The New Nirces Mining guide (chapters 1 to 4)

[_Morgoth_]

<font color=red>Chapter 1 : Creating a Character</font color=red>

Introduction
So you want to be a Miner ? Perhaps to support your smith or as a pure money maker ? Either way you can't go wrong reading this guide. As a miner you will see a lot of the world, with popular mining locations being both in T2A (Delucia) and all over the old lands on both facets. You will be Travelling a lot especially when you are looking for Valorite. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about the mining skill and methods of mining, maybe even a bit more. If you decide to take this up as a profession, I must warn you: it is considered by many to be one of the more boring professions. It's fine when you start, but once you become an advanced GM Miner, it can become rather dull. On the up side you will make a lot of money and be in demand. Everyone needs Ingots in some form, from the Adventurers for their weapons and armors to the carpenters and tinkers for their tools and house add-ons.

Making Your Character
So Ok, You had this introduction and still want to make a Miner. Good for you. So a Hi Ho Hi Ho its off to work we go ... First of all let us have a look at your Stats. Here is what I recommend:
44 str
10 dex
11 int.
As a Miner you will need as much str as possible when first starting out to carry that heavy ore. Every point in str counts and will allow you to carry another 3.5 stones. While 11 int means you will be able to recall straight away, a very important ability for traveling the wide lands of Britania and beyond. Str will raise quicky from Mining, while Int and Dex you can raise through your other skills.

Starting Skills
There are a number of starting Skills to choose from. This might sound paradox, but I wouldn't really choose Mining as it takes less than an hour to Raise it to a level of 50. If you're going to Smith start with 50 Smithing as your first skill. As for your other skills I advise 49 Tinkering and 1 magery. I will tell you why later. If this is to be a pure Miner (ie. no smithing) then the advice I give you is to start with 50 Tinkering 49 Magery and 1 Mining. Let me explain to you why. I advise against 50 Mining because it is a very fast skill to raise and so a waste as an initial skill. Tinkering is a much harder skill to raise and isn't much use to you below 45.

Tinkering can be used to make shovels and pickaxes which you will need to mine with. This ability to tinker your own shovels allows you to mine constantly without having to go back into a town and buy new shovels. If you chose not to have Tinkering you will have to buy shovels all the time and also store them. (your bank box has unlimited weight, but a limited number of items it can hold) Just making those shovels will raise tinkering into the high 80's sortof as a side benefit. You will fail a lot at first but it will raise well.

Magery you should start with anyway. Put in at least 1 point so you start with a spell book. This Skill will also enable you to recall around (teleport to anywhere) and will generally be very useful later on, while not so much needed at the beginning. Smithing (often called blacksmithy instead) explains itself. This guide doesn't cover the Smithing skill in any detail so if you are planing on being a miner/smith then you should also have a look at the Stratics Smithing Essays.

Starting Town
Once you have setup your character you need to chose a town where your miner will be born. There are 3 towns worth starting at: Britian, Trinsic/Vesper, Minoc. You will automatically start on the Trammel facet which is crowded for miners on most Shards, but a lot safer than Felucca where other players can kill you. Later you will decide on your preferred facet. Don't worry if this mention of "facets" confuses you at this point. You will be safe where you start (Trammel) and you can stay there until you have learned more about the divided nature of the lands of Britania (there is a separate Stratics Essay on the subject of facets)

Britain: Best Place to sell your ingots on the street, most players there, large mountain area to the west, and a good large cave to the north. Both places have handy mountainside forges on most shards that were created by Gamemasters for the special benefit of beginner Miners. Personally I dislike Britian due to it being on one of the busiest Sub Servers of UO and very crowded. However it is a lot easier to find help, buy goods and sell those ingots there. The Britain west bank is the market place of UO.

Trinsic: Not really starting places as such but more of a stepping stone to Delucia, which is in the lands called T2A (ie. "The Second Age", and additional landmass that was added with the Ultima Online Renaissance upgrade). There are a number of small caves west of Trinsic along a large mountain range, though, that can be be mined and are usually quiet. You will have a very hard time selling ingots in Trinsic.
To get from Trinsic to Delucia head out of the town through the west gate. Using your map head towards the south one of two small mountains to the southwest of Trinsic. On the south side of the lower one, there is an entrance into the Trinsic passage. There are some aggressive and deadly monsters in there but please don't worry about dying. In the unlikely event that you do, you will not lose anything at all due to your starting equipment being blessed. Blessed items stay with you in death and will be in your backpack after you get resurrected. There is a healer for (eventual) resurrection on the other side. Once in the Cave Run to the lower path going east, and you will come out in the dungeon section. Run Down and head east through the cave wall into Delucia. If you died the healer hut is in the north west corner of the town. All your newbie stuff will be in your backpack.

Another good and in this case safe way to get to Delucia is to simply ask for a gate to Delucia at the bank. There are always players there and after some asking around one of them will surely help you. Just ask friendly and be patient. In the end it will get you thre quicker than the walk (but without seeing much of the land, so its a lot less exciting)
(read more on the wonderful town of Delucia below)

Minoc: The classical home town of all miners. As such it still holds a lot of attraction for new miners, and many do indeed decide to start here. This attraction, however, is also its major disadvantage. Minoc suffers from chronic overcrowding with new miners. It means that the easy to reach east Minoc mines are typically full of miners and rather devoid of iron. There are, however, two sets of mines here, the east mines (only a short walk over the bridge leading east) and the north mines. The north mines are considerably more plentiful and have a lot of public player houses with forges in them. When starting in Minoc it is a good idea to buy a packhorse and a few starting shovels and head out for the northern mountain range. Just go north and north from the Minoc stable.
You might even want to start here and migrate to Delucia shortly afterwards. Not because it is the best starting point, but because it is Minoc, city of Miners. Minoc bank always has a number of players near it and if you walk around and ask kindly for a gate to Delucia, you should in all likelyhood get one real soon.

Delucia: This place has everything you need. It is the dream town of a beginner miner. A nice safe place with a lot of mountain range inside the guard zone, with a stables and magic shops and plenty of players. If you are a total new player I advise this place to start. In addition to the walking all the way from Trinsic or Vesper to Delucia, you might also try to wait at the bank in these towns and ask other players kindly if they would help you getting there by casting a gate.

All those towns have stables should you want to pack horse mine (discussed later), and shops for buying basic supplies, like shovels or pickaxes.

