Mining

Miners must have all the necessary equipment to succeed.

• Mining
• 5 yd yd range
• 3.2 sec cast
• Tools: [Mining Pick]
• Primary Profession. How to pull ore and stone from mineral veins, do a more advanced level of mining, raise mining to an art form, become a Master Miner, become a Grand Master Miner, or become an Illustrious Grand Master Miner for use in Engineering and Blacksmithing. Gives a potential mining skill of X. Requires a Mining Pick.

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 was the first to introduce 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.

Mining in Legion

This section concerns content exclusive to Legion.

Legion-level players may learn mining and raise it to cap all within the zones of the Broken Isles. Though the "partial ore gathered", introduced with Warlords of Draenor, remains in effect for lower levels, players in Legion zones will always gather full ores, regardless of mining level. Learning mining in the Isles is as easy as mining a node.

In addition, the new ores have three ranks and perks associated with them. Ranks 1 and 3 increase the materials found, and Rank 2 increases the chance to find rare materials.

• Felslate:
  • Needed for  [110] Nal'ryssa's Technique
  • Needed for supplies and work order world quests for Suramar
• Infernal Brimstone
  • Needed for  [110] Bindings of the Windlord
• Leystone Ore:
  • Needed for  [110] Nal'ryssa's Technique and  [100] Strange New Ores
  • Needed for supplies and work order world quests for Azsuna, Highmountain, Stormheim, and Val'sharah

Partial ore new in Warlords of Draenor

This section concerns content exclusive to Warlords of Draenor.

Starting with the Warlords of Draenor expansion, nearly all basic ore can be gathered with Mining skill of 1, but the full ore will only drop if the character has the appropriate minimum skill to gather the ore. If the skill is below the minimum, a partial ore will drop that requires 10 to create the full ore. Partial ore will almost always have the suffix "Nugget" added to the names of the full ore to distinguish them as partial ore.

 [Herbalism] also has a similar mechanism when trying to gather herbs with a minimum required skill above current skill points.

Proficiency

Proficiency	Level	Skill
Apprentice	5	1 - 75
Journeyman	5	50 - 150
Expert	10	125 - 225
Artisan	25	200 - 300
Master	40	275 - 375
Grand Master	55	350 - 450
Illustrious	75	425 - 525
Zen Master	80	500 - 600
Draenor Master	90	600 - 700
Legion Master	98	700 - 800

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

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

Zen Master is only available after installing the expansion Mists of Pandaria.

Draenor Master is only available after installing the expansion Warlords of Draenor.

Legion Master is only available after installing the expansion Legion.

Uses

Mining is a complementary profession to blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting. Mining provides ores, which can be used in smelting bars, included after learning mining. Both mining the ores and smelting them provide skill points.

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 also tends to benefit other miners, like in the case of getting the materials to smelt Dark Iron Bars.

Mining used to grant the player Toughness until Patch 6.0.2 .

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.

An excellent way for miners of every skill level to make gold is to smelt two bars into a higher value bar. For example smelting a Copper Bar and Tin Bar together to create two Bronze Bars, because a single bronze bar usually sells for more at the auction house than a copper or tin bar (although players should always check to see if this is the case before smelting as the process is irreversible). Naturally, this means that someone could also buy copper and tin bars (or even the usually cheaper ores) from the auction house and smelt these into the more valuable bronze bars, thus yielding sometimes over 50 in profit with very little effort (depending on server, prices of bronze, tin, and copper). If the miner personally farmed the ores, this profit can double, but it will take more time. Be warned that this method of gold-making works in the case of bronze bars (on most servers) because of the high demand; it may not work as well for Steel Bars or higher level bars.

Regardless of the method chosen, mining can be profitable. Be sure to check the local prices of ore against 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 found at various vendors, such as trade good, mining supplies, engineering supplies, and blacksmithing supplies vendors. The pick must be in the player's inventory to be used when mining a node, though does not have to be equipped.

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 specialized bags that can be made or bought. These bags typically have 20, 28, or 32 slots and will automatically store mined ores. They cannot, however, store other non-mining objects.

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).
• [Goblin Mining Helmet] adds +5 to mining skill.
• [Gnomish Army Knife] adds +10 to mining, herbalism, and skinning skill

Mining skill and its increase

Different veins require different mining skill levels to loot (e.g. mithril veins require a skill of 175). The relative difficulty of the mining attempt is color-coded:

• 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.

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 a player can mine (not counting rare veins like silver or gold), there is a very high chance of a skillup.

To mine a vein, right-click on it. After a brief animation, a loot box will appear containing ore, stone, and sometimes rare drops like gems or motes. Nodes that are orange or yellow in difficulty will likely increase your mining ability, so it is important to focus on these nodes when 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 one point of skill per miner. This allowed 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, but only one miner will receive all the ore.

