🗺️ What's Next for Mithril & Mud
We've shipped 8 patches since Early Access launch — over 60 bug fixes, expeditions, offline production, automation, a full soundtrack, and a mountain of balance tuning. That's all in the first three weeks — and we're not slowing down.
Mithril & Mud is a passion project built by a tiny team, and we're pouring every spare hour into making this the best dwarven mining game we can. When you drop a bug report in Discord at midnight and see it fixed in the next patch — that's us hunched over a keyboard with too much coffee and a stubborn refusal to ship broken things.
We want to be straight with you — we're working on this game every single day. You might notice updates slowing down compared to the rapid-fire patches at launch. That's intentional. Instead of pushing a bunch of small fixes every few days, we're shifting to larger, more impactful updates that each bring meaningful new content and systems. The quality bar is going up, and we'd rather take the time to get things right than rush something half-baked out the door.
Your feedback has already reshaped major systems. Expeditions, offline workers, the automation suite, the entire balance curve — those all came from conversations with you. We read every message, every review, every "hey this feels off." It matters more than you know.
So — what's coming next?
🔓 Progressive Automation Unlocks
Right now, the automation panel opens all at once. That's changing.
Automation will become part of the progression system itself. Individual capabilities — auto-assign workers, auto-buy upgrades, auto-delve deeper, auto-convert resources — will be unlocked as upgrades you earn through gameplay. Early depths are hands-on. As you progress, you unlock the tools to let the mine run itself, piece by piece.
Automation won't just be a convenience toggle — it'll be something you work toward.
👑 Dwarven Heroes & Kings
A brand-new system: named dwarven characters with unique passive bonuses. Each hero brings something different — production boosts, expedition perks, combat strength, or resource efficiency.
- Heroes persist through prestige
- Meaningful long-term choices across runs
⚔️ Click-to-Attack Raids
Raids are about to get interactive. Instead of watching your Runic Warriors handle everything, you'll be able to click to fight trolls and dragons directly.
We're exploring a craftable relic — a Dwarven Warblade — that unlocks click-to-damage during raids, with slash effects and floating damage numbers. Raids become moments where you can jump in and make a difference.
🏪 Trade Post Overhaul
The Trade Post is getting reworked around ongoing maintenance.
- Nations require a steady stream of Trade Points to maintain relation bonuses
- Relationships decay over time without upkeep
- New priority system — choose which nations to sustain first when TP is tight
Trade goes from set-and-forget to an active strategic layer.
💎 Shadowsteel Rebalance
Shadowsteel currently piles up faster than you can spend it. We're rebalancing the income side — making drops rarer and more meaningful so finding Shadowsteel feels like a real reward.
🎮 Steam Deck Investigation
We're looking into Steam Deck compatibility. Godot 4.6 already exports to Linux, so the foundation is there. The open questions: touch/controller input, UI scaling at 1280x800, and Proton vs native. No promises yet, but it's on our radar.
🔮 Also On the Horizon
- 🏆 Elite Achievements — Ultra-rare goals (1–5% rarity) like D20 speedruns and Lithodore without warriors
- 🎯 Tooltip Audit — Filling in missing tooltips across every panel
- 📉 Blessing Diminishing Returns — Preventing exponential blowout from repeatable depth multipliers
- 🖥️ Minimalist UI Mode — A Stellaris-inspired compact interface toggle
- 🏛️ Visual Artifact Shelves — Procedural display racks showing your crafted artifacts like a trophy room
- 🔄 Challenge System Rework — Redesigning challenges to feel more rewarding
🙏 Thank You
We know Early Access means trusting us with your money before the game is finished — and we don't take that lightly. Every patch is us trying to earn that trust. We're a small team punching above our weight, and we're not going anywhere.
If you have thoughts on any of these features — or ideas we haven't thought of — join the Discord. Some of the best features in the game right now started as a message from a player. Yours could be next.
The mine goes deeper. Stay tuned. ⛏️