Golgotha
Shrouded in the rotting jungle are the mouths of the rust-caves of Golgotha, chrome's graveyard.
Golgotha is an early game dungeon that the player is sent to as part of the first quest for the Barathrumites, "More Than a Willing Spirit." The structure only occupies the center zone of the parasangAn area made of 3x3 screens, which is represented as one tile on the overworld map.; outskirts both above and underground generate as normal 
jungle and subterranean jungle zones, respectively.
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Spoiler Warning: This article contains information normally only found in the course of advancing the main quest line. |
Floors
Surface
Stratum: 0
The outside of Golgotha appears as a jungle level with one sealed central building and four randomly placed outbuildings, each containing a row of three 
slimy shafts. The central building contains a 
deep shaft that leads directly to the bottom of Golgotha, and a 
control switch that will unlock the door from inside.
When ready, the player can jump down one of the slimy shafts to the first floor.
One advanced strategy is to 
phase, 
burrow, 
teleport, or 
mine your way through the 
tarnished chrome directly into the central building, and jump straight down the elevator shaft- but your character cannot survive the fall without special preparation.
Trash chutes
slimy shafts and down to the next level.Strata: 1, 2, 3, 4
The next four floors are all randomly generated in the same way: the player drops in from a shaft in front of a set of 
conveyor drive units driving -conveyor belts. The player must then choose how to make their way to the next set of slimy shafts leading down: whether by standing and fighting to clear an area, or potentially by riding the conveyor belt as quickly as possible to the next level while dodging hazards. Whatever strategy is used, the player may have to confront:
green jells, 
brown jells, 
black jells, 
sewage eels, 
Glow-wight cultists of Agolgut, 
giant beetles, 
beetlebums, 
spark ticks, 
electric snails, 
agolmaggots, 
spitting slugs, 
chute crabs, 
eyeless crabs, 
rustaceans, 
voiders, 
quillipedes, 
girshlings, 
agolflies, 
agolzvuvs, 
jilted lovers, 
dreadroots, 
steaming vents, 
sparking vents, 
scratched vents, and 
fuming vents.
The Cloaca
Stratum: 5
In contrast to the quickly moving conveyor belts and hazards of the trash chutes, the Cloaca is a relatively static area full of 
trash and sewage. The player will encounter one rare 
chest, a dysfunctional waydroid, and the unique creature 
Slog of the Cloaca. Whether Slog is friend or foe depends on the players reputation with Mollusks. Mutants with a good faction relationship can learn the Cloaca Surprise through preforming the water ritual with Slog, using one dram of 
slime. Alternatively, Slog can be killed, and their corpse butchered to obtain 
Slog's annunclus.
Preparation
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This section is opinion-based. Your mileage may vary. |
Players should come prepared to run the entire dungeon, since floors in Golgotha cannot be ascended by normal means once the run has begun.
Strategies for preparing for Golgotha's hazards may include:
honey or 
yuckwheat stem for disease prevention- A source of healing, such as
witchwood bark or 
salve injectors - Explosives, a
flamethrower, or other means to clear pools of sewage - Neutral reputation with the Mollusks faction
- Precognition via the
Precognition mutation or 
sphynx salt injectors - A recoiler
- Rustproof equipment, such as
eyeless crab shells, 
salthopper mandibles and 
puma chitin vests or Lacquered equipment
Bypassing Most of Golgotha
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This section describes a cheese strategy. If you haven't done so before, you may want to get through a more obvious way first, especially since there are details that if gotten wrong can lead to immediate death anyway. |
This section describes a cheese strategy. If you haven't done so before, you may want to get through a more obvious way first, especially since there are details that if gotten wrong can lead to immediate death anyway.
Players who plan to bypass the dungeon entirely will avoid most of the dangers above, but will need a few extra supplies to get in and out safely:
- A way to either bypass or destroy the walls surrounding the elevator shaft, such as Phasing through them, teleporting past them, or simply destroying the walls with Burrowing Claws or a pickaxe.
- Mafeo is guaranteed to have a pickaxe for sale.
- Alternatively, a player with
Psychometry can simply walk through the door.
- A way to survive the fall. It will deal
5d20+225230-325 (Avg: 277.5) damage, enough to kill most characters even in midgame. Cooking with Sliced bop cheek can reduce fall damage by 90%. A 
rubbergum injector will reduce the fall damage by 75% for True Kin and 50% for mutants, and can be stacked for multiplicative benefit. - A means of flight may avoid all damage on the way down, but be aware that there is a certain chance per turn of falling. With
mechanical wings, it's 5% per turn, or an 18.5% overall chance of taking massive fall damage. If you use them, you'll need to reduce fall damage anyway to be safe.
- Some mechanical wings can always be found on the
flattened remains, although they will need to be repaired first. - If the max damage the fall could deal is more than your maximum HP, but the minimum is survivable, a source of Precognition will allow you to keep retrying until you survive.
- Some
- If you choose to fall and simply tank the damage, or use wings that can fail, a way to quickly heal, such as a salve injector, is highly recommended. It is likely that a hostile creature will be waiting somewhere near the bottom of the elevator, and will attack before you have a chance to heal by waiting.
- With luck, you can avoid Slog entirely, as it's possible for a waydroid to appear close enough to the elevator to simply grab it and run before Slog can reach you. Precognition can help to check if this is the case.
- Finally, if you're willing to tunnel a long distance, you can avoid the risk of fall damage and surprises simply by going 5 strata down elsewhere and digging your way to the Cloaca. This can take much longer, and requires you to keep in mind where you are in relation to Golgotha, as you cannot check the map underground.
Trivia
- Before game version 202.78, the strata below the Cloaca were named: Fetid pools (strata 6-8), Deep Cells (strata 9-14), and Oubliette (stratum 15). However, these deeper levels were procedurally generated, using the generic 'ruins' tiles and layout, and were populated principally by creatures found elsewhere in Golgotha, as well as the tier-appropriate spawns of a ruins zone for that z-level. They were not connected to the levels above with stairs, and as such, were inaccessible without a
spiral borer or similar means of digging downwards. These strata have since been replaced with generic subterranean caves.