Complete Mining Event Guide For Heroes vs Hordes

In order to maximize your results, it's helpful to know how the event works before heading in.

In the Mystery Mine, or Farm Bonanza, which I'll just refer to as the mining event going forward, you "dig" down through layers of dirt and stone to collect items and eventually enough resources to redeem a hero or weapon.

To start off, you're presented with a mine that has several types of tiles:

• Plain Dirt Tile: These take one pickaxe hit to break.
• Stone Tile: It takes two pickaxe hits to break.
• Event Resources Tiles: Appear in different amounts of 15, 45, 120, and 300 resources. You can tell how big the resource is based on the tile image. These all take 1 pickaxe to break.
• Small Knapsacks that offer medium rewards (e.g., small amounts of energy or 2 extra pickaxes). These take 1 pick axe to break.
• And Large Treasure Chests, which offer better rewards (e.g., bombs, drills, or 8 pick axes). These also take 1 pickaxe to break.

As you can tell by the math, a large treasure chest is worth 4x a knapsack.

There are three tools to help you dig through the tiles or squares:

A Pickaxe (middle option) that counts as one hit on a tile. A Drill (left option) that removes a vertical line of tiles, plus the bottom-left and bottom-right tiles at the bottom of the mine. A Bomb (right option ) that blasts a larger area of squares in one go.

The Farm event uses a pitchfork, cowbell, and pumpkin with the effects.

Quickly note that a drill and bomb will destroy the stronger stone tiles as well as collect any resource tiles. That will be an important part of the strategy.

You use these tools to clear away tiles and move deeper into the depths, which is the most important part of the event.

The Depth Mechanic you see on the left is the key to getting the biggest rewards.

• As you keep mining downward below the rope or fence on the screen, the screen shifts up so you can continue excavating.
• The depth counter on the left tracks how far you've gone.
• Reaching certain depth milestones earns big resource rewards, which is the key to hitting the 10,000 event resource threshold required to redeem a weapon.

The goal is to get to that final depth milestone of 2000 event resources as cheaply as possible. That should guarantee you enough resources for the weapon.

But how do you get that far down?

The Most Important Tip: Ignore Low-Value Resources

As you dig deeper into the mine, you'll come across dirt blocks, stone blocks, gold tiles with varying amounts of gold (some worth 15, some 45, some 120, even some 300), smaller knapsacks with mid-level rewards, and larger treasure chests that can contain valuable items like drills and bombs.

The focus of the strategy is to ignore the 15 resource tiles and instead focus on getting as deep as you can into the mine. Let me repeat that for emphasis:

Ignore 15 resource tiles unless they are directly on your path down.

It's more profitable over the long run to skip small resource pieces in favor of plowing deeper and hitting major resource thresholds.

Therefore, a big part of the strategy is efficiently mining downwards.

So, let's dig into that using my 5-step strategy.

Kolz's Simple 5-Step Strategy For Success In The Mines

Step 1: Wait Until The Last Day To Mine

The first step in this process is NOT to START dipping until the last day of the event. Now, you'll see in the video that I had one more day of resources to get, so I don't follow my own rules because I get impatient, but it's better to wait until the last day.

You wait until the last day so you can understand what resources you have to work with.

Step 2: Use The Right Tools

Step 2 in the process is using the right tool to clear the depths.

Because stones take two pick axes to break, you want to try and use bombs and drills to clear those out. That will let you save pick axes for carefully selecting tiles along the way.

However, try to combine clearing out stones with also hitting big pockets of resources if you can use a drill to clear out a whole line of event resources and plow through a stone, even better.

Step 3: Dig deep, not wide

This brings me to step 3 in the process, dig deep not wide. The only time you're not going down is to scoop up a resource worth more than 15 event tokens. Unless you can grab the 15 resource tile on your natural way down, let it go.

Step 4: Let the depth mechanic surface resources

Instead, rely on step 4 of the process. Let the depth mechanic surface resources to the top.

Let's say a 45-resource tile spawns on the opposite side of the mine. DO NOT DIG DOWN TO IT. Instead, as you dig below the depths, the whole screen shifts up. Let that shift up bring the resource to the top.

The one bit of nuance here is that sometimes, when you dig below the line, you hit a vein of many empty tiles in a row. That's normally great because our goal again is getting deep. But this can sometimes push the resources up past the top.

So if you have a treasure chest that is 1 line below the surface, it's worth it to use the extra pick axe to grab it.

Step 5 is "Dig baby dig."

Keep going down as efficiently as you can. That means if the tile below you is a stone, but you can dig horizontally one space to hit an empty patch, do it. Save those pick axes!

It also means that if there is a stone below you but a 15-resource space to the immediate right or left, move over one space and grab it on the way down.

Both of those actions require two pick axes, but the second also gets you 15 resource tokens.

Now, unless you get SUPER lucky and hit several big veins of event resources, the quests will not be enough to get you the weapon. So that's where gems come into play.

How To Use Gems To Get The Weapon

Here's how you use gems to finish off the event.

It's a good plan to hold off on digging until the final day of the event so that you don't overspend on gems. That way, you know exactly how many pickaxes, drills, and bombs you've stockpiled for free, and you can decide how many gems you need to spend.

And you will be spending your gems exclusively on pick axes.

I buy 100 pickaxes at a time for 1,500 gems because I'm lazy, but you should be buying just to reach that 10,000 gold threshold for the weapon or hero. Buying too many pickaxes at once can lead to suboptimal use of gems.

The good news is that you do get some gems back from the small knapsacks and treasure chests on your way down, which can help offset your total spending.

Then, simply repeat the 5-step strategy until you hit the amount of event tokens you need. In my experience, I've gotten the special weapon for as little as 1500 gems, but it normally takes about 3000 in my other runs.

And that's how I've grabbed weapons from the mining events in the past, but if you have extra resources or already have the heroes, here's what else I recommend buying from the shop.

Beyond the obvious reward of obtaining the hero or weapon (which is what most people have their eyes on), you can also purchase other great rewards with leftover resources in the event shop.

In my opinion, hero shards are always valuable, especially if there's a particular hero you want to advance. Specific hero shards can be quite difficult to find, so if it's for a hero you want, grab them.

After that, forge tokens for event weapons are another major draw since they won't come up as an Arena reward. Special weapons tokens will save you from spending super tokens later on to level them up in the forge.

Other decent options include enchanted eggs if you're slowly working up to unlocking Crystalsaurs or star biscuits for quickly evolving a pet.

Ultimate or core skill books and certain unique jewels like Projectile P or Vulnerability are also good long-term investments.

With any scrap resources, feel free to invest in energy as that tends to be the better deal since you can farm runs will get you more keys than what you'd get by directly purchasing them.

All in all, the Mystery Mine or Farm Bonanza event is a solid play for free-to-play players. You can consistently grab the event's weapon for about 1,500 to 4,000 gems, which remains one of the best deals in Heroes vs. Hordes.

By focusing on going straight down rather than clearing out every single block, making sure to sidestep or use bombs and drills for tougher rows of stone, and remaining mindful about when to pick up larger gold tiles or treasure chests, you'll almost surely reach the depth-based gold milestones needed for the prize.

This event only comes around occasionally, so it's worth gearing up for it. If you compare the gem cost to other events where luck can ruin your chances, the Mystery Mine and Farm Bonanza really shine as a reliable and efficient way to invest your gems.

And I'm Kolz, a high-level HvH player. Good luck with your mining (or farming), and if you have questions, feel free to find me here, on Reddit, or on Discord.

If you want even faster answers or early access to more guides, I also offer a Patreon where you can get in touch and see my videos a week in advance.

And remember, always do your adventures!