Effective Mining in Portal Knights V0.01

If knowledge is power, then take this knowledge and put it  to good use and Power Mine!
I didn't realize that there are various ways to mine in Portal Knights until I was a much higher level.
I wrote this guide for the people who want a little advise on mining.
The principals are the same for each complexity.
I will cover Basic, Advance and Expert mining tactics.
You will need to deploy some tools and think about setting up farms for Expert.

This guide will not be a set-by-step how to mine for ore in PK.
This guide will be an overview of the types of techniques that can be utilized. One can simply use a Pickaxe for everything I have covered if needed. But, once you get a feel for using the Explosion Bomb, and invest in the infrastructure needed to the supply the explosives.  You become good at knowing when and when not to use explosives and you become extremely effective at amassing stacks of ore quickly. The games fun level levitates!

Index

List of the sections within the guide:
1. Editorial Comments
I give some shotgun style comments on mining and Power Mining.
2. Basic Mining
We go over some basic tips and get started.
3.Collecting Gem Stones
The three stones to rule them all.
4. Mining Tools
A list of tools and their details.
5. Miner Jumpsuit, Helmet & Boots
A list of miner gear that can be worn.
6. Advanced Mining
Techniques for advanced mining.
7. Expert Mining
End game mining find out what its all about.
8. Types of explosives with details
Details on the types of explosives we will deploy.
9. Farms & Farming for Mining
Setting up farms for efficacy.
10. Continual Improvement
where does this guide go from here?

1. Editorial Comments

Why mining?
Mining is the main way to progress in the game.
Some mobs drop the ingredients and resources needed to create gear but that's not going to support your characters progress trajectory.
By effectively mining you can really change your character in the direction you want.
Remember that Mining produces EXP and portal stones.
In effect you might not even need to farm monsters for EXP if you don't want to.

Did you know that you can place a bunch of dirt blocks and then dig them again and that will produce more EXP. You could in theory place 100 dirt blocks, remove 100 dirt blocks and repeat, continually producing EXP.

Have a plan, what to work on first.
Experiencing delays in acquiring better gear can be frustrating.
Having a plan to produce the requirements to make that better armor faster.
Some ingredients you can begin stock-pilling and hoarded right away.
Hoard these right off the bat:

• Linen Cloth
  
• Cotton Cloth
  
• Copper Bar 50-100
  
• Silk Cloth farm
  
• Verdant Emerald
  
• Flame Ruby Dust
  
• Sea Sapphire Dust
  
• coal

See the farming section for more info.
Most of the stuff listed below will also help you in terms of mining.
These will make potions that will assist you in mining faster and more effectively.
Your already out and about and should get these ingredients anyway. 
They can be used to make some basic potions.
Make sure to stock up on these also.

• Ice rose
  
• Fire Spirt
  
• Agate
  
• Flammable Liquid
  
• Algbaster Mushroom
  
• Water
  
• star water
  
• jelly berry
  
• Margenta Berries
  
• Fire Berries
  
• Palm Resin
  
  Equipment :
  
• Torches

Power leveling? Power Mining.
I think having a continual supply of any needed component will improve how fast you level.
Power Mining means deploying explosives to effectively produce resource's much faster than just pickaxing.

Note: TNT and explosion bomb will mine some gem stones for you.

Hard Boss mode by power mining.
I think again to be effective at the hard boss run. You need to have all your ducks in a row.
Having everything ready to go in terms of resources like Titanium and others, just makes the game fun and not a grind. You need to have a good infrastructure and storage in place for it to be effective.

Build up twitch skill mining.
What I mean is that once you use this method you become better and better at it. Its a learned skill. In effect you will be surprised at how fast you can produce results.

Best explosive to use explosion bomb.
I think this is the most economical of the explosives. Its just less powerful than TNT and a lot less cost to produce.

2. Basic Mining

You need to locate the resource first.
Always go through the portal once you have opened it. If you don't and just tp back to your base.
You will not know what resource are on that world until you travel there.
Its great to bring up the map and look for the resource you need, saving a lot of time.
Having lots of opened portals and not knowing where resource are will create confusion and delay.
So don't be lazy. Go through the portal when you open it.





