Mining

Overview

Mining is EOSTRA’s first gathering skill. You discover ores by examining them, learn more about each deposit as your Mining grows, and extract ore with a pickaxe. It uses the shared level 1–100 curve of the non-combat skills.

What you need

• An Iron Pickaxe, worn in your gathering kit. Your character visibly mines with it, and your normal equipment comes back when you stop.
• Optionally an Ore Sack: mined ore goes there first and overflows into your bag when it is full.

Discovering ore

Right-click a deposit and choose Examine. The first time you examine a new type of ore you see ORE DISCOVERED and earn a one-time Mining reward. Discovery is permanent and per character, and examining again never pays twice.

You can discover an ore before you are skilled enough to extract it: discovering it and being able to mine it are separate.

Reading a deposit

Examine tells you more as your Mining grows. At level 1 you identify the ore. Later levels add how much a deposit has left, its geology and how hard it is for you to work, any secondary minerals, and finally where the same mineralisation runs in the region — always in words, never coordinates. Your Skills panel keeps a journal of the ores you have discovered.

Mining a deposit

Click a deposit to start mining it. A yellow X appears on the rock and converges on the moment of the strike:

• Click as it lands for a PERFECT or GOOD strike. A poor click is a MISS — it still makes progress, and nothing is ever lost.
• Ignore it, and the X blinks and resolves an automatic strike a moment later. It stays clickable while it blinks.
• The X moves around the rock from strike to strike. There is no combo or streak multiplier: every strike stands on its own.

Auto-Mine: right-click a deposit and choose Mine to let your character work on their own at a steady pace. You can still click the blinking X to land a better strike, and Auto-Mine carries on.

Good timing makes you faster, not luckier: manual and automatic mining give exactly the same experience per ore. Your reward for timing well is more ore — and therefore more experience — per hour.

Higher Mining makes the timing windows slightly more forgiving and extraction a little more efficient, within firm limits. It never makes a deposit hold more ore.

What stops mining

Walking out of reach, losing sight of the rock, taking damage or entering combat, changing equipment, losing the pickaxe, the deposit running out, dying, or pressing Esc. Opening chat or your inventory does not interrupt you.

Deposits

Each deposit holds a limited amount of ore. When it is worked out, the rock stays in place, greyed, and recovers after a while. There is no visible countdown.

Deposits are shared: any number of miners can work the same rock, and nobody is locked out. When several people work a deposit together, its ore is shared out by how much of the work each person actually did — not by who landed the last blow. Someone who stops, leaves, dies or disconnects is taken out of the share for that rock.

Ores

Ore	Mining level	Found in
Copper Ore	1	Northwatch Coast, Tide Flats
Tin Ore	1	Northwatch Coast, Tide Flats, Soutreach Cliffs
Coal	10	Western Wilds
Bog Iron Ore	10	Southern Fenlands
Iron Ore	15	Western Wilds
Silver Ore	20	Soutreach Cliffs

Smelting ore into metal is part of the planned Smithing skill.

Not yet in the game

Gems and other secondary finds, deep mines with darkness and a miner’s lamp, underground mining areas, better pickaxes, and silver’s uses against the undead are all planned for later.

Current values (development — subject to change)

Value	Current
Manual rhythm	105 beats per minute (one strike opportunity every ~0.57 s)
Auto-Mine	one strike every 0.65 s
Strike progress	PERFECT 1.0 · GOOD 0.9 · MISS 0.75 · Auto-Mine 1.0
PERFECT window	±50 ms
GOOD window	115 ms early, up to 74 ms late
Timing windows at level 99	up to 25% wider
Extraction efficiency at level 99	up to +10%
Ore Sack capacity	28

At 105 beats per minute, perfect manual mining is about 14% faster than Auto-Mine, and consistently mistimed clicking is about 15% slower. The rhythm is a playtest value and will be reviewed after the next playtest.