I’m not much into mining but using an AOE hammer is pretty fun. Knocking out 9 blocks at a time and hearing the chomp sound effect as you collect rocks and ore is pretty cool. All those bomb miners who quit the game don’t know what they’re missing
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I’ve been mining with 3x3 AOE Hammer for a while now, and I still had more fun Bomb Mining, personally. I wasn’t happy when they nerfed it–especially because somehow people didn’t yet realize that Hammer Mining was more efficient–but quit the game over it? Das just silly. You adapt and overcome obstacles when they’re thrown at you. You don’t just quit. 
Although I do wish we still had original Bomb Mining as an alternative to Hammers, I suggest anyone who hasn’t Hammer Mined efficiently to give it a go.
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Ive been steadily working my way towards being able to make 3x3 AOE hammers, but them damn trophies for the correct forge ingredients are a PITA. Been grinding away resisting the urge to just buy one hammer…
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im just done mining sapphire and it was a pain compared to the other gem types.
Great thing about mining amethyst and emerald is the tons of silver u get
for diamond its gold and titanium
topaz and sapphire yields u enough ancient tech for a long time
and ruby gets u silver and gold easily
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Once you buy that first hammer it’ll pay for itself in gems/resources. Then you can just sell those and buy what you need. Those trophies are expensive though and I havent seen many people selling them from what i’ve seen
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Yeah Im kinda thinking of givin it a go, its only money lol… I think regarding the trophies I may need to befriend a large clan and go meteor hunting on T5+, just finding it too hard to solo them, and killing loads of wandering mighty hoppers doesnt seem to yield much, luck maxed and all.
I joined my first hunt the other day on T6 and got more mats than i know what to do with from about 4 meteors. Only 1 hopper trophy tho. No roadrunner naturally. 8 points in luck. Could just be bad luck tho on low sample size
Hmmm definitely something i need to consider
Go to Altinans for stupid sapphire spawn rates
edit:
IME cardass and altinans are lopsides for gem rates. Alt gives me personally a much higher ratio/hammer. Cardass gives me a much higher topaz ratio/hammer.
Stupid hey? I was mining there on the weekend. In an hour using normal titanium hammers I only found 61 sapphires.
Not what I would call stupid amounts
Thats disappointing certainly. I pulled in 278 sapphire and 58 topaz in a 30 minute session I had earlier. Sorry to hear you’re not having the similar results.
using a 3x3 hammer with mega str brew and persist pie. Barely put a dent in to the hammer, and the only thing holding me back was energy regen. Could have been higher but kids slow me down asking if they can have the gems to builds more walls with.
Im really curious as to how folks are mining where there are such insane divides. I have yet to have a poor run since the tweaks over the last week or two. I don’t get much time so make the most of the 30-40 mins I usually have to play. Quite a few folks have said they dont get good returns for their time investment and I feel like anyone with a similar hammer, brew, pie and atlas shjould easily be able to pull the same returns.
I guess I should sell my sapphires I did collect and buy a 3x3 hammer with the proceeds.
Were you using 3x3 titanium or 3x3 gem hammers?
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TBH titanium is fine if you cant afford the jump to gem, though many folks are offering nice gem hammers for mid 20’s. I saw some being sold for 45-48k but they are really top of the line hammers that should yield you a return of 1mil if you land on a solid hotspot and can go crazy., otherwise you should get 400-500k worth of mats total.
if you can get gem, look for diamond or emerald since they have higher dmg caps I believe. Eme might be slightly more durability? Honestly I’m not well versed on the specifics of each type. I’ve made a post before on my method of mining, if I can find it I’ll edit it in to this post. it works for me very well. I’d hope it’d work the same for everyone else. Im sure others have an even more refined method.
edit: I dont ever mine with anything but 3x3 at this point. It’s just not worth the time.
heh my method comment was in this post actually:
I was mining at altitude 90 chewing through solid rock mostly in an area that was pure white (and tending to a little bit of yellow) in the atlas. I didn’t see any evidence that someone had been through and mined the area before I got there.
I would find small pockets of 3-5 gem seams but on the whole just rock. I did pick up quite a bit of tech which is nice though 
I was using the branch mining at first like I did in Minecraft (a tunnel every 3 row to expose the maximum rock face per tunnel) but eventually was just tunneling in a line following the centre of the white area after I had explored the area I started in fairly thoroughly
I think for topaz/sapphire you want to be 110+. That’s my rule of thumb anyways.
Hmmm I was following Useful References for altitudes
I suspect once I start using a 3x3 hammer my rate would pick up but it’s getting started with it that’s the hard part 
Still, that 61 total was better than my previous total when I was originally using iron hammers
I just realised that I should have been finding topaz as well but got 0 of them 
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It still about 19 000 coin for a +/-2k hammer not that bad.
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I really recommend going to 110 the next time you decide to give it a whirl. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for ya to get some of my rng.
Ah cool. I’ll prob sell off my gems I did collect then and buy a couple and try again
19K, for what hammer is that and where, I must find one