In Brief:
- AFK Heroes (official site) bosses now drop Pickaxe Crates, which players can open, upgrade, reroll and fuse.
- The pickaxes lay the groundwork for Mining, a feature the team hasn’t released or dated yet.
- It’s the latest addition to the Solana idle RPG’s Season 3, which reset all heroes to level 1 on Aug. 28.
AFK Heroes has added Pickaxe Crates to its boss loot tables, giving players their first look at the tools for a mining system the studio hasn’t launched yet.
“Bosses now drop Pickaxe Crates. Open them, upgrade, reroll, fuse… and get ready for Mining,” the team said in a post on X announcing the update.
PICKAXES ARE HERE
Bosses now drop Pickaxe Crates. Open them, upgrade, reroll, fuse… and get ready for Mining
Everything you need to know
The post went up under the heading “PICKAXES ARE HERE.” It also pointed players to an explainer billed as “Everything you need to know.”
What’s live and what isn’t
The team listed four actions for the new items: opening crates, upgrading pickaxes, rerolling them and fusing them. Bosses are the only drop source it named.
Mining itself isn’t live. The announcement didn’t give a launch date. It also didn’t say how pickaxes will tie into $AFKHERO earnings, or whether upgrading, rerolling and fusing cost tokens or in-game resources.
So for now, players can collect and improve pickaxes but can’t put them to use.
Boss content in the current season
The game’s map runs through a series of zones, each with its own boss. They range from Frozen Spire at level 40 through Molten Foundry to Singularity Vault at level 90 and above.
Season 2 launched July 24 and brought server-wide zone bosses, along with guilds, crafting, tournaments, PvP and a feature called Powerball. Tying the new crates to boss kills gives players another reason to push through those zones.
That push started over at level 1 for everyone in Season 3. The season began Aug. 28, wiped hero levels and the leaderboard, and came with a reward pool three times the size of Season 2’s.
Token and staking
$AFKHERO launched on pump.fun with a supply capped at 1 billion. About 944.84 million tokens are in circulation.
In September, the team said its staking vault had filled to its 250 million $AFKHERO cap, locking up 25% of total supply. It put that as one in every four tokens now sitting in the vault.
Payouts depend on several factors. Heroes with a higher Power Level take a bigger share of the reward pool. Guild members can earn up to 25% more $AFKHERO, plus 100% more XP and 100% more gold. Deposits, holdings and account linking can stack an earning boost of up to 80%.
The team has also expanded its referral program. Under the new terms, players earn from what their referred friends spend and trade, get paid out faster and can compete in a 5,000,000 $AFKHERO prize race.
Background
AFK Heroes went live on Solana in June as a voxel idle RPG that runs in the browser. There’s nothing to download. Players connect a Phantom or Solflare wallet, choose a knight, mage or rogue, and send their hero out onto the map.
The hero keeps fighting while the player is away, earning XP, gold, loot and $AFKHERO even with the tab closed.
Season 2’s first week drew more than 10,000 connected wallets and about 6,000 active players. Players deposited 378.9 million $AFKHERO that week, and the game paid out roughly 126 million.
The token’s market data shows how concentrated holdings are. In mid-August, the top 10 wallets held 85.91% of supply, up from 72.11% in early August.
