Core Keeper Drill Guide | How to Mine Large Rocks

In this Core Keeper Drill Guide, I'll tell you how to get a Drill that will let you mine the big rocks of ore you find in the world. Best of all, the Drill works automatically.

How to Get a Drill in Core Keeper

You can get a Drill in Core Keeper by unlocking the Azeos' Wilderness biome, mining Scarlet Ore, and crafting an Automation Table at the Scarlet Workbench. It sounds easy, but it's actually fairly involved. In short: this is endgame content (at least relative to what's in the Early Access launch version).

Step 1: Unlock Azeos' Wilderness

Your first step to getting a Drill is to unlock the Azeos' Wilderness biome. To do this, you'll have to beat the first three bosses: Glurch the Abominous Mass, Ghorm the Devourer, and the Hive Mother.

Once they're defeated, you can use the items they drop to activate The Core at the center of the map. This allows you to remove the magical barrier blocking your progress into Azeos' Wilderness.

Step 2: Mine Ore

Now that you've opened up Azeos' Wilderness, you'll need to get Scarlet Ore and Iron Ore in quantity if you want to build a good drill. You can easily get Iron Ore in The Forgotten Ruins biome, but Scarlet Ore is exclusive to Azeos' Wilderness.

At the minimum, you'll probably want to get at least 30 Iron and 30 Scarlet to start. More is better, of course -- you can build more than one Drill!

As an alternative, you can build a Crude Drill with just Tin Ore. However, it won't be quite as fast as the more advanced version

Step 3: Build Your Drill

Now that you have some resources, it's time to build your Drill! Here's the bare minimum of what you'll need:

• Drill
  • 10 Iron Bar
  • 10 Scarlet Bar
• Robot Arm
  • 5 Iron Bar
  • 5 Scarlet Bar
• Conveyor Belt (5) x2
  • 2 Tin Bar (1 Tin Bar per batch)
• Electricity Generator
  • 10 Copper Bar
• Electrical Wire (3) x 3
  • 3 Copper Bars (1 Copper Bar per batch)
• Chest
  • 5 Wood

Step 4 - Set Up Your Drill

Now it's time to actually set up your Drill. Head to the big ore rock that you want to Drill and do the following:

1. Place the Drill next to the big ore rock.
2. Rotate the Drill by pressing E so that the drill bit faces the ore rock.
3. Place Electrical Wire on the ground next to the Drill.
4. Place the Electricity Generator next to the Electrical Wire to power your Drill.
5. Place Conveyor Belts near the back of your Drill to move the ore away. Put a wall at the end of the Conveyor Belt to stop items from falling off.
6. Place the Robot Arm next to the end of the Conveyor Belt with the arm hovering over the Conveyor Belt.
7. Place the Chest on the opposite side of the Robot Arm.

If you've set things up right, the Drill will mine a piece of ore. Then, it will automatically drop on the Conveyor Belt. Once it's in range of the Robot Arm, the Robot Arm will pick it up, rotate 180 degrees, and deposit it in the Chest.

Step 5 - Expand Your Drilling Operation

You've got the basics down -- now it's time to focus on expanding.

First and foremost, you should focus on getting an equal amount of Iron and Scarlet. These materials are essential to building more Drills. You'll have to explore to find the little bit of Gold you'll need; Copper is quite abundant in the Dirt Biome, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. From there, you can shift to building more Drills on other big ore rocks to easily collect materials!

Core Keeper Drill Guide - Best Drill Setup

The best Drill setup in Core Keeper uses a total of 8 Drills surrounded by Conveyor Belts and leading to a Robot Arm and Chest. This guide's header image shows this exact setup in action.

Is the Drill Automatic?

Yes, the Drill runs automatically. Once it's set up, you don't have to do anything other than occasionally collect ore from it.

How Much Power Does the Drill Need?

You can power multiple Drills off of one Electrical Generator. It looks like there is not yet any power resource management in the game.

Does the Drill Work When You're Not Next To It?

Yes, the Drill works if you walk away, although it appears to Drill at a slower rate than if you were nearby.

Does the Drill Break?

The Drill doesn't break as far as I've observed.

Do the Big Ore Rocks Break?

The big ore rocks do eventually break, but it takes a long time. You'll get hundreds of ore out of a big rock before it breaks, and it will take several hours of drilling even with eight drills. Once that happens, you can pick up all of your equipment and move on to the next one.

That's it for our Core Keeper Drill Guide, check out more guides below: