Mining
From WoWWiki
|  Mining (Profession)
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| List of mining nodes • Quests • Recipes • Trainers |
Mining allows you to find and mine minerals, ores, and stones from resource nodes scattered throughout the world. It is one of the primary professions. Materials from mining and the items miners can create from them are reagents needed for recipes within other professions.
The Burning Crusade expansion contains several mobs that are capable of being mined. See Ore skinning for a general definition, and Mineable Mobs for a list.
Mining pointers:
in range of deposit/vein that can be mined
out of range of deposit/vein
For other articles related to Mining, see the Mining category.
Contents |
Uses
The main professions which need the raw materials from mining are Blacksmithing, Engineering and Jewelcrafting; occasionally recipes from other professions may need mining materials too. Mining is one of the three collecting professions (the others being Herbalism and Skinning). Some argue that it creates the highest income of the three.
Characters trying to maximize their income should take two collecting professions at the start of their career, sell the products they find, and switch to crafting professions only after reaching the level cap and having a solid financial foundation. When miners try to sell the materials they find, they should pay attention to whether there is a price difference between the raw ore and the smelted bars. Frequently the ore is more valuable (because mining skill can be gained from smelting, and Jewelcrafters require ore for Prospecting).
Players actually interested in crafting items usually combine mining with one of the three trading professions which mostly use mining products.
Mining skill also grants the player Toughness.
Tools and Abilities
A mining pick is needed for mining and can typically be found for sale by the following types of NPC: trade goods, mining supplier, blacksmithing supplier, or engineering supplier. To perform mining, the pick must be in the player's inventory.
After learning mining the "Find Minerals" ability becomes available in the General tab on the spellbook. Activating this ability will show all mineral nodes in the player's vicinity on the mini-map. Find Minerals cannot be used at the same time as any other minimap "find" ability (like Find Herbs or Hunters tracking). To make collecting easier, three special mining bags can be created or bought, which have 20, 28, or 32 slots respectively and will automatically store gathered ores.
Miners are also able to learn smelting. This allows them to melt down ore and mould it into a bar. For this to work, the player must be in proximity of a forge. Melted bars are the end product of Mining/Smelting, and usually are the raw material used by the other professions. Smelting certain ore can also give you skill points.
Worthy of note:
- Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining adds +5 to mining skill.
- Enchant Gloves - Gatherer adds +5 to all gatheringskills (mining, herbalism and skinning).
- [Goblin Mining Helmet] adds +5 to mining skill.
Mining Skill and its Increase
Different veins will require different mining skill levels to loot (e.g. mithril veins require a skill of 175). The relative difficulty of the mining attempt is colour coded as usual:
- Red: Skill insufficient.
- Orange: 100% chance of increasing skill level.
- Yellow: 75% chance of increasing skill level.
- Green: <50% chance of increasing skill level.
- Gray: Never increases skill level.
To actually mine a resource node right click on it. After a short time a loot box comes up, containing ore, stone and sometimes rare drops like gems or motes.
The normal method to gain mining skill is to use it on nodes which are not grey. Prior to Patch 3.0.8, mining a node completely required multiple attempts, one for each unit of ore. Because each node could yield up to one point of skill increase per miner, several players could mine the same node, each gaining a skill point. Since Patch 3.0.8 however, a single mining attempt extracts all of the ore, stone, and gems from the node. However, it is actually possible to gain a skill point without even removing the ore, allowing a large party of miners to skill up on the same node.
The much quicker method to level mining is by smelting. Particularly at the start of a mining career, smelting Copper will yield an easy and quick increase in mining skill. Unfortunately, at higher levels, even brand new smelting recipes will be green or even grey. Gold and silver however are an exception; unfortunately these ore types are quite rare.
Mining Etiquette
It is considered poor form to use a speed enhancing ability to grab a node before someone else does. It is important to note that while it is considered impolite to take a node from another player, the game rules do not classify such behavior as harassment and therefore it is not punishable. Do note that in higher level areas there is essentially no faster way to show that you are new than to observe this etiquette. If you complain to a player that they stole your ore, they will laugh at you. If you complain in General chat, you will be ridiculed. The rule of thumb in these areas is "it is your ore when it is in your bag". Realize that people WILL steal your nodes if you are in combat with mobs, if you are on a PvP server, they will steal them when you are in combat with other players as well. Other players in any area where Saronite and Titanium nodes propagate WILL use anything they can to speed boost themselves in any way they can to beat people to nodes. If you do not have your epic flier and cold weather flying, you can guarantee you will get 1/4th of the nodes you find.
In a party, share your nodes with other miners so you can split the skill ups and ores. If somebody is fighting a mob near a mining vein, either help kill the mob, or wait until the person is done, to see if he was planning to mine the vein. If they are of the same faction (Horde/Alliance) you can simply ask them.
