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Mining is how a player extracts fragments and ores using pickaxes. Those materials become ingots, which feed almost everything else: weapons, armour, tools, and structures. It splits into two very different activities depending on where it happens: surface mining, which is safe and shallow, and Underworld mining, which is where the valuable material is.
Getting Started
A pickaxe is required, and some resources need a bronze pickaxe or better. A flint pickaxe can be crafted anywhere from the quick-crafting menu, but every pickaxe above that has to be made through smithing. Town structures can produce better pickaxes without owning a homestead, with one catch: tools crafted that way come out with no quality at all.
Once a pickaxe is made, equip it in the primary tool slot, arm it, then face the target and hold the attack input. See Controls for the current key bindings.
Surface Mining
On the surface, stone fragment piles spawn randomly across the wilderness, while copper fragment piles only appear around copper mines. Lead is different: it is a trade resource, so it only spawns in certain areas for about four days before its location rotates elsewhere.
Pile | Output | Tool Required |
|---|---|---|
Stone Fragments Pile | Stone Fragments | Any pickaxe |
Copper Fragments Pile | Copper Fragments | Any pickaxe |
Lead Fragments Pile | Lead Fragments | Bronze pickaxe or better |
Underworld Mining
Most advanced mining happens below ground. Almost everything down there needs at least a bronze pickaxe, which means a player has to do some surface mining and smith a bronze pickaxe before the Underworld is worth entering at all.
The Underworld is reached through cave entrances that spawn randomly across the surface. Only the handcart can be taken down, so hauling capacity is limited and every trip has to be planned around what one cart can carry.
Mining Platforms
Two structures exist only in the Underworld: the square mining platform and the mining platform stairs. Both are used to reach the upper levels of lattice formations. Bringing processed wood, nails, and a hammer is strongly recommended so platforms can be built wherever they are needed, because a lattice that cannot be climbed cannot be fully mined.
Chunks and Lattices
Underworld resources spawn as chunks arranged in lattice formations rather than as loose piles. Each lattice has a predetermined composition, but where any individual chunk sits inside it is randomised. Some lattice configurations are also time-gated and will not spawn until enough time has passed in the current age, so the deposits available early in a war are not the full set.
Processing What You Mine
Ore mined in the Underworld is not directly usable. It has to be crushed into fragments at a smashing plate, and smashing plates can only be built at wild homesteads. That constraint catches people out: without access to one, a full cart of ore cannot be processed at all.
Build a wild homestead with a smashing plate before a serious mining trip.
Or rent one that has a smashing plate set to rental access.
Once fragments are in hand they are smelted into ingots at a furnace, then used for crafting, smithing, or building. A furnace with a bellow attached reaches full heat instead of half, so powered equipment matters at this stage as much as the mining itself, and it is what allows higher quality output.
Risks
The Underworld is not empty. Bats, cave wolves, and the Stonwulfe all live down there, and a miner loaded with ore is a slow target. See NPCs and Creatures for what each one can do. Cave entrances are also visible to the enemy, so a productive mine is a place opposing players will come looking for.