About the game

A cozy hold, dug too deep

A dwarven mining incremental. Build your hold and dig deeper every run.

An incremental mining game for Windows. Hire miners, build rooms, earn helpers that run the mine for you, then dig deeper than anyone should.

Pip Mudbeard, the youngest miner in the hold, holding up a glowing mythril nugget

How it plays

From one vein to a busy hold

You start with one ore vein and a pickaxe. Click the vein, hire Dwarf Miners, and build rooms around the cave. Soon the carts are rolling, the tavern is full, and your dwarves are asking where the next tunnel goes.

Mine
Click the ore vein and hire Dwarf Miners to dig beside you.
Build
Open rooms, assign workers and make blueprints, timber and mythril.
Dig deeper
Each descent costs more and pays more. Cave-ins, trolls and a dragon get in the way.
New Dig
Start over with Ancestral Knowledge, pick an omen, and go deeper than last time.

How it starts: depth 3, five miners and the first three rooms around the ore vein. — Depth 3: five miners and three rooms.

A busy hold at depth 18: sixty miners around the glowing ore vein, every room staffed, mine carts and trade embassies. — Depth 18: sixty miners and every room busy.

Build the hold

13 rooms

Rooms open up as you dig. Staff them, upgrade them and watch the numbers climb. Expeditions go out to 8 destinations, and 10 nations each set up an embassy in your cave to trade.

Surveyor's Office
Surveyors draw up the Blueprints every build and upgrade needs.
Lumber Mill
Lumberjacks cut Timber for the hold.
Smelter
Smelters produce rare Mythril.
Engineering Hall
Engineers boost all production.
Resource Converter
Turns surplus resources into what you need, at fixed rates.
Dwarven Tavern
Tavernkeepers make hiring cheaper and help break cave-ins.
Runic Barracks
Runic Warriors smash cave-ins and fight off raids.
Trade Post
Traders deal with the nations of the underground.
Beast Den
Beast Haulers make hiring cheaper still.
Gemcutter
Workers polish your gems to make them stronger.
Worker Barracks
Every worker here counts as an extra hand in almost every other room.
Shrine of the Deep
Late-game production that grows with every worker.
Dark Forge
Forges Mythic Upgrades from Shadowsteel.

7 main resources

Ore
Blueprints
Timber
Mythril
Shadowsteel
Trade Points
Rune Shards

Automation helpers, the Guild Hall and the Forge

Earn your automation

The Foreman, the Overseer, the Quartermaster, the Smeltmaster and more sign on as you progress. Each one takes a chore off your hands, and you can switch them on or off, save profiles, or pause them all.

Play actively, or let the hold run while you are away. Offline progress runs at the full rate, and a Welcome Back report shows what your dwarves did.
The Guild Hall gathers every screen of your hold in one place.
The Forge: craft artifacts, cut gems and forge mythic upgrades, all in one place.

The skill tree: three branches of nodes bought with Rune Shards.

Depth 12: a golden dwarf turns up among the miners beside the ore vein.

Raids, dragons and Wardens

Something is knocking on the tunnel wall

Every descent costs more and pays more. Cave-ins block the way, and trolls and a dragon come raiding. Your Runic Warriors handle them.

Past depth 20, each biome has a Warden. Halfway through, it rises and fights like a dragon raid.
Wardens are tougher than dragons, but they drop Shadowsteel, Rune Shards and, the first time, a unique relic.

The Cinderwyrm, Warden of the Emberdeep, fights the hold at depth 25 between falls of lava.

Lithodore the dragon raids the hold at depth 16 while Runic Warriors fight it and the miners scatter.

Omens and challenges

New Dig, with an omen

Start a New Dig to earn Ancestral Knowledge and spend it on permanent blessings. Before each dig the elders read the stones.

Pick one of three omens (each gives something and takes something) or dig as usual. There are 14 to find.
Take on one of 5 challenges for Bronze, Silver and Gold medals. Medals teach your helpers new tricks.
Ascend for a second layer of permanent perks.

The Next Dig screen: three omens to choose from and the optional challenges.

Endless depths

The tunnels keep going

Act one ends at depth 20 with a crown to forge, and the story reaches its ending at depth 40. The tunnels keep going: the Emberdeep, the Drowned Halls, the Crystal Choir and the Hollow Dark, each with its own rule twist and its own Warden to beat.

The biomes cycle deeper and deeper, so there is always another depth.
17 relics to find and equip, runestones to slot, and a 24-node skill tree bought with Rune Shards.

Depth 44 in the Crystal Choir: purple crystal spires around the ore vein and the rooms of the hold.

From depth 20
The Emberdeep
“The rock runs hot here. Seams of molten stone light the tunnels, and anything wooden chars before it reaches the lift.”
Twist Forge Heat
Warden The Cinderwyrm
From depth 30
The Drowned Halls
“An old dwarven city, flooded to the rafters. Boats move faster than feet, but ink runs in the damp.”
Twist Floodwater
Warden The Drowned King
From depth 40
The Crystal Choir
“Every strike of a pick rings through the crystal. The whole cavern hums, and the walls answer.”
Twist Resonance
Warden The Choir Golem
From depth 50
The Hollow Dark
“No lantern reaches the far walls. Things live down here, and they have noticed you.”
Twist The Dark Hungers
Warden The Hollow Wyrm