Explosives
Explosives
Section titled “Explosives”Blasting is the fast way to turn ore or rock into a large amount of muck. It is also the fastest way to collapse your mine, so treat each shot as a planned engineering operation.
Drill depth and tools
Section titled “Drill depth and tools”A drill hole starts at zero blocks deep. Strike the drill first, then use its turn interaction to advance it. Each successful strike-and-turn cycle adds one block.
The reference depth ranges are:
| Drill | Hole depth |
|---|---|
| Short hand drill | 0 to 4 blocks |
| Medium hand drill | 4 to 8 blocks |
| Long hand drill | 8 to 12 blocks |
When the current drill reaches its depth limit, change to the longer drill.
Prepare the hole in order
Section titled “Prepare the hole in order”Every successful turn makes the hole dirty again. A hole must be at least one block deep before it can be cleaned or loaded.
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Drill: Advance the hole to the chosen depth while striking before each turn.
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Clean: Use the Blowpipe. Dirty, spent, and burnt-out holes cannot be prepared correctly.
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Load: Add blasting powder based on depth. Use one powder per four blocks, rounded up:
Hole depth Powder 1–4 blocks 1 5–8 blocks 2 9–12 blocks 3 -
Plug: Seal the loaded hole with a Clay Plug.
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Fuse: Use the Fuse Awl to install the blasting fuse and set its delay. Quickmatch can connect prepared holes for a sequence of shots.
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Ignite: Light the fuse with a torch, then retreat behind the planned safety line.
How the blast behaves
Section titled “How the blast behaves”The blast travels down the drilled hole in short steps rather than appearing as one instant sphere. Its standard radius is about 0.75 blocks, and it can detect nearby valid holes as paths, including holes that have not yet been cleaned. This makes connected charges useful, but it also means a badly placed hole can carry the blast somewhere unexpected.
Blasting can produce hangfires, duds, hard failures, and gas cuts that partly consume a charge. A failed or spent hole normally becomes burnt out. Clean it with the Blowpipe before attempting to reuse it.
After the blast, wait for every connected charge to finish. Inspect the roof, support beams, and retreat route before collecting the muck. Follow Cave-ins and safety whenever the blast opens a new room.