Mining
Description
Mining is the skill of excavating stone 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.
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.
- Activate a pickaxe and right click the rock or cliff, select Mining > Tunnel.
Each tunneling action has a chance to create a stone shard. After a number of stone shards are created, usually 9, the message You will soon create an entrance will appear. A stone shard or two later, and an entrance will be created.
- The two lowest slopes of your tile will form the bottom tile border of your opening, which will be completely flat. The top of your mine opening will be completely flat as well.
- 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, but you would not be able to continue mining because of ceiling height restrictions. Tunnel slopes should be less than 235.
- 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 can be placed on tunnel entrances that are 1 tile or wider, except on PvP servers. Note that you will need more than one mine door for wider entrances!
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 stone 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 is 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
Ore and shard mining
Ore is produced by mining metal ore veins found inside of a mine. Marble, slate, rock salt, and sandstone veins produce shards. When an ore or shard vein is depleted a tunnel is created. However, a vein can take several thousand actions to deplete, so it is advised to mine around ore and shard veins for tunneling purposes. The exception to this is rock salt, which has about the same amount of shards as a regular rock tile, approximately 50.
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 pass through. It is a good idea to keep a rowboat/sailboat close by for stamina regain when mining past the water level.
- 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, so each ceiling tile must be mined individually, if you wish them to be higher.
- You can fix slopes with concrete: one concrete will raise one corner, the equivalent of 1 dirt or 1 mine action.
- Mining ceilings for stone 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.
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, 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.
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 stone shards.
- No reduction: You chip away at the rock.
Notes
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.
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. Collapsing a dropshaft tile with the Strongwall spell or a shaker orb will allow you to remine a tile to the height of the tiles around it, but proceed carefully and ask for assistance, as careful planning is required.
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 4 silver and is a one time use item.
Skillgain
Ore Difficulty
Different ore veins have different difficulties. The easiest is mining plain rock or zinc, followed by iron veins and tin 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 shard.
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.
| 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 |
Resources
There are several types of resource which can be found while mining:
| Tile type | Mining By-Products |
|---|---|
| Rock | Stone 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
Characteristics trained
See: Characteristics
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.
