Mining FAQ (Last updated: 06 MAY 2006)

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Well, the first thing you need to do is get some Shovels or Pick Axes. Shovels and Pick Axes can be purchased from any Tinker NPC. Pick Axes can also be purchased from Blacksmith NPCs. Additionally, Shovels and Pick Axes can be made by any character with at least 40.0 in the Tinkering Skill.

Next you will want to make sure that you have your mining skill set to UP, and that you have skill points remaining to gain. Your skill window will tell you all you want to know about your skills and help you set them up correctly.

Tip: If you have not yet created your mining char you should consider using the “Blacksmith” character template. It offers good starting values in both skills and stats. This will make starting out as a new miner alot easier. You will also get good starting equipment along with the ability to make your own shovels.

Now you are ready to mine. Head to the nearest mountain and start mining to your hearts content! You will notice how by using your skills they automatically start to rise making you more and more proficient in your craft.

To mine, just Double Click on the Shovel or Pick Axe and then target the mountainside or the cave floor. Any Ore that you successfully mine will be deposited into your backpack. Watch your weight while mining. As a beginner miner you can not carry that much weight. Dont worry, this will get better with training. When you have reached your weight limit head for the nearest forge to smelt your ore into ingots.

Please keep reading the FAQ for more information!

Some things to be aware of.

If your backpack is filled to its limit (400 stones), any further ore you mine will be lost!!! Please keep track of your weight to minimize this waste of time and energy! Bear in mind also that once you are over your characters weight limit, which as a beginner is considerably lower then 400 stones, you will no longer be able to move. In this case you will have to drop some ore to the ground until you are no longer overweight.

Shovels and Pick Axes have a limited number of uses. If you Hover on the tool, it will tell you the uses remaining. Something to consider when buying or making new tools: Shovels are far better as mining tools then pickaxes. They have the exactly the same mining capabilities but weigh less and thus are less of a burden.

STATS: For sure you want to try to maximize your strength to carry as much as possible. Depending on your template as described in Section 2, you may have to trade off your strength for Dexterity or Intelligence depending. This will limit the amount of Ore, or Ingots you can carry, but will result in your other skills being stronger. Just make sure you have this in mind when choosing your skills.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Basically all you have to do to gain in mining, is MINE and SMELT! Both actions will steadily increase your mining skill.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Yes!!! Mining is Difficulty based, therefore, mining Ore at your skill level will give the best gains.

Do not forget that smelting Ore also results in a chance to gain skill. It would be wise to break down your piles of Ore into smaller chunks when you smelt. This will give you more skill checks than smelting just one big pile. Especially break down colored Ore piles!! Not only do these result in greater skill gain opportunities, but the failure rate will not hit you as hard smelting a few Ore at a time.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Lets assume that you actually do have real skill points to be gained. Mining skill gains from two activities: actual mining and smelting ore to ingots. Both activities are difficulty based, which means that: 1) they will get more difficult for higher ore colors and 2) the chance to gain skill increases with the difficulty of the task. To make maximum use of this effect you should always concentrate as much as you can on your higest two ore colors (obviously only applicable after reaching shadow ore mining level). When you smelt your ore and you are still training your mining skill you should definitely use the 1-by-1 smelting method (Described in the Smelting Section).

The truth is there is not really a sure fire / fastest method to gain mining. It is a skill that can not be 8x8'd, it is difficulty based so moving around doesn't really help, BUT you have to move around as the Ore in different spots runs out!!!

Mining gains realatively steady through regular play. If you really want to maximize your skill gain potential, then concentrate on the two highest Ore colors you can mine as described above.

Note: Steady does not mean fast, but it is faster than GGS (Guarantied Gain System)!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The Guarnteed Gain System (GGS) is a system to assist you in gaining skill. This basically negates skill gain "Walls" by automagically making a gain happen if a couple of factors are met:

1. No gain has been made in the past (time factor) for a successful use of a skill.
2. The time limit from the last GGS for your skill level has elapsed.

Basically, if you are successfully using mining, and you receive no gains, after a certain amount of time, GGS will award you with a gain.

