Ideal Mining Characters:
- Race: Kobold due to the innate +2 mining rank bonus
- Class:
(A) Sorcerer or Wizard due to the ability to start with a familiar
(B) If you don't mind customizing the character, then can also set starting Wisdom to 18 and starting Strength to 18 (Custom Miner Class)
- Familiar: Armadillo due to its +3 mining rank bonus
- Feat: Skill Focus: Profession (Miner)
- Item: something with +Wisdom (they don't stack so just use the highest one)

Already have a save with full party, but still want some optimized miners:
(1) Go to town with an Adventurer's Guild that provides Substitute Character service
(2) Buy Substitute Character slots if you have not already (1000, 4000, and 9000 gold pieces for first three slots)
(3) Move old character into Substitute Character storage
(4) Recruit Kobold (doesn't matter the class; higher level is better although costs more), which tend to be in towns towards the West
(5) Go to town with any Adventurer's Guild
(6) Right click the icon of the new Kobold and select "Retrain", which will reset the character to level 1 and allow you to choose the class (and familiar)
(7) Go to character profile and select level up [+] icon to get all the levels back

Mining Party
- Main Miner and 2 Assistants with maxed Wisdom
- Less mining trips will be needed if the entire party has as much Strength as possible since this increases your carrying capacity
- Make sure team can handle the enemies occupying the floors using a combat build of your choice
- Thus, 3 Wisdom / Strength Miners + 3 Strength Combat-Centered Characters works best

As explained by the in-game tutorial, the Mining Skill can be trained at any of the towns with an Artisan's Guild. The Artisan's Guild provides training in Woodcutting, Mining, Blacksmithing, Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Magic Equipment Crafting, and Wondrous Item Crafting for a small fee of 200 Gold Pieces. The towns with Artisan's Guilds have the icon with the crossed tools over blue flag shown by their city name, which also happens to be the icon to click when visiting the town to access the menu for the training (seen in bottom left corner when inside town). As only three characters can participate in mining at the same time (1 miner and 2 assistants), there is not much benefit training miners beyond the three characters you picked to be miners.

The following towns have Artisan's Guilds:

• Bertbury (Mid-Southeast)
  
• Ironthorns (Northwest)
  
• San Ayrr (Central)
  
• Whitehawk City (Northeast)

Don't confuse the Artisan's Guild icon with the Adventurer's Guild icon (crossed swords over yellow flag shown below), which provides Disable Device Training, Open Lock Training, and/or Substitute Character.

Once you have trained your characters with the mining skill, you can choose the main miner and two assistants by opening the Skill Menu in the bottom right of screen (icon shown above). Next, select the party icon in the top left (usually the default selection):

Then, scroll down until you reach the party mining skill section (early game party example shown below). This window shows from left to right: Wisdom icon indicating that this stat gives a bonus modifier with increasing levels of Wisdom, Mining icon, effective party mining skill rank (16 current rank and 17 max rank in this example), the three party members assigned in the small boxes, and lastly the character with the highest mining skill level in the large box (does not indicate the main miner).

Finally, to select which characters will be used for mining, select the Skill Users Icon in the bottom left after selecting the Party Mining Skill as above. The first character you select will be the main miner (single fist) and the next two will be the assistants (green hands shaking).

Hovering over the party mining skill section provides even more information that is especially useful when planning an optimized mining build:

• Profession Type: Miner
  
• Skill Rank: current rank / max rank
  
• Breakdown of how that skill rank was calculated: Proficiency Rank (ranks already achieved via proficiency points, which are given while mining), Assigned Rank (term for max skill rank), Wisdom Modifier (boost in rank due to main miner's Wisdom level), and lastly additional bonuses applied (Feat, Race, Familiar)
  
• Proficiency Points: current progress towards achieving next proficiency rank
  
• Key Ability (again just showing which stat boosts this skill): Wisdom
  
• Class Skill (shows which character classes can learn this skill): Cleric, Wizard, Sorcerer, Rogue, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Druid, and Bard
  
