How to Dig

The manual · updated August 2026

MUSTER is minesweeper with teeth. You dig a warband out of a barrow, deduce where the danger sleeps, and spend that certainty on ambushes. Everything below is also on the in-game HOW TO DIG screen (main menu, or pause); a first run opens it automatically.

The floor

• The floor starts bare, like a fresh minesweeper grid. Your first dig is always safe — the whole floor is rolled and validated around wherever you break ground.
• A revealed empty tile prints how many of its eight neighbours still hide a foe or loot. It does not say which. The FOES and LOOT counters let you subtract what the floor still contains.
• Killing a monster lowers every number around it. Numbers only count what is still buried, so a fight is often how you break a stalled board.
• The stairs are buried too, and never near where you broke ground. Finding the way out is the floor's actual job.

Flag, then dig

• Flag a tile, then dig it. A monster becomes an ambush: it fights alone, you move first, +1 morale. A correctly marked cache or forge opens neutrally.
• Blind-click a monster and the pocket wakes. Every hidden monster orthogonally adjacent joins the fight, chaining outward. Numbers use eight neighbours; pockets use four. That asymmetry is deliberate.
• Only a flag on something the numbers do not count costs morale.
• Three lanterns a floor peek any hidden tile without triggering it. They are the anti-guess valve — on a dense floor you will spend them.

The warband

Six diggers, six roles, and reach is the ladder that makes them mean something.

• Every digger carries an individual class quest. Completing the escalating quest grants a talent point, spent in THE WARBAND among three linear trees of three nodes. The first two tiers can be mixed; the first capstone chosen locks the other two and changes how the role fights. Progress lasts the run.
• The dead drop coin and gear in four rarities — common, uncommon, rare and fabled — with deeper floors tilting the roll upward. Each digger carries one weapon and one charm; a Two Irons Warrior opens a second weapon slot.

Fights

• Fights are a full-screen honeycomb. Drag your diggers onto any cell in your four columns, click one to read their stats, press START, and watch. Reach decides everything: a Long Spear lets a body fight from behind the Barrow Widow, who pulls attacks onto herself.
• The Sexton guards floor three's descent. You can wake him early on your terms, but the stairs force the fight if he still lives. The Barrow King holds the same final line on floor six.
• Losing a fight costs one of three grit; survivors squat on their tiles with the wounds they earned. Dead diggers stay dead. Coin is spent at the camp pedlar on gear, bandages, oil, or digging a fallen friend back out.

Two barrows

There are two campaigns, chosen next to the difficulty rung before a run starts. The frozen barrow has its own twelve rooms, four species, threshold and throne (the Hoarwarden and the Rime Queen) — and the frozen ground is holding things. A rimebound monster is visible from the moment the floor is rolled and counts for nothing, so it never costs you a deduction; every dig thaws it, the tile prints how many are left, and when the ice gives it takes the first strike. Break it early and the first strike is yours. Difficulty is a separate axis: the rung means the same thing in either barrow.

Controls

Every pad button is rebindable under SETTINGS → CONTROLLER, along with the stick that moves the cursor, deadzone, hold delay and repeat rate, the prompt style (auto / Xbox / Steam Deck / PlayStation / Nintendo) and rumble. On a Steam Deck the game starts fullscreen and names its buttons the way the Deck does.

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