WoW Mining Guide

Mining in World of Warcraft is the skill to have as you can gather resources that can be used with other professions, such as Engineering, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. Mining isn't needed to use these other professions but it can be very handy to gather your own materials as it saves a lot of money rather than buying them all the time. Mining can also be very good even if you don't ever plan to learn a crafting skill as you can make a lot of gold by selling your resources in the auction room. As there are some people who don't train in this so are willing to spend a lot of money!

The mining skill ranges from level 1-450. Obviously 450 being the best where you will become a 'Grand Master', at 300 you become a 'Master' at mining. When you reach 450 you will be able to mine everything there is to get in World of Warcraft and you will most likely never fail when doing it.

You will first off need to train the basics in the skill by finding a professions trainer. Your easiest bet when just starting out is to head into one of the big cities, depending on which faction you've joined. Head into town and speak to a guard, ask them for directions and they will place a locator on your map for your to follow directly to the trainer.

So how do you find these mining spots? (the proper term for them are nodes) Fortunately for us, World of Warcraft tells us where to find these mining spots. All you need to do is click the small button on the side of the mini-map (the furthest one up) and select the option from the drop down list that says "Find Minerals". When there is a node in your area close by it will appear as a small round dot on the map so you can go and mine it for all it's worth! If the dot is grayed out, it most likely means it's not on the same plane as you and you will need to either go up a cliff or into a cave beneath you.

To gain your mining skill, you want to mine nodes which are neither too easy, nor too hard for your current level. They are color coordinated to help you identify which is which. WoW Mining Guide Difficulty Ratings Gray Your skill will not increase by mining it (still get the materials to sell though) Green Small chance of gaining skill Yellow Fair chance of raising your skill Orange Best opportunity to raise your skill, you may fail a couple of times to gather the material, but keep at it Red You will not gain your skill and cannot mine the materials here yet

When you want to mine a node, you will not need your pick to be in your hand at the time. You can leave it in your pack and leave you weapon equipped. When you find a node which you want to start mining (any which are possible ideally) just right click on it and that's it. Keep repeating this process until it's run out and it will disappear off screen. You can normally gather up to 3 lots off a single node, unless it's of a higher value. Then it is normally only 1 or possibly 2.