Mine a Planet Planets & Evolution Tiers

Your planet upgrades tier by tier at the PLANET UPGRADE sign. Each upgrade grows the planet dramatically (one player called it "four times bigger" after a single upgrade) and can change its whole theme. Bigger, higher-tier planets expose richer ore, so planet tier is the real progression ceiling. A "Rebirths: 0" counter has been spotted on a laser panel — a prestige layer that does not seem active yet in BETA 8. Evolution reshapes which ores you can reach and is planned in the evolution calculator; the underlying stats are on upgrades.

Your planet is a sphere of voxel blocks, and that shape explains why depth drives everything else. Drones start at the crust and chew inward, crossing from one ore band into the next. There is no layer readout in the interface — the only marker is block colour, which shifts when your fleet breaks into a new band. Deeper ore sells for more, so two fleets with identical stats can earn very differently depending on how far in they have dug. The geometry cuts both ways: the deeper the mining face, the longer each loaded drone spends flying back out, which is why Cargo and Speed matter more the further you get. Skydog Games has never released a layer map or a band count, so the boundaries you learn are the ones on your own planet.

Evolution is the only documented way to raise the ore band sitting underneath every upgrade you own, which makes it the biggest lever in the game — and the only one that takes something back. Player reports agree that evolving resets your depth progress: the fleet and the stats you paid for survive, but the dig restarts at the crust with a higher ceiling. That turns the whole question into timing. Evolving early in a tier costs little, because shallow depth is quick to re-mine. Evolving after a long grind deep into a band hurts, since the depth you throw away is what was funding the upgrade. The one price verified on screen is $250,000 for the Tier 3 to Tier 4 step, read off the in-game upgrade sign in July 2026 footage. Prices past that have never been published in any form, which is why our evolution planner asks for the figure on your own sign.

Planets change appearance as they climb tiers. Themes documented in footage: the default gray voxel world, a pink Candy planet, a blue snow-capped Santa/Ice planet, plus green and purple variants on other players' plots. Themes appear to be cosmetic stages on the same progression, not separate planets you choose.