Mining Guide for The War Within

Mining allows you to mine ore veins found all across The War Within zones. The normal and rare ores mined in this fashion can then be further processed through Mining's specializations, or directly sold to players with Engineering, Jewelcrafting, or Blacksmithing.

You will also be able to gather rare reagents used by most professions, such as Null Stone, Writhing Sample, and Crystalline Powder.

Earthen will be able to gather more ore with their Hyper Productive racial, making them a great option for the current mining meta.

Dracthyr mobility abilities and +2% baseline Perception racial are a decent alternative, especially for mining as Null Stone is the most valuable of the rare gathering reagents.

The final contender are Highmountain Druid, especially when combined with Druid instant cast flying with Travel Form, as their Pride of Ironhorn grants a massive 25% increase in gathering speed and +5 mining skill, which will help you get more valuable Rank 3 ores when gathering!

Mining can make great use of all three stats, but you might want to focus on specific stats for different playstyles. We go into detail with Mining stats and the gear you can use to boost them in the specialized guide below:

You can gather three base ore types: Bismuth, Ironclaw Ore, and Aqirite, with Finesse procs increasing the amount mined.

Null Stone, Writhing Sample, and Crystalline Powder can also be gathered occasionally from Perception procs and related special nodes.

The base types can be found as special nodes: Seam, Rich, EZ-Mine, Webbed, Weeping, Camouflaged, and Crystallized. These will grant you extra materials, but also have annoying or dangerous properties.

The EZ-Mine, for example, is loaded with explosives and will try to blow you up with swirlies that deal high damage and knockback once you go close, but you can mitigate this with the talent tree, reducing the damage taken from getting hit and mining the nodes much faster.

You will also be able to learn and use Overload Empowered Deposit after mining your first special node, and while its effect differs from node to node, it will give you an extra knowledge point for the first time you do it on a specific deposit type and a larger or more specific resource yield.

Mining is easy to level, as all you need to do is mine from the many deposits found all around the world. The most common regular deposits will only give you skill up to 40 or so, but special nodes will continue giving skill ups until later, with Ironclaw Ore and Aqirite specials going all the way to 100.

As you mine nodes you will also occasionally loot items that can increase your knowledge, up to a weekly maximum tracked on your profession journal.

You will be able to track all weekly and one-time sources of profession knowledge with Myu's Knowledge Points Tracker, a very helpful Weak Aura!

There are multiple treasures around Khaz Algar that you can loot for up to 24 extra knowledge. You can find them all easily in-game with the aforementioned Weak Aura or the Rarescanner addon, which will put up small treasure icons with a hammer underneath at their map location, as exemplified below.

Mining Specializations dictate what ores you are proficient at mining, and can even let you mine while mounted! In fact, that feature is so strong that we would recommend you to invest 60 points into Mining Fundamentals to begin with, before branching out to any of our suggested builds below.

After investing into mounted mining you should have all or almost all of the specializations unlocked as you mined around The War Within zones. Further investment into the Mining Fundamentals tree is discouraged as Rich and Seam deposits are not that common or profitable.

Any of the three base ores can be refined for profit, and because it will be much harder to get high Quality ores in The War Within, investing into maximum skill when mining the most common, yet also most profitable, Bismuth ore through the Plethora of Ore tree is a good idea, especially as doing so will also make it more likely to randomly get Null Stones while at it!

Investing into mining the other base ore deposits is also recommended, before finishing with Mastering the Mysterious, which grants large bonuses to Overload Empowered Deposit and your skill at mining special nodes, but also requires a massive amount of talent point investment.

Mining makes gold by farming ores in The War Within zones, with rarer ores being looted based on your Perception stat.

As ores are a common ingredient for Engineering, Jewelcrafting, and Blacksmithing, try to sell yours in raid days, when crafters are more likely to be looking to create and sell their wares. The Undermine Exchange can also help you understand the price fluctuation for ores in your server, and which ores are best to farm at any given moment.

We have a specialized guide for The War Within goldmaking below, which contains a goldmaking tier list and goes deeper into techniques and habits for successful gold making, as well as websites and addons that can help you on your journey!