World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight – Complete Guide To Mining

Quick Links

• Overview

• Basic Ores

• Ore Modifiers

• Specializations

• Gathering Knowledge

World of Warcraft's expansion, Dragonflight, has resurrected professions from an early grave. Following through on many players' pleas, Blizzard implemented a greater importance on professions and offered more rewarding and diverse gameplay to go along with it.

One such revived profession is Mining, a gathering profession that many trades rely on for its ability to gather needed resources. While it still features you flying around the map to chase down nodes on your mini-map, there are new tricks and twists to spice up the grind. Here's everything you need to know before you set out on your journey.

Overview

Mining is all about gathering raw resources in the form of ores around the Dragon Isles. Many professions, including Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, and Engineering, all require the trade goods that Mining is responsible for finding.

Raw ores usually sell at a decent rate on the Auction House, but if you'd like to make equipment yourself, pairing Mining with Blacksmithing is a classic combination. However, if you have multiple characters, you can dedicate one as your gathering character and pick up Herbalism as your secondary profession to find both herbs and ores during your farming route.

While there are many different trainers around the Dragon Isles that can teach you Mining, your main trainer will be Sekita the Burrower in Valdrakken. This trainer gives you the opportunity to do unique Mining quests that reward you with points to pour into a specialization later on.

Once you've learned the appropriate skill, you can begin gathering ores at any time, though you should pick up Mining equipment first. Unless you have another character with appropriate professions that can make the gear, you'll want to search the Auction House before you begin. By equipping one tool and two accessories, you gain a boost to stats that'll let you find higher-quality ores and increase your gathering speed.

Basic Ores

While you soar around the Dragon Isles to look for mining nodes, you'll want to keep your eyes open for three different resources. However, you'll only be able to find two as a deposit to directly mine.

When you begin at level one, you are guaranteed a rank up from mining any deposit. You'll find that the early ranks fly by quickly, but as you level up further, specific deposits will begin to offer less and less of a chance to grant experience.

• Mining basic Serevite deposits gives guaranteed experience until level 15, then their effectiveness decays further at level 20, and they stop granting experience altogether at level 30.
• Mining basic Draconium deposits gives guaranteed experience until level 30, decaying further at level 45, and then stops granting experience at level 60.

If you're having trouble finding Draconium, go to The Waking Shores. There, you should be able to find Rock Walls that can be demolished with your pickaxe. These open small caverns or expansive caves that often harbor the rarer Draconium deposits.

After level 60, you'll no longer be able to level up your Mining skill from basic ores alone. Instead, you'll have to turn your attention to modified ores to reach max rank.

Ore Modifiers

Modified ores are new to Dragonflight, wreathing a deposit in one of five special effects. While most of them only serve to benefit you, two of them are extraordinarily dangerous under the wrong circumstances.

Upon reaching level 60, you'll want to target modified ores. These give you the experience needed to reach level 100 in Mining and secure further points for your specialization. However, you should expect the grind to slow dramatically due to how much more rare modifiers are around the Isles.

• Modified Serevite will provide guaranteed experience until level 60. Its effectiveness will decay further at level 85, but it will always give you a chance to rank up until level 100.
• Modified Draconium will always provide guaranteed experience until level 100.

Pay attention to any mobs that might be around Molten ores and be sure to be at full health before mining! The DoT damage can and will kill you if you aren't wary of it.

Specializations

As you grow as a miner, you'll be able to specialize within a certain Mining talent tree upon level 25. You can use points of Dragon Isles Mining Knowledge to activate a myriad of perks within three distinct specializations.

Mining Process

Mining Process is the first specialization, and it's a good pick for those seeking to get more out of every node. As you increase your skill, you can find more resources or even find a certain gem whenever you mine a deposit.

Metallurgy

Metallurgy relates to how well you can mine deposits. The general talent will allow you to gather while mounted on your drake, and the unique spin-offs offer the chance to refine Serevite, Draconium, and Khaz'gorite into higher quality ore, improving the equipment made with them.

Mastering The Elements

The third specialization, Mastering the Elements, is what allows you to pick up the unique buffs from modified ores. In addition, you'll generally be more efficient at gathering modified ores than basic ones, and the negative effects from Hardened and Molten will be less of a problem for you.

Gathering Knowledge

You can find Dragon Isles Mining Knowledge in a number of ways. You can gain a point for every new ore that you discover upon first mining it, and whenever you receive resources from a deposit, you have a chance at receiving Iridescent Ore Fragments or a completed Iridescent Ore. You can study both of these items for one or three Knowledge respectively.

In addition, you can receive more Knowledge quite easily through quests given to you either from your trainer or the Artisan's Consortium. These will often require you to gather a certain resource through Mining, such as Rousing Earth, and you'll gain consumable items that grant you more points.

It's quite likely that you won't be able to gain enough Knowledge to specialize in all three trees at first, so you can pick whichever path sounds the most appealing to you. However, if you continue to keep at the grind, it is possible to eventually gather enough Knowledge to unlock every talent currently implemented.

Source: Read Full Article