The Fastest Way to Grind Gemstone/Mithril Powder (2023)

The long-awaited article is finally here! I get so many requests for this guide and questions about it on the daily, but I've been too busy to begin making it until now. Everyone hates grinding powder, but how much do you really need? How long will it take, and what gear do you need to pass the time the quickest? This article will go over everything related to powder mining and how to get through it without losing your mind.

As usual I'll start by sharing some of my credibility for making this article. I currently have over 1.3B gemstone collection and 5m/13.5m powder in my tree. I first got into mining when the Dwarven Mines came out, but since then I was wiped and had to restart a little while after CH released. I have over 100m overflow mining xp and I'm currently ranked in both gemstone and gold collections, and before my wipe I was top 10 in mithril collection. I'm also in the top mining guild on the server with many other experienced players. You can check out my stats below:

This guide is a part of my mining guides series, which covers almost everything mining related in the game. I also have a Discord server where I answer questions and give personalized advice to other players, you can find a link in my forum signature or in my bio.

Don't forget to follow my forums account to stay up to date on the latest guides!
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How much powder do you need?
This is a very controversial question, and it honestly depends on how big an investment you're willing to put into mining. If you play the game casually, I'd say you only need 4m/4m powder. This lets you almost max speed1 and fortune1 perks and gives you a decent buff from speed2 and fortune2. However, if you're a sweat or want to make big money you should definitely grind out 4.5m/7.5m. This lets you max both speed perks and both fortune perks, making the only unmaxed profit perk professional. If you want the max efficiency and the fastest progression in the game, it is best to grind out ALL the powder you need first before you even touch gemstone mining for profit. But that means getting 4.5m/11m powder, which is absolute hell. Personally, what I did was get 4.5m/7.5m then grinded gemstones and put all the powder I got into professional until it was maxed.

I would also like to mention that powder grinding is 100% required if you want to make money gemstone mining. It gives an extremely large amount of fortune and speed that you can't get anywhere else, and the longer you procrastinate or put off powder grinding the more coins and time you waste. It's best to get it out of the way early.

Is Scatha worth it?
Another common question people ask is if they should get scatha for powder grinding. If you have the money, the answer is yes. Scatha is already OP for powder grinding as it increases chest spawn chance and gives you a better mole perk, letting you mine more blocks. The pet is soon getting an update which gives it a perk that increased ur powder gains by 20%, which makes it way more OP and worth it.

Now in my hypermaxed mining setup guide I mentioned that scatha was something you should get last, after divan drill. I'm going to amend my statement to this: Buy a tier boosted leg scatha for powder grinding, and then sell it to get divan drill, and then buy a non-tier boosted scatha after that. If you want to check out the article I'll link it below!

What setup will you need?
Great thing about powder grinding is that the only expensive requirement is the scatha, and even without using a scatha you still get a lot of powder. However, the one mistake a lot of people do is start powder grinding at HOTM6. In order to powder grind effectively you NEED to have HOTM7. Without it powder grinding takes hours longer and you will regret not getting it. There are a few other items that will be useful, and they're listed below.

The minimum mining speed you MUST have for powder grinding is 1500. This allows you to insta-break hardstone, which is required to be efficient. Any speed after 1500 is helpful and you will notice a slight difference, but it barely affects powder per hour. As for fortune, you technically don't need any for powder grinding. However, you will be mining through a lot of coal, iron, gold, diamond, redstone, lapis, and other ores while you grind. If you have a decent amount of fortune, you could get a couple millions coins per hour from these ores on top of automaton parts. We will talk about automaton parts later.
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HOTM Tree Setup
The picture above shows the HOTM tree setup u will be using to powder grind. This is currently the meta setup. While other tree layouts may exist, this is the one that will get you the most powder per hour as well as decent passive profit. Below are the perks you will need to upgrade, listed in priority order.

I’m also going to list all the perks in the tree and how they affect powder mining, for those who are interested.

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Daily Commissions
After you reach HOTM7, completing your daily commissions will award a large amount of powder instead of HOTM experience. Complete the commissions but don't turn them in, then wait until a double powder event is active to turn them in. You can get upwards of 50k of each powder by doing this. You want to do this DAILY because it's free powder and helps you early on. After I had a couple million of each powder I stopped doing this because I was already making a large amount of powder each hour and it didn't help me as much, but early on its essential.

The Strategy
Now there are 2 places people like to powder mine, the jungle and the precursor remnants. I'm going to make this really simple. Do you like to make money? If you do, don't go to the jungle!!! The reason people go to the jungle is because you can sludge mine while you powder mine, meaning you use a jungle pickaxe to get sludge while you mine, then you sell the sludge for a couple million an hour. However, if you go to the precursor remnants you will get loads of automaton parts from chests which sell for way more as it is. On top of that, you can use your regular drill/gauntlet in the precursor remnants, allowing you to get more fortune and therefore way more drops from the ores. In total, you will make millions more coins by going to the precursor remnants instead of the jungle. The only downside is you have to auction all the robot parts instead of selling to bazaar like you would with sludge. Considering the difference in profit per hour, spending the time to auction is worth it.

Alright so you've arrived in the precursor remnants. Next step? Dig down. Around Y level 100 is where I like to mine, it gives you a decent amount of ores compared to higher lvls. Now start mining a 2 block high layer of hardstone around you. Chests spawn, you unlock them, simple as that. When you begin to lvl up your mole perk, remember to mine northeast to see its full effects.
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If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading! I hope this guide helps you begin your grind! If you have any questions for me at all I can answer them in my Discord server, link in my signature and in my forums bio. We have a nice community that's growing fast. You can also visit my island in game and ask me if I'm online, but a lot of the time I'm out mining or grinding.

Don't forget to follow my forums account to stay update on my guides and posts!!! The picture above was taken on my island, I have some cool builds I'm working on right now. Feel free to check them out too!

-Xeon