I determined the base value of each reasource by using the most basic recipe. If there are multiple recipes available (like the silver dagger and silver ring) I compared these based on their rarity. (See "Common", "Rare", "Legendary" below).



After that I calculated the value of all recipes with these base values to determine the best recipes.
The margin between Sell Price and Expected Value (calculated from the ingredient costs) was my indicator.

For the recipes with the highest margin I calculated the "Expected Value/Unit". This is the best price you can achieve per unit.

Based on that value I re-iterated my calculation for all recipes. (See below)

The "Margin[%]" is the indicator wether a recipe is good or bad. At 0% you are earning the optimal amount of money with that recipe. All values below 0% mean that you arn't using the resources in a supoptimal way.




All in all there are a few good recipes and many you should avoid. For all base ingridients there is a definitve optimal recipe (marked green) and for iron and silver there are kind of decent alternatives (marked yellow).


I hope this guide helps you. Feel free to leave critique and suggestions

Following I like to explain how I try to mine for resources in a efficent manner.

I don't claim to have the best strategie, so feel free to add/comment on this if you have a better way.

The general concept of this guide is applicable for the early-game with some limitations: you should only buy sites where you can easily reach the bottom. The valuable resources are allways on the bottom of the site. If you cant realistically reach and mine them you are wasting your gold.


Relic selection

First I want to discuss my relic selection.
I chose the following relics:



Prio 1: "Eternaly Yin-Yang"
The energy return bonus is really benefical as you have a limited time to mine resources so you want to "spam" as many utilities as possible.

Prio 2: "Horn of Action"
When timing perfectly this allows you to almost double the lifespan of your drill wich is really important to dig as fast and as far as possible in a short amount of time.

Prio 3: "Flame of Ghast" or "Lens of Clarity"
As there is no clear third BiS relic I would recommend either of these as they give you a small bonus in mining or overview.


Mining Site selection

The mining sites have different resources, license days and deepness values.
As it is free I try to roll an optimal site.

An optimal site should look like this:



It is important to have at least dianonds or Adamantite resources on the site as these are the most valuable resources by far.

I prefere 2 days as this gives you enough time to mine deep down and harvest almost all important resources.

Sites with diamonds and/or adamantite are allways deep so I wouldn't look too much on that value.

The overall price is allways worth the spending if you manage to harvest most of the resources from deep below.
Sidenote: You should keep allways about 100 Gold to make sure to buy all the trees/wells.


Step-by-Step

After selecting a site the map loads with a paused timer. The time starts to tick after you place your entrance.

Befor doing that you should grab all trees and wells as they are definitly worth their money.




Then I prefer to place my entrance around the middle on a resource node to grab the first few resources.
From there you start diging with your drill as this is the fastest and most resource efficent tool to get down as fast as possible.




While your drill is doing his thing you should start scanning the bottom of the map to find the valuable resources. You should allways have 3 energy the restart your drill but never should reach 5 as you would wast resources.




With the help of the "Horn of Action" you should reset your drill befor it runs out to double its range.




Keep scanning the ground and refresh you drill whenever necessary.
When you are reaching the bottom you should have 5-6 minutes left for mining. Start moving your drill towards the largest nodes.
When ever you have energy left send a miner as they are the most effective units (mined area/energy).

Focus on Adamantite and Diamonds and start with the largest resource nodes.




If there arn't any nodes easyly accesable use drills (or sometimes worms) to create vertical shaft (keep in mind, to redirect them.




In the end you should basically have mined the whole bottom layer of the map and a good amount of Diamonds and/or Adamantite.
Besides you should have gathered a decent amount of iron, silver and gold as well plus the wood from the trees.