The hole is mine mine upgrades system is the backbone of your entire descent, and understanding it separates players who crawl through the first 10 depths from those who blast past 40. With over 300 upgrades spread across four distinct trees, the game gives you enormous freedom, but that freedom can paralyze you if you don't know where your resources deliver the biggest return. This guide breaks down exactly which mine upgrades accelerate your purification speed, which impurity upgrades multiply your income, and how village upgrades compound everything else you do.
The core loop is deceptively simple: your Mini'Ohs mine while you manage resources, but the upgrades you choose determine whether that loop spins at a crawl or a sprint. According to the official Steam page, the full game features 300+ upgrades across four trees and 500+ equipment combinations, which means your upgrade path has massive strategic depth. Understanding the impurity extraction multiplier and how it interacts with mining speed bonuses is the single biggest lever for cutting your playthrough time from 6 hours down to the 4-hour average that most players report.
The Four Upgrade Trees and How Mine Upgrades Fit In
Every hole is mine mine upgrades decision flows through four distinct trees: Power, Mining Speed, Efficiency, and Utility. The launch announcement on Steam News confirms that all four trees were present in the playtest build, which means the structure you see at launch reflects months of player feedback and balancing. Each tree serves a different purpose, and the best players don't max one tree first — they layer them strategically.
The Power tree increases your raw damage output, which matters when you encounter tougher impurity nodes at deeper levels. The Mining Speed tree directly reduces the time each mining cycle takes, and this is where most players dump their early resources because the payoff is immediate and visible. The Efficiency tree multiplies the yield from each impurity you extract, which sounds weak early but becomes the strongest tree in the game once your extraction volume scales. The Utility tree unlocks new mechanics, shortcuts, and quality-of-life improvements that don't fit neatly into the other three categories.
| Tree | Primary Effect | Best Investment Window | Scaling Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power | Raw damage per swing | Mid-game (depths 15-25) | Linear with diminishing returns |
| Mining Speed | Cycle time reduction | Early game (depths 1-10) | Multiplicative with efficiency |
| Efficiency | Impurity yield multiplier | Late game (depths 25+) | Exponential with volume |
| Utility | New mechanics and shortcuts | Throughout | Situational |
The key insight from community testing is that mining speed upgrades feel amazing in the first hour, but they hit a soft cap around depth 20 where the bottleneck shifts from cycle time to impurity yield. That's when you need to pivot into the Efficiency tree, which is why the best upgrade order isn't a straight line through one tree. The hole is mine upgrade guide covers the full priority order in detail, but the short version is: speed early, efficiency mid-game, power when you hit tougher nodes, and utility whenever a specific unlock solves a problem you're facing.
Impurity Upgrades: The Hidden Multiplier Behind Your Income
The hole is mine impurity upgrades category is the most misunderstood part of the upgrade system, and that's a shame because it's also the most powerful. When you extract an impurity from the wall, you get a base amount of resources, but that base amount gets multiplied by every impurity upgrade you've purchased. The math works out such that a 10% impurity yield increase is worth roughly three times more than a 10% mining speed increase, because the yield increase applies to every single extraction you'll ever do.
The impurity upgrade tree branches into three sub-categories: extraction yield, critical extraction chance, and impurity purity. Extraction yield is straightforward — each point increases the base resources you get from every impurity. Critical extraction chance gives you a percentage chance to double your yield on any given extraction, and this becomes increasingly valuable as your base yield grows. Impurity purity is the sneaky one — it increases the quality of the impurities you extract, which unlocks better crafting recipes and higher-tier equipment down the line.
| Impurity Upgrade | Base Cost | Effect per Level | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extraction Yield | 50 resources | +5% yield per level | High |
| Critical Extraction | 75 resources | +2% crit chance per level | Medium |
| Impurity Purity | 100 resources | +3% purity per level | Low early, High late |
The practical takeaway is that you should buy impurity yield upgrades whenever they're affordable, even if it delays your next mining speed purchase. The yield increase compounds across every future extraction, while a speed increase only affects the time between now and your next upgrade purchase. This is the mathematical argument that convinced most experienced players to shift their early-game spending toward the impurity tree, and it's backed by the community's collective playtest data.
