- Tunneling could use some qol, a simple stone structure that doesn't require metal or wood that only provides a 1x10 line would be amazing.
- Dust piles are the best addition you've done to the caves add more localized resources to the caves in the form of gems to promote exploration of vast cave systems.
- Add some form of cave wax to the caverns so I feel productive while exploring caverns in the early game.
- Boulders bad make it a toggle. not a single person wants to be interrupted by this.
- For whatever reason you're persistent on energy remaining in the game so why not add energy food to the cave systems so I'm not forced to teleport out?
- The str requirement for certain rocks is insane, mining a tunnel for 20 mins only to be stopped by "you cant even scratch the rock" is really annoying.
- reducing the overall water consumption while mining would be amazing, needing a barrel of 100l for a mining trip seems silly no?
These are the main culprits that stop me from really enjoying mining, constantly being interrupted by the games annoying mechanics forcing me to do something else when I just feel like mining for a couple hours.
Also the mine elevator is useless due to how far u usually find ore, teleporting a cart with 6 wheelbarrows is 100x better than a stationary elevator maybe buff it so it doesn't suck? making it a stationary teleport point that isn't vertical would work.
I have a bunch more ideas that could make the caves really worth it to explore and ill consider typing those out if you're interested.