Mining and the Daily Cache
How Mines earn Shards: quotas, Keep multipliers, the 1-day buffer, extra Mines, raids, streaks, the Daily Shard Cache and the emission multiplier.
Mines are the steady income of your base. They dig Shards around the clock into a small buffer that you collect, and everything that makes them better — more Mines, higher Mine levels, a higher Keep, a daily streak — stacks multiplicatively. The Daily Shard Cache is a separate, flat daily pickup that also powers the streak bonus on your Mines. Pixel Kingdom Wars is in devnet playtest: the KEEP and SOL mentioned on this page are test-net tokens with no real value.
Quick facts
- One Level 1 Mine next to a Level 1 Keep earns 500 Shards per day.
- Income is the sum over all your Mines; each Mine has its own level multiplier, and your Keep level multiplies the total.
- A Mine holds at most one day of its own output. When full, it pauses — nothing is lost, but nothing more is earned until you collect.
- You can own 2 Mines at Keep L1, growing to 8 from Keep L7. The first costs 400 Shards; Mines 2–8 cost KEEP.
- A 7-day Daily Cache streak adds a ×1.4 mining bonus. Missing a day resets the streak.
- The Daily Cache pays 100 to 700 Shards in your first week, then 500/day (streak 7+) or 100/day (rebuilding).
- Raiders take a Mine's uncollected Shards only if they destroy that Mine and win.
How much a Mine earns
The server computes a daily quota per Mine and accrues it second by second. The formula is:
Daily quota = 500 × (sum of each Mine's level multiplier) × Keep multiplier × streak multiplier × emission multiplier × referral multiplier
All of it is integer math on the server, so the number you see in the Mine sheet is exactly what you will be paid.
Why: mining used to be one per-player quota keyed on your best Mine. Since 2026-07-19 every physical Mine contributes on its own, so a second Mine really does add a second income stream instead of being cosmetic.
Mine and Keep multipliers
The Mine multiplier and the Keep multiplier use the same curve. A Level 1 Mine at a Level 1 Keep is ×1.0 × ×1.0; a Level 20 Mine at a Level 20 Keep is ×6.68 × ×6.68.
| Level | Multiplier | Level | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ×1.00 | 11 | ×4.64 |
| 2 | ×1.36 | 12 | ×4.86 |
| 3 | ×1.88 | 13 | ×5.09 |
| 4 | ×2.55 | 14 | ×5.32 |
| 5 | ×3.27 | 15 | ×5.54 |
| 6 | ×3.50 | 16 | ×5.77 |
| 7 | ×3.73 | 17 | ×6.00 |
| 8 | ×3.95 | 18 | ×6.23 |
| 9 | ×4.18 | 19 | ×6.45 |
| 10 | ×4.41 | 20 | ×6.68 |
Worked examples (no streak, normal emission):
- Two Level 1 Mines, Keep L1: 500 × (1.0 + 1.0) × 1.0 = 1,000 Shards/day.
- One Level 5 Mine, Keep L3: 500 × 3.27 × 1.88 ≈ 3,073 Shards/day.
- The ceiling: eight Level 20 Mines, Keep L20, with the ×1.4 streak bonus ≈ 250,000 Shards/day.
The streak multiplier
Once your Daily Cache streak reaches 7 days, every Mine earns ×1.4. The bonus switches on the moment you claim the seventh day — the server re-anchors your Mines right then so the new rate applies immediately — and switches off as soon as a missed day resets the streak. See The Daily Shard Cache below.
The referral multiplier
Each active, qualified referral adds +0.5% to your mining quota (additive: three referrals = ×1.015). A referral qualifies when the referred player mints a Land Deed and reaches Keep L3; the bonus lapses while that player has been inactive for more than 7 days. Details are on Quests, referrals, mail, chat and clans.
The emission multiplier
The last factor is a server-wide throttle explained in The emission multiplier at the end of this page. Most of the time it is ×1.0.
