There are two events that happen at random with a very small possibility of occurring each second from the start of the game: finding buried treasure in your mine and conning hard drive vendors.
Finding treasure
Throughout the game, there is a 0.2% chance each second, or about once every 8 minutes and 20 seconds, to find a buried treasure containing gold. The chance increases to 0.4% (once every ~4 minutes, 10 seconds) with the purchase of Pirate's Luck and goes up an additional 1% (once every ~1 minute, 11.4 seconds) with Ten Thousand Foot View. The base gold received from a buried treasure is 72; on top of that, you will gain a random amount of gold between 0.5%-4.5% of your current gold, capped at 2 hours worth of your gold per second, or 10 hours worth with Gold Forever. After purchasing Gleaming Treasure, buried treasures also contain between 20-50 dreary gems in addition to gold.
Hard drive vendors
After years of deceptive hard drive space marketing, Mine Defense finally provides a way to get back at hard drive vendors. Every second of the game, there is a 0.02% chance, or about once every 1 hour, 23 minutes, and 20 seconds, that a hard drive vendor will attempt to buy a hard drive from you with a price in base 10, but will end up paying extra in base 2 instead. Why you have a steady supply of one hard drive per hour to sell to hard drive merchants is a mystery, but the benefits are great in the beginning of the game. The amount of gold you get is dependent on your current gold and is displayed in the table below.
| Current Gold | Gold Received(exponential) | Gold Received(decimal) |
|---|---|---|
| 0-10M | 1024^1 | 1024 |
| 10M-10B | 1024^2 | 1.048M |
| 10B-10T | 1024^3 | 1.073B |
| 10T-10Qa | 1024^4 | 1.100T |
| 10Qa-10Qi | 1024^5 | 1.126Qa |
| 10Qi+ | 1024^6 | 1.153Qi |
No-click runs
Since the random events are available from the beginning of the game, it is possible to begin a no-click run with zero mine clicks by waiting for one of the two random events to give you enough money to purchase your first hireling. With a starting average rate of just over 8 minutes to find a buried treasure, you should not have to wait too long to get your first 72 gold without clicking.
Update info
- Version 0.87 - 27/06/2014
- Two new upgrades for buried treasure
- Version 0.80 - 07/06/2014
- There is now a cap on buried treasure amount
- Version 0.65 - 03/05/2014
- Confused hard drive vendors now roam the land with fat wallets
- Version 0.60 - 27/04/2014
- Fixed negative treasure chest bug