Introduction

In February 2018, in the 1.5 Update, Guns of Glory was extended with the Spirit Mines. This guide explains how the Spirit Mines work.

The Basics

In between the Daily Shipments Dock and the new Doctors Lab building are the new Spirit Mines located. If your Castle is at least level 16 you can enter it, progress various floors by beating monsters and chose a door to the right to gather Lazarus Crystals at the Crystal Mines. These Lazarus Crystals can subsequently be exchanged for various rewards.

Mineshaft

The first part of the this feature is the Mineshaft. When entering you need to make sure you have your Airship at home and set for war, and that you have your attack equipment on, because your combat boosts are used for your performance.

In the Mineshaft you start at floor 1, where you face a monster. If you beat this monster you proceed to the next floor where you can chose to leave to the Mining Area to gather, or to battle the next monster. When you battle a monster, the troops you lose are really lost (within this small game, your main account is not affected), unless you use a Restore March Capacity item, which I explain below. The amount of troops you have in the Mineshaft affects the mount of troops you can use in the Mining Area. Good to keep this in mind, because the fewer troops you have the easier you are to beat.

After each monster you beat you can buy benefits. The way it works it a bit complicated. There are 19 possible benefits to buy. 18 of these are combat benefits for which the price and benefit increases each level, and which you can only buy once. The 1st benefit restores your march capacity by 20% and has a fixed price of 300 credits. You can buy this one as often as you want. Each level you get a fixed number of credits, initially that is more than the price of the benefits, but later on it is less because the prices keep increasing. Because of this you have to think a bit about what you want to purchase. Depending on at which floor you get stuck (or potentially at which earlier floor you want to go out to gather crystals, because there are some considerations to not go to the highest floor possible), you might want to plan your purchases, e.g. buy the troop boosts at the highest possible floor (although at the last floor I like to buy a restore march capacity item).

The boosts you buy are added to your regular boosts and are effective in both the Mineshaft and the Mining Area.

Once you enter the Mining Area, you can not go back to your previous location in the Mineshaft, unless you use the Reset button at the bottom right. You have a gathering time limit, and once that is expired you start in the beginning of the Mineshaft again.

Mining Area

When you enter the Mining Area you have a specified time to collect Lazarus Crystals. In the Mining Area there are many screens with mines in them. You can either gather an unoccipied mine, or you can attack an occupied mine.

If you have VIP 8 or higher active you can use a Quick Find Crystal Quarries button to find the first available unoccupied quarry.

If you do not find an empty quarry you can opt to attack the quarry another player is gathering on. If you lose it does not seem to have effect on your troops, but there is a time, seems a bit similar to the donation time, and if you lose too many battles you cannot attack further. If you have a hard time finding a quarry to gather on, you might also considering resetting and next run leaving the spirit mine at a lower level. Here you mind find empty quarries, or otherwise it will be easier to beat someone else gathering and occupy their mine.

If you are attacked on your quarry and you lose, you get a report and have a possibility to take Revenge. Successful revenge will return any lost crystals to you.

When your time is over you will receive a "Leave Mines" mail which amongst other information stattes the successfully defended mines.

When you are on a mine, you are attacked and you lose, you lose a part of your Crystals. Not sure exactly how is determined how many Crystals you lose, but it is not all.

Rewards

The rewards are quite interesting. There are quite some items you can get here that you can't get easily in other places, or that are quite cheap. Below an overview as far as I know it now including where available a comparison with the gold and alliance honor price.

The rewards are refreshed each day.

I am not yet sure what is best to use the Crystals on, I see quite some interesting possibilities, like Assault Power, Refining Stones, Glory Banners, Lord EXP, Airship EXP. Even the Material Chests, Resources and VIP points are interesting for me.

Considerations and Tips

This new feature is available permanently. You might want to make sure you are always gathering here, as it basically is just free extra goodies.

Gathering in the Spirit Mines does not cost you a march slot.

Items in the shop only become available once you have reached a certain floor. If you ever reach a higher floor, this keeps being valid even after the Spirit Mines are reset. If you have problems reaching certain floors you might consider using an item to increase your march size, or for example set you talent points in the war tree to increase the march size.

You could consider stepping out a lower floor than the maximum floor you can reach because here it will likely be easier for you to find an empty quarry and to successfully defend it against attackers. I haven't made a comparison yet, but I think the higher floors have a higher crystal gathering rate, but if you are being attacked and are unable to gather full time the higher rate is useless.

Conclusion

I am not too crazy about this new feature, but just consider it as an easy way to get some nice goodies. If you have any tips or questions, please share.