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[Mining] Where to mine?

Petrov

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Im out of the loop for a long time. Where should I mine now? Used to live in the ork dungeon :)
Also do miners pretty much mine exclusivley in felluca?
 
I exclusively mine in fel with the double resource gathering. I feel like its a no brainer, but have met a rare few that mine in Tram. Maybe Ilsh for paragon eles, but alway fel to double your production. Never get pk'd anymore, even on Atlantic. Beyond that any mountains will do. I change it up every so often so keep it fresh.
 

Petrov

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So how do you do it? Do you walk in with a fire beetle and smelt it once you reach max capacity you recall back to your house in trammel?
 

Basara

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I never mine in Fel - not worth the potential for loss. While most of the people on my shard know me and wouldn't bother me, it's the cross-sharders that show up that would kill me for just being there, and I don't feel like wasting hours for zero outcome. If those stupid BOD reward maps were "by dig" I'd be tempted to, but the maps are only good for the same amount of ore, regardless of where claimed (it just might be a quicker in-an-out if claimed in Fel, but with the maps being random, you never know when you'll find the map right outside a Fel Resident's house). Ironically, when in Fel on other characters (such as my T-hunters) I'm more likely to see a scripter mining there, than a live player.

I do Ilshenar-only. I get the chance for paragons (and their chests - still trying to complete my collection of chests off ore eles), an Ilshenar as a whole counts as dungeon for chance of niter spawns for High Seas ammunition crafting.

As for methods....

Regardless of facet, the Fire Beetle is the way to go, at least for lower metals (Gold and lower). Gold elementals can be farmed in Blackthorn's dungeon (underneath the new king's castle), and you can use up a 6000-ingot 100% gold smelting talisman there in 40-60 MINUTES. You just need a miner with combat capabilities (weapon or book earth ele slayer, DI/SDI, etc.)

There's also a Mining Satchel (I think that's the name) that can hold up to 1000 stone worth of ingots, at half-weight for purposes of your carry capacity. Not sure were it comes from, as I found it for 100k on someone's vendor. It can hold ingots and ore, up to 27 different types. Not checked to see if they can be used inside a pack animal to double storage.

I typically mine in relatively safe places (nothing tougher than skeletons), so I also bring a packy along with my fire beetle. Now that NEW fire and giant beetles are only 1 slot, you can bring 1 fire beetle and up to 4 giants. Or, if you have taming/lore on your miner, train one up to 2 slots and the other up to 3, increasing their resists, HP, etc. and adding attacks (AI, Rune Corruption, Poison) and regens. Note that a Giant beetle with its strengh raised no longer is subject to that BS about being fatigued past 400 or stone in its pack. I take Agapite, Verite and Valorite home in the pack animal(s) once they are fully loaded, to save till I get enough to use one of the BOD reward talismans of the appropriate type (as those talismans only last a day when claimed, and have a set number of ingots before running out - it's not worth claiming them until you have the full amount of ore on hand).

I also tend to use both Prospector Tools and Gargoyle pickaxes when mining.
1 dig with a normal (or sturdy) tool to start the dig, followed by the PT to elevate the ore once, then the GPA to elevate it a second time, and the chance to get the elementals and their 25 ore, digging out the site with the GPA. I get far more high end ore via elementals than I do digging, and about 50% of my ShadowIron/copper/bronze from the eles. This method pretty much minimizes Dull Copper collection (as PT+GPA turns Iron-only spots to SI/Iron, and DC spots to Copper/Iron), and eliminates half the iron you'd normally get.
The normal tools I carry (usually 3 or 4 sturdy tools) are for when I hit niter deposits (High Seas enabled), as there's no reason to use anything other than a normal/sturdy shovel or pick on Niter. With about 500 luck, I usually get only Massive/Clumsy or Gigantic Niter deposits.
 

Keven2002

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I don't mine much these days but in the off chance I get bored and want to do BODs I will do it in Fel. Like others have mentioned it's extremely few and far between seeing any reds these days given that all ore locations change so there is no more camping a few set places. While in Fel I try to visit the biggest caves because I believe they typically will give more digs versus the side of a mountain (and are easier to hit without a message like "you cannot see that"). Similar to Basara I will use the prospector tool and garg tools based on what I'm mining for and I always bring a fire beetle to smelt. I'd also agree bout the saving of Agappite/Verite/Valorite ore and as mentioned before it seems to be such a rare occurrence that I see anyone while mining (on ATL too) that I haven't encountered any problems just leaving the high end ore on the ground until the end (Basara had a good tip with the crafter satchel though so I'll probably use that going forward).

