Snipped the comment for space and put it under spoilers. So, they want you to use the various foods/drinks and your skill trees (in this case, str and sexual tyrannosaurus). They would have to balance the whole game around removing stamina for mining tools to prevent steel fortresses by day 7. So, I did some science on this.
ST = sex trex. C = coffee. B = beer. Times are until first swing out of stamina
1pt ST + stone axe = NA, can mine infinitely
1pt ST + iron pick = 16.62s | 22.56 w/C | 48.43 w/ C+B (here on out, |raw| |coffee| |coffee+beer|
1pt ST + steel pick = 11.22s| 13.94 | 21.91
3pt ST + iron pick = 24.52 | 1:07.17 | NA, infinite under C+B
3pt ST + steel pick - 17.14 | 27.83 | 1:35.44
So, yes you can still do your tunneling and dwarven-mode game-play: You just need to change from the days of infinite-stamina with no help ways from previous alphas

. Adding points into ST, drinking some coffee will give you a large boost, adding beer makes it significantly more (and when you do run out of stamina, under these buffs you near-instantly refill). There are still ergonomic grips to add, another point into ST, food buffs, mega crush, hydration buffs to add to further increase your mining time. Now go eat, drink, and mine away.
Been testing these numbers since you posted it, and Sex Rex makes a huuuuge difference with even a single point, I'm wondering if it's a bug and matters more than it says.
At level 50 with 4/5 Miner 69, I can't even break half of a 2500 health block before I'm out of stamina. 1 point of Sex Rex pushes it to where I can get the block to about 1K health with Iron and Steel pick, coffee pushes it over so that I can break a single block before getting winded. Bigger issue than just the stamina though, is the food drain is nuts. I seem to be using around 2-3 food per stamina bar. I burned through 20+ food in a few minutes just testing the different picks on the side of a nearby PoI.
I just tested going to bedrock on my level 50 character with 4/5 Miner 69 and 1 Sex Rex, using a Steel Pick with a rockbreaker and ironbreaker mod, and after eating a Meat Stew and using Coffee
Took about 3 hours in game, 20 food, several coffee, and a repair kit, but I got there!
The results weren't as bad as my early game test a few days ago when I tried to go mining with my first Iron Pick and a bunch of canned food and coffee, but TBH like 80% of that success and speed to get to bedrock was because I have 50% more stamina because I'm higher level and then another 20 was from my Stew.
For giggles I tried it on a new character with 1 Sex Rex and 2 Miner 69 and nothing else. Using a Level 5 steel pick with the rock, iron, and dirt breaker mods, and using Blackstrap coffee because normal coffee was taking WAY too long
Going to bedrook took about 5 hours in game and 20 food. I guess I should have used an Iron pick to more accurately represent how much food it would take, but that would have taken frickin forever-er.
With Blackstrap coffee, it takes 8 full seconds to regenerate my stamina bar from 20 (where I stop being able to use my tool) to 105. So I mine for 20 seconds and then run out of stamina, and then stand still for 8 seconds not doing anything waiting for it to recharge.
That's
almost 50% downtime between "actually playing the game" and why I say stamina is not a fun mechanic, Stamina exists specifically to *stop* you from having fun and playing the game, hence, a punishing stamina system being more annoying than fun. I break exactly 4 blocks, then stand there AFK for 8 seconds until I can play the game again. Nearly a full half of my time spent mining is spent AFK staring at my pick waiting for my stamina to come back
Part of the problem I have with the current mining set up is that it's all geared around food and drinks etc. That's okay late game, but farm plots are expensive AF, and it takes a lot of perks to get there. Sex Rex is something I don't ever normally invest in because it's not good late game, but a single point in it made a very noticeable difference for tools and max Sex Rex would be completely mandatory if people actually used Picks past mid game. Coffee is just RNG to get to spawn in vending machines if you don't have farm plots, and blackstrap is SUPER rare for some reason, to the point where I've seen 2 total by day 30 and still can't even craft it myself.
I agree with the person a few days back who talked about their new friend who started to play 7 Days and was going to be a miner and instantly nope'd out. There are so many pre-reqs to actually play a mining character that it's crazy. I just did the math and you need around 25 points to even really be a decent miner, and like half of those points are food and gardening perks so you don't starve to death