Ore is worth more the deeper you find it — and nothing at all until it's in the shack. Your sack counts chunks, not dollars, so the only way to make a trip pay is to take it further down. Your canteen disagrees. So does whatever's living down there, until it finds your minecart.
Dig down, fill your hands, get back up alive. Hold a direction into rock and the ring over your head fills as the block breaks. Every tile you break stays broken — a good run looks like a real mine when you are finished with it.
The whole game is one question: how deep before you turn back. Gold is worth more the further down it came from — the same swing pays about 26 near the surface and nearly 190 at the bottom. Your hands only hold eight chunks whatever they are worth, so the only way to make a trip pay is to take it deeper.
Water is the clock. Your canteen drains faster the deeper you are, and refills only from pockets down there or the well at the top. Break into a flooded pocket and you can dig your way back out — but you are on borrowed air while you do.
Gold is worth nothing until it is banked. Carry it up and press E at the storage shed. You carry the whole trip home in your hands, so dying drops it where you fell — you can go back for it, if you can get back down. The wagon comes on day 2 and then weekly: sell at the buyer, and haggle — refuse him and he opens higher next week.
Build to go deeper. Ladders and rail cost wood and iron and get you back out faster than climbing; a cart hauls 32 chunks and a lift 48, so neither is carried in your hands.
Sign in so your mines and your runs save under your tag.
Your tag goes on the wall. The 4-digit code is yours — it keeps your saved mines yours.
