Mining



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. This method is continued in Wrath of the Lich King. See Ore skinning for a general definition, and Mineable Mobs for a list.

Mining pointers:
 * [[File:Pointer mine on 32x32.png]] in range of deposit/vein that can be mined
 * [[File:Pointer mine off 32x32.png]] out of range of deposit/vein

For other articles related to Mining, see the Mining category.

Proficiency
Grand Master is only available after installing the expansion Wrath of the Lich King.

Illustrious Grand Master is only available after installing the expansion Cataclysm.

Uses
Mining is a complementary profession to blacksmithing, engineering and jewelcrafting. These professions rely specifically on ore and ore-derived materials.

Mining can be a profitable gathering profession because of the large sums utilized by the other primary professions. Jewelcrafters require five ore per prospect, blacksmiths can use dozens of bars for specific items, and engineers use large amounts of ore for the many consumable materials they can create.

Mining skill also grants the player Toughness.

Economical Gain
As with any gathering professional, low-level characters and characters without economic support may consider using two gathering professions. While this denies the player the ability to directly enhance his or her equipment/abilities, it does allow one to, in theory, make money quickly and easily through the use of the auction house.

Regardless of the method chosen, mining can be profitable. With regards to mining, be sure to check the local prices of your ore against the local prices of your smelted bars. Frequently ores will be more valuable because they can be prospected or smelted for skill points. This desirability leads to increased cost per unit.

Tools and Abilities
A mining pick is required to mine nodes in-game. This item type can be bought from various vendors, typically the ones selling "trade goods", "mining supplies", "engineering supplies", and "blacksmithing supplies". The pick must be in the player inventory to be used when mining a node.

A trained apprentice miner will immediately learn the Find Minerals ability, which highlights nearby nodes on the mini-map. The miner will also learn the accompanying smelting skill. This skill is used to convert one or more ore and elemental ingredients into bars, which are used in various professions. This skill can only be used in the vicinity of a forge, and will occasionally grant skill points depending on the player profession level.

In addition to a miner's pick and their ore-sensing abilities, dedicated ore farming may require a bag. There are a few mining-specialized bags that can be made or bought. These bags typically have 20, 28, or 32 slots respectively and will automatically store mined ores. Mining-bags can also store rocks and elemental items found by mining, smelted bars, a few items created in Jewelcrafting, a few items used in Blacksmithing, and mining picks. For a list, click here.

Worthy of note:
 * Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining adds +5 to mining skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Gatherer adds +5 to all gathering skills (mining, herbalism and skinning).
 * 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 all other crafting and gathering professions:

Although the same colors are used as for other professions, the actual odds of getting a skillup are considerably higher than the color would indicate. For example, at skill 60, a copper vein will appear green but have a ~80% chance of giving a skillup. In general, if a node is of the highest-level type of ore you can mine (not counting rare veins like silver or gold), there is a very high chance you will get a skillup.

To mine a vein, right-click on it. After a brief animation, a loot box containing ore, stone and sometimes rare drops like gems or motes. Nodes that are orange or yellow in difficulty will likely skill your mining ability, so it is important to focus on these nodes when you are leveling this profession.

Prior to Patch 3.0.8, mining a node completely required multiple attempts, one for each unit of ore. As such, each node could yield a one point of skill increase per miner. This would allow several players in a raid or group to mine the same node for a skill-up. Since the patch,a single mining attempt extracts all available loot from the vein. Alternatively, miners can share a node for a skill-up by not looting the vein. This allows multiple miners to gain a skill point (or tap) a vein, but only one miner will receive all the ore.

Smelting provides an opportunity to level mining at a faster pace. Smelting large stores of collected ore can be smelted en masse and in large quantities. Since 3.08, it has been possible to level from 1-375 only via smelting, but this will be expensive, since at certain skill ranges there is a very low chance of getting a skill point.

In Azeroth and Outland, there exist rare spawns of various ore veins in place or more common metals. Specifically:
 * Tin can spawn Silver.
 * Iron can spawn Gold.
 * Mithril can spawn Truesilver.
 * Fel Iron and Adamantite can spawn Khorium
 * Saronite can spawn Titanium
 * Elementium can spawn Pyrite

These vein types are visually distinct from normal veins. They typically have a glossier, shinier model, and are described as silver, gold, or truesilver when exposed on the minimap.

By Skill Level
See Mining proficiencies and Smelt proficiencies.

Quest Items

 * Incendicite Ore (objective of )
 * Lesser Bloodstone Ore (objective of )
 * Indurium Ore (objective of )
 * Rethban Ore (objective of )
 * Nethercite Ore (objective of )

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 and Tricks

 * MapWoW is a great Google Earth-like web application for finding node locations.


 * Gatherer is an add-on that can keep track of historical mining data. It can keep track of when and where you last mined a node.  Additionally, it can be partnered with GathererDB.  This addon is a communal database of mined ore.


 * GatherMate is a replacement for the now defunct Cartographer_Mining. It aims to be map addon independent. It can be combined with Routes to produce a traveling salesman route to all nodes in a given zone.


 * Weapons can also serve as a mining pick:
 * Kobold Excavation Pick
 * Gouging Pick
 * Cold Iron Pick
 * Miner's Revenge
 * Tunnel Pick
 * Digmaster 5000
 * Brann's Trusty Pick
 * Shatterstone Pick


 * A cannot be used as a weapon but does function as:
 * Gyromatic Micro-Adjustor
 * Arclight Spanner
 * Blacksmithing Hammer
 * Mining Pick
 * Skinning Knife


 * Paladins, Frost Death Knights, Druids and Engineers have a slight advantage in mining because of speed increasing talents.

Mining Bugs

 * Nodes have been known to respawn in rapid succession immediately after mining. This is much more common with nodes in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor than in Outland or Northrend.
 * Occasionally, a node will appear on the minimap but be inaccessible.
 * If the node is a gray-yellow in the minimap, it is underground or above you.
 * If the node is solid yellow, but not visible, it is bugged and cannot be mined.


 * Rarely, certain nodes will not appear in the minimap but be harvestable in-game. Dark Iron Ore is a good example of this.
 * Players standing on top of ore nodes will remain where they stand after the node is mined.