Additional Skills and Equipment
Now you have your character made and in the town of your choice, you will need to decide on your additional skills, You have a skill cap (maximum) of 700 total real skill points, with each skill taking up a maximum of 100 points. Don't worry about raising skills you don't want later, you can lose skill points later if you chose to do so. If you haven't already started with the following do them:

Items:
Go to the Tinkers and buy some shovels. Both Minoc and Vesper have tinker shops. If you do this before your walk to Delucia store them in your bank box. Delucia itself has a smith that will sell you pickaxes. Shovels are better for mining when you can get them. It will take about 10-15 shovels or pickaxes to reach the mining skill required to smelt iron into ingots fairly well (50). Shovels are lighter and cheaper than pickaxes and pickaxes are no better than Shovels.

Skills:
Magery - If you did not start with 50 or so magery you should go to the mage shop and ask the vendor to teach you some magery. This will cost about 300gp or so. To do this go to the vendor and say "vendor teach me magery.
&lt;&lt;&lt;insert pic of vendor saying how much it will cost&gt;&gt;&gt;
Then drag the required amount of money onto the vendor.
Hiding - A useful Skill allowing you to hide from monsters and other things. A nice skill to have as a Miner. Don't worry about raising this, it will raise fast while you mine if you use one of the mining macro's described later.
Fighting Skills - If your planning on making a fighter then starting in Britain is your best bet. Buy yourself a weapon and head out to the training dummies (have a look at the Stratics warrior essays for detailed information on how to become a good fighter).

Types of Miners
For some general templates, miners fall into one or more of the following categories:

Pure Miner:
This character has mining, with some magery and maybe tinkering. Other skills Include a mix match of things that seem like a good idea at the time. The most common mule character (character used to make money to support other characters) The other skills consist of what you need on a mule. Hiding is common. while less used skills that can be useful find their way onto this character. Often a pure miner or mining mule will develop into a craft miner later on.

Smith Miner / Craft Miner:
This character has mining and smithing and often tinkering with some magery. It serves as a self supplying character for crafting all items that require ingots to be made. A good developement is to add other craft skills like carpentry and/or tailoring later on to have a character that can craft a wide range of items. Doesn't make much money to start with except for the few ingots he/she sells. Can make more money than normal Miners once GM smithing is gotten. It takes upwards of 30,000 ingots to GM smithing at current sell rates that is about 300,000 to 500,000 gold. So it is quite an investment. For each craft skill you add, however, you will gain more items that you can sell.

Stealth Miner:
This character has mining, hiding and stealth, along with the other skills wanted. This in my opinion is the best type of mining character. As well as being able to move around and mine while hidden, this type of character can mine in heavy monster spawn areas where even the fighter miners will not go (due to having to spend more time fighting than mining). It allows for safe mining in Felucca, as you are able to get the better of people. Not to mention that it is a very fun character to play even without mining, as you can stealth almost anywhere without being uncovered. The only downside: stealth is a very hard skill to raise. This is probably the hardest character to make. You can't chose stealth as a starting skill because you need at least 80 hiding before you can even start training and begin to use it. This is the type of character I use to mine.

Fighter Miner.
This character on top of mining has a series of fighting skills that allow him to defend himself if mining in felucca and also mine in medium monster spawn areas (your still mining than fighting) Because of the needed mining skills, the most perfect fighter is not possible. Usually, if you want a fighter and a miner, it is best to make two characters. Use the miner to make money until the fighter can support him/herself.


--
Morgoth, aka. Melkor the Magic Miner of Drachenfels
Guildmaster of IOU (Iron and Oreminer United)
Moderator of UO-Miners Forum and UO Third Dawn Forum

 

[_Morgoth_]

<font color=red>Chapter 2 : The Mining Skill</font color=red>

I know that you now feel like grabbing that shovel and hitting the mountain, but let me ask you to be just a bit more patient. Before I show you how to mine, here is some basic information about the mining skill, the mining tools and the ore, so you know what to expect After that, in chapter 3 we will finally get going and I will explain the Basics of Mining itself, before telling you about the advanced mining methods. Something that you should know before reading onwards, though, is that mining gives you ore as a result, but that you must smelt this ore into ingots before it is of any further use. Both actions: mining and smelting use the mining skill.

Ore Colors and Ore Size
There are 10 known types of ore (also called ore colors), 9 of which are actually mineable (more about that 10th below). The 9 minable ore colors are: Iron, Dull Copper, Shadow, Copper, Bronze, Gold, Agapite, Verite, Valorite. They are listed in their order of difficulty, meaning that Iron is the easiest to mine and Valorite the most difficult. Below you will find a table showing you what the ore colors look like and what their exact mining skill difficulty level is.

Ore Size
There are 4 different sizes that a piece of ore can come in, which apply to each other. For the most part you will dig up the standard "Large Ore" piece. But there are also 2 types of medium sized ore and 1 type of small ore. Ore size can (only) be converted downwards, meaning large ore can be converted into medium and small ore, and medium ore into small ore. There is an advantage to converting large and medium ore into small ore as you will see. Converting ore size is also called "combining" and the explanation of how to do it is found below. The following table shows the differently sized ore pieces, together with the weight and the resulting amount of ingots when smelting:

&lt;&lt;&lt; insert picture of ore pieces and associated weight here &gt;&gt;&gt;
&lt;&lt;&lt; the following is just a textual placeholder &gt;&gt;&gt;
Large Ore Piece 12 stones 2 Ingots per ore
Medium Ore Piece 7 stones 1 Ingot per ore
Medium Ore Piece 7 stones 1 Ingot per ore
Small Ore Piece 2 stones 1/2 ingots per ore (you need 2 to make Ingot)

When you convert one ore size into a smaller ore size the amount of resulting ingots will always be and stay exactly the same. From that table, however, you can see that the different sizes are not balanced in weight. For example if you convert large ore into either type of medium ore you will get 2 medium ore for every piece of large, and your total weight will increase by 2 stones for every large ore you convert.

However if you convert large ore into small ore you get 4 pieces of small ore per large. 4 pieces of small ore only weigh 8 stones rather than 12, so in effect you have reduced the total weight of your ore by 33% (without changing the amount of ingots you get out of the ore).

To convert (combine) ore "DoubleClick" one pile of ore then select the second. The ore size will always convert (combine) to the smallest size. Thus you get one pile of ore as the result, it will have the smaller of the two sizes, and the number of ore pieces you get is calculated so that it represents the exact same amount of iron ingots, as the two original piles did. This works both for single ore pieces and stacks of ores.

Ore Color
As I said before there are 10 different ore colors, but only 9 of them can be mined. The tenth color is "Coal" which was a 1998 Christmas present from OSI and cannot be mined at all. Shards that were created after this date will not have any "Coal" ore at all. Its color is slightly darker than Shadow ore.