Please see this article on stratics for more in depth information: Guaranteed Gain System

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Check if you have free skillpoints to gain from. The skill cap (maximum sum of all real skill points) is 700.0 to 720.0 (depending on your account age). To gain in a skill after reaching the skill cap you must explicitely set a skill with real points in it to going down. A typical error is selecting a down skill WITHOUT enabling "Real Skills" first (the checkbox at the bottom of the Skills window). Enabling (ticking) "Real Skills" will make many skills seem to "drop" to 0.0, because they do not have real skill points in them, only bonus points. Such skills can of course not be dropped.

Note: that with GGS (guarantied gain system) is has become impossible for a skill to not gain within a specified period of time. Therefore if your mining skill seems to be stuck it is most likely that you have no real down skill points to gain from.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

There are several differences to the UO rulesets when playing on the Seige Perilous or Mugen shard, that are beyond the scope of this FAQ. So...

If you are playing on seige and want to take up mining, please see The Miner Guy for a brief discussion about mining on Siege!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Obviously, the first thing you will need is the Mining Skill. The only other main skill I would reccomend is either Magery, Chivalry, or Necormacy. One of these three skills I reccomend only for the benifits or recalling (Magery), Sacred Journey (Chivalry), or recalling while in Wraith Form (Necromancy). It is ALOT Easier to get around having one of these skills. If you use Packhorses, (explained later), once the animal bonds with you, there is no need to run around, or walk if your packy is slow, and no real reason to gate anywhere.

There are a whole host of other skills that compliment the mining skill and will be determined by your style of play, or your needs. The templates offered below are typically the most common and reasons for each are listed with the template.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

This is basically a Mage Template with mining. For example:

100 Magery
100 Evaluate Intelligence
100 Meditation
+
100 Mining

Other skills as required...

This template falls into the category of a PvM or PvP Miner. There are several advantages to this template, some of them being:
Self Defense / Offense: to ward off Monsters while mining, or to ward of PK's while mining.
Making Money: Some will use this template for the Magery Skills being primary to fight monsters, and as a side job to mine.

A couple benifits to having High Magery that you might want to think about:
Able to gate your Packy's around while you are waiting for them to Bond.
Able to cast EV's or other summons to fight for you if you are attacked while mining. (Assuming you have the control slots available.)

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

This is basically a fighter template with mining. For example:

100 Tactics
100 Anatomy
100 Fighting Skill (Swords, Mace, Archery, Fencing)
+
100 Mining

Other Skills as required...

This template falls into the category of a PvM or PvP miner. There are several advantages to this template, some of them being:
Self Defense / Offense: to ward off Monsters while mining, or to ward of PK's while mining.
Making Money: Some will use this template for the Magery Skills being primary to fight monsters, and as a side job to mine.

Additional Skills for the Fighter:
Chivalry - Great for the Sacred Journey spell to get around.
Necromancy - Great for Wraith form to get around, also, the Horde Minion Familiar which will be discussed later.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

This is basically a template that combines all the crafting skills into one template. One of the templates, and the one I currently have is:

120 Blacksmithy
120 Tailoring
100 Carpentry
100 Tinkering
100 Magery
100 Mining
80 Musicianship

(I have a Vet account, so I get the bonus skills to 720)

The advanteges of this template is that I can make everything on one character, (With minor exceptions, Alchemy, Glassblowing, Inscription to name a few).

Some other ideas include switching crafting skills in and out of this template to give you a character that works for you. Especially if you specialize, or are not into some of the Crafting trades listed, you can switch them out to somethign more suited to your play style.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The Mule template is not really designed to further any specific play style. It is more just a combination of various skills that for whatever reason wouldn't fit on another template / character, or maybe you just wanted to try it out. An example of this template might be:

100 Mining
100 Lumberjacking
100 Begging
100 Camping
100 Tracking
+
Additional Skills as necessary

The point being that this template is really just leftover skills thrown together. The template above might be used for strictly resource gathering, specifically Ore and Lumber.

