Mining progression

Mining progression

Interesting Mining & Extraction changes mining trip into a complete ore-processing chain. Copper is found at the surface, ore is mined as muck, and that muck must be separated before it becomes useful metal. Follow the age-based route below, then use the reference guides when a new machine or furnace becomes available.

The values in the reference pages follow the bundled IME 1.0.16 assets and the server’s current compatibility setup. If the in-game furnace projection or handbook disagrees with a number here, use the in-game result: the projection is the final structure check.

The route at a glance

Stage	Goal	Unlocks
Stone Age	Prepare the first copper expedition	Surface copper notes, rawhide muck bag, T1 smelting furnace, copper pickaxe
Early Copper Age	Recover copper from ore muck	Stick sluices, flowing-water separation, first smelted copper
Late Copper Age	Prepare for bronze and larger mines	Anvil, proper sluice baffles, tin prospecting
Bronze Age	Separate and improve ore processing	Screen, bronze hammer, roasting furnace, iron prospecting
Iron Age	Bootstrap iron and increase throughput	Sieve recovery, bloomery, jaw crusher, improved infrastructure
Steel Age	Follow the vanilla steel progression	The in-game guide’s steel route

Stone Age

The first objective is not a deep mine. It is a marked copper location with enough equipment to bring the first muck home safely.

1. Find copper rocks or copper-bearing surface indicators. Note the location, nearby rock type, and a route back to your camp.
2. Craft a rawhide muck bag. Muck is not a normal item that can be left in a chest, so the bag is part of the mining kit.
3. Collect enough copper nuggets to make a copper pickaxe.
4. Build a tier-1 smelting furnace from mudbricks. The smelting furnace guide explains the door, projection, pot, fuel, and charge setup.
5. Make the copper pickaxe using the normal Vintage Story nugget and tool process.

Before leaving, also pack a shovel, food, torches, spare blocks, and a second bag or storage place at the mine mouth. Mark the surface position of the deposit; a good copper location will remain useful after the first tools are replaced.

Image placeholder — surface copper location

Show a copper surface rock or indicator beside exposed stone, with a player marking the position and a visible path back to camp. The image should make the location, surrounding geology, and route easy to read. Suggested file: public/images/guides/mining/surface-copper-location.webp

Early Copper Age

This is the first complete muck-to-metal loop.

1. Craft Stick Sluice Baffles from sticks and soil.
2. Build a short water contraption near the copper deposit. The water must flow through the sluice, with a clear downstream place for tailings and outputs.
3. If the copper is underground, stop and read Cave-ins and safety before opening a room or shaft.
4. Mine the copper ore. Use a shovel to handle the muck and a rawhide bag to carry it to the sluice.
5. Deposit the ore muck into the sluice. Raw and fine muck can be processed; coarse muck must be screened or crushed first.
6. When the sluice reaches 100 concentration, extract the ore muck with a shovel. Each extraction is one ore type at a time, so do not mix valuable concentrates casually.
7. Put the recovered muck into the tier-1 smelting furnace. Remove as much stone muck as possible first because it occupies charge space without contributing metal.

The stick sluice is intentionally temporary. It stores up to 400 concentration and captures ore at roughly half the rate of proper sluice baffles. It is still the right first build because it needs only sticks and soil and establishes the water-processing habit immediately.

Read Muck and how to handle it for the three muck grades, bag handling, and the difference between concentration and availability. Read Sluices and screens for the water layout and the later screen/crusher loop.

Late Copper Age

Once the first copper batches are reliable:

1. Craft an anvil using the vanilla Vintage Story process.
2. Craft Sluice Baffles. They hold up to 800 concentration and recover fine muck more effectively than the stick version.
3. Start recording prospecting results by rock type and location.
4. Find tin using the prospecting mechanics. A prospecting pick reading is a direction and concentration clue, not a guarantee that the nearest block is the deposit.
5. Process copper and tin separately until you have enough metal for the bronze tools and workshop upgrades that make larger mines practical.

At this point, the smelting furnaces page becomes the main reference for copper, tin, flux, and pig metal. Keep the roasting furnace and bloomery pages nearby for the iron route; the bloomery is for iron-bearing muck, not the non-ferrous copper and tin charge.

Bronze Age

Bronze is the point where manual muck separation and ore improvement become practical:

1. Make a Screen to separate raw muck into coarse and fine muck. Collect both outputs so the coarse fraction is not lost.
2. Use a bronze hammer to crush coarse muck into fine muck for now. This is the manual step until the jaw crusher becomes available.
3. Make a roasting furnace to improve the availability of processed ore. Roast ore muck once before sending it to the appropriate smelting furnace or bloomery.
4. Prospect for and mark iron deposits so the next age has a reliable ore source.

Read Sluices and screens for the screen outputs and the later crusher loop, and Roasting furnaces for the roasting process and availability results.

Iron Age

The first iron is a bootstrap step; the rest of the age is about making the processing chain more efficient:

1. Use a sieve to gather your first iron bits. Sieve recovery is slow, but a few iron nuggets can help unlock the first bloomery.
2. Make a bloomery and fill it with iron-bearing muck. Roasted iron muck gives the best availability before blooming.
3. Make a jaw crusher to improve the processing of coarse muck. Replace the bronze hammer step with the crusher, then send its fine output back through the separation chain.
4. Improve your infrastructure: add safer supported workings, better muck storage, larger water-processing lines, and powered conveyors when the processing hall outgrows manual handling.

Use the bloomery guide for construction and firing, Cave-ins and safety for supported mining, and IME power and conveyors for the infrastructure upgrades.

Steel Age

For the Steel Age, follow the vanilla Vintage Story progression in the In-Game Guide. Use the bloomery and the rest of the mining-processing chain to supply the iron, then follow the guide’s instructions for turning it into steel.

The order is flexible after the first copper, but the dependency is not: prospecting finds the deposit, mining or blasting creates muck, water and machines separate it, and furnaces turn the useful fraction into metal.