especially because the police barricades are up.

    • Onett Cluster list:
      • Central Onett: 18 doors
      • North Onett: 3 doors (Ness’s house, Minch’s house, Liar’s house)
      • South Onett: 2 doors (Exit Mouse’s house, path to Twoson)
      • Behind the Entertainer’s Shack: 2 doors
      • Butterfly Cliff under Giant Step: 2 doors
      • Cliffside House: 1 door
      • Frank’s Backyard: 1 door
      • Giant Step: 1 door
    • Every one of these clusters may be on a different floor. If you find yourself in Central Onett while you are on the 4th floor, buy the Cliffside House, and enter it, you will not know what floor you are on anymore until you can determine it from context.
    • There are three ways to determine what floor you are on:
      • The Shiny Spot text says “This is the Xth Your Sanctuary location,” where X is the floor that that shiny spot is the last cluster of. The Shiny Spot rooms always go the “correct way”, so through the door being guarded by the shiny spot is forward, and the other way is backward.
      • The 6 Hint Men will tell you what floor you are on, as well as the vanilla names of the 8 chosen Shiny Spot bosses.
      • You can guess what floor you are on by the music you hear, the difficulty of the enemies, and the value of the gift boxes.
    • Most notably, all three of the doors in each of the Monkey Cave trading rooms are their own cluster; since there are many of these rooms, this is where the largest number of skips are found.
    • Enemy scripted battles in the middle of the room, like Mini Barf or Sentry Robots, do not break the room up into different clusters, so beating them may be required. Again, these are not skips.

  • Each floor has a guaranteed free full heal. The 7 Sanctuaries (Lumine Hall is not in the maze), the Brick Road's Head Room, and the Dalaam Palace Room will each be given one to each floor.

    • There are other full heals beyond these. One notable one is at the exit of the Pyramid in Southern Scaraba--this one is repeatable in AC because Poo does not leave your party. Also, Ness’s mom in Onett has her free hotel functionality, and Ness's mom in Magicant is a full heal.
    • Staying in hotels will keep you in the hotel lobby, not move you to another room.

  • All doors that appear to be one-way, such as holes, are actually two-way.

    • The “front door” to Dungeon Man from the inside works like a normal door, but “Entering Dungeon Man” using the key from South Scaraba is a one-way skip. You will not be able to get back to South Scaraba if you enter him.

  • The Exit Mouse lets you mark a spot you are standing on, then return to the most recently marked spot automatically. You can mark any number of times, but only the most recent will be saved; and actually returning uses up the Exit Mouse. This is useful to easily get back to Full Heals, Shops you can't afford, or to get out of one-way skips. If you don't mark anywhere, it will return you to Ness's Room.

  • The Teleport Men in Moonside have been modified to let you visit the whole map of Moonside, but not leave the map. The Teleport Man outside the hospital is the one you want to talk to that begins the chain of teleports that lets you pick up the three gift boxes in only-teleport-accessible areas.

Cave Content

  • Random enemies and gift box items are progressive. Enemy spawns will gradually increase in difficulty as you get deeper in the cave, and items drops will gradually get better. There is some shuffling involved, however, so the progression is not strictly linear (you may find one weaker enemy after a stronger one, but the overall trend is towards stronger).

    • Scripted enemy battles other than Shiny Spots are not changed. So if you encounter an early Sentry Robot or Hieroglyph, it will be much much stronger than the random enemies you have been fighting. However, it will also give much more XP. Your psychic abilities and Jeff’s starting BBR should get you past the first scripted battle you have to face without a full party wipe.

  • Gift box distribution information!

