Introduction to Mining

Characteristics of Mining
For each tool and land card, there are three numbers in the corners. These values determine how effective the tool is for various aspects of mining. The three categories are the Trillium Modifier, Proof of Work (PoW) Reduction, and NFT Luck Modifier. The description of the card also gives the charge time of the tools. These numbers are dependent on both the tool type and its shininess.

Trillium Modifier
Trillium modifiers massively impact the amount of TLM one can mine during each session. These values are recorded as percentages. When having multiple tools, the tool trillium modifiers are summed together then multiplied the Trillium Mining Power multiplier of the land that you're on.

Proof of Work Reduction
When mining, the device you're using starts trying to find hashes to submit that meet certain criteria. When that hash is found, you are able to claim your TLM. The usefulness of this modifier depends on how powerful the device you're using to mine is. This should be a main focus if the majority of the mining will be done on a mobile device such as a phone, though it still reduces the time on the mining screen for computers as well. After the first two or three (see wallet differences below) bytes of the hash are zero, the next four bits must be less than or equal to the sum of the PoW reduction values for the tools used along with the PoW reduction for the land being mined on. Each increase in reduction drastically increases the number of possible valid hashes that can be found.

Wallet Differences
The average length of time that an account will mine is drastically dependent on the type of wallet account linked to Alien Worlds. To have the shortest possible mining phase, it is advised to use a WAX wallet that ends in .wam. When using a .wam account, the first two bytes (16 bits) of the hash must all be zeros along with the last four bits being less than the POW reduction to be a valid hash. When not using a .wam account, the first three bytes (24 bits) must be zero along with the same requirements as before. According to the Alien Worlds Technical Blueprint, the actual Proof of Work calculation is as follows:

NFT Luck Modifier
When mining for NFTs, there are two stages that your miner must pass. While it is possible to increase the chances of mining an NFT, there will only ever be a max of one NFT paid out per attempt.

Stage 1
The first stage is to determine if you have the possibility of mining an NFT in the current session. This stage is affected by the NFT Luck modifier of the tools and the land. These values are given in percentages and the total value applied is equal to the summation of the values for each tool. This value is then multiplied by the NFT Luck multiplier of the land being mined on. In other words, the possibility of passing stage one is as follows:

$$\text{Percent chance of clearing stage 1} = \sum{ (\text{Tool NFT Luck}) } \cdot{ } \text{Land NFT Luck Multiplier}

$$

Stage 2
The second stage determines the rarity of the NFT given out. In this second stage, the chance of no NFTs are still possible. This can not be affected by any modifiers. While the breakdown of this stage is unknown, there appears to be a fairly large chance of failing this second stage according to multiple people's anecdotal evidence.

Changes to NFT Luck
As of May 6, 2021, a tool's actual NFT Luck was changed from the value listed on the cards. With this change, tools that have a modifier of less than 10.8 have a lower real NFT modifier and those above have a higher modifier. In order to calculate this new Tool NFT Luck, use the following formula:

$$\text{New Tool NFT Luck} = \frac{\text{Tool NFT Luck}^{1.3}}{2}

$$, rounded down to nearest tenth's place

Charge Time
This determines how long you must wait before being able to mine again once you claim your yield. The actual time that you have to wait depends on the specific tools you use, which I will call effective wait time. No matter how the effective wait time is calculated, it is then multiplied by the land's charge time multiplier. When only having one tool, the time on the card is equal to the effective wait time. When using two tools, half of the shorter charge time is added to the longer tool's charge time to give you the effective wait time. When using three tools, the longest two charge times added together gives the effective wait time for the tools.