For all the mineable colors here this table shows how they look and what mining skill level is needed to be able to dig up ore of that color:

&lt;&lt;&lt; Insert Here: Ore Graphic Shield Graphic Name Skill required to mine and Smelt &gt;&gt;&gt;
Iron 0
Dull Copper 65
Shadow 70
Copper 75
Bronze 80
Gold 85
Agapite 90
Verite 95
Valorite 99

The mining skill level is the minimum displayed (total) mining skill level required for the corresponding color. All mining areas consist of ore spots and each ore spot has a rather fixed ore color assigned to it. But you will find more detailed information about this in the following chapter "Ore Spawns". For now you should only note that for each spot you will either get it's assigned color (if your skill is high enough) or you will get only iron (if your skill is still too low). The minimum skill applies to smelting as well. You can only smelt ore of a color into ingots if your mining skill level is high enough for the color. Should you happen to find some ore of a color that you can not mine, it means that you can not smelt it into ingots either.


Mining Tools
You do your mining with Shovels or pickaxes. There are 3 types of these: Shovels, Pickaxes, and Gargoyle Pickaxes (which are found sometimes on gargoyles, stone gargoyles and fire gargoyles). The gargoyle pickaxes are a special magical variant and will be discussed in detail later on.

Out of the other two you will be using shovels. Pickaxes weigh more than shovels and cost more (when buying them from NPCs). They both require the same amount of ingots to make and both will dig up exactly the same amount of ore before they break. Shovels cannot be equipped as a weapon, while pickaxes can. But pickaxes are very crude and ineffective weapons and if your going to fight you would be better off with a sword or axe. All shovels and pickaxes (exceptional or not) will wear out after 51 successful ore extractions, ie. you get 51 pieces of ore per tool, after that it "breaks" (disappears). It is often mistakenly believed that shovels can not be used for mining, because you can not take them in hand. This is not true, as chapter 3 will point out.

Gargoyle Pickaxes
Gargoyle pickaxes are magical and very special. They allow you to mine ore colors one class better than you normally could with your actual mining skill, Beware, though, that this might result in you not being able to smelt the ore because your mining skill stays the same and smelting depends on mining skill. If you use it to mine in a Dull Copper spot, and your mining skill allows you to mine Dull Copper, you will get Shadow Ore instead (the next higher color according to the table above). Another magical benefit of gargoyle pickaxes is that they are twice as strong as regular pickaxes, meaning that they will dig up 102 pieces of ore before they break.

But as with all things good, there is also a (magical) disadvantage or danger ! There is a chance that you will pull up an ore elemental of the color you are extracting. These dangerous monsters range from fairly easy (dull copper elementals) to very very hard (valorite elementals). Ore elementals spawn right next to the miner and attack him first. Upon death they carry 25 ore of their color as loot, which is especially rewarding with the valorite elementals.

Ore Spawn Mechanics
Lets explain how 'ore spawn' and ore spots (patches) works. The land of UO consits of so called tiles. When you move by one step in any direction you move from one tile onto the next. So a tile is a step. When you mine on a tile, however, you are really mining a patch, or as some call it a 'resource square'. Patches are made up of 64 tiles in a square 8 by 8 configuration. For us miners there are two very basic types of tiles: minable tiles and non minable tiles.

The amount of ore that can be mined from any patch is determined by the amount of minable tiles within that patch (remember: a patch is 8x8 tiles). So inside a cave where every tile is a minable tile, the amount of ore you get from one patch is 16 big ore. this is the maxium you can get from any one patch per spawn. Mountain side patches (ie. the mountainside outside of caves) are often made up of few minable tilesand some non minable tiles, and hence produce smaller amounts of ore. This is why cave mining is preferable to mountainside mining. But more on that later. Here is a picture showing the layout of patches:

&lt;&lt;&lt;insert picture illustrating patches and tiles here&gt;&gt;&gt;

Once all the ore is mined from a patch, no more can be mined until the next 'Spawn'. Spawn takes about 18minutes. That is to say new ore will spawn (regenerate) every 18 minutes and restock the patches. This will happen whether the square is totally empty or not. It is even possible that you are mining a patch just while it (re)spawns and so you get more than 16 ore out of the spot, because you have actually mined 2 spawns. Different sub servers of UO spawn at different times, but all spawn every 18 minutes approx (there is some randomness resulting from server loads). So the Trinsic caves will spawn at a different time than the Vesper caves, while the Fire Isle caves will spawn at the same time as the Ice Isle caves due to being on the same sub server.

Each patch holds one specific color of ore and if you have the skill to mine that ore, you will randomly (50% chance) mine that color of ore from that spot rather than iron. If you haven't got the skill you will mine just iron. The ore type you get was randomly decided the first time someone ever mined there after a server internal reset. But in 4 years of UO this ore color reset has happened just once to fix a bug, so ore color locations can be considered very fixed. Also because of this mechanism ore color locations are different from shard to shard and also from facet to facet. So Europa Trammel will have a different layout to Europa Felucca and any other facet on any other shard.


--
Morgoth, aka. Melkor the Magic Miner of Drachenfels
Guildmaster of IOU (Iron and Oreminer United)
Moderator of UO-Miners Forum and UO Third Dawn Forum

 

[_Morgoth_]

Hail Fellow Miners,

Herewith I present the newest and most complete version of the Nirces Mining guide. Chapter 4 has been just been added. I know that I am a bit late in adding a new chapter this time, but sometimes RL just isnt as cooperative as you would like it. Oh, that and chapter 4 is a rather lengthy chapter full of wonderful information /shared/forum_images/beige/icons/smile.gif Hope you enjoy it ... AND POST SOME FEEDBACK !!! (not in here, because this stuff is locked, but in the forum)


TABLE OF CONTENTS

<font color=red>Chapter 1 : Creating a Character</font color=red>
Introduction
Making Your Character
Starting Skills
Starting Town
Additional Skills and Equipment
Types of Miners

<font color=red>Chapter 2 : The Mining Skill</font color=red>
Ore Colors and Ore Size
Mining Tools
Ore Spawn Mechanics

<font color=red>Chapter 3 : The Basics of Mining</font color=red>
Basic Mining Methods
Smelting Your Ore
Finding Ore
UnWritten Rules of Mining
Mining Macros
Dangers of Mining

<font color=red> Chapter 4: Advanced Mining Methods </font color=red>
Dragging Ore or Leap-Frogging
Run Mining
Recall Mining
Pack Horse Mining
Boat Mining
Strip Mining
Compression of Methods


--
Morgoth, aka. Melkor the Magic Miner of Drachenfels
Guildmaster of IOU (Iron and Oreminer United)
Moderator of UO-Miners Forum and UO Third Dawn Forum<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by _Morgoth_ on 02/14/01 03:13 PM.</FONT></P>

 

[_Morgoth_]

<font color=red>Chapter 3 : The Basics of Mining</font color=red>

Mining Methods
Here in this chapter I shall discuss the various different mining methods that you can use. After explaining the basics for the aspiring new miner (click shovel, click ground, repeat until head explodes with boredom I will go on to tell you advanced ways to optimize your mining for maximized ingot production and for optimum mining skill gains. The chapter is topped off with some insight into the ethics and unwritten rules of us professional miners.


Basic Mining Methods
After Getting yourself some shovels (always prefer shovels over pickaxes whenever possible, they are cheaper and lighter), go find yourself a mountain, or preferably a cave. When looking for Caves be careful of dungeons. You don't want to confuse the former with the later and you don't want to enter one of those dungeons by mistake. One reliable way to spot the dungeons is the sign that is mounted at all dungeon entrances and tells you the dungeon name. It would of course be best if you use UOAM to find caves or ask around (UO AutoMap), but as a beginner you might not be familiar with UOAM this, so just read on until you come to the chapter where UOAM is explained in detail.

Now we come to the very basics. To mine the ore, first double click on a shovel (or pickaxe), A target cursor will appear. Then click the ground. What you do is you target the area where you want to mine. Now a message will appear telling you whether you succeeded with mining in that spot or not. Based on your mining skill you will either fail to get any ore or have some ore placed in your backpack. Another reason for failure might be that you have targeted a spot where mining is not possible. The messages are pretty self explanatory, and as a beginner miner without mining skill you will see one message most of the time telling you that you mine and mine but fail to extract ore. No worries, just keep on digging.

Once you have mined all the ore out of a square, you will get the message you can't find any more ore here. So you move onto the next square. Sometimes you target a spot and get this message right away. This means that another miner has been here before you and already mined all the ore in a spot. In caves ore areas where there are many miners around (East Minoc Mountain for instance) this can happen quite a lot. You will just have to keep on searching for a spot that is not empty. Another useful thing to note (and repeat) at this point is that the floor inside a cave is also minable.

Chapter 2 explained about resource squares and mining spots. This knowledge comes in very handy when looking for new spots to mine. As a miner you have quite a reach. You can mine several spots without even having to move. Here is a picture showing you how far you can mine from your person in every direction:
&lt;&lt;&lt; insert picture about mining reach here &gt;&gt;&gt;
At any one time you can reach up to a maximum of 4 resource squares (see chapter 2 for an explanation of resource squares). For quick and optimized mining it is indeed best to always try and stand in the position where you can mine as many squares as possible without moving.

Now when you are out there mining the ore and seeing iron ore pile up in your backpack have a good look at your current weight. Each large ore weighs 12 stones and the point will come where you can not move any more because you are overweight. Either you keep track of your weight and stop mining before you reached your maximum weight, or you will have to drop ore pieces to the ground until you can move again. Because move is what you must do next: you must walk to a forge to smelt your ore into ingots ... (see next chapter on smelting).

If you happen to have a packhorse with you things are not as critical, because your packy can carry a lot more than you can: up to 1600 stones in weight, which is 133 large ore or 400 smallest ore. Whenever your backpack is full and can hold no more ore just pick the ore pile up and store it in the packy. When your packy is full however, it is indeed time to go smelting.


Smelting Your Ore
When you have mined your ore, you will need to smelt it to get iron ingots. To do that take it to the nearest forge:
&lt;&lt;&lt;insert pictures of the 3 forge types&gt;&gt;&gt;
Double click your ore (you will get a target cursor) and then click onto the forge. The size of the pile doesn't make a difference in terms of success rate, and neither does the type of forge or using the bellows. Eating and being full (while not stuffed) however does make a difference. If you are well fed while smelting your success rate is higher than when being hungry.

You have a certain Success Rate which is based on your mining skill and the ore color that you attempt to smelt, where higher ore colors give a lower success rate at the same mining skill level. At some stage in the high 70's of mining your success rate for iron will reach 99.9% meaning that you will near to never fail smelting iron. All ore colors up to Copper can reach 99.9%, but even at GM Mining you will still fail Bronze sometimes and Valorite a lot (with Gold, Agapite and Verite in between those two).

When smelting your ore you must decide between two quite different methods: smelting for maximum ingots gains, or smelting for maximum mining skill gains. For maximum mining skill gains is to smelt as small a piles you can (2 smallest or 1 large ore) at a time, because each time you smelt you can gain skill, so you want to smelt as often as possible. When you start getting into the colored ore skill ranges (dull copper starts at 65) you should use the 1-by-1 smelting or 2-by-2 smelting (with small ore) for your two highest ore colors only: dull and copper first, shadow and dull next, etc. Smelting higher colored ore will give a higher chance of gaining skill. For anything below your two highest colors use the maximum ingots gain method explained below

Once At GM mining skill level you will stop smelting 1-by-1 (2-by-2) to save time and to increase the amount of ingots you get in return for your ore (for the higher colors). For Iron, Dull Copper, Shadow and Copper you can smelt any amount whatsoever and will practically never fail (at GM level). But generally, for those colors where you can fail, choose to smelt larger piles with occasional eating in between to maximize your ingot result. I will not go into the mathematical details here, but it has been proven that attempting to smelt in larger piles gives you a higher average success rate over the total amount of ore. As an example: I always smelt Valorite large ore on a 4-by-4 basis with eating fishsteaks in between to stay well fed. This gives an average success rate of 78%, ie. out of 100 large Valorite ore you will (on average) get 156 Valorite ingots (at GM Mining level).


Finding Ore
Once you are raised in skill somewhat, you will start finding the colored ore. There will come a time when you want to find specific ores for skill gain or money. There are a number of ways to locate colored ore spots for a desired color. The most basic one is of course your own memory (or notes) based on your mining experience, as you tour the mountains and caves of Britania. But there are considerably more efficient ways.

The best one so far are the so called ore UOAM ore maps. I myself created and released an ore location map for the Europa shard made to be used with UOAM (UO AutoMap) tool. Since then several people have claimed to be working on one for the various shards. At this current time, mine is the only one out there, maybe, but when your reading this it will certainly be different. I mentioned the UOAM tool, which is an invaluable aid to all miners. It can not only display the map of Britania, it also allows you to annotate the map with things, like colored ore spots, that you want to remember. A full separate chapter of this guide has been devoted to UOAM, so you will learn more about it later on. Recall what I said before about colored ore locations: they are shard specific and facet specific. That is why you need a separate map for each facet on each shard.

