world of warcraft Mining

So you want to be a miner? Mining is an exciting Profession used to gather materials for blacksmithing or engineering. However, you dont need those Professions to be a miner. You could simply collect resources and sell them to blacksmiths and engineers. You're going to find these spots anyway as you travel throughout the world, so why not cash in on them? However, most people combine mining and blacksmithing or mining and engineering.

Becoming a Miner

Now you need to go buy yourself a "mining pick". They are usually sold by a "trade merchant" or other merchants near the mining trainer.

Finding Mineral Veins

Have "Find Minerals" active nearly all the time so that you will know when minerals are nearby.

Mineral Vein Types

Minerals come in many different versions, from common to more rare: copper, tin, silver, iron, gold, mithril, and more. To find rare veins, you will have to fight your way (or sneak) to more powerful regions of the world. The first veins you will come across are copper. As you head to more powerful areas, you will begin to see tin and so on.

Using Mineral Veins

Mining Components

When you mouse over the mineral vein, you will see a color showing whether you will gain skills by mining it. Gray - You cannot increase your skill by mining.
Green - These mineral veins give you a fairly poor chance to increase your skill. You can still do it, but its going to take a lot of gathering/creation to up your skill with these mineral veins.
Yellow - These mineral veins give you a reduced chance of increasing your skill. Its still pretty reasonable to try to increase your skills with these mineral veins.
Orange - These mineral veins give you your best chance of increasing your skill. For many of the Professions making an orange item will always increase your skill.
Red - you cannot mine it yet. You need a higher mining skill. After you have mastered the mining of a particular type of mineral, you will no longer gain skills by mining it. However, you can still use the minerals and stones you mine.

Using a Forge/Smelting

Find yourself a forge. They are located in main towns and some smaller towns. If you cant find one, ask around to determine their locations. To confirm you have in fact found a forge, move your mouse over the location and see if it says "forge". You can also try smelting the metals. You do not need to interact with the forge; you only need to be near it.

Now that you have found a forge, its time to smelt the metal. Open up your abilities book and locate the smelting icon. Press that to see your recipes. Some examples of what you can create with smelting are: converting copper ore into copper bars and creating bronze by combining copper bars and tin bars. To gain additional smelting recipes/options, you will need to learn them from a mining trainer. The mining screen will tell you how many of each bar that you can smelt based on the types and amounts of raw material that you have.

Claim Jumping

Common Questions

While the game allows such strategies, some players question the nobility of such moves.

Barracks-ing
The idea is to walk over to the enemy early and build a barracks in between the Town Hall and Gold Mine so that they have difficulty mining Gold. The first Peon after building a Town Hall and Farm is sent over to check the nearest mine, where if they find the enemy is there, build a Barracks in their way trying to prevent them from being able to mine Gold. This strategy is more damaging on high resources as the offensive builder will have more resources and will be able to build more buildings.

Counter: If you suspect the enemy will try this, build a few walls in between your Town hall and Mine. Then the enemy will not be able to build anything bigger than a Farm. Use Peons to destroy the Barracks or building. Play maps with multiple starting positions so that it will be harder for the enemy to find you early in the game. Avoid playing high resource games where this strategy is more easily done.

Starting Your Town in Their Town
Rather than building at the starting location, the player finds the enemy town then builds their Town Hall beside the enemy Town Hall. Then the visiting player builds buildings in the way of the original owners Gold Mine to make it difficult to mine Gold. The two players battle to build up while attacking the enemy at the same time which results in either Peon attacks or escalates to Tower wars. This strategy is a danger on higher resources and whenever the enemy can find your town at an early time in the game.

On low resources the visiting player is always at a disadvantage because they will be further in behind in building because they had to walk to find where the normal player was located. If someone attempts to do this to you, focus on killing their Peons before they can build up while building Buildings and Walls to block off their Town Hall from the Gold Mine.

On high resources this offensive building campaign will be very difficult to stop as the original player will have already put down the majority of their buildings.

Fun Ways To Finish Off an Enemy
People can easily just surrender, but if they stick around have some fun.

Although Goblin Sappers are best used to blow up buildings they also have a little used often forgotten attack ability. Rather than using the Sappers to blow up the enemy buildings select them and hit A for attack and click on the enemy building to make them attack.

Use your Peons to finish off enemy buildings and units. Sometimes this is necessary in real games when resources run out. Bloodlust those peons for even more fun. Have your *real* units stand behind the Peons doing nothing as if they were watching.

Cast Bloodlust on the enemy units. Show them that you can still beat them if they were Bloodlusted.

Build Towers in their town and use them to finish off their buildings while you have your land units stand around the Towers watching

Slow your own units while attacking the enemy, best if done right before they are about to be eliminated to delay it further.