MONEY FROM INTERMEDIATE MINING (AND BLACKSMITHING)
This is a guide for leveling in mining (and blacksmithing) in order to get to the point where you can make some serious gold in the game. Let me just start off by saying that there are many ways to make gold from the mining and/or blacksmithing profession and you can certainly use this as a starting point for developing other methods. However, this guide will focus on getting you to mining level 125 and blacksmithing level 75. This guide will assume that you keep up with the training from the respective trainer to obtain the abilities discussed below.
MINING BACKGROUND
Mining consist of finding metal veins, collecting ore, and then smelting that ore into bars. A miner gets the ability to smelt and/or mine various metals at various levels. You can smelt the following metals at the following levels:
Mining Level 1: Copper
Mining Level 65: Tin
Mining Level 65: Bronze (1 bronze bar = 1 copper bar + 1 tin bar)
Mining Level 75: Silver
Mining Level 125: Iron
Mining Level 155: gold
Mining Level 165: Steel (1 steel bar = 1 iron bar + 1 coal)
Mining Level 175: Mithril
All of the above metals will produce one bar of the metal for one piece of ore when smelted. You can frequently get 4-5 pieces of ore from a single vein. There are other metals (truesilver and thorium) that can make you a TON of money, but I haven’t reached those levels yet so I will wait until I can develop a strategy for them before updating this guide.
Along with the metal, you also get various stones and gems from the veins, shown below:
- Copper veins: Rough Stones, Malachite, Shadowgem, Tigerseye
- Tin Veins: Coarse Stones, Jade, Lesser Moonstone, Moss Agate, Shadowgem
- Silver Vein: Lesser Moonstone, Moss Agate, Shadowgem
- Iron Veins: Heavy Stones, Aquamarine, Citrine, Jade, Lesser Moonstone
- gold Veins: Jade, Lesser Moonstone
- Mithril Veins: Solid Stone
So, as you can see, you will be collecting a lot of “stuff” from mining. The only thing directly useable by you is the ore as a miner. Everything else is used by blacksmiths and some other professions in some cases. Therefore, I chose to also become a blacksmith. As you will see, there is definitely money making synergy, even if you don’t you’re your blacksmithing products to other players.
MINING STRATEGY
First, as you will see above, you will only be able to mine and smelt copper until level 65. Luckily, you will get mining xp from both mining AND smelting for most, if not all, of this time. Therefore, clear out as much space as you can in your inventory and go to a lower level area. Just hunt around the foot hills for copper veins and collect ore, stones and gems until your inventory is full. I would go to the easiest area you can find so you don’t have to worry about mobs that much. For instance, see here for a map of copper veins in Elwynn Forest, near Stormwind. http://www.thottbot.com/?m=1108
Everything stacks so you will have a lot of material when you are full. In my inventory, I typically have 40 open slots (with my backpack full of other stuff and four 10 slot bags open. Theoretically you can fill each slot of the 40 with ore, stones and gems. If you do this, when you are done, you will probably have something like 3 slots of gems, 17 slots of ore and 20 slots of rough stone. It all depends on the drop rate of stone, but this is probably about right as the stone drops 2-3 sometimes and the ore typically drops one at a time. Your mileage may vary. You should note that, when smelting you will need at least one slot open for the bars to go into – as you use up the ore, it will open up another slot.
Once you are done, go to your local forge and just smelt away to make copper bars. At this point, without blacksmithing, just sell the bars, stone, gems either at auction or at vendor and rinse and repeat. The bars only sell for 10 copper and the stone only sells for 2 copper each.
BETTER STRATEGY: SYNERGY WITH BLACKSMITHING
Here’s where you can begin to see the synergy that blacksmithing can add. First, unless you really need the money from selling the gems, I would suggest banking them – they sell for good money to a vendor, typically, but you will definitely need them for armor and weapons later. Ore and stones are easy to get, gems are not since the drop rate is somewhat low. I would also save a good amount of the rough stone since blacksmiths will be able to make rough grinding stones at level 25, which are necessary for some blacksmithing plans. However, this is up to you. At level 25, making rough grinding stones is an excellent way to level.
And here is a key point: as a blacksmith, you should only make things that don’t use a lot of resources and, at the same time, are the highest difficulty available (orange, yellow, green is the order of difficulty). If you run out of orange, yellow is OK, but you won’t level as quickly. Green is very inefficient. Eventually things will “grey” out and won’t give you xp. Note that you will always get one level for each thing you make that is orange in difficulty, regardless how many resources it requires. Therefore, for leveling it don’t use gems to make something when you could get the same level by just using copper.
