Minerals

Everything in the ground#

Ores

• Iron oreRusty brown rock
• Copper oreLook for green stains on the rock
• Tin oreHeavy black grains you'll find in the top of the granite
• GalenaShiny grey cubes of galena
• Gold oreRusty quartz with specks of gold in it

Gems

• GarnetsDeep red crystals that weigh next to nothing

Fuel

• CoalIt burns three times as long as a log does

Stone

• StonePlain building stone
• LimestonePale rock full of old shells
• MarbleLimestone that got cooked by the granite

Earth

• DirtThe top layer, under the grass just about everywhere
• ClayStiff grey clay under the dirt
• SandPale sand on the beaches

How to find stuff#

On the surface. You can break boulders with a pick for stone, iron, copper or coal, and dig the ground with a shovel for dirt, clay or sand. Everything else is underground, so sooner or later you will want a mine.

Prospecting. Once you get to Mining 2 you can prospect with a pick, and it is worth doing before you start digging. On a boulder it tells you what is in it. On open ground it gives you hints about what is up to three levels below you, within about 12 m. On a rock wall in a mine it tells you what is within about 7 m on that level, and which way to go to get to it.

Digging a mine. At Mining 2, with 6 logs for timbering, you can sink a shaft on flat, dry ground, and that gets you down to level 1. To go deeper you carry 3 logs down with you for ladders and sink deeper from a tunnel.

Getting it up. A pack full of rock is too heavy to climb the ladder with. If you put a windlass on your shaft (6 logs) you can wind your load up instead, and it ends up in a pile next to the shaft.

The granite. Every few hundred metres there's a dome of granite pushed up under the ground. It doesn't always show as hills on top, so you find it by prospecting. The rock right beside it got baked, so when you start tunnelling into hard dark hornfels or white marble, the granite is close. A lot of the good ore sits in a ring around a dome.

Reading the rock. The rock layers are flat and tilt a little away from the granite. That means a coal seam or a band of ore runs across a level like a stripe instead of sitting in one spot. Ore also comes in pockets with plain rock in between, so if you find some, it is usually worth following it.

The faults. These are long straight cracks in the rock that filled in with quartz a long time ago. That is where all the gold is, and a good part of the copper and galena too. There are a few of them in every couple of hundred metres, and one usually runs out from a granite dome. A fault runs in a straight line, so once you've found its quartz in two places you know which way it goes.

The levels#

Each level is 5 m below the one above it. How far down level 1 is depends on how high the ground is where you sink your shaft, so it's deeper under high ground. You need a higher Mining level to work the deeper ones.

Rocks underground#

Some rock is a lot harder to dig than others. The number is how much longer it takes, so a rock at 1.5× takes half again as long as sandstone.