A coil sold by the hole

A coil you buy is sold by the hole. Each finished dig spends one charge. When the stack hits zero you are back on bronze, or you are back in the shop. That sounds mean until you notice what the alternative is: a detector you pay for once and swing forever, which is a costume, or a detector that sips some other meter we would then have to invent. Charges are the meter. They are honest. You can see them. You can count them. You can decide whether the next hole is worth one.

The free bronze never empties. That is the floor of the game, and it is the reason a lapsed pass is not a locked field. You can always walk, always sweep, always dig. You will just do it slowly, on a coil that sings at every bottle cap.

What you are buying besides speed

Speed is the obvious ladder: fifty seconds, forty, twenty-five, fifteen. Hunters buy that because they have lost a race. The quieter upgrades are the ones you feel on every step and forget to name.

Radius is how far a buried find still registers. Bronze hears two tiles out. Mythic hears six. A wider coil turns blind sweeping into following a signal. Covering ground is how you arrive. Arriving is how you start. Starting is not finishing, but you cannot finish a hole you walked past.

Discrimination is how much scrap the coil refuses to sing about. The free machine calls every cap treasure. The top of the ladder walks past most of them. It never touches empty holes — no machine tells you the ground is lying — so upgrading buys a quieter field, never a guaranteed one. If you want fewer wasted stands, you want discrimination. If you want to win the stands you take, you want seconds.

The pass, and the stack

A live pass lends its detector without a hole count, for as long as the pass runs. That is the difference between renting a coil by the hole and being handed one for a month. Explorer lends silver. Archaeologist lends gold. Neither of them opens a second map. The dirt is the same dirt. What changes is how long you stand in it, how much junk you hear, and how often the roll in the hole comes up rare.

When the pass lapses you keep any coil you actually bought. You do not keep the lent one. The stack you paid for in coins or in dollars is yours until it is spent. Mixing those two up — 'I had gold yesterday' — is how people think the game stole a detector. It lent one. The shop still sells the other.

When to stop swinging

A low stack is a decision, not an emergency. The bronze is still there. Spending the last gold charges on contested commons is how a hunter with good kit still feels poor. Save the fast coil for holes you will finish. Sweep on bronze when the field is crowded and you are only looking. That sounds obvious written down. It is not, at dusk, with three signals and a hunter already walking.

The shop will sell you more holes. The Museum will sell you the coins to buy them. Neither of those is a requirement. The game is playable on the coil that never runs out. Everything above that is impatience, priced.