Mining

In many cave areas in The Depths you will find nodes of ore which can be mined. You will need a mining hammer in your inventory in order to harvest ore from these nodes, although you do not need to equip it.

A number of different NPCs will offer you mining quests which require you to supply them with stated quantities of a given ore type. The initial quest giver will give you your first hammer for free.

Your Mining skill determines your success or failure in harvesting a particular node, and each unit of raw ore that you successfully extract has a chance to increase your mining skill. In addition each node you mine also has a chance to produce rare items, gems, and metals such as mithril and adamantine. These are also valuable components for crafting.

The more valuable the ore, the the higher the skill required to mine it. At a certain skill level, each ore becomes trivial and mining it will no longer increase your skill:
 * Copper requires a minimum skill of 0 and becomes trivial at 30
 * Tin requires a minimum skill of 50 and becomes trivial at 150
 * Iron requires a minimum skill of 150 and becomes trivial at 250
 * Darkstell (Mithril is the rare ore) requires a minimum skill of 250 and becomes trivial at 350
 * Admantite (Emberore is the rare ore) requires a minimum skill of 350 and becomes trivial at 500

It is perfectly legitimate to complete mining quests by buying the ore from other player characters or from stores, if it is available. You will gain the normal quest rewards but of course your Mining skill will not improve this way. Similarly, if you wish to mine ore without having a quest open, in order to improve your Mining skill, you can do so: any excess ore can be bartered with other players or sold to stores.

Completing mining quests will sometimes reward you with an upgraded mining hammer which will improve your rate of success as a miner. Replacement basic mining hammers can be bought from Hard Hana's store in The Quarters. She also sells a vest giving a strength bonus that allows low-strength characters to carry large amounts of ore.