WoW Forever Mining Guide

Mining in WoW Forever still starts with a copper vein on a hillside and a pick in your bag. Blacksmiths and engineers still want every bar a miner can smelt, and Forever gives them more recipes to spend those bars on, along with a few ores and camp objects that Classic never had.

Most of the hours go into the climb, and the climb keeps asking the same two things: where the next trainer stands, and which zones are worth the ride once copper runs dry. Then the bags fill up. What a miner does with all that metal is a bigger question in Forever than it ever was in Classic.

WoW Forever Mining Changes

Swinging a pick at a vein is the same as it was in Classic. The rest of the profession is not.

• Trainers in the starting zones: six Junior Mining Trainers teach Apprentice Mining where new characters spawn, and an early quest in each starting zone can pay out Mining for Dummies, a manual that teaches the profession on its own.
• A camp object at 20: Camping 101: Mining asks for 20 skill and teaches the Lodestone, a melee Attack Power buff for everyone sitting at your camp, worth 90 once the miner reaches level 52.
• Scarce minerals: Pyrite, Bauxite and Pitchblende can drop alongside the ore. Pyrite turns up as early as the first Copper Vein; Bauxite waits for Gold Veins and Mithril Deposits.
• New bars: Heavy Thorium Bar and Azerothium Bar, two bars Classic never had, go into Blacksmithing and Engineering recipes, and alchemists turn the first of them into Legionite Bar. Azerothium is smelted from two Pitchblende and a Coal.
• Two more camp objects: the Rock Garden grows a mining node at your camp, and the Molten Foundry is the only place to smelt Heavy Thorium. Both come from Blueprints, at 140 and 300 skill.
• Mining without Mining: Rockslicer, a two-handed axe from the Deadmines, opens low-level veins for anyone who wields it.
• Extra nodes in the starting areas: Poor Copper Vein spawns in five of them. Teldrassil has no Copper Vein at all and gets its copper from Chunks of Amber instead.
• A mining bag: the Apprentice's Mining Pack has 4 slots for ore, stone, gems and bars, and all six Junior Mining Trainers sell it.

Journeyman opens at 50 skill, beyond anything a Junior Mining Trainer teaches, so plan a trip to one of the 16 full trainers in the next section. Pack a Mining Pick as well: the profession requires one in your bags.

WoW Forever Mining Trainer Locations

Mining has four ranks. A full trainer teaches all of them, and each rank waits for the skill shown below, so train Journeyman at 50 rather than heading out with a skill that stops at 75. At the cap, veins stop adding skill until you train the next rank.

There are 22 mining trainers. Sixteen teach every rank, plus the Lodestone, Smelt Azerothium and Smelt Heavy Thorium; the six Junior Mining Trainers in the starting areas teach Apprentice only. Every rank also needs a Mining Pick in your bags.

Alliance Mining Trainers

Stormwind and Ironforge each have a mining trainer and Darnassus has none: a night elf learns Apprentice from the Junior Mining Trainer in Teldrassil and the higher ranks from Kurdram Stonehammer in Darkshore, where one version of the camp quest ends. Five more full trainers stand in Dun Morogh, Loch Modan, Darkshore and Duskwood, all listed with coordinates at the end of this section.

Horde Mining Trainers

Every Horde capital has a trainer. Two more stand on the leveling road, Krunn in Durotar and Johan Focht in Silverpine Forest, and both of them teach all four ranks along with the Lodestone and both new smelts.

Neutral Mining Trainers

Four full trainers serve either faction. The two on Zephras Isle are listed with the starting zones below, and the other two are Pikkle in Tanaris and Grungle in Riverglades.

Mining Trainers in the Starting Zones

Each of the six original starting zones has a Junior Mining Trainer who teaches Apprentice Mining and nothing above it, and all six sell the Apprentice's Mining Pack. Dun Morogh and Durotar also have full trainers. Zephras Isle, Forever's own island, has no Junior trainer at all. Both of its trainers serve either faction.

Learn Mining from a Profession Book

The trainer is optional. An early quest in each starting zone offers a choice of three gathering manuals; pick Mining for Dummies, and it teaches Mining if you know fewer than two professions and adds 2 skill, up to 15. It takes one of your two profession slots.

Camping 101: Mining opens from level 4 and waits for 20 skill, then sends you to a mining trainer who teaches the Lodestone. A camp needs a campfire first, which cooks teach.