If you are into Role Playing, the template above could be used as such:
"Bob the miner/Lumberjacker makes his living gathering resources to sell at the local Bazaar. Not making enough money, he has to result to begging occasionally to replenish his shovel supply. Not having a home, Bob camps out in the wilderness." Or something to that effect.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Some other skills to think about are:

Hiding - You can mine will hidden! This is a great advantage if you Mine in Felluca, or in areas with heavy monster spawns.
Camping - If you don't own a house yet, this could be useful if you are out in the field and need to log off.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

There are 9 known colors or types of Ore listed below in order of difficulty. Each ore color requires a specific minimum mining skill before you can find it while mining (with the exception of iron). Also, I have included the rough percentages that the different Ore Veins will show up throughout Britania.

50%......Iron..................0 Mining Skill
11.2%....Dull Copper.....65 Mining Skill
9.8%.....Shadow Iron.....70 Mining Skill
8.4%.....Copper............74 Mining Skill
7.0%.....Bronze............80 Mining Skill
5.6%.....Golden............85 Mining Skill
4.2%.....Agapite...........90 Mining Skill
2.8%.....Verite.............95 Mining Skill
1.4%.....Valorite...........99 Mining Skill

If you mine a spot that would normally yield colored ore, but you do not have the skill required to mine that color, you will only get iron out of that spot. So as a beginner bear in mind that each iron spot might just be a colored that you you lack skill for.

When used with the Blacksmithy skill to create weapons and armor, the different colors will generate different base properties of the item being created. For instance, Golden Ore will usually add luck to the item being created.

For a detailed list of the properties generated by the different colors, The skill required to mine the different colors and a whole bunch of other information, please go here: Mining

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The trick to finding out where the different colored Ore is basically go out and mine and see what comes up, (Assuming you have the skill!)!!

The most basic approach is to have UOAM (UO Auto Map) running and map all colored ore spots yourself, as you find them. Thus you will have your own constantly growing colored ore map. You can also search for publicly available colored ore maps for your shard. Often players put their maps on a website once they have finished them.

Good places for finding shard specific public resources are shard forums, or you could try asking around in game.

Another way is to try to visit your local Rune Book Library which is almost sure to have a section for Colored Ore Locations.

Questions about where to find ore maps and such are asked very often, and yet an answer to them is very hard. I will try to collect all the info I can find and add it to this FAQ entry. Most likely, though, you will probably be disappointed, sorry! In addition to such info being scarce it is also very volatile. Quite often web links are disappointingly unreliable and tend to no longer work over time.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

There are three basic weights and four basic sizes that Ore comes in: Small, 2 different types of Medium, and Large. For detailed information on the Sizes and Weights, please go here: Mining

Please note that for the different sizes of Ore, if you are mining and insist on carrying Raw Ore around with you, the smallest pile gives you the best ratio for weight to ore! Both medium sizes are a total waste of time and effort. You should either convert themto small size immdeately or simply drop them to the ground.

You can convert ore size back and forth between the different sizes. To convert a pile from one size to another, you must double click on the pile of Ore you want to convert and then target a different sized pile.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

No! If You can mine Valorite Ore in one specific location on the Pacific Shard, that does not mean that Valorite will be in the same location on any other shard.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

No! If you can mine Valorite Ore just to the right of the entrence to Covetous on the Trammel Facet, that does not necessarily mean that Valorite will be in the same location on the Felluca Facet.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

This is a tricky question! The real answer to this is NO, they will not be fixed forever. The answer to this in practice is that YES, locations are pretty much fixed.

When the Servers were first brought up, all the resource locations for Ore were not yet identified. The first time someone mined there, the Random Number Generator Powers decided that certain spots should be what they ended up being, Iron, Golden, Valorite, Etc... One day, a long time ago, There was a nasty publish to fix a bug with something or other that ended up reseting the Ore locations which had to go through the process of the RNG Powers again. Ore Locations have generally remained fixed since then.

The last known Ore Location reset was in the Second Quarter 2000, (Around June).

While there is no guaruntee that the locations will stay the same forever, you can be fairly confident in your local Ore Location Library!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

There is no real set answer for this. Ingot prices can vary wildly depending on color, shard, facet, availability, quantity and the whims of the individual vendor.

