Mining

Main / Skills / Mining

Description

A Miner at Work

Mining is the skill of excavating rock shards and ore veins.

Method

There are several "modes" of mining, depending on where and what you mine. The method is much the same for all of them: Activate a pickaxe, right-click the place to mine and select Mining -> (action). Mining speed is determined by mining skill, pickaxe quality, pickaxe skill and the Wind of Ages cast, ordered from greatest effect to least.

Because Wurm is not a true 3D world, the cave layer is essentially a second world beneath the surface. It is possible to mine upwards and downwards with a few limitations.

• Mining straight mines at zero slope. Mining upward or downward mines at a slope of 20 in that direction. From this, a set of variants is applied based on skill which ultimately determines the final slope of the tile. This skill-based variance set is such that: <50 skill is +/- 3, 50-70 is +/- 2, 70-90 is +/- 1, 90+ is 0. Only the final action that breaks the wall (upward, downward, or straight) determines the direction mined.
• You may not mine upward out of rock and into the dirt that is covering it.
• You can mine downward until you reach 25 dirts below the water table.
• It is not possible to have one tunnel pass under or over another without forming a vertical shaft. Each tile is essentially a pillar, so if two tunnels cross at different elevations they create a shaft going from the upper tunnel to the lower tunnel.

Read More: Wind of Ages | Quality | Pickaxe

Opening a mine

The first step is to make a mine entrance on the surface which may be done on any cliff or rock tile.

The slope of the tile borders around the left and right of the required entrance are an important factor, too shallow of an opening and the entrance would be too steep to easily walk in and out of. The slope on both sides should ideally be greater than 10 each to ensure that the entrance is easy to navigate. Poor tunnel slopes can be fixed, however, it is very difficult.

Activate a pickaxe and right click the rock or cliff, select Mining > Tunnel.

Each tunneling action has a chance to create a rock shard. After a number of rock shards are created, usually 9, the message You will soon create an entrance will appear. A rock shard or two later, and an entrance will be created.

• Tunnels can not be opened if the north-west corner is more than 4 dirts below water level.
• You cannot surface mine to correct an oddly shaped entrance once it is open. So you must make sure to have the tile in the exact shape you want it to be before you open the mine.
• The maximum height of a tunnel entrance is 270 slope.
• The maximum height of an tunnel entrance is 90 slope if you plan to add a mine door.
• You may create a mine entrance up to 3 tiles wide.
  • To widen a tunnel, the tile you mine must only be connected to ONE open tunnel only
  • Mine doors cannot be placed on tunnel entrances that are 2 or more tiles wide.

Read More: Slope | Digging | Water Table

Tunnel excavation

Mining a cave wall inside of a mine will remove that tile of rock. It takes anywhere from 45-50 mining actions to produce the message The wall will break soon after which it takes an average of 5 actions to fully remove the tile.

Activate a pickaxe and right click the cave tile, select Mining > Mine.

• It is possible to mine up, down or flat but only the final action is taken into account. The resulting slope of up or down will be approximately 20.
• There are slight deviations in mine slopes (up to 3 "Slope") when a mine shaft progresses.This is based off Mining Skill.
  • skill less than 50, +-3
  • skill = 50, variance is +-2
  • skill = 70, variance is +-1
  • skill = 90+ no variance
• When connecting two mine shafts, the direction of the mining is irrelevant; one floor will connect to the other floor and ceilings will likewise connect.
• Each action will produce one rock shard.
• All items mined from the cave wall will appear in a pile on the ground on the tile you're stood; this often includes items such as salt and gems, all of which are found randomly.
• It is not possible to create an exit from the inside if there is dirt covering the planned exit, this must be fully uncovered and bare just as If you were to create an entrance from the outside.
  • If the outside tile if covered by dirt while trying to mine out the message The cave wall looks very unstable and dirt flows in. You would be buried alive

Read More: Gems | Salt

Ore mining

Ore is produced by mining on ore veins found inside of a mine. When an ore vein is depleted a tunnel is created the same as when mining rock. However, a vein can take several thousand actions to deplete, so it is advised to mine around ore veins for tunneling purposes. Shards may also be produced from marble and slate veins.

Activate a pickaxe and right click the ore or shard tile, select Mining > Mine.

• Each action will produce one ore or shard of the vein's type on the floor in a pile where you are standing.

Read More: Prospecting | Ore

Floor and ceiling mining

Mining the floor or ceiling of a cave does not create tunnels. Instead, it raises (for ceiling) or lowers (for floors) the cave. Note that, as with digging, these actions affect the closest corner of the tile and not the tile itself. A ceiling tile can be mined upward around 31 times before it is too high to reach (given that you haven't lowered the floor before you start). A floor tile can be mined down well past swimming depth to let boats such as Corbitas pass through. It is a good idea to keep a rowboat/sailboat close by for stamina regain when mining past the water level.

Activate a pickaxe and right click the floor or ceiling tile, select Mining > Mine.

• When removing a rock tile adjacent to a section of the mine which has been modified as such it's important to know that the floor of the new section connecting the modified corners will match up (providing you didn't mine up or down), but the ceiling will not. The ceiling will take the standard height.
• You can fix slopes with Concrete: one concrete will raise one corner, the equivalent of 1 dirt or 1 mine action.
• Mining ceilings for rock shards is much faster than mining on a wall tile, this can be used to your advantage when not wishing to extend a mine, but shards are required.
• When mining the ceiling to high you will receive the message You cannot reach the ceiling .
• When mining the floor too low, (with an already high ceiling, before hitting the water level) you will receive the message: Lowering the floor further would make the cavern unstable .
• When mining the floor you can create uneven surfaces thus make it hard to move around on. For the best access in a mine it is recommended not to mine the floor directly unless you have a plan for it. The actions "mine up" and "mine down" create a predictable slopes of 20 and are good if you want a sloped passage, although floor mining can be very useful if used in the right way.

