Building and managing an efficient workforce is key to clearing caves quickly. There are several ways to bring new miners to your field, upgrade their skills, and manage your team capacity.

You can expand your team of miners using three main features in the game:

• The Recruitment Button: Located at the bottom of your screen. Tapping it instantly hires a goblin. The button displays the worker's starting level and the current gold cost.
  
  

  • Hiring Cost Strategy: Every time you buy a goblin, their future starting level increases, but the gold price rises drastically. Balance your budget—sometimes investing gold into your Forge or Shafts yields better long-term returns.

  • Discounts: The hiring cost drops every time you activate a checkpoint on the map, and can be permanently lowered by upgrading the rare card Heavy Discount.
    
    

• The Goblin Cannon: Located to the right of your Forge. It fires Mystery Barrels onto the field containing various resources, including bonus goblins. The cannon also guarantees one free goblin barrel every 40 minutes.
  
  

• The Spinning Wheel: You can win extra workers by taking a spin on the reward wheel.
  
  

The Merging Rule: How Upgrades Work

To clear high-durability rocks faster, you need stronger workers with advanced tools. You can upgrade your miners by dragging one goblin and dropping it directly on top of another.

💡 Critical Merging Rules:

• Identical Levels Only: Goblins must be the exact same level to merge. You cannot combine a Level 1 worker with a Level 2 worker; you must combine two Level 1s first.

• Levels Step Up, They Don't Add Up: Merging upgrades a goblin by exactly one level—it does not add their numbers together. For example, combining two Level 2 goblins results in a single Level 3 worker, not a Level 4.

The Goblin Cap & Population Limit

Your mine has a strict capacity limit on the number of workers who can be on the field at the same time. You can view your current capacity in the top-right corner of the screen.

• Reaching the Limit: Once your team hits the maximum cap, the Goblin Cannon will stop delivering goblin barrels until you free up some space.

• Unopened Barrels Count: Unopened wooden barrels sitting on your field still occupy space and count toward your population cap! Open or merge your active workers to keep the delivery line moving.

• Increasing Capacity: You can permanently raise your maximum population limit by collecting and upgrading specific special cards.