Mining is a skill that allows players to obtain ores from rocks and then smith the ores into bars or sell the ores. Selling the ores can give players a great profit, which is one of the reasons why mining is one of the most popular skills in the game.
How To Mine
To mine, a player will first need a pickaxe. These are sold by Nurmof in the dwarven mines, but every new player has one. Next, the player has to find a mining area. When these two tasks are complete, the player can then find a rock in the mine and click on it, making their character mine the rocks.
Unfortunately, mining can be very boring, as it is very repetitive, though selling the ores obtained from the rocks can give players a good profit. Also, mining is a skill largely based on a player's luck, which is totally random in RuneScape. Luck affects mining like this: the player will mine the rock, but when they hit the rock, it might take eight to twenty hits to get an ore. Another player may mine the same rock and get an ore in just one hit. It depends on two factors: what kind of pick you're using and luck.
Pickaxes
Pickaxes, or 'picks', are needed to mine rocks. They can be equipped as a weapon, giving players some more space in their inventory. Pickaxes can either be bought from Nurmof in the Dwarven Mines or from other players. Nurmof's shop is labelled on the mini-map as a gold pickaxe. Due to an update Picks bronze through rune can be smithed if the player has the appropriate level and has completed the quest Perils of Ice Mountain.
Ores And Rocks
Ores are obtained from the different types of rocks. These rocks can be found in mines. On the mini-map, mines are labelled as a gray pickaxe. The color of a rock and it's name correspond to the ore found in it, so mining a copper rock will yield a copper ore, while mining a coal rock will yield a coal ore.
When players click on a rock, they will hit it with their pickaxe and try to get the ore out. The higher level rocks, such as mithril and adamant, take longer for players to mine an ore out of them, so patience is needed when mining these rocks. Players receive experience when they get ore from rocks.
After the ore has been mined, the rock will turn gray for a while. Eventually another ore will respawn and the rock will regain its colour. Players can only mine a rock when ore is available. Ore respawn times differ with the difficulty of the rock, runite respawns the slowest and clay the fastest. The respawn time is increased slightly on world servers with more players on them.
Training
It's up to you if you want to either deposit the ores after mining a whole inventory or drop the ores when you've mined them. Dropping the ores will be much faster than depositing the ores.
- Levels 1 to 14
Mine copper and tin rocks.
- Levels 15 to 40
Mine iron rocks.
- Levels 41 to 59
Mine coal and iron together(rune pick axe highly recommended).
- Levels 60 to 84
Mine coal rocks in the Mining Guild.
- Levels 85 to 99
Mine rune rocks in the Wilderness.
Mining is a very slow skill to raise, so raising it will probably be very boring. You can either continually mine or take breaks, do another skill, and then come back to mining.