Two currencies. Only one of them is money.
Prospectour runs on a deliberately simple economy, and almost everything that confuses new players comes down to keeping nuggets and gems straight. Get that one distinction right and the rest of the game reads itself.
This page is the whole thing, with the real numbers — what a square earns, how the ads work, what rarity actually changes, and where the honest ceiling sits.
The distinction
- Nuggets
- Play money. Earned by watching ads, or bought. Spent on one thing only: more land. Nuggets can never become cash.
- Gems
- The cash rail. Never sold — only earned, by owning land. Pegged at 1,000 gems = $1.
Stand somewhere and take the ground under you
The map is divided into squares about 12 metres across in the UK. Walk to one, pay the nugget price, and it is permanently yours — nobody can take it back. You can claim anything within a 15-by-15 square area around where you are standing, so you never have to be exact.
The moment you claim, the game rolls the square’s rarity, and rarity is what sets its earning rate for good. You cannot buy a rarity, re-roll one, or see it in advance. The odds are published below and shown in the app before you commit.
- Your first square
- 700 nuggets
- Square size (UK)
- ~12 m across
- Claim range
- 15 × 15 squares
- Rarity tiers
- 8
- Can it be taken?
- Never
It earns while the app is shut
Every square you own mines on its own, around the clock, whether or not you are anywhere near it. It produces gems and nothing else — squares do not make nuggets. What a square pays is set by the rarity it rolled when you claimed it, and it never changes after that.
There is one catch, and it is the single most important mechanic on this page. Each square fills a 24-hour tank. When the tank is full the square stops earning until you collect. That is why a fortnight away earns you one day of mining, not fourteen.
- Gems per square, per day
- 0.43 – 1.71
- … while fully boosted
- 0.64 – 2.57
- Nuggets per day
- None — ads only
- Tank
- 24 hours
- Needs the app open?
- No
Two kinds of ad, doing two different jobs
Ads are the only place nuggets come from, and they are the only way to make land you already own mine faster. Those are separate tracks with separate daily allowances, and you can run both.
Nugget ads pay out instantly and buy you land. There are 108 a day with no cooldown, so you can watch them back to back or spread them out. Every one pays a flat 8 nuggets — the same on your first square as on your thousandth. There is no taper and no fade: what an ad is worth never goes down.
Boost ads double your gem rate for 30 minutes each, and there are 48 a day — enough to run boosted around the clock. You can only hold twelve hours of boost at a time, so taking the full allowance means coming back once through the day rather than stacking it all in one sitting. Once your boost is full another ad adds nothing, and it does not cost you one of the day’s 48. The boost is a flat 2× for everyone — it does not care how much land you own, and it is the same for a one-square player as for a five-thousand-square one.
- Nugget ads per day
- 108, no cooldown
- Per ad, always
- 8 nuggets
- Boost ads per day
- 48
- Boost per ad
- 30 min at 2×
- Max boost banked
- 12 hours
- Boost by estate size
- Same for everyone
Empty the tanks, bank the gems
Collecting sweeps every square at once and moves the gems into your balance. It also resets the tanks, which is the real reason to do it daily — a full tank is a square that has stopped working for you.
Gems are counted across your whole estate, not square by square. A single square earning well under a gem a day would otherwise round to nothing forever; pooling them means every fraction you have genuinely earned gets paid.
- Collects
- All squares at once
- Gems counted
- Across the estate
- Resets the tank
- Yes
- Best cadence
- Once a day
Spend the nuggets, widen the estate
Land is the only thing nuggets buy, which makes the loop simple: watch ads, buy a square, that square pays gems forever. Squares do not produce nuggets, so the way to earn more is to widen the estate, and the way to widen the estate is to keep watching ads.
Squares cost a flat 700 nuggets until you own a thousand of them. After that the price rises by 10 for every further thousand you hold — so an enormous estate costs slightly more per square than a modest one. A group of five players each holding a thousand squares always pays less than one player holding five thousand.
What the next square costs, once you already own…
| Squares already owned | Price of the next |
|---|---|
| 0 – 999 | 700 |
| 1,000 – 1,999 | 710 |
| 2,000 – 2,999 | 720 |
| 5,000 – 5,999 | 750 |
- First 1,000 squares
- 700 each
- Rise per 1,000 owned
- +10
- Only nugget sink
- Land
- Referral reward
- 1 square, over 60 days
What rarity actually changes
Rarity is the gem rate, and therefore it is the whole game. A Divine square pays exactly four times what a Common one pays, forever, and the six tiers between them are evenly spaced across that range. A lucky roll is worth real money, not just bragging rights.
What it does not do is inflate the economy. The eight rates are set so that the average across all eight tiers, weighted by how often each one appears, is the same number it would be if every square paid identically. Rarity moves value around between players; it does not create it.
The eight tiers and their published odds. Resting is what a square pays with no boost running; boosted is the same square at 2× while a Rush is on.
| Tier | Chance | Gems / day | Boosted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 50% | 1.2846 | 2.5692 |
| Uncommon | 25% | 1.5660 | 3.1320 |
| Rare | 12% | 1.9089 | 3.8178 |
| Epic | 7% | 2.3270 | 4.6540 |
| Legendary | 4% | 2.8367 | 5.6734 |
| Mythic | 1.5% | 3.4579 | 6.9158 |
| Transcendent | 0.4% | 4.2153 | 8.4306 |
| Divine | 0.1% | 5.1385 | 10.2770 |
How to play it well
Six things that genuinely change your rate. Most of them cost nothing but attention.
