Mining

Mining is one of the popular professions for earning gold. Thanks to this profession you'll be able to gather various ores in every zone of the current expansion. The higher your profession is leveled and the more knowledge points you invest into talents, the more and higher-quality resources you'll receive.

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

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

Belil — Silvermoon City, Bazaar

Saren — Silvermoon City, Court of the Sun

To collect loot, you need to find a nearby ore deposit and right-click on it. Mining will then begin, and after a few seconds you'll receive your loot.

You can always find the nearest ore deposit on your minimap — it's shown as an ore icon.

The main Midnight ores you'll be gathering are: Refulgent Copper Ore, Brilliant Silver Ore and Umbral Tin Ore, as well as the rare and especially valuable Dazzling Thorium. You can gather them throughout the region — from Eversong Woods and Silvermoon City to Harandar, Zul'Aman and the Void Storm.

Unlike other professions, Mining is leveled directly by gathering ore. And the more ore you gather, the faster you'll level your profession. You don't need to prepare reagents or stand at a workbench leveling up skills. All that's required from you to level up is your time.

Leveling from 1 to 100 takes anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours and depends on how much and how quickly you gather ore.

Tools

Besides your profession level and its talents, the game features special tools that add profession stats and let you obtain more rare loot. Tools come in green and blue quality. For example, the Thalassian Pickaxe or the Sun-Blessed Pickaxe.

• Green ones can always be bought at the auction house in the Profession Equipment section.
• Blue ones, such as the Sunforged Pickaxe, can be crafted through the crafting order table at a blacksmith. This requires crafting resources that you obtain while working the profession.

Upgrades and Buffs

The game features special potions and items that increase your profession stats, allowing you to obtain rarer reagents while gathering.

To get the most out of Mining, we recommend using them:

• Haranir Phial of Finesse — increases Finesse and Deftness.
• Haranir Phial of Perception — increases Perception and Deftness.

Some potions and phials can be quite expensive, so we recommend using them only after you've leveled the profession to 100, equipped quality gear both on your character and for the profession, and invested a number of talent points. Otherwise, the cost of the potions may not pay off.

Demand and Price

If you plan to make money from the profession, we recommend keeping a close eye on the price of all the reagents you obtain — for example, by adding them to your favorites on the auction house. The thing is, not all reagents are worth the same, and the tier of the loot is by no means always justified by its price. For example, you might gather a lot of low-tier reagents, but they'll sell for the same as top-tier reagents, because players have demand for precisely that type of reagent.

Enriched (Infused) Ore

Besides regular ore deposits, you'll come across infused ore — gathering it is a bit more challenging and requires completing a small mechanic. For gathering such ore you'll receive more resources, and sometimes special side reagents — motes.

There are five kinds of such ore in total:

• Light-touched. Glowing points appear around the ore — you need to collect them in time to receive a Mote of Light and more resources.
• Void-touched. This ore is surrounded by a purple Void mist that slows you; once you handle the mechanic, you'll receive a Mote of Pure Void.
• Wild. Enemies appear during gathering that you need to defeat. The reward is a Perception buff and a Mote of Wild Magic.
• Primal. Gathering binds you with roots and deals periodic damage — stay in place and see it through to receive a Mote of Primal Energy.
• Rich Deposits. These have no negative effects — it's simply a large ore deposit that, once gathered, grants you more resources with an increased chance of rare loot.

Overload

Once you've leveled your profession to 100, you'll be able to level the ore overload talent — the ability Overload Infused Deposit.

While standing next to a regular ore deposit, you'll be able to use this ability and turn the nearest ore into infused ore. The ore type and its enrichment will change to random ones, and the ability's cooldown will decrease with each piece of ore you gather.