How to mine, a quick guide

[Anopheles]

First things first 

 

You can't mine outside your own hex on the sanctuary mine.  So detect first, then place your sanctuary territory unit.

 

Switch on your light with L.  This gives you your depth and and your orientation degree. 0 is flat.

 

Investing in jump pack and run speed; this will make leaving a mine immeasurably easier.

 

Invest in nanopack inventory size.  This will help you mine for longer.

 

Invest in mining skills, obviously.

 

The scanner (tool 3)

 

T1 ores

 

Press it.  Walk about until you get signals.  Learn what colour is what ore by pressing tab, then clicking on the output field in the middle of the screen and then toggling the t1 ores to see what blips disappear and reappear.  Use this to focus on the ore you need (which is probably bauxite ).

 

When the blips appear walk on the surface untill you are sure you are at the lowest point, this is usually when the line remains flat in all directions.

 

Dig down.  The line will slope.   Keep digging down until the line is flat again.

 

Choose any cardinal direction (NSEW) and dig forward at 0 degrees (flat).

 

If the line remains flat then turn 90 degrees.

 

If the line rises steeply, then turn 180 degrees.

 

If the line continues to fall, then bingo.  Carry on.

 

Repeat if the line flattens again.   If the line remains flat in all the cardinal directions then dig up or down.

 

If you get under 50 metres then try the detector (button 2).  Move your head slowly starting in the direction you were digging.  It takes a couple of seconds to 'kick in' so waggling your head around quickly will be useless.   If you find a signal and it fades, then you are close, if it remains them dig in that direction.

 

General tips 

 

The way you came in is the fastest way to get out.  Especially now Force Respawn empties your suit.

 

If you make a crossroads while mining, then make then dig with 'collect soil' (or have some handy) and then 'alt +dig' to close off dead ends.  Alternately, use the flatten tool to smooth out the correct tunnels.

 

Some miners like to have a mining base with a linked container on a core within reach of nearby ores and a surface hopper.

 

Use the player resources to discover where ores are and how deep they sit.

 

Depth of ores is measured from the surface, and is not an absolute depth.  So you are at 100m then a ore at 500 meters will be 500 meters below you, not 400 or 600.

 

Territory scanners are good  for  searching out t3 + ores.   With the right talents you should be quicker manually searching for t1 and t2.

 

With sufficient skills and practice you should be digging down and clearing t1 ores in under 5 minutes.

 

So be patient.

 

[Kezzle]

Once you've got some mining skills, the size of all the digging tools can be adjusted with Ctrl-mousewheel. They're all (mining, Detecing and Scanning) separate and will reset to smallest when you relog.

 

If you want to keep using your tunnels, don't make crossroads, because it's easy to miss a side passage when you're jetpacking along a tunnel. If you make a dogleg or a small chamber, your navigation is easier. Similarly, if you're going down, don't do it in the middle of a tunnel, dig a scoop or two out to one side and go down from there. This isn't so important for T1s because you'll just be riddling the near surface with tunnels that go from deposit-to-deposit, but once you're mining deep, you won't want to excavate a second mile-deep shaft without good reason, so keeping your workings navigable and organised will save time when you come back.

 

Mining into a linked container is Big and Clever: link the container from the RMB context-sensitive menu, and make that your active container using Ctrl-I. Once you're going for deeper ore, you'll want Talents that increas your linked container range.

 

If you've been mining "ad hoc" underground into a container, the fastest way out once the container is full might actually be a new tunnel, rather than trying to retrace your steps through your galleries and connecting tunnels and exploratory excavations. You might want a destination waypoint to aim at so you come out somewhere near your transport/base.

[TheMirage]

The question is what do I do if I placed my territory unit in a bad spot.

[Anopheles]

2 hours ago, TheMirage said:

The question is what do I do if I placed my territory unit in a bad spot.

Collect rocks and dig down to see if you have a t2 node below you.

[Anopheles]

Some people find, for t2+, that using the flatten tool to dig, then switching to detector helps.

[michaelk]

This is super helpful, the mining tool isn't exactly intuitive!

 

Personally, I hope that they streamline mining...virtually every concept in this game is fairly dense and not aided by their UI design -- they could make the basic steps of obtaining resources more clear while still making it take just as much time! 

 

My fear is "it isn't so bad once you figure it out" will be the general attitude...and that DU will become too much a niche product to keep funding it at the levels it needs. Especially if something so basic as mining requires this much explanation, which I really appreciate you doing. ?

[Kezzle]

8 hours ago, michaelk said:

This is super helpful, the mining tool isn't exactly intuitive!

The Codex had enough information for me and my wife to learn how it works in about 30 minutes during the stress test... Like most things in this game, there's a level of complexity that rewards investigating the resources available to you.

8 hours ago, michaelk said:

Personally, I hope that they streamline mining...virtually every concept in this game is fairly dense and not aided by their UI design -- they could make the basic steps of obtaining resources more clear while still making it take just as much time! 

I hope that they do not. Strongly. I like the steps involved. Dumbing it down any further would make it humdrum WoW-fodder.

 

8 hours ago, michaelk said:

My fear is "it isn't so bad once you figure it out" will be the general attitude...and that DU will become too much a niche product to keep funding it at the levels it needs. Especially if something so basic as mining requires this much explanation, which I really appreciate you doing. ?

There absolutely should be better guides to figuring it out. The OP here is a better guide than even the Codex, IMO. Writing user manualry is not NQ's strength. Maybe if they get enough money from the "beta" they'll be able to hire a technical author with English as their first language to cater to their largest demographic.

[Reg_AU]

The method of mining that was suggested to me, and seems to work is:

1. Key 3, scan the ground whilst walking, change directions (N,E,S,W) until the dots on the scanner remain at a constant depth.
2. Create a Bookmark for where your vehicle is and another one where the entry point is.
3. Face a Cardinal point (N,E,S,W) press 'L', dig at an angle on 45-50 degrees until you get the "Too far..." message in red.
4. Travel down to the end of the tunnel, turn to the next Cardinal point to the right,
5. Continue to dig at an angle of 40-50 degrees, until you get the "Too far..." message,
6. Travel to the end of that tunnel,
7. Turn to the next Cardinal point to the right and continue in the above fashion until you reach the required depth,
8. When the ore is 40 metres below, press Key 4 (directional scanner), point downward and slowly turn around until you get vertical lines indicating the direction of the ore,
9. Dig to the ore.
10. Before mining the ore, create a flat platform around you (Key 8), ensuring you can access the tunnel you came down from, plus access the ore above and below.
11. If you want to dig ores further down, make your tunnel down, from the main platform and near the tunnel up.
    

This method will make it easier and quicker to return to the surface near your vehicle. If you have a Cargo box on your vehicle, link it to your Nanopack (point to the container, right click, "Declare Linked Container"). Your skill level will determine at what depth you will loose contact with the linked container.