Core Mining
When: throughout Season 1. First run August 17, 2026 on servers 1 to 17, arriving on every server at once rather than staggered. What it is: a large multi-part event built around digging underground for diamonds, wrapped in seven sub-systems. Why it matters: it is the only source of exclusive hero gear shards for Vela, Scarlet, and Elias, plus permanent base camp and marching queue skins.
The short version¶
- Do the daily themed tasks first. They pay the most and they reset daily.
- Dig with pickaxes; collect rare diamonds on the way down.
- Past 300 metres, use smart dig to burn your whole pickaxe stock at once.
- Trade diamonds in the Treasure Gallery for reward chests — save rare ones for gold chests.
- Fight crystal giants and turtles in Treasure Hunter for drills, dynamite, and diamonds.
- Level the mining battle pass by spending pickaxes.
- Clear the puzzle board rows for chests, the full board for the top prize.
What you are actually grinding for¶
Season 1's theme is underground mining, and the headline reward is exclusive hero gear — a new system that gives a specific hero four unique skills, new animations, and substantial stats that stack on top of normal gear. Season 1 covers Vela, Scarlet, and Elias. See Hero Gear.
Alongside that: golden hero shards, speed-ups, the blue upgrade stones that raise exclusive gear star levels, two base camp skins (one legendary, one epic), and a marching queue skin.
The parts, in priority order¶
Seven sub-systems. Spend your time in this order.
1. Glory Miner — daily themed tasks, and the most important part¶
Runs 6 days with daily themes, working the same way as the Ultimate Alliance Duel. Complete the day's themed tasks to earn points; thresholds pay daily rewards, and each day ends with ranking rewards.
This is where the real value is: pickaxes, gems, and exclusive gear parts. Every day has a different theme, which means the same hoard-then-spend logic that governs the Ultimate Alliance Duel applies here too. Bank your actions and cash them in on the matching day.
If you only have time for one part of Core Mining, this is it.
2. The dig itself¶
Your main activity. You clear bricks one at a time to descend, hunting rare diamonds on the way down.
Pickaxes are the core currency — one or more per brick. Drills and dynamite are gadgets that clear more ground per use.
Diamonds come in rarities, green at the low end up to a multicoloured rarest tier. Your haul accumulates in the strongbox and is spent in the Treasure Gallery.
Bricks are not equal. Diamond-bearing bricks take more pickaxes to break than plain ones. For ranking points: a two-hit stone scores more than a one-hit stone, and diamond bricks beat both by a wide margin. Rarer crystals award more points.
At 300 metres deep, smart dig unlocks — it spends your entire pickaxe stock in one action instead of tapping brick by brick. Use it. Manual clicking past that depth is a waste of your evening.
3. Treasure Gallery — where diamonds become rewards¶
Exchange collected diamonds for reward chests: energy cores, speed-ups, recruitment tickets, lucky gear chests, and more. The exchange is tiered by crystal quality: high-quality crystals buy golden chests, mid-quality buy purple, common buy blue. Contents include golden hero shards, breakthrough blueprints, energy cores and gear upgrade shards.
So do not spend rare crystals on cheap exchanges just because you can. The blueprints in particular are what gate your gold-to-red gear breakthrough — see Hero Gear.
Note this is a daily exchange, so it paces you whether you like it or not.
4. Crystal Trade Mart — the alliance angle¶
Trade crystals with alliance members — or post a wish with nothing offered in return, which teammates can simply fill. There is no cost to asking.
Use this. If you are three green diamonds short of a gold chest, someone in your alliance has spares. Ask.
5. Treasure Hunter — the combat feeder¶
Defeat Crystal Giants or Armored Tortoises during the event to receive event chests containing drills, dynamite, gold and a serum that summons a Goblin Boss. Killing the boss scatters chests — up to 20 chests claimable per day.
That 20-per-day cap is the number to plan around: it is a hard ceiling on what this sub-mode can give you, so spread your summons across the event rather than burning them in one session.
This overlaps directly with your daily crystal giant routine, so it costs you almost nothing extra. See Daily Events.
6. Treasure Pass — the mining battle pass¶
The more pickaxes you spend, the more pass levels you gain. No strategy beyond digging.
The free track gives a trial Basecamp skin; the premium track gives a permanent skin and an exclusive emote.
7. Shining Moment — the puzzle board¶
A 3-stage puzzle board, the same structure used in Carnival Night and the Hunting Festival. Complete daily tasks — arena fights, detection missions and similar — to clear fields. Clearing a row gives pickaxes; clearing the whole board pays the largest prize.
As always: work toward completions, not scattered field clears.
Abyss Vault — paid only¶
Top-ups during the event award shovels, and 1,000 shovels grants a marching queue skin. A purchase track with no free path. Skip it unless you specifically want that skin and are comfortable with the cost.
Patch note worth knowing¶
September 3, 2026 optimisations: completed trades and wishes now auto-clear from chat, the next puzzle round refreshes only after the current countdown ends, crystal types are distributed more evenly, and some exchange costs were adjusted. If you played the first run, the economy is slightly different now.
Common mistakes¶
Digging before doing daily tasks. Tasks pay the pickaxes. Reversed order means less digging, not more.
Tapping bricks manually past 300 metres. Smart dig exists. Use it.
Spending rare diamonds on low-tier exchanges. Save them for the gold chests in the Treasure Gallery.
Ignoring the Crystal Trade Mart. Free diamonds from teammates, for asking.
Treating Treasure Hunter as separate from your daily routine. It runs on crystal giants and turtles you were already killing.