Interesting Mining & Extraction

I've been programming for 13 years, entirely self-taught. I use Codex/ChatGPT to accelerate development, but features go through multiple iterations of my own design and planning before they ever reach Codex.

I have used approximately 10 gallons of water on this (and IOG). I have collected approximately 12 gallons of water from my local stream and splashed it on my PC just to ensure I was paying back my environmental impacts!

2.0.0 IS OUT! THERE WILL BE BUGS AND ISSUES!

WHEN UPDATING, CLOSE GAME, CLEAR CACHE, REMOVE PREVIOUS INSTALLED VERSION, INSTALL THE NEW VERSION, AND THEN RESTART GAME, OTHERWISE THERE MIGHT BE ISSUES.

READ HANDBOOK PAGES!

There are 4 full handbook entries in the mod page, they should explain all of the mechanics!

 

REQUIRES Interesting Ore Gen!

Interesting Mining & Extraction

 

IME adds a new mining minigame based all off of one material. Muck.

 

What is muck?

Muck is a new, special pile block that is dropped when you break stone or ores. Muck blocks, unlike vanilla piles, can contain a multitude of entries (up to 8 layers) of material within them. Specifically ores or rock types. 

Why is muck?

The new gameplay loop is all centered around muck. For now, with 2.0.0 Muck is primarily just meant to be an obstical for the player. Sluice or Screen muck for Metallic and Non-metallic ores (Respectively), and then toss away the tailings in a big pile. You CANNOT destroy Fine Muck right now, to encourage piling it into nice big piles of tailings! That may change eventually.

How create muck?

Muck can be created through 2 major ways, breaking rocks with a pickaxe, and breaking blocks with Drilling and Blasting.

 

 

What different processing methods are there?

For IME 2.0.0 there are currently 3 main processing methods

Sluicing: Water Separation and sluicing are possible through an emergent property of Muck. When in flowing water, muck will move slowly downstream self seperating heavier material that will remain behind. You can also use Sluice Baffles under the water to capture the ores without letting it flow down stream. (Additionally, you can only now extract metallic ore from Sluices, which returns vanilla chunks based on the richness of the ore)

Sieving: Not technically a muck process anymore! Sand, or gravel convert into Crushed Quartz and Flint respectively.

Screening: Dry seperation for non-metallic ores! Also Stones! This is the only way to take "Raw" muck and transform it into "Fine" muck, and it WILL DESTROY METALLIC ORES WITHIN IT! Fine muck cannot be further processed and is a waste product. The output of ores is out the sliding side, fine muck out the bottom.

 

 

Interesting Mining & Extraction Design Philosophy

IME is built around the want for players to build up infrastructure for their mines and build up tailings piles. That's it, for now! Dig rock into muck, move muck from hole to small processing machines, dump tailings in a pile.

Main Changes to Vanilla:

• Rock/ores now drop muck when broken, which needs to be shovelled up and transported and disposed of.
• Sluice/Screens to process muck directly
• Sieve to process sand/gravel to useful early game resources
• Drilling and Blasting for rapid muck excavation and just to have a fun side-minigame.

Compatibility:

IME was built from the ground up to be compatible with Geology Additions by small_fern

Incompatibilities:

Salty's Immersive Mining seems to have a weird interaction with the Muck Shovel. (Likely on my end, haven't had time to look into it)  This should be fixed now but I've not spent time to genuinely fix this issue so I'm not entirely sure. Pending further report from users.

Material Needs: Geology isn't technically generating muck but wont break anything, haven't had time to integrate their ores in yet.  IME should automatically drop ore from appropriate muck from modded stones/ores now automatically. However I have also NOT personally confirmed this either. Pending further report from users.

 

FAQ

 

1) "Can you add a config for muck generating from stone?"

No, that defeats the purpose of IME. 

 

2) "Can I branch/fork your mod to do X?"

No. No branches or forks of IME are allowed to be made. No written permission has been given, you CAN however make a patch mod if you desire to do those things.

 

3) "Can you add more processing to IME?"

Eventually. I've since gutted IME for the 2.0.0 set, but I wont add furnaces or "hot processing" of muck whatsoever. I might eventually re-add conveyor belts or something similar to physically transport muck, but for now use Yangs Transport Tycoon or another rail system to transport muck, as long as they allow placement of the muckbin onto carts.

 

(More to come as 2.0.0 gets used and abused!)

 

Copyright © 2026 Ross the Great. All rights reserved.
Interesting Mining & Extraction (IME), including its source code, compiled binaries, and original assets, may not be redistributed, republished, modified and distributed, or used to create derivative versions without my prior explicit written permission.
Permitted: Independent JSON content mods, compatibility patches, and integrations that interact with IME without redistributing its code or assets.
You are welcome to contact me with suggestions, compatibility requests, or questions. I am happy to discuss permissions, provide assistance, and consider requests for source-code access.

Contact: Ross the Great/rossthegreat - Vintage Story Discord.