The furnace
Where the INGOT goes, where it comes back from, and why the game can't run itself dry.
Sinks
250 INGOT, once per miner. A quarter of it is burned.
Paid at the start of every pick. It's 1% of your pickaxe's forge price, minimum 5.
From 60 up to 75,000 INGOT as you go up the ladder. 5% burned.
10% of your pickaxe's forge price, minimum 125. A quarter burned.
Whatever isn't burned is split 7.5% to the team and the rest into the Treasury. Half of every burn goes to the motherlode instead of being destroyed.
Trading pays in too
Every swap of INGOT carries a 2% fee, and our share of it goes straight to the Treasury. It is the only money that reaches the furnace without a player paying it at the camp, which means the pool that pays the veins does not rest on mining alone.
The one source
Veins, and the small payout every pick brings up. Both are paid by the Treasury, and how much of them you actually get depends on the furnace pressure:
Below the target the Treasury pays a smaller share of each vein, but never less than a quarter. When it's running thin it pays a quarter and owes nothing.
Above the target you get a boom. Veins pay up to one and a half times. Silver and up get the full boom, copper gets half of it, bronze gets none.
The shafts panel shows the current pressure for your pickaxe before you commit anything.
The motherlode
A second pool, shown on the shafts screen, that every licence, entry and forge pays into. Any step into shaft 7 or below can turn it up, and a hit pays half of it. It is funded out of what would otherwise be burned, so the Treasury's cut of every fee is unchanged, and it can never owe more than it holds.
Everyone gets the same rate
The Treasury opens at its target, not above it, so the furnace runs at full pressure from the first block and the first miner is paid exactly what the thousandth is. There is no launch bonus and no early mover pool. Pressure moves after that, but it moves with how full the furnace actually is, never with how early you turned up.
The floor is fixed at a quarter, so the Treasury cannot be drained to nothing, and money coming in from licences, forges, oil, entries and the trade fee pushes it back towards the target.
The edge
At normal pressure, every pickaxe's best depth has the same house edge, about 8% of what you put at risk. There's no combination of pickaxe and depth that comes out ahead on its own. The way to come out ahead is to hold a pickaxe that survives the deep floors, where the veins are, and to know when to climb out.