All that said, what exactly are you looking for when mining? If it's strictly ingots then I'd actually suggest taking to the high seas; the trade ships will carry all types of resources (I average 300-500 each of Agao/Verite/Val ingots per ship). Given the randomness of mining these days I think it's actually faster to go "mining" on the high seas in a pirate/trade ship area (like East of Jhelom). This also has the added bonus of getting frostwood and barbed leather etc so you are really gaining resources for all BODS (assuming that's why you are mining in the first place); and now you also can get trade cargo to turn in for points and assuming you are doing it in tram you are pretty safe. In the off chance you are looking for exclusively getting niter deposits, you won't get those BUT you will get ship ammunition from the trade ships too (typically AT LEAST the same amount it takes to scuttle the ship) so it kind of replenishes itself.

In my opinion taking to the High Seas is the best return on your time investment and would be my preferred method unless you specifically wanted to actively use a miner *shrug*.
 

Basara

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You can buy iron ingots on most shards from NPCs (the randomly spawning Gypsy camps in Ilshenar tend to have the best prices). Siege is different.

Colored ingots are mostly on sale JUST on Atlantic. Most of the illegal script miners run their scripts elsewhere, then transfer their ingots to Atlantic - BUT, before they do the transfer, they typically look for anyone selling colored ingots on the shard they are on and buy them out (then either resell at ATL prices over general chat, or take to ATL to resell, to make people dependent on the Atlantic market).

My shard's only had a couple months out of the last 10+ years where people have been able to have ingot vendors that can stay stocked for more than a few hours. Someone always buys the ingots out within hours, and when there's been witnesses, the buyer has almost always been someone non-local. As a result, most ingot sales have become direct deals inside alliances or otherwise between friends.
 

Basara

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That sadly hurt the honest player way more than it hurt the scripter.
After 12 years, still waiting for that to be true, at least for me. Even on a small-population shard, when locations were fixed, half the time I recalled to an agapite, verite or valorite spot, it was already mined out.

I get more Valorite mining a random hillside now with random locations than I ever did recall mining, especially now that I use the PT & GPA almost exclusively.

The trick is that (despite what devs have said) the percentage of colored ore and number of digs varies per resource square (modified by race bonuses - elves get 1.2 times base, humans get an extra ore on 10% of digs), BUT the chance is stable for that square regardless of what color ore is being produced.

So, if a spot was producing 20-30 digs, and was giving colored ore on 80% of digs, back when the colors were fixed, it is STILL giving 20-30 digs and 80% colored now, regardless if it's a DC, bronze or Valorite site originally or currently. And, even if it's currently an iron only spot, you can still get 80% DC with a PT or GPA, or 80% shadow iron using both in combination.

IF people had taken the time, back in the days of recall mining, to filter their runes for the "best output" in addition to "this is everywhere X ore is found", they'd have had a core set of runes they could have pulled from their rune books for each color, of "runes to high-output locations to exploit. It would be "like a box of chocolates" (you'd not know what you were going to get until you got there), but you'd be guaranteed a high colored to iron ore ratio. I even made such a book, but have no idea what happened to it after we went crazy as an alliance trying to collect paragon ore elemental chests for a few years, and switched to Ilshenar mining long before High Seas.
 
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Keven2002

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This might be getting a little off topic (apologies to the OP) but what would be the biggest draw to mining (or just farming in general) aga / verite / val ore these days (outside of selling the ingots)? Is it just for filling BODs (assuming everyone bribes up to Val Exc 20)?

If my assumption is right on filling BODs; what are people using the BOD points for (are people still getting runics above gold these days)? If it's for val ore map / val ore fail proofing then that brings me back to my original question of why mine for val ore in the first place? I spent a week or two doing smithing BODs a while back for the val maps and I felt like the amount of resources I used to get that was a bit much ( I used max val BODs and I feel like I burned through roughly the same amount of val ingots as I got from mining the map lol).

