I have never seen anyone do this, but it's the most efficient way of cleaning the ruins post Fuelweaver.

[Swiyss]

You can farm some night berries (if you're in the late game) or play as wx-78 with the optoeletronic circuit.

Then you'll equip the bone helm, a piggyback or krampus sack, and the thurible. Then you just spawn the reanimated skeleton at the start of the monkey village when the *calm phase starts.

It takes 5 days to completely clear all the ruins, ~15 nightmare fuel, and you don't waste a single use of pickaxes nor weapons because the skeleton will fight for you. And if he dies, you get 4 fuel bonus and just spawn him again. You'll need gift wraps or bundle wraps for storage, and you can also bring a rabbit horn to store the bundles on the cave rabbit hole (it only costs maximum 20 carrots and 1 cut reed. Just don't forget to not have meat in your inv when spawning the rabbit king).

I did this twice now, and at first I thought it wasn't reliable, cause I did it with wx-78. So I thought it was only possible for him until I decided to do it with Maxwell.

You'll need around ~20 night berries (40 to guarantee), a magician's hat and the codex umbra/lazy forager to pick up items (I used a lazy forager and had only food, a hammer, a dark sword and a lantern inside the magician's hat alongside 20 gift wraps).

This strat is great because he also demolishes all the monkey pods AND all the thulecite walls. I had 7 stacks + 4 of thulecite fragments by the end of my maxwell run.

Edit: Just saw a video on yt of someone explaining this strategy. Still, I dont see anyone actually doing this, and its omega effective.

Without counting the labyrinth of course.

[ChintzyGnat]

It's seems very good but I prefer to just use 25 warrior merms lol

[Echsrick]

you could alsol just hire a group of rocklobsters, and clean up the place of machines and then once everything is done just leave them somewhere once there loyality runs out and go for the statues

[Pruinae]

For long-term worlds, I prefer marking all the yellow and green gems statues with Moonlens, then pushing the clockworks near/on the way to those to a corner (using panflutes); and walling them in place. Do it once and you never have to do it again, then ruins clearing basically becomes walking around breaking the statues and leaving. There's only so many gears you need, you can do Varg farms for the other gems, and with Brightshade tools gold lost a lot of value for me.

Sounds like a lot of work, but I find it pretty chill. You can also do it with Sleepytime Stories and Bone Helm, but I prefer panflute + green staff to maximize the chill factor.
Eventually I WILL have an exorbitant amount of gem trees, then probably won't even think of the ruins anymore.

And well, AG for Wanda is like: Kill it once, place one or two (preferably two to make sure its always dead by the time fuelweaver respawns) anenemies to kill it from then on, then when you need the key you tp in, get everything, tp out (take care with the shadow tentacles lmao, they seem to sometimes spawn and wait for you with this method).

[Swiyss]

10 minutes ago, Pruinae said:

For long-term worlds, I prefer marking all the yellow and green gems statues with Moonlens, then pushing the clockworks near/on the way to those to a corner (using panflutes); and walling them in place. Do it once and you never have to do it again, then ruins clearing basically becomes walking around breaking the statues and leaving. There's only so many gears you need, you can do Varg farms for the other gems, and with Brightshade tools gold lost a lot of value for me.

Sounds like a lot of work, but I find it pretty chill. You can also do it with Sleepytime Stories and Bone Helm, but I prefer panflute + green staff to maximize the chill factor.
Eventually I WILL have an exorbitant amount of gem trees, then probably won't even think of the ruins anymore.

And well, AG for Wanda is like: Kill it once, place one or two (preferably two to make sure its always dead by the time fuelweaver respawns) anenemies to kill it from then on, then when you need the key you tp in, get everything, tp out (take care with the shadow tentacles lmao, they seem to sometimes spawn and wait for you with this method).

wow I never thought about panfluting the clockworks, seems like it would be nice to prioritize the gems. But my mind would trick me into thinking that I'm losing resources by not killing them lol. If there was a way for anenemies to work with the DST Alone mod then I'd use it, but they are bugged with that mod unfortunately.

[Maxil20]

36 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

But my mind would trick me into thinking that I'm losing resources by not killing them lol.

The clockwork resources are for the most part irrelevant in doing a full ruins clear. For reference, if your world had 40 clockworks, you would get 16 fragments (which isn’t even enough for 3 pieces of thule), 20 nightmare fuel, and 40 gears/purple gems, the latter being pretty valuable but having other ways to get that are much more efficient later on. This pales in comparison to other ruins loot like the broken clockworks/ancient statues and you save a massive amount of time compared to having to fight every single clockwork.

In my endgame world I can comfortably do a “partial” ruins clear (mining every statue/smashing every broken pseudo station and ~half the broken clockworks) in ~12-16 minutes. I do admittedly use honey spice, but without it it would add ~2-4 minutes at most.

55 minutes ago, Pruinae said:

For long-term worlds, I prefer marking all the yellow and green gems statues with Moonlens

Ancient statues don’t save their gem type during a ruin reset, it will always be a random color when they regenerate. The only thing that matters in particular is if the statue has a gem or not, as that is saved.

57 minutes ago, Pruinae said:

Eventually I WILL have an exorbitant amount of gem trees, then probably won't even think of the ruins anymore.

I still do like clearing ruins for the novelty of it (I admittedly might be slightly insane when it comes to that, I do the ruins twice a year and have done them hundreds of times). While I mainly do it to get more guardian horns, thulecite is readily available and is always nice for crafting walls/making construction amulets, which are still very relevant in an endgame context.

[Pruinae]

Just now, Maxil20 said:

Ancient statues don’t save their gem type during a ruin reset, it will always be a random color when they regenerate. The only thing that matters in particular is if the statue has a gem or not, as that is saved.

My wording was AWFUL, thanks for clarifying.

Just now, Maxil20 said:

I still do like clearing ruins for the novelty of it (I admittedly might be slightly insane when it comes to that, I do the ruins twice a year and have done them hundreds of times). While I mainly do it to get more guardian horns, thulecite is readily available and is always nice for crafting walls/making construction amulets, which are still very relevant in an endgame context.

Aren't you the one that illuminated the entirety of the ruins with Astral Detectors? I fear "slightly" doesn't cut it darling xDD

53 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

wow I never thought about panfluting the clockworks, seems like it would be nice to prioritize the gems. But my mind would trick me into thinking that I'm losing resources by not killing them lol. If there was a way for anenemies to work with the DST Alone mod then I'd use it, but they are bugged with that mod unfortunately.

I have a video on it, I made it mostly for a friend and as such its TERRIBLE. But it's there lol, probably best if you skim through it

wow my English pronunciation improved a lot since then, I am proud of myself hihi

[Maxil20]

Just now, Pruinae said:

Aren't you the one that illuminated the entirety of the ruins with Astral Detectors? I fear "slightly" doesn't cut it darling xDD

Admittedly it was only the village biome but Yes, and then I proceeded to light a good deal more with a combo of mushlights/1 shard gemerators + spotlights

I have admittedly wanted to decorate the ruins more as a fun project (its why I’ve only been clearing ~half of the broken clockworks, as I don’t want a rook to spawn in some areas and cause chaos), just haven’t had much inspiration to do it yet. I always really liked the concept of ruins bases and the areas atmosphere/ambience is phenomenal and has a lot of potential. Just wish it looked more like DS gen with the footprint to make builds with (I do know of the DS ruins mod, but that came out way after I started the world and I have done too many projects in the caves to want to drop the cave shard for a new one…)

[Jakepeng99]

I done it