The 1-day buffer and collecting
Every finished Mine accrues into its own buffer, capped at one day of that Mine's quota. When the buffer is full, the Mine simply waits. Nothing is ever seized or expires — but a full Mine is a Mine that is not earning.
- Tap a Mine and press COLLECT MINING. The button shows accrued / capacity and your rate per hour, and a single tap empties every Mine buffer on the selected deed in one transaction.
- Collected Shards are credited to the base that owns the Mines. Shards belong to the Land Deed, not to your wallet; if the deed changes hands, its Shards go with it.
- A Mine starts producing when its build or upgrade job finishes, measured from the authoritative finish time — not from when you next open the game. You are not punished for being away, beyond the buffer cap.
- A new base has no Mine; COLLECT MINING and the Daily Cache both refuse with "build a Mine first" until your first Mine is complete.
- Collecting also ticks the daily quests Collect from your Mines (10 Shards) and Collect 1,000 mined Shards (25 Shards).
Tip: because the cap is exactly one day, logging in once a day keeps every Mine at full efficiency. Twice a day changes nothing; once every two days halves your income.
How many Mines, and what they cost
The number of Mines you may own is gated by your Keep level:
| Keep level | Max Mines |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 5 |
| 5 | 6 |
| 6 | 7 |
| 7–20 | 8 |
Mine prices rise steeply with each additional Mine. Building a Mine never costs SOL; every Mine after the first is paid in KEEP (devnet KEEP, which the game recycles into its emission pool rather than burning).
| Mine | Price |
|---|---|
| 1st | 400 Shards |
| 2nd | 1,500 KEEP |
| 3rd | 4,000 KEEP |
| 4th | 10,000 KEEP |
| 5th | 22,000 KEEP |
| 6th | 45,000 KEEP |
| 7th | 80,000 KEEP |
| 8th | 130,000 KEEP |
Why: each Mine adds income linearly, so the acquisition curve is super-linear on purpose. The 8-Mine cap was also tuned so a maxed base's mining stays under the KEEP withdrawal cap.
Mines are 1×1, take 60 seconds to build, and occupy a builder for that minute. See Base building for placement rules and builders.
Upgrading a Mine
Upgrades cost Shards and builder time, and a Mine can never be upgraded above your current Keep level. From Level 5 upward, each upgrade also costs SOL on top of the Shards. The SOL goes entirely to the game's liquidity wallet. Levels 2–4 are Shards only.
| Upgrade to | Shards | Time | SOL |
|---|---|---|---|
| L2 | 61 | 2 h | — |
| L3 | 95 | ≈2.6 h | — |
| L4 | 148 | ≈3.3 h | — |
| L5 | 231 | ≈4.2 h | 0.50 |
| L6 | 359 | ≈5.4 h | 0.65 |
| L7 | 561 | ≈6.9 h | 0.85 |
| L8 | 876 | ≈8.8 h | 1.04 |
| L9 | 1,370 | ≈11.2 h | 1.22 |
| L10 | 2,140 | ≈14.3 h | 1.40 |
| Upgrade to | Shards | Time | SOL |
|---|---|---|---|
| L11 | 3,330 | ≈18.3 h | 1.58 |
| L12 | 5,190 | ≈23.4 h | 1.76 |
| L13 | 8,100 | ≈1.25 d | 1.94 |
| L14 | 12,600 | ≈1.6 d | 2.12 |
| L15 | 19,700 | ≈2.0 d | 2.30 |
| L16 | 30,700 | ≈2.6 d | 2.48 |
| L17 | 48,000 | ≈3.3 d | 2.66 |
| L18 | 74,800 | ≈4.3 d | 2.84 |
| L19 | 117,000 | ≈5.5 d | 3.02 |
| L20 | 182,000 | 7 d | 3.20 |
The SOL prices from L6 upward are playtest placeholders: the server charges them today, but they are marked for owner tuning and may change. All SOL here is devnet SOL.
