Welcome to Elderfield Mines Guide: Ores, Bath Reset and Elder Gem

The mines are the heart of the resource loop, and the most frustrating part of the game.

The basic Beginner Mine sits at Town Outskirts West. One floor, three ores - Copper Ore, Stone and Coal - and very weak enemies. It is the game’s safe mining zone. Other mines run deeper, hit harder and drop rarer loot, and the mall hides an extra level, Mall Mines.

Two things are worth knowing up front: mines reset, so you never need to ration them, and every swing is a risk check.

Tiers and outputs

The Beginner Mine’s limit is useful to know: it does not drop rare ore, so do not farm high-tier materials there. Its value is steady copper and coal plus a low-risk place to level.

Bathing is the reset button

The “my copper never respawned” question has a clear answer: every mine regenerates weekly after the player bathes. The community answer reads: All mines regenerate weekly after the player bathes. No specific ores are guaranteed, but between the beginner mine and Mall mine, there should [be enough].

Two consequences follow.

You do not need to comb the map for leftover nodes. One bath can grow new ones.

But specific ores are not guaranteed. When you are short of one type, rotate between the Beginner Mine and Mall Mines rather than waiting at a single spot.

One more thing: this rule shares its trigger with the mystery system. Bathing resets mysteries and monsters at the same time, so when you plan a gathering day, count the fact that a bath makes the world dangerous again.

The three results of a single swing

This is the real cost of mining. A Chinese-language negative review laid the mechanic out plainly after launch. A high-tier ore takes ten-odd swings, and every swing can (1) drain a percentage of your HP, (2) apply a random debuff curse, or (3) trigger an encounter and drop you into battle.

In the stream embedded above, the game delivers the narrative version of that rule within minutes of entering. The text on screen reads Sleeping beings which lie beneath curse you for disturbing them. Her reaction: Dude, I just started. Then she adds: You do get a lot of coal though.

Risk for output. That is the design logic of the mines.

The practical advice is short. Stock healing and status-clearing items before you go down, and mine on good days - inside a Tax Man blessing, for example. Getting cursed halfway through a run costs far more than two extra ore tiles.

Why coal matters this much

Coal underpins crafting and a large share of consumables, and its scarcity is a common player complaint. The same Chinese review calls coal “critically scarce”. A player with 25 hours put the pacing side differently. Their words: Going to sleep each night takes a long time due to having to sit through multiple cutscenes and texts… Also how there is a dice roll to determine loot after every single enemy is defeated, making the process drag on longer than it should.

Put the two together: the mines produce what you need and drag harder than anything else. The time-saver is to mine in batches. One descent that covers the week’s coal and copper beats two tiles a day.

The fight that takes you from one action to two

Early combat feels passive because you get a single action per turn. There is a clear turning point.

A Steam player’s two-playthrough write-up: Once the Hall Monitor died and you can do 2 actions, everything is was a cake walk. A Chinese review describes the same thing. Without clearing the administrator boss in the room up and to the left of the mall mining area, you only get 1 action per turn, and only 2 after beating it.

Two independent sources, one conclusion: the administrator-type boss in the mall mine area is one of the highest-priority early targets. It takes your actions per turn from 1 to 2 and changes how every fight plays out.

Players do not agree on that boss’s official name (Hall Monitor, or the administrator), so both names are listed here with their sources.

The two quest lines this episode opens

The stream embedded above runs 3h23m and stays in the mines almost the whole time. It opens two directions.

Elder Gem. The NPC in the mine says Oh, Molly sent you. How is she?… The elder gem. and points you on: The door just to the left of me here, that is where the gem is hidden. The trail then stalls deeper in - as late as 13 September 2026 a Steam player was still asking about find the lost farmer in the passage after Molly's friend, which suggests no complete public solution exists yet.

The fishing rod. She closes by confirming the fishing rod. I think I need to talk to somebody in the sewer for the fishing rod. That route starts on the sewers page.

Still unconfirmed

The administrator-type boss’s official name is not documented; both player names are listed here.

“Coal is scarce” and “late-game items cost thousands of gold” come from player reviews. They are impressions, not official numbers.

The weekly reset comes from a community answer, not an official refresh rule.

No complete mine floor table has been published, and none is invented here.

The video

Embedded above: Welcome to Elderfield (Part 3) by Tattooed Nadia.

Facts checked 2026-09-16. Mining risk and outputs can change with patches. This video has no public comments, so player feedback here comes from Steam store reviews and forum threads.