1-450 Mining Guide | Mining Trainers

WoW Mining Guide

Mining – Useful Counterpart to Many Professions

If you aren’t sure which professions to take as your primary professions, then a good choice in any way would be Mining. Why? Mining is a great profession to have since it can accompany many other professions and it is even a need for them.

Mining is one of the biggest money makers in WoW. Even through leveling from 1-450 you will make a solid amount of cash. It takes a little bit more time to level up mining compared to the other gathering professions but its very powerful for making money.

Mining goes excellent with Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing and Engineering. You can also pair it with another gathering profession such as Herbalism or Skinning, where Mining won’t have a direct influence on another profession but it will surely raise your profit.

What do I need to start Mining?

For beginning Miners there are a few things that come as a necessity. First thing is a mining pick which you can purchase at any mining supplies vendor or trade goods vendor, found usually near your mining trainer.

The next thing you will need to find are the veins. Same as with Herbalism, with Mining you will get “Find Minerals” ability. When this ability is activated it will show veins as yellow dots on your minimap.

By making a good use of addons like The Gatherer, you can save the locations of all the veins you found. You will be able to store the locations of veins found by any of the guild/party member who has the same addon as you.

Veins are mostly found in the mountain areas or on the hills or rocks. Depending on the area the level when it comes to veins will be higher/lower. The starting areas of all classes usually have Copper and Tin veins.

 Check Out Dugi's Dailies Here!

What do I get with Mining?

With Mining you will get another ability called Smelting. With Smelting you can create valuable metal bars from the ore you received while mining. When you mine you will also get stones, motes, and sometimes even valuable gems.

Mining and other professions

As mentioned before, Mining is popular because it is a good counterpart to some professions. Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting and Engineering are in a great need of products you get with Mining.

However, the combination of two primary professions is your choice only but it is always nice to have two professions paired in order to level them up easier.

Herbalism and Mining are said to be the ultimate gold making professions since all you need to do is fly around and gather ores and herbs which are usually found close to each other.

What else does Mining offer?

Apart from being a very useful and moneymaking profession, Mining is also good for classes that need more hit points, like Warrior, Paladin or Death Knight tanks. With Mining you will get a special passive skill called Toughness.

This skill will give you additional amount of stamina while you are levelling Mining and when you hit 450 in Mining, Toughness will give you 50 stamina (around 500 hit points). Nice bonus for a tank, isn’t it?

Classes which decide to become miners usually are Warriors and Paladins. The new hero class – Death Knights also wear plate and can come in handy as tanks so they also frequently choose Mining as one of their primary professions.

Nevertheless, not only plate wearers decide to go for Mining. You can often see Warlocks, Mages and even Rogues and Druids mine since their choice of professions fell on Engineering or Jewelcrafting.

The guide below will show you how and where to level your mining up from 1-450. It is so much easier if you know where every node spawns so below we have a link to an add-on called Gatherer, and coupled with the WoW Head data feed it’s a huge time saver. (you can read more about this here and get the addon)

WoW Mining Guide 1-450

For Detailed Mining Maps Click Here

1-65 Copper Ore

Collect: Copper Ore.

Zones: Elwynn Forest, Tirisfal Glades, Dun Morogh, Azuremyst Isle, Durotar, Teldrassil. (basically any starting zone is plentiful of these nodes).

We prefer: Dun Morogh (Alliance)/ Durotar (Horde).

You don’t have to mine your way all the way to 65. Once you get 30-40 Copper Ore I go back to the nearest town and smelt it into copper. This will give you skill-ups and expedite your leveling.

65-125 Copper Ore/Tin Ore/Silver Smelting

This is the most difficult portion of the leveling. Tin ore is a pain to find. The BEST zone to find Tin Ore is Thousand Needles. If you are horde you should level it here for sure. If you are alliance, and you have easy access to Thousand Needles AND you want to head over there, then this will be the best place to find Tin Ore.

If you are alliance, you might have to switch zones a few times. I run cycles between Lakeshire, Loch Modan (where the ogres spawn) and southern Wetlands. There’s a cave with spiders in it. In that cave there is a special ore that spawns, and you can mine this for skill ups also.

Once you get to level 75 you can purchase Silver Ore and smelt it for skill ups. You can do this all the way to 125 if you get enough bars. ON MOST SERVERS silver ore and silver bars sell for the same price. So buy the silver ore, smelt it, and resell it. This will cost you nothing but AH fee’s. (Note: prices on your server may vary..check prices before doing this).

From 75-125 the quickest way to level is through smelting silver. If you don’t have enough gold to purchase silver bars, or you don’t want to spend the cash.. just continue farming Tin and Copper ore in these zones. Smelt the Tin and Copper ore into bars, and then smelt bronze bars. This will give you additional skill ups.

Collect: Copper Ore. Tin Ore, Silver Ore

Zones: Thousand Needles, Wetlands, Loch Modan, Lakeshire.

At level 125 get your Expert Mining skill from a trainer.

125-175 Iron Ore

Collect: Iron Ore, Gold Ore.

Zones: Badlands, Arathi Highlands, Hillsbrad Foothills, Thousand Needles.

Iron Ore is pretty plentiful, but to increase the speed I usually run cycles between Badlands, Arathi Highlands, and Hillsbrad Foothills. Once you get to level 155, you have the ability to smelt gold. The same thing applies just like it did with smelting silver.

If you can afford to purchase gold ore (or if you can find some) make sure you smelt it for extra skill ups. From level 155-175 it takes about 30-40 Gold Ore. This will give you an idea on how much to purchase.

175-230 Mithril Ore

Collect: Mithril Ore

Zones: Badlands, Arathi Highlands, The Hinterlands, Tanaris

Whether I’m horde or alliance I still like to run cycles between Badlands, Arathi, and if needed The Hinterlands. Mithril Ore is really plentiful but it is farmed regularly by gold farmers. So you may have a little bit of competition. Just continue to switch zones.

230-300 True Silver/Mithril – Thorium

At level 230, you can learn how to smelt True Silver Ore into True Silver bars. Just like silver and gold ore, the same rules apply. If you want to, and you have the cash to purchase True Silver ore, then do so.

Make sure you stop by your Mining Trainer to get your next level of mining.

Here is where it’s great to have your gloves enchanted with +5 mining. You can smelt True Silver bars until level 245 (or continue mining Mithril from the ones) At level 245 you can begin farming Small Thorium Veins. **This is if you have the glove enchant. If you don’t, conitnue farming mithril ore.

To farm Small Thorium Veins, I switch between Burning Steppes, and Searing Gorge.

Once your maining reaches 250 you will want to alternate between mining small thorium veins and smelting the Thorium Ore into Throium bars. You will do this until 270, or 275 (depending if you have the gloves enchant).

At level 275 you can finally farm Rich Thorium Veins. I do most of this farming in Burning Steppes, Searing Gorge, and Eastern/Western Plaguelands. Continue to farm Thorium veins until level 300.

Smelt: True Silver Ore

Collect: Small Thorium, Rich Thorium

Zones: Burning Steppes, Searing Gorge, Eastern Plaguelands, Western Plaguelands

300-325 Fel Iron Ore

Head to the outands and get your next Mining Skill. Collect Fel Iron Ore in the Hellfire Penninsula

Collect: Fel Iron Ore

Zones: Hellfire Penninsula

325-350+ Adamantite Ore

Collect: Adamantite Ore

Zones: Nagrand

Note: You don’t have to stick solely to farming these Adamantite Ore. Or you can also head back to Hellfire and farm Fel Iron Ore, if you can’t find enough nodes in Nagrand. It’s usually very plentiful but if your server is highly populated you may have trouble finding spawns. Nagrand is a big farming zone.

350-400 Cobalt Ore

Make sure you stop at your Northrend trainer and learn your next Mining level of training.

Collect: Cobalt Ore

Zones: Borean Tundra

Borean tundra is the easiest place to farm Cobalt Ore. There wont be many spawns because there are frequent levelers that snatch it up, but it usually respawns fairly quick. Just continue to run cycles around the perimeter of this zone.

400-450 Saronite Ore

Collect: Saronite Ore.

Zones: Sholazar Basin

This is your last swing and you want to get familiar with this zone. This is where I do most of my Saronite Ore farming. With that being said it might be more difficult for you to max out your mining (since you will be competing with other crafters and farmers collecting this ore). But at this level, you can farm almost every ore in the game. So your mission is complete!

WoW Mining Trainer
Courtesy WoWWiki.com

A mining trainer is an NPC that offers miners the opportunity to train and learn recipes. Trainers in the first section can train any of the mining levels up to a skill level of 300. Master mining trainers can train the Master mining level and recipies between skill levels 300 and 375. Grand Master mining trainers can train the Grand Master mining level and recipes between skill levels 375 and 450.