What causes a low-tier tool mining ore above its tier?

The mining check verifies only that the held tool is some pickaxe, not that its tier meets or exceeds the node's required tier.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a Lower-Tier Pickaxe Mining Ore It Should Not Be Able To

Quick answer: Tag each node with a required tool type and minimum tier, and reject the harvest (or yield nothing) when the equipped tool's tier is too low.

Players strip the toughest ore veins with a starter pickaxe, skipping the whole progression. The harvest check only asks whether a pickaxe is equipped, never whether it is strong enough.

How to fix it

1. Define node tier requirements

Give each resource node a required tool type and minimum tier. Without a per-node requirement, every pickaxe is equally valid and progression collapses.

2. Compare tiers on each hit

Before applying damage to the node, check tool.tier >= node.requiredTier. If it fails, show a feedback message and deal no progress.

3. Differentiate fail feedback

Play a distinct clink and tooltip for too-weak tools versus wrong-tool-type so players understand they need to upgrade rather than switch tools.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Godot error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.