⏳ XDC Underground — Getting Buried

Sooner or later a tunnel will come down on you. Most of the time it'll be because you dug too far ahead of adequate supports, but it can be triggered by PvP or raiding underground, by lack of maintenance, and it can happen when you're offline. This guide is what to do when it does — and it's worth reading before it happens, because you won't be able to read it while you're under the dirt.

Practise the escape minigame right here first — it's simple, but a couple of goes will save you having to learn it with a timer running.

The moment it goes

When a dig is about to cause a cave-in you'll see "The wall gives way - the tunnel caves in! Get back!" along with dust and a rumble. The collapse commits within about two seconds — run out of the cube immediately. Sometimes you'll make it, sometimes you won't; stopping the dig won't save you on its own.

If you're still in the cube when it fills, you're buried: your screen goes black, you can't move, and the heave gauge appears with the message "The earth caves in around you - TAP RELOAD when the marker hits the green to dig free!"

The escape minigame

The gauge is a vertical track. A marker sweeps up and down it continuously. Somewhere on the track is a green band with red bands hugging it on either side. Your job:

• Tap R (reload) when the marker is in the green. Each green hit is one heave of digging, and the bands then jump to a new random spot.
• Hitting red costs you a second of air and a little health — "You choke on the dirt around you."
• Tapping anywhere else does nothing.

Your progress shows as DUG %. When it reaches 100% you drag yourself free into the nearest safe cube (or out to the surface if you were in the entrance cube). Note that escaping yourself only opens a burrow — the cube still has to be properly dug out afterwards to reopen it.

Everything else you'd normally do is locked while buried — you can't jump, and you can't use a firearm (R is the dig key, so guns are disabled entirely until you're out).

Air, and the 4-minute timer

You start with about 15 seconds of air, and each green hit gives you a little back — but never enough to get ahead of the clock, so you have to keep hitting green. The gauge shows AIR, HEALTH and a DEATH IN countdown.

If your air runs out you fall unconscious, buried alive. From full health you then have up to 4 minutes before you suffocate (less if you were already hurt). You cannot wake yourself up — once you're out, the only things that can save you are a teammate digging you out or a shot of epinephrine from someone who's reached you. That 4 minutes is the time your team has to rescue you.

If you were breathing collapse dust before you were buried you start with less air (down to a minimum of 10 seconds) — another reason to mask up.

What makes it harder or easier

Harder:

• How deep you're buried. The further your cube is from the entrance, the narrower the green band and the faster the marker.
• How boxed-in the cube is. A collapsed cube at an open junction needs about 12 heaves' worth of digging; one with solid faces all round needs up to 24.
• More collapses between you and the exit — if the tunnel keeps caving in above you, your game gets harder in real time.

Easier:

• Hold a shovel. A shovel in your hands widens the green band, slows the marker, and every hit counts double. A pickaxe, field shovel or hoe is nearly as good; even any other item helps a little. Bare hands count for the least and cost you health — 2 HP a heave and a chance of opening a bleed on your forearms. Gloves spare your hands. A digging tool loses a little durability instead.
• Friends digging from outside make your minigame easier — the green band widens as their progress comes in, and their digging fills the same bar you're filling.
• Anyone buried with you helps too. Everyone in the collapse shares one progress bar; every green hit any of you scores fills it, and when it fills everyone is freed at once — including anyone who's already passed out.

Rescuing someone

From a cube next to the collapse, look at the earth fill with a shovel (or pickaxe, field shovel or hoe) and hold Dig Out Collapse. Each cycle takes a couple of seconds and adds to the buried player's bar — with a shovel that's roughly 6–12 cycles, so 15–25 seconds of solid digging gets someone out. Several people can dig the same collapse at once.

Things that can stop you:

• A built wall in the way — you'll be told to break it down first (the collapse can still be dug from another, unwalled side).
• Digging out has its own collapse risk — each cycle can chain a cave-in into the cube you're standing in. Wall a side before you start, or accept the risk.
• If the buried player has already died, and the cube's core was destroyed by raiding, clearing it needs 20 planks + 30 nails on you. While anyone is still alive in there, digging is always free.

A rescued player is "pulled free" into the cube; the cube itself comes back damaged and needs repairing.

If you're not going to be rescued

The gauge says it plainly: "You are buried alive. You cannot escape without a player digging you free. Press ESC and choose Respawn to end it now." If you know nobody's coming, you can respawn rather than wait out the four minutes.

• Your body stays inside the collapse. It isn't dumped in the next cube for anyone to loot. If you get back to the spot before your body despawns — a new character, a shovel, and your way back into the base — you can dig the cube out and recover your gear. The core's 5-day refresh covers buried cubes, so the body is kept as long as the system stands.
• Logging out while buried doesn't help. Your remaining air and bleed-out time keep counting in real time. If your cube is dug out while you're offline you'll wake up free; if the time runs out before then you die on your next login, body still in the collapse. (A server restart or kick does give you a fresh minigame rather than penalising you.)
• Logging in inside a cube that has collapsed buries you.

The dust cloud

Every collapse throws up a dust cloud that hangs around the cube and its neighbours for about 90 seconds. Standing in it:

• Blinds you — grit in the eyes blurs your vision, building to fully blind after about 12 seconds of exposure, and takes around half a minute to clear once you're out. Being dug out of a collapse dumps a full dose on you the moment you surface unless your eyes are protected.
• Chokes you — you start coughing, and if you choke for long enough (about a minute) you'll start to vomit every few seconds until you get out of the dust and recover.

You can mitigate these effects with eye protection or mouth protection, or a gas mask with a filter. Better items give better protection:

Gas mask + filter                        total protection, eyes and lungs
Gas mask with no / empty filter          eyes fully protected, lungs only partly
Balaclava, shemagh, bandana, face cloth  lungs mostly protected — eyes not at all
Goggles (tactical / ski / ballistic)     eyes almost fully protected — lungs not at all
Motorbike or military helmets            some of both

So a balaclava or shemagh offers some protection, goggles + shemagh together is a cheap, effective combination, and a gas mask with a filter is best. Ruined items protect nothing.

If your eyes are full of grit, crouch with a bottle or canteen of water and use Rinse Eyes — each rinse uses water and clears some of the grit; two full rinses clears you completely. You'll need to take off a sealed mask to do it.

Quick tips

• Practise the minigame before you need it: https://claude.ai/code/artifact/0fcebf4f-0165-4542-afc5-543e7810054c
• Carry a shovel in your hands when digging — if you're buried holding one, you've already halved the job.
• Wear goggles and a shemagh (or a gas mask) when digging. Dust before a burial means less air during it.
• Tell your team where you're digging. A buried teammate has four minutes; a lost one has none.
• Don't dig from a cube that reads red. If the ground gives way, run first, think later.