Another good method for finding colored ore spots are the magical runes that you can buy and mark. Using the recall spell or the gate spell on a rune will teleport you to the exact spot where the runes has been marked. This technique can be used to create whole collections of runes for spots where specific ore colors can be found. The runes can be arranged in runebooks (with one or more book per color) Most if not all shards have public mining rune libraries, ie. player owned houses, where runebooks with runes to colored ore spots have been layed out for everyone to use. Ask around to find out where such places are on your shard.

Of course there is always the chance to find colored ore spots yourself, creating your own maps or your own rune collections. Pick an area and start working, it is faster if you don't do it for ingots. Mine a spot and move on to the next spot once you find a color or have mined 8 iron (after mining 8 iron there is a 98% chance it is an iron spot) Noting down on paper or marking runes once you find either the colored ore you are looking for, or indeed any color at all. How to use the UOAM tool for record your ore locations will be covered in the UOAM chapter.


UnWritten Rules of Mining
There are a number of ways in which you can show respect for your fellow miner. If you want to make friends you should follow these rules that form the miners code of ethics:

1. Don't Steal other Miners Ore even if they leave it on the ground, if you find some ore on the ground ask around even if you don't see anyone before taking it. There is a high chance a miner is hiding or stealthing. Reasons for leaving ore on the ground will be explained in Advanced Mining Methods chapter. One day you might be using the same method and you dont want to see YOUR ore stolen than, do you ?

2. Don't Mine the same resource square (spot) as another miner, this seen as being impolite.

3. Don't deprive Fellow miners of a spare shovel or tinkers Kit, This should extend to one or two, rather than a full supply, but that's your choice after the first one. Be friendly and generous, one day it might be you who needs something.

4. Don't EVER leave boats blocking access to ore, ie. boat mining spots. This is not only rude behavior, it is also against UO rules and can lead to your boat being deleted by a game master.

5. If sharing a mining location with a Miner more skilled than yourself, be so kind and ask if there are any preferred spots that you could leave untouched, there is nothing worse to a GM Miner than a low level miner mining a Valorite spot (and therefor turning it into iron), in return expect an iron
square or squares left for you, or maybe even gain the knowledge of what colors are "hidden" behind those squares (which will be invaluable to you later on).

Mining Macros
Ok, all that Clicking is a major wrist ache, there's gotta be a better way, right?, Yes there is. Inside UO there are is an automation mechanism that allows you to assign one action or multiple actions to a single key press. This is called macros. Just press Alt-O to bring up the options dialog (or use the Options button on the paperdoll) and choose the macro's tab. Macros are extremely useful with mining and definitely belong to the very basics of mining.

To get going choose "Add Macro" to get a blank form, enter a key - I advise an F1-12 key, if you chose a normal key, you will build up a series of them in your speech entry. Picking a shift or control combination isn't very good for your most used macro either. The key you enter will activate the macro, ie. every time you press that key in game it will start a series of actions that you specified in the dialog. The normal in game macro itself is quite simple and is the best macro you can use in my opinion. The UO-Assist tool (see additional mining tools) allows you to improve mining further but even if you use that, you should still be using this along side it.

The Macro consist of 3 basic commands: LastObject, WaitForTarget and LastTarget. Once you have added them, click ok. Enter them one after another in the boxes at the bottom of the macro dialog. Single clicking will open a list where you can scroll and select. Some of those commands require quite some scrolling. My recommendation: put the whole 3 commands macro on the F9 key. After setting up the 3 commands press "Add" again and press "Apply" after that. For good measure I would recommend 3 additional simple macros that come in handy quite often: F10=LastObject, F11=LastTarget, F12=LastSkill

Here's what the mining macro does: LastObject will use the last object that you yourself used with a double click on the object, this should be your shovels. WaitForTarget will cause the mecro to pause until the target cursor apears, which usually takes a bit of time. LastTarget will automatically supply the last target that you manually clicked to the target cursor. Now to start mining you double click upon your shovel (this sets the shovel as last object) and then you click where to mine (this sets the last target) normal fastion. You can now simply hold the mining macro key down to mine out the spot without stopping once. There are no delays other than the automatic "WaitForTarget". The macro will stop if the shovel breaks. At this point simply double click on a new shovel to reset last object and continue to press the mining macro key. It wont stop when the ore is mined out, so pay attention and watch for when you have Mined out the patch and release the macro key to maybe move the ore and set a new target.

There is an optimization for the macro that might be required, depending on your connection speed. In my experience it is indeed required in most cases. Timing problems between your client and the UO server might cause a message like "you have to wait for the current action to finish" a lot. If this message pops up a lot it will spam the screen and will slow down your mining. It can be avoided by a simple trick: add a fourth line to your macro with another "LastTarget" in it. Your mining macro now looks like this: LastObject, WaitForTarget, LastTarget, LastTarget

If you desire to raise your hiding skill, you can alter your mining macro to the following:
LastObject
WaitForTarg
LastTarget (again: add this twice if necessary)
Use Skill Hiding
This will attempt to use the skill hiding every time you mine, it will be spammy (causing lots of messages on screen with a bit of resulting mining slowdown), but your hidng should raise to above 80 quite fast, which will in turn allow you to raise Stealth if you wish so (this macro doesn't work for stealth though). Stealth is a very powerful skill that allows you to move while being hidden.

Dangers of Mining
There are a number of dangers when out mining. The danger can come from evil fellow miners, monsters and if in Felucca, evil players specialized in killing players (the so called PKs). Fellow miners can steal ore that you place on the ground for moving or smelting, you should always be wary of other miners who might have a need or desire for your ore. A basic safety precaution can be to either not place any ore on the ground at all, or to place only one pile of ore one the ground (iron for instance) and pick it up (hold it in hand) as soon as someone else comes too close.

Monsters are a problem if you cannot kill them or hide from them. This is easily avoided by sticking to areas that have zero monster spawn, and there are many great mining areas where this is the case. If you do decide to mine in spawn areas, then there are a few options to you:
1. Develop Fighting skills to defend yourself, useful in low spawn areas, anything more and you waste too much time fighting.
2. Getting the creatures to follow you outside the cave to a safe distance then runningback fast while tabbing in and out of combat. This will stop them from following you if you are fast enough. This works in areas that have limited spawn, In high spawn areas more creatures will spawn.
3. In high spawn areas the only options is to either have fighter friends help, or use hiding and optionally stealth. You can mine while being hidden, so with sufficient skill you can run to the next mining spot, hide and mine. Without stealth you will be visible to the monsters while moving to a new mining spot. With stealth you can move while staying hidden for uninterrupted mining in monster invested areas.

