Mines of Mars: Walkthrough and Strategy Guide

This is a strategy guide and walkthrough for Mines of Mars. You’ll be able to find help, hints, tips, tricks and solutions. It’s a work in progress, so please bear with me. Feel free to ask for help in the comments section, or share your own hints and tips.

Each game is randomly generated and unique, meaning your game will be different than mine as far as placement of ores, minerals and portals go.

This is mostly a starting guide with tips and tricks. Scroll all the way down for links to guides for dungeon boss battles, weapon stats, and the Offering Pit.

Starting Off:

On the surface of Mars, you’ll find a number of structures that are vital to your journey. I’ll be going through them here:

1. The Portal is in the center. Stand in front of it and tap on it. Then tap on one of the circles that represent the available portals. You’ll now be teleported there. These portals make travel easier, so you have less room to travel. They’re also your only way back to the surface with your materials intact.

2. Crafting: Walk left and you will see the crafting building. This is where you craft better equipment and weapons. You must craft linearly, and you will only see the equipment that is available for you to craft at the moment.

3. Cutting: Continue left and you see the gem cutter. This is where you cut your stones into gems.

4. Smelting: Continue left and you see the smelting building, which refines ores into ingots.

5. Museum: The last building on the left is the Museum, which will house your Offering Pit artifacts and key pieces.

6. Revive & Refuel: Walk to the right of the portal to fill up your health bar in the green stasis chamber (just stand in front of it and it will pick you up). Also tap on the building to get fuel if you’re missing any. It will drop and you need to pick it up.

7. Ammo: continue right. This is where you can pick up more ammo for your weapons. It refills all your weapons’ ammo.

8. BB’s Arcade: Continue right and you get retro arcade games. Enjoy!

Tips:

1. When mining downwards, occasionally mine a bit to the left and right as you go down, in case you need to access an area a bit further up from where you are. That way you can easily go back up a bit and dig left or right. REMEMBER: In the beginning, you can always dig down easily, but digging up is much harder (you can shoot tiles with your gun, but it’s highly inefficient). Also, try to have a clear path downwards so you can free fall back down and fly up easily back to the portal. Once you get the Carbon boots (level 3), this will be less of an issue because they have anti-gravity capabilities. You can flip gravity by tapping the middle top of the screen.

**Pro tip: If you have the anti-gravity boots before you have your level 4 jetpack, you may be able to save on fuel by reverse-falling upwards back to the portal. Try it!**

2. You can kill critters while they’re small, like this little lizard below, even though they seem harmless. (I’m not sure about this part: If allowed to live and grow, it seems they will turn into monsters that will eventually attack you if you encounter them.) Critters sometimes drop health (blue) or fuel (yellow), so it makes sense to kill them if you’re running low.

3. If you have more than one gun, you can swap between them by swiping left or right in the inventory menu. I kept trying to tap the arrows and nothing happened. So if you haven’t discovered that yet, now you know!

4. Upgrade your helmet (light), rockets (fuel), and boots as fast as possible. Fuel will allow you to go deeper without worrying about coming back up. The light will allow you to see a bigger radius, so you can dig smarter (and see enemies before they attack you). The final helmet (level 4) allows you to see everything, and the final jetpack allows you to fly as much as you want without ever needing to worry about fuel! This means you can also fly and shoot freely. The 3rd and 4th level boots give you antigravity abilities, which allow you to dig upside-down, and also walk on ceilings so you can shoot upside-down (great for dungeons!).

5. If you come across a statue, don’t waste your time digging to uncover it. Look for this eye stone and stand on it and all the blocks will clear out. The statue marks an opening of a dungeon.

6. Watch your fuel! Make sure you don’t go too deep for you to get back to a portal, because if you run out of fuel (or die), you lose all the raw materials you’re carrying. I lost a full bag of emeralds this way when I needed them badly! If you need to only make small jumps, try tapping the bottom right part of your screen. You can’t go very far in the beginning, but it doesn’t use fuel.

7. If enemies are giving you trouble, just focus on mining and getting your upgrades before taking on the bosses. It’s perfectly possible to get all upgrades before even fighting one boss!

8. Try to remember the depth for each of your portals, or take screenshots of them in case you get lost. It’s easier to find them if you know the depth. The same goes with any dungeon you want to come back to or even a pocket of ores and minerals that you don’t have room for at the moment.

9. Secret Pickaxe, the Alien Kick-Axe:
You can get this secret pickaxe from the Offering Pit. It’s incredibly fast, about as good as the Iridium Drill (best drill you can craft). To learn more about it, see our Offering Pit and Artifacts Guide.

10. To mine a bit faster, stand on the seam between two blocks and mine down. You should mine two blocks in quick succession each time you mine downwards.

Ores/Ingots:
Iron — Mostly under 500 ft
Bronze — Mostly around 700 ft
Cobalt — mostly around 800 – 1100 ft
Steel — mostly around 1000 – 1200 ft
Rhodite — mostly around 1200 – 1800 ft
Gold — mostly around 2000 — 3500 ft
Platinum — mostly 3000+
Iridium — mostly around 3500+

Sadly, the mines are not infinite. The bottom is around 4400 ft.

Gems/Stones:
Opal — mostly under 500 ft
Amethyst — mostly under 1000 ft
Emerald — mostly around 1200 – 1900 ft
Ruby — mostly around 1500 – 1800 ft
Sapphire — mostly around 1700 – 2000 ft
Topaz — Mostly around 2000 – 3200 ft
Diamond — mostly around 3000+ ft
Obsidian — Mostly around 3500+ ft

See all our Mines of Mars guides here.

Weapons Stats Guide

Dungeons and Bosses Walkthrough Guide

The Offering Pit and Artifacts Guide

If you like Mines of Mars, you might also like Battleheart Legacy.