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The Volcanic Cave is the dungeon that unlocks all of the Legendary dungeons. The guide covers gives recommendations on gear needed to idle this dungeon. Idling has a significantly higher skill and equipment requirements than manual clears.
Why Clear Volcanic Cave?
- Clear 1 time:
- Clear 50 times:
- Clear 100 times:
- Clear 100+ times:
According to simulations, to get the full 
ancient armour set it will likely take:
- 640 clears with a 50% chance
- 817 clears with a 75% chance
- 1377 clears with a 95% chance
When to Clear Volcanic Cave?
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.
Gear To Idle
The boss of 
Volcanic Cave uses the 
Melee style and so it is not recommended that you attempt to idle this dungeon with 
Ranged due to the Combat Triangle penalties. This guide assumes that you have 
Auto Eat - Tier III equipped which greatly reduces the DR requirements.
The 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 often idled with Melee because the 
dragon armor set can be obtained with 
Level 99, further, the armour can be upgraded to provide 30% DR.
This Melee build requires 820 Hitpoints to idle the dungeon. However, this should be seen as a minimum DR + HP, as any less will be below the max hit of 
Malcs.The 
Sandstorm Ring can be omitted, but at the expense of clear time.
Lower tiers of armor may be used if HP or DR is increased through other sources such as 
Agility, 
Summoning, or more Hitpoints levels, etc.
Pre-Volcanic Magic
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.
If available to you, use the 
Ring of Spirit Power instead of the 
Aorpheat's Signet Ring
To idle the dungeon with the build below, you need 780 Hitpoints and 
Weakening III active.
100+ Volcanoes Magic
After clearing the Volcanic Cave 100 times, you will unlock Ancient Magicks.
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 HP and 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.
Weapon Choice
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.
Gear Options
Gloves
The 
Ancient vambraces drop from the Dragons Den. You will very likely need them to idle the 
Air God Dungeon, so might as well get them now.
The 
Red and 
Black vambraces can be either crafted with 
Crafting or dropped from the 
Spider Forest.
Or you might just farm some 
Paladins for their 
Gloves.
Cape
Boots
The choice of boots is small because we don't want to drop in DR too much.
Ring
TL/DR
In summary, the suggested order of equipment is:
- Obtain the
Sunset Rapier and the Sandstorm Ring
- Perform 100 Volcanic Cave clears as Melee to unclock Slicing Winds
- Do the remainder of Volcanic Cave clears with Slicing Winds with the Surge aurora.
Infernal Stronghold
Fire Cape which grants 2% DR
Elite Chest
Dragon Bones, 
and 
ancient armour in preparation for the 
Ancient Crossbow
Amulets of Fury needed for the 
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs (FEZ). Check the FEZ/Guide for more details.
(G) Dragon Helmet
(G) Dragon Platebody
(G) Dragon Platelegs
(G) Dragon Boots
Paladin Gloves
Knight's Cape
Elite Amulet of Defence
Sandstorm Ring
Sunset Rapier
(G) Dragon Shield
Air Expert Wizard Hat
Air Expert Wizard Robes
Air Expert Wizard Bottoms
Air Expert Wizard Boots
(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces
Skull Cape
Elite Amulet of Magic
Aorpheat's Signet Ring
Ancient Wizard Hat
Ancient Wizard Robes
Ancient Wizard Bottoms
Ancient Wizard Boots
Magic Wand (Powerful)
Miolite Shield
Pre-Volcanic
Dragon Sword
Dragon Claw
Ancient Sword
Ancient Claw
Knight's Cape
Level 66 area unique drop
Skull Cape
Firemaking Skillcape
Level 99, no DR increase
Obsidian Cape
(G) Dragon Boots
Level 60
(G) Rune Boots
Silver Diamond Ring
Ring of Wealth
Ring of Blade Echoes
Combat:
