Dwarf Eats Mountain: Mithril vs Mountain Souls Spending Guide

Table of Contents

1. Correction: What The May Version Of This Page Got Wrong
2. Mithril: Where It Comes From
3. Mountain Soul: The Documented Definition
4. Comparison Table
5. Mithril Spend Priority: Real Costs
6. Mountain Soul Spend Priority: Ritual Power First
7. Where The Two Currencies Meet: The Forge
8. Trap Purchases
9. Verdict
10. Sources

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Correction: What The May Version Of This Page Got Wrong

Four things in the version I published on May 24 were not in the game.

There is no “Mithril Forge” shop. Mithril is a per-tier cost attached to normal upgrades, and there is a real upgrade named Mithril Forging on the forge path — but it is not a separate vendor where you buy a Mithril tree.

Mithril Chainmail and Magnetic Gloves are not Mithril items. Magnetic Gloves is real but costs 100 gold across 15 tiers and does one specific job: “Runners get bonus speed.” There is no Mithril-purchased survival upgrade by that name.

“Mithril Pickaxes cost 15 Mithril” was wrong by an order of magnitude. The real line is 140 base gold, 1 Mithril, 6 tiers. The reason my invented number survived so long is that I described a cost instead of reading one.

The Mountain Soul reroll economy does not exist. I wrote that rituals cost 5-10 Mountain Souls each and let you convert a bad artifact into a good one, with a Great Forge reroll shop and a “Ritual Power upgrade that increases Mountain Soul generation.” None of it. What is real: Ritual Power unlocks rituals and buffs them per tier, rituals mostly cost gold, and Souls are a cost on Ritual Power and deep upgrade tiers rather than a currency you spend per cast.

Everything below is transcribed from the current upgrade and resource data. Where the data does not answer a question, I say so.

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Mithril: Where It Comes From

The resource entry says Mithril is a “rare upgrade currency, mainly from dens and spelunking,” and that “mountain damage can also drop it through luck and Mithril-luck scaling.” Four documented sources: the mithril drop meter, dens, artifacts, and transmutation-style effects.

That ordering matters for how you plan. Dens, not raw damage, are the primary source — so any upgrade that increases den value is indirectly a Mithril upgrade. Two documented examples:

• Relic Raiding (Spelunker’s Guild): 200 gold, 1 Mithril, 9 tiers — “increases the chance that dens drop artifacts.”
• Monster Bane (Ballistics Workshop): 190 gold, 1 Mithril, 10 tiers — “mithril and silver coat the bolt. Bonus damage to dens.”

Mithril-luck is a real stat on artifacts and upgrades (Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet: “All dwarves get +4 mithril luck”; Forgeheart Ember adds +10 mithril luck inside its window), and it is how the drop meter scales. My May claim that a “Spelunker’s Guild unlock costs 30-40 Mithril” was invented — the guild’s actual published upgrades cost 1 Mithril per tier.

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Mountain Soul: The Documented Definition

The game describes Mountain Soul as a “late ritual and magic currency awarded by mountain progression, including every 4th mountain reward, and spent by soul-based rituals and upgrades.”

That is nearly the whole published picture. What I can add from the upgrade and reward data:

• Income: mountain progression including an every-fourth-mountain reward, and peak boss drops. Mountain Core (Architect’s Summit reward) reads “+8 PP, +10 Mithril, +1 Soul” — a documented Soul income source.
• Sinks: 68 upgrade tier rows list a Soul cost. The heaviest documented chain is Ritual Power at 1 / 2 / 3 Souls across its three tiers. Others include Cyberdwarf, Pickarang, Multi-shot, Power Overwhelming, Infernal Symphony, Ancestral Lore, Boulderbane Runes, It’s Rainning Dynamite and Rocket Salvo.
• Refunds: Shadowflame Whip (Balrogg’s Pit reward) gives “+9 PP, makes Forge Artifact cost 1 less Mithril, gives Forge Artifact a 30% chance to refund 1 Soul.” That refund line is the strongest evidence that forging draws on Souls somewhere in its chain. [Unverified — the Forge Artifact cost row I read lists Gold 400 and Mithril 3, and does not print a Soul component, so I cannot state the exact figure.]

I will not repeat my May numbers. Soul income rates per mountain are not published anywhere I could read, so “how many Souls per hour” is not a question this page can honestly answer.

