New Player Guide to Mining (Long)
Mining Guide
Mining Locations:
There are 6 main locations for mining. Wiluna Mine: located northwest from the casino and just under the Chinese New Year street and the only mine you can see on your map if you select jobs. BBZ Mine – located southwest from Mercy East hospital and directly below Blazian Bandits Zone base and the spar complex. BH mine in between Gun Upgrades store and Blackholst base. iFreeze mine: located near the same area as the iFreeze subway station. Southridge: located directly north of the street that goes to the Mall. The sixth is in Guerre base in Southridge. Warning: Guerre mine is a PK/Basing area and you can be killed by guns and melees in the Guerre mine. These places are “main” mining locations because they have grinding machines where you can change rocks into minerals. Minerals can be sold for gralats. Other than Wiluna mine, none of the other mines seem to have official names. There are other places where you can mine, however none of these locations have grinding machines.
Buying a Drill and Batteries
You cannot mine without a drill. There are two spots where drills can be bought, at the surface entrance to Wiluna Mine and Southridge mine. The drill costs 140 gralats and you only need to buy it one time. Any drill you buy starts with a fully charged battery. As you use the drill its battery is drained. When your battery expires you see a message each time you use your drill saying that your battery is dead. Replacing your battery costs 80 gralats and is cheaper than buying a new drill. Batteries are only sold at the same place where the drills are sold. You can get or trade drills at the trade tables, you cannot trade batteries. Depending on how you drill, batteries last for up to ~800 rocks.
How to Mine Rocks
First of all enter the mine. This is usually done by moving your character into the mine entrance cage by moving into the red button. This activates the elevator which lowers you into the mine. Doing the same thing from in the mine takes you back to the surface. Then equip your drill as if it was a melee and select the drill. Select a spot, move your character up to the rock wall until you can’t get any closer and hit the attack button in the direction towards the wall. You should see the drill spin and you may see an animation of rocks flying around the drill bit. You should also see a mini-rock (sometimes called a pebble) appear on the ground behind your player. Do not move from that spot and continue to tap the attack button at least once each second. At beginning levels the mini rock will grow every 10 seconds. Continue tapping until the pebble grows the 3rd time and glows. Move to a new spot and repeat again. If you mine the same spot twice in a row you will see the message “Nothing to mine here” and you will have to wait around 10 seconds before a mini-rock will happen in a new spot. By waiting the right amount of time between mini-rocks you can mine a rock in as little as four taps. Until you get good at how long to wait, it’s better just to tap more frequently. Most spots in the mine work, but if you don’t see anything happening after 10-15 seconds try a new spot. The drilling animation sometimes messes up drilling and you might need to tap the drill in the opposite direction and then back towards the wall or hit the movement button towards the wall to get the rock pile to grow. Do not move along the wall as that will start a new rock pile. If a new one starts close to the one you were working on, you might have to finish off the new one before you can finish the old one. You get no credit for piles that you don’t mine all the way until it glows. You can complete piles you started and moved away from but if you wait too long they disappear. When you finish a rock pile it glows and a message shows across the bottom of the screen telling you how many rocks you have mined, how many to go until you achieve the next level, and how many you currently have in your inventory. Periodically the mine will have a cave in for just you, not every miner in the mine. To avoid dying, leave the mine and reenter the mine.
Mining Levels and Achievements
All miners begin at level 0. Levels are achieved based on the total number of rocks you have mined. Each level (except level 6) requires a greater and greater number of rocks to level up than the previous one. At level 0 the time between mini-rocks is 10 seconds. Taps before the 10 seconds are up will have no effect even if you move to a new spot. With each level, the time until the next mini-rock can happen decreases by 0.1 seconds until you reach level 99 where the time stays constant at 0.1 seconds per mini-rock. Each time a miner achieves a new level an announcement with their name and face is flashed on the bottom of every player’s screen. For the first 50 levels (except level 6) each level takes more time to complete than the previous one. Above level 50 each level is quicker to complete than the previous one. Achievements (EC pieces) are given for reaching level 1, Level 10, Level 30, Level 50, and Level 100.
How to Grind Rocks
Once you have rocks you have two choices what to do with them. You can trade rocks at the trading tables or you can grind them and turn the rocks into minerals. There are grinding machines in all of the main mine locations. You might have to hunt for them as they are in different rooms throughout the mines. They all work the same way. Move your character up to the bottom of the machine and hit the grab button (the red glove). A pile of rocks will appear on the conveyor belt and move into the machine. The machine will show an animation and after some time two large horizontal lights will glow on the machine (red or green). Two greens means you got maximum minerals, one red and one green meant you still got minerals, and two reds means you got no minerals for that load. Minerals will appear on the output conveyor belt and get dropped on the ground above the machine. For the first 3 minutes you are the only one that can pick up your minerals. After 3 minutes anyone else can grab your minerals. After some longer amount of time the minerals completely disappear. Facing sideways works best for grabbing the minerals on the floor. Move your player next to the minerals and tap the grab button as you move closer or farther from the minerals. There are two small vertical red lights on the grinding machine that look like power level meters. When the loading conveyor backs up and the power lights go off you can load the next group of rocks. Several of the mines have rooms with more than one machine and you can grind rocks faster by loading rocks using all the machines and leaving the minerals on the ground, but don’t forget to pick them up before 3 minutes or others can pick them up.
How to Make Money
Rocks can’t be sold for gralats, but minerals can. There is only one place where you can sell your minerals for gralats. It’s at the shop located directly to the left of Wiluna mine. Enter the shop and tap on the counter. One counter is for selling the minerals used in weapon upgrades (iron, copper, lead, quartz, silver and gypsum). These give you 5 gralats each. The other counter is for the rarer minerals (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Gold). These range between 7 and 10 gralats each. You can also trade rocks and minerals at the trade tables for other items in the game. Some of these items, such as shells, trash, and mushrooms can be sold for gralats. Mining is a relatively low earning job in comparison to other jobs in Graal earning around 500 gralats an hour when you first start. However, after around 1500 hours spent on mining it becomes the highest earning job in Graal earning in excess of 6,000 gralats an hour. Outlandish claims have been made about the earning potential of a level 100 miner but they don’t take into consideration having to move to a new mining spot each rock, replacing dead batteries, and having to spend time grinding the rocks mined.
Mining Manners
No one owns a spot in a mine, however it is rude to mine in the exact spot where someone else is already mining.
If you are stopping mining or taking a break you should move off of the rock wall so others can mine in that spot.
It is rude to stand where you cover up other people’s rock piles whether with your body or a bubble message such as BRB or AFK.
Some rude people like to throw explosive barrels in the mine. These cause damage and can appear to kill you, however the kill doesn’t count in anyone’s stats. The best way to combat this is to not react and every 3 barrels use a valentine bomb to heal yourself while you continue to mine. If they won’t stop, report them for harassment.
Mining Tips
If you don’t tap your drill after the rock pile glows, when you move to a new location the next rock pile will begin immediately. If you do tap after it glows without moving you will get a “Nothing to mine here” and your next rock pile (in a new location) will be delayed (~10 seconds at beginning mining levels) in starting. This slows your mining down by a lot – 40 seconds to get a rock versus 30 seconds.
Mining in Wiluna mine or Southridge mine saves time when your battery goes dead because the batteries are sold at the mine entrances. Mining at other mines require you to travel to one of these two mines to buy a new battery and then time to travel back.