In Felucca Players can steal ingots directly from you, using the thievery skill, which does not work on players in Trammel. They can also kill you in Felucca, for your ingots or ore or whatever you might be carrying. This provides a strong danger and because of this Felucca is a lot less crowded than Trammel, and you have the chance to get more ore/ingots. You can chose to fight any PKs or thieves that come after you. A lot of the Pks that come after miners are inexperienced PKs and hence not that hard to kill. However it can be troublesome and there are the PKs that can fight very well. Again the hiding and stealth skills work wonders. While hiding to some degree works. Hiding when ever you see a name you do not know and waiting for them to leave/ start mining is a good thing, PK's will often use scouts to check who is in the mines before they come to kill you. If they know your there they will cast magical reveal.

The miners best and easiest defense against PKs (and monsters as well) is the recall scroll. Scrolls seem to cast faster and are harder to interrupt than the recall spell itself (cast from the spellbook). You need about 30 magery for a 90% chance of success on a recall scroll while you need 60 magery for casting the spell from the spellbook. Having a Safe rune to a place unlikely to be blocked is a good thing. Having it in a Rune Book(A item made by players to hold runes) as the default location is even better because runebooks are blessed, they cannot be stolen and stay with you upon death. You should generally keep all your runes in runebooks. Keep them charged up at all times with recall scrolls (brought from mage shops or players), but also always have one recall scroll in your backpack for escaping as its faster to double click the scroll and target the runebook, than opening the runebook and selecting a destination (as a means for escape). You can generally use the scroll even while they are hitting you.

A last word on the danger from PKs in Felucca. At the time of writing this the fear of PKs is a lot greater than the actual danger, as Felucca is not very populated and only a few PKs remain. The fear is what keeps many miners away from Felucca, thereby making it an ideal and competition free mining area. This might change when the population of Felucca increases again, but nevertheless it might be very rewarding to overcome your fear and give Felucca a try. You can always move back to Trammel if Felucca disappoints you.


--
Morgoth, aka. Melkor the Magic Miner of Drachenfels
Guildmaster of IOU (Iron and Oreminer United)
Moderator of UO-Miners Forum and UO Third Dawn Forum

 

[_Morgoth_]

<font color=red> Chapter 4: Advanced Mining Methods </font color=red>

Dragging Ore or Leap-Frogging
This method is often used alongside the other methods, its not a mining method as such but a way of moving large amounts of ore. Once you have a pile of ore too heavy to carry in your backpack, you can place it on the floor. If you then stand in front of it, and pick it up again, you can't move more than maybe one step at the most. This one step will drain all your stamina. Have a look at your weight on your character statistics while holding a large pile of ore: it will be horribly high, as even 100 large ore weigh 1200 stones already. But what you can do is place the pile down in front of you, while not actually moving yourself. With a reach of 2 tiles all around you (in all 8 directions) you can effectively move it up to 4 tiles at a time. You can do this with any amount of ore and for any distance. All it takes is some practice: pick the ore up, drop it off 2 tiles away, now move 4 tiles forward, pick the ore up again, ... etc. Experienced Leap-Froggers can reach near to normal walking speed with this method. The only thing that will stop you is a server line.

There is a certain danger, though. While your ore is on the ground it can also be stolen by someone walking by. Since this is for him just a picking-up operation, he will not even be flagged as a criminal for the theft. Do not bother calling a GameMaster for such a theft, as they will not do a thing about it. They follow the policy that all items lying on the ground basically belong to whoever picks them up first. On the Felucca facet, however, you can choose to defend your ore, by attacking the thief. But beware the consequence, as this will flag YOU as the attacker (you will go grey) and it is YOU that gets the murder count if the ore thief dies.

There is one basic precaution : while a pile of ore is picked up (held in hand) it cannot be seen by other players. So whenever someone approaches pick up your pile of ore and hold it until all is clear. This will of course only work for one pile of ore But leapfrogging more than one pile is a pain anyway, and a waste of time as well.


Run Mining
Not really considered an Advanced Mining Method as such. its the simplest and safest way to mine, this of course also makes it the slowest. The pouch variant described below can however speed it up considerably. The name of the game in this method is never ever put the ore down. You mine - run - smelt, mine - run - smelt, always running to a forge and smelting when you can nott carry anymore. With all the running you don't mine that much, though. The efficiency of this method depends on the distance between where you mine and where the nearest forge is. Do not forget that many player owned houses have publicly accessible forges. In many good mining areas this is a major asset and it can actually make run mining profitable. Normal run mining with a forge close by and with not too much competition can produce 1000 to 1500 ingots per hour.

To maximize the ingot production, you're best doing this naked wearing no clothes and putting any un-needed items in the bank, so weigh as little as possible. The only things you should have on you are shovels, tinkers kit, whatever ingots you have smelted already, perhaps some food (fishsteaks), as well as your runebook and recall scroll(s). Tinkering is a great help with this method, becasue to stay as light as possible you should not burden yourself with more than maybe 3 or 4 shovels.

This method is used on both facets, but on Felucca it can be a dangerous method because anyone who sees you doing it will know you are carrying ingots. But if you manage to run or recall away you don't lose anything. You are a clear target for thieves and Pks who can't mine.

A sub method (modification) which is sometimes used with this method is the hidden pouch. You hide a pouch somewhere where it can't be seen except with circle trans. If you use the real "a pouch", which is the smallest bag available, you can even find plants that will cover it so cleverly that noone else will ever notice it. Whenever you smelt your ingots place them in the pouch, when finished grab the ingots and recall out. If you cant tinker shovels (or you don't want to waste mining time tinkering shovels), you can also keep a supply of shovels in the hidden pouch. This very effectively protects your ingots against thieves and PKs (if you die you don't lose the ingots), but stands the risk of the pouch being found either by mistake or by someone watching you hide it. In Felucca you should even keep some ingots on yourself, so that a PK or a thief doesn't go looking for the pouch when they kill/steal from you and get no ingots.


Recall Mining
More of an extension to run mining. Rather than running back to a forge, which might be some distance, when you are loaded up you use the mark spell to mark a rune, then recall to a forge and smelt and recall back to that Rune and continue. Good for gaining skill as your always moving, and for finding ore, up a mountain side. However the cost of constant recalling brings this method down as a ingot gathering method. Additionally the marking and recalling costs time comparably to the time you spend running when doing run mining.

The real use and power of this method is the gathering of colored ore of one specific (and high) color for miners of high skill (95+). Basic requirement is a runebooks (or several runebooks) with a few or more Verite and Valorite spots marked on runes placed in the runebooks. Professional miners go as far as filling one runebooks with runes for one color. You recall to the first spot, mine it empty, drop the iron ore and recall to the next, when fully loaded recall to a forge and smelt (or recall to your house or the bank and just drop the ore off). For best results plan when you need the forges so you can always mine out the spots. This method works best for the higher ores because of the cost of recalling. It can be used for lower colors as well, if you're in a pinch and need them real urgent. This is the best method to use if you need verite or valorite, but for pure money making, the other methods will provide you with better results per time and per investment.