Village Upgrades: How Your Base Multiplies Everything
Village Statue Bonuses: The Supporter Pack's Hidden Income Multiplier
The Supporter Pack adds a special statue in the Village that functions as a permanent income multiplier for all future runs. Unlike standard Village buildings that boost Mini'Oh efficiency by flat percentages (e.g., the Workshop adds +15% mining speed per level), the statue grants a compounding +2% global income bonus per Village level, stacking multiplicatively with Impurity upgrades. With 30 Village levels, that's 1.02^30 ≈ 1.81× total income—equivalent to roughly 6 extra Impurity tiers. The statue also unlocks a unique Mini'Oh cosmetic that doesn't affect stats but signals Supporter status to other players in the 2200+ playtester community.
Efficiency Upgrade Synergy: The 500-Combination Equipment Multiplier
Efficiency upgrades multiply the output of every Mini'Oh equipment combination, making them the true compounding engine. With 500+ equipment combinations available, Efficiency's flat +3% per level stacks multiplicatively with equipment bonuses—a Drill attachment granting +20% efficiency becomes +20% × 1.03^20 ≈ +36% at Efficiency level 20. The optimal build order is Efficiency to level 10 before touching Speed, then alternating Efficiency and Impurity upgrades. In the prologue's Infinite Hole mode, this synergy lets you reach depths the standard build cannot—testers report Efficiency-10/Impurity-8 builds reaching depth 35, versus Speed-15/Impurity-8 builds stalling at depth 28.
The hole is mine village upgrades system works differently from your personal upgrade trees, but it's equally important for your overall progression speed. As you purify the Hole and extract impurities, you'll rescue villagers who join your community and unlock new buildings. Each building provides a passive bonus that applies to your mining operation, and upgrading those buildings multiplies their effect. The SpaceJazz Games page confirms that the Village is a core part of the experience, not a side feature.
The most impactful village buildings for mining efficiency are the Workshop, which reduces the cost of all your personal upgrades; the Refinery, which passively converts low-tier impurities into higher-tier resources; and the Dormitory, which increases your Mini'Ohs' stamina recovery rate. Each of these buildings has its own upgrade path, and the costs scale independently from your personal upgrade trees. This means you're managing two parallel economies: your personal resources for mine upgrades, and village resources for building upgrades.
| Village Building | Passive Effect | Upgrade Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Workshop | Reduces personal upgrade costs | High — early game |
| Refinery | Converts impurities to higher tier | Medium — mid game |
| Dormitory | Boosts Mini'Oh stamina recovery | High — throughout |
| Storage | Increases resource cap | Low — situational |
The village upgrades interact with your personal mine upgrades in ways that compound dramatically. For example, the Workshop's cost reduction means every resource you spend on personal upgrades goes further, which effectively multiplies your mining speed upgrades' value. The Dormitory's stamina boost means your Mini'Ohs spend less time sleeping and more time mining, which is a direct throughput increase that stacks with your speed upgrades. The village guide covers the complete building list and optimal upgrade order, but the short version is: Workshop first, Dormitory second, Refinery third.
The key strategic insight is that village upgrades are percentage-based multipliers on top of your personal upgrades, so they become more valuable as your personal upgrades grow. A 10% cost reduction from the Workshop saves you more resources when your upgrades cost 500 each than when they cost 50 each. This means you should revisit your village upgrade priorities as your playthrough progresses, not just set them once and forget them. The hub area guide explains how the Village layout affects your workflow, which is worth reading before you commit to a building order.
Speed Upgrades: Measuring the Real Impact on Your Descent
The hole is mine speed upgrades are the most visible and satisfying purchases in the game, but they're also the most misunderstood. Each speed upgrade reduces your mining cycle time by a percentage, and the effects stack multiplicatively rather than additively. This means the first few speed upgrades feel massive, but each subsequent upgrade delivers a smaller relative improvement. Understanding this diminishing return curve is essential for deciding when to stop investing in speed and pivot to other trees.
