Dude Deep Drill.

How to play Dude Deep Drill

1. Choose Start the expedition. Hold down, or use the direction pad on a phone, and the pod drills into the rock below. Open tunnels are quick to travel; rock takes time and battery, and harder strata take longer.
2. Drill straight into ore to collect it. Copper is worth 8 credits, crystal 18, gold 35, amber 50, emberite 75, a relic 90 and voidglass 125 before the ore sorter bonus. The hold has limited slots, shown on the cargo counter.
3. Watch the battery bar. The gold tick marks what the trip home along your amber cable will cost, and climbing costs far more than going down. Head back before the bar reaches the tick. Hold Reel or the H key to follow the cable automatically.
4. Bank at the surface lift or at a restored dock with E or the Bank button. The haul becomes workshop credits, and any surveys or work orders you completed pay out on the result screen.
5. Reaching a dock chamber at the top of a stratum finds it. Restore it in the workshop and it becomes a lift stop where shifts can start and hauls can be banked, which is how the deeper strata become practical.
6. Handle hazards: step out from under a boulder or lava pool that starts to wobble, leave gas clouds quickly, and back away from a lit reactive seam. A pulse clears nearby rock, lights reactive seams from a distance and kills mites, but shatters relics and voidglass.
7. When your gear is ready, drill through the hard seal at the bottom of the Hollow into the Heart Chamber. Pulse the Warden’s glowing core three times in each of its three phases while dodging its head, falling stone and floor vents. Then collect the Heart and carry it home.

Make your move

About Dude Deep Drill

Dude Deep Drill is a mining adventure seen as a cross-section of the earth. A small tracked pod with a spinning drill starts at a surface station beside a lift. Moving into rock drills it, so every direction is both a step and a tunnel. The mine is persistent: tunnels you dig stay open between shifts, so a good shaft keeps paying off. The expedition runs two kilometres down through six named strata and ends in the Heart Chamber, where a stone Warden coils around the Heart of the mine.

Each stratum has its own palette, rock hardness and rules. The Copper Shelf is soft loam and copper. Glasswater Strata hides crystal caves and reactive seams. The Old Foundry has straight abandoned galleries, relics and loose boulders. Lanternroot Caves are lit by glowing roots and guarded by mite nests. Ember Reach adds heat that drains the battery and pools of lava that flow when you dig beneath them. The Hollow combines all of it with voidglass, the most valuable ore. It gets darker as you descend, so the survey lamp upgrade and the light from roots, lava and gems matter more the deeper you go.

Two meters keep a shift honest. Battery drains every second, with every tile drilled and with every tile climbed, and a gold tick on the bar shows what following your cable home would cost. Hull takes the hits: gas clouds, reactive blasts, falling boulders, lava and mite bites. If either gives out, the crew tows you home and salvages a quarter of the haul, so a mistake costs a haul rather than your progress. Bank at the surface lift or at any dock you have restored.

Credits buy nine workshop upgrades with four levels each, and every card shows exactly what the next level changes. Supplies ride along: a patch kit for the hull, a spare cell for the battery and a recall beacon that winches you and the haul home. Eighteen surveys set goals from your first banked haul to defeating the Warden, rotating work orders keep credits useful, and every completed survey is a star toward cosmetic pod paints. Nothing is for sale; everything is dug up. A daily mine gives everyone the same fixed gear and a date-based layout with one twist, such as rich veins or loose ceilings, and Free dig removes the battery drain for exploring. Progress is saved in this browser, and the page plays in portrait or landscape.

A little help for your next high score

• Bank a small haul on your first shift. It completes the First Shift survey, pays for a first upgrade and shows how the return trip works before the battery gets tight.
• Trust the gold tick on the battery bar. It is the cost of following your cable home from where you are now, including the climb, so turn back while there is still a margin above it.
• Restore docks as soon as you can afford them. Starting a shift 600 or 900 metres down saves a long climb, and a dock is also a place to bank without going all the way up.
• Never dig out the tile directly beneath a boulder or a lava pool unless you can step aside at once. Both wobble for a moment first, which is your cue to move.
• Use pulses on reactive seams from a distance. The chain blast opens a lot of rock for free, but keep relics and voidglass out of the radius, because blasts shatter them.
• Carry a patch kit into Lanternroot and below. Mites follow your tunnels and bite, and a pulse clears every mite in its radius at once.
• Upgrade the coolant loop before a long stay in Ember Reach or the Hollow. Heat multiplies the battery drain, and the coolant also softens lava burns.

Good questions