Wiki / Mining / Tectonic Drills
⛏ Tectonic Drills

Tectonic Drills

The signature payoff of the Tectonic alignment: industrial rigs you plant on ore that mine on their own, even while you're offline, banking materials for you to claim later.

Overview #

Drills are the exclusive reward of the Tectonic alignment. Buy one from the Drill Mechanic (only Tectonic-aligned players can trade with him), place it on an ore block, and it starts mining that block for you, no clicking required. Everything it digs is banked into the drill's own inventory, which you claim from its panel or the /drills menu.

Because drills keep running while you're away, they're the closest thing to true automation in the mines. A drill even keeps mining in the Diamond Mine or any other ore area because the whole game is one seamless world, so a drill you place anywhere just keeps working.

⛏ Mines on its own

Place it on ore and it grinds that block, banks the yield, waits out the block's reset, then mines it again forever, with no input from you.

😴 Runs offline

Every drill keeps mining for a set stretch of time after you log off, so you come back to a full inventory of banked ore.

📦 Banks its own ore

Yield goes into the drill's inventory, not straight to your balance. Claim it whenever from the drill's panel or the /drills overview.

🔌
Drills are items, so they're never lost to any reset. A Seconds, Chrono Dust, Time Leap, or Era reset all leave your drills (and everything they've banked) exactly where they are.

The Five Drills #

There are five drill tiers, each a dramatic step up from the last. The ore multiplier is the factor applied to a block's normal ore gain on every break, the area is the pocket of blocks it clears around itself, and offline runtime is how long it keeps mining after you log off.

DrillRarityOre mult.AreaOffline runtime
Basic DrillCommon×0.4–0.63×32h
Reinforced DrillUncommon×0.8–1.23×34h
Excavator DrillRare×1.5–2.53×36h
Magma Core DrillEpic×3–55×510h
Tectonic TitanLegendary×2–42×2 (all)16h
Basic Drill
A salvaged copper starter. Intentionally weaker than hand-mining (it yields less than one of your own swings), so its whole value is grinding away for free while you're gone.
Reinforced Drill
An iron-plated workhorse that pays back a full block's worth of ore and grinds several times faster than the Basic Drill.
Excavator Drill
A heavy deepslate excavator: it roughly doubles ore yield, mines quickly, and clears most of its 3×3 ring with every break.
Magma Core Drill
A molten core that quadruples ore yield at blazing mining speed ⛏ and tears through a wide 5×5 pocket of blocks each break.
Tectonic Titan
The Mechanic's masterwork: a colossal 2×2 rig that stands over a 2×2 of ore and mines all four blocks every break, with monstrous mining speed and near-instant resets.
💡
Each drill rolls its exact ore multiplier, mining speed, and block-reset time once when it's built and keeps those values for life, so two drills of the same tier can perform a little differently. Roll high and you've got a keeper.

How to Get Them #

Drills are traded from the Drill Mechanic, who only deals with Tectonic players. Costs lean on scarce Pure Diamonds and custom mob-drop components, with a light sprinkle of raw ore on the early tiers. Every tier also consumes one drill of the tier below it, so you build up the ladder rather than buying each in isolation.

DrillCost
Basic Drill250 Pure Diamonds + 10,000 Diamonds
Reinforced Drill2,000 Pure Diamonds + 8× Rusted Gear + 250,000 Iron + 1 Basic Drill
Excavator Drill10,000 Pure Diamonds + 6× Undead Core + 10× Rusted Gear + 1 Reinforced Drill
Magma Core Drill30,000 Pure Diamonds + 4× Gemstone Core + 12× Undead Core + 1 Excavator Drill
Tectonic Titan50,000 Pure Diamonds + 2× Tectonic Heart + 8× Gemstone Core + 32× Undead Core + 1 Magma Core Drill
🔌
The components (Rusted Gear, Undead Core, Gemstone Core, and the Tectonic Heart) drop from Diamond Mine mobs like the Undead Miner and Gemstone Guardian. The Tectonic Heart is the exclusive rub: it drops only for Tectonic-aligned players, so only a true Tectonic timelord can ever supply the Titan.

Placing & Claiming #

To place a drill, hold it and aim at an ore block with room above it. Rarer, taller drills need a little more headroom, and the Tectonic Titan needs a full 2×2 of minable blocks to stand on. Once planted, it starts mining immediately.

Placement cap
You can have up to 3 drills planted at once (dormant drills whose chunk is unloaded still count against the limit).
Placement cooldown
There's a short 3-second wait between placements, so drills can't be cycled to replace a pickaxe for active mining.
Managing drills
Run /drills to see every drill you own, live or dormant, with its area, coordinates, and mining status. Left-click one to open its panel and claim its banked yield; right-click one (in the world or the menu) to pick it back up.
Claiming yield
A drill banks everything it mines into its own inventory. Nothing hits your balance until you claim it from the drill's panel.
⏳
Offline runtime is a cap on catch-up: log off and the drill keeps mining only up to its rarity's limit (2h–16h). While you're online, though, a drill in an unloaded area keeps banking the whole time uncapped, so staying logged in keeps every drill working no matter where you wander.

Strategy & Related #

The Basic Drill isn't meant to out-mine you. It's an offline trickle. The real turning point is the Excavator and up, which overtake hand-mining and clear a whole pocket of ore per break. Point your best drills at your most valuable ore (usually Diamonds) and let them feed your Pure Diamond refining while you're off doing anything else.

Drills pair naturally with the rest of the Tectonic kit: the Fault Line passive shatters ore in an expanding radius as you hand-mine, and the Deep Breaker pickaxe breaks any ore with its Mining Surge ability. Together they make Tectonic the definitive mining alignment.

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Not sure what any of this means yet? /guide opens this wiki in your browser. Start from the Mining overview or the Alignments page to see where drills fit in.