Mining The War Within

Mining is one of the most popular professions for earning gold. With this profession, you can gather various types of ore in all locations of the current expansion. The higher your profession level and the more knowledge points you’ve invested in talents, the more and better resources you’ll obtain.

This profession pairs perfectly with Blacksmithing: Mining provides you with reagents, while Blacksmithing lets you craft various pieces of equipment from them or create rarer reagents to sell to other players.

You can learn the profession from one of two special NPCs:

Tarib — Dornogal

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To gather resources, find an ore deposit nearby and right‑click it. This will start the mining process, and after a few seconds, you’ll receive your loot.

You can always locate nearby ore deposits on your minimap.

Unlike other professions, Mining levels up directly through ore gathering. The more ore you collect, the faster your profession will level. You don’t need to prepare reagents or stand at a workbench to level your skills — all you need is time. Leveling from 1 to 100 takes between 30 minutes and a couple of hours, depending on how much and how quickly you gather ore.

Tools

Besides your profession level and talents, the game features special tools that add stats to your profession and let you get more rare loot. Tools come in green and blue quality. For example, Artisan’s Pickaxe.

• Green tools can always be bought on the auction house under the Profession Equipment section.
• Blue tools can be crafted via the Order Table. This requires 300 Artisan’s Insight, which you can earn by practicing your craft.

Enhancements and Buffs

The game offers special potions and items that boost your profession stats, letting you get rarer reagents while crafting. To maximize your Mining gains, we recommend using all of them:

• Clawsteel Grinding Stone
• Vial of Fortunate Seasons
• New Moon Firewater

Some potions and elixirs can be quite expensive, so we recommend using them only after you’ve leveled your profession to 100, equipped quality gear for both your character and profession, and invested some talent points. Otherwise, the cost of potions might not pay off.

Demand and Pricing

If you plan to earn gold with this profession, we recommend keeping a close eye on the prices of all reagents you gather. For example, you can add them to your auction house favorites. Not all reagents are priced equally, and the level of your gatherings doesn’t always justify the price. For instance, you might gather a lot of low‑level reagents that cost the same as high‑level ones if players are in demand of that specific reagent type.

Enhanced Ore

In addition to regular ore deposits, you’ll encounter enhanced ore, which is slightly harder to gather and requires completing a small mechanic. Gathering such ore yields more resources.

There are six types of enhanced ore:

• Webbed Ore. When approaching or mining it, you’ll be entangled in webs. Your task is to break free by running a short distance away. As a bonus, you’ll get some cloth or webbing.
• Camouflaged Ore. This ore is invisible to players. You can reveal its location only if you have the Vial of Fortunate Seasons buff active.
• Explosive Ore. When approaching or attempting to mine it, a large filling circle will appear around the ore. If you stay in this circle until it fills up, it will kill you regardless of your health. The only protection is complete immunity to damage. If your Mining skill is well developed and you mine quickly enough, you can gather the ore and move to safety.
• Rich Ore. This ore has no negative effects. It’s simply a large ore deposit — gathering it yields more ore and increases the chance of rare drops.
• Crystallized Ore. This ore also has no negative effects. Instead, it lets you gather more ore and grants you a small stat buff.
• Weeping Ore. After mining, this ore applies a 1‑minute debuff that deals damage to you. You can remove this effect by gathering Crystallized Ore.

Overload

Once you’ve leveled your profession to 100, you can unlock the ore overload talent. While near a regular ore deposit, you can use this ability to transform the nearby ore into enhanced ore. The ore type and enhancement will be random, and the cooldown will decrease with each ore you gather.

If you’re interested in leveling other professions, we’ve prepared separate guides for you:

• Engineering;
• Tailoring;
• Cooking;
• Jewelcrafting;
• Alchemy;
• Inscription;
• Enchanting;
• Blacksmithing;
• Leatherworking.

And also for gathering professions:

• Mining;
• Herbalism;
• Skinning.