• Special: Tutor (need to learn skill from Artisan's Guild), Trained Only (can't mine without having at least skill rank 1), and 3 maximum combining users (1 main miner and 2 supports)
  
• Can get +3 Mining Rank by selecting the Feat "Skill Focus: Profession (Miner)"
  
• Can get +2 Mining Rank if character race is Kobold
  
• Can get +3 Mining Rank if familiar is Armadillo

For comparison, here is a Kobold with 0 proficiency (compare with the higher lever non-optimized character above with 9 proficiency ranks). Higher mining rank at the start = more successful mining = more proficiency experience = easier to hit max rank and more productive mining:

And here is a miner that can mine everything in game at 100% success rate with the help of two similarly leveled miners:

There are two main ways to increase max mining skill: proficiency based (only increase max level) and non-proficiency based (immediately increase effective mining skill level).

Proficiency Based Mining Skill Bonus:

• +3 Bonus Initial Skill Point Assignment
  
• +1 Skill Point Assignment Per Character Level
  
• i.e. +4 at level 1, +5 at level 2, +6 at level 3, etc

Note: Proficiency gains are permanent in that you will not have to re-earn them. However, if max proficiency drops due to skill reset, then that proficiency will not be used until the max is raised again.

Non-Proficiency Based Mining Skill Bonuses:

• + Mining Rank based on Wisdom Level
  
• +3 Mining Rank by selecting the Feat "Skill Focus: Profession (Miner)"
  
• +2 Mining Rank if character race is Kobold
  
• +3 Mining Rank if familiar is Armadillo

This is easiest done with whatever mining node you have close to 100% success rate with since you get significantly more proficiency from successful mining than unsuccessful. If using the optimized build above, then you should be able to jump straight into the highest rarity ores. This can be done either by going to floor 20+ of a regular mine or right away by spending a little extra to use the special metal mine as discussed later on in guide.

New Mining Feature (as of latest update): Use middle-mouse button to target all ores (of all types) in visible map at once.

Once you have your miners ready to go, you just need a place to mine. If you use the in-game mining tutorial, then you will have free access to that mine until the tutorial has been completed. After completing the tutorial, then you will need to pay a one-time fee to use each mining site. As a side-note, it is not worth purchasing the wood areas as they are small single level areas with less total wood than the mining area. While mines of course have ores, they also have a significant amount of wood throughout. Furthermore, instead of just one small level, mines have 80 levels with nice enemy battles at each level providing more than enough gold and rewards to make up for the higher purchase price. Every 5 levels there is an extra exit to the surface which can be used to quick travel back to that mining depth. For coal if you delve deeper you just have higher chances for getting more coal each time you mine. For ores you not only get more chances for extra ores from each node, but also get find higher rarity nodes. Also, every mine you purchase gets more expensive. So I recommend only buying one of each of the following (preferably close to a town with a bank for depositing all the drops):

• Regular Mine (dig at least the first 20 floors to get easy access to all the lower ore tiers)
  
• Special Metal Mine (get rarest nodes right away with easy combat between floors)
  
• Coal Mine (will need lots of coal for crafting)
  
• Iron Mine (will need lots of iron for crafting training)
  
• Stone Mine (again first 20 floors for all early nodes)
  
• Precious Stone Mine (for easy access to later nodes).

Regular Mine: Main Ore Nodes by Depth

• Floors 1-5: Copper, Tin
  
• Floors 6-10: Iron
  
• Floors 11-15: Silver
  
• Floors 16-20: Gold
  
• Floors 21-80: Mithral, Cold Iron Ore, Adamantine

Stone Quarry: Main Nodes by Depth

• Floors 1-5: Sandstone
  
• Floors 6-10: Slate
  
• Floors 11-15: Limestone
  
• Floors 16-20: Marble
  
• Floors 21-25: Granite
  
• Floors 26-30: Basalt
  
• Floors 31-80: Quartzite

Note: There are also a bunch of coal nodes, stone nodes (Sandstone, Limestone, Slate, Granite, etc), and ore nodes of other rarities (higher/lower) spread throughout at a much lower frequency than the main ore nodes. Platinum is also always a rare ore and even in deep mines or special mines it remains rare. It seems to have a similar rarity to that of Darkwood when woodcutting. If you want to mine a specific type, then I recommend clearing out the lowest level and then working your way up to avoid unnecessary battles when returning to the mine after it has been reoccupied by enemies. For example, for gold it is more efficient to clear out floor 20 when returning and go 20 -> 19 -> 18 -> 17 -> 16 instead of starting at 16 and battling enemies in between every floor (after the first time of course).

New Feature: Mining location enemies now respawn every single reset cycle.

While it may seem like a lot to have all the floor enemies respawn if you just want to focus on mining, it turns out that if you defeat the lowest level then all the enemies above will flee. So the minimum battles that need to be completed to make the entire mine usable again is two: one surface battle and one at the deepest level. Again, I highly recommend going as deep as possible as enemies drop much better gear the further in you go.

Before clearing out mine:


After clearing out the final floor of the mine: Floor 80


At Floor 80, the map is just a regular map without stairs down:

For each node there is a threshold called "DC" that must be reached in order to successfully mine the node. Then it adds the following: [dice roll 1-20 + main miner's mining rank + 0-4 assists (+2 for each assist: [dice roll 1-20 + assist miner's mining rank] vs [DC - 5])] vs [DC]. For example using Quartzite with DC 35, Main Miner with Mining Level 23, and 2x Assist Miners with Mining Level 21:

• Aid Check 1: [dice roll 1-20 + 21] vs 30 = 22-41 vs 30 (55% chance for +2)
  
• Aid Check 2: [dice roll 1-20 + 21] vs 30 = 22-41 vs 30 (55% chance for +2)
  
• Mining: [dice roll 1-20 + 23 + 0-4 Aid] vs 35 = (57% chance of success)

Thus, once your effective Mining Skill Level of Aids is as high as the mining node DC - 5 (30 in the above example), then each of the Aids will give +2 to the main miner's effective mining skill 100% of the time, essentially increasing the main miner's Mining Skill by 4. This means that to have 100% chance of success for the node with the highest DC in game (Quartzite), the main miner only needs to have an effective Mining Skill Level of 30 when both Mining Assistants have Mining Skill Levels of 30. At this time, mining level 30 can be achieved around character level 11. Note that if you increase mining level 5 more levels (level 36), then there is no need to bring three miners anymore and you can mine everything with a single miner. Because of the way this system is setup, it can seem very slow with a low Mining Level, but once you get above the DC threshold everything becomes 100% and mining leveling is much faster given higher proficiency experience with mining success.

New Feature: more ore dropped per node with higher Mining Skill Level. Here is an example to help illustrate. At level 1 Mining Skill Level, the early nodes drop only 1 ore per node. By level 36 Mining Skill Level, those same nodes drop 6-8 ore per node.

Metals:

Copper: DC 12


Iron: DC 15


Tin: DC 15


Silver: DC 20


Gold: DC 25


Cold Iron: DC 25


Mithral: DC 25


Adamantine: DC 25


Platinum: DC 30


Stones:

Sandstone: DC 12


Slate: DC 15


Limestone: DC 18


Marble: DC 20


Granite: DC 25


Basalt: DC 30


Quartzite: DC 35


Coal:

Coal: DC 15

Every time ore or stone is mined, there is a chance to get a gemstone rare drop. The gemstones are divided up into tiers with each tier able to be dropped by the nodes corresponding to that tier.

