How to Get the Hand Drill to Mine and Ore Veins in Ark of Charon

Sometimes in Ark of Charon, you’ll come across veins of ore or stone embedded in the walls that your golems can’t seem to mine. To get at these precious Ore Veins, you’ll need to research and build a Hand Drill. Here’s how to get your Hand Drill in Ark of Charon.

How do I find ore veins in Ark of Charon?

Ore veins, as you might expect, are found while digging underground. They are big chunks of rock or ore embedded in the back wall, rather than occupying the space of a normal block. While digging, keep an eye out for sparkles in the soil, as these indicate either an artifact (which can be useful in its own right) or a nice vein of ore lies ahead.

Veins can contain one of a variety of resources, most commonly iron and stone, but their supply is not limitless. You can check how much a vein contains by mousing over it.

Here’s a screenshot I took, so you know what to look for in-game:

How do I research and build a Hand Drill in Ark of Charon?

Once you’ve located your ore vein, you’ll need a hand drill to extract it. You can find them in the Research Tree in the top right-most box. It will cost a single Research Point to gain that knowledge.

Once you have the blueprint, you can place one down in front of the vein and wait for your golems to bring over the five pieces of wood and five pieces of stone required to build it. After it is done, a golem can operate the drill to mine the ore until the deposit is depleted.

Remember that you can select “remove” instead of “demolish” to place the drill in storage! Then the next time you find a vein, you can set it up faster and get to exploiting those sweet, sweet resources.

Ark of Charon is immediately available for PC via Steam Early Access.