How to play
Mine to build a better pickaxe, then take it down the shafts to earn INGOT. That's the loop. Here it is step by step.
Connect a wallet, pick a name and one of three faces. One miner per wallet, and it stays with that wallet.
Wick sells the claim licence for 250 INGOT. It comes with the bronze pickaxe, which you can't lose but which won't get you past shaft 3. Nothing else in the camp opens until it's paid.
Head to the mines and pick one of the five deposits. You pay the lamp oil up front and a timer starts, about 30 minutes on bronze and a bit less on each pickaxe after that. When it runs out you collect three to seven lumps, rolled on whatever your pickaxe is good at, plus a small payout of INGOT, around 25 on bronze and more with better pickaxes. Then you pick again. This is the passive side of the game: slow, steady, and it pays for itself over time. The real money is below, and so is the real risk.
Steve the Smith takes twenty lumps of an ore plus some INGOT and gives you that ore's pickaxe. Each pickaxe up the ladder has a better chance of surviving each floor and can go deeper. You've got three slots and you can't have two of the same.
This is where the INGOT is. Pay the entry and walk down one floor at a time. Every floor has a chance to collapse, higher the deeper you are and lower the better your pickaxe. Every floor you survive can hold a vein of INGOT, and the veins get bigger the deeper you go. Climb out whenever you like to bank what you've found.
You lose everything from that run, and the pickaxe you were holding is gone for good. You're back on bronze. The cage takes ten minutes to reset before you can go again.
The point of the pickaxe
Mining pays a little. The shafts pay properly, and how well they pay comes down to the pickaxe in your hand. Copper gets you to shaft 4 with a fair chance of coming back. Cobalt gets you to shaft 10 and survives the upper floors far more often. The veins on the deep floors are several times the size of the ones near the top. So you mine to forge, and you forge to go deeper and come back with more.
Levels
Each mining session gives you XP, and completing the shafts gives a lot more. Your level is a permanent bonus: a bit of luck, where a lump can roll twice and keep the better result, and a bit of speed on your pick timers.
Odds and depth
Before you go down, the shafts panel shows your chances of getting out of each shaft with the pickaxe you're holding, and how big a vein each one can hold. It's worth a look before you commit anything. The right depth for copper isn't the right depth for cobalt.