Mining Leveling Guide

Mining in World of Warcraft is a popular profession, as it’s a gathering profession that you can do comparatively quickly as you level up your character.

When questing, you can take the additional few moments to gather ore and metals, and at more progressive levels, you can do ore farming specifically to gather ore to sell on the Auction House or to use with other professions that depend on ore farmed from mining.

Mining is best done with the following professions:

Gathering profession such as herbalism or skinning – If you’re using mining to generate an income, you can combine it with another gathering profession for this purpose. You do quests and mine nodes at the same time, in addition as gather herbs or skin mobs.

Blacksmithing – Uses metals to create mail and plate armor, weapons, keys and rods.

Jewelcrafting – Uses metals and gems, to create jewelry and gems for socketed items.

Engineering – Uses metals and other materials to create guns, bullets, arrows, goggles, devices, and mounts.

Here are some tips to help with leveling your mining:

1. Do your mining training with your mining trainer as you approach the various levels of mining. Mine the nodes when questing and then get training, when you reach these levels:

Expert Miner – requires level 10 / 125 mining

Artisan Miner – requires level 25 / 200 mining

Master Miner (Burning Crusade) – requires level 40 / 275 mining

Grand Master Miner (WOTLK) – requires level 55 / 375 mining

Illustrious Miner (Cataclysm) – requires 425 mining

2. Use your minimap and gatherer addon

As you do your quests or instances, use your find minerals ability to locate mining nodes on your mini map. So when you quest, look for ore deposits and mine them when you can, as you level up your character. The gather add-on will remember where you have before mined nodes so that if you return to that area, you can look for those minerals again.

3. Use special gear and enchants to speed up and enhance your mining ability

The first group of gear are large slot bags. These include the mining sack, the strengthened mining bag, the huge mining bag which can keep up 20, 28 and 32 slots respectively.

The second group to consider are the enchants and helmets. These include enchant gloves – progressive mining, enchant gloves – gatherer, and goblin mining helmet, which will add a +5 skill to mining or gathering.

4. Here’s a list of the higher level mineral veins:

Khorium Vein – Isle of Quel’Danas, Nagrand, Terokkar Forest

high Cobalt place – Zul’Drak, Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, The Storm Peaks and Crystalsong Forest

Saronite place – Sholazar Basin, Icecrown, The Storm Peaks

high Saronite place – Icecrown, Sholazar Basin, Wintergrasp

Pure Saronite place – Ulduar

Titanium place – Icecrown, Sholazar Basin and The Storm Peaks

The higher the level of mineral and the more scarce it is, the more valuable it is on the Auction House and to other characters whose professions require it.

5. Use your skills in whichever class you’re in to mine efficiently.

Some of my favorite skills to use when mining include the ability to stealth. Stealthing past mobs can be easier than killing them, and make your mining more efficient. For example, use Stealth as a rogue or Prowl as a druid in cat form. Rooting and stun ability (eg Hibernate for a Druid, Sap for a Rogue, Banish for a Warlock, Sheeping for a Mage, or War Stomp for a Tauren) also can help you gather minerals faster. You can use either ability to keep the mobs occupied away from the mineral place as you gather the ore. When done, run off before the effects use off and continue your mining!

So you can use these tips, and more, when leveling up your mining.

Whether to generate gold on the Auction House with other gathering professions as you level a character, to gather the materials to sustain a manufacturing profession, or to farm when you’re at the highest levels to generate income, mining can be done efficiently and give great rewards.

So go to it and level up your mining, and get rewarded with great gear and gold!