Miner much?
Have you ever seen that one miner with full drake armor, making everyone around him ERP just with the use of his voice, did you feel the temptation to be as much of an asshole yourself? Have you ever wanted to put in an enormous amount of effort, just to get an item you’re not even allowed to use as a non-antag? Do you like dying after making one single mistake, only to wait ~1.5 hours to try your luck again?
If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to any of those questions, then being a miner is for you.
After playing Miner on and off for what feels like ~2 weeks, I found it quite dull that a lot of valuable, game-changing info is missing on wiki when it comes to the loot / Megafauna / strategies / general knowledge. So now that I’ll not be playing any miner any time soon, I’ve decided to share my knowledge and wisdom with all the aspiring Miners out there, without fearing that my own strategy is going to be used against me by other miners. This guide will include the general sequence of things I do each round, a word or two about tendril loot, Megafauna strategy and some lesser-known tips. This guide is aimed at the miners who already know the layout of the lavaland base, how to mine, how to earn points and spend them.
Note that all the points I’m gonna make in this guide are mostly my own opinion, and my opinion can’t be objective by definition. I’ll be mostly talking from my own experience and from the info I’ve managed to find. Be sure to correct me in the replies if you spot any misinformation, or think something should be added in this guide. Also, if I don’t elaborate on any points (like Collossus’s moveset, for exaple), feel free to use the wiki links:
https://wiki.beestation13.com/view/Shaft_Miner
https://wiki.beestation13.com/view/Megafauna
Table of contents
- Spawning in and getting equipped
- The first mining run
- Getting equipped 2: The Sequel
- The second mining run: Son of the Tendril
- Megafauna (BDM gtfo)
Spawning in and getting equipped
So, you’ve just spawned in with 2 other miners. This means that you get 1 locker each. There’s a lot of stuff lying in yours, but you don’t really need all of it. You only need to take:
- a Kinetic Accelerator, your trusty mining-tool-weapon. Attach the seclite and the knife found in your bag to it, place it in your belt slot for now
- optical mesons, I think you know what it does
- an automatic mining scanner, turn it on and stuff it into your internals box in your bag, it’ll work just fine (the sprite in this guide is outdated)
- a shelter capsule, for when you’re caught in an ash storm, stuff it into your mining boots
When you are done, put on the 
explorer’s mask found in your internals box, put the
survival medipen found in your pocket into your bag and head for the mining shuttle. It’s good etiquette to wait for the other miners to also board the shuttle, before sending it to lavaland, but don’t hesitate to send it, if some other miner is taking too long. Wasting other miners’ time is much worse than sending the shuttle too soon.
Once you arrive, there’s some additional stuff you’d want to pick up. Head for the additional mining lockers in the lavaland base. On the way to them, there’s a break room with a box of donk pockets and a microwave. Stick all the pockets into the microwave and turn it on. Eat 2 pockets, if you’re ‘not hungry’, 3 - if you ‘could use a bite to eat’ and 4 - if you’re ‘quite hungry’. In the locker room, pick up an additional KA (attach a seclite to it, found in the very same locker) and 2 moreshelter capsules (put one in your boots and one in your bag).
After that, head for the EVA room and pick up a
GPS, use it and drag the opened window to the right of your screen, somewhere it’d not block chat/game and put it (the GPS) in your pocket. Now, for the important part: if you see a Resonant Signal in the GPS window, use the
voucher found in your bag on one of the
mining vendors to buy a Crusher Kit (you only need the
Crusher itself, don’t bother carrying the fire extinguisher around), otherwise buy an
explorer’s webbing and stick themedipen in it.
Get an
explorer suit and an oxygen tank from the EVA room, toggle the hood on the suit and open the valve on the tank (leave the tank in your suit storage). Get the
pickaxe from the EVA room and drag an Ore Box behind yourself, you’re good to leave the base now.
The first mining run
As soon as you leave the base, pop acapsule somewhere where it wouldn’t block anything. Why? Inside the shelter it creates, is an emergency NanoMed, inside the emergency NanoMed, is one of the reasons I’ve decided to make this guide. There are 2 sprays with styptic powder and 2 sprays with silver sulfadiazine. Just the fact that you can get these easy-to-use, effective healing items so easily is kinda game-changing for the Miner ((punching bag)) job. Vend all 4 of the sprays and put 1 of each in your bag and 1 of each in yourexplorer suit. I advise you use them in 5 units per burst as 10 is quite an overkill for the bruises and burns you’ll get during your routine fights with fauna. BONUS: pick up the blanket from the bed and wear it as a cape.