This method is the safest method for both facets.


Pack Horse Mining
Not a Felucca Method unless in guard zone, due to packys being fodder to any Pks and thieves. When in guarded areas you still have to watch out for thieves stealing anything from your packy. You can Stable a minimum of 2 pack horses (or generally tame pets) up to a maximum of 5, depending on your taming, animal lore and veterinary skills. Typically you will need only one packy for a mining, up to a maximum of two. But even just having two makes handling a lot more complicated, and in 9 out of 10 times you will not need more than just one.

Lets look at the pack horse (or llama, they are both exactly the same in all aspects, but their looks and sounds). Each one can hold 1600 stones and a maximum of 125 separate items. If you are using small ore this means it can carry 800 ore pieces, which smelts into 400 ingots. If you use the packy for carrying large ore it can carry up to 133 large ore pieces, which is a macimum of 266 ingots. Not as much as with small ore, but look below for the pros and cons.

One packy is really all you need if you can gate. And the ability to cast gate (even if from scrolls) is highly recommended with pack horses, because pack horses can't recall after you. Walking with your packy from the stable to a mountain is not recommended for professional miners, because it takes so much time that any other mining method in faster and better.

The method of pack horse mining is similar to run mining. Some time ago, when packhorses could only hold 400 stones each, they were quite useless to miners, but now they could possibly be the best Method for mining in Trammel in non-spawn areas. The idea is you fill up your packy with ore and either run or gate to the forge. Many a good mining area has conveniently placed player owned houses with public forges that make a miners life a lot easier. If a forge is conveniently close to your mining area just run to it with your packy in tow, smelt, put the ingots on the packy, put new shovels into your backpack and run back to the mining area. I talked about large ore versus small ore above. The crucial point is that combining the large ore that you mine into small ore takes time. The fastest method to mine along is to just place the large ore into the packy when you mined one spot dry (16 large ore) and continue with the next spot. That's the fastest way to mine if you are a gate miner (see below) or if a forge is conveniently close. If the way to reach a forge is more time consuming you will be more efficient by maximising your packys carrying capacity with combining and small ore, and even by having two packys instead of just one.

Loyalty and Feeding]
There are a number of problems with pack horses that you must be aware of. They need to be fed about once per half hour with fruit (apples and pears are best). Just 1 will do. They are quite hard to control and can sometimes fail to gate. However with some practice, Trammel mass mining can be safe and possible. The bane of pack horses are monsters. Taking the packhorse into any spawn area will cause the pack horse to be attacked and wonder off, or to simply attack a monster at random, so be careful. Alot of the problems that people have with pack horses is that they go wild. They go
wild because the owner didn't know how to look after them correctly. A packhorse brought from a stablemaster is easier to control and look after than one bought off another miner or (re)tamed yourself (another reasonpack horses aren't good sellers).

You need to feed your pack horse regularely, however it doesn't care how much you feed it at one time. Feeding the packhorse 1 apple or a 1000 at a time will have the same result. You will gain maximum control over the packhorse. A packhorse only cares for how often you feed it however. If you don't upset it in anyway (quite easy to do) a packhorse can actually stay with you for 24 hours without being fed. I recommend feeding about once per 30 minutes to an hour, as a number of things can reduce that ideal 24 hours drastically. The first is failed Commands, this will happen far less if you got it from a stablemaster, but you can have problems with a re-tamed or player bought animal. Each time you fail a command it will lose happiness. The more unhappy it gets the more you will fail commands, which in turn increases its unhappiness even more. Feeding restores happiness. If you fail 5 times in a row feed it. The second is if it leaves your line of sight. It needs to see you (its trusted owner) at all times and that doesn't mean on the same screen. It has to be close
to you with nothing in the way, such as trees, cliffs, houses etc. It takes around 20 minutes for a packhorse to go wild if it no longer sees you.

Handling two pack animals
Handling two pack animals on Trammel is rather difficult and requires some tricks, if you dont want to waste lots of valuable time. The main problem is that on Trammel your two pack animals will stand and walk in exactly the same spot when following you. That makes them hard to tell apart. You might notice that I took care to say pack animals. The reason is that I recommend using two different pack animals when going mining with two. Having two identical ones makes them near to impossible to keep apart and they will overlap perfectly. Constant commands would be required just to reach one specific packy. But if you have one pack horse and one pack llama you will at all times see both and be able to access both without any extra commands. The different graphics make sure that some part of both is always visible, thus making it accessible for ore storing, feeding or pack opening.

Gate Mining with a pack horse
Gate mining with a packy (just one packy is enough) is in turn the fastest and most efficient way to mine with pack horses. Being able to cast gates very reliably, however, is a basic requirement. This means that you either must have very high magery or use gate scrolls. When casting gate from the spellbook your magery simply cant be high enough. 85 should be minimum, high 90s is better, but even at GM Magery you will fail a distressingly high amount of gates (about every 5th). Casting gate from a scroll OTOH gives you a 100% chance of success at 80 magery.
Gate Mining with Packy means optimising you overall efficiency by gating directly to a forge or container as soon as your packy is stuffed with ore. Don't bother with combining as this only costs time. Personally I prefer the gating to my house, where I drop the ore into a secure container close to the door. When you dropped the ore off you immediately cast a new gate to a new mine (or the same one if it wasn't empty). After mining in this way for about an hour or two you can smelt the collected ore in large stacks (takes less time than smelting it after each gate trip). another speed optimization is to prepare all the shovels before the trip. Juts put a bag with 30 shovels on your packy, they should last you for an hour.
This special mining method variant will result in 2000 up to 2300 ingots per hour (including colors).

I vote this the best method for mining in Trammel.

Boat Mining
Boat Mining refers to mining while on a boat. This is done by sailing out on a boat to places you can mine without having to leave the Boat, and then moving the boat up or down the cliff face and keep on mining. Storing the ore on your deck. When you are done you sail to a forge to smelt. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to this method. The advantage is you can mine large amounts and it is very difficult to steal. (but not impossible ! see below)

However mining these large amounts take time. The main disadvantage lies in the places where you can boat mine, The most popular place is the seaward side of the North Minoc Mines. This is a large stretch of mountain side where the patches are quite large. A lot of people mine here and also leave many boats blocking the higher ores (this is against the rules of UO and GM's often go and sink the boats, but not often enough) making it hard to sail around them because your up against the server line.

