Copperhead mines

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Warning.png WARNING: Shaft number two in the Copperhead mines is a dangerous zone with auto-attacking npcs and other perils.

The Copperhead mines are composed of an outer area with an exit to Copperhead village and the entry to the mine shafts. Only shaft number two seems accessible currently.

When you enter shaft two you enter an instanced dungeon with a randomly generated map. See the help file reproduced below for more information on this.

Sample layout of one single randomised mine, with flooded rooms, stockpiles, and gem veins highlighted

Entry

You'll have to bribe the guard to let you in, costing &&&&&&&&&&&+8640 LC 5|-|-. He's had to buy more armour to guard shaft number two from the horrors within and it was very expensive.

You'll need to repeat this every hour if you leave and want to come back in. This does not mean that the mine instance has worn off, you go back to the same instance unless you've been gone long enough for it to unload.

Layout

Each mine has a central vertical shaft where you enter the mine.

  • This shaft links every level of the mine.
  • You can drop items there and they will stay caught on the rungs of the ladder, they won't drop off.
  • The vertical shaft rooms are too small for a circle.
  • After many levels the shaft is blocked by boiling water, a door too rusted to open or rocks.

From the central shaft you have:

  • Rooms with doors, either locked (empty) or unlocked (there will be hostile dwarves or trolls inside).
  • Corridors that might lead to a lot more rooms or just one. You have to move off the central shaft to see with 'map' if there's further rooms.

Some aggressive npcs delay pursue if you leave the room, but will not follow into the vertical shaft.

  • Trolls and bats delay pursue.
  • Spiders pursue, but do not delay pursue.
  • Dwarves do not pursue not delay pursue.

Rooms with doors

The locked doors to the great hall and the tomb look like this:

Carved out of the same rock that surrounds you in all directions, the doors would blend in with the walls if they weren't decoratively carved with impressive designs.
They are closed and locked.

The other rooms have ordinary doors.

Tomb

Filled with rows of coffins and corpses.

  • You can search through the corpses to find some jewellery or maybe a zombie. The dwarf zombies do not autoattack.
  • The jewellery will always match one of the three gem-types that might be found in a vein in this mine, and a mineral type found within the mine.
The confused dwarf zombie stumbles around the room.
This is a skeletal dwarf corpse who seems to have unexpectedly risen from the dead.  It looks very confused, but has no tongue with which to express this confusion.
It is in good shape.
It is standing.
Holding : a ruined dwarf axe (left hand).
Wearing : a chainmail shirt.

Great hall

This is one of the rare wider rooms in the mines. There's a corridor that seems to have been caught in yet another cave-in.

Here you can search the barrels to try to find one that's still intact and full of dwarf wine.

Bedroom / quarters / chamber

Those with unlocked doors have from one to three berserk dwarf miners or from one to three mountain trolls inside.

There's various objects in the tables.

Sometimes there's more to be found in those rooms.

Type of corridor rooms

If you are lucky enough to see into a room before entering you can learn a lot about that room. Unfortunately, except for vurm-lit rooms this requires Dark Sight or enormous amounts of perception and luck.

Each room has a description of what is inside in its short name. You can see it by looking into another room or with glance or set it to show automatically when you enter a room with "options output map glance".

Example: vurm-lit flooded spider nest

spider nest

Always home to a spider UNLESS there is stinkdamp gas in the room - if you see an empty spider nest that you didn't empty yourself, then there is stinkdamp gas here. If you want to avoid spiders check 'map' to see if it is occupied (the $ symbol). Sometimes you need to move past those rooms to get to the other ones.

vurm-lit

Vurms are glowing critters that give some light. It does not seem possible to interact with them.

stockpile

In this room you'll find the crates minigame! You'll need a crowbar or a claw hammer.

You have to pry open the crates with no spiders in them.

  • The first crate is always free of spiders.
  • You can investigate an opened crate to get a number of the surrounding crates with spiders in them. Sometimes the number you get is wrong and investigating later gives the right number. Trying two times in a row does not resolve this. There might be a skill involved, possibly perception.
  • This is similar to the minesweeper game. Learning to recognize the patterns for safe crates to open helps a lot. Often you'll need to take chances though.
  • There can be between 0 and 8 spider crates per game.
  • If you open a crate with spiders you lose the loot except for what you already found and you still get any key that's left on the floor. This does not harm you.

Things you'll sometimes find in opened crates:

  • engraved <mineral> key - any of these keys open all the locked doors in the central shaft for the instance it was found in. This does not help for future mines.
  • <very small/small/medium-sized> <silver/tin/brass/copper/pewter/bronze> bars.
  • very rarely a closed old textbook written in uberwaldean and dwarfish.

glinting

This is where the mining happens!