Open it once a day, every day
This is worth more than everything else combined. A square that hits its 24-hour tank stops mining entirely, so a week of neglect costs you six days of production on every square you own.
Claim hard and early, while the ads pay most
The nugget reward shrinks as ads pay you. Your first 62 squares’ worth is earned at 8 nuggets an ad; by 800 squares’ worth it is 2, and past 938 it is nothing at all. Holding the nuggets back does not slow the fade, so there is nothing to gain by waiting.
The maths: at the full rate, 108 ads a day is 864 nuggets — a square every twenty hours, around 450 a year. That pace is at its best on day one and only ever slows, so the squares you claim early are the cheapest you will ever get.Spend your boost; do not hoard it
Boost banks to a maximum of twelve hours, which is twenty-four ads. Watch a twenty-fifth on top of a full bank and it adds nothing, though it no longer costs you one of the day's forty-eight either. There are two banks' worth in a day, so the way to take the whole allowance is to fill it, let it run down, and come back. The nugget ads have no cooldown and can be binged; the boost ads are worth spacing across the day.
Claim where you actually are
Home, work, the school run, the gym. Each claim reaches a 15-by-15 block of squares around you — roughly 180 metres across in the UK — so the estate you can build is the one your day already covers.
Take the rare rolls seriously, but do not plan around them
A Divine square really does pay four times a Common one, so a lucky roll is worth genuine money. The trouble is you cannot chase it: the odds are fixed, the roll is server-side, and you cannot see it before you commit.
The maths: half of everything you claim will be Common. Divine is one in a thousand. Over an estate of any size your average lands near the middle whatever happens, so claim volume beats waiting for a good roll every time.Invite people you actually know
A referral pays you a full square’s worth of nuggets, dripped over the 60 days your friend stays active. It is slow on purpose, and it is free land.
The honest pace
A square averages 3.2262 gems a day while you are boosting, and the cash-out floor is 5,000 gems. That makes the arithmetic simple, and we would rather you saw it than guessed at it.
This is a slow game. One square is a rounding error; an estate is a real rate. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
Time to reach the 5,000-gem floor, by estate size. Assumes you collect daily and never sell.
| Squares owned | Gems / day | To the 5,000 floor |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3.23 | 4.2 years |
| 25 | 80.7 | 62 days |
| 50 | 161 | 31 days |
| 150 | 484 | 10 days |
| 500 | 1,613 | 3 days |
| 1,500 | 4,839 | 1 day |
The way to move up that table is not to buy your way there — it is to keep the tanks empty, watch your ads, and turn the nuggets into more land.
Straight answers
The questions we get most often, answered the way we would answer them in person.
Do I have to spend money to earn?
No. Nuggets are the only thing land costs, and ads are the only place they come from if you are not buying them. A hundred and eight ads a day at 8 nuggets each is 864 nuggets, which is a new square roughly every twenty hours — about 450 squares a year from a standing start, and that rate never slows down: an ad pays the same 8 nuggets on your first square as on your thousandth. Buying nuggets is a shortcut, not a requirement.
Does a rarer square pay more real money?
Yes. Rarity is the gem rate. A Divine square pays exactly four times what a Common one pays, and the six tiers in between are evenly spaced across that range. It is the single biggest thing that separates one square from another, and it is decided the moment you claim.
Do my squares mine nuggets too?
No. Squares produce gems and nothing else. Nuggets come from watching ads or buying them, and nowhere else. It means your land earns you money rather than earning you more land, and it is why the ad allowance is as large as it is.
Does owning more land increase my gem rate per square?
No, and it does not decrease it either. A square pays what its rarity says whether it is your first or your five-thousandth, and the boost is the same flat 2× for everybody. Ads pay a flat nugget reward too — it does not fade as you earn, and it never has a cap other than the daily count.
What happens if I stop playing for a week?
Your squares keep mining, but each one fills a 24-hour tank and then stops until you collect. So a week away earns you one day of nuggets, not seven. Gems bank the same way. Opening the app once a day is the whole of the maintenance.
Can I lose a square?
No. Once a square is yours it stays yours. Nobody can claim it out from under you, and it keeps mining whether or not the app is open.
When can I actually cash out?
Cash-out is not switched on. The rail is built and the floor is 5,000 gems, but no payouts are being made, gems have no monetary value while it is off, and we are not promising it will ever be turned on. If it ever is, it will be region-limited and will need identity verification. We would rather say that plainly than imply money is waiting for you.
The whole loop, in five lines
Claim ground, keep the tanks empty, watch your ads, and let the nuggets turn into more ground. Everything else on this page is detail.
Join the beta- 1.0Claim — 700 nuggets, permanently yours, rarity rolled on the spot.
- 2.0Mine — 0.43 to 1.71 gems a day by rarity, into a 24-hour tank. No nuggets.
- 3.0Ads — 108 nugget ads a day at a flat 8 nuggets each, plus 48 boost ads at a flat 2× on gems.
- 4.0Collect — once a day, every day. A full tank has stopped earning.
- 5.0Grow — land is the only thing nuggets buy, and more land is the only way to lift your total.
Rewards are a discretionary loyalty programme. They are not guaranteed, have no fixed monetary value, and the rates, terms and availability shown here may be changed, limited or withdrawn at any time. Nuggets and land are game items with no cash value and can never be redeemed for money; gems are the only currency that could ever be redeemed. Cash-out is not currently enabled, while it is off gems have no monetary value, and nothing here is a promise that it will be enabled. If it is ever offered it will be restricted by region and will require identity and eligibility verification. See the Terms of Service. Prospectour is rated 18+.