All Mining Trainers with Coordinates

The full list follows by faction and zone, with coordinates in each zone's Forever map frame.

How to Level Mining 1-300 in WoW Forever

Mining levels by mining veins, and every vein has a skill floor below which you cannot touch it. One vein gives one point at most. The route below runs in six brackets, each named for the veins that open inside it, and points you to the zones where those veins overlap most on the map.

Two habits save the most time. Keep Find Minerals active so nearby veins show on the minimap, and visit a trainer before each rank cap, because a capped skill cannot climb past it. Find Minerals tracks one kind of thing at a time; a miner who also picks herbs swaps trackers by hand.

Every Ore Vein by Skill

Each vein opens at the skill shown. Zones are ordered by how many spawn points the map holds for that vein, most first, and the last column lists the stone, gems and Scarce minerals the vein has dropped besides its ore.

Mining 1-65

Copper Vein opens at 1. The zone you start in is the right one: The Barrens carries the most points, followed by Zephras Isle, Mulgore, Dun Morogh, Elwynn Forest, Tirisfal Glades and Durotar. Poor Copper Veins in Mulgore, Durotar, Elwynn Forest, Tirisfal Glades and Dun Morogh give Copper Ore and Rough Stone too.

Night elves get something different. Teldrassil has no Copper Vein spawns at all; its copper comes out of Chunk of Amber and Large Chunk of Amber, and the large ones have dropped Pyrite.

Train Journeyman at 50.

Mining 65-125

Tin Vein opens at 65 and Silver Vein at 75. The Barrens wins this bracket too. Thousand Needles, Hillsbrad Foothills, Arathi Highlands and Redridge Mountains follow, every one with both veins in numbers, and for what it's worth, a night elf looking for tin should try Ashenvale, which holds almost twice the Tin Vein points of Darkshore.

Train Expert at 125.

Mining 125-175

Iron Deposit opens at 125 and Gold Vein at 155. Arathi Highlands leads. Stranglethorn Vale, Badlands, Thousand Needles, Desolace and Alterac Mountains all carry both in numbers. Badlands, Tanaris and The Hinterlands hold more Gold Veins than Iron Deposits, and smelting keeps paying as you go: Smelt Iron turns grey at 140 and Smelt Gold at 185.

Mining 175-230

Mithril Deposit opens at 175. It stays the only new vein until 230, and The Hinterlands holds the most of it, then Tanaris, Azshara, Desolace and Badlands. Mithril Deposits also drop Solid Stone, Citrine, Aquamarine, Star Ruby and Black Vitriol besides the ore — keep the stone, because Blacksmithing and Engineering both use it.

Train Artisan at 200.

Mining 230-275

Truesilver Deposit and Dark Iron Deposit open at 230, Small Thorium Vein at 245. Look, Burning Steppes is the zone here. It carries all three, and Searing Gorge is the only other zone that does, since Dark Iron Deposit stands in no other open-world zone. Silithus, Un'Goro Crater and Winterspring pair Truesilver with Small Thorium for anyone who would rather skip the Blackrock zones, and Silithus holds more Truesilver points than any other zone.

Mining 275-300

Rich Thorium Vein opens at 275. Silithus has the most of it, all of them the ooze-covered kind, with Winterspring, Eastern Plaguelands and Azshara next — and past 300, the Small and Large Obsidian Chunks of Silithus ask for 305.

WoW Forever Smelting: Every Bar and Where to Smelt It

Smelting turns ore into bars at a forge, and it gives skill points the same way crafting does: orange always, yellow usually, green rarely, grey never. Smelt Copper comes free with Mining, and the table lists what trainers charge for the rest.

Smelting can carry you to 185. Below 300, Smelt Gold is the last bar that turns grey later than it opens; Steel, Mithril, Truesilver, Dark Iron, Thorium and Azerothium are grey from the moment you learn them. Honestly, past 185 the forge is for bars and the skill comes from veins alone. Two smelts need a special station. Fair warning, Smelt Dark Iron works only at the Black Forge in Blackrock Depths and eats 8 ore per bar. Smelt Heavy Thorium needs a Molten Foundry, the camp object miners build at 300.

New Ores, Bars and Scarce Minerals in WoW Forever

Forever adds three Scarce minerals that drop alongside ore, plus one ore and three bars of its own.

Pyrite shows up first. It has dropped from Copper, Tin, Silver and Iron veins and from Large Chunks of Amber, and it goes into 15 recipes, nine of them Tailoring. Bauxite turns up later, from Gold Veins and Mithril Deposits. All three carry the Scarce tag on their tooltip, the tag the Bountiful Harvest perk increases.

Pitchblende matters most, because two of it and a Coal make an Azerothium Bar. Heavy Thorium Ore smelts into Heavy Thorium Bar at a Molten Foundry, and the Heavy Thorium Vein asks for the full 300 skill. Legionite is an alchemist's bar. Transmute: Legionite, an Alchemy 275 recipe, turns a Heavy Thorium Bar and a Fel Crystal into one, with a Philosopher's Stone in your bags and a 47-hour cooldown.

WoW Forever Mining Camping: Lodestone, Rock Garden and Molten Foundry

Mining has three camp recipes. Each cast makes a single object, and all three need a campfire nearby, stand for 15 minutes and share the one hour-long cooldown that every camp object has. Set over a Lodestone, the Rock Garden or the Molten Foundry takes its place and keeps its buff.

The Lodestone's buff depends on the level of the miner who places it, and at 52 it reaches 90 melee Attack Power. It does not stack with Blessing of Might.

Blueprint: Rock Garden drops from the Relic Guardian, an elite elemental in the Excavation Site: Wetlands dungeon, at a 7.66% drop chance, about one Blueprint every 13 kills. Blueprint: Molten Foundry needs Mining 300 to learn.

WoW Forever Professions

What WoW Forever Ore and Bars Are Used For

Raw ore goes into almost nothing but smelting, so the demand sits with the bars — and Forever roughly doubled the recipe count for Copper and Bronze Bar compared with Classic Era, and nearly quadrupled it for Silver Bar.

Thorium Bar leads with 131 recipes. Silver Bar grew on two fronts: Blacksmithing went from 12 recipes to 34, and Tailoring, which had none in Classic Era, now uses it in 18. Heavy Thorium goes furthest per craft: the Enriched Thorium Breastplate takes 24 bars, and each of the twelve crafted Justice tier pieces takes 18 for the legs or 12 for the rest, the crafts our WoW Forever Paladin Tier Set guide walks through.

Ore and bars also go into a Waylaid Crate, a lost shipment you identify by reading its label; the ore and ingot crates take any one bundle from the lists below. Sealed and handed in, an Apprentice crate pays 5 or 10 Merchant's Favor and a Journeyman crate 10 or 20 — and the Performance Bonus perk gives each hand-in a chance to pay double.

Best Mining Tools, Gear and Bags in WoW Forever

Every rank of Mining needs a pick, and a few other items do the pick's job.

Rockslicer is the odd one. Anyone who wields it can open Copper, Tin, Silver and Iron veins without knowing Mining, for 30 charges; the axe stays in your bags after the last charge, it just stops mining. No joke, an engineer and blacksmith with no gathering profession can farm their own iron this way. The Gnomish Army Knife needs level 45. Its schematic needs Engineering 250 and Honored with the seller's faction, and Fizzlefuse in The Barrens and Fritz Fizzle in Hillsbrad Foothills sell it for 270 Merchant's Favor.

Skill bonuses let you mine a vein before your trained skill reaches it, so +5 opens Silver at 70 instead of 75.

The Goblin Mining Helmet, the Advanced Mining enchant and the Miner's Cape stack. Together they give +12. Smelting Pants from Gilnid in the Deadmines cut the crafting time of Smelt Copper, Smelt Tin, Smelt Bronze and Smelt Silver by 25%. The Apprentice's Mining Pack is the one mining bag in the game: 4 slots for ore, stone, gems, bars, the Scarce minerals and the three camp objects, sold for 26 copper in the starting areas and capitals.

WoW Forever Legacy Perks for Mining

Four perks of the Legacy Professions tree touch Mining, one of them through the crates above.

Bountiful Harvest is the perk built for gatherers, and at its last rank it doubles the Scarce minerals a miner finds. Working Overtime raises the chance of a skill point from any tradeskill, smelting included. Performance Bonus opens after 5 points spent in the tree and gives a crate hand-in a 5%, 10% or 15% chance of double Merchant's Favor. Dedicated Study waits for 10 points. It is a 25-second cast with a 23-hour cooldown that adds a point to your lowest tradeskill. Mining itself earns no Legacy points. Tradeskill points come only from non-gathering professions at 150, 225 and 300.

WoW Forever Mining FAQ