Mining speed and pick quality

[Sitting_Bill]

If I increase the quality of my pickaxe, will that increase mining speed? I know it will allow me to mine harder rock, but I'm unsure how/if mining speed is affected by quality of the pickaxe...

[DatOneGuy]

It is, 'Mining Ability' is determined by your Strength and Pickaxe/Stone Axe Quality, the better your Mining Ability, the faster you mine.

[Sitting_Bill]

Wonderful Is there some point at which it "maxes out"? I'm trying to make a very long level 1 mine tunnel to an iron deposit so I can get my brickwall up, and my pick is q19... If I was to get, say a q60 pickaxe would that make it sqrt(60/19) ~1.7 times as fast? (just guessing ) or does it cap out at some point?

[DatOneGuy]

Wonderful Is there some point at which it "maxes out"? I'm trying to make a very long level 1 mine tunnel to an iron deposit so I can get my brickwall up, and my pick is q19... If I was to get, say a q60 pickaxe would that make it sqrt(60/19) ~1.7 times as fast? (just guessing ) or does it cap out at some point?

I don't know how the exact formula works, I think it's actually sqrt(PickAxe * STR).
It caps out at the point that you are breaking a whole 'hourglass' in a single 'tick' (Less than a second I believe, not sure on the exact timing, it's between 200-500ms).

You won't hit that point for a long time, somewhere around a q70+ Pickaxe and 300+ STR for L1 I believe.

[Sevenless]

Wonderful Is there some point at which it "maxes out"? I'm trying to make a very long level 1 mine tunnel to an iron deposit so I can get my brickwall up, and my pick is q19... If I was to get, say a q60 pickaxe would that make it sqrt(60/19) ~1.7 times as fast? (just guessing ) or does it cap out at some point?

I don't know how the exact formula works, I think it's actually sqrt(PickAxe * STR).
It caps out at the point that you are breaking a whole 'hourglass' in a single 'tick' (Less than a second I believe, not sure on the exact timing, it's between 200-500ms).

You won't hit that point for a long time, somewhere around a q70+ Pickaxe and 300+ STR for L1 I believe.

I think it's more like Q70 and 250ish strength. But yeah, right in that area.

Now for the mining increase: Your mining score does not translate directly into mining speed. If you're beating the rock's score by 1 point, you mine incredibly slowly. If you're beating it by 15 points, you mine at least 3-4x faster. That extra 14 points of score makes an incredible difference in mining speed. However if you're mining at 30 points above, an extra 14 won't double your speed, or even increase it by 50%.

That being said, buying a pickaxe from a store is a great idea. A Q60 pick makes lvl 1 laughably easy for mining, even with 10str+ cape/tooth bonus.