Mina the Hollower: How to Quickly Earn Bones & Best Farming Route

In any top-down adventure with punishing mechanics, experience points and currency naturally become your most valuable assets if you want to survive and thrive – and Mina the Hollower is no exception.

That being said, the game does mix things up a bit. Basically, the developers at Yacht Club Games decided to double down on a clever mechanic where your experience points and shop currency are the exact same thing. This forces you to channel your inner accountant to manage your finances wisely, constantly balancing whether you should spend your hard-earned wealth to level up Mina's stats or save it to buy powerful weapons and essential tools.

This dual-purpose currency comes in the form of Bones (yes, literal bones!), which you unearth while exploring the world. You can find them scattered throughout the map, usually tucked away in secret areas or buried underground. Normally, these loose Bones go straight into your pocket. However, in true soul-like fashion, walking around with a stuffed pocket is a gamble, as you risk losing your stash if you die and fail to successfully make it back to recover it.

Thankfully, you will also occasionally stumble across large, golden diamonds known as Bonestones, which yield much higher quantities of Bones all at once. And, unlike loose currency, these diamonds don't sit in your pocket, but are sent directly to a deposit box inside your Underlab, which functions as a checkpoint and safe room for Mina.

Like you probably noticed, there are certainly a lot of mechanics to juggle when it comes to managing your hard-earned cash, and if you are anything like me, budgeting might not be your strongest suit. At some point, you will find yourself in a critical situation where you desperately need to secure a massive amount of Bones, and fast.

Fortunately, I’ve already suffered through being broke in Ossex, so you don't have to, and I’m here to share the absolute best strategies to quickly fill your pockets with large amounts of Bones in Mina the Hollower.

How to Turn Mina into a Bone Magnet

While the most obvious way to secure a steady flow of Bones is by defeating enemies, there is a specific method to boost your spoils that you can trigger very early in the game!

To set this up, you just need to advance the main story until Mina meets Lionel at the Radiant Manor Foyer in Ossex. Once he explains that your primary objective is to repair the city’s generators, you are officially free to explore the world.

However, before running off, immediately head back to the courtyard of the Radiant Manor Foyer and check the upper-right corner of the screen. You’ll spot a hidden passage tucked behind some tall grass. Cut it down and venture inside to meet Elizabeth, a mysterious skeleton NPC.

Talk to Elizabeth, and she will offer to loan you her very own skull to help you secure a quick influx of cash – after all, being a skeleton, she has plenty of spare bones to share! There is a catch, though: she expects you to return the favor with interest, charging you a total of 1,000 Bones to settle the debt.

Despite sounding like a sketchy trap, trust me, this loan is entirely worth it, so go ahead and accept it. Once you have the advance, leave Ossex through the eastern exit to reach the Eastern Heath. Keep pushing to the right (if you haven't unlocked the bridge shortcut yet, you’ll just need to loop around the lower path to open it) until you eventually reach the entrance of Mourner’s Mile. This path ultimately leads to the Queensbury Crypt, home to one of the game's main bosses.

But your primary focus right now is to explore the grave-filled areas of Mourner’s Mile, as the enemies roaming this region drop relatively high amounts of currency upon defeat. Grind out the 1,000 Bones required for the debt and make your way back to Elizabeth. Once you pay her back, she will happily regain her head (an even fancier one, I must say) and reward you with the Deboning Wand – and this spectacular Trinket ensures that defeated enemies reward you with far more Bones than usual.

The only downside to the Deboning Wand is that it causes the dropped Bones to bounce around wildly upon spawning. However, fortunately, you can easily counter this drawback by pairing it with the Stolenoid Trinket.

The Stolenoid essentially turns Mina into a walking magnet, automatically pulling all nearby Bones straight to her so you never miss a single piece. You can purchase this handy tool from Belvedere for 600 Bones in a hidden chamber inside the Queensbury Crypt – just two rooms before the main boss arena, you’ll find an area with two headless statues that need restoring, and you can burrow your way through the left pillar to find his shop.

Therefore, the final step to complete our get-rich-quick build is simply expanding Mina's Trinket Bag so she can equip two Trinkets at the same time. To do this, just purchase the upgrade at the Emporium from the Provisioner merchant right in the center of Ossex. So, do a final stretch of gathering to secure this amount, and then we’re good to go!

The Best Farming Route for Early Game

With this powerful Trinket combination equipped, you are officially ready to start hoarding serious wealth! The fastest farming strategy (which you can pull off immediately, making it available quite early in the game) involves clearing out Mourner’s Mile all the way up to the entrance of the Queensbury Crypt. As I mentioned before, the enemies here already offered great base payouts, but with the Deboning Wand active, your profits will skyrocket.

To give you an idea of how lucrative this run is, let’s take a look at the boosted payouts for each target. You’ll be netting 40 Bones for every goblin, 30 for the blue crows, and 25 for half mummies. Don't forget the seven graves, which reward you with 50 Bones each simply by digging into the loose dirt. The real prizes, however, are the three armored knights yielding a whopping 120 Bones each, and the two horned beasts riding the moving platforms right by the crypt entrance, which drop 150 Bones apiece.

So, when you tally it all up, a single clean run through this route takes roughly two minutes and yields around 1,400 Bones. By spending just ten minutes repeating this simple loop, you will easily walk away with a whopping 7,000 Bones! In the early game, this massive sum will allow you to level up Mina multiple times in one go, significantly bolstering her health and damage before even defeating the first major boss of the game.

Best of all, this strategy remains incredibly viable for a nice chunk of the entire campaign. The next time you spot an incredibly expensive Trinket or upgrade at a merchant, just spend ten minutes on this route, and your financial problems will be completely solved!