The best ways to find out what you should sell your ingots for are:

Visit the local Bank, West Britain Bank, or Luna, and see what others are selling for. There is usually someone here advertising their Ingots at the bank. These sellers will usually give discounts for people that buy in bulk. The advantage to selling at the bank is the amount of people you can reach, Bulk Resource Deeds are sold right there at the bank and transactions are typically easier as everyone has their money there anyway.

Visit Vendors throughout your shard. Typically a shard will have a few Giant Vendor Malls. These will almost definately have at least one vendor selling ingots. Take a look at what they charge and for how much.

Additionally, Stratics maintains one shard specific forum per UO shard. The players in this forum should be able to offer accurate and up to date advice on shard specific questions, like raw material prices.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

One-by-one smelting basically involves taking your pile of large Ore and smelting it one at a time, OR, taking your pile or Small Ore and smepting it two at a time.

Large Ore smelted one at a time will result in 2 ingots upon success, and Small Ore (2 at a time) will result in 1 ingot upon success.

The point of doing this is that it maximizes your smelting, (by dragging it out!), to increase the opportunities for a skill gain. Each time you smelt Ore, it makes a check for skill gain!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

At GM Mining you will fail 48% (!) of all Valorite smelts (ie. 52% success rate). Each failure leaves you with 50% of the ore, though. Smelting what remains gives you another 52% chance to succeeed and so on. (also its 2 ingots per large ore pieces). The basic rule is this: At the exact level where you start mining an ore color you have exactly 50% chance to smelt it successfully. Each additional skill point in mining adds 2% to the success rate. Thus at 99 mining skill your chance to smelt Valorite is 50% and at 100 skill its 52% (and at 105 skill it is therefore 62%)

At 100 Mining Skill, your smelting chances are as follows:

100% Iron
100% Dull Copper
100% Shadow Iron
100% Copper
90% Bronze
80% Golden
70% Agapite
60% Verite
52% Valorite

In the end the OVERALL gain rate from Valorite ore to ingots will be about 70% (at GM Mining). In other words smelting 1000 valorite ore pices will on average give some 1380 valorite ingots, almost regardless of smelting method. The main factor with how much to smelt in one go is psychological factor! If you have 300 large valorite ore, would you smelt them in 3 piles of 100 each ? A simple (and often observed) failure streak might result in 3 failures and you loose 150 ore pieces right away. Even when you know that it will even out with future smelts it will still frustrate you to see all that ore being lost!!

I would always base smelt pile size on how much ore I have. When you do 10 to 20 smelts one after another the statistic determinability will begin to show (ie. you start observing the 50% failure rate). Streaks might occur but will get evened out. Therefore if I have a few hundred ore pieces I smelt in piles of 10 or 20 to get at least 10 smelts. If I will ever have more then 1000 valorite ore pieces, I would certainly smelt 100-by-100. As I said: it's mainly psychological and after doing a smelting session you want to see a fair result.

Here is a detailed example of the math behind smelting Valorite. Lets take your example of 1000 ore pices and 100-by-100. Note that the math would be almost identical for 1000 ore pices and 10-by-10 smelting.

52 successful smelts => 10400 ingots (5200 ore consumed)
48 failed smelts => 2400 ore left (2400 ore lost)

24 more smelts to do: 52% of 24 is 12.48, let's round it to 13
13 successful smelts => 2600 ingots (1300 ore consumed)
11 failed smelts => 550 ore left (550 ore lost)

For easy mathematics sake lets do 4 smelts and keep 150 ore for later:
2 successful smelt => 400 ingots (200 ore consumed)
2 failed smelts => 100 ore left (plus the 150 we didn't smelt to begin with)

We have 250 ore left, lets do another 2 smelts (and not use 50 ore):
1 successful smelt => 200 ingots (100 ore consumed)
1 failed smelt => 50 ore left (plus the 50 we didn't smelt)