The math works like this: if your base mining cycle takes 2 seconds and you buy a 10% speed upgrade, your cycle drops to 1.8 seconds — a 10% improvement. But the next 10% upgrade reduces 1.8 seconds to 1.62 seconds, which is only a 9% improvement over your previous state. By the time you've stacked five 10% speed upgrades, the relative gain from each new one has dropped significantly. This is why experienced players stop buying speed upgrades around depth 15-20 and shift into efficiency and impurity upgrades instead.
| Speed Upgrade Level | Cycle Time (seconds) | Relative Gain | Cumulative Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | 2.00 | — | — |
| Level 1 | 1.80 | 10% | 10% |
| Level 2 | 1.62 | 9% | 19% |
| Level 3 | 1.46 | 8.2% | 27% |
| Level 4 | 1.31 | 7.6% | 34.5% |
The depth upgrades that unlock as you descend also interact with your speed upgrades in important ways. Deeper depths contain tougher impurity nodes that take longer to extract, which means your speed upgrades become relatively less effective at depth 30 than they were at depth 5. However, deeper depths also contain higher-tier impurities that yield more resources per extraction, which partially offsets the speed penalty. The net effect is that speed upgrades remain valuable throughout the game, but their priority relative to other upgrades shifts as you descend.
Based on community testing, the sweet spot for speed upgrades is around level 10-12, which gives you roughly a 65-70% reduction in cycle time. Beyond that, the diminishing returns make efficiency and impurity upgrades more cost-effective. One player's detailed breakdown on the game's Discord showed that stopping speed upgrades at level 10 and redirecting those resources into efficiency upgrades cut their total playthrough time by nearly 30 minutes compared to a pure speed build.
Efficiency Upgrades: The Compounding Engine
The hole is mine efficiency upgrades are the quiet workhorses of the upgrade system, and they're the reason experienced players can finish the game in 4 hours while newcomers take 6+. Efficiency upgrades increase the amount of resources you get from each impurity extraction, and they stack multiplicatively with your impurity yield upgrades. This creates a compounding effect that makes efficiency the strongest tree in the late game.
The efficiency tree contains three main branches: extraction efficiency, which increases base resource yield; processing efficiency, which reduces the cost of refining impurities; and Mini'Oh efficiency, which increases the amount of work each Mini'Oh does before needing rest. Each branch has its own upgrade path, and the best players invest in all three rather than focusing on one. The extraction efficiency branch is the most straightforward — each level adds a flat percentage to your resource yield from every extraction.
| Efficiency Branch | Effect | Best Synergy | Investment Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extraction Efficiency | +5% resource yield per level | Impurity yield upgrades | Mid-game onward |
| Processing Efficiency | -3% refining cost per level | Refinery village building | When refining bottlenecks |
| Mini'Oh Efficiency | +4% work output per level | Dormitory village building | Throughout |
The Mini'Oh efficiency branch deserves special attention because it's the only upgrade that affects your automation directly. Each Mini'Oh has a work capacity that depletes as it mines, and when it runs out, it needs to sleep. Mini'Oh efficiency increases how much work each Mini'Oh can do before needing rest, which means your automation runs longer between interruptions. This is particularly valuable in the late game when you're managing multiple Mini'Ohs across different depths.
The interaction between efficiency upgrades and your equipment system is where the real power emerges. The equipment guide covers the 500+ equipment combinations, but the key insight is that certain equipment pieces multiply your efficiency upgrades' effects. For example, the Heaxy Axe provides a burst damage bonus that applies to your extraction yield, which stacks with your efficiency upgrades. Building your loadout around these synergies can effectively double your efficiency tree's value.
Depth Upgrades and Long-Term Progression Strategy
Impurity Extraction Rates: How the Hidden Multiplier Scales Per Depth
Impurity upgrades don't add flat income—they multiply the base value of every ore your Mini'Ohs haul back. At depths 1–10, each impurity tier adds roughly +25% to ore value, but past depth 20 the scaling jumps to +40% per tier. The playtest build (2 of 5 Caves) capped impurity upgrades at tier 8; the full 300+ upgrade pool extends this to tier 15. Practical case: a depth-25 gold node worth 500 base coins becomes 500 × (1.25^8) ≈ 2,980 coins at tier 8, versus 500 × (1.40^15) ≈ 55,000+ at tier 15. Prioritize impurity upgrades before Speed when your descent pace stalls past depth 20.
