When first placed/created, Mineral Soil begins with a mineral content of 1%. This means the plant growing atop the Mineral Soil block has a 1% chance of having a random update tick go through, which will then calculate the growth chance of the plant atop the Mineral Soil block and decide if it should grow. This allows each plant to have its own separate growth chance and still be affected by the mineral content of the soil block below.

Naturally, plants growing on Mineral Soil with a low mineral content will grow extremely slowly. Fortunately, the mineral content can be increased up to a maximum of 50% by right-clicking the Mineral Soil block with either Mineral Rocks or Dense Mineral Rocks. By default, this will increase the mineral content by 1% and 9% respectively.

When the Mineral Soil block is broken, all resources put into the block will be dropped. This includes the dirt block, a single Mineral Crystal and the number of Mineral Rocks and Dense Mineral Rocks put in dropped as Mineral Rocks. If more Mineral Rocks were put into the Mineral Soil block than needed to get the mineral content to 50%, the excess will be lost and the Mineral Rocks will NOT be recoverable.

Mineral Soil has 5 tiers (called stages). The stage of the soil is directly related to the mineral content. Each stage affects the appearance of the block and each incremental stage increases the cracks on the soil block.

The following tables shows what stage the soil block will be in at different mineral content concentrations.

Stage (Tier)	Mineral Content
Stage 1	1%-19%
Stage 2	20%-29%
Stage 3	30%-39%
Stage 4	40%-49%
Stage 5	50%

The different tiers of Mineral Soil.