Therefore, I suggest you use the copper bars as a blacksmith to make copper chain pants ( see http://www.thottbot.com/?i=272 ). You can make copper chain pants from level 1 and they only require 4 copper bars. So, now for the synergy: copper chain pants sell to vendors for 67 copper – so with a little more effort, you can make 67 copper instead of 40 copper from just selling the four bars (a 68% profit difference). Keep making these pants out of copper bars until you reach level 25. I don’t remember how many pants it takes to get to level 25, but assuming it is about 35 or so, that would be about 140 iron ore, or 7 stacks.
You will get other recipes but all of them require additional resources. The only thing I would consider is making copper boots at level 20. These require 8 copper bars and no other resources. However, you will lose profit by making them – 8 copper bars would sell for 80 copper to a vendor and the boots only sell for 49 copper. However, they will also give you more xp than the pants at level 20. This minimal loss is enough to get you to level 25, which is where you can make rough grinding stones. Rough grinding stones sell to a vendor for 5 copper, while the rough stones only sell for 2 copper (a 150% profit difference). They will also give you good xp for a while, so just make these until they turn yellow in difficulty.
Note that the above examples assume you will sell the items to a vendor. The pants and boots should definitely go to a vendor since it is not worth selling them at auction. However, the rough grinding stones are in demand because they are required as blacksmithing components. Therefore, you may find it desirable to sell them on auction depending on the market at your server. I don’t have the specifics, but they will almost certainly sell for a decent amount above the vendor. It all depends on how much time you want to take setting up the auctions. I simply sold some to a vendor and kept some for myself.
Now things become a little fuzzy because there are so many options. But here is what I would suggest you use to level:
- Blacksmithing Level 35: Copper Chain Belt – 6 copper bars
- Blacksmithing Level 40: Runed Copper Gauntlets – 8 copper bars, 2 rough grinding stones
- Blacksmithing Level 45: Runed Copper Pants – 8 copper bars, 2 fine thread (buy from tailor vendor), 2 rough grinding stones
Some of this might be inefficient in terms of gaining xp because the difficulty of the item drops eventually, but these are the lowest cost items in terms of resources. Feel free to vary on what you use to level, but try to keep your costs down as much as possible.
At mining level 65, you get the ability to mine tin, which also drops coarse stones. Once again save the gems and coarse stones. After this level of mining is reached, use the following to level in blacksmithing:
Blacksmithing Level 65: Coarse Sharpening Stone – 1 coarse stone
Blacksmithing Level 75: Coarse Grinding Stone – 2 coarse stones
END GOAL OF THIS guide: MINING LEVEL 125, BLACKSMITHING LEVEL 75:
At level 75 in blacksmithing, you get the ability to make Coarse Grinding Stones. As far as mining goes, continue to mine whatever will give you xp (tin, silver, gold, etc). At level 125 in mining, you get the ability to mine/smelt iron. This is where you can make some serious money. Eventually copper and tin will grey out, as will smelting entirely. However, you will still get xp from mining silver, gold and, the goal of this guide in mining: Iron., which you will obtain at level 125 in mining.
And here, finally is where the cash really starts rolling in. Iron bars on my server sell for a buyout of 2 gold per stack and there is not much supply for sale out there. Last night there was one auction with a buyout of 1 gold 75 silver, 4 auctions with a buy out of 2 gold and 1 auction with a buyout of 7 gold (what WAS he thinking lol). Thus, there were only 6 auctions for Iron Bars. Given that I had 8 stacks of 20 iron bars that I had accumulated, I could have made a killing. But I only sold one at 1 gold 75 silver (just for kicks) and it sold very quickly. Therefore, if you are interested in easy money, just mine iron, smelt the bars and sell them at auction. No cost to you at all, other than time!
If you were to just find iron veins and throw away everything but the ore (bad idea because other things are very valuable also), you could fill up each slot in your inventory with 20 ore/bars. Assuming you spent enough time to fill up 40 slots in inventory, at 2 gold per stack this could theoretically net you 80 gold. That’s a lot of mining, but it’s easy money if you can put up with the grind.
Coarse grinding stones can also be sold for a good profit. While I haven’t sold any yet, there are NONE at the auction house right now and I hear people in ironforge frequently requesting them. I have asked myself, just see what the response will be, but no one ever had any for sale. Therefore, this is an untapped market. I will put up an auction tonight for coarse grinding stones and let you know how it goes.
The same strategy above can be extrapolated to heavy stone, mithril (which sells for 5 gold a stack) and other materials. But I have found that iron (iron ore) and tin (coarse stones) are the most plentiful veins in the game after copper. Therefore, I think this is sweet spot for money making.
