The Volcanic Cave is the first of the Master dungeons. The guide covers first run through to idling of the dungeon. Idling has a significantly higher skill and equipment requirements than manual clears.
There are no downsides to attempting Volcanic Cave early as you will obtain powerful gear if you manage to complete it. However, it will be a significant challenge if you attempt this dungeon under-levelled.
In general, you will want at least Level 80 and you should be able to complete Dragons Den relatively easily before attempting this dungeon. Ideally, you will want sufficient Auto Eat to survive the dungeon without resorting to manual eating.
Ancient Magicks
After you clear the Volcanic Cave 100 times you gain access to Ancient Magicks which are a more powerful form of magic. When you have a Ancient Magicks spell equipped, there are no curses available, but you can still use Auroras.
In general, the spells you receive are very powerful:
Winds is best used when your chance to hit is relatively low because you are guaranteed not to miss if your accuracy is 20,000+.
Ignite is a more powerful spell and has a good chance of killing monsters in one-shot.
Icicle Volley is a good all rounder, and can be used in all other cases.
Ancient Magick spells do not scale in the same way as standard magic (i.e. with equipment buffs and debuffs), but they are still impacted by the Combat Triangle in the normal way. Typically, when you first obtain Ancient Magicks it is more powerful than the regular magic and so should used in preference. However, late-game these spells will not scale with gear and so will become less useful.
This calculations in this guide are against the Hardcore/Adventure modes, and so should work for most play styles, however if you have lower HP or DR than the guide recommends then check out Can I Idle or the Combat Simulator to see if you build will survive.
Melee
Volcanic Cave is usually done with Melee because the dragon armor set requires only Level 99 to produce. It then can be trimmed to provide 30% DR.
Below is the melee build that requires 820 Hitpoints to idle the dungeon on any game mode. However, pay attention that even slightly less DR or HP will mean death for this build because it hangs a hair breadth away from the max hit of Malcs. Check with Can I Idle or Combat Simulator to see if you can idle with your build. Also, the Sandstorm Ring is very important for your clear time.
Lower tiers of armor may be used if HP/DR is increased through other sources such as Agility, Summoning, or more Hitpoints levels.
The other possible option is Magic. Clearing the Volcano with Magic from the start is not recommended because its adjusted clear time is slower and more complicated to set up than the available melee builds.
Fire Robes have the exact same stats as Air Robes. The secondary effect of robes (+20 minimum hit for matching spells) outweighs the damage increase of higher level spells, therefore, use the highest level spell and robe combination available to you.
Your first goal with this build is to reach 20k accuracy for Slicing Winds, which means the spell won't miss at all. Therefore, while the build only requires Level 72 at minimum, you will need at most level Level 93 or multiple Accuracy bonuses from various other skills to achieve 20k Accuracy Rating, including:
It's possible to farm the Volcanic Cave with the 20k-accuracy Slicing Winds on the following build if you have 880 HPand a Stone Skin prayer active.
To farm the dungeon with 33% DR and without the prayer or potions, you need 910 HP. Your biggest threat is Prat, the Protector of Secrets with the monsters Max Hit being inches above your Auto-Eat threshhold
Check if you can fulfil the accuracy quota with the gear available to you either with the Combat Simulator or by checking your out of combat stats. 20k accuracy is important because after that number Slicing Winds cannot miss, becoming a top-DPS spell against the dungeon at this point of progression.
With sufficient accuracy rating, Miolite Shield may be swapped out for a ranged or melee shield with more DR such as (G) Dragon Shield to lower other HP/DR requirements.
This table plots some Combat Simulator results adjusted by the time it takes to produce all of the required consumables with some assumptions made about the exact bonuses available for each skill.
You can view the spreadsheet here. Make a copy to tailor the resource values to match your own, there is also a column on each table that allows you to input your own Sim results.
(link)
Magic builds using Ancient Magicks are generally better than their Melee counterparts when not using all buffs available to the player. Due to the large amount of runes required to cast, and the non-scaling nature of Ancient Magicks, eventually they fall behind Melee builds for adjusted clear times.
The usual food expenditure is approximately 200,000 HP to 250,000 HP per hour.