  • You'll need a pickaxe and a small hammer or a claw hammer. If you forgot your pickaxe you can try to find one on a berserk dwarf miner.
  • "appraise" the wall/rock and you'll get an estimate of the distance to the gem vein. With enough skills and/or attempts you'll get a value that is "exactly" so and so inches.
    • You'll also get an estimate of how many inches the pickaxe and hammer will remove.
    • Appraising uses the crafts.mining.mineral skill
  • Figure out the number of strikes with the pickaxe and the number of chips with the hammer you need to get to the gem vein.
  • Failing with the hammer hurts you, removing some hp.
  • Failing with the pickaxe will make you accidentally hit a nearby boulder, sometimes this hits a mountain troll that will start to fight you.
  • Mining with the hammer (and presumably the pickaxe) uses the crafts.mining.gem skill

Note: There may be increased success chances for appraising gems if you have higher people.trading.valueing.gems

flooded

With water around your ankles you'll get wet.

There's often sediments in the water, with lots of panning skills, a pan and if you stop at the right timing you might separate some purple mineral powder!

rubble-strewn

There's piles of rock rubble from the excavation.

  • You can search the piles, with a chance to find gems.

cavern

A small natural cavern with stalagmites.

  • A stalagmite is usually marked with mine-sign.

hot

Some areas are particularly hot.

  • Wearing linen clothes will reduce your warmth when you are too hot and will not change your temperature when it is cold.

twisting

There is a deep, natural pit here.

claustrophobic

The ceiling is low and claustrophobic, sized for dwarves; anyone taller must hunch their shoulders and lower their head when passing through.

collapsed

One of the walls has collapsed, blocking half of it.

humid

The air is terribly still, with a certain humid, choking quality to it.

Surprisingly this does not necessarily mean your breathing is impaired in this room. Watch out for the stinkdamp gas messages!

sulphurous

A large, jagged vent in the ground, surrounded by yellow crystalline deposits, belches clouds of uncomfortably warm steam.

Hazards

The mines can be death traps. Come prepared!

Often the hazards / rooms are combined. A stinkdamp gas room with some foes and crates for example - but note that only mountain trolls can be found in stinkdamp rooms, spiders, bats and miners cannot survive in such conditions, and so if you see a "breathing" creature, you know there can be no stinkdamp in that room (but there may still be rockfalls!)

giant cave spider

A giant cave spider (hiding) is crouching in wait on the ceiling.
The giant cave spider (hiding) rears up and fires a wide spray of webbing from its rear end at you!
You are covered in sticky webbing!
This is the underground variety of the infamous giant spider.  While it is less physically strong than its forest-dwelling cousin, it has adapted a mottled grey carapace for camouflage and the ability to spray tangling webs at potential prey, making it far more dangerous.
It is in good shape.
It is scuttling on the ground.
The giant cave spider moves in eerie silence, its feet making no sound as it scuttles across the ground.
  • It covers everything that enters in webbing and again every few minutes.
    • This leaves a very short time between struggling free of the webbing and the next time the spider webs you.
    • With some skill, grappling has been suggested, and possibly strength you can still move to another room.
    • This sometimes captures giant fruitbats preventing them from following you.
    • Using FTF to float does not prevent the webbing from restraining you.
    • The webbing uses up a lot of AP which can make you stop attacking the spider.
    • You have big penalty to dodge while stuck in the web, at least a ~445 dodge bonus is recommended.
  • It is in hiding when you first enter the room and it will ambush you.
  • It pursues you, but only very rarely does it leave the room it spawned in.
  • When it bites it poisons you.
  • If you leave the spider long enough so that you are both not hunting each other then the spider doesn't seem to re-initiate combat with you. It still webs you though.
  • A cave spider will never be spawned in a stinkdamp gas room (they cannot survive in them).

berserk dwarf miners

Spotted in amounts between one and three, these dwarves have lost it and will attack upon seeing you. They are berserk on discovery, and so have very high health and will not be affected by certain combat actions such as feint. Their berserk can wear off after a while (perhaps 5+ minutes), and you can go back and fight them when they are weaker, but they will re-berserk when they are able to.

  • A dwarf miner will never be spawned in a stinkdamp gas room (they cannot survive in them).
  • They do not seem to leave the room they spawn in.
An <adjective> berserk dwarf miner is standing here.
Whatever torments and tribulations this dwarf has gone through in the slow death of the mine has driven [her|him] into a permanent state of berserk paranoia.  Bloodshot eyes darting from shadow to shadow, rusted chainmail pockmarked with holes, [she|he] looks ready to kill and possibly eat anything unlucky enough to run into [her|him].
[She|He] is slightly hurt.
[She|He] is standing.
Holding : a large axe (left hand and right hand) or a pickaxe (left hand and right hand) or a loaf of dwarf bread (left hand) or (they are not holding anything).
Wearing : a chainmail shirt.

mountain trolls

Trolls are initially unarmed, but pick up rocks from the mine, which they can then use as weapons and also throw at you, bypassing floaters. They then pick up another rock.

