Mining

How to mine

Carry a pickaxe and use it on an ore vein, or just use the vein while the pickaxe is in your backpack. Each swing is one strike. A strike that fails says "You strike the rock. It looks more brittle.", and every failed strike makes the next one likelier: a vein starts at 20% and gains 1% per miss, whoever made it. A successful strike gives you the ore and the vein is gone. You can swing once a second.

Your first pickaxe is a copper pickaxe, sold for 5,000 gold by general stores such as Gorn, Lubo and Bertha. An ordinary pick won't mine.

Better pickaxes don't raise your success chance. They give a chance of one extra ore on each success, and the best one in your backpack counts:

The Mining skill

Mining starts at level 10 and gains one try per strike, at the server's skill rate. It levels at the same pace as Fishing. No vein needs a minimum level today.

Ores

Every success also has a small chance, 3% on copper up to 7% on runite, of a raw quartz on top: rose, cobalt, citrine, opal, obsidian, azure, verdant and more.

Where to find ore

Veins appear by themselves all over the world, a new wave every 20 seconds. The ground decides the ore. Many hunting areas have their own mix: Kazordoon's Dwarven Mines get richer with every floor down, and the Inquisition seals are the richest ground in the game.

Anywhere else, the more dangerous the monsters nearby, the better the ore:

Towns and boss rooms have no ore at all. The dungeons under towns do.

What ore is for

Smelt ore into bars at an anvil, under the Mining tab of the crafting window. Bars make the better pickaxes, so mining pays for its own tools.