Proper etiquette can vary from server to server. You may wish to disregard etiquette for miners of the opposing faction on a PvP server, but as with all PvP encounters, it is up to you how to act. Doing so may result in you getting ganked and camped, however, so you may wish to exercise caution.
Mining Products
By Skill Level
See Mining proficiencies and Smelt proficiencies.
Quest Items
- [Incendicite Ore] (objective of
[22] Search for Incendicite
- [Lesser Bloodstone Ore] (objective of [37] Favor for Krazek)
- [Indurium Ore] (objective of
[42] Indurium Ore)
- [Rethban Ore] (objective of [24] Rethban Ore)
Quest ore is usually mined off special nodes, but can also drop off certain mobs in the same area. The ores cannot be smelted and are not "quest items" per se, so they can be traded or purchased off the AH.
Tips
- MapWoW has some great Google-Earth like ways of figuring out where to find good places to ride around and level up your mining skill if you're not doing it as you level (epic mount preferred by far here). It will not, however, tell you that if you're at about skill 175-ish, finding Mithril nodes becomes quite the pain. If you play rogue or druid and have the skills and gear to stealth around Uldaman and not die too much, there are quest nodes in there as well as tons of Mithril.
- Gatherer is a great free-standing addon that will help you track where you find herbs or mining nodes - which will make leveling mining A LOT easier and faster with a mount. Available from WowInterface and Curse. An interesting thing to note about Gatherer is, if you have a friend who has it they can send you their node locations, which is very handy if you have a high-level gatherer in your guild, who will be able to send you all node locations they've mined.
- GatherMate is a replacement for the now defunct Cartographer_Mining. It aims to be map addon independent. Available from Curse.
- Mining Node Spawns: to the best of limited research, nodes in a given zone seem to spawn in a few patterns. Thus you will frequently find that if you find a node in spot X and Y, and the next day find a node in spot Y, there's a better than average chance that X is also active (but you never know if another miner is around...). If neither is there, more than likely another 'set' of nodes is active. The length of time it takes for a node to respawn is approximately 30 min for most ores, however this may vary for rare ore spawns.
- Some weapons can also serve as a mining pick: [Brann's Trusty Pick], [Cold Iron Pick], [Digmaster 5000], [Gouging Pick], [Kobold Excavation Pick], [Miner's Revenge], and [Tunnel Pick]. These weapons can save you 1 slot of inventory space by occupying your weapon slot yet also allowing you to mine without a normal mining pick, assuming you have the proficiency to use their weapon type.
- A Gnomish Army Knife cannot be used as a weapon but does function as a Gyromatic Micro-Adjuster, Arclight Spanner, Blacksmithing Hammer, Mining Pick, and a Skinning Knife.
- Paladins and Unholy specced DKs are great for mining because of their speed boost, but Druids have the advantage as well (especially in northrend) as they can instantly enter flight form after mining. Druids can NOT mine in flight form. Everyone else has to run up to the node, dismount, mine, remount, and continue. It is ideal to get a Paladin friend to go mining with you (promise him gear from the mining or something) as then whatever class you are you can get the speed buff as well.
- Mining, Herbalism, and Auctioneer addon is a very easy way to make money, even as a low level character. While a bad server economy may lower your prices a bit, it is still an easy and stable way to make gold.
Mining Bugs
- Multiple vein appearance. Sometimes two, three or even four veins will spawn in the same place, increasing the amount of ore you can get. Furthermore, the minimap symbol acknowledges the location of both veins on the exact same spot. It is not clear if this a bug or intended behaviour; it's conceivable that a large rock could be "mined" several times.
- The minimap might show that a vein exists, but the wall of the mine falls between the player and the location of the mine (such as the Kobold mine south of Goldshire). This can be especially annoying with underground mines, sometimes players discover after wading through a lot of mobs that the node actually cannot be looted. (Though most of the time it's merely that the vein is on another floor of the mine).
- The minimap does not always show all nodes. This mostly happens underground. A few common examples are in BRD: the Dark Iron nodes do not always show up on the minimap.
- Sometimes a node will appear on the minimap, but the harvestable volume a node will not be exposed so it can be clicked. Seen at the entrance of
Zzarc' Vul's cave in Duskwood and in the hills above Dustbelch Grotto in southwestern Badlands.
- If you stand on top of a vein, and then mine it, you will be left "levitating" in midair when the vein disappears until you next move.
Patch changes
Patch 3.1.0 (2009-04-14): You can no longer fail when Mining, Herbing, and Skinning.
Patch 3.0.8 (2009-01-20): Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits.
External links
- For leveling guides please visit Tradeskill leveling guides
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