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Comparison Table

Factor	Mithril	Mountain Soul
Published definition	Rare upgrade currency, mainly dens and spelunking	Late ritual and magic currency from mountain progression
Documented income	Mithril drop meter, dens, artifacts, transmutation effects; scales with luck and mithril-luck	Every 4th mountain reward, peak boss drops (Mountain Core +1 Soul)
Typical cost form	1-3 per upgrade tier, rising to 12-16 on deep tiers	1-3 on ritual-critical and late-chain tiers
Cheapest real buy	Serrated Mithril Spikes (80 gold + 1 Mithril, 10 tiers)	Ritual Power tier 1 (666 gold + 1 Soul)
Gates what	The forge path (Forge Artifact needs Mithril Forging tier 2+)	Ritual unlocks and the deepest late-game tiers
Also spent on	Forge Artifact ritual: 400 gold + 3 Mithril per use	Alchemy: mithril cost rises by 1 every 25 uses; soul-based rituals
My May claim	”Mithril Pickaxes 15 Mithril” — wrong, it is 1 per tier	”5-10 Souls per artifact reroll” — no such system

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Mithril Spend Priority: Real Costs

Costs below are the published base gold, Mithril per tier, and tier count. Base gold scales with mountain level; the Mithril number is what the row lists.

Buy first — the forge path:

Upgrade	Published cost	Why here
Mithril Forging	120 gold + 1 Mithril, 4 tiers	Forge Artifact requires Mithril Forging tier 2 or higher. This is the door.
Mithril Pickaxes	140 gold + 1 Mithril, 6 tiers	”Pickaxes get bonus damage.” Your main damage source early, and cheap.

Buy second — den economics, because dens feed Mithril back:

Upgrade	Published cost	Why here
Monster Bane	190 gold + 1 Mithril, 10 tiers	Bonus damage to dens; faster den kills mean more mithril and more artifact rolls.
Relic Raiding	200 gold + 1 Mithril, 9 tiers	Raises the chance dens drop artifacts. The only published artifact-rate upgrade.
Serrated Mithril Spikes	80 gold + 1 Mithril, 10 tiers	Cheapest line item here; harpoon crit potential.

Buy when the build commits:

Upgrade	Published cost	Requires
Pickarang	800 gold + 2 Mithril, 8 tiers	”Pickaxes can bounce back and hit the mountain again. The chance scales with Scientists and Luck.”
Power Overwhelming	600 gold + 2 Mithril, 7 tiers	Laser Cannon bonus damage over time per Scientist.
Multi-shot	1000 gold + 2 Mithril, 5 tiers	Harpoons gain extra-bolt chance; pairs with Sorcerous Spyglass accuracy.
Cyberdwarf	1337 gold + 2 Mithril, 4 tiers	Unlocks Gorilla Arms and Rhino Legs for runners; tier 2 unlocks C.
Grand Laboratory	650 gold + 1 Mithril	Building unlock; the science and luck branch.
Artillery Hall	1800 gold + 2 Mithril	Building unlock for Great Duke Cannons.

Deep chains move to 3, 6, 9, 12 Mithril per tier with gold costs of 500 / 3,100 / 14,400 / 666,999 on the documented Duke Cannon scaled-damage ladder, each tier also asking for 1 Soul. That is where a run either has the economy or does not.

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Mountain Soul Spend Priority: Ritual Power First

Ritual Power is the only Soul sink I would call non-negotiable, because it gates a system rather than nudging a number:

Tier	Published effect	Published cost
1	Unlocks the first ritual-power tier; opens Enchant Good Luck / Enchant Lethal Precision style ritual support	666 gold + 1 Soul
2	Expands ritual buffs such as Calamitous Force and Call Earthquake	3,333 gold + 2 Souls
3	Maxes the chain; supports the later Bulldozer / Primal Power ritual unlocks	6,666 gold + 3 Souls

Its gate is documented: the Ritual Power prestige upgrade plus 3 Runesmiths in The Great Forge. Its full unlock list: Enchant Good Luck, Enchant Lethal Precision, Enchant Calamitous Force, Call Earthquake, Bulldozer’s Living Metal, Enchant Primal Power.

Why Ritual Power earns Souls before anything else: rituals scale off its tier. Boon of Chad gives runners “+6 carrying capacity and +50% gathering speed until they return to base,” and adds “+3 carrying capacity and +25% gathering speed for each tier of Ritual Power.” Boon of Shielding gives a shield with “1 charge, +1 for each tier of Ritual Power.” Call Earthquake scales its damage and force per Ritual Power tier and per Runesmith — and at tier 3 Ritual Power, “each Runner has 65% chance of magically avoiding each quake.”

