Lago's Guide to Mining

Mining is a skill that many find boring and tedious to level up, but it's actually a skill you can level up fairly quickly and it can make you some money as well.

It's also one of the skills with the most complex systems attached to it (apart from combat/catacombs), with the heart of the mountain, commissions, nucleus runs, drills, the forge and a bunch of armor sets and tools to choose from.


QUICK GUIDE:

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Gold Mines and Deep Caverns


(Miner's Outfit) Diamond Pickaxe

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Dwarven Mines


Glacite Armor Diamond and Fractured Mithril Pickaxe


Glacite Armor Heated Refined Titanium Pickaxe Epic/Legendary Mithril Golem


Sorrow Armor Heated Titanium Drill DR-X355 + upgrades Epic/Legendary Mithril Golem

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Crystal Hollows


Glacite Armor Heated Ruby Drill TX-15 + upgrades Legendary Armadillo/Silverfish


Sorrow Armor Heated Gemstone Gauntlet Legendary Bal

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Anywhere


Jaded Divans Armor Auspicious Gemstone Gauntlet Legendary Mithril Golem/Bal/Armadillo (depending on location)

Jaded Divans Armor Auspicious Titanium Drill DR-X655 + upgrades rare Scatha + Quickclaw

Jaded Divans Armor Auspicious Divans Drill Legendary Bal (epic Scatha if not in Magma Fields)

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If that's confusing for you or you don't know where to start or how to progress, this complete guide should help you a lot. So let's start with


THE EARLY GAME

Even though the Gold Mines and the Deep Caverns technically are the first mining areas in the game, you should try to leave them behind as quickly as possible, since the other mining areas (Dwarven Mines and Crystal Hollows) are infinitely more worth it to spend time in them. Just get any pickaxe (diamond does the trick), put some enchants on it if you want and get to mining level XII (12). An alternative, faster way would be to mine sand in the Mushroom Desert, simply use an efficiency III (3) golden shovel. Then talk to Rhys and give him 10 enchanted Redstone, 10 enchanted Coal and 10 enchanted Lapis, which should be the cheapest way to complete his quest as of now. After that you can really get started in


THE DWARVEN MINES

If you wanna get mining 60 as quick as possible, this is where you're gonna stay from early game up to end game. The Dwarven Mines are a huge and confusing place, so before we get to the actual gear, here's a short breakdown of the most important locations:

  • Bubu and Bulvar sell mining tools and t12 mining minions near the spawn

  • Fetchur gives a daily quest that rewards you with 1k mithril powder and 20k coins

  • In the Royal Palace you can find the Kings. Talking to all of them will reward you with the King Talisman.

  • To the left of the Kings in the library you will find the Puzzler NPC, that gives a quest every 24h giving you 1k mithril powder upon completion

  • Emissaries will appear all over the map once you unlock them by completing enough commissions. They let you do commissions without talking to the king.

  • In the forge you can forge items once you unlock their recipe by leveling up your heart of the mountain level (hotm level). Forging items takes time and is a good source of passive income, so keep your forge slots occupied with things like refined mithril, refined titanium or power crystals. If you can afford it, the more expensive items might also give you a lot more profit.

  • If you struggle to find specific locations it's best to use the minecart system. For a small fee it will take you to any of the stations.


COMMISSIONS AND POWDER

Commissions are a good way to get mining experience and mithril powder (later gemstone powder as well) and required to level up your hotm. Talking to the King will give you your first set of commissions that once filled will reward you with 100 hotm exp and an additional 900 hotm exp for your first 4 commissions a day. The Crystal Hollows have a seperate set of commissions that give 400 exp (plus daily bonus) on completion. You only get the daily bonus 4 times, not 4 times per mining area, so if you aim to level your hotm using your time efficiently you should only ever do 4 commissions a day.

The mining exp you get is boosted while holding a pickaxe with the refined reforge and/or the compact enchant, also the 2x powder event applies (same for the Fetchur and Puzzler quests).

