Orichalcum Pickaxe

The choice is not really about raw speed. Drills look faster on paper, but they ignore mining speed bonuses entirely, so the moment you pick up any mining gear the pickaxe pulls ahead. The pickaxe also reaches further, which matters more than people expect when you are cutting a shaft and would rather not reposition every few blocks.

This tier is the gate to the next ore, so the only real point of making it is getting at adamantite and titanium. There is no reason to sit on the bars once you have them; craft it and go straight back underground.

Rounding flattens the good modifiers together on this tool, so several different rolls end up giving identical mining speed. Take the first decent one you get instead of feeding coins into the Goblin Tinkerer for a specific name on a pickaxe you will replace within the hour.