Gloves of Mining (Smith BOD reward, come in +1, +3 and +5 versions, depending on the BOD turned in)
The one of the most useful additions for Miners are the three types of “
Gloves of Mining“, which come as Blacksmith BOD rewards. They come in Leather (+1 skill), Studded Leather (+3 skill) and Ringmail (+5 skill). All of these come in the colors of the 9 ingot types, despite being made of their normal material, and retain that color when enhanced, regardless of the color of the material used to enhance them. The leather gloves do not interfere with meditation, but the other two types prevent meditation when worn. However, for maximum ingot return when smelting crafted/looted items, you need at least the +3 gloves (see below).
These gloves ignore the skill cap for mining (100 skill), increasing the ingot return and (if below 99 skill) allow you to mine ores normally out of your range when worn.
- For smelting ore, each +1 of the Gloves is a 2% increase to the chance of success.
- For smelting metal items, each +1 of skill appears to give an additional 0.66% to the ingot return. As the return for Grandmaster Mining is 66%, it requires either the +3 or +5 gloves to reach 66.67%, and get back the most ingots from items made with multiples of 3 ingots. Similarly, the way the numbers factor, one gets one more ingot with the +5 gloves when smelting 25-ingot items (plate tunics, chaos shields, order shields), than with +3 or lower gloves (69.3% vs. 67.97%, with 68% needed).
This is best seen in the use of the +5 gloves, where most items return 69.3% (or whatever whole ingot amount is closest yet less than this precentage). At Grandmaster real skill, There is a 1 ingot difference between +3 & +5 gloves when dealing with items requiring 25 or 28 ingots, which isn’t much an issue. However, there is 1 ingot difference between +1 gloves (or no gloves) & +3/+5 gloves, for most items, as a vast majority of items in the games require a multiple of 3 ingots to make, and 101 mining falls just short of the 66.67% target for 2/3 ingot return.
Note that for the specialized mining tasks of mining stone, sand or gems (described later), one can wear gloves to reach the level required to learn those skills.