    • To begin, all the gift boxes accessible in the maze are ranked based on their depth in the maze. Better items will be placed deeper, on average.
    • First, skip-granting items, like the Pencil Eraser and the Backstage Pass, are placed in the first two-thirds of the cave.
    • Second, an Equipment Pool is created. This equipment pool consists of one copy of each unique equipment, three copies of each non-unique equipment, two Franklin Badges, and two Auto-Starmasters.
      • The pool is sorted by strength, lightly shuffled, with the Badges being put at 30% and 70% deep in the pool, and the Auto-Starmasters being put at 40% and 80% deep.
      • The pool is used to fill somewhat over half of the chests. About 70% of the pool gets used. The rest of the pool--about 30%--is thrown away.
    • Third, the remaining empty chests are filled with non-equipment items of gradually increasing value.
    • As a result, you are highly likely to find a decent array of very good pendants, as up to 3 of each of Sea and Star Pendants may appear in chests.
    • Also as a result, either 0, 1, or 2 Franklin Badges may appear in chests. Paula’s Shack may or may not appear in the maze as well, which means in any seed you may have as many as 3 or as few as 0 Franklin Badges available.
    • An Auto-Starmaster is a one-use device that teaches Poo Starstorm Alpha. If you use a second Auto-Starmaster, he learns Starstorm Omega. You have to "Use" the Auto-Starmaster for it to work; it does nothing sitting in your inventory.

  • Enemy stats are (potentially) both randomized and intershuffled.

    • This means that the Runaway Dog may have, for example, the Spiteful Crow’s speed + 4%.
    • Because of this, the Caterpillars may or may not have a big XP prize compared to their power; the XP prize may have been given to someone else instead.
    • One thing I have noticed often is that Foppies and Fobbies seem to regularly get much better stats due to the intershuffling than people expect at first. Don’t take them lightly.
    • Enemy shields, weaknesses, and explode-on-death status can be changed, but will usually be the same as normal. Just be aware it is always a possibility. Pokey has gotten a reflective psychic shield before.

Miscellaneous things you might not expect

  • A large number of special storyline events that break the game (entering Sky Runner, Onett cop fights) have been disabled. However, some may still exist. You go trying to trigger storyline events at your own peril.
  • If you have trouble getting into tight spaces, hold the Y Button to move at normal walking speed.
  • The Pyramid doors are open, and that door is part of the North Scaraba cluster.
  • If you are in Happy Happy Village, check the free shop as there may be very good items in it. You have to have free space in Ness’s inventory for the shop to work; otherwise it will appear to work but nothing will happen.
  • Due to shop randomization, almost every shop is worth checking.
  • Multi Bottle Rockets may be much better or worse than you are expecting, due to randomization of both Jeff’s and enemies’ speed.
  • Spawn plates are intentionally difficult to despawn, so don’t spend forever trying it if it’s giving you trouble.
  • No one can enter or leave your party, so trying to get Bubble Monkey or Flying Men won’t work.
  • The Starmaster full heal at the exit of the Pyramid will repeat itself every time you enter its trigger zone, because Poo does not leave.
  • There is no way to get the Ness stat boost from beating Magicant’s Ness’s Nightmare, even if you encounter it as a Shiny Spot boss, so be sure to take that into account.
  • There is a bug that can occur in Paula’s prayer, where it appears to restore over 65,000 HP to a character, but it actually subtracts a small amount of HP instead. This bug actually exists in the vanilla game, but is extremely rare. It is significantly more common in randomizer due to the stat growth randomization.
  • If you encounter the Paula's Shack Interior room, you can talk to Paula to get a Franklin Badge. (This means you could theoretically get 3 badges at once with a lucky seed.)
  • Ness's Mom in Magicant is a full heal.
  • If you have an equipment equipped (for example, a Platinum Band) and pick up another copy of the same equipment, and drop it with the R button, your equipped item may be dropped instead. Basically, the first item the game finds with the right name will be dropped. Be careful when dropping equipment for this reason.

List of clusters with the most doors

  • 5 - Long sewer room
  • 5 - Dalaam
  • 5 - Master Belch's base
  • 5 - Monotoli Building hall with bathrooms and robots
  • 5 - Titanic Ant dungeon
  • 5 - Inside Brick Road entry level
  • 5 - Saturn Valley
  • 6 - Winters (north)
  • 6 - Dusty Dunes Desert
  • 6 - Scaraba (north)
  • 6 - Mole tunnels entry level
  • 7 - Long sewer below Fourside
  • 9 - Fourside
  • 9 - Happy Happy Village
  • 12 - Summers
  • 13 - Threed
  • 18 - Onett (central)
  • 19 - Twoson