Cavern Mushroom
Food · FoodVegetable0★Grows thickly inside caves. The base ingredient for healing medicine.
Cavern Mushroom is 6th of 20 foods by hunger restored, at 15 against the 100 of Corn Soup.
Cavern Mushroom feeds 10 different recipes, which is why it is worth farming past the point you think you need it.
Details
It stacks up to 9,999.
Where to Find Cavern Mushroom
Cavern Mushroom comes out of the ground: there are 1,445 grotto mushroom nodes on the Palpagos Islands, and each one grows back a while after you break it, so a good cluster is worth remembering.
If you would rather just buy it, the seller is Caravan Shop at 500 Gold.
Sending a team on the Verdant Hollow, Secret Realm of the Forest and Blazing Cavern expeditions brings some back without you leaving base, and 2 more expeditions can return it too.
Beyond the open-world nodes, the mushroom is also seeded inside dungeon interiors — it sits in the easy-tier spawner pool for the grassland, forest, desert, volcanic and snow cavern sets alike, so the very first cavern you clear at low level already carries it. The caverns that stock it are Astral Mountains Cavern, Cavern of the Dunes, Hillside Cavern, Mountain Stream Grotto, Ravine Grotto and Volcanic Cavern.
Inside a cavern it is placed as a world object clinging to the rock along the walls, not as chest loot and not on the boss table. That makes a mushroom run cheap: walk the corridors, harvest what is stuck to the stone, and leave through the entrance without ever pulling the alpha at the far end.
| How | Where | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Mining and gathering | Palpagos Islands — 1,445 grotto mushroom nodes | Respawns after you break it |
| Merchant | Caravan Shop | 500 Gold |
| Expedition | Verdant Hollow | Easy · 30 min · 50% chance · 2–5 at a time |
| Expedition | Secret Realm of the Forest | Easy · 30 min · 50% chance · 3–7 at a time |
| Expedition | Blazing Cavern | Normal · 45 min · 100% chance · 4–8 at a time |
| Expedition | Hidden Sanctum of the Desert | Normal · 45 min · 100% chance · 4–8 at a time |
| Expedition | Free Pal Alliance Illicit Trading Post | VeryHard · 120 min · 100% chance · 10–20 at a time |
Using Cavern Mushroom Well
No Pal produces this on a Ranch. Shroomer is the obvious guess and it is the wrong one — its ranch drop is the ordinary Mushroom, a separate item that no medicine recipe accepts. Cavern Mushroom only comes from gathering it, buying it, or sending an expedition, so if you are burning through Recovery Meds, plan the trips rather than the pasture.
Alternatives and Upgrades
Step up from here and you get Red Berries at 20 hunger restored; step down and it is Hop at 15. The size of that step is what decides whether the crafting bill is justified yet.
Other foods at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:
