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.

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).

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 mining skill, as follows:

You can only recycle metal types you can mine. It is possible, if your Blacksmithy skill is higher than your Mining skill, that you may not be able to recycle some metals that you are able to use in crafting.
The amount of ingots returned is calculated by the following formula: (ingots needed to make item) x (0.66% x Mining Skill), rounding fractions down after the multiplication is done. At 100.0 Mining 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 Mining 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.