Find the Nugget

Look at the little guys! It's always great to see them enthusiastic about mining. I wonder how long it'll take them to get the nugget out of it.

— An older spectator at the Dragon's Festival

Find the Nugget is a popular childrens game, often played during the Dragon's Festival or at birthday parties. It is a great way to keep dwarven kids busy while the adults can drink their ale in relative peace.

Key Concepts

The premise of the game is easy: find the nugget! Adults give the stone creator a present to put in the stone. This gift is the nugget. The stone itself is made of a soft material that crumbles with little effort. The kids get their toy pickaxes and mine away at the stone to dig out their nugget.
Depending on the number of kids participating, a style of Find the Nugget is chosen. For the Dragon's Festival, multiple stone creators work together to produce numerous small mountains filled to the brim with gifts for the kids to find.

Competition

While Find the Nugget is a childrens game, it is also the perfect game for a competition and to determine potential mining talents. The concepts of Find the Nugget stay the same during competition, but the materials are different. Instead of a soft stone that crumbles at the slightest impact, they use harder stone that is closer to the rock found in the mines. They also replace the funny gifts for actual silver nuggets. Competitors can keep any nugget they mine out of their stone which also counts as the prize for participating in the competition.
High level competitions come even closer to a realistic mining environment. Participants will mine as much and as quick as then can through a handmade mountain. The rocks have the same hardness and the minerals are closer to what they would actually find. In these competitions they look at speed but also expertise. Better to mine slightly slower, and pull out the highest quality minerals.