Mining warnings

Main article: Mining

Under some circumstances a warning message will appear in the event window while mining or tunnelling to inform the player that they are either unable to continue on the current tile or that continuing may cause unusual effects.

Informational messages

These messages do not prevent mining but inform the player of the result of their actions should mining continue. These may be intentional or otherwise.

The cave walls sound hollow. 

This appears when mining into another shaft and the height difference is not dangerous.

Preventative messages

Mining will be no longer possible when receiving one of the following messages:

Side shaft

The cave walls sound hollow. A dangerous side shaft could emerge. [The cave shudders from some imbalance.]

This message appears when the tile being mined shares a single corner with an existing tunnel. To continue, adjacent tiles must be mined out before mining can continue on this tile. See example on the right.

Cannot have cave entrances meeting diagonally.

This message appears when there is another cave entrance diagonally. It can be two tiles away from the tile giving the message. Mine out the adjacent tiles, so you can connect the two entrances by a tunnel.

The mountainside would risk crumbling. You cannot tunnel here.

Occurs when opening a new tunnel from the surface. This message appears when there is already a tunnel to the back or the sides of the entrance tile or if a tunnel is ahead but too far down to connect to. Surface mine down to reduce the slopes, then attempt to tunnel again.

The cave walls look very unstable. You cannot keep mining here.

This message appears when mining close to the top of the rock layer. The ceiling of the newly mined tile would break the rock layer. Can sometimes be avoided by mining downwards or by lowering the mine floor and opening the new tile a bit lower.

The cave walls look very unstable and dirt flows in. You would be buried alive.

This message appears when the tile being mined will break out to the surface, but the surface is not exposed rock. To open the entrance, the rock on the surface must be fully exposed.

A dangerous crack is starting to form on the floor. You will have to find another way. [The cave shudders from some imbalance.]

This message appears when undermining previous tile mined above, as in a steep upwards dropshaft would be created. There is no fix for this, though mining another wall, and changing tunnel direction, may work. Going from the other side down should work.

The ground is too steep to mine at here. You need to make it more flat.

This message appears occasionally when mining the floor down. The cause is unknown.

The ground sounds strangely hollow and brittle. You have to abandon the mining operation. 

This message appears when when there's already a tunnel on the tile being tunneled. An entrance cannot be mined here.

The topology here makes it impossible to mine in a good way.

This message appears when trying to create a mine entrance on a perfectly flat rock tile. One corner must be lowered with surface mining to continue.
This can also occur if both corners nearest the lowest corner are the same height.
Has also been reported underground, probably when mining that tile would create a flat mine entrance. Mining downwards may work in this case.

The mountainside would risk crumbling. You can't open a hole here.

This message appears when attempting to create a mine entrance on a rock tile that is too steep. The maximum slope is 270.

There is no space to mine here. Clear the area first.

This message appears when the tile occupied by the player has 100 a pile of items. Clear the area or move the character onto another tile and make a new pile of shards.

You fail to produce anything here. The rock is stone hard.

This message appears when tunneling on the surface. This means the tile you are attempting to excavate is actually an ore vein. There's nothing to do about it, you simply have to make your entrance on another tile. Note that if you make the entrance one tile below the vein, the tunnel will open right into the vein and cannot be extended until the vein is depleted. The best course of action at this point would probably be to mine out a rock tile next to the one you get this message on.

This message also appears when mining down a floor and roof is too high, Can only be fixed by collapsing all affected tiles and re-mining. (In other words, if you want the tile flat collapse it and re-mine, if you want to lower it collapse all surrounding tiles and re-mine.)

You hear falling rocks from the other side of the wall. A deep shaft will probably emerge.

This message appears when there is already another mine nearby, but there is too much of a height difference to connect the two mines.

You cannot keep mining here. The rock is unusually hard.

The message appears when attempting to open a tunnel directly onto a vein.

The roof sounds strangely hollow and you notice dirt flowing in, so you stop mining.

This message appears when mining the ceiling too close to the surface and it is not dug to rock on the surface.

The water is too deep to mine here.

This message appears when trying to mine too far under the water table.

The roof sounds strangely hollow. You must mine the other corners if you want to create an opening.

This message appears when mining a cave ceiling to the outside tile corners height.

The roof sounds dangerously weak and you must abandon this attempt.

This message appears to indicates the rock layer above is very close to the ceiling, so there is no more room to mine further.

You cannot reach the ceiling. 

This message appears when you can't mine the ceiling any higher.

You are not allowed to mine here.

Deed permissions have disabled mining, and at least one spirit templar exists to uphold the law.

The rock sounds hollow, you will need to tunnel to continue

This message appears when trying to surface mine above an open tile underground, and you are already at the ceiling height of the mine.

The rock is too hard to mine.

This message appears when you have tried to mine into a reinforced tile or more rarely, happens with stacked action when the wall breaks before you run out of actions (i.e. trying to mine thin air).

You are too unskilled to mine here.

This message appears when trying to surface mine higher than your skill allows. Freedom Formula: 3 x Mining Skill. Epic Formula: 1 x Mining Skill (Not-curved).

An altar of (deity) on the surface disturbs your operation.

This message appears when an altar is directly above the tile you are trying to mine (possibly near the entrance?). Push the altar to another tile.

This tile is protected by the gods. You can not mine here.

This message appears when a GM protected highway tile above the tile that is being mined.

A felled tree on the surface disturbs your operation.

This message appears when a felled tree is laying over the surface of the tile where the tunnel will be created. Occurs when mining from the inside out.

Current tile needs a flat border to correspond to lower part of adjacent cave entrance.

This message appears when you need to surface mine the bottom slope of the adjacent tile to match the slope of the mine entrance, only when creating a multi-tile entrance.

Lowering the floor further would make the cavern unstable.

This message appears when ceiling is too high above the floor.