Mining Basics

Mining is the heartbeat of Ancients. Every ore you break pays you three ways at once — money, Ancient Energy, and level XP — and everything else on the server grows out of that loop.

What every block gives you

Money ($). Ore you mine is sold automatically the moment you break it, and the cash is handed to you as a Money Note item. Right-click the note while you're in a safe zone to claim the money. While you're out in the mines (outside safe zones), a sell tax is taken from the payout first — there's no tax on ore mined inside a safe zone.

Ancient Energy. Energy from each block is stored inside your pickaxe as you mine. When you want to use it, you have two options:

• /extract while holding your pickaxe to turn its stored energy into Ancient Energy items you can carry, trade, or spend. Extracting is tax-free in a safe zone — outside one, a tax is taken (the amount is shown in chat, and it shrinks as your prison rank rises).
• Drop your pickaxe into a wormhole to spend its stored energy on pickaxe enchants. If your pickaxe is "overflowing" with energy, the game will remind you to do one or the other.

Ancient Energy is also a currency in its own right — for example, Auction House listings can be sold for energy instead of cash (/ah).

Level XP. Mining ore is the primary way to raise your level, which unlocks new mines and areas. Check /levels for milestones, XP requirements, and rewards — leveling up also pays out bonus rewards like shards. There's a server-wide level cap that rises as the season goes on; once you hit the current cap, blocks stop giving XP until the cap rises. Check it with /levelcap.

Sell prices and respawn times

These are the base prices you'll see in /sellprices (bonuses and the sell tax adjust the final payout). Each broken ore regenerates in place after its respawn time.

Higher-tier ores also grant more Ancient Energy and XP per block. If you spot deepslate variants, they're worth a little more than the regular block.

Pickaxes — what you can mine

You need a good enough pickaxe for each ore. The /shop (usable in safe zones or in your own cell) sells the full range, from wooden to netherite:

Two extra notes:

• Emerald also requires you to be level 100, no matter your pickaxe.
• Your pickaxe has its own level, too. A pickaxe leveled high enough (with a matching prison level) can mine one ore tier above its material's normal range, so you don't always need to rush the next pickaxe upgrade.

Staying alive out there

PvP is on throughout the mines — the only safe ground is in safe zones: spawn and the warp arrival platforms above each mine. The /warp menu shows a danger meter that climbs with each mine tier. Health regeneration works old-school style: as long as your hunger bar stays nearly full you steadily regenerate health, and hunger drains much more slowly than you might be used to.

Meteors and meteorites

Keep an eye on the sky. Meteors periodically crash down around the prison — a landed meteor sticks around for 10 minutes before despawning, so mine it while you can. Smaller meteorites also turn up around the map, and their ore is far richer in Ancient Energy than regular mine blocks.

Optional client mod

PrisonsMod is an optional, client-side Fabric mod made for Ancients. It's purely cosmetic and quality-of-life — HUD widgets, floating numbers, gang and meteor pings, scrollable tooltips — and does nothing on other servers; the server always stays authoritative. Grab the latest release at github.com/alekswoje/PrisonsMod/releases.