How a Rift Run Works — Ancients Wiki

Inside the Rift you mine through a series of rounds for as long as your daily time lasts.

Continuous rounds

Each round runs for about 90 seconds, followed by a short ~5-second pause while a fresh mine is prepared, then the next round begins.
Rounds keep cycling endlessly while anyone is inside — there's no fixed number of waves any more.
When the Rift empties, the rotation stops and the mine regenerates, so the next person to enter starts clean at round 1.

You earn points by mining ore. See Rift Points & Shards for the values and special blocks.

You're fully invincible — nothing in the Rift can hurt you.
You can't drop the Rift pickaxe or pick items up, and most commands are blocked. /rift leave always works.
Your personal boosters auto-pause on entry and resume when you leave, so you don't waste booster time mining a kit pickaxe.
The Rift pickaxe is kit gear and can never be kept. Both wormholes now refuse it outright, so a Rift pickaxe dropped into the Calcite Wormhole or the enchant Wormhole simply stays in your inventory.

Leaving (/rift leave, running out of time, or a staff close) restores your stored inventory and sends you to spawn.
If you disconnect, crash, or the server reboots while inside, your inventory is handed back automatically the next time you log in on any server — nothing is lost.

Rift rounds now cycle continuously while anyone is inside (the mine regenerates each round) instead of a fixed three-wave event; the rotation pauses and resets when the Rift empties.
Your inventory is restored on exit and auto-recovered after a disconnect, crash, or reboot; boosters auto-pause while you're inside.

Rift event pickaxes can no longer be dropped into either wormhole: a dropped Rift pickaxe stays in your inventory instead.