I love this game, too, but I agree the mining is a slog. Because I knew there was so much mining, I decided to work on things to make mining easier first (upgrade my pickaxe, focus on repairing the bridge north of my house to make it easier to get to the mines), but that bridge, one of the simplest things to build, takes 20 iron bars. Each iron bar takes 5 iron ores. That's 100 iron ores. Those iron ores are on the 20th level and down in the mine. It takes forever to run around to get down there. There are only 3 or 4 iron deposits per level max, and you only get 2 or 3 iron ore per deposit, and even with my upgraded pickaxe, each deposit takes 4 units of energy to mine. I appreciate that you've simplified getting out of the mine, but it just isn't fun to spend all my game time on mining. I'm really considering whether it's worth continuing to play if even the easiest structure takes so much work.