Mining, ores and essences

Mining is the heartbeat of Time Heroes. Your coins per second are your damage per second, so every pet you hatch is really a mining upgrade. You can tap nodes by hand for burst income, or let passive mining run, and in practice you do both.

One rule catches almost every new player: passive mining pays nothing at all until you own the Auto Miner research, which unlocks in the Research Lab at level 5 and costs 0 gems plus 10 Forest Essence.

Idle, closed and open tabs pay differently

Time Heroes treats an open browser tab and a closed game as two different states, and the difference is large enough to plan around.

• An open idle tab pays your full coin rate.
• A closed game pays half the coin rate.
• Idle mining pays half ore, but essences accrue at the same rate whether you are tapping or not.

Item drops are a count, not a timer

While you mine, items drop on their own inside a 45 to 90 second band. The detail that changes how you build: drop boosts raise the number of items in each drop, they never shorten the interval. Stacking drop rate does not make the game tick faster, it makes each tick heavier.

Every world has one signature essence

Essence is the world's own material, and it is what research cards, craft recipes and the shuttle are priced in. Its rarity band climbs as the worlds do, from Uncommon in World 1 up to Secret in World 10.

What essences are for

Essences are not decoration. They are the material the game keeps asking you for once coins alone stop being the answer.

• The Auto Miner research needs 10 Forest Essence
• Craft recipes and shuttle modules are priced in the essence of the world they belong to
• Colony donations accept materials as well as gems

Ores and the industrial era

Ores are a second resource layer that starts at level 10, when coal appears alongside the Shuttle. Copper follows at level 11 with the Smelter, and iron at level 14. Ores do not feed hatching at all. They feed the shuttle's crafting chain, which turns raw ore into plates, components and eventually ship modules.

That split is worth understanding early. Essences buy access to new worlds. Ores buy a better ship. They are farmed in the same place but they are spent in completely different parts of the game.

The Digsite

The Digsite opens at level 33 and is a different kind of extraction. You spend shovels on dig runs through layered ground, and deeper layers carry collapse tiles that end the run. The Surface layer has zero collapse tiles, so it is a safe place to learn the board. A Treasure run carries three collapse tiles out of nine, which is the trade you are actually making when you dig deeper.