Mining

Mining is the skill you train by breaking stone, ore, and other pickaxe blocks. The higher your level, the more often blocks drop extra loot, and the more powerful your two big tools become: the Super Breaker super ability (a temporary mining frenzy) and the entire Blast Mining tree that turns TNT into a precision ore-harvesting tool.

You level Mining by mining. Every eligible block grants XP based on what it is: common stone pays a little, deep ores pay a lot.

Double Drops: mine double the loot

Double Drops is the bread-and-butter of Mining. Every time you break an eligible block, you have a chance to drop a second copy of whatever it dropped. It is available from level 1 and scales up as you level.

The chance climbs in a straight line from 0% to 100% at the cap, so a level 50 standard player double-drops about half their blocks, and a level 100 player double-drops everything.

Mining:
    DoubleDrops:
        SilkTouch: true          # allow double drops while using Silk Touch
        ChanceMax: 100.0
        MaxBonusLevel:
            Standard: 100
            RetroMode: 1000

Mother Lode: a chance at triple drops

Once you hit a high level, Mining gains a chance to drop three copies of a block instead of two. This is Mother Lode. It is checked first: if Mother Lode triggers you get the triple drop; if it fails, the normal Double Drops roll happens instead. The two don't stack.

Mother Lode caps at 50% and the curve stretches all the way to level 1000 (Standard), so it's a long-term reward for dedicated miners.

Mining:
    MotherLode:
        ChanceMax: 50.0
        MaxBonusLevel:
            Standard: 1000
            RetroMode: 10000

Super Breaker: the mining frenzy

Super Breaker is Mining's super ability. While it's active, eligible blocks shatter instantly (a strong haste-style speed boost) and your double-drop rolls are upgraded to triple drops.

How to activate it

1. Hold a pickaxe.
2. Right-click a wall/block with the pickaxe to "ready" your tool (you'll see a tool ready message).
3. Immediately start mining an eligible block, and Super Breaker fires.

Super Breaker unlocks at Mining level 5 (Standard) or 50 (RetroMode).

How long it lasts

The duration grows with your Mining level, using mcMMO's shared super-ability formula:

duration (seconds) = 2 + (Mining level ÷ IncreaseLevel)

IncreaseLevel is 5 in Standard and 50 in RetroMode (from advanced.yml → Skills.General.Ability.Length), and the level used is capped at the cap level (100 Standard / 1000 RetroMode). In practice:

By default there is no hard cap on length (Max_Seconds.Super_Breaker: 0).

Cooldown

Super Breaker has a 240-second cooldown by default (config.yml → Skills.Cooldowns.Super_Breaker). The cooldown is reduced by the Cooldown perk if your server grants it.

The triple-drop boost

While Super Breaker is active, a successful Double Drops roll yields a triple drop instead of a double, but only if the server keeps the default AllowTripleDrops: true:

Mining:
    SuperBreaker:
        AllowTripleDrops: true   # Super Breaker upgrades double drops to triple

Using a super ability also wears your pickaxe down a little faster (the extra durability cost is set by Tools.Durability_Loss in config.yml, default 1).

Blast Mining: mining with TNT

Blast Mining is a whole sub-tree that turns TNT into an ore-harvesting tool. Instead of mining ore by hand, you blow it up and Blast Mining hands you the ores (and strips out the junk). It has its own rank track and its own cooldown, separate from Super Breaker.

Blast Mining ranks unlock at these Mining levels:

Remote detonation

The headline trick: you can detonate TNT from across the room.

1. Hold a pickaxe or the configured detonator item (default Flint and Steel, config.yml → Skills.Mining.Detonator_Name: FLINT_AND_STEEL).
2. Sneak (crouch) and right-click while looking at TNT within 100 blocks.
3. The TNT primes and explodes instantly.

This requires the mcmmo.ability.mining.blastmining.detonate permission and an unlocked Blast Mining rank.

Cooldown

Remote detonation has a 60-second cooldown by default (config.yml → Skills.Cooldowns.Blast_Mining). You can't detonate again until it's up.

Ore yield bonus and drop multiplier

When Blast Mining blows up ore, you get more ore than a normal explosion would drop, and the surrounding debris (cobble, dirt) is mostly suppressed. Two numbers control how much ore you get back: the ore bonus (a percentage added to the explosion's yield) and the drop multiplier (how many times each ore can drop):

Under the hood, the explosion's yield is multiplied up by the ore bonus, then capped at a per-ore yield of 3. For each successful ore roll, the drop multiplier gives extra copies (each extra copy has a 50% chance), as long as Bonus_Drops.Enabled: true (default). Non-ore debris only has a 10% chance to drop at all, which is why Blast Mining gives you a clean pile of ore instead of a mess of stone.

You always earn full Mining XP for every ore destroyed, even the ones that don't roll a drop.

Bigger Bombs

Bigger Bombs is the part of Blast Mining that increases the blast radius of your detonated TNT, letting you clear more ore per charge. The radius bonus per rank is in the table above (+1.0 at low ranks, up to +4.0 at rank 7–8). It unlocks at the same point as Blast Mining rank 1 (level 10 Standard / 100 RetroMode) and needs the mcmmo.ability.mining.blastmining.biggerbombs permission.

Demolitions Expertise

Demolitions Expertise reduces the damage TNT explosions deal to you, so you can stand closer to your own blasts. The damage reduction per rank is the "TNT damage taken" column above: TNT damage is multiplied by (100 − reduction) ÷ 100. At rank 8 you take 0%: complete immunity to your own Blast Mining TNT.

It first kicks in at rank 4 (level 50 Standard / 500 RetroMode), since ranks 1–3 have 0% reduction. It needs the mcmmo.ability.mining.blastmining.demolitionsexpertise permission.

Earning XP

Mining XP comes entirely from breaking blocks. Each block type has a fixed XP value in experience.yml. A sample of the defaults:

Deepslate variants pay roughly 40–50% more than their stone counterparts, rewarding deep mining. Blast Mining grants the same per-ore XP for every ore the explosion destroys.

Anti-exploit protection

mcMMO blocks the most common Mining XP exploits by default, via experience.yml:

• Lava, stone & cobble farming. ExploitFix.LavaStoneAndCobbleFarming: true stops you from farming infinite Mining XP off generated stone/cobble (e.g. cobblestone generators).
• Player-placed blocks give no XP. mcMMO tracks blocks placed by players; breaking a block you (or anyone) placed yields no Mining XP and no bonus drops. This also applies to Blast Mining: placed ore in the blast list is skipped.

Commands & permissions

See Permissions for the full list and how to assign them.

Quick reference