Mines

The mine is a small puzzle. You pay the entry fee, you land on a board, and you dig a tunnel from one door to the other. The tiles you dig yield ore, and some of them are mined. Ore is the raw material of your permanent power — so the mine is not just a game, it is a real investment.

What the mine is

You enter through the Mine section of the Job tab. There are four mines and each has a different entry fee, running from the cheapest (silver) to the most expensive (uranium). An expensive mine yields more valuable ore.

The most important rule: the entry fee is spent the moment you enter and never comes back. Even if you explode on the first tile, the fee is gone. The mine is not a "quit while ahead" game, it is a crossing game.

Door to door

When you land on the board you see two doors: an entrance and an exit. They sit at the two furthest ends of the board from each other.

The rules are simple:

• You start at the entrance, and the entrance is already open.
• You may only dig a tile next to one you have already opened. You cannot jump to a random spot.
• The tiles you dig yield ore. Some are empty.
• A run only completes if you reach the exit door and dig it.

The doors' positions are visible from the start, not hidden. The only hidden thing is where the mines are. So the mine is not a game of chance but a game of choosing a path: which route carries the least risk?

Mines

Some tiles hold a mine, and you cannot see where they are.

If you step on one, the run ends there. But you do not lose everything: you walk out with half of what you collected on that run. You get half the ore and half the experience it grants.

This is deliberate. Having an explosion wipe everything turned the mine into gambling — the entry fee burned and the six tiles you dug burned with it. Leaving half behind does not remove the risk (half still hurts) but it does remove the wipe.

There is also a detector: you spend gems for a hint. The detector does not tell you a mine's position; it only gives you a number, like "how many mines lie in that direction". The decision is still yours. Someone without a detector can finish the mine too; it opens no closed door.

The ores

There are four ores and the gap between their values is wide. Silver is the most common, uranium the most valuable.

Ore has no fixed price in the game and no shop that buys it. Its value is set by how much another player needs it. So ore prices really do swing.

What ore is for

It has two big uses, both permanent:

• Raising stats. Attack, defense, finance, politics, education — every upgrade is paid in ore. Details: Your character and power.
• Upgrading military vehicles. Taking a vehicle up a tier spends ore. The top-tier vehicles that no factory produces are obtained only this way.

And a third: selling it on the market. But remember — the ore you sell is a stat you did not upgrade.

Economically the mine is not a source of money but a drain: it burns gold and produces sellable goods in return. The game's money balance needs that.

Tips

• Start with a cheap mine. Before entering uranium your pockets need to be full; losing an expensive run hurts.
• Think about the shortest path to the door. The more tiles you open, the higher your chance of hitting a mine. Every tile is a risk.
• But do not rush either. If you only sprint for the door you collect little ore. Finding that balance is the whole point.
• Do not sell your ore immediately. Permanent power comes from upgrading, not from selling.
• Use the detector in expensive mines. Spending gems on a cheap run is usually not profitable.