Your hotm (accessable via skyblock menu or /hotm) is basically a skill tree. The optimal way to use your skill points up until hotm 5 is something like this (texture pack: Furfsky Reborn):

Always try to get more mithril powder (later gemstone powder) to level up your hotm perks. Also note that resetting the hotm tree is possible. Everything except for the peak of the mountain will reset and you get back any powder and token of the mountains you've invested in the other perks. It does come with a cost and a cooldown, but the first time is actually free.

For more money and less xp you can swap out the 2 marked perks. Later on you can try to experiment with the perks. The most important ones are the ones that give mining speed or mining fortune, as well as Efficient Miner (for Dwarven Mines only). The only pickaxe ability you will need is Mining Speed Boost, don't bother with the others. Also it's recommended to completely ignore the right side of the tree.


GEAR PROGRESSION

Unlocking the Dwarven Mines will give you access to two cheap mining armor sets: the Goblin Armor set (drop from Goblins) and the Glacite Armor set (drop from Ice Walkers). The Goblin Armor's effect is only good if you have lots of intelligence, but a low mining level. The Glacite Armor sets effect is pretty good though and that's why it's gonna be your (mining) armor for a long time (since mining level XII is required to enter the Dwarven Mines, Glacite will give you at least 64 mining speed. For Goblin giving you the same amount you'd need to have 460 mana).


Alternative armor sets

As long as your mining level is not much higher than 30, Flamebreaker armor is better than Glacite, yet more expensive.

If you want a cheaper set and you have no way of getting Haste, get the Miner's Outfit instead of Glacite. It gives you haste II which is + 100 mining speed. That's more than Glacite up until Mining Level 30, but you can't apply Gemstones so it's more of a temporary option.


For the pickaxe you can keep whatever you've been using before to mine mithril, but for titanium you need to buy a Fractured Mithril Pickaxe from Bubu, since it meets the breaking power requirement of 5 for titanium.

Once you reach hotm level 3 you can enter the Crystal Hollows, which will give you more money and more hotm xp, if you have the right gear. But thats gonna cost a lot of coins to do efficiently, so I recommend to continue mining in the Dwarven Mines first. That will also give you more mining xp.


MINING GEMSTONES FOR MONEY

If you choose to mine Gemstones, your next tool should be a drill. The ruby drill to be precise. The reason for that is it's high mining speed and breaking power for a relatively cheap price - the only disadvantage is, that it's pretty useless for mining anything other than gemstones. Another option that let's you mine Gemstones is the Pickonimbus 2000, which is a cheap pickaxe with high breaking power and mining speed, with the drawback of only having 5000 uses. For Pets you could choose the legendary silverfish (if you don't have a god potion or want the xp boost) or armadillo pet. Another thing you should work towards is getting more pristine. It gives you the chance to get multi-drops for gems. For maximum pristine you should use the pristine enchant and apply topaz gems to your mining armor set (Sorrow or Divan). If you wanna get pristine fast and cheap, you could try out Yog Armor. It has a free universal gem slot and if you max it out by killing yogs, it has a very high mining speed of 500.


MINING FASTER

If you don't immediately want to mine gemstones your next tool should be the Titanium Pickaxe and its upgraded version, the Refined Titanium Pickaxe. You can get both of these from Bubu. You should also definetely get a Rare or higher Mithril Golem pet. In terms of reforges you'll only have access to pickaxe mining reforges, which would be either Heated (Hot Stuff) for the most mining speed, or Refined (Refined Amber) for the most mining xp. Don't forget to apply amber and jade gemstones to your mining armor for a mining speed and fortune boost.

Your next upgrade can be either the first tier of the titanium drills, or sorrow armor.

