Guide - A *fairly* Comprehensive Guide to Mining Progression in CH (Ironman Oriented) (2024)

Update 1: Unfortunately, the "cheese strat" of using a garbage pickaxe is no longer viable, you NEED the Ruby and Gemstone drills. There are a few ways to get the ruby drill; farming bal for 480 flawed ruby, opening chests, and a titanium pickaxe from Bubu for 1m coins, a bejeweled handle (3 glacite jewels) and 100 titanium. Although I cannot vouch for any of these methods, I'd imagine you can do a bit of all and *eventually* get enough. Alternatively, you could go for a Pickonimbus but I don't suggest it as it only has 5000 durability. You can get this from either nucleus runs or rarely in chests/mines of Divans. After you get your Ruby drill or Pickonimbus, Gemstone drill is straight forward. After Gemstone drill, you basically ignore most of the armadillo nerf, only excluding jasper which is not high on the priority list if you're reading this.

Before I start the guide, I want to make a few remarks as to who this guide is aimed at. First, this guide assumes you are HOTM 3 (obviously). It also assumes you have "decent" gear before starting CH; for reference, automatons in CH are not "no gear" friendly but I was able to kill them *reasonably* on a day 14 profile on ironman (no fairy souls). Third, this is not meant to be a substitute for a guide to CH; I will not cover specifics like "where do I do XYZ comm". Lastly, this guide is obviously not limited to ironman, this is easily modifiable for trade as you see fit.

At HOTM 3, you unlock CH which is daunting. If you've never done CH starting with nothing and being able to buy everything (such as a pickonimbus) you need, there's a good chance that you have no idea what you should do for progression. In this guide, I will give some sort of an idea as to what this progression should look like for you to have an easier time. As per this game, grinding will not be easy; it is a MMO. Be sure to take breaks because this is a rather lengthy process.
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Stage 1: Bare minimums
If you are starting a profile and gunning straight to CH, I would suggest that you at least have the following gear as a bare minimum:
-Wise Glacite Armor (You should already have this)
-Heroic Dreadlord (Get carried through entrance I guess?)
-Good Mobility (AOTE is probably best here, set up a bunch of enderman minions on your island and occasionally use a cleaver on them with looting. Grappling is okay too but I don't prefer it over AOTE.)
-A diamond pickaxe (no, literally, unless if you bought a bandaged mithril pick or better, this is the one)

For your HOTM, the only perks you should NEED on are Daily powder and Mining Speed Boost. Mining Speed is okay too but I don't find it necessary to have a high level of plus you wouldn't need to respec later.
As soon as you enter CH, your goal is to open A LOT of chests. Find structures, open chests, and try to find a prehistoric egg. Armadillo pet will be your bread and butter for the remainder of your mining experience in CH so get one ASAP. After you get a prehistoric egg and hatch it, you can move onto stage 2
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Stage 2: Comms for days
This is where the real grind begins. HOTM 4 & 5 aren't *too* bad to grind for while in CH; from HOTM 3 to 5, you need 85,000 HOTM exp which, if you do your dailies daily, this will take ~15 days. Of course, you should do as many comms as you can/want even without daily exp. However, HOTM 6 & 7 are rather lengthy if you only rely on dailies, taking up to 2 months meaning I highly recommend doing extra comms if you want to shorten this time. Spending an hour doing 10 extra comms a day at a rate of 6 minutes per comm (if you are good at comms, it really shouldn't take nearly as long) almost doubles how fast you will progress through HOTM. At this point, you will rack up a bunch of tokens and wonder how to spend them. I recommend the following at each HOTM (note: you may have more tokens than what I recommend, I would save these to spare yourself of a respec)

As for the rest of your tokens, it doesn't really matter what you decide to put them into. Unless you wish to manually mine (AKA mine in divans mines or bal), you do not need the mining speed the left side of the tree offers. Some potentially okay choices include Quick Forge, Front Loaded, and Sky Mall, though I cannot personally recommend any of these besides Quick Forge.

While you are working on comms, you should also work towards getting a jungle pickaxe, A LOT of hardstone for flamebreaker armor, yog armor, personal compactor (not strictly necessary), and

(Ruby and Gemstone Drills do not appear to work with armadillo currently). I will provide additional tips for these items.

Once you've acquired everything and at least have HOTM 6 (although 7 is preferable), you can move onto stage 3
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Stage 3: Infinity war
At this point, you're ready to go for the big guns, the gemstone gauntlet. Before you actually bash your skull in to get it however, make sure that you have a fine topaz and jade on your yog, pristine 3 (I suggest 4 since you will need this setup for quite a while) on your gemstone drill, and a decent amount of powder specced into mining fortune (Maybe level 30 Mining Fortune, maxed out Fortunate, and level 30 Mining Fortune 2). Unfortunately, there is no better way than to dig around the magma fields and mining the occasional topaz with armadillo while holding your gemstone drill for pristine and same goes for ruby. However, if you do some research on google/finding in game, you can find HUGE veins of these which you can mark the coords down since they do not change positions unless if a structure spawns there. People usually keep these coords private since they do not want people griefing their setups. If anyone asks, I did not tell you this.
For the gold portion of the gauntlet, dwarven mines royal mines is AMAZING for it now; since Hypixel re-enabled efficient miner and mining fortune to work on it, gold shouldn't be too difficult to come by. If you're too lazy, gold minions.
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Stage 4: Profit?
After you get your gauntlet, you aren't quite finished. Now, you need to regrind pristine for it EXCEPT it has to be pristine 5 now. Also, you need a bunch of powder for mining. You can find the exact number of powder you need to max out mining fortune on your HOTM tree here:

Along with this, there are a lot of upgrades that will allow you to max out mining. You should get Divan's armor as it gives A LOT of mining fortune that yog armor does not give (120 mining fortune would be about 10% more gems mined). As you're farming nucleus for the fragments, you will get a few jaderalds which, of course, you would put on your Divan armor when you get it. While getting the pieces for divans, make sure to grind out gemstone chambers for the topaz slots (make sure to unlock these first) and jade slots (even more mining fortune). You also need to grind for an artifact of power as it gives a topaz slot which, of course, gives extra mining fortune and pristine (although the effect is halved but it's necessary for min-maxing).
Finally, try to get as many mining levels as you can. This is best done in the dwarven mines, mining mithril for hours on end, with the silverfish pet. Unless you plan to go for a 655, don't bother with mining fortune (although if you have enough powder, definitely spec into it regardless because you can make money/have the materials). All you really need is Mining Speed (1 and 2), Daily powder, Efficient Miner, and Seasoned Mineman.

I hope this guide is somewhat useful to whoever needs it. If you have any questions/suggestions, feel free to let me know. Thanks for reading!

TLDR: Get armadillo, grind comms for HOTM, Yog armor,

, get a bunch of pristine, gemstone gauntlet.