Proceed with caution when adjusting the floors as mining is not easily reversed. When digging you can always drop the dirt and refill the hole - this is not possible when mining.

Read More: Mining Warnings | Concrete | Digging

Leveling

Standing on a flat cave tile will permit the leveling of an adjacent tile so that it will be at the same height. To see if a tile is flat simply activate a pickaxe and hover over the tile.

Activate a pickaxe and right click the cave floor tile, select Mining > Level.

• In order to raise any corners concrete must be held in the inventory.

Read More: Concrete

Surface mining

Surface mining is the action of shaping external rock or cliff faces to prepare an area for tunneling, adjusting terrain for other uses or simply for aesthetic reasons. To mine on the surface, all adjacent corners of the tile must be clear of dirt. When mining into water the maximum depth permitted is -25 from the water level. To mine the surface rock, first activate a pickaxe. While standing on the corner you wish to modify, right-click on the rock of cliff tile, select Mining > Mine. It may take one or more actions to lower a single dirt level of rock. Border slope depth may be seen with a pickaxe activated just as with a shovel.

Slope reduction: You mine some rock shards.

No reduction: You chip away at the rock.

Read more: Surface mining | Digging | Slope

Other information

Mine doors

You can limit access to your mine with the use of a mine door. Several types of mine doors are available. Remember that off-deed mine doors can be bashed by other players, so your mine is not entirely safe just because it has a mine door attached. A deed perimeter does not protect mine doors.

• If you wish to place a fence around a mine entrance this should be done before attaching a mine door.

Read More: Mine Doors

Dropshaft

Dropshafts are typically unfavorable in mines. They link two sections of a mine together which have a height difference of many dirts. They are not easily traversable. Vehicles and horses will not be able to move between the levels, and a player must climb to move between the two.

When a drop shaft is going to be created you will receive this message before the wall breaks: You hear falling rocks from the other side of the wall. A deep shaft will probably emerge.

Should a dropshaft be required, simply mine out the rock tile which separates two mines of different levels. Some players have created dropshafts to gain fast access to water or create short-cuts. There is no falling damage inside mines, so falling down these shafts is not going to injure the player.

Proceed with caution as these are very hard, often impossible, to modify once created.

Read More: Climbing | Damage

Cave-ins

Any excavated cave tile has a chance of caving in. When this occurs the tile will become either a rock or ore/shard vein and will need to be re-excavated. A recently collapsed rock tile may not require as many actions to re-open, however an ore tile will likely require many hundred, or even thousand, actions to remove.

Reinforcing a cave wall with a support beam will lower the chance of a cave-in on tiles surrounding that support. Once reinforced they may not be excavated, however a mayor may mine out the support should it reside on their deed. This would take approximately 50 actions just to remove the support. Ore veins are considered similar to reinforced walls for purposes of stability.

• The chance that a tile is replaced with a vein or shard other than rock is extremely low.
• You also have the option to manually cave in mine tiles using the spell Strongwall and using a shaker orb which can be bought from a trader for 5 silver and is a one time use item.

Read More: Support Beam | Strongwall | Shaker Orb

Skillgain

Characteristics gained

• Body / Body strength, Body stamina
• Mind / Mind logic
• Soul / Soul strength

Different ore veins have different difficulties. The easiest is mining plain rock, followed by iron veins and copper veins. The hardest are silver and gold. As with most things in Wurm, too low difficulty leads to reduced skill gain, while too high difficulty results in high failure rate. A failure results in a 1.00 QL by-product.

Items from successful mining have random QL, but the maximum possible is the lower of your mining skill and the tile's inherent quality. See prospecting for details about tile quality.

Note: In order to gain skill from a mining action the by product has to be anywhere in between 1.01 and 39.99 quality range.

Note: All tests were done with a 25ql pickaxe.

Optimal Skill Gain

Tile type	Skill
Rock, Zinc	1-25
Iron, Rock salt	25-35
Tin	35-50
Copper, Slate, Lead	50-75
Silver	75-90
Gold, Marble, Sandstone	90+

Optimal Pickaxe Selection for Skill Gain

If you want to optimize mining skill gain, you need to pick the correct QL pickaxe for your skill and for the vein you are mining. You can use the formula:

(Skill + Tool QL) divided by 2, then subtract 20 = <optimal difficulty>

Plug in the variables you know, and solve for the remaining variable.

Ore type	Difficulty
Stone	2
Zinc	2
Iron	3
Tin	10
Copper	20
Slate	20
Lead	20
Rock salt	30
Silver	35
Gold	40
Reinforced	40
Marble	40
Sandstone	45

Read More: | Prospecting | Ores

Resources

There are several types of resource which can be found while mining:

Mining Resources

Tile type	Mining By-Products
Rock	Rock shards
Rock salt	Rock salt shards
Slate	Slate shards
Sandstone	Sandstone shards
Marble	Marble shards
Iron Vein	Iron ore
Copper Vein	Copper ore
Tin Vein	Tin ore
Zinc Vein	Zinc ore
Lead Vein	Lead ore
Silver Vein	Silver ore
Gold Vein	Gold ore

Other resources which can be found include salt, gems, source crystals and flint.

Read More: Prospecting | Resources

See also

• Pickaxe
• Prospecting
• Support beam
• Stuck
• Mining warnings
• Strongwall

Titles

• Miner at 50 skill
• Prime Minester at 70 skill
• Mastermine at 90 skill
• The World is Mine at 100 skill

Notes

• Mining can be done while moving, so long as you do not move too far away (two tiles) from the tile you are currently working on.
• See Mining warnings for more indepth information on each situation.