Flatten The Mountain Progress & Cash Calculator
Estimate the time left to your Height target and the Cash needed for an upgrade using one sample from your own run. Use your Height and Cash balance at the end of the sample, not the values you wrote down before starting it.
Evidence reviewed September 12, 2026. Dates describe source review or hands-on testing only—not automatic builds.
The calculator uses elapsed session time. It does not contain an official mining rate, predict chest drops, or assume that an old guide's prices are current.
Enter a sample from your run
Measure a period without buying upgrades or spending Cash. Record the Height decrease and the Cash earned over that same period. Then enter the Height and Cash balance currently shown after the sample.
Keep chest visits, movement, and Eagle interruptions inside the elapsed time. If any progress or income continued while you stopped mining manually, subtracting those minutes would overstate your session rate.
Read the beginner route before starting, or compare the Skill Tree when choosing your next purchase.
Enter a sample to see an estimate.
Worked example: estimate from the end of the sample
These are invented calculator inputs, not recorded game rates or prices.
During a five-minute sample, Height falls from 240 to 180 and you earn 150 Cash. At the end, your current Cash balance is 150. You want to reach Height 0 and buy an upgrade costing 300 Cash.
| Result | Calculation | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Height decrease per minute | (240 − 180) ÷ 5 | 12 Height units/min |
| Time remaining from Height 180 | 180 ÷ 12 | 15 minutes |
| Cash earned per minute | 150 ÷ 5 | 30 Cash/min |
| Additional Cash needed | 300 − 150 | 150 Cash |
| Time until the upgrade is affordable | 150 ÷ 30 | 5 minutes |
Do not enter 240 as Height now: that would include progress you have already completed. Do not add the five-minute sample to the remaining-time result.
If one of those five minutes was spent moving or handling a hazard, the elapsed sample is still five minutes. Dividing the same output by four would answer a different question and produce a more optimistic rate.
Show calculator formulas
- Height rate = sample Height decrease ÷ elapsed minutes.
- Remaining Height = max(0, Height now − target Height).
- Remaining time = remaining Height ÷ Height rate.
- Cash rate = Cash earned ÷ elapsed minutes.
- Cash gap = max(0, upgrade cost − Cash now).
- Time until affordable = Cash gap ÷ Cash rate.
- Extra Cash/min = after-upgrade rate − baseline Cash rate.
- Payback after purchase = upgrade cost ÷ extra Cash/min.
When an upgrade pays for itself
A before-and-after comparison is useful only when both samples use the same timing method and reasonably similar conditions. Keep temporary boosts, route changes, team changes, and other purchases out of a one-upgrade comparison.
Suppose the example upgrade raises your measured rate from 30 to 45 Cash per minute. The extra rate is 15 Cash per minute, so a 300-Cash purchase would recover its cost in 20 minutes after buying it, assuming that extra rate continues.
Affordability and payback are different. Affordability asks when you can buy the upgrade. Payback asks when the extra measured income has recovered its cost. Neither result proves that the upgrade is the best way to finish the mountain.
Why the estimate can change
A Height estimate is not a guarantee of a completion time. Your measured pace may change across the mountain or after an upgrade. A near-zero Height reading is not, by itself, evidence that every required block has been cleared.
Use the progression guide for completion context. For interruptions, see buried chests and the Eagle guide.
Cash and Gems are separate inputs for different decisions. Do not put a Gem balance into the Cash fields. For a Gem-priced pickaxe, use the pickaxe Gem budget.
Calculator questions
Why is there no time estimate?
The time result needs a positive sample duration and a positive measured Height decrease. If the sample showed no Height progress, the calculator cannot infer a positive progress rate. Cash results can still be available from valid Cash inputs.
Why does the calculator keep interruption time in the sample?
The main result estimates real elapsed time. It uses all progress measured during the whole sample, so it keeps the whole sample's duration too. The optional manual-interruption field is context, not a deduction.
Why is there no upgrade payback result?
Payback needs a positive upgrade cost and a comparable after-upgrade Cash rate higher than the baseline. A zero or negative gain does not support a finite payback estimate.
Does the calculator know my server's current rates?
No. It calculates from your entries. Blank inputs do not become hidden game defaults, and example values are never loaded as current game data.
Revision history
- Elapsed-time estimates and input reviewRates now use the whole elapsed sample; added an end-of-sample example, separate input validation, and confirmation for older saved values and share links.
- Current-build guidance addedClarified that guide snapshots are never preloaded; all calculator formulas and controls remain the same.
- Calculator 2.0 releasedAdded Height targets, Cash targets, interruption handling, upgrade gain, payback, local saving, result copy, and share URLs.