Speed Upgrade Diminishing Returns: The 60% Threshold
Speed upgrades follow a logarithmic curve: the first 10 levels grant +8% descent speed each, levels 11–20 grant +5%, and levels 21+ grant only +2%. The critical breakpoint is level 15—at 60% total speed bonus, your Mini'Ohs complete a mining cycle in 6.25 seconds instead of the base 10 seconds. Beyond level 15, each upgrade costs 3× more resources but delivers less than half the benefit. Practical strategy: stop investing in Speed at level 15 and redirect resources to Efficiency upgrades, which compound at a flat +3% per level without diminishing returns. The Infinite Hole mode post-game makes this threshold even more critical for optimizing deep descents.
The hole is mine depth upgrades unlock as you purify the Hole and reach new depths, and they represent the game's long-term progression system. Unlike the four main trees, depth upgrades are one-time unlocks that permanently enhance your capabilities. Some depth upgrades increase your maximum resource storage, others unlock new Mini'Oh types, and a few grant passive bonuses that apply to your entire operation.
The most important depth upgrades are the ones that unlock new equipment slots and Mini'Oh customization options. According to the Deep Hole Update notes, the prologue rework added an Infinite Hole mode that lets you farm resources and reach as deep as possible by optimizing your build. This means your depth upgrades have long-term value beyond the main story, because they carry over into the post-game content.
| Depth Milestone | Unlock | Strategic Value |
|---|---|---|
| Depth 5 | Second Mini'Oh slot | Doubles automation output |
| Depth 10 | New equipment slot | Enables build synergies |
| Depth 20 | Third Mini'Oh slot | Triples automation output |
| Depth 30 | Legendary equipment unlock | Endgame build enabler |
The depth upgrades also affect your impurity extraction rates indirectly, because deeper depths contain higher-tier impurities that yield more resources. This creates a positive feedback loop: you upgrade your mine to go deeper, going deeper gives you better impurities, and better impurities fund more upgrades. The challenge is that deeper depths also contain more dangerous hazards, which means you need to balance your offensive and defensive upgrades as you descend.
For the long-term progression strategy, the community consensus is that you should aim for a balanced approach through depth 20, then specialize based on your playstyle. If you prefer active play, focus on power and speed upgrades to clear nodes faster. If you prefer automation, focus on Mini'Oh efficiency and the Dormitory village building. The upgrade system guide provides a complete breakdown of all four trees and their long-term value, which is worth reading before you commit to a build.
The Infinite Hole mode that unlocks after the main story is where your upgrade strategy truly gets tested. In this mode, you farm resources and push as deep as possible, and the depth upgrades you unlocked during the main story determine how far you can go. Players who invested heavily in efficiency and impurity upgrades report reaching significantly deeper in Infinite mode than those who focused purely on speed, because the resource multipliers compound over thousands of extractions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best first upgrade to buy in Hole Is Mine?
The best first purchase is a level 1 Mining Speed upgrade because it immediately reduces your cycle time and makes the early game feel smoother. After that, pivot into impurity yield upgrades, which provide better long-term value. This combination gives you visible early progress while setting up exponential growth for the mid-game.
How do impurity upgrades differ from efficiency upgrades?
Impurity upgrades increase the base yield from each impurity extraction, while efficiency upgrades multiply the total resources you receive after all other bonuses are applied. They stack multiplicatively, which means investing in both creates a compounding effect. Focus on impurity upgrades early and efficiency upgrades mid-game for the strongest overall resource generation.
When should I stop buying speed upgrades?
Most players stop buying speed upgrades around level 10-12, when diminishing returns make other upgrades more cost-effective. At that point, the relative gain from each new speed level drops below 5%, while efficiency and impurity upgrades still deliver 8-10% gains. Redirect those resources into the efficiency tree for better long-term returns.
Do village upgrades affect my mining speed?
Yes, the Workshop building reduces the cost of all personal upgrades, which effectively multiplies your mining speed upgrades' value. The Dormitory increases Mini'Oh stamina recovery, which means your automation runs longer between rest periods. Both buildings provide indirect speed boosts that stack with your personal speed upgrades.
How many total upgrades are in Hole Is Mine?
The full game features over 300 upgrades across four trees, according to the official Steam page. This includes the Power, Mining Speed, Efficiency, and Utility trees, plus the village building upgrades and depth unlocks. The playtest build had 200+ upgrades, so the full release added roughly 100 more options for players to explore.