World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Welcome to our World of Warcraft Mining Guide, your ultimate guide to Mining in World of Warcraft. We’ve compiled everything you need to know to turn the Mining profession from a little bit of extra health into a gold farming powerhouse. If you don’t know already, Mining is a gathering profession in WoW that lets you venture out into the wide world of Azeroth and gather raw ore to return to a forge and smelt into metal bars. These bars sell for a pretty penny and can be used to craft some of the most wicked items in the game.

Are you looking for what it takes to farm a certain metal? Looking for a power leveling guide? This guide is for you, so struggle no more leveling Mining in World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft Mining Guide

Mining is a gathering profession that enables you to gather ores from various resource nodes located throughout the world in addition to smelting raw ore into metal bars. For instance, when you first start, you’ll be capable of mining Copper Ore and in turn, will then be able to smelt it into Copper Bars. The Copper Bars are used by various professions to create gear (primarily Blacksmithing and Engineering) while raw metal ore can be used by Jewelcrafters to find gems. Various other uses exist, like an Alchemist can transmute certain metal bars into different metal bars, but it’s not the primary function of that profession.

This is how the profession works: Go to any major capital city and locate a Mining Trainer (ask any guard for directions). Once you’ve learned the profession you’ll need to buy a pickaxe, also known as a Mining Pick, (located near the Mining Trainer). With a pickaxe and the skill, you can venture out into the wild and mine ore from nodes that litter the world (mostly in rocky/non-grassy areas). A skill called “Find Minerals” will be available to you on your mini-map to highlight mineral veins throughout the world of Azeroth. As you gathering your ore you’re given two options. If you’re a Jewelcrafter, you can “prospect” the ore and turn it into gems (gems are also “looted” from the nodes). If not, then you can either sell the raw ore (which is sometimes more profitable) or smelt it into bars.

The following protip is something many players overlook when it comes to profiting off of Mining.

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You may ask why you should take on Mining. Well, that’d be a difficult question if there wasn’t a very straight forward answer: gold. Mining makes tons of gold because players need gems, hence the need for ores. Players also need certain items made with Blacksmithing, so metal is needed to craft them. Then there are rare recipes

Farming Metals/Ores in World of Warcraft

Farming metals and ores in WoW can be a difficult task, but let’s start with a quick real world talk. At lower levels there is no need to break your back trying to farm ores. Sure it’s extra profit, but it’s a ton of extra work without flying. There isn’t much need to ride your slow horse around all day looking for nodes. Casually level the skill up until you get your flying mount, then head out and begin trying to make your fortune.

Anyway, the biggest most successful way to farm ore is to get an addon like Gatherer and follow specific tracks around high-population maps for the ore. The game has changed a lot, so usually any rocky map that’s at your level is where you want to be. Check our leveling guides for great tips on where to find tons of ore (hint: the same way you level is the same way you farm a specific metal! Think about it, you need to farm lots of one ore to level right? So it’s obvious the best way to farm is the say way you level.)

You may be wondering about the colors on the various mineral veins that you fine. Red means you can’t mine it, yellow means it’ll give you a skillup, and green means it might give you a skillup. Grey means you won't get a skillup, but you'll still get the ore.

Smelting Ore and Mining Skill Levels

One of the great ways to level Mining and one of the super important aspects to earning money with Mining is smelting. It’s a skill you get as soon as you become a Miner that allows you to take various ores (like Copper Ore and Tin Ore) and turn them into bars (like Copper Bars and Tin Bars). You’ll need a certain level before you can smelt a certain ore (usually the same level you can mine it) and it generally gives you Mining skillups for a while. So, you’ll go out, farm a few ore, then come back and smelt them, rinse and repeat until you’re the max skill level.

Smelting can be a big money maker too. You can search on the auction house for different metal ores and compare their prices to metal bars. If you find a lot of ores selling cheaper than the metal bars, you can buy the ore up, smelt it, and sell the bars at a tidy profit. You can also purchase ores for the point and purpose of leveling Mining, although it’s not a cost effective way of doing it.

You'll also need to be near a Forge in order to smelt anything.

Are you looking for where the good stuff is in Cataclysm? See our ultimate Cataclysm gathering guide!

Mineral Veins & Mining Levels (When can you smelt/mine certain metals.)

Minerals spawn in rocky areas, usually on cliffs, in their appropriate zone. They spawn in specific, set locations, and when one is mined another one spawns somewhere on the map. When spawning, there is a small chance for a rare mineral vein to spawn in place of a regular one (for instance, an Iron Vein can be replaced by a Gold Vein). So you can’t overfarm an area and if you’re hunting down a rare vein then it’s smart to mine everything that you see to increase the chance of a rare one spawning.

A big question every new miner has is: when can I mine x and where is x located? Well, ask that question no more by looking at the list below:

Toughness

Banging your pickaxe against hard rock all day can make the body hearty. This translates into a small health boost (1,200 at 525 skill as an example) that, in the current game, isn’t very much. It does increase your stamina, so any skill/talent/ability that increases your stamina by a percentage works with it, but the health gain is only important to tanks. It’s a nice bonus, but you don’t get Mining for the extra health (it’s nearly equivalent to Jewelcrafting’s bonus, for instance, so that’s nice for tanks who would gem stamina). You’ll find a chart below with how much bonus health you’ll get.

Second Professions

You’ll probably ask yourself – what pairs well with Mining? Well, everything pretty much does. This used to be a long drawn out question fully of debate, but has been fine-tuned down to the following question: do you want to do double gathering professions, forget about the stat bonuses, and focus on earning cash or do you want to get a production profession for the stat bonuses?

If you want to do double gathering professions then choose Skinning or Herbalism (your choice, one requires you to just gather nodes while the other requires you to slay animals). If you want to do a production profession and use your own ore to make items then choose Engineering (gadgets), Jewelcrafting (gems), or Blacksmithing (weapons and Mail/Plate armor). If you want to sell the ore to fund a different profession then pick whatever tickles your fancy.

That’s about all there is to picking a second profession. It’s entirely possible to use Mining to fund buying herbs for Herbalism if you want to go that route and it’s also entirely possible to save up your ore and work on Blacksmithing. There is no best route; it all depends on what you feel like doing. Jewelcrafting is an excellent companion if you want to gamble prospecting your ores to see if you can hit payday.

Prospecting

Opposite of smelting, Prospecting allows you to take 5 ore and turn it into a level appropriate gem. This is a great way to level Jewelcrafting (as it provides you with gems, saving you tons of money on the AH) and a great way to make extra money out of mining by getting gems from your ores then either selling the raw gems or cutting the gems and selling them (depending on what sales better).

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Special Mining Skills

Smelting Dark Iron

An NPC known as Gloom’rel can be found inside of the “Chamber of the Sevens” in Blackrock Depths. He’ll want two Star Rubies, ten Truesilver Bars, and twenty Gold Bars to teach you how to smelt Dark Iron (if you have 230 mining skill). Afterwards, you can begin smelting Dark Iron at the Black Forge which is also located in the Blackrock Depths. Eight Dark Iron is needed to create one Dark Iron bar!

Learning Smelt Elementium

In Blackwing Lair you can learn how to make this extremely rare and valuable metal. It’s only for a few epic and legendary items, but it still scarce! You must venture into Blackwing Lair and seek out Master Elemental Shaper Krixix. He’ll be aggressive, so have a Priest mind-control him. A skill will appear on the pet bar called “Smelt Elementium”. Cast this on any player who seeks to learn it.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to Mining! Be sure to read over the additional leveling guides contained in this guide to help you take mining from zero to max in no time and join us in the comments section below with your thoughts on Mining!