You can see the trend, so lets stop here. The sum of ingots is: 10400+2600+400+200 = 13600. We do still have 100 valorite ore, roughly equivalent to 140 ingots. Thus the total amount of ingots from smelting 10000 ore pieces would be approximately 13740 ingots and thats equivalent to approximately 69% success rate.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

No! Smelting is difficulty based, based on the type of Ore you are smelting. As Morgoth pointed out in the original FAQ, this is more of a personal decision and a psycological one that anything else. It really depends on how well you feel the RNG Powers will treat you!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

No! Smelting is difficulty based, based on the type of Ore you are smelting. The amount of Ore you are smelting in one go does not affect the difficulty!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Basically, everytime you Double Click a pile of Ore and target a forge, (or your Fire Beetle), The Random Number Generator rolls the dice, if your number falls in the success range percentage, YOU WIN, your Ore is smelted and the Ingots placed in your pack, If your number isn't right, you lose Ore and you must start over!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Okay, To smelt Weapons and Armor, you must have the Blacksmithy skill.

HOWEVER

In Order to smelt "Colored" Weapons and Armor, (and by colored, I do not mean the Neon ones, I mean Golden, Agapite, Valorite, etc...) you must have the appropriate Mining skill to smelt the same colored Ore in order to succeed!

Mining determines how many ingots are returned on a successful smelt of Armor or Weapons. At 0 mining, your return is just a single ingot. At GM +5 mining gloves it is around 60% returned.

(Thanks Barok!)

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The answer is YES. Together with a friend, Morgoth did some scientific tests regarding the influence of eating food on smelting ore. They both smelted through a large pile of Verite ore (500) with the same method (4-by-4). One of them was and remained well fed and the other was practically starving. The result was clear : being well fed gave a better success rate (ie. more ingots in return) then being hungry.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Pack Horses and Pack Llamas (Packy's) are animals with a backpack that can carry things for you. They require NO Taming Skill to own.

They are not found in the wild typically, (Unless someone releases one), but can be purchased from any Stablemaster NPC. Pack Llamas are usually about 100gp less than a Pack Horse.

Packy's are limited to the same number of items that you can carry, (125), but can carry ALOT more weight, 1600 Stones. This equates to about 16,000 Ingots, 800 Small Ore, or about 133 Large Ore.

More detailed information about Packy's can be found here: Packy's

More detailed information on the Pack Horse, please go here: Pack Horse

More detailed information on the Pack Llama, please go here: Pack Llama

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The Blue or Giant Beetle can be used as a mount AND as a pack animal, which like a Pack Horse can carry 1600 stones. Because it is both a mount and a pack animal it requires 3 control slots to own it. No taming skill is required to own or ride it.

When mounted (and ONLY when mounted) the beetles pack is limited to carrying 400 stones of weight. If there is more in the backpack the beetle will run out of stamina. Without stamina a beetle can only walk but not run. In other words it becomes slow as a snail. When NOT mounted the beetle enjoys the same 1600 stones carrying capacity as pack horses and can run at full trott behind you.

The Beetles pack can be accesed by using its context menu while you are not mounted.

Another nice thing about beetles is that they are decent to good fighters. This makes them excellent protection for miners against small to medium monsters. After some fighting training (yes, pets can be trained in fighting) they become quite good fighters and can take on some of the stronger monsters, like trolls, ogres, ettins, earth elementals, etc.

Beetles can not be bought from NPCs. They are found in the wild and must be tamed by players with sufficient taming skill. Once tamed, though, they can be transfered to any char, as explained above. In order to get a blue giant beetle (and YES, as a miner you WANT one) you must find a tamer and ask him/her to sell one to you. For current prices, please check with your Tamers at your local bank, or ask on the Shard Specific Forums. Typically, prices range from 5k-10k.

For more information on the Blue (Giant) Beetle, please check here: Giant Beetle

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The Fire Beetle is another kind of the rideable Giant Beetle. The main difference other than the color is that the Fire Beetle does not have a backpack, but to make up for that a miner can use it to smelt the ore he digs up on. It is essentially a ridable orange forge on six legs. Sadly it also requires 3 pet control slots to own, so you cant not have both a blue beetle and a fire beetle with you. But you can have a packhorse and a fire beetle with you, which might be an excellent alternative to having a blue beetle. Find out for yourself what suits you best.

