Mining
"You have a basic understanding of the common minerals, and of how to mine them, and can thus construct Mine Shafts and Supports provided you have found appropriate materials."
What it does
Mining allows you to mine underground for minerals using an axe or a pickaxe. It's required to construct Mine Holes and Mine Supports. It also unlocks Tunneling skill with which you are able to construct Stone Columns.
How to mine
To begin mining, you must first build a Mine Hole or find a Cave. Have a Stone Axe, Metal Axe or a Pickaxe equipped and use
Adventure > Mine
and click on a wall. Walls within the 49 tiles (7x7) of a cave entrance cannot be mined. Be careful, as mining without supports may cause a cave-in that can cause HHP and SHP damage and will kill you if you get hit by too many.
Mining drains stamina based on the type of the tool used, it's quality and the hardness of the tile relative to a character's mining ability. Make sure to bring plenty of drink to restore stamina quickly.
Using a torch or Miner's helmet for light will help drastically when mining, particularly when working older mines whose ore deposits are located far away from the minehole. Note however that using a pickaxe requires both hands, thus making a miner's helm the only portable light source that can be used. (Note: Use of current custom clients with Night vision negates the need for light sources if turned on.)
The world consists of multiple layers--the surface and nine underground layers. Caves and mines all are part of the same underworld; a hearthling can tunnel from one mine or cave to another. In the underworld, if a hearthling selects 'mine' and clicks on a wall, he or she will attempt to chip out the wall, extracting Ore or stones, depending on the what mineral node it is. Note:Initial Cave walls are neutral, and will not give stone or ore (except for occasional Cat Gold). They must be mined to expose what minerals are directly around it. Minerals (Stone and Ore) exist in nodes. Various stone nodes build almost all of the underground. Sometimes ore nodes will intersect cave walls, and sometimes you have to dig into the wall for some distance before finding ore. For you to mine a cave wall, you need to click on the wall that is at least 50 tiles from an entrance. You can also use Rustroot Extract to find ore in the layer below you.
Whether the hearthling is able to extract ore or stones depends on the hardness of the wall. That is to say, some wall tiles will require more strength (and/or better tools) to extract ore or rock from. If the hearthling has enough strength to mine it, the tile will be converted into floor. The higher your strength is and the better quality tools you use, the faster the mining spot will be mined. Also, mining spots contain layers, which means that each tile can be mined multiple times before it converts to floor. Each time you mine there is a chance to get stone or ore. Whether it's ore or stone depends entirely on tile - tile that belongs to vein will not give stones, and tile that does not belong to vein will not give ore. Mined stones and ore are automatically placed in inventory, or dropped to the ground if you lack the space in inventory.
Depending on the hardness of the wall compared to the quality of your tool and your strength, you will start to mine that wall or will receive an error message such as the following. Messages that occur while mining (each message means you need 10-15 more Mining to mine successfully):
- You don't even manage to scratch that rock.
- That rock is very much too hard for you to mine.
- That rock is much too hard for you to mine.
- That rock is slightly too hard for you to mine.
- That rock is just slightly too hard for you to mine.
The ability to mine out walls easier scales with your Mining Ability , calculated in W8 as . Note that the tool's average is calculated based on double the qualities for pickaxes and normal qualities for axes. Formula for it is suspected to be for axes or double that for pickaxes. Said formula has also been affectionately referred to as "the whole square average thinger", it's a technical term.
![{\displaystyle AvgTool={\sqrt[{2}]{\frac {{q}Tool^{2}}{3}}}}](https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/01c25511e2f4a0c12083c9ba6e5475d203ac6035)
Example: You have a Q20 Pickaxe (remember that pickaxe quality counts double in the formula) and 60 Strength. Your mining ability would equal to sqrt(60 * 40) = ~50 Mining ability. Let's assume you tried to mine a wall and received "That rock is much too hard for you to mine" message. That means you would need at least 80 or more Mining ability to start mining that wall.
Using a better quality tool and better strength means more tiles to mine available. Strength can be increased by equipment such as a Bear Tooth Talisman, Bear Cape or by the following rings: Forge Ring, Thane's Ring, or Beast Ring
Safety and Cave-ins
Cave-ins can happen on any cave wall tile. When you first mine out a wall tile of the cave, there is a small random chance it may cave in. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about that. Once you have completely mined out a tile, there are indicators that will guide your progress from there on. Some tiles will cause dust particles to fall from the ceiling when mined and leave a small pile of cave dust behind. That means one or more of the 8 tiles around the tile (3x3 square with the said tile in center) you just mined will cause a cave-in. So if a tile doesn't cause particles to fall, it means that the 8 tiles around it are safe to mine (unless it itself is a cave-in tile, as cave-in tiles don't cause particles to fall for them self).