Okay, the actual mining time is now, use thepickaxe to mine ~18 tiles of lavaland sand so that the station has glass (but, more importantly, so that YOU have glass for the future upgrades), it should last for the whole round. Throw the pickaxe away and get to mining minerals. At this point, you’ll need anything, but be extra cautious for 
uranium and 
diamonds. For mining, use a crusher (if you have it), otherwise dual-wield KAs. Also kill any 
watchers and 
goliaths you encounter, for diamonds and goliath plates respectively (I will not be covering normal fauna in this, see How to be robust against fauna 101, it has good tips). Remember that you need to butcher their corpses to get the loot (harm intent with the KA with the knife on it). While you’re mining, shout at science over the :n sci channel to research advanced mining and applied bluespace. Honorable mention: if you hear a scientist named ‘Renton Thurston’ on the sci comms, you can count on it that everything you need WILL be researched by the 10 min mark and there WILL probably be good healing nanites for you to use. So, to sum up, when you’re mining, focus on getting a little bit of every ore there is, think about all the good stuff you’re gonna get from it. Don’t stray too far away from the base because as soon as the first ash storm hits (usually happens 10 mins into a shift), you come back to the base and take the shuttle to the station.
Getting equipped 2: The Sequel
When you arrive at the station, drop off all the ore you’ve mined into the ORM and collect the points. Then head for the cargo techfab and pray that science have done their job. From the fab you’ll need a couple of things:
- KA mods. There’s a number of viable setups you can create by combining the range, damage and cooldown mods. A cooldown mod is better than a damage mod DPS-wise, but the setup I run is range-damage-damage on both of my KAs. The reason behind this is that I like to play it safe when dealing with Megafauna: only attacking after the moster attacks, only to await its next move afterwards. This is also the setup I’d advise you to run if it’s your first experience with Megafauna. The mods are found in the ‘Mining Designs’ tab of the fab.
- advanced plasma cutter, the thing you’ll use to traverse lavaland, recharge it with plasma ore, 50% a piece of ore. Stuff it in your bag. Found in the ‘Mining Designs’ tab of the fab.
- mining sathcel of holding, the thing that lets you store the ore effectively, without dragging around an Ore Box. You don’t really need it to kill Megafauna/do tendrils, but it’s a nice tool to earn some additional mining points while simultaneously exploring lavaland. Replace your old satchel with it. Found in the ‘Bluespace Designs’ tab of the fab.
BONUS SECTION: Fine, I’ll do it myself
If science has done no research, it’s a good idea to remind them how seriously you take your job. Head to the RnD counter. Is there a scientist there? Yes - ask them to research mining, in person. No - use your KA/Crusher to smash the glass and do some good ol’ B&E. It’d be a good idea for a miner to familiarize himself with the RnD console’s interface, just for such occasions. The nodes you want are: Basic Mining Technology (for KA mods), Advanced Mining Technology (for advanced plasma cutter) and Applied Bluespace Research (for mining Satchel of Holding) (largely optional).
alternatively, you could just ask the AI to do the research (if it’s competent)
Now, for the stuff you use your hard-earned points to buy at the mining equipment vendor. If I were to sort them by priority (from most to least):
- explorer’s webbing, for storing your healing items, it’s a good idea to take it to have free space in your bag for the tendril loot.
- advanced mining scanner, for more effective ore farming and for spotting gibtonite before you shoot it point-blank with a plasma cutter, while it (the gibtonite) is already fused, killing yourself instantly and ending your mining career (sprite outdated and REDACTED, again)
sprite redacted - stabilizing serum, use it on the cores that drop from
legions to stabilize them, making them not lose their healing properties after a set amount of time. By doing that you get an item that, when used on yourself, heals you to full HP, but be wary: you must not use one after another for some time. When you use a core, stabilized or not, it gives you an icon at the top-right of your screen that looks like a core. If you use another core while that icon is still there, you’ll get a disease which will transform you into alegion if you don’t cure it. I have no idea how to cure it (or if it can even be cured), so watch out for the icon, wait for it to disappear before you use a core again. I advise you to have no more than 3 stabilized cores in your webbing, you shouldn’t need more than that.
