Mine must sit adjacent to Rocks; Smelter must sit adjacent to the Ore. In the documented cards, Mine creates 1 Ore on a random adjacent tile every 4 weeks, while Smelter passively removes adjacent Ore for +1 mult and scores +40 every 3 weeks. Feeding the Smelter and scoring with it are two separate checks — plan for the Ore landing on a tile you did not choose.
Place a legal Mine first
The pictured Mine card carries a hard creation rule: it can only be created adjacent to Rocks. No Rocks in reach means no Mine, and a Plaza does not lift that requirement. When you scout a map before locking a guild pair, mark rock clusters as potential Mine spots the same way you would mark water for Fishing.
Leave at least one free tile next to the Mine. The Ore appears on a random adjacent tile, so a Mine ringed by buildings or blocked ground has nowhere to put its product.
Pair it with a Smelter that reaches the Ore
Smelter works two ways at once: it passively removes adjacent Ore to gain +1 mult, and it scores on its own 3-week trigger. The consumption is passive — you do not spend an action on it — but it only touches adjacent Ore, not Ore anywhere in a shown range. Place the Smelter so that the tiles next to the Mine overlap the tiles next to the Smelter.
Keep supply and scoring on separate clocks
The engine has no single “every N weeks” rhythm. Mine produces on a 4-week clock; Smelter scores on a 3-week clock; the Smelter’s Ore removal is passive and waits for adjacency, not for either clock. A quiet week usually means one clock simply has not ticked yet — not that the chain is broken.
Schematic · roles and timing, not a tile map
Because Ore sits on a tile until something consumes it, a producer with no consumer eventually blocks its own spawn tiles. One documented answer is exactly this Mine → Smelter pairing; heavier chains that turn resource events into further triggers are covered in the Depot and Tool Shed engine.
When ore stops moving, fix the right link
- No Ore ever appears: check the Mine is actually adjacent to Rocks, has a free adjacent tile, and has had its 4-week tick. A Mine that was never legal produces nothing.
- Ore piles up: the Smelter is probably not adjacent to the tiles where Ore actually lands. Watch one spawn before adding a second Mine.
- Smelter eats Ore but scores little: its mult only multiplies its own +40 trigger. If you expected the mult to boost other buildings, re-read where multipliers actually pay.
- No Smelter in the pool: keep the Mine only if Ore feeds something else you own; otherwise hold the tiles for another opener instead of forcing Industrial.
- No Rocks near useful ground: do not drag the engine across the map. Pick a different starter from the neutral fix that matches your actual problem.
For any link that still looks connected but stays quiet, run the generic source, position, target and timing check before adding parts.
Card text above comes from curtaincall’s illustrated manual (posted Aug 28, updated Aug 31, 2026), read Oct 5, 2026; the wider Mine/Smelter/Sawmill chain context comes from player build discussion. These are attributed sources with dates, not our own current-client test; v1.0.6 is the latest patch listed on the official news feed.