Additionally, you can smelt Ore on a Bonded Dead Fire Beetle, and you can smelt Ore on a Fire Beetle that does not belong to you!!!

For current prices, please check with your Tamers at your local bank, or ask on the Shard Specific Forums. Typically, prices range from 10k - 40k.

For more information on the Fire Beetle, please check here: Fire Beetle

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

With the Necromany Skill, one of the spells you can use is Summon Familiar. This will give you a list of Familiars to Summon, (depending on your skill), one of them is the Horde Minion who is a very handy little friend for a miner!

The Horde Minion has several abilities:

Decent Combat Assistant - Can help you fight off light monster spawn while mining!

Picks stuff up - While playing with the Horde Minion in my own testing, he will pick up gold, regeants and bolts / arrows off the ground. I will test whether or not he picks up Ore or Stone.

Has a backpack - The Horde Minion has a backpack like you or the packy. He is limited to the same 125 Item limit as most containers are. Additionally he is limited to a weight limit of 400 stones. This is not alot of carrying capacity, but every little bit helps!

For more information on the Horde Minion (Familiar), please go here: Horde Minion (Familiar)

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

(Intro: the following report was written by me, Morgoth, aka Melkor the Magic Miner, the current Moderator of the UO Miners Forum)

Update from Morgoth: The text below is a bit old. Some time later, after bonded pets got added to UO, I did the exact same testing with recalling instead of gating and got the same excellent results. Recall mining with a bonded blue beetle nowadays is my own most favourite way of mining.

I did a real scientific evaluation of pure gate mining with a packhorse last night. The basic requirement for this technique is that you can cast gates as good as possible. Myself I got GM Magery, which essentially means I still fizzle about every 3rd gate.

So here's how I prepared for the test: I fetched my trusted packy "bugger" from the stables and put a bag with 30 shovels on him. another 5 shovels were in my backpack. Bugger was well fed and I had some more apples in my backpack. My only other basic equipment was: my spellbook and 60 regs each.

Equipped like that I stood in my house and hit the stopwatch (noted down the time) and cast the first gate to one of my favourite caves. Now here is what I do in the caves: I mine the spots as fast as possbile (with UO macro), when one spot is empty I move the ore from my backpack into the packy and begin to mine the next spot ... spot empty => ore into packy => rince wash repeat. Simply mine in the cave as fast as you can, storing the ore (uncompressed) in the packy until it is filled up. When the packy is full cou can carry an additional load on yourself (I am assuming 100 str or at least the ability to carry 5 shovels and 16 large ore).

As soon as your packy is full (and you carry another 16 large ore) cast a gate to your house and drop all ore into a secure container next to your forge. This is the highly optimised version. The alternative (for those without a house) would be to gate from the mine to the bank and drop the ore into a bag in your bankbox.

Thats the basics of doing one round. Now you cast a gate to another mine, or the same mine, if you know that it can deliver a second packy load of ore. Upon arrival you start again with mining the ore spots as fast as you can. Ie. you repeat the stuff above. If you're good and fast the time between arriving in two subsequent mines (the first and the second for instance) shuld be 6 minutes. This means that you can theoretically do up to 10 such trips in an hour, but 9 are more realistic.

But after those 9 trips you are not finished, and yet 60 minutes have passed. There still is some work to be done: the smelting. Smelting the results of the 9 trips and storing the ingots took me another 5 minutes, so the number of ingots must be adjusted, because it relates to 65 minutes.

The Result : I got 2500 Ingots in those 60 minutes of mining and the overall time i spend on the trip was 66 minutes (without counting the time to obtain the 30 shovels and to get/stable the packy). So the net result of this type of mining is 2300 ingots per hour, including colors. Here is (roughly) was I got in ingots, sorted by colors (those figures are not 100% exact, but pretty close and quoted from memory):

1850 Iron
60 Valorite
120 Verite
20 Gold
20 Agapite
30 Bronze
100 Copper
100 Shadow
100 Dull Copper

I was of course very happy with this result and it is 100% reproducable, IF there is not too much lag. To reproduce these results you must be able to empty a 16 large ore cave spot in 30 seconds or less. The test was carried out on the Trammel facet of the Drachenfels shard at 23:30 local shard time (GMT).

