Originally posted by sarteck:

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

..snip...

The stagbreaker ain't for use as a weapon, it's used for finding the silver. You get the "Too Hard" message by randomly pounding in places.
Silver will always ping if it has not been hit.
I have to doubt the efficacy of that "seam" method in your screenshot, because I see such seams all over the place without wishbone pings.
Stone Golems I've encountered Golems where there was no silver anywhere nearby many times.

As for "sitting through the gate," I've never once had a problem with it, but I suppose it's possible problems exist.

I'm not too sure about killing bonemass being a trigger condition for The Hunt. Typically, that's been the Elder for most other things, but it seems even that has changed. For example, without killing the Elder, you typically cannot get "The Ground is Shaking" has always been my understanding, but that seems to have changed sometime in the past few months; I just got it a few days ago on my new seed.

(This is all vanilla, btw.)

With those things in mind, I'd find having the Wishbone a greater boon than the Swamp Key, to be quite honest.

[Also, OP did specifically state about not cheesing bosses, but wanting legit strats.]

I know how people use the stagbreaker to locate silver.. I just don't need to do that.
Silver will not always ping. That is probably why you find so many golems and no silver if you rely on the wishbone. Maybe just weird RNG but I have played over 20 worlds and new characters and this has been my experience.

Bonemass is 100% the trigger for the Hunt Event. It was stated as such when the event was added.

I also do not mod.

Without map glitching I have no other way into an iron crypt so I see the elder as mandatory.

Fair point on the Boss things. Although some people wouldn't call cutting a bit around the Moder summon a cheese method. I suppose that is left for the individual to decide what is too cheesy for them as much as I have chosen not to use certain things.