Natural Gallery note: The tile that opens up a Natural Gallery will trigger dust if appropriate. The other cleared tiles of the Natural Gallery do not.
Cave-in damage increases significantly the lower the level your are. The most damage a Level 1 Cave-in can deal is generally around 50 damage in wounds, not including your Concussion, which will be anywhere from 5% to 20% of your MHP. Generally, a full health Hearthling of any Constitution level can't die from one L1 cave-in, but obviously you should only mine at full or near full health and not risk multiple cave-ins, if you're hit by one take a rest before you continue.
The SHP damage isn't always all of your health. At high levels like Level 1, with enough Constitution and a Miner's Helm, it's possible to not even get KOed by a cave-in. [Verify]
Boulders left from cave-ins can be destroyed by Destroy command.
CaveIn leaving boulders and fully collapsed mine tiles behind.
Mining without supports
When you first start out with a new Hearthling, you will not have the resources to build supports. Despite the higher risk, there is a method to avoid them though. In essence its a "Minesweeper" game. Where warning are given but falling dust, and the surrounding mine-count is given by the fallen dust amount (you need to pick up the dust-pile to see the amount). One strategy to keep track of the fallen dust includes placing a rock stockpile on that spot, to make a clear and lasting sign of the nearby instability. See Sevenless' guide to haven and hearth for more info on this method.
Mining can be done per tile (single click), or by selecting multiple tiles (click+drag).
- When a dropped bolder blocks the heartlings path to its target tile, it will first chip the bolder away.
- When multiple tiles are selected. The hearthling will stop mining when a dust pile drops related to a cave-in tile in a unprotected area. Dust from cave-in tiles inside a protected areas will not stop the mining.
Mining with supports
To mine with protection from cave-ins you need to be mining a tile where the centre of the tile is covered by a Mine Support or a Stone Column. To see the radius of a support, go to
Adventure > Toggles > Display Mine Support Radius
.
A support takes damage every time you mine in that support's radius a tile that would cause a cave-in without support. Supports should be checked for damage and repaired as needed.
Unlike previous worlds, the cave entrance does NOT function as a wooden mine support and cave-ins can occur in the tiles immediately surrounding the cave entrance.
Mining Difficulty and Ore Quality
Underground there are 3 types of mining related nodes. Ore veins, Rock quality and Hardness nodes. These nodes are all placed randomly and have no relation to each other except under chance conditions. All rock that is mined will be of the quality equal to the rock quality node (or the base quality if there is no node) of that area. This applies to both stones mined from "empty" rock and ore mined from an ore vein. Finding a soft, high quality ore vein is therefore a very good stroke of luck.
There is only one relation between hardness and quality. As you descend levels of the world, each one gains base quality and base hardness. Quality potential goes up each layer significantly, however it is unknown the exact amount hardness goes up.
Quality of mined ore is hardcapped by Masonry and softcapped by mining tool's quality.
- It is worth noting that having quality bonuses from Quarryman and/or Miner credos seem to add the bonuses after the hardcap calculation. This means it is possible to get rock/ore quality higher than your masonry hardcap.
((potential) Outdated image. Missing Stack Furnace change.)
Game Development
- Loose Velvet (2023-06-22)◎ >"Mine Supports now take less damage when preventing cave ins (about 0.5x). When a Mine Support prevents a cave in, the normal collapsing stone effect is played on it to indicate that."
- Loose Velvet (2023-06-22)◎ >"Ore Quality variance now takes effect per tile, rather than per piece of ore. This means that, all other things being equal, all ore from any single mine tile will be of uniform quality."
- Loose Velvet (2023-06-22)◎ >"When outside the protection of a mine support, encountering a mine warning tile (e.g. one near a cavein tile, where cave dust falls) will interrupt area mining operations."
- Loose Velvet (2023-06-22)◎ >"Implemented "Loose Rock". Loose Rock spawns where previously we used to spawn Cave Slimes or Boreworms. Mining near it may cause it to collapse, spawning random things, for example Cave Slimes or Boreworms. Destroying it will cause it to spawn random things. Loose Rock interrupts area mining should it spawn. I think of Loose Rock as a Mine Piñata, and I suggest you do the same."
- Loose Velvet (2023-06-22)◎ >"The higher tier mine supports have been given more HP (1.5x, 2.0x, respectively.)."