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Note: While you are holding a large pile of ore you can NOT move due to being overweight. This is a huge disadvantage in Felucca or Siege Perilous Shard, where you thus become a sitting duck for any PK that strolls by. Your only chance of survival as a leapfrog miner in Felucca would be to have high hiding skill. When hidden you can still pick up your ore pile and thus both you and the ore pile become invisible. Now hold your breath and pray that the PK does not find you ....

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

This is nowadays the fastest and most efficient method of mining (at least according to the humble opinion of Morgoth, the moderator of this forum). You recall to a good mining location, like for instance a cave, mine till your packy or beetle is full, then recall back to your house or to a bank and quickly drop the ore into a container. Recall back to the next good mining location,rince and repeat. Prepare for the trip by having a decent supply of shovels. In really short time you acquire a large amount of ore that you can smelt later at your leisure.

Personally I choose the locations to recall to based on how much colored ore veins they contain (and have those mapped out on UOAM). Colored ingots always sell best.

When doing this with a packhorse it must be bonded. Bonded pets will recall together with you. When using a beetle it must not be bonded. Mount the beetle and cast recall. Recalling when mounted works even when the beetle is too heavy for running.

This method is the successor to “Gate Mining” described below. It gives the same or even better rewards, while being superior because it does not require you to be able to cast the gate spell. Simple recalling will suffice.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

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.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Mining in Trammel

Trammel is generally considered safer as you can not get PK'd or stolen from while you are in Trammel.

Mining in Felluca

Felluca has added the bonus of extra resources. What this means is that for mining, every swing will yeild you double the Ore over mining in Trammel. The drawback is that you can be stolen from or PK'd in Felluca!

Mining in Ilshnar

Ilsh has a few wide open runs of mining that are relatively safe. Ilsh is under the Trammel ruleset so you can not be PK's or stolen from. The main difference with Ilsh is that you can not Recall or Gate into Ilsh, and that occasionally there will be a Paragon creature that spawns either Naturally, or if you are using a Gargoyles Pick Axe, a Paragon Elemental as described in Section 8.

Mining in Malas

Malas is under the Trammel ruleset also and is thus safe from PK's and getting stolen from. There is no other difference really.

Mining in Tokuno Islands

Mining in Tokuno Islands is not really recomended. The reason why is that the dangers are WAY to great, and there are not many spots to get a good mining run in. With The Elite Ninja's, (Who Hide and Stealth), Hiryu's and other monsters all over the place that really hit HARD, you will more likely die then be able to get any significant mining done.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Sorry, Not Completed Yet!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

Sorry, Not Completed Yet!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

While out and about the various mountain ranges mining, some areas are pretty void of any life whatsoever. Occasionally though there will be randoms monsters, or spawns that will seriously put a hamper on your mining activities if you are not paying attention, or are not careful.

The biggest probelm I have had with monsters while mining is that my "Not so Bright" Packy will decide to wander off to play with a Troll. This results in my packy dieing and me either having to Rez him, (If he is bonded), or buying a new one, finding his corpse and then getting all the Ore that I had on him back.

Typically most of the monsters that hang around different mining locations are not very tough to deal with.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

When using the Gargoyles Pick Axe as described in Section 9, there is a chance that you will pull up an ore elemental of the color you are extracting, hence the need for a miner with any combat skill to be wielding an Earth Elemental Slayer. All types that spawn from gargoyle pickaxe use are susceptible to the standard Earth elemental slayer, or the Elemental super-slayer. These dangerous monsters range from fairly easy (shadow iron & verite elementals) to very very hard (valorite elementals).

Ore elementals spawn right next to the miner and usually attack him first, though on rare occasions a nearby pack animal or mount will be targeted first. Upon death they carry 25 ore of their color as loot, which is especially rewarding with the valorite elementals. Some miners specifically dig with just gargoyle pickaxes, in order to get the elementals.

