Changes

The first step in all mines is to make a mine entrance on the surface. This can be done on any [[cliff]] or [[rock]] tile. Surface Equip a mining is fairly quick compared to tunnel pick, and ore select the mining-> tunneling option. After 51 mining tunneling actions, the message "You will soon create an entrance" will appear. A few actions later an entrance will be created. The exact value is random, averaging around 5 mining actions after the message appears. Tunneling on a shallow slope is dangerous since you are basically mining straight down and may dig yourself into a steep slope or a pit. A slope of 10+ is probably safe (estimate). The good news is that a poor tunnel slopes can be fixed. The bad news is that it is a lot of work! Sculpting rods, if you have access to one, are the fastest way to shape rock. Someone else will need to enter data on them, as I have never owned one. You can now change the slope of surface rock with a mining pick. It is time consuming, but possible. Here's a step-by-step on how to do this. 1) You must clear a square of four tiles all the way down to rock in order to lower the rock at the point where those four tiles intersect. To clear all the dirt off a single rock tile, you must dig down to rock on all four corners. You will know that you have hit rock by watching event messages for messages that indicate you are hitting rock. You will also cease collecting dirt in inventory when you start hitting rock. Example:  A--B--C | | | D--E--F | | | G--H--I If you want to lower rock at point E, you will have to dig down to rock at all points A through I. Points A/B/E/D will clear the top left square, B/C/F/E will clear the top right, etc, etc. 2) Activate your mining pick and stand at the intersection of the four tiles (point E), click the ground, and select the mining action. Be sure that you do not select tunneling. Tunneling will eventually create a mine entrance, which we do not want (at least not yet) 3) Roughly once per every 10 mining actions, according to recent notes, you will drop the rock level at the point where you are mining by 1 dirt. This does not appear to be a cumulative chance. Sometimes you will drop the rock level very quickly for a short spurt, other times you might mine 25 times and not drop the level. In other words, many failures in a row does not make future success more likely. 4) Surface mining is reported to allow you to lower surface rock below the level of existing tunnels underground. It would be good to get some additional confirmation of this, though I am rather certain that at one of my personal surface lowering locations, I did precisely that, lowering the level of rock to a point below where it should have broken through into a tunnel. Remember Wurm is not truly 3D. 5) *needs more input* Lowering surface rock with a pick may be more successful in the daytime than at night. A campfire at night does seem to help. I might just have had several very long strings of failures at night and many quick successes in the daytime by sheer luck. My experience was over a period of probably 8 or 9 Wurm day/night cycles. Not enough to be truly sure, but enough to make me doubt coincidence. Note that the example above is only for one point. If you want to lower the face of a tile to make a nice mine entry tunnel, here's a more complex example:  A--B--C--D | | | | E--F--G--H | | | | I--J--K--L You have prospected on tile B/C/G/F and want to create a tunnel there to start a mine, but the slope is just not right. You want to drop corners F and G to make a nice slope for your mine entrance. To drop the rock level at F you need to dig A/B/C/E/F/G/I/J/K down to rock To drop the rock level at G you need to dig B/C/D/F/G/H/J/K/L down to rock Remember! Surface rock lowering is done at intersections of rock tiles, tunnel creation is done within a single rock tile. If you try to tunnel while standing at a intersection of 4 tiles, you might get a tunnel at an unexpected location, so be sure to be standing on one tile, and be sure to be clicking that one tile when creating a tunnel.