If you want to find out what's the most efficient way for you to make money (and XP, technically) through mining with your current pickaxe and it's damage upgrades, here's a few things you should know :



- 1hp of a mining node = 1xp

- To easily find out how many hp a certain mining node have, take 3 ores from it. The value of those 3 ores = the amount of hp the node has, and therefore the amount of xp you'll get mining it

- To know how many durability you will lose per hit on that mining node, take the maximum amount of hp the node has and divide it by 30 (or you just divide the value of 1 ore by 10, it's the same)

- The durability required to hit a certain node will always be a fixed value, no matter how hard you hit the node! So, hitting a score of 100 or closer as often as possible is always a good thing because a perfect score = 2x damage, which means faster gathering and less durability loss and more profits

- DO NOT mine bone ores unless you actually need them because they're the worst for money making, more info on that down below



So, what does all this gibberish means in practice?

Take a sapphire node, for example. One sapphire ore is worth 500 gold. So, 3 ores = 1500 gold. Now, you know a sapphire node has 1500 hp and, if you divide that by 30, you'll know that one hit of your pickaxe, no matter how good that hit was, will remove 50 durability points from it.

What matters, to make money efficiently, is not the value of the ores you're mining, but the value of the net profits you'll get after the repairs you'll have to do once you're done mining! It's even more true when you get to a point where repairing your tool cost 30k+ gold.

In general, being able to fully mine a node in 2 hits (one perfect, one near perfect) or 3 hits (3 near perfect) will give you more money than mining a higher tier node in 4-5 hits because your pickaxe will not only break more slowly, but you'll also have a better value of gold/durability loss, which means more *profits*.

Since a sapphire node has 1500 hp, if you own a pickaxe that can do 500 dmg at least, you now know you could down it in 2-3 hits for a loss of 100 or 150 durability to get 1 to 5 ores worth 500 gold each. (better get 520ish dmg so you don't have to rely too much on perfect hits)

Now, if we compare the situation above to mining molten ores (most expensive one currently in the game), 1 ore is worth 1125. You might think "hey, it's more than 2 times a sapphire ore, so it should be better, right?" well, if your pickaxe does 500 damage, you will still make a profit, but it will be far less than if you were mining sapphire for sure, because you will also lose 2x+ more durability / hit and you will have to hit it 2x+ more times, too ->

3375 : 520 = 7 regular hits to down it or 3 perfect hits and a near perfect one. That's between 4 and 7 hits for a loss of 112,5 durability *for each hit!* for a total loss of 450-787.5 durability in total. Downing a sapphire node only takes 100-150 durability and can net you 2500 gold max while you spent 4-7 times more than that to get 5625 gold ... so, obvioustly, the molten node ain't for you yet!

With all those things in mind, you can now decide more easily if it's worth upgrading the damage of your current pick a bit more or not. If your current pick is doing 490 damage and you want to farm sapphire for money, you should definitely upgrade it past 500 damage because not only you'll mine the sapphire faster, but also for cheaper! Note that over-upgrading your damage might be counter productive if you're not using the best pickaxe in the game yet because any upgrade applied on your tool will also increase it's repair costs! If you're just planning to mine, say, sapphires, until you can afford your next pickaxe, you really don't need more than 520-550 damages unless you want to 1-2 hit them ... then, go for 750+ damages. (you will most likely not upgrade your pickaxe that much before you're getting your hands on a molten pickaxe, though)

Note that, for some reasons, a bone node will never really be the most profitable thing you can mine. A bone node has as much hp as a molten one *but*, 1 bone ore is only worth 980 instead of 1125 for a molten one ... which is also why the bone node is an exception to the "divide the value of 1 ore by 10 to know howmuch durability/hit you'll lose" formulae. You will lose 112.5 durability instead of the supposed 980:10=98, which makes the bone nodes a big "no no" for profits!



Conclusions :

- To make money in an efficient way, try and hit a score of 100 when filling the mining bar as often as possible while mining nodes you can fully down in 2-3 hits max.

- Upgrade your pickaxe damage if it can help you 2-3 hit a better tier node while also keeping in mind that upgrades will make repairing prices go up a bit. When you're able to 2-3 hits the node you want, you can just save up for your next pickaxe or invest in durability to make your trips last longer if your mining spot is far from the blacksmith

- Have fun! If you prefer to mine something you're downing in 4+ hits, that's perfectly okay! You should still make a profit. This "guide" is about the most *efficient* way, which may or may not be the funniest way to you!


Happy grinding! It wasn't meant to be a guide at first but I figured I might aswell list my findings as one since there ain't many guides yet, so I hope it was helpful to somebody!