As the gold price continues to rise, it has become increasingly viable to mine higher-risk, more complex ore systems closer to the economic cut-off. These opportunities carry narrower profit margins, making them more vulnerable to fluctuations in economic and mining cycles, and increasing the risk to favourable project economics. To manage this risk, operations often adopt accelerated mining strategies that minimises capital spend while maximising throughput. This is often in conflict with quality and delivery of optimal grade. These competing relationships between cost, volume and grade are compounded by several contradictions. Robust geological understanding of uncertain ore systems requires more input data to capture complexity, yet time and cost constraints often limit data acquisition. Optimising grade from complex ore systems necessitates quality focused mining strategies, yet time and cost pressures favour larger, lower-cost mining fleets aimed at volume extraction. Furthermore, typical risk minimisation is challenged when short-term production targets are driven by locally complex and uncertain ore definitions, where small deviations in interpretation and execution can have disproportionate impacts on grade, dilution and loss. To mitigate these conflicting priorities, Northern Star has developed several quantitative tools through collaborations between geology and mining teams. Central to this is the Geological and Mining Risk Matrix, a framework that supports strategic decision-making and communication across key stages of the mining cycle: planning, pre-blasting, post-blasting and extraction. The matrix enables teams to proactively identify and reduce uncertainty, dilution, and ore loss, ensuring complex orebodies are extracted optimally, and in alignment with Ore Reserve assumptions. Complementing this is the Revenue or Free Cash Flow Attribute – a clear, universally understood metric that communicates the economic significance of each ore block driving higher quality mining practices. Together these tools help derisk the inherent geological uncertainty of complex ore systems, maximising margins in challenging, higher-risk projects.