- survival medipens, you can never have enough of those. While you use sprays to heal up outside of combat, you use pens to heal IN combat. They contain a cocktail of healing chems that will rapidly restore your HP over time. Not quite good as a stabilized core, so use the cores for the most serious injuries. Like the cores, you shouldn’t inject two pens in quick succession as you can OD on the chems that they contain. If you OD on them, you’ll take a lot of damage of (I think) all types which would mean instantly losing a fight against Megafauna. I suggest you buy Stabilizing Serums/Pens at a 1:1 rate until you have 3 serums, then just buy pens.
Okay, once you have anadvanced plasma cutter andKA mods, you’re good to leave for lavaland for your second run. This time you’ll not be after the ore, but after the good stuff, the loot.
The second mining run: Son of the Tendril
The title is misleading, from this point you’ll be going different ways, depending on whether there is a Resonant Signal or not, so:
- There is a Resonant Signal, you have aCrusher
Head for that Resonant Signal, it is where the BDM spawned
Resonant Signal - Blood-Drunk Miner
Difficulty - bruh
Loot - decent
For this fight, you’re gonna use yourCrusher, make sure you have yourexplorer suit fully reinforced (3 goliath plates). I don’t even want to describe his moveset as it’s really not important to win this fight. Before you attack him, spray yourself with 30u of Styptic Powder and pop amedipen, then just go in and start smacking him, be sure to damage him by detonating the Crusher’s mark, it does twice as much damage as a normal whack. If he attacks you quickly and your screen goes red, don’t panic, just continue smacking him, I guarantee you’ll tank him until he dies, keep your DPS up by exclusively damaging him via mark detonations.
LOOT:
- cleaving saw, a Bloodborne reference, more cool than practical in killing fauna. It can be toggled between to modes: one attacks rapidly, stacking bleed effect on simplemobs, damaging them tremendously when the bleed bar fills up, the other mode attacks with normal speed, but also damages addtitional targets in front of you. When you get it, drag it after yourself on your way to hierophant.
- kinetic accelerator. Just a normal KA, has ‘bruh’ written on it (it doesn’t(it should))
- Eye of a blood-drunk hunter (drops only on a crusher kill). The very reason you’ve killed this guy with a crusher, attach it to your axe. On mark detonation, gain stun immunity, damage-slowdown immunity and 90% damage reduction for one second. This is relevant to the next Megafauna on your list:
Zealous Signal - Hierophant
Difficulty - a floating stick (Crusher timeline)
Loot - Epic
So, you have yourBDM eye attached to your crusher. This fight isn’t gonna be much different from your BDM fight. Spray yourself with 30u Silver Sulfa-something(the stick does burn damage) and head in. Time the crusher mark detonations so that you get hit by ((the AoE blast hiero does)) right during the effect of BDM eye. For quicker killing you can find the back of the stick (yes, this stick has a back) and whack it from behind for 100 damage instead of 70 damage (you’ll know that you’re whacking it from behind by the KA sound on mark detonation). Just test it by whacking it from each of the 4 sides until you find its back.
LOOT:
- Hierophant’s Club, a mini-version of Hierophant that allows you to perform mini-vesrions of Hierophant’s attacks. I will describe it more in-depth below, in another paragraph.
- Vortex talisman, another Crusher trophy (drops only on a crusher kill). On mark detonation, will create a 1x3 barrier on your location, which only you will be able to pass. Allows you to easily kill Collossus, more on that later.
After you’re done with Hierophant, head for the lavaland base usingHierophant’s Club to clear the way, crusher in hand and cleaving saw dragged after you. Hide the saw and the crusher somewhere on the base, probably in one of the crates there, place a Hierophant Beacon somewhere on the base and equip theclub on your back slot, carry your bag in your hands (so that some rando assistant doesn’t shove you and take the staff). Head for the station. Go to RnD and request a Bag of Holding(BoH), a back slot storage item which: - gives no slowdown -has a great storage capacity - can store items of any size. If there are no scientists in RnD, do some B&E, research Miniature Bluespace Research and use the Science techfab to print a Bag of Holding (in the ‘Bluespcae Designs’ tab). Dump all the items from your old bag into the BoH and use thestaff to teleport back to lavaland, stash theCrusher and thesaw into the BoH.
