Dig away the mountain: Mining in "Free Realms"

In "Free Realms", the Miner job is simple: complete the mining minigames to collect ore and gems. Ore can then be made into metal bars with the smelting minigame, which, combined with gems, can be used in the Blacksmith job to craft special weapons.

Miners wear tough clothes they can get dirty in, and carry shovels, pickaxes, and dynamite to help them get the job done.

On its own, being a Miner in "Free Realms" is not the most beneficial job. Unlike a Chef, miners only harvest the resources for crafting items, while the crafting of items itself takes place in the Blacksmithing job.

The primary benefit for being a Miner is to gather the materials necessary for the Blacksmith job. Of course, as a miner, you can also benefit from making money. You can do this by either selling the ore and gems you find to a vendor, or by selling it to another player who needs it for their Blacksmithing.

Naturally, you can also just play a Miner because it's fun!

The mining minigame is a match-three style game. The goal is to match three or more icons (representing rocks in this version of the game) in a long chain, thereby clearing the way for special ore and gems to fall to the bottom and be collected. You have a time limit that ticks away; matching tiles add time back to the time limit. Each vein of ore (for instance, copper ore, rich copper ore, iron ore, etc.) has a different board shape and difficult level associated with it, but remains the same matching game throughout.

While you are matching tiles, beware. Brown blocks cannot be matched with anything, and can only be destroyed by dropping it to the bottom of the game board. Locked tiles (normal tiles with a lock on them) can't be destroyed or shuffled, but can be unlocked by matching them with other tiles in a regular chain. Star tiles act as wild-cards that you can match with any other tile in a chain.

There are several types of power-ups that can be used in the mining mini-game:

• Star Circle: A small circle with a falling star, using this power-up will create star tiles on the board.
• Dynamite: A circle with red dynamite, this power-up will destroy several nearby tiles.
• Shuffle: A circle with a tornado, the shuffle will randomly move tiles around on the board.
• Explosion: A circle with a small explosion in the middle, this power-up will destroy some random tiles on the board.