From there on you can work on upgrading your drills, or you might consider switching to the gemstone gauntlet at one point ( pretty much the next best thing will be the t4 titanium drill, which will cost you around 500m when maxed). Now you can also put a mining reforge on your armor: the Jaded reforge (Jaderald). Said Armor should either still be the Sorrow Armor or preferrably the Divans Armor. As you get more and more mining speed, adding more is less important, so you might consider switching to the Auspicious Reforge (Rock Gemstone) for more mining fortune.

The last step is gonna be the Divan's Drill, but at that point you don't need any help anymore.

MINING STATS

There are 4 mining stats: Mining Speed, Mining Fortune, Pristine and Breaking Power


Mining Speed

Mining Speed determines how fast you can mine blocks. This obviously also depends on the blocks hardness. Every block has a softcap for Mining Speed, after which getting more Mining Speed doesn't shorten the breaking time anymore. This softcap can be bypassed by having enough mining speed to instamine the block. However, the difference between hitting the softcap and instamining is huge and most skyblock custom ores can't be instamined (or only with the best possible gear). If you have enough mining speed to hit the softcap the breaking time will be around 0.3 seconds. For that reason once you hit the softcap of the blocks you want to mine it's better to focus on Mining Fortune rather than Mining Speed.

Also Mining Speed isn't continuous but rather clustered, meaning 1 point of Mining Speed doesn't mean you mine faster. If you're serious about mining it might be worth finding out about these clusters and trying to exactly reach the next one for optimal efficiency.


Ways to increase mining speed

hotm perks, pets, pet item (Quick Claw), Ring/Artifact of Power, Titanium Talisman + upgrades, armor, Jaded reforge, Amber gemstones, pickaxe/drill + reforges (Heated gives the most mining speed), Efficiency V + 5 * Silex, drill engines and upgrade modules, Haste effect



Mining Fortune

Mining Fortune works just like the other Fortune stats (farming and foraging). Each 1 Mining Fortune increases the chance to get + 1 drop from mining ores by 1%. Each 100 Mining Fortune guarantees you get + 1 drop. So 378 Mining Fortune means you get + 3 drops from every block (quadruple drops) and have a 78% chance to get an additional + 1.


Ways to increase Mining Fortune

hotm perks, pets, pet item (Quick Claw), Artifact of Power, Mineral Talisman, armor, Jaded reforge, Jade gemstones, pickaxe/drill, Auspicious reforge, drill engines and upgrade modules, Spelunker effect



Pristine

Each point of Pristine gives you a 1% chance to get a Flawed Gemstone when you get a Rough Gemstone by mining a Gemstone block, essentially giving you 80x drops. Since each Gemstone block drops multiple Rough Gemstones you have multiple chances to trigger the Pristine effect per block mined.

Mining Fortune is applied afterwards, so with 300 Mining Fortune you would get 4 Flawed Gemstones if Pristine activates.


Ways to increase Pristine

Pristine enchant, Topaz gemstones, Bal pet in Magma fields, Artifact of Power


Breaking Power

Breaking power determines what kind of blocks you can break with your tool.

The behavior of Vanilla type pickaxes should be the same as in Vanilla Minecraft.


Gold pickaxes like the Stonk have a breaking power of 1 and behave like vanilla minecraft gold pickaxes.

A diamond pickaxe (breaking power 4) allows you to break any vanilla blocks as well as Mithril and Hardstone.

Titanium: Breaking Power 5 Mithril pickaxes

Ruby Gemstones: Breaking Power 6 Titanium pickaxes

Amber, Sapphire, Jade and Amethyst: Breaking Power 7 Pickonimbus 2000, Titanium Drill t1, Ruby Drill

Topaz: Breaking Power 8 Titanium Drill t2, Gemstone Drill

Jasper: Breaking Power 9 Titanium Drill t3+ , Topaz Drill+, Gemstone Gauntlet


The Divans Drill has a breaking power of 10, but there are currently no blocks in the game that require such a high Breaking Power.

There is no way to increase the Breaking Power other than getting a better tool.