Tip: levels 2–4 are cheap and quick (under five hours each) and already take a Mine from ×1.0 to ×2.55. Max those out on every Mine before reaching for the SOL-priced levels.
What raids can take from your Mines
Uncollected Shards sitting in a Mine's buffer are handled differently from the Shards already in your base balance:
- Collected Shards in your base balance (plus anything sitting in today's open Gold Forge) are the main loot pool: up to 50% is exposed, reduced by your best standing Vault. See Raids and loot and Defenses, traps and walls.
- Uncollected Shards in a Mine are paid to the attacker only if that specific Mine is destroyed in the raid and the attacker wins at least one star. A Mine that survives the fight keeps its buffer, and a Mine destroyed in a raid that ends with zero stars keeps it too.
- While a raid on your base is live, the Mine buffers are frozen; whatever is not awarded is put back into the Mine (still capped at one day) when the raid settles.
Tip: collecting before you log off removes the buffer from play entirely. A full day's output sitting in an unwalled Mine is the easiest loot on the map.
The Daily Shard Cache
The Daily Shard Cache is a flat daily reward, separate from mining and separate from the Gold Forge. It is claimed from the DAILY SHARD CACHE screen — the streak pill in the base HUD turns gold and reads CLAIM! when it is ready, and shows your current day (for example D3) after you have claimed.
Schedule and amounts
- One claim per base per UTC day. After claiming, the button reads CLAIMED TODAY and NEXT CACHE counts down to UTC midnight.
- You need at least one finished Mine on the base to claim.
- First week ever (one time only): the reward is 100 Shards × your streak day — D1 100, D2 200, D3 300, D4 400, D5 500, D6 600, D7 700.
- After your first completed week: 500 Shards per day while your streak is 7 or more, and 100 Shards per day while you are rebuilding a streak below 7.
| Situation | Cache paid |
|---|---|
| First week, day N (1–7) | N × 100 Shards |
| Later, streak ≥ 7 | 500 Shards |
| Later, streak < 7 | 100 Shards |
Streak rules
- Claiming on consecutive UTC days extends the streak by one.
- A gap of more than one day (you skip a whole UTC day) resets the streak to 1.
- Reaching day 7 turns on the ×1.4 mining bonus; dropping below 7 turns it off. Both changes apply to your Mines immediately.
- The streak and the "first week completed" flag belong to the base, like its Shards.
- Claiming ticks the daily quest Claim the Daily Cache (10 Shards).
Why: the Cache is deliberately small. Its real job is to reward showing up every day — the ×1.4 on all your Mines is worth far more than the 500 Shards once your Mines have grown.
The emission multiplier, explained
Mining income is multiplied by a server-wide emission multiplier between ×0.1 and ×1.0. By default it is ×1.0. It exists so the economy can slow Shard mining automatically if the KEEP side of the game comes under pressure.
Every 10 minutes the server looks at three signals and takes the most restrictive:
- Pool health — how much of the lifetime KEEP reward pool is left. At 50% or more remaining there is no throttle; at 10% or less the multiplier hits the ×0.1 floor; linear in between.
- Outflow — KEEP withdrawn over the last 24 hours as a share of the remaining pool. At 1% per day or less there is no throttle; at 6% per day or more, the floor.
- Crowd — active players in the last 24 hours versus a baseline of 1,500. At or under the baseline, no throttle; above it, the multiplier scales down in proportion.
Changes are smoothed asymmetrically: the multiplier can drop by up to ×0.4 per tick but recovers by only ×0.05 per tick, so a spike throttles within a few ticks and eases back over hours instead of oscillating. The multiplier takes effect at your next collect.
Two things it does not touch: the Daily Cache (a flat payout) and the Gold Forge's daily KEEP emission, which is fixed. See Gold Forge.
There is no player-facing "epoch" or halving in the live game; the only runtime lever on mining is this multiplier.