Hytale's elusive end-game ore, mithril, 'won't be as simple to mine as the others'

While Hytale's early access experience is surprisingly good (in spite of the developer Hypixel's warnings), there are some clear holes. The biggest one for me is its rather linear progression based around moving through the zones to find new ores, from copper and iron to cobalt, adamantite, and mithril.

I'd forgive you for believing that your end goal right now is finding mithril ore, but that's not the case. Mithril's not actually available yet, despite it being required for several recipes listed in-game.

The good news is that, when it's eventually added, it won't just be another block to break—presumably in the unreleased fifth zone. Hypixel's founder, Simon Collins-Laflamme, says, "We got some fun ideas about Mithril… let’s say it won't be as simple to mine as the others".

As for what these ideas are, exactly, that of course remains to be seen, and it's added to an already long list of to-dos the team already has to tackle—Collins-Laflamme only bought back the project two months ago and whipped up the early access build in record time, after all. Nevertheless, changes and new features are coming out at a breakneck pace right now, such as adding the ability to hide armour after significant community requests.

Given Collins-Laflamme's hint, I'm hoping mithril will require some extra, more intricate steps to mine. I'm all for making mining ores more interesting than a few whacks with a pickaxe, especially since higher-tier picks effectively just increase durability, unlike in Minecraft where better pickaxes let you mine new materials. It's partly why Lucky Mining is one of the best Hytale mods in my eyes, adding a fun strategy to mining ores.

I'm spitballing, but perhaps mithril could see the arrival of specialised mining equipment and machinery. People love creating factories in these types of games, myself included, and mithril (and/or potentially with the fifth zone) seems like a good opportunity to introduce more complex gubbins to mess around with.