Are you level 60 and find that you have no money?
Is herbalism getting you down?
Do you like shiney object?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this is the guide for you! I just recently dropped herbalism and picked up mining because I've been level 60 since the beginning of January and still don't have my epic mount! (Ok ok, truth is I quit when I hit 60 and I just started w/my new crew Nocturnal a few weeks ago, but hey). Anyway, this is a quick and dirty guide that should help you get 300 mining skill in about.. ohhh.. less than a day. While this is not a complete guide on mining, it should at least help you level up your skill quickly. FOr a more complete (and incredibly out of date guide), check out the mining guide posted on the WoW forums.

Compiled: June 1st, 2005

BEGINNING POINTERS:
- First thing's first. Go to curse-gaming.com and download "Gatherer." It's a prog that will mark all the veins (and herb spots) that you use. GO NOW!.... GO!
- Be persistant: You won't get jack for copper/tin/iron on the AH, so don't bother listing it... just smelt your 187913 bars and go watch TV while you wait. Once you hit mith, you'll be happy
- This guide should work for either side (especially when I research Loch Modan more). I realize that the first part I list is in the barrens.. but if you're level 60 and on the alliance side, you really shouldn't be worrying about level 12s. Notably because if you're level 60 and alliance, you're probably nancy boy paladin.
- Be happy if the veins on your route are not what they should be, cuz that probably means they are silver/gold/truesilver instead, which is a little harder to mine, but will almost garauntee a skillup, which is a relief when you are in the green of a phase before the next level of ore.
- When you get to the iron/mithril phases, start saving the other materials! A stack of the iron stones usually go for about 60-75 on the AH (oddly enough, more valuable than the iron it seemed). The stone from the Mith actually sells for about a gold and a half per stack.
- As I've become a web developer since I created this site, and I don't feel like re-doing the whole thing to make a retarded WoW guide more appealing, this is a disclaimer to please NOT judge my skills based on this site ;P.

ZONE GUIDE:

Copper/Tin

If you're horde, head right out of Orgrimar after you pick up mining and there should be copper mines all over Durotar. Work your way down to The Barrens, and then stay along the right side, down by Dustwallow. You'll probably notice a few tin mines by then. For more Tin mines, make sure you check the Thorn hill fort thingies. They show up as brambles on the map. Also, you'll usually find some Tin at the bottom of each of those pools in the 4 retarded oasisesees that you had to "explore" for early XRoads quests. As you work on more Tin w/out worrying about copper, keep more to the south around those brambly things. Also note that these early stages are the only ones that you can really level at all off smelting. It's your personal choice as to whether or not you want to head back to Org every 20-40 ore to smelt until you go grey in skill. As a mage it's easy, but other classes might find it quicker to just keep perpetuating the rotations. I marked the copper route in... copper... and the Tin route in a silvery color. Hot spots (the bramble things) are marked in red).

Special Ore/Iron

The worst part about leveling mining is when you are getting out of the Tin phase before the iron phase. It's hard to find a large quantity of Tin, and it becomes tedious farming it. Fortunately, there are 2 special mines that usually have several pockets of ore that not only work between tin and iron, but also a bit into the iron phase. I don't remember the exact skill needed, but I think it was around 95ish to start farming this new stuff. Your new mining spot is Arathi/Wetlands. I really only went to wetlands for the special cave, but theres a bit of tin here and there, mostly iron, and not much of it at that. I marked in a silver/greyish color the iron route, and put a yellow fluer de li thing by each of the special mines. As usual, red marks hot spots. I didn't bother marking a path in wetlands, but there are a few spots that I pointed out. As you can see, in Arathi you have a few choices. You can either head down to the other special cave after the ogre caves (recommended if still coming out of the Tin phase), or you can skip wetlands and head to the other ogre cave, where you can either start at the far top left, or closer toward the town to get back to the hot spots quicker. The choice is yours.

Mithril

Here's one of the funnest parts for me. You have to mine a royal crapload of mithril (bout as much as you did iron) in order to get up to the small Throium veins. This is fine, because Mith sells for almost as much as Thorium does on the AH. It's also fine because there's an amazing route through the Badlands where you can garauntee to hit several mines everytime (as long as no one else is farming). Towards the North of the Badlands, the pickings are slimmer, especially because it is more traversed, but you'll still find mith/iron around there. Generally, mines found more towards the middle of the map (away from the edges) will be iron. Just a heads up. I marked the ironish veins in the silver and the Mithril route in a lightly tainted piss color. There's only one real hotspot on this map, and I marked that with a big dot, but I also put dots in places that you should almost always find a vein.

Small Thorium/Rich Thorium Run

*Sigh*... I didn't want to give this one up, cuz that means that I'm probably going to be facing a lot of competition now, but that already happens anyway, so who cares. I'll let you guys in on the Rich Thorium run that I do, told to me by some friends in the guild. There are 2 hot spots, and they are right by each other. One of them is in a cave which is usually pretty hot in terms of PvP, but can weild several veins to mine from (or none, if someone got to it before you). The other thing to look at is that, at this level, EVERYTHING agros on you... which is annoying as hell. In the northern parts, up by the cats, it's especially annoying because most of the mobs are invisible, and you will run into them. Also, I'm not going to mark it, but in the far south, by all the lvl 60 elite demons, there are usually several Rich Thorium veins. If you want, go after them, but be forewarned, they won't come easy. There are also generally a few Rich veins by the 60 elite giants (right above the demons), but you run into the same problem, and you don't yeild as much as from the demon spot. other than the mobs and increased pvp, this place is pretty ideal to make some money. Just follow the route outlined in silvery/photoshop filtered crap and you'll be rich in no time. Also, this zone still has Mith around, on the western part not in the route, and towards the middle inside the route, but if you want to keep farming Mith, I would highly recomment that you stay in badlands, as you will get much more there.

Disclaimer: I suck at spelling. I probably spelled something(s) wrong. As a matter of fact, I would be in complete utter shock if there were no errors in this, but like all of my thesisisess and papers that I turn in, I haven't read anything that I wrote to check for errors, and I'm not going to. If you would like to report errors to me, that's cool, my email's at the bottom of the page - if not, that's completely fine as well. Just don't send an email bitching at me, cuz I really could care less if you are taking for granted a page that pretty much holds your hand while you level your mining in a day. To everyone else, hope this guide helped, I'll prolly make a post or something for comments like I did on my grinding guide, but if you really want to reach me, drop me a line

Cheers and tah tah,
- Phrozt of Nocturnal; Stormscale, hordeside.