Palladium Drill

Drills swing faster with no help, but they ignore every mining speed bonus you own and they reach a tile less than the matching pickaxe. Before you have a mining set and potions running, the drill wins on raw tunneling. After that, the pickaxe pulls ahead and stays ahead, and the shorter reach starts to hurt when you are picking out single blocks around ore.

This tier exists to open the next one. Cut through to mythril or orichalcum, craft the tool from that, and this becomes shed weight. Do not sink modifiers or a reforge budget into something you will replace within an hour of digging.