The few other places where it is possible to boat mine are the Cove cliffs, but there's not much ore there, or in T2A. T2a has a lot of sea cliffs, but a lack of seaside forges, so if you wish to smelt then you will either have to sail through the serpent pillars back into Britania to find a safe forge, or use many a gate to carry the ore of the boat with a packy or two (or even three).

Dangers of boat mining are pirates (on Felucca only), ore thieves, decay and a few water based monsters. If in Trammel you do not have to worry pirates. But ore thieves operate on both facets ! Sinde you tend to carry a lot of ore on your boat the reward for successful thieves is very high. Regardless of the size of your boat, on the open sea there is NO safe spot for ore. It is possible to
use the Telekinesis spell to merge ore on your boat with a oew on the thieves boat, even from behind the mast of a large boat. This is not even against any UO rules and is done quiet often. Only if one side of your boat is parked against an inaccessible barrier, something like a cliff side, then your ore is safe on the side of the boat facing the barrier. Just be careful when leaving the cliff face while someone else is near by. Decay can also be a problem, While your ore is on the ground (and the boat deck counts as "on the ground") it is subject to normal item decay. A single peice of ore left on the ground takes 60 minutes to decay while larger piles take longer, a pile of 2000 ore can last a few days. If you add to the pile or move it, that is considered to be a refresh and the decay timer will restart.

Getting your ore off your boat and to a forge can also be difficult. There is a quick way if some suitable conditions are met. First find yourself a quiet forge without anyone there, next to the sea. Bring your boat up against the shore and make sure that the lowered gangplank is as close to the shore as possible. Place your ore on that side of the boat, unlock your gang plank and leave your ship. Return to your ship and still standing on the gang plank drag (leapfrog) your ore ashore. If your boat is in the right place (ie. close enough to the shroe) this is possible to do. After that just continue dragging it to the forge. Even if you are not close to the shore, this is still a good way to get your ore off the boat in a quiet location, where noone is around to steal it.

An alternate way is to lead ore gate one ore more packys onto the boat to use them for carrying the ore off. First walking them on: this can be done if you park your boat so close to the shore that the lowered gangplank touches the ground. This allows you to walk on and off the boat and any pets following you will come along with you. Second: gating. This method is more powerful, as works without having to park the boat anywhere specific and covers any distance directly to your destination. Bring your packy(s) to the destination point, ie. your house or a forge or a bank, and tell it to "stay". Mark a rune at this destination (next to the packy, not in the same spot as the packy, or the rune is "blocked"). Now recall onto the boat (you can recall of the boat key). When standing on the boat cast gate and walk in. You appear next to your packy(s), tell them to "follow" you. For multiple packy address them singly by their name. Wait about 5 seconds, and walk back into the gate. Voila, if you do not get the "your spirit lacks cohesion" message you will all appear on the boat. The 5 seconds wait is to prevent the "cohesion" message.

Strip Mining
Maybe the most dangerous and fastest way of Mining. To get top speeds you need to leave a lot of ore on the ground, often out of your sight. For instance, when using this method, I have anything up to 1500 large ore on the ground in various piles, and often in different mines. Ore thieves are the main danger, especially casual ones that just happen to see your ore and noone around. They will take your ore and you have a hard time beating them to the forge or getting it back. Even if it is only a small pile in general, an ore thief will spend more time trying to get that pile of 100 ore than it would take him to mine it (5min).

For the method itself, it can be used for both cave and mountain side mining, but cave strip mining will yield far better results. Taking a large cave or a couple of medium ones, if you cannot gate you will need forges nearby or a friend who can gate. The idea behind strip mining is to mine as much as fast as possible regardless of the dangers. So to this end here is what a strip miner will do: A Strip miner will have a few favorite caves and at certain times of the day will strip mine them, ie. mine them dry in as fast and optimised a way as possible. They will have a route through the cave to get to every ore spawn point in the cave(s) with as few time consuming movements as possible. If in medium sized caves he will recall to other caves as part of route. They will also know how many shovels are needed to mine all that and have that number or more ready. Mining each spot the ore is placed upon the ground at the miners feet when a patch is mined, then move on to the next patch.

An alternative to this might be to drag either all or some of the ore around with you to reduce the
chances of it being stolen. But dragging costs a lot of time and when going to another cave you will have to leave it there anyway.

When a strip miner has finished a spawn (reminder: spawn is every 20 minutes, and in that time you can "strip" several caves), he will make/get more shovels and start again at the beginning of his route. After a few times you will learn which caves to mine in which order, so that waiting for respawn is reduced to a minium or not even required. After a certain time of mining, or when your nerves give out for having so much ore lying around, a strip miner will gather up the ore (drag it together in all the caves you visited) and smelt it. Either drag the large piles to nearby forges or use gating (see below for instructions on gating ore piles), or maybe even some packys. Having a forge nearby is mostly the best.

The advantages of strip mining is that you don't waste any time. Records stand at 5000 ingots per hour on a high speed connection, at an off time and with no ore stolen. The major disadvantage is of course the (real) risk of ore thieves. This is not a method to use in Trammel unless your sure there are no thieves about for the duration of your mining, which in Trammel, on a normal shard, is rather unlikely. In Felucca be prepared to fight for your ore if you spot a thief.

The rules of mining change somewhat for strip miners, As a rule all their ore is covered by the mining code (they mined it so it is their own) but they are seen by some other envious miners as "Mine Hogs", and I have met miners who would normally follow the code break it to steal from strip miners. This is a more recent view of the method. But due to the nature of strip mining, ie. its best when noone else is around, such conflicts should not occur often.

So as a new rule for strip miners alone, if you are sharing a cave with other miners then work out an area share or leave. Even then: better not trust those other miners. Likewise if as a miners you come to the cave of a strip miner: leave it alone for the time being. The life of a Strip miner is a hermit. Be careful you don't mine so much ore that you can't carry the resulting ingots to the bank (has happened to me).

Compression of Methods
All the above methods have advantages and disadvantages, and its up to you to decide which you are going to use. Run/Recall Mining offers the safest way of mining while, in Trammel. Pack horse mining once you have the hang of it is hard to beat, but you still have to stay away from even low spawn areas. In Felucca your not going to beat strip mining for ingot production but only once you have the hang of dealing with PKs and thieves. Boat Mining is a fair trade off on both shards.

With pack horses, boats and strip mining you should be getting over 2000 ingots an hour once you have settled into a method. Run Mining is slower but much safer and easier. It depends on your additional skills and play style to what method you should use.



--
Morgoth, aka. Melkor the Magic Miner of Drachenfels
Guildmaster of IOU (Iron and Oreminer United)
Moderator of UO-Miners Forum and UO Third Dawn Forum