UO Mining Skill Guide
Mining is a resource-gathering skill that allows players to dig up ore and smelt it into ingots for Blacksmithy and Tinkering. It also improves your ability to find treasure chests if