Snow Cave
Interior Map
Location
The Snow Cave is in the Snow Biome.
Dangers
- Wild Creatures only spawn between levels 120 and 340 on default settings (they are not tamable)
- Extreme Cold
- Water (will damage you when touched)
Recommended Equipment
- High quality or multiple sets of
Fur Armor and Riot Armor or Flak Armor - 10 × Torch to see in dark areas and warm up
- 20 × Pike to kill organisms in meele combat with
- 90 × Cooked Meat for food, remember 1 cooked meat is 20 food
- Enduro Stew Consume it to regenerate 1.2 HP each second and increase melee damage increase by 30%
- 3 × Fria Curry Consume it to gain +50 increased hypothermal insulation, and slow your rate of food consumption by 25%
- 15 × Medical Brew for quick health
- Campfire to warm up and cook meat while inside Snow Cave
- ~50 × Wood to cook stuff in the campfire
- 2 × Crossbow 1 for range with the stone arrows and the other grappling hooks
- ~100 × Stone Arrow to have ammo for the crossbow
- 20 × Grappling Hook to get into areas easier
- Metal Pick to get loot via mining
- Pump-Action Shotgun with about 100 × Simple Shotgun Ammo
- 30 × Custom Consumable to regenerate health and food
- 3 × Hide Sleeping Bag or 1 × Simple Bed to respawn when needed
Tips
- Engram-Grade Fur Gear(the ones made from the Smithy via earning Engrams) is not enough insulation. You will want improved Fur from the Deep Sea Loot Crates.
- The cave gets colder the deeper you go. You can be well-insulated at the entrance, and freezing to death at the artifact. A good idea is to bring some Fria Curry or Standing Torch (use angler gel).
- Direwolves are terrible swimmers. Whenever possible, take advantage of the floating snow "islands" to shoot them down while they swim.
- Or use a Grappling Hook and camp at the ice cave ceiling. You can easily kill all creatures from above using any kind of ranged weapons. Alternatively, you can skip fighting any creatures and just go through on the ceiling of the cave.
- Don't fall in the water. You will be swarmed by high-level Anglers and freeze, and your gear will be much harder to recover.
- Or gather all Piranhas and Anglers by swimming in the water and finish them with one rocket-propelled grenade. Don't forget to gather the meat and angler gel.
- There is at least one pitfall trap with water at the bottom from which you will not be able to escape without a Grappling Hook should you fall in (the one in question surrounds one of those green-lighted "sci-fi" monoliths).
- You will either need to grapple over or harvest some large Crystal that block your path occasionally.
- One or two dozens of well trained dimorphodons can help you clear the cave quite easily. Utilize your swarm tactics to overpower dangerous animals like Yetis and Direwolves and keep yourself safe while the swarm whittles away attacking animals.
- One of the best ways to navigate the cave outright is by avoiding the creatures within. The extreme cold already poses a massive threat, and animal attacks will only worsen the pain of traversing the Snow Cave. Since the creatures are all of high levels and any mishap can have terrible consequences, they are best avoided. Try to find the quickest route through the cave that involves minimal confrontation with creatures, but beware that you may still be needed to battle!
- Another way is to breed several rexes inside the cave. The snow cave has a high enough ceiling to let rexes walk freely inside some of it. You just have to make enough space to breed the rexes at the start, putting behemoth gates can also be done. Half way the rexes will not be able to continue, so breeding a second set of rexes after that point is the only way to complete the cave with rexes. While technically viable, any and all tamed dinos left in (or even near) the snow cave will despawn if at any time left unattended (i.e. go into stasis).
- Use the entrance, the player will be able to hit the other creatures with a ranged weapon but the other creatures won't be able to hit the player. The player can also lure the creatures to the entrance to make this tactic a little more effective, so that the hostile creatures will just stand in front of the entrance, and are basically an easy target.
- One of the easiest ways to even solo that cave is to bring at least 20 metal spikes and 3 sleeping bags. Always stick to the left site of the cave and place one spike in front of you, the creatures will gain damage and die but can´t damage the metal structure. At chokepoints its recommended to leave at least 1 spike as a safe spot if you want to carry out more than one artifact at once without a shoulder pet. The first part of the cave has 2 loot drops where you cant build so you need to sprint through it. Just jump over the water, then left over the crystals and down the waterfall. This way you just need 2 Grappling Hooks to complete the cavern, but make sure you don't have something on your cooker because it will take several hours to complete the cave. If your server/game has Structure Plus mod installed, this strategy can work better as you can pick it up and save resource and weight.
- With the introduction of Cryopods, you can now easily transport creatures in and out of the cave safely. This also makes the previously mentioned strategy with Rexes easier, as you can just cryopod then un-cryopod any creature such as the Rex that may find itself stuck.
Creatures
Compatible Tamed Creatures
This table is incomplete.
You can help us by adding the tamed creatures you know can enter the cave. If the creature can't enter, please exclude it.
Accessibility Ratings:
- Excellent: Full-Cave Access (Entrance-to-Artifact)
- Limited: Can Access Portions of the Cave Safely
- Not Recommended: Can Get Stuck/Unable to Leave Cave
| Creature | Accessibility | Rideable | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
 Archaeopteryx
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Compy
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Dilophosaur
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Dimorphodon
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Direwolf
|
No | Yes | |
 Dodo
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Dung Beetle
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Jerboa
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Kairuku
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Otter
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Mesopithecus
|
Excellent | No |
|
 Pteranodon
|
Excellent | Unofficial/ Single-Player |
|
 Pelagornis
|
Excellent | Unofficial/ Single-Player |
|
 Spider
|
Not Recommended | Yes |
|
 Vulture
|
Excellent | No |
|
Notes
- Even though the water will damage you when touched you can still use it to grab a quick drink and fill up your canteen.
- Currently, this is the hardest cave in the game, newcomers beware and creatures seem to be untameable.
- Araneo are capable of being ridden into the cave by sprinting through the second blue crystal while hugging the wall. This can be difficult to do, but once performed properly, your Araneo will have access to the rest of the cave. Keep in mind, once you have passed the first blue crystal, you will be unable to exit.
- Seeing that a Rex fits inside the cave, breeding other dinos which is smaller than Rex can also be done to help beating the cave.
- All Red Chests found in the Snow Cave function differently than normal cave loot crates, in that their loot table is identical to the Deep Sea Ocean Crates. Given that the Snow Cave operates on a 3.25 - 4.0 item quality threshold, the end result are crates containing the ocean loot table at a higher than normal quality than anywhere else in the game.
- As a testament to how cold and deadly this cave is, at least three frozen human bodies can be found in the cave.
- There is an absurd amount of Purlovia in the cave (not on Mobile) which will leap and stun/dismount you before you see the dirt piles, almost always resulting in death. It is advised to kill other creatures in the area first before proceeding past a Purlovia. Your best bet will be using a metal shield as it blocks initial damage, and then to use a high-powered melee weapon to finish it.
Gallery
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