Tier 1: Common (white)
Ores: Copper, Iron
Stones: Sandstone, Slate, Limestone
Best Mining Spots: Floors 1-10 Regular Mine and Floors 1-10 Stone Quarry
Gemstones: Azurite, Banded Agate, Blue Quartz, Eye Agate, Freshwater (Irregular) Pearl, Hematite, Lapis Lazuli, Malachite, Moss Agate, Obsidian, Rhodochrosite, Tiger Eye













Tier 2: Magic (blue)
Ores: Tin, Silver
Stones: Marble
Best Mining Spots: Floors 11-15 Regular Mine
Gemstones: Bloodstone, Carnelian, Chalcedony, Chrysoprase, Citrine, Iolite, Jasper, Moonstone, Onyx, Rock Crystal, Rose Quartz, Sard, Sardonyx, Smoky Quartz, Star Rose Quartz, Zircon

















Tier 3: Uncommon (purple)
Stones: Granite, Basalt, Quartzite
Best Mining Spot: Precious Stones Quarry or Floor 20-80 Stone Quarry
Gemstones: Amber, Amethyst, Brown-Green Garnet, Coral, Crysoberyl, Deep Green Spinel, Golden Pearl, Jade, Jet, Pink Pearl, Red Garnet, Red Spinel, Red-Brown Spinel, Silver Pearl, Tourmaline, White Pearl

















Tier 4: Rare (yellow)
Ores: Gold
Best Mining Spot: Floor 16-20 Regular Mine
Gemstones: Alexandrite, Aquamarine, Black Pearl, Deep Blue Spinel, Yellow Topaz, Violet Garnet







Tier 5: Epic (orange)
Ores: Cold Iron, Mithril, Adamantine
Best Mining Spot: Rare Metals Mine or Floor 20-80 Regular Mine
Gemstones: Black Opal, Black Star Sapphire, Blue Sapphire, Blue Star Sapphire, Emerald, Fiery Yellow Corundum, Fire Opal, Rich Purple Corundum, Star Ruby, Water Opal, White Opal












Tier 6: Legend (red-orange)
Ores: Platinum
Best Mining Spot: No perfect mining spot as this ore is always a rare ore, although it can be found in Rare Metals Mine or Floor 20-80 Regular Mine (about 2 nodes per floor)
Gemstones: Blue Diamond, Blue White Diamond, Brown Diamond, Canary Diamond, Clearest Bright Green Emerald, Jacinth, Pink Diamond

Aside from just being fun to mine through numerous floors, level up mining, and collect rare drops, there are a number of benefits to mining. Once mining is all setup with a high mining level and great mining spots unlocked/explored, it is possible to collect large amounts of crafting materials very quickly. Leveling up crafting uses up a significant amount of resources and this will make leveling up your crafting skill much easier (next guide will likely be on crafting). While resources don't sell for much since things sell for 20% of their value, you can still get some quick profit once mining is efficient and high level. Eventually every mining node will have 100% success and give 1-10+ ore +/- 1-10+ gemstones, which means ore quickly piles up into the thousands which is perfect for crafting training. Furthermore, buying them from the store will often not get you the exact materials you need or in a sufficient quantity and for a higher price than they are worth. This leads to running around the map from shop to shop hunting for materials and then waiting for the next shop reset. Mining provides a fun way to collect tons of these materials quickly and directly. It also provides a nice series of battles with difficulty easy to set based on how deep in the mine you go instead of scaling to your level like much of the game, which allows for both harder and easier battles than you might see elsewhere depending on how deep you decide to dive.

Lastly, while I personally find mining/crafting to be my favorite part of the entire game, I realize not everyone shares this opinion and some players just want to rush the mining content to focus on combat. By creating optimized miners as above, you will be able to start at 100% success rate for most of what you will be mining which allows for much faster gathering and less time spent mining. Also, with the new middle mouse click to mine everything in the window + faster mining speed after the last update, it really doesn't take long to clear out a mining floor and focus on the combat in between floors. The last update also made it such that the enemies occupying the mines respawn, which means most of the time mining will be spent on the combat in between floors. If you go deep enough in the mines, the battles will quickly get more challenging which means better loot as well. For those of you that share my enjoyment of the gathering/crafting system of this game, I hope this guide will help you to make the most of this skill.

Other Guides in Series:

• Complete Guide to Crafting
  
• Complete Guide to Woodcutting
  
• Complete Guide to Wholesale Trading