Let there be light!
You need to see the resource before you can mine it.
Your first mining will be running around on the surface looking for resource blocks binary style.
If its dark or you don't have a torch, your going to miss a lot of resources.
Don't waste time! Have a good light source like the Miners Hat.
A torch or the magic light potion (wisp).

And no, don't just start pit-mining that's not effective.

While you are Basic Mining, make sure your also collecting needed ingredients for speed potions.
Water breathing potions, and magic light potion (wisp). Explosive components. 
The faster you can move the faster you can find resources. Utilize the speed potions for collecting ingredients

3.Collecting Gem Stones

• Verdant Emerald
  
• Flame Ruby Dust
  
• Sea Sapphire Dust

These gem stone are required to create explosives. Make sure to farm these stones so you allways have a few stacks.

4. Mining Tools

• Pickaxe
  Requirements:
  Stone: Manual Crafting | 4x Stone Blocks; 2x Wood Logs
  Copper: Workbench II | 1x Copper Bar; 3x Wood Logs
  Iron: Workbench III | 2x Iron Bar; 3x Wood Logs
  Gold: Workbench IV | 4x Gold Bar; 4x Wood Logs
  Titanium: Workbench V | 8x Titanium Bar;5x Wood Logs
  
  
• Mining Drill
  Requirements:
  Mining Drill: Workbench II |2x Copper Bar; 2x Coal
  Iron Mining Drill: Workbench III | 4x Iron Bar; 3x Coal
  Gold Mining Drill: Workbench IV | 6x Gold Bar; 4x Coal
  Titanium Mining Drill: Workbench V | 8x Titanium Bar; 5x Coal
  Super Drill: (Quest Item);(Quest Item) *
  
  
• Mining Claw
  Requirements:
  Mining Claw: Workbench II | 2x Copper Bar; 4x Refined Electro Quartz
  Iron Mining Claw: Workbench III | 3x Iron Bar; 6x Refined Flame Ruby
  Gold Mining Claw: Workbench IV | 4x Gold Bar; 8x Refined Sun Diamond
  Titanium Mining Claw: Workbench V | 5x Titanium Bar; 10x Moon Opal Dust
  
  
• Torch
  Requirements:
  Torch: Manual Crafting | 3x Wood Logs; 1x Cotton
  
  
• Wisp in a Bottle
  Wisp in a Bottle: Altar II | 4x Water; 8x Verdant Emerald
  Releases magical wisp for light 60sec
  Wisp in a Bottle II: Altar III | 4x Water; 8x Sea Sapphire
  Releases magical wisp for light 120sec
  Wisp in a Bottle III: Altar IV | 4x Star Water; 8x Sun Diamond
  Releases magical wisp for light 240sec
  
  
• explosives
  Requirements:
  Mini Bomb: Archer Station II | 1 x Straw Block; 1 x Verdant Emerald Dust
  Dropped by: NIL
  Sold by: NIL
  
  Explosion Bomb: Archer Station III | 1x Flame Ruby Dust; 1X Cotton Cloth
  Dropped by: Burning Bones; Fiery Roarc; Red Gruntking
  Sold by: Razzo
  
  TNT: Archer Station IV | 1 X Silk Cloth; 1 x Sea Sapphire Dust
  Dropped by: NIL
  Sold by: NIL
  
  
• Hoe
  Requirements: Workbench II | 3x Wood Logs; 1x Copper Bar
  
  
  
• Resource Scanner
  Requirements: Workbench III | 2x Iron Bar; 3x Wood Logs

5. Miner Jumpsuit, Helmet & Boots

Miner Helmet: Workbench II | 6x Copper Bar
+12% Mining Damage and LIGHT

Miner Boots: Workbench II | 16x Cotton Cloth
+10% Mining Damage

Miner Jumpsuit: Workbench II | 40x Linen Cloth
+25% Durability Loss Reduction

6. Advanced Mining

You should now have access to the mining drill. So you can move dirt much faster.
Its worth working about when mining a resource point. Go 5-10 blocks deep on any surface resource.
There is usually more underneath.