The following list of Elementals are those that are spawned by using the Gargoyles Pick Axe:

Shadow Iron: Immune to magic spells and most pet damage, but a relatively easy melee or archery kill.
Copper: 50% Reflect melee damage, 100% Reflect spell damage back to caster - can be tricky to fight without dying.
Bronze: Ranged Gas Attack that can be a pain for those trying to back off and heal. Also does mostly (70%) fire damage, compared to most other's physical-only attacks.
Gold: Has a very High physical resist (75)
Agapite: Stronger than most ore elementals, but less hitpoints. Special weapons moves are your friend.
Verite: Damage is 50% Physical, 50% energy.
Valorite: The mother of all elementals. Has the special abilities of the Shadow Iron, Copper, and Bronze elementals, the best resists of all elementals(75/60/60/60/50) and the strength of the Agapite elemental, all rolled into one lethal package. Its damage is 25% physical, 25% fire, 25% cold, 25% energy. Hunt these only if you have an archer handy, or a melee type good at "jousting" (running through the target, then away to heal, if necessary). With the reflect combined with a hard hit and possible gas attack, I recommend that you do NOT use damage-increasing special moves (concussion blow, double strike, etc.) on one, as you could well kill yourself. It's funny when you kill a monster with reflect physical damage from its last attack - it's not so funny when you're on the receiving end of such a death.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

When mining in Ilshenar with a Gargoyles Pick Axe, there is the possibility that the Elemental that spawns will be a Paragon! These are especially nasty creatures as all their stats and abilities are greatly enhanced.

For a detailed list of Paragon abilities, please go here: Paragon's

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

The only place that Player Killers, (PK's) are ever a problem are in Felluca. As described in Section 7, mining in Felluca gives the reward of Double the Ore haul from a single spot over Trammel. The Risk is that you are open to attack from other players!

This is where the Hiding Skill would be handy. Tracking could also be used to see if any Player Characters are around. Additionally, the Fighter or Mage templates would be used to ward off would be attackers!

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

For OSI Shards, resources are divided up into 8x8 Resource Grids. A Grid map overlay for UO Auto Map (UOAM) Basically shows you the exact Resouce Grid Layout.

The so called grid map overlay has more or less been outlawed by OSI. When adding it to your UOAM, the UOAM tool looses its UO-Pro status (because you make changes to internal program files). Using tools without UO-Pro status in turn *can* lead to UO account suspension or UO account banning when their use is discovered. As far as OSI is concerned (and this is something they have in their ToS!) any third party tool without UO-Pro is an exploit. Since Stratics does not allow the posting of bugs or exploits we do not allow the posting of any information relating more directly to the grid map overlay.

Crafters-Inc. · Aug 31, 2005

(Smith BOD reward, often found dumped on the ground in Blacksmith shops)

These items can be used as a macing weapon, but their real use is "prospecting" an ore site. Before you can prospect a site, you must use a digging tool (shovel, pickaxe, Gargoyle Pickaxe) once on the target area. Such use does not have to be successful, just break the ground (which means, you can do the "false dig" method while mounted, and be told you cannot mine while mounted, then use the tool, to maximize your return).

A successful use of the prospector tool means that all colored ore you gain from a site will be one level higher. However, you can only use the tool to elevate a site to an ore type that you can already mine. For example, at 85 mining, you could elevate a bronze site to gold, but not a gold site to agapite. Elevating an Iron site to dull copper becomes possible at 65 Mining (the skill needed to mine DC ore), but only a percentage of the ore will be DC; all other elevations simply replace the usual colored ore with the higher type.

You can only use the prospector's tool once per site, until the ore respawns, at which time you can use it again on that site. They have 50 charges when new, and that could easily add up to 1000 enhanced ore if used in Felucca, or even the best locations in Trammel, Malas, Tokuno & Ilshenar.

If you try to use to tool again, it will tell you that this site has already been prospected!

Mining FAQ (Last updated: 06 MAY 2006)

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