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

In Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend 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

Ghost Iron can spawn Trillium

These vein types are visually distinct from normal veins. They typically have a glossier, shinier model.

Basic mineral deposits and veins

This section's content needs citations, references, or sources.

Mineral Vein	Skill Color
	Orange	Yellow	Green	Gray
[Copper Vein]	1	25	50	100
[Tin Vein]	50	90	115	165
[Silver Vein]	65	100	125	175
[Iron Vein]	125	150	175	225
[Gold Vein]	155	175	205	255
[Mithril Deposit]	175	200	225	275
[Truesilver Deposit]	205	255	280	330
[Dark Iron Vein]	230	255	280	330
[Small Thorium Vein]	230	270	280	345
[Rich Thorium Vein]	275	300	325	350
[Fel Iron Vein]	275	325	350	400
[Adamantite Vein]	325	350	375	425
[Rich Adamantite Vein]	350	375	400	450
[Nethercite Deposit]	350	375	390	400
[Cobalt Deposit]	350	375	400	425
[Khorium Vein]	375	400	425	?
[Rich Cobalt Deposit]	375	400	425	450
[Saronite Deposit]	400	425	450	?
[Rich Saronite Deposit]	425	450	475	?
[Pure Saronite Deposit]	450	?	?	?
[Titanium Deposit]	450	475	?	?
[Obsidium Deposit]	425	450	465	?
[Rich Obsidium Deposit]	450	?	?	?
[Elementium Vein]	475	500	?	?
[Rich Elementium Vein]	500	?	?	?
[Pyrite Deposit]	525	?	?	?
[Rich Pyrite Deposit]	525	?	?	?
[Ghost Iron Deposit]	500	550	575	600
[Rich Ghost Iron Deposit]	540	?	590	600
[Kyparite Deposit]	550	600	610	?
[Rich Kyparite Deposit]	575	?	?	?
[Trillium Vein]	600	-	-	-
[Rich Trillium Vein]	600	-	-	-
[Blackrock Deposit]	600	-	-	-
[Rich Blackrock Deposit]	600?	-	-	-
[True Iron Deposit]	600	-	-	-
[Rich True Iron Deposit]	600?	-	-	-

Mining products

By skill level

See Mining proficiencies and Smelt proficiencies.

Quest items

•  [Nethercite Ore] (objective of  [70 Daily] Nethercite 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 and tricks

• 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.

• Weapons can also serve as a mining pick:

 [Kobold Excavation Pick]

 [Gouging Pick]

 [Brann's Trusty Pick]

 [Cold Iron Pick]

 [Miner's Revenge]

 [Tunnel Pick]

 [Digmaster 5000]

• A [Gnomish Army Knife] cannot be used as a weapon but does function as:

 [Gyromatic Micro-Adjustor]

 [Arclight Spanner]

 [Blacksmith Hammer]

 [Mining Pick]

 [Skinning Knife]

• Paladins, unholy death knights, druids and engineers have a slight advantage in mining because of speed-increasing abilities.

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.

If the node is solid yellow, but not visible, it may be bugged or the player may be out of phase with the node.

• 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.

Patch changes

• Patch 6.1.0 (24-Feb-2015): Mining [Blackrock Deposits] and [Rich Blackrock Deposits] in garrison Mine now gives the same XP as [True Iron Deposits] and [Rich True Iron Deposits]. Previously Blackrock was much lower.
  
• Patch 6.0.2 (14-October-2014): Miners can now harvest mineral nodes in outdoor areas of the game world without hard skill requirements. The yield a Miner will be able to harvest from each node is now determined by skill level.
  
• / Patch 4.0.1 (12-Oct-2010): Mining gives XP.The higher level the character is, the less XP it will get. See Formulas:Gather XP.
  
• Patch 3.3.3 (2010-03-23): [Titansteel Bar]: Creating this item no longer results in a 24h cooldown.
  
• Patch 3.2.0 (04-Aug-2009): In addition to the normal requirements, mining deposits in Northrend now require a minimum character level of 65 to mine.
  
• Patch 3.1.0 (14-Apr-2009): 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.
  

See also

• List of mining nodes
• Smelting

External links

For leveling guides please visit Tradeskill leveling guides

Info

WoW Official Game Site (US) Mining

WoW Official Game Site (EU) Mining

Wowhead Professions & Skills ► Mining

Wowhead Spells ► Professions ► Mining

Guides

Crafter's Tome Mining recipes

WoW Farming - Mining Guide WoW Mining Maps and Farming

WoW Cataclysm Mining Guide 1-525 Mining Guide and Maps

β News

Wowhead News Gathering Professions Preview and News Round Up: Dragon Soul 30% by perculia 2012/07/12 12:29 PM

Old

Replay.Web.Archive.org Archive of old official Mining page 7-Aug-2010

AHseller.com Discover most profitable Mining products. Online database for making gold.