Version 0.4 — The Automation Overhaul
Version 0.4 brings a massive overhaul to how you automate and scale your mining operation. With dedicated work rooms, a completely redesigned Black Market, new off-map expeditions, and dynamic live events, your crew is about to become more efficient than ever.
Work Rooms & Worker Assignments
The constant room-hopping that broke jobs and pathing is over. The new Work Room system lets you define named zones (Main Mine, Refinery, etc.). Workers and drones now get a permanent room assignment on spawn - they treat this room as their home base. They will travel anywhere on the map to mine and collect ore, but will always bring their hauls back to the smelters and crates in their designated room. New workers are automatically distributed round-robin across all your unlocked zones.
Need to shuffle your workforce? You can easily reassign workers via the worker panel's new ROOM button, and assignments persist across saves.
This feature is kinda beta, as it may not always work.
Need to shuffle your workforce? You can easily reassign workers via the worker panel's new ROOM button, and assignments persist across saves.
This feature is kinda beta, as it may not always work.
The Black Market Redesign
The old ore-for-ore trading post is gone. The Black Market is now a rotating buff shop! It offers a daily seeded selection of temporary boosts:
- Quad Ore Production
- Quad Mining Speed
- Worker Frenzy
- Smelter Overdrive
- Overcharged Tools
- Lucky Expeditions
These boosts are bought with a brand new currency: Artifact credits, which are tied to our new Expedition system.
Expeditions & Artifacts
Expeditions no longer pull your active workers off the mining floor. You can now hire off-map specialists directly at the Black Market and send them out on wall-clock timers. They keep travelling even while the game is closed!
They return with ore hauls and new Expedition Artifacts (Ancient Relic, Strange Geode, Alien Alloy, Mystery Crate, Void Shard) which are used as currency in the new Black Market. Plus, expedition members tier up every 3 completed runs.
A New Sector: The Courtyard
Your facility is breaking out of the factory walls. The second expansion unlocks an open-air courtyard - far more physical room than the cramped indoor sectors, with a scattered, natural mining field layout instead of neat rows of bays. It's the biggest single expansion in the game so far.
Smarter Automation & Quality of Life
Your automated facility just got a lot smarter:
- Preferred Auto-Refine Ore: Star a baseline ore recipe in the smelter panel, and workers will prioritize refining that ore first. (Complex alloy recipes cannot be starred to prevent accidental burning of rare resources).
- Drones Are Miners Now: Drones only mine. We've removed all collection and ferrying states, meaning they never fight workers over pickups. Workers now own the full logistics loop.
- Smarter Auto-Smelting: Automation picks recipes preferred-ore-first, then cheapest-ore-first, protecting your diamond and mythril stockpiles.
- Trapped-Ore Escape: Ore that workers repeatedly fail to reach gets a physics nudge and a 30s targeting cooldown, preventing workers from getting stuck trying to path to unreachable drops.
Gameplay & Tool Tuning
- Hold-to-Mine: Give your clicking finger a rest. Hold Mouse1 to keep swinging. Cooldown, attack speed, and animation timing are fully respected.
- Tool Tier Power: A tool above an ore's tier now instantly destroys the node (e.g., Tier 6 Gold Pickaxe one-shots all Tier 0–5 ores). An at-tier tool breaks a node within 3 swings.
- Mining Augments: A new 5-tier upgrade adding up to +90% swing speed.
- Coal Economy: Coal availability has roughly quadrupled. Nodes drop 5–10 coal (was 2–4) and its spawn weight increased from 1.6 to 2.4. Smelter fuel is no longer a progression bottleneck.
Visuals & Physics Polish
- Impact & Physics Optimization: Ore pickup physics have been optimized, and game props are now static for improved performance. We also capped the crack visualizer wobble intensity to prevent explosive node impacts and physics glitches.
- Ore Highlight Toggle: Colored outlines on dropped ore and ingots can now be toggled on or off in Settings. New drops respect the setting immediately, and toggling it live updates every pickup already on the ground.
Contracts, Events & The Living Market
- Weekly Contracts: The contract system has been completely rewritten into a data-driven model with over 100 new unique contracts. You now receive 2 massive Weekly Contracts per week that require 7x the effort for 7x the reward!
- Live Events: Server-scheduled events (like Double Ores Weekend or seasonal specials) override game tuning values live. An in-world display shows the active event with a live countdown, and values revert cleanly when the event ends.
- Living Market: The market simulation got a full rework - fresh price movement every poll, momentum trends, rare spike/crash events, and 2-decimal prices so cheap ingots aren't frozen by rounding.
The factory must grow. See you in the mines!