You really want to deploy the "Resource Scanner" at this point.
It will change the way you mine going forward. Pull out your Resource Scanner move about until the lines match up and dig.Collect those resource and repeat.















Its time to also start to tinker with mini-bomb (emerald dust & straw-wheat) and thinking about setting up farms for Expert Mining.

7. Expert Mining

Expert mining is all about boom!
You don't want to have to use your Mining Claw or pickaxe unless its on actual resources...
Stop spending time digging under ground with your pickaxe, time to deploy explosives. To have a large amount of explosives collected you need to do a little farming.
You will need a few farms for all the ingredients needed to amass stacks of exploding bombs or TNT.

Once you have amassed a few stacks of explosives you can begin blast mining. The concept is the same. What I do is dig a mining tunnel where I know there is a lot of mass beneath, so I will not pop out the bottom of the island quickly.
I move up and down the tunnel until I have a good lock on some resources with my resource scanner.
I usually use mini-bombs to clear the way to the resource and then chuck a explosion bomb to clear the area for extraction. Then just repeat.. Some times you will get a strong signal right under you, use the TNT to blast your way down. In no time at all can collect 100 Titanium with this method and its fun! Its very effective!

8. Types of explosives with details

Mini Bomb:
Dropped by: NIL
Sold by: Razzo
Buy: 26GP
Sell: 16GP
stack to: 50

Explosion Bomb:
Dropped by: Burning Bones; Fiery Roarc; Red Gruntking
Sold by: Razzo
Buy: 32GP
Sell: 16GP
stack to: 50


TNT:
Dropped by: NIL
Sold by: Razzo
Buy: 144GP
Sell: 72GP
stack to: 50

9. Farms & Farming for Mining

To be able to effectively use explosives for mining you need to do the ground work and have some stacks available. This requires some time farming. Create the farms right beside the landing pads for efficacy.












Create a room in your base for mining ingredient storage. I keep a chest for each.
Mini-bomb, Explosion bomb and TNT. I try to leave one of each ingredients and stack(s) of the explosives. So I don't forget what the ingredients are and I can quickly see what I'm getting low on.

Farms needed: 
1. Cotton Cloth farm
2. Silk Cloth farm
3. Wheat farm

Spend some time  collecting gems. Their needed in explosive making.
Ingredient farming needed for:
1. Verdant Emerald
2. Flame Ruby Dust
3. Sea Sapphire Dust

10. Continual Improvement

I will be updating the guide over the next few weeks. Adding more meat on the bone where needed.
If you have suggestions, recommendations or corrections this will be a good time to address those, kindly post.
I may add new sections as I feel needed to enhance the guide soon.

[Wariat117]

in the current version of game there is 1 NPC who sells all explosives.
he is in fort finch and he is called shelton

[Just Gravity Bro]

You can also get mining gloves if you mange to find the recipe

[Human_Being]

nice

[dragon-soul]

y

[MONKWORKS]

Kool, thanks for the info!

[Sly-Scale]

Good guide so far! But I don't bother getting materials for bombs, I just buy them. Can be done super-early in the game too. And here's what you need:

-Coal, aim for half a stack when first starting out. Move to entire stacks.
Some islands are LOADED with coal. Need bombs to make it fast though.

-Wood, and lots of it. You may need to convert a whole island to growing trees.
I recommend looking up a guide for this. In short: direct sunlight, no substitute.

-A workbench, any quality. Multiple workbenches move things along faster.

-A shopkeeper, preferably Razzo at Fort Finch because, well, he sells the bombs.

[Sly-Scale]

So you get some coal, some logs. Turn the logs into Refined Wood (not the Wood Blocks), then combine that Refined Wood with Coal to make Dark Refined Wood. That stuff's worth 10 gold a block; the coal is worth 1 gold to sell and a Refined Wood block is worth 1 gold to sell.

Super good gold, 2200 gold per stack of Dark Refined Wood when it took 100 logs and 10 coal to make.