- There’s no Resonant Signal, you have 2 KAs
Your aim is to clear the tendrils to get epic loot
Eerie Signal - Necropolis Tendril
Difficulty - just don’t get swarmed
Loot - various
Tendrils act as spawners from Minecraft, spawning monster of a certain type, so a tendril can be Goliath/Legion/Watcher. The general rule is just to not get surrounded by the monsters / caught in a goliath tentacle. Clear the monsters one at a time, sometimes you can kill a tendril with KAs without even aggroing them, just gotta fire from the right place. Once you hear a scream and see a chest spawn on top of a tendril, that means it’s dead. Quickly pull the chest away from the tendril as it’s gonna create a hole in the ground, destroying anything that steps on it (anything not flying). Tendril loot ranges from shit to godlike, in decreasing level of epicness I’d put it in the following order (the list below isn’t all the loot you can get, I only put everything worthwhile here):
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- champion’s hardsuit/inquisitor’s hardsuit, might be the best loot you can get from a Tendril. It drops pretty often as well. Both suits are reskins of each other and offer much better protection than a fully-reinforcedexplorer’s suit. Fully spaceproof, fireproof, ash storm proof, give no slowdown, also are magic immune and don’t let YOU use magic yourself (also the meat hook you can get from a tendril, for some reason). Basically, the best thing you can wear on station (but not on lavaland). Also, keep in mind that these suits don’t have storage in them, so remember to take out the sprays from your explorer suit. Their helmets might also make you flashproof, I haven’t tested it, sadly.
sprite redatced - mysterious core, basically a fucking holopara. A fucking holopara. The wiki is misleading in that the type is chosen at random, you can easily customize it like a normal traitor holopara. The only thing that makes a hardsuit better than this is how rarely it drops. I’ve only ever gotten it once. If you’re not a traitor and just want to kill Megafauna, I suggest the following setup:
Power - A
Speed - B
Potential - A
Range - F
Defence - F
Abilty: Healing
I will describe how your holopara should behave in a fight later in the guide.
sprite redacted - Lifesteal Crystal Modkit, is a KA mod that heals you up by a bit with each shot hit. I love this thing, it helps you keep your health topped off, without popping a medipen for the mildest of injuries. If you get it, use the crowbar found in your internals box to remove the mods on one of your KAs and make the range-damage-lifesteal setup, you’ll also have room for another range mod in there.
- eye of god, can be worn like glasses, but can not be removed once equipped. Gives X-Ray vision. X-Ray is always cool, whoever you are.
- red/blue cube, they come in a pair. When you use one, it teleports you to the other instantly, wherever it is. The main use is to skedaddle if you find yourself in a tight spot against Megafauna (unlikethe club, it isn’t required that you wind it up first)
- Wisp Lantern, when used, spawns a friendly wisp, orbiting you. The wisp gives you thermal vision and some light around you. Basically a worse version of the eye of god, which you can disable at will (by using the lantern again).
- Flight Potion (“Strange Elixir”), when drank, makes wings pop out of your body, dealing 20 brute (heal that with your spray). The wings can help you cross lava lakes and chasms, just don’t forget to activate them before crossing.
- Instant Summons Spellbook, as the name suggests, teaches you a spell ‘Instant Summons’. Let’s you mark an item (you won’t be able to change it, choose wisely!) and then use it again to teleport that item to your hand, wherever it may be. Blocked by inquisitor’s/champion’s harduit
- haha shuttle grief
Necropolis chests also spawn from tumors (Menacing Signal), but it’d be cumbersome to also add info about them, maybe I’ll do a separate guide on tumors and their rewards.
Ookay, you’ve cleared the tendrils and there are no Eerie Signals left, it’s time you left for the station and got a BoH to store all that loot and prepare to fight the big guys.
I’ve hit the characters limit, see Megafauna (BDM gtfo) (part two) for the continuation