Mining

The mining skill is also useful when practising the creation of smeltable items (which can be recycled back into usable Ingots, with the amount of ingots returned based on the Mining skill). It furthermore gives a bonus to Treasure Hunters looking for Treasure Chests underground. You cannot mine while mounted.

As your skill improves, you become capable of mining and smelting more obscure forms of ore:

0+ Iron Ore
65+ Dull Copper Ore
70+ Shadow Iron Ore
75+ Copper Ore
80+ Bronze Ore
85+ Golden Ore
90+ Agapite Ore
95+ Verite Ore
99+ Valorite Ore

A GM Miner, after the proper research, may also extract High Quality Granite and Sand for use by the more experienced crafters. When you have read the High Quality Granite book, you can click on your pickaxe and set it to mine both stone and ore. When you have read the High Quality Sand book, instead of mining only in rock, you can also mine the beaches and deserts of Britannia (or any random sand tiles available to you).

Although your Mining skill cannot advance past 100 points through training, Mining Gloves may be worn to take your skill to an absolute maximum of 105. Mining is the only skill that can be advanced in this way without the use of a Power Scroll.

Human characters will have a chance to get extra ore with each dig, while Elves have an increased chance of harvesting special ore types from colored veins (as opposed to finding colored veins).

Whenever an ore vein refreshes after being harvested from, there is a slight chance it will change resource type. For example, a mountainside that yielded Valorite today might give plain iron tomorrow, and vice versa. Your level of skill does not determine your chance of finding a colored vein, it only determines whether you can extract the colored ore.

A Gargoyle's Pickaxe and/or Prospector's Tool can be used to potentially advance an ore vein's level by up to two types (e.g., Agapite to Valorite).

A colored ore map can be obtained from Vela the Sorceress as a Covetous Void Pool reward. These maps reveal the exact location of a single colored ore vein. The vein color depends on the type of map:

Training

0 - 40: Train from Jacob Waltzt in the Haven Mountains. (cost 400 gold)
40 - 50: Do the accelerated skill gain New Player Quest The Delucian’s Lost Mine from Jacob Waltzt. and receive Jacob's Pickaxe.
50 - 100: Mine up and smelt Ore.

Gains from the actual digging process can be from mining any ore type (even Iron-only veins), as the chance of a gain is based on the chance of digging up ore (which only reaches 100% at 100.0 skill). However, gains from smelting of ore into ingots is difficulty based, and is based on the chance to successfully smelt that ore. As a result, while you can gain slowly, simply by mining, you can enhance gains further by splitting up colored ore piles that you are not 100% chance to succeed on, and smelt 1 ore at a time. This is especially useful at very high levels of mining when ores are rarer.

Ingot Return from Recycling Blacksmithy Items

Recycling items requires a Blacksmithy tool, a forge and an anvil. The amount of ingots returned is based on the greater of the characters mining OR blacksmithing skill, as follows:

When re-smelting blacksmith items, the skill check uses the greater of the character’s Mining or Blacksmith skills (capped at 105)
The amount of ingots returned is calculated by the following formula: (ingots needed to make item) x (0.66% x Skill), rounding fractions down after the multiplication is done. At 100.0 skill, a 12-ingot item will return 7 ingots (12 x 66.0%, rounded down).
To get 2/3 your ingots (66.67%) back when Recycling, one must have at least 101.1 skill (natural skill plus the bonus from either +3 or +5 Mining Gloves )
Use of a Salvage Bag will add one additional ingot returned, per Blacksmithy item recycled.

Special Resources

Gems

At 100 Mining skill you have the chance to randomly retrieve one of the following resources:

You can also retrieve regular small gems after reading the High Quality Gems book, obtained in Ter Mur from the Royal City Blacksmiths for approximately 10,000 gold.

Saltpeter

Introduced with the High Seas booster pack, saltpeter is a gathering resource for miners from the niter deposits that can be discovered inside the dungeons and at the sea.

Saltpeter

Other

While not exactly a resource, Blackrock has been used during various events in the past and still has some special uses.

A Small Piece of Blackrock

Tips & Tricks

To get the most ore out of your pickaxe uses, go to Felucca instead of Trammel. You will notice that you get exactly double the amount of ore per use of the pickaxe.
Mining veins in towns are half of what you could get outside of the towns.
People can get confused on which beetle most suits their character. Its wise to have both but when you are mining, it is a better deal to use the Fire Beetle over the Giant Beetle, especially in locations far from forges. However, if you are relatively close to a forge all the time, you can collect more ore, smelt them into ingots, and store them in the Giant Beetle.
There is no way to increase your mining above grandmaster 100 skill unless you are using Mining Gloves which add a +5 to your total skill. Mining Power Scrolls do not exist.
Tinkering is a very good combination with your mining skill. You can use it to create more pickaxes and shovels with the ingots you collect. This way you can stay out with your pack mule for longer periods of time.
When smelting richer types of ore material that you can't always work with successfully (eg, Agapite, Verite, or Valorite), it's best to divide all of the material in piles of two. That way if you fail to smelt the ore (hence wasting half the pile), you only lose one ore rather than, say, fifteen ore from a nice pile of thirty in that type.
To mine High Quality Granite or Sand, you must travel to the Gargoyle city Ver Lor Reg in Central Ilshenar or Royal City in Ter Mur and buy "tutorial books" from the gargoyle alchemists or stonecrafters that reside there. The books can only be read by GM Miners.
Although the type of ore a vein gives will change over time, the percentage of coloured ore it'll give on average (of any colour) does not change. That is to say, if you clean out a Dull Copper node and get 70% coloured ore from it, you'll likely get the same percentage if it ever flips around to Valorite.