Note the cost structure: those rituals themselves are bought with gold (Boon of Chad 200, Boon of Shielding 200, Call Earthquake 500). Souls buy the ladder, gold buys the casts. That single fact reorganises the whole spending question, and my May version had it exactly backwards.

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Where The Two Currencies Meet: The Forge

Forge Artifact is the collision point: 400 gold + 3 Mithril per use, requires Mithril Forging tier 2 or higher, 67% chance at one of five unique Tier 5 artifacts and 33% at a random Tier 3 or Tier 4.

Two artifacts turn it into an engine rather than a gacha:

• Forgebound Seal — “Whenever you use the Forge Artifact ritual, Miners, Harpoon Ballistas and Great Duke Cannons permanently gain +5% damage.”
• Forgeheart Ember — “Whenever you use the Forge Artifact ritual, all dwarves gain +30% damage and +10 mithril luck for 20 seconds.”

Add Shadowflame Whip (Forge Artifact costs 1 less Mithril) and Great Shabu Altar Tier 1 (better odds for Forge Artifact, Alchemy, Spelunkers and Treasure Hunters), and a Mithril that once bought one upgrade tier is now buying permanent damage and a new artifact. Alchemy is the other forge-adjacent cost curve: “every 25 uses the mithril cost is increased by 1.”

So the honest spending rule is not “Mithril now, Souls later.” It is: spend Mithril on the forge path early enough that Forge Artifact attempts become affordable, and spend Souls on Ritual Power as soon as the Runesmith requirement is met. Everything else is timing.

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Trap Purchases

• Buying damage tiers before Mithril Forging. If Forge Artifact stays locked, every Mithril you sink into pickaxe tiers is a Mithril that never compounds through the forge loop.
• Cannon-line tiers without a cannon. The Duke Cannon scaled-damage ladder asks 3 / 6 / 9 / 12 Mithril and a Soul per tier. Committing to it mid-run is a build decision, not an upgrade purchase.
• Spending Souls before the Great Forge gate. Ritual Power needs 3 Runesmiths; until you have them you have almost nothing to buy. There is no downside to holding Souls.
• Treating Alchemy as flat-cost. Its Mithril cost rises by 1 every 25 uses. A ritual chain you keep hammering gets progressively more expensive, and that ramp is the reason Forgeheart Ember’s +10 mithril luck matters.
• My May advice to “ignore the Ritual tab and keep pushing” on run 3. Wrong framing entirely: the Ritual tab is a gold-cost shop behind a Runesmith and Ritual Power gate, not a soul-burning menu you stumble into early.

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Verdict

Mithril is the currency that decides whether your run has a plan: it is the per-tier cost on damage, den value, artifact rate, and the forge path, and the forge path is the only place in the game where spending one currency produces permanent damage and new artifacts at once. Mountain Soul is the currency that decides whether your run has a ceiling: Ritual Power tier 1-3 costs 6 Souls total and unlocks an entire ritual branch, and deep late-game tiers ask for Souls alongside gold that climbs into six figures.

If you take one line from this rewrite: Mithril Forging tier 2 before you spend your third Mithril on damage, and Ritual Power the day you have 3 Runesmiths. Both are documented gates, and both were invisible in the version I published in May.

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Sources

Source	What it provided
WikiTactics resources page	Published definitions and income for Mithril and Mountain Soul, plus the list of pages that spend each
WikiTactics upgrades database	Mithril Forging, Mithril Pickaxes, Monster Bane, Relic Raiding, Serrated Mithril Spikes, Pickarang, Cyberdwarf, Forge Artifact cost and requirements, Ritual Power tier costs, ritual descriptions, Alchemy cost ramp
WikiTactics mechanics page	Den and artifact-choice selection rules, artifact tier and weight tables
WikiTactics special mountains	Mountain Core and Shadowflame Whip rewards, including the +1 Soul and Soul-refund lines
Steam store page, appid 4078200	Current build and DLC metadata

WikiTactics is a community wiki, not a developer source, current through v1.5.0 as of this check. Costs and effect text above are transcribed from it; where it publishes no number — Soul income per mountain, the Forge Artifact Soul component — I have written [Unverified] rather than supply one.