Dig for gold, carry it to the surface to bank it, then push deeper for richer (but riskier) gold. Banked gold is safe forever — gold in your pack is not.

⛏ Mining

• Tap a tile to mine it — it digs on a timer. Darker rock is tougher and takes longer.
• Tap the same tile again to pause (Continue / Cancel).
• Tiles with gold flecks are rich veins — extra gold.
• Your pack is limited. When it's full, gold stays in the tile — bank, then come back. Buy a Bigger Pack in the store.
• Underground dig gear (⛏️ Pickaxe → 🛠️ Drill → 💥 Rock Breaker) cuts faster and deeper down the shafts. The 🚜 Excavator is a separate open-pit machine: it opens a fast pit down the top 3 levels — bench straight down with no shafts — but does nothing below the pit.
• Deep rock is tough: hardness-4 seams need the 🛠️ Drill, hardness-5/6 need the 💥 Rock Breaker — or spend a 🧨 Dynamite Stick (needs a 📜 permit) to blast one tile (works anywhere). Rock your tool can't cut shows a small cracked marker. Fuel the Excavator & Rock Breaker with ⛽ Gasoline — run dry and they stall.
• Underground gear: 🔍 Metal Detector reveals gold, 🪵 rigs (shoring/vent/cart) install per level, 🪣 sump knocks down a flood. Above ground: 🌊 Sluice, ⚖️ Assay Scale, 🗺️ Prospector's Map.

⚠️ Dangers

• Spiders 🕷️, snakes 🐍, gas ☁️ hide in some tiles. You always get a warning one dig before one appears.
• When one emerges: use a tool (safe), brave it (−1 heart), or back off (keep the gold you already pulled — but the danger stays on that tile).
• Lose all hearts → you're rescued: you lose your pack haul, but keep banked gold and your dug tunnels.
• 🛡️ Insurance (toggle in the 💸 Costs chip) charges a small daily premium but covers most equipment repair bills and halves blackout rescue fees — worth it once you run machinery or dig deep.

🏦 Banking & the wash plant

• You can only bank at the Surface. Climb up (↑), then tap Bank Gold.
• Hire a crew (👷 $500 each) and assign jobs in the Crew panel — this is your idle income: ⛏️ Miners dig raw pay-dirt, 🪏 Sifters run it through the plant into gold, 📦 Haulers carry gold to the vault. (🧍 Free = send on manual hauls.)
• Balance the crew: lots of miners but no sifters just piles up dirt. Build a bigger 🌊 sifting plant (Sluice → Trommel → 🏭 Wash Plant) and add sifters to run more dirt per hour. Each hand draws a daily wage.
• Your crew keeps working while you're away — that's the Welcome Back payout (scarce & random, like real digging).
• The gold price swings all day — sell into the ▲ highs, hold through the ▼ lows. Arm 🤖 Auto-sell in the Market to turn your vault into cash automatically at a price you choose, even while away, so payday never bounces.

↕️ Going deeper

• Tap a square, then tap ↓ and pick Rope / Ladder / Elevator to dig a shaft down to the next level.
• A connector shows ▼ where it goes down and ▲ where it goes up. Tap an existing shaft + ↓ to drop through it or swap its type.
• Ladders & elevators move gold up faster than rope. Tap ↑ to climb back.
• ⚙️ Elevators are the fastest haul, but must run dead-straight — each level locks to the column above. Because they line up, there's almost no sideways carrying between levels. Building one is a background bulldoze: it digs over time while you keep mining, and your idle helpers form the crew that finishes it faster (helpers out on a haul trip don't dig).
• Use ← → to move between side claims (buy adjacent ones with gold).

🏞️ Gold panning

• At the Surface, tap the blue river row (top of the board) to pan for small, safe gold.
• Swirl to wash out flecks (and the odd 💛 nugget). Each swirl adds to your pan — but raises the chance the next swirl washes it all back into the river.
• Tap Pocket it to bank what's in the pan. Classic press-your-luck: greed or safety?

🛒 Store

• Buy tools, dig-gear upgrades, a bigger pack, extra hearts, helpers, and shaft gear (rope / ladder / elevator).