Plasma Drill & Ore Crusher

The Plasma Drill and Ore Crusher are the backbone of the new underground layer, but the tooltips don't tell you how they actually behave under load — or how they're meant to work together. Here's the mining-to-refining loop new players keep asking about.

How the Plasma Drill draws power

Unlike the Hammer, the Plasma Drill isn't a free action — it pulls a steady load from whatever's wired to it the moment you engage it. A single battery keeps it running for short bursts, but continuous digging sessions will drain one fast. Once you're mining for real, wire a small battery bank instead of relying on one battery you have to keep swapping.

Heat is the hidden limiter

The drill's heat gauge climbs the longer you cut continuously, and as it climbs, cutting speed drops before the drill eventually stalls and needs a moment to cool. The fastest overall mining pace isn't holding the trigger down nonstop — it's short, deliberate cuts with brief pauses, which keeps the gauge in the range where the drill is still cutting at near-full speed.

If you're chaining long unbroken tunnels, plan pauses into your route rather than fighting through a stalled drill mid-tunnel.

What the Ore Crusher actually outputs

Raw ore alone isn't useful for crafting — it has to pass through the Ore Crusher first. Feed it raw ore and it returns refined material plus a smaller amount of scrap as byproduct, which is worth collecting rather than discarding since it feeds straight back into basic Craftbot recipes.

The exact ratio varies slightly by ore type, but as a rule of thumb: expect the refined output to be meaningfully less than the raw input by volume, which is exactly why placement matters — see below.

Where to place the Crusher

Raw ore is heavier and bulkier to haul than refined output, so the efficient setup is a small Crusher station near your active dig site rather than one central Crusher back at the Mechanic Station. Haul refined material home, not raw ore, and you'll cut your travel time noticeably once you're mining more than one or two veins a session.

Working underground

The underground caverns are fully dark outside of your own light sources — there's no ambient light to rely on the way there is on the surface. Bring more lighting than you think you need, and consider wiring a few lights to your drill rig itself so you're never digging blind. Route-finding also matters more here than on the surface: mark or remember your tunnels, since the cavern layout doesn't offer the same landmark cues the overworld does.

A simple beginner mining loop

1. Set up a battery bank at the tunnel entrance

   Keep it close enough to swap or recharge without a long walk back to base.

2. Cut in short bursts

   Let the heat gauge settle between cuts rather than holding the trigger continuously.

3. Haul raw ore to a nearby Crusher

   Place it at the tunnel mouth, not back at the Mechanic Station.

4. Carry refined output home

   It's lighter and it's what your Craftbot recipes actually need.

Common mistakes

• Running the drill off a single battery. You'll spend more time swapping batteries than actually mining.
• Holding the trigger down continuously. Short cuts with pauses outpace a stalled drill every time.
• Hauling raw ore all the way back to base. Crush it near the dig site and carry the lighter refined output instead.
• Underestimating cavern darkness. Bring more light sources than the surface ever required.

Power draw, heat behavior and refining ratios are based on early post-launch community testing rather than official documentation — treat exact numbers as approximate until Axolot Games publishes harder figures.