Vein Miner

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Not out yet

Not out yet. In the development build; not in the 0.6.0 download.

The Vein Miner turns one swing of the right tool into many blocks: a whole ore vein, a whole tree, a tunnel, a shaft or a staircase. It is off until you turn it on. It lives in Hard Hoof Core, so every Hard Hoof jar has it.

What it is for

Inputs: a tool that is right for the block you hit (a pickaxe for ore, an axe for logs, a shovel for dirt), and a shape you chose.
Outputs: every block the shape takes, broken one wave at a time. The drops land at your feet and the experience comes to you as orbs.
Controls: the H wheel, two optional keys, and a shape screen. All below.

Turn it on

Press H to open the wheel. The Vein Miner is the pickaxe slice.
Click the slice. The wheel closes, and the action bar says "Vein Miner on" with the shape and size, or "Vein Miner off". An ON badge shows on the slice while it is on.
Right-click the slice, or hold Shift and press Enter or its number, to open the shape screen. A slice with a second action shows three dots on its rim.

There are two keys you can set in Options, Controls (Gameplay): Vein Miner: on / off and Vein Miner: shapes. Both are unbound until you set them.

Sneak mines just the one block you hit while the Vein Miner is on. This is a setting in the shape screen, on by default. The count under the crosshair then reads "one block".

First example

Turn the Vein Miner on and choose Shapeless.
Hold an axe and look at a tree trunk. The whole tree lights up in gold, and a +N count appears under the crosshair.
Break the log you are looking at. The tree comes down log by log, and the logs land at your feet.

Try the same with a pickaxe on an ore vein. A wall of stone beside it stays, because it is not the same block.

Shapes

Each shape keeps its own number. Hold Shift while you press − or + to step by 8.

Shape	Number	What one swing takes
Shapeless	most blocks, 8 to 256 (64 at first)	Every touching block of the same kind, corners included: a vein or a tree. Nearest first.
1 × 3 × 3	none	The 3 × 3 square on the face you hit, one deep. For walls and floors.
3 × 3 × 3	none	A 3 × 3 × 3 block of rock, from the face you hit inward.
Tunnel	distance 2 to 64 (16), width 1 × 2 or 3 × 3	Straight ahead and big enough to walk.
Straight down	distance 2 to 128 (16), width 1 × 1 or 3 × 3	A shaft down, for ropes and lifts. Stand beside it: it will not hold you up.
Straight up	distance 2 to 128 (16), width 1 × 1 or 3 × 3	A shaft up, for chimneys and lifts.
Stairs down	distance 2 to 64 (16)	A staircase down ahead, one block per step, with headroom to walk it.
Stairs up	distance 2 to 64 (16)	The same, going up.

"Same kind" means the same block, or the same metal's ore (stone and deepslate alike), or the same tree's logs. Stripped logs do not join. "Ahead" is into the face you hit when that face is a side, otherwise the way you look. The 3 × 3 width fits a 3 × 3 lift car: see Lifts and Rope.

What stops it

The preview shows these before you swing, so what is lit is what goes.

Wrong tool. It takes only blocks your tool is right for. The first block it is not right for stays, and that line stops there, boxed in red. A pickaxe tunnel stops at dirt: switch to a shovel to go on.
Water and lava. It stops short of them rather than let them in. Stop blocks beside a fluid are boxed in blue. A shaped swing never opens onto water or lava.
Chests, machines and anything else that holds items or fluid. They are never taken.
Claims and protection. Each block goes through the ordinary break rules, so a claim or spawn protection that forbids breaking a block stops it.

Wear

A swing never takes so many blocks that your tool would break. It stops before the tool's last point of durability, and the count turns crimson and reads "worn". It also stops at once if you change what you hold. Every block wears the tool as if you had broken it by hand, and fortune and silk touch work on each block. There is a hard limit of 1,024 blocks per swing.

The highlight

While the Vein Miner is on and you look at a block your tool can mine:

the blocks it will take are outlined in gold, with a dimmer copy visible through rock;
a light band runs through the shape in the order the blocks will break;
stop blocks are boxed in crimson (blue for fluids);
the count shows under the crosshair. It reads "stand aside" when you stand on a shaft you are about to dig down, and "not this tool" when your tool is wrong.

Delver interplay

The Delver specialization (chosen at the Calling, Adventure level 10: see Character growth) is built around the Vein Miner.

Delver part	Effect on the Vein Miner
Sealing	Lines are not stopped by a block beside water or lava. Every block the swing breaks plugs each liquid beside it: stone stays stone, anything else becomes cobblestone. The fluid itself still stops a line, and waterlogged blocks are left alone.
Reach	The Vein Miner reaches 50% further.
Mastery (level 10 of the Mining skill)	The pick wears half as fast.
Motherlode (Z)	A separate technique: the next ore you break brings its whole vein out at once, doubled, and does not wear the pick.
Survey (Sneak + Z)	Pins the ore bodies within 48 blocks on your team's map.

The Vein Miner itself is for everyone, not only Delvers. The Delver adds the safe lines and the reach.

Hands that dig

An empty hand can count as a tool. The Construct's Drill Arm is the first: a Construct with a working arm digs ore, stone and dirt in veins as an iron pickaxe or shovel would. Each block wears the arm a point and costs the Construct its usual charge. The vein stops before the arm's last point of wear or last charge, and it runs twice as fast as a pickaxe's. See Species.

Settings file

Your choices (on or off, shape, each shape's number, widths, sneak) are stored in the client config hardhoof_core-vein.toml. Your client tells the server your settings when you join and when they change. A server starts everyone with the Vein Miner off.