Intro

Edited addition at end on guide.


If you can not dig a full square to bed rock in 1 game day = 24hours,with the big excavator
then this guide may not work for you,or atleast will take longer to get to a t3 setup.
The T2 only recovers 7% of the gold in a given square.The basic T3 double's it to 14.5%.
The T3 with jig's 18.5% and full T3 with hog's 19-20%.I did not test T4-T5 because if you make it there you wont need any help then.


The main objective for hard mode success will be to get a basic T3 plant setup asap,
Basic T3 plant,Conveyor hopper,conveyor belt,shaker,st sluice,trommel,s rock,t-dj sluice's.

There are two things you will need to do to succeed.
1: You must dig up the entire hog pan area this is a must, you'll need every dollar you can get for starter money.no successful miner starts with out enough starter money.
2: After hog area is done first thing you must do is drill the entire claim,you have to know where the gold is at so you can plan how to mine it.


How to achieve this lets begin.


Start a new game in hard mode,get loan from the bank and buy the basic hog pan setup with 6 buckets,get to claim and start digging.
Dig up and pan 2 full clean outs.I averaged 7oz's a clean out,but seen as much as 10-11oz's clean outs.
You should have 14 plus oz's now,go to town sell 1 oz ore then smelt the rest,you should have around 15k in cash now.sell gold and payoff the loan.

Go buy Hog pump setup and wave table with needed hose's and cord,4 jerry cans buy fuel get back to digging.
If there's not enough cash to pay the rent when daily report come out just let it go minus,
it will pay it on next clean out.

Myself and others averaged 320-340oz's from the hog area,so we'll go with 320 avg if you get more thats even better.So that is 209oz's after 30% rent,and minus the 15 or so used to buy the wave/pump setup.

209 -17 or so smelting loss = 192oz's = 230k cash.


Now buy the drill send it to claim,buy moble fuel tank and fill it,get to claim and drill entire claim.

230k -204k for drill = 26k, -9.5k fuel tank =16.5k, -5k fuel = 11.5k cash now.


After drilling now sell drill for 102k. now you have 113.5k cash,go to bank get loan it gave me a 59k loan for 60 days.thats now 172.5k cash.

Now buy moble washplant 19k,fill moble tank again 4,224 = 23k.
buy big excavator 121k send to claim - 1500 transport.

172.5k - 145.5k = 27k cash now.

Buy 6 thin hose's and 5 connector, one high voltage cord, 12 buckets.get back to claim.
move the pump out by the t3 plant site as far as the fat hose will reach.
Move T2 and wave table and generator out to where you going to start digging,use hose's and connectors to run water out to t2.Start digging the best square's first i'll list the squares i started with below.

I used half a moble tank of fuel aday,and alotted 2k for repair's but didnt use that much,so that's about 4.1k a day in cost plus 1400 loan payment = 5.5k a day for me,so you now have 4-5 days operating cash.


Now the gold on the claim.



I drilled the whole claim, there are 202 square with gold in them.
86 yellow high yield.
116 brown low yield.

86 yellow ok to good squares.
26 with over 300-340 oz's.2 with 355 oz's,i adveraged them at 320 oz's.
43 with over 200-299 oz's,i adveraged them at 250 oz's.
17 with over 100-199 oz's,i adveraged them at 150 oz's.

116 brown square's with over 20-199 oz's, i adveraged the at 120 oz's.


So for the yellow squares thats a average of 21600 oz's.
For the brown square's thats a adverage of 13920 oz's.

ok on to the recovery rate's,

T2 adverages 7% gold recovery.so on yellow sq's that have 320 avg sq's, thats 22.4 oz's per sq.
T2 on 250 avg sq's thats 17.5 oz's per sq.
T2 on 150 avg sq's thats 10.5 oz's per sq.

Now for T3.

the basic t3 with shaker trommel and td-j sluices will be what you buy first,or i would.

T3 basic recovers 14.5% of the gold,
on 320 avg sq thats 14.3 oz's in grates,and 31.713 oz's in mat's.total 46.013.

T3 basic with jig's recovers 18.25% of the gold.
on 320 avg sq thats 14.3 oz's in grates,31.713 in mat's,and 12.462 in jig's.total 58.475.

T3 basic with jig's and hog pan's,recover 19-20% of the gold.
on 320 avg sq thats 14.3 oz's in grates,31.713 in mat's,12.262 in jig's,and 4.825 in hog's.total 63.3.

This gold is all before 30% rent, fuel and repairs cost.
So what does this all mean.


How much gold will you have to mine to buy T3 basic.

basic T3 plus dump truck,and transports,and other small things for T3 like extra gen hose's electric cables,grates,mats all those things.And 30% rent and operation cost you'll need to mine 1057oz's or so.

Break it down.

1057-317 ozs 30% rent = 739ozs
739-200 ozs fuel & repairs cost = 539 ozs
539-45 ozs smelt loss = 494 ozs
494 = 593k = T3 plant,and dump truck.


So to achieve this you will be digging up all the yellow good gold squares.
That leaves the 116 low yeild square to run thru the t3 plant at 19-20%.

13920 at 20% recovery = 2784
2784 - 30% rent = 1948
1948 - 676 ozs operation cost = 1272 oz's.
1272 - 114 smelt loss = 1158 oz's.
1158 x 1200 = 1,389600 cash.

So as you can see it is totally doabale on hard mode,you wanted hard mode, you got it baby:)
This is not for a Todd Hoffman its a Parker all the way.
Now im sure there are some slight errors in my math thats why i did a low average of the gold so that you should be ahead of my estimations and end results.
This was a down and dirty average and what you can expect to see.

End results you now have a T3 and 1.2-1.4 million in cash to now move to next cliam.
Of course you could move on before clearing the claim after you buy T3,by going to bank taking out a now much high loan amount and renting another claim and start getting 20% gold recovery from the start.Or up grading to next tier and getting even more.

Myself i will clear OA claim take loan from bank buy pine valley and start making bank right from the start.
So thats my guide hope it helps anyone in need of help.Happy Mining...


Addition..

First a shout out to: ThunderStrom,TheStreaminGeek,Metallos.

For thier pointing out to me the use on magnetite to help reduce operation cost.
And the use of 2 moble washplants.

1: Collecting magnetite from the T2 mwp will help reduce over all operation cost.
And since you will be using the T2 for sometime the initial cost of about 9k
will pay for itself in 3 trailer load's At 3k a trailer.Then it's all profit.

2: Since the big excavator fill's the mwp so fast you have two opition's.
One once mwp is full turn off excavator for 1-2 min's then turn it on
and start filling again which save's on fuel.
Or use two mwp's side by side and keep digging and process even more dirt per hour.

Both of these option can be ran off the same generator and pump used for running the one
mwp,so cost will be the same.You will need to spend an additional 28k to buy everything to
do a double mwp,and magnetite setup.

If you do use the double setup instead of using thin water hose's to pump water from pump
to work site,use the fat hose's and connector's and a splitter at the work site.
The splitter will supply both mwp,mag separator,and wave table.

The moble generator has 2 high volt plugs use them to run both mwp's when digging.
Buy another high volt cable and splitter and 2 low volt cables to run wave & mag separator
when doing cleanup's,just swap plug's on gen when doing it

Alternative Plan:

You can setup a T3 basic for about 120k and use front loader for 160k = call it 300k,and be running a T3. Instead of the 500k needed to use the dump truck and conveyor setup with excavator.