The heavy mountain troll lumbers over to a stray rock and picks it up.
The heavy mountain troll holds a white mineral rock in its left hand.
The heavy mountain troll throws a white mineral rock at you.
The white mineral rock bounces off your plague of assassin bugs.
  • The skin of the trolls act like armour and absorbs some of the physical damage dealt to them.
  • Trolls do not need to breathe like other living creatures, and so trolls CAN be in rooms with stinkdamp gas.
  • Trolls delay pursue if you leave the room, but will not follow into the vertical shaft.
A <adjective> mountain troll is standing here.
While the trolls that live up in the mountains are less civilised than city trolls, this does not mean they are any less smart.  Quite the opposite, actually.  It just means that rather than wasting time on useless things like mathematics, they can spend it all on important things like geology and beating each other with large rocks.  Or, possibly, you.
It is not in good shape.
It is standing.
Holding : a white mineral rock (left hand).

shadow bats

A <adjective> shadow bat is perching upside-down on the ceiling.
A distant relative of the Uberwaldean land eel, these bats absorb the substance of darkness itself from places deep underground, using it to aggressively defend themselves from predators, intruders upon their territory, mining dwarves, and generally anything that wanders into range.
It is surrounded with a shadowy haze that makes it hard to see.
It is in good shape.
It is wheeling and swooping.

The haze around the vicious shadow bat trails after it as it swoops upon you.
  • You need enough perception to see the shadow bats well enough to fight them as they are so dark, and you can TM perception while fighting them.
  • Having more (at least two) sources of light on you makes it easier to fight the bats.
  • They can be in groups of anything from one to six individuals.
  • A shadow bat will never be spawned in a stinkdamp gas room (they cannot survive in them).
  • Bats delay pursue if you leave the room, but will not follow into the vertical shaft.

falling rocks

When you enter some rooms you see this:

Somewhere above you, you hear the rumble of falling rock.

After a few seconds you'll receive several times rocks on your head (each combat rounds you stay in the room).

Heavy rocks rain down from above on your head!

Eventually it will end.

The rockfall peters off.

Leaving the room fast enough and waiting around 5-6 heartbeats will allow you to avoid this.

  • Using a sufficiently strong CCC that absorbs blunt damage, a bug shield or a TPA will protect you if you fail to notice (for example because of combat spam).
  • The rocks falling in from above completely bypass EFF or household guard.
  • The rocks do not damage NPCs, for example dwarf miners or bats, in the room.
  • A full rockfall unprotected can do anything upwards of several thousand points of damage.

stinkdamp gas

Something doesn't smell right.  You take a sniff but the faint odour of rotten eggs makes you cough. 
You can't smell it any more, but you're getting a dizzy sort of headache.  Maybe you should get out of here. 
You suddenly feel like you can't breathe.
You collapse on the ground, your muscles spasming uncontrollably.
You collapse on the ground, your muscles spasming uncontrollably.

When you see these lines entering a room, about one line every combat round, and your hp drops better not stay long in this room (unless protected)! Forget fighting. Even coming back just a second to open crates is a big pain.

  • Heezlewurst's Elemental Buffer with a yellow crystal protects from the gas. When entering a room with stinkgas "The yellow energy around you pulses briefly".
  • The damage you take increases with time. If you leave and come back or go to another stinkdamp gas room it will continue to damage you at the level it was and not at a low damage.
  • When you get "The air here seems fresher." you have found a room without the stinkdamp gas. Stay there a while to reduce the vapours in you.
  • Even if you leave the room the damage will continue, lessening with time as the vapours gradually leave. This seems to take twice as much time to remove as the time you were in the stinkgas.
  • You are free from the vapours when you see the message "You feel better."
  • "Breathing" monsters - dwarf miners, cave spiders, and shadow bats - never spawn in a stinkdamp gas room. An empty spider nest room that wasn't emptied by you is a guaranteed stinkdamp gas room.

Recovery takes a while if you don't die. Since damage comes over time it is useful to use a method of healing that also works over time like healing tea, bandages and healing roses.

The air here seems fresher.
You collapse on the ground, your muscles still spasming from the poisonous vapor.
You convulse on the ground, your muscles still spasming from the poisonous vapor.
You take deep breaths of the clearer air, your lungs burning painfully.
You take deep breaths of the clearer air, your lungs burning painfully.
Your dizziness hangs around like a stubborn dinner guest, reluctant to leave but being slowly shoved out the front door inch by inch.
Your dizziness hangs around like a stubborn dinner guest, reluctant to leave but being slowly shoved out the front door inch by inch.
You cough some of the vapour out of your lungs.
You cough the last of the vapour out of your lungs.
You feel better.

In game help

See also