I understand it is possible that maybe people just like mining but I feel like mining these days is actually less effective when there are now other methods of getting high end resources (as mentioned in my earlier post) in larger quantities and rather easy.
 
Sorry OP haven't got on since reply. I always go with fire beetle and pack horse. On top of that I carry a bag of sending to send back piles of verite/val ores to smelt later with talismans. And as others do I always use garg pick and prospectors tool. Val ele's are fun and challenging depending on the gear I have on atm. Generally just strip mine every ore for BODs, but lately I've been just going along to different areas with shovel and prospector tool and selectively mine for agapite and up. Again, I like to mix things up every so often.

I mine agapite and up for BODs for copper/bronze runics. I don't have High Seas, yet, but I'm interested in seeing how they compare. Is mining in Fel with good knowledge of ore spots comparable in return to those High Seas trade ships? Idk.
 

Basara

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You get more ore, IMO, in 5 minutes of mining, than a couple hours of ships. The only thing there's a lot of on ships is iron (there's often 2-6 stacks of 50 ingots) as that's used to repair cannon.
 

Keven2002

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Sorry OP haven't got on since reply. I always go with fire beetle and pack horse. On top of that I carry a bag of sending to send back piles of verite/val ores to smelt later with talismans. And as others do I always use garg pick and prospectors tool. Val ele's are fun and challenging depending on the gear I have on atm. Generally just strip mine every ore for BODs, but lately I've been just going along to different areas with shovel and prospector tool and selectively mine for agapite and up. Again, I like to mix things up every so often.

I mine agapite and up for BODs for copper/bronze runics. I don't have High Seas, yet, but I'm interested in seeing how they compare. Is mining in Fel with good knowledge of ore spots comparable in return to those High Seas trade ships? Idk.
I certainly don't think someone will straight up beat ingot production of mining (especially in Fel) but that requires a focused effort on JUST mining whereas doing the pirate ships kind of allow you to multitask; you get all types of resources (val/verite ingot / frostwood / barbed leather). Remember that if you find a val ore spot these days and mine it dry then there is a chance it won't spawn val again (same with frostwood). On top of that lets just say you mine 200 val ore in an hour; IF you successfully smelt it the first try you get 400 ingots but if you fail it's now 200 ingots for that hour*. My experience with trade ships is that I have gotten up to 500 val ingots from one boat (lets say I average 250 per ship) along with other resources and on the low side I can find / scuttle at least 2 trade ships an hour (that's almost guaranteed 500 val ingots).

Ultimately it comes down to style of game play. I think the OP said they actually like to mine so doing the ships is a moot point for them. I like a little more action when I have a chance to play so doing the trade ships gives me a chance to kind of kill a few birds w/ one stone.

*Side note - I am aware that technically you can get an ore talisman to prevent failure and valorite maps and all that other stuff that would send val production through the roof when mining but I purposely didn't take that into account because you need a bunch of resources initially to get them rather than just setting out to mine ore versus setting sails to scuttle trade ships.
 

Marquis de Sade 209

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I always mine in fel and in random caves because the ore is random to punish scripters. Although in true UO fashion that also punishes those who actually marked the spots and recalled in
 

Basara

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The talismans can be gotten easily enough by filling some LBODs of low-end color ore.

Even the Valorite smelting talisman only requires filling an Iron Plate LBOD, any DC armor LBOD, or anything from Shadow Chain Ex 15-count LBOD. The gold talisman can be done with any Iron Ex LBOD, or Chain 20 or plate normal LBOD (and the normals you can fill buying off an NPC).

The talismans are only cost-intensive if you get it into your head you have to fill a SINGLE SMALL BOD to get the points.
 

Basara

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I always mine in fel and in random caves because the ore is random to punish scripters. Although in true UO fashion that also punishes those who actually marked the spots and recalled in
Which, on my shard at least, were.... THE SCRIPTERS. I had 20 different books of marked runes. They were worthless when scripters were active.
 

Keven2002

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The talismans can be gotten easily enough by filling some LBODs of low-end color ore.

Even the Valorite smelting talisman only requires filling an Iron Plate LBOD, any DC armor LBOD, or anything from Shadow Chain Ex 15-count LBOD. The gold talisman can be done with any Iron Ex LBOD, or Chain 20 or plate normal LBOD (and the normals you can fill buying off an NPC).

The talismans are only cost-intensive if you get it into your head you have to fill a SINGLE SMALL BOD to get the points.
Understood but I was trying to keep all variables the same when comparing resource production of mining vs high seas. You wouldn't fill any BODs when doing high seas for resources so I kept it consistent when comparing mining. I understand your point but I could also counter with saying it takes X time to get those bods in the first place and X time to fill them and resources etc etc etc and there is none of that when hitting the high seas so that could mean double the amount of ships and double the resources. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here; I think it is very close and based on RNG could go one way or the other. It's all about your play style in which option is right for you. *shrug*
 

Marquis de Sade 209

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Which, on my shard at least, were.... THE SCRIPTERS. I had 20 different books of marked runes. They were worthless when scripters were active.
The guild I was in killed the scripters quite frequently. I still was able to get a whole butt load of valorite
 

Tarragon Slayer/MZB

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I like doing mining in a place in New Haven somewhere. It's a dungeon of some kind, only I don't know how to get there. A friend gave me a rune once, so no idea how to enter the place. Perhaps someone can help with the coordinates. Clipboard03.jpg
 
Another easy way to get ingots is to just go to suolen cave and kill the big bug in the sand pit. off top of head forget what they are called. But they drop the lower end ores. and gold and bones.
 

Maldar

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I love the High Seas when it comes to farming agapite, verite and valorite. Those three colors are much more prevalent than any of the lesser colors on the ships. I have amassed over 75k valorite ingots, over 80k verite ingots and over 100k agapite ingots in a couple months of off-and-on ship hunting.......not to mention equivalent amounts of hides and boards. I doubt I ever mine, except for granite, again.
 

BeaIank

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The talismans are only cost-intensive if you get it into your head you have to fill a SINGLE SMALL BOD to get the points.
Considering that a valorite talisman costs 575 points, you can get it with a single 15 ex bronze small bod.
They are quite viable to get with small bods even without using high end ore. Specially since golden ore is so easy to get these days.
 

Basara

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Considering that a valorite talisman costs 575 points, you can get it with a single 15 ex bronze small bod.
They are quite viable to get with small bods even without using high end ore. Specially since golden ore is so easy to get these days.
Yeah, but I've ran into some types that think that you need to fill BODs from similar metal - it's hard for them to equate in their head that a 15 EX Bronze small = 15 Normal Valorite small, and they insist on filling the latter.

Whereas you can also get the same points from a Ex Plate Large (any count) or Ex 5-part Weapon large (15 or 20 count) - and iron is far more common than even bronze. I might have 10k bronze, but that's because I bought a 60k deed on Atlantic while cross-shard shopping (and the pile of bronze got slaughtered by 3 years of christmas trees). But, from my own mining plus other finds (including a friend giving me all their crafting supplies when they left UO), I've had close to a half-million iron ingots at one point (but gave away about half of it, including helping two friends become a governor candidate by giving them regular ingots and wood to donate to their city to raise loyalty). But, even with that, the iron to me is the better deal even if its ingots I mined.
 

BeaIank

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Yeah, but I've ran into some types that think that you need to fill BODs from similar metal - it's hard for them to equate in their head that a 15 EX Bronze small = 15 Normal Valorite small, and they insist on filling the latter.

Whereas you can also get the same points from a Ex Plate Large (any count) or Ex 5-part Weapon large (15 or 20 count) - and iron is far more common than even bronze. I might have 10k bronze, but that's because I bought a 60k deed on Atlantic while cross-shard shopping (and the pile of bronze got slaughtered by 3 years of christmas trees). But, from my own mining plus other finds (including a friend giving me all their crafting supplies when they left UO), I've had close to a half-million iron ingots at one point (but gave away about half of it, including helping two friends become a governor candidate by giving them regular ingots and wood to donate to their city to raise loyalty). But, even with that, the iron to me is the better deal even if its ingots I mined.
Yeah, bronze isn't as easy to come by as iron, but golden is plentiful now, so when I need a talisman, I just burn an small ex golden BOD to get it.
Otherwise, if they don't have means to farm golden elementals at Blackthorn's (which would make me wonder how is that possible), doing iron lbods is their best bet to get them for cheap.
 

Snuggs105

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I like to mine in Fel Delucia for the double resources and being right next to the stables and banks. I can buy shovels in town and chop wood too :)
 
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