WoW Mining Leveling Guide
Mining is a gathering profession that does not require a whole lot of gold to get started and to maintain it. So it’s a popular one, especially when you’re traveling across many parts of the World of Warcraft world while you level your character, so you may as well mine metal ore, minerals and gems as you go, and create an income from it or to supply another profession.
The best professions to do together with mining with are:
Blacksmithing – which required metals and minerals for the process of making mail and plate armor, weapons, keys and rods.
Jewelcrafting – which require metals, minerals and gems which can be mined, to create jewelry such as rings, necklaces, trinkets and gems for socketed items.
Engineering – the majority of materials needed for engineering can be acquired from mining, with some others from skinning as some recipes require leather, to make guns, bullets, arrows, goggles, devices, mounts and much more.
Here is what you need to know about leveling your mining, as you level up your character:
1. Always level your mining up as you level up your character from 1-80.
To level your character from 1-80, you will be doing your quests. Choose quests which give good rewards and xp with the help on an in game guide. As you level with questing and you do the quests that give good rewards you will travel to areas where you can find the minerals to level your mining.
The reason for leveling you character and mining at the same time is that if you level your character but not your mining, you’ll soon be in areas that have mining nodes which require a higher level of mining that what you’ve got. So you’ll need to go back to lower level areas to level up your mining, which can take extra time.
A rule of thumb to use is the 5x rule, which is that your mining skill level should be 5 times your character level. It’s a quick and easy check at any level to see if you need to do more mining to keep up with your leveling.
2. Use Find Minerals and the Gatherer Addon to find minerals easily.
When you use your find minerals ability, you’ll be able to see unmined deposits of ore in your minimap. So when questing, keep an eye out and get these mining nodes as you see them.
What Gatherer addon does is that it remembers where these deposits are. These are marked as hollow circles so that if you’re traveling back through the same areas in future, you’ll know where the deposits of ore are.
3. See your mining trainer as needed to progress to the next level.
There are 2 main things you need to do: gather ore while you’re questing or doing instances or dailies, and visit your mining trainer as required.
These are the levels of mining:
Expert Miner – requires level 10 / 125 mining
Artisan Miner – requires level 25 / 200 mining
Master Miner – requires level 40 / 275 mining
Grand Master Miner – requires level 55 / 375 mining
Ilustrious Miner (Cataclysm) – requires 425 mining
Doing your training at these levels means that you can mine ore that require higher levels of mining. So as you return to a city or town after questing or instances, visit a mining trainer as you reach these levels of mining.
To mine, you’ll need to get a mining pick from a vendor.
4. Take note of the different colors of the name of mining veins.
When you notice a mining node on the minimap or on screen, you can hover of the mining node to see which level it is to see if it’s worth going there as it may be surrounded by mobs.
Red – means that it is too high a level
Orange – 100% chance of increasing skill level
Yellow – 75% chance of increasing skill level
Green – <50% chance of increasing skill level
Grey – does not increase skill level
5. If you’re doing a lot of mining, ensure that you have enough bags and also consider enchants and extra gear as well.
There are 3 bags for mining and the advantage of these bags is that they have more slots:
Mining sack – 20 slot bag, which can be purchased from Fabian Lanzonelli in Allerian Stronghold, Floyd Pinkus in Thrallmar, and Caregiver Ophera Windfury in Temple of Telhamat.
Reinforced mining bag – 28 slot bag in Burning Crusade
Mammoth mining bag – 32 slot bag, created by Leatherworkers in WOTLK
The enchants and extra gear to consider are:
Enchant Gloves – Advanced Mining – adds +5 to mining skill
Enchant Gloves – Gatherer – adds +5 to mining, herbalism and skinning
Goblin Mining Helmet – crafted by engineers, adds +5 to mining skill
So if you’re doing a heap of mining, then use these bags and enchants to enable you to store more ore and to farm higher level ore for use in your other professions or to sell.
6. You can do smelting as well as mining.
As a miner, you can use ore and other ingredients and smelt them into other metals.
Often though, most raw ore sell for more at the Auction House, so if you want to make gold, check the prices of ore versus smelt metal before smelting a whole lot.
To smelt, you need to be near a forge which can be found at Dwarven towns and encampments of various races including mobs.
Otherwise, just stick to mining if you wish and sell the ore for a profit.
6. Use your class specific skills to help you level your mining faster.
Stealth
Use your ability to stealth, such as with Stealth as a rogue or Prowl as a druid in cat form, to level your mining faster.
Stealthing means that you don’t have to engage in combat to do your mining which will help you to gather ore faster. As you mine, you will come out of stealth, so prepare to run or to root the mod on place so that you aren’t followed by a large group of mobs.
Flight Form
As a druid, your ability to have Flight Form at level 60 can help you mine without needing to dismount like other classes have to. If you can fly in, gather ore and then fly out without dismounting, you can mine faster and reduce the likelihood of needing to get into combat or to get killed by mobs.
Root or Stun Ability
Use your ability to root mobs in place or to stun mobs (eg Hibernate as a druid, Sap as a rogue, Sheeping as a mage, Banish as a warlock, or War Stomp as a tauren) to do your mining without interference. Draw the mobs to you but away from the mining node or vein, and then use your entangling ability to root them all to the ground or your stun ability. Do your mining and get away to the next area as soon as you can.
7. Here’s a list of metal veins and deposits and the levels required to mine them, as a guide to keep you on track:
Copper Vein 1
Tin Vein 65
Silver Vein 75
Iron Vein 125
Gold Vein 155
Mithril Deposit 175
Truesilver Deposit 230
Dark Iron Vein 230
Small Thorium Vein 245
Rich Thorium Vein 255
Fel Iron Vein 275
Adamantite Vein (Burning Crusade) 325
Rich Adamantite Vein (Burning Crusade) 350
Cobalt Deposit (WOTLK) 350
Khorium Vein (Burning Crusade) 375
Rich Cobalt Deposit (WOTLK) 375
Saronite Deposit (WOTLK) 400
Rich Saronite Deposit (WOTLK) 425
Pure Saronite Deposit (WOTLK) 450
Titanium Deposit (WOTLK) 450
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
