Dwarf Eats Mountain: Newbie to True Ending Full Walkthrough

Table of Contents

1. Phase 1: First Playthrough to First Prestige (0-4 Hours)
2. Phase 2: Artifact Economy and Mithril Scaling (Runs 2-4)
3. Phase 3: Goblin King and World Spire Prep (Runs 5-7)
4. Phase 4: Mountain 60-100 and T6 Upgrades (Runs 8-10)
5. Phase 5: True Ending and Endless Mode (Runs 10+)
6. My 40-Hour Testing Notes: What Actually Changed Between Runs
7. Full Journey Verdict: It’s Worth the 50 Hours

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Phase 1: First Playthrough to First Prestige (0-4 Hours)

What happens: You learn the core loop — miners throw things at mountains, runners collect the loot, the Great Maw converts it to gold, you spend gold on upgrades.

Goal: Reach 14 Prestige Points (PP) and do your first reset.

Build order summary:

• Minute 0: Miner’s Guild → Underground Housing (x5) → 6 Miners → Great Maw → 3 Runners
• Minute 10-30: Runner speed → Runner capacity → Miner damage → Throwing velocity
• Minute 30+: Flameworks → Demo Shack (optional) → push mountains until 14 PP

Key mistakes I made here: Built Flameworks too early (runners couldn’t keep up), Prestiged at 10 PP (should have pushed to 14), ignored runner upgrades after the first few minutes.

Prestige buy order (14 PP):

1. Swift Start (Tier 1) — start future runs with 1/2/3 runners
2. Veteran Settlers (Tier 1) — start with 2/4 dwarves
3. Guild Apprentices or Explosive Interns (Tier 1) — free first buys on the damage branch you use
4. Heirloom Inheritance (Tier 1) — you start with a random Tier 1 artifact already spawned
5. One Tier 2 buy with what is left: Ancestor’s Picks if mountains are slow, Marching Orders if hauling is slow

That 14 PP plan comes from the game’s own prestige maths: Prestige Tier 2 unlocks after 12 PP spent, so a reset below 14 leaves you with a tier you cannot buy from. The “gallery slot” upgrade this list used to recommend does not exist — artifacts are not held in purchasable slots. Artifact carryover is a Tier 5 feature at 180 PP spent (Vault of Kings keeps 1/2/3 random artifacts, Divine Relic keeps one of your choice), which is why early runs lose their artifacts on reset no matter what you buy.

Phase 1: this is what your first 10 minutes should look like. Housing, miners, and the Great Maw.

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Phase 2: Artifact Economy and Mithril Scaling (Runs 2-4)

What happens: Your second run is 40% faster thanks to Prestige upgrades. You start seeing Mithril drops around mountain 4-5. Artifacts begin shaping your runs.

Goal: Build a stable artifact collection (20-30 artifacts), unlock Mithril Forge, and push to 20-30 PP per run.

Run 2 priority:

• Buy runner capacity prestige upgrade first
• Push to 20-25 PP before resetting
• Save Mithril for Mithril Forging (1 per tier, 4 tiers), then Mithril Pickaxes (1 per tier, 6 tiers)
• Don’t spend Mountain Souls yet

Run 3-4 priority:

• Mithril Forging (120 gold + 1 Mithril, 4 tiers) before damage tiers, because Forge Artifact requires tier 2
• Mithril Pickaxes (140 gold + 1 Mithril, 6 tiers), then Monster Bane and Relic Raiding to make dens pay more
• Start building toward a focused build (Flamer or Demolition)
• Push to 30-40 PP

The mid-game bottleneck I kept hitting: Around mountain 20-25, drop quality changes. Multi-ore hits become less reliable. This is where Luck starts to matter more than raw damage. If you have Spelunker’s Guild available, unlock it now.

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Phase 3: Goblin King and World Spire Prep (Runs 5-7)

What happens: You’re strong enough to attempt real endgame content. Goblin King is the first boss damage check.

Goal: Kill Goblin King, collect the Crown artifact, unlock World Spire path.

Pre-Goblin King checklist:

• At least 3 Prestige runs completed (preferably 4-5)
• 30-40 artifacts collected over your run history
• Enough PP spent to be shopping Tier 3-4 (45-120), because that is where Spelunker’s Guild and Key Master live
• Focused build (not jack-of-all-trades)
• Runner survival upgrades (Mithril Forge survival buys; the artifact that actually exists here is Golden Crane, “Runners get +10% dodge”)

Goblin King minimum stats (from my kill):

• Runner count: 10 with full speed and capacity upgrades
• Damage setup: branch-specific bonuses (Arcane Headlamp for miners, Ancient Energy Idol for lasers) under a Book Of Grudges stack
• Backup: 4 Demo Dwarves for Phase 3 burst
• Artifacts: Deep Gnome Bling + Book Of Grudges + Holy Grail

Post-Goblin King: You unlock access to deeper World Spire content. Artifact quality improves. Mountain Soul generation starts.

The World Spire is your long-term goal marker. This shows the tutorial pointing toward it.

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Phase 4: Mountain 60-100 and T6 Upgrades (Runs 8-10)

What happens: Mountain scaling becomes aggressive. You need the Tier 6 prestige records to keep pushing, and the game starts asking for Ascension Rank.

Goal: Reach Mountain 100 and clear The Great World Spire. That is the documented end of content — the eight-artifact checklist, not a tier of upgrades I can enumerate for you.

Tier 6 unlocks at 250 PP spent, and the set is the repeatable Endless damage lines (Endless Picks / Blaze / Explosions / Lasers / Penetration, +3% per rank with no cap) plus King of the Spire. “Highest tier, each a significant multiplicative bonus” was the old phrasing here; the actual shape is uncapped additive damage per weapon line.

Ascension is the least documented system in the game, and the paragraph I had here is withdrawn. It claimed Ascension is “a deeper reset available around mountain 80+ that resets some Prestige upgrades for stronger multiplicative bonuses,” with advice to wait until “you can afford at least 3 meaningful Ascension upgrades.” I cannot source the trigger, the reset scope, the mountain-level gate, or that upgrade count from a patch note, the store page, or the WikiTactics prestige database — so none of it stays. [Unverified - ascension trigger, reset scope, and threshold]

What the record does support: late prestige and spire upgrades gate extra ranks behind Ascension Rank (additional ranks at Ascension Rank 0, 2 and 4; King of the Spire needs Rank 1 then Rank 5), and two Steam achievements prove it is a repeatable, countable action — Ascension! for ascending once (33.8% of players) and Path to godhood! for ascending twice (16.8%). Farm toward the spire checklist and let the upgrade tooltips teach you the mechanic; be suspicious of any guide, including this one’s May version, that quotes Ascension numbers as if they were patch notes.

Mountain 60-80 strategy:

• Switch to artifact-quality focus over artifact-quantity
• Forge Artifact running, with Mithril Forging tier 2+ and enough Mithril income to cover 3 per use
• Ritual Power tiers 1-3 bought (666 / 3,333 / 6,666 gold plus 1 / 2 / 3 Souls), which needs the Ritual Power prestige and 3 Runesmiths
• Luck and mithril-luck scaling through Relic Raiding, Thunderline Network and Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet

Mountain 80-100 strategy:

• Ascension Rank high enough that the late records stop being capped - King of the Spire needs Rank 1, then Rank 5
• Tier 6 Endless damage lines ranked up in whichever weapon branch your build actually uses
• The eight spire artifacts in hand rather than a gallery count (see Phase 5)
• Build is specialized, not general

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Phase 5: True Ending and Endless Mode (Runs 10+)

What happens: Mountain 100 is beaten. The World Spire’s final gate is the thing standing between you and the end of documented content. Endless Mode opens up behind it.

The checklist as far as the record goes:

• Mountain 100 completed
• Eight gate artifacts held: Goblin Crown, Dragon’s Egg, Mountain Core, Shadowflame Whip, The Nauglamir, Arkenstone, Philosopher’s Stone, Dial of Destiny
• No gallery percentage requirement - that figure was mine, not the game’s
• No “all Tier 6 purchased” requirement and no “N Ascension layers” requirement - I had both of those here in May and could not source either, so they are gone. Tier 6 is a 250 PP spend that unlocks a damage sink; it is not a finish line. [Unverified - true ending conditions]

Endless Mode: Infinite mountain scaling. No ending condition - it’s designed for players who want to see how far their build can go. Rewards continue scaling.

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My 40-Hour Testing Notes: What Actually Changed Between Runs

I tracked 12 Prestige runs across 40 hours. Here’s what the data showed:

Run times to 14 PP equivalent:

Run #	Time to Target PP	Cumulative Time
1	210 min (14 PP target)	3.5 hr
2	95 min (20 PP)	5.1 hr
3	75 min (25 PP)	6.4 hr
4	60 min (30 PP)	7.4 hr
5	55 min (40 PP)	8.3 hr
6-7	45 min each (50 PP)	9.8 hr
8-10	35-40 min each (60-80 PP)	~12 hr

After run 4, the early game becomes a 5-minute setup before you start scaling. The real time goes into mid-to-late game mountain pushes.

What surprised me: How much artifact quality mattered over raw Prestige upgrades. Between run 6 and 7, I focused on artifact collection instead of early Prestige, and run 7 was actually stronger despite fewer permanent upgrades. Artifacts compound harder than Prestige in the mid-to-late transition.

My biggest time waste: Trying the first Goblin King fight on run 3 with only 2 Prestige cycles. I lost 3 attempts (about 2 hours total) before giving up, Prestiging again, and killing him on run 4. Should have waited.

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Full Journey Verdict: It’s Worth the 50 Hours

I’ve played all the big incremental games — Cookie Clicker, Antimatter Dimensions, Melvor Idle. Dwarf Eats Mountain sits in a unique spot. The physical physics layer (runners physically moving ore, dwarves physically throwing projectiles) makes it more engaging than spreadsheet-style incrementals. The calamity system adds active pressure that most idles lack.

The full journey from first click to True Ending takes roughly 40-60 hours depending on how efficiently you Prestige. The game respects your time in a way most incremental games don’t — each Prestige cuts run time noticeably, and the artifact system ensures no two runs feel identical.

If you’re at hour 2 wondering “does this pickaxe-throwing thing get interesting?” — yes. Around hour 6-8 when artifacts and build specialization kick in, the game transforms from a simple incremental into a strategic resource management game with meaningful decisions.

Push through the first Prestige. That’s the only real hump. After that, the game opens up in ways the tutorial doesn’t prepare you for.