By the way, regarding the pickaxe. I am currently doubting if we should really include such a tool. I tried it out and...it's too mighty: Every 3 seconds, you can mine one gold. For free. The only thing it takes is time. So, with enough patience you can dig yourself through any vein, even through granite and stuff, again for free.
To "balance" this out by making the use of the pickaxe even slower (it is already painfully slow) is no option because what we would do by that is the following: We offer the cheapest, safest and easiest way to mine (through) anything in the game while at the same time discourage it's use by making it incredibly slow and boring. So why did we include it in the first place if we want to make it as ineffective as possible? (Which is hard to do since it's "free" to use) The outcome will be that many will still continue to use it because it's reusable and free (like wind generator vs. coal plant+coal) and thus really profitable even though it's really boring. Still, the blame will go to the gameplay - to be very boring and long-winded .

Makes sense