Excavation is the act of breaking through a wall into unmapped space. With a pickaxe, you can dig into any unmapped space next to your room. The wall must be chipped away over multiple strikes before it yields. Each strike consumes an action point, costs stamina, reduces the pickaxe's durability, and may produce a mineral as a side effect. When the wall's durability reaches zero, a new room is created at that position.
Excavation lets a seeker extend the dungeon beyond its original rooms. It costs tools, stamina, and time, and commits you to a direction the dungeon did not already go. The new room is bare and holds none of the cards an ordinary room would.
Vein mining is an action offered by certain locations, such as a river bank, a narrow passage, or a rocky wall. With a pickaxe, you can mine the location and take whatever it yields. No wall is broken. No room is created. The location simply produces something from its interior.
Vein mining is faster and safer than excavation. It does not risk a ceiling collapse, and each action is a single attempt rather than a sustained project. The tradeoff is that vein locations are placed by the dungeon, not by the player. They are found, not made. The chance and the finds depend on the location.
Every wall begins with 100 durability. The seeker chips away at it over multiple turns until the wall falls and a new room opens behind it.
Excavation cannot begin without a pickaxe that is currently equipped and has durability remaining. The pickaxe is the only tool that reduces wall durability. Without one, or with a broken one, nothing happens. A pickaxe that breaks mid-excavation must be replaced before the work can continue.
Each excavation strike reduces the wall's durability by the seeker's effective strength: the pickaxe's own strength added to the seeker's base strength stat. The Miner perk increases this combined value by an additional 25%. A seeker with high strength and the Miner perk can complete an excavation in significantly fewer strikes than one relying on a bare tool.
When wall durability reaches zero or below, the wall falls, a new empty room opens in its place, and you are told the tunnel is complete. The room is fully accessible from that point forward and connects normally to adjacent rooms that exist. It holds no cards of its own. It is a blank space you have carved out of the world.
Every strike during an in-progress excavation has a chance to produce a mineral. The wall resists you, but it also reveals what it contains.
Each excavation strike that does not complete the wall rolls a 20% chance to produce a mineral. On a success, you find an ore or a gem, and rarer finds are less likely. It goes straight into your equipment, and the chronicle records what you found.
Thirty percent of the time, regardless of what would have been selected, the result is replaced with plain stone. Stone is the most common return from excavation and is always possible even when richer ore is in range.
The Prospector perk adds a second, independent roll on every excavation strike: a 5% chance to produce a gem regardless of whether the primary mineral drop succeeded. This roll is separate from the ordinary find, so a single strike can give you both a mineral and a Prospector gem.
Both minerals, if both drop, go into the seeker's equipment simultaneously. The chronicle records each find. A strike that produces nothing, a strike that produces stone, and a strike that produces a named gem are all possible outcomes of the same action.
Every mineral produced by excavation has its quality applied before it enters the seeker's inventory. Quality is rolled the same way as for any other find, so the same wall can give you dismal ore or masterful ore.
Graveyards and burial sites support a separate digging action with a shovel rather than a pickaxe. Grave digging uses the same general structure as excavation but finds different things: remains, relics, and items associated with what was buried. The Grave Digger perk adds a 1% chance to find magical items during any mining or digging action.
Mining of either kind improves your mining proficiency, which grows through use. Higher mining proficiency improves outcomes over time: at advanced levels it affects yield chance, how rare your finds can be, and the efficiency of excavation work. It builds up wherever you mine.
Mining is not free. Every strike taxes the seeker's equipment, stamina, and occasionally the structural integrity of the room itself.
Every excavation strike reduces the equipped pickaxe's durability by one, regardless of how much wall durability was removed. A pickaxe that hits zero durability breaks. A broken pickaxe is unequipped automatically and can no longer be used to excavate. If the pickaxe breaks mid-excavation, the damage already done to the wall remains, and work can resume once a replacement pickaxe is found and equipped.
Each excavation strike costs stamina equal to the pickaxe's stamina cost value. Stamina never falls below zero, but with none left you cannot run, and other actions may be closed to you. Mining in an area with no stamina recovery available is a decision that becomes more costly the longer the excavation takes.
Every excavation strike, except the one that breaks through, has a 10% chance of bringing the ceiling down. Vein mining never does. A collapse brings falling debris that can hurt you. The Mole Man perk removes the risk entirely. Without it, every strike is a small gamble on the structural stability of the rock above.
Both excavation and location-based mining leave the seeker dirty once valid work begins, even when the attempt produces nothing. An attempt blocked by a missing tool or other requirement does not make the seeker dirty. Bathing, soap, or Cleansing removes the condition.
Some locations carry exposed mineral deposits that can be worked directly , with no excavation and no new room. The location itself is the resource.
A location that supports vein mining offers a mining action while you have a pickaxe equipped. The action costs one action point and has a fixed chance of success, usually around 33% for an ordinary mineral vein. On a success, you gain one find from the vein. A failure costs only the Action Point.
Different locations hold different finds. A river bank with exposed rock yields the same mineral categories as a narrow underground passage, but grave sites yield bones, relics, and burial goods. The location's type determines not just what can be found but at what rarity. A seeker who knows which locations carry which veins can plan routes through the dungeon with resource gathering in mind.
Vein mining is a repeatable action. The same location can be mined on successive turns as long as the seeker remains there and retains action points. Vein locations do not deplete. A 33% chance per action means repeated attempts are not guaranteed to be productive. Time spent mining a vein is time not spent elsewhere, and some runs will reward patience at a vein while others will reward moving on.
A finished Excavated Dugout, and any room of an Abandoned Mine without another condition, may hold an Iron (10%), Gold (8%), or Silver (7%) Ore Vein, shown by a border on the location card. The room keeps its normal actions and adds Mine Ore Vein. Each attempt costs 1 Action Point and 1 pickaxe durability, with a 45% base chance improved by Mining proficiency and room improvements. A success yields the named ore and removes one portion. A vein holds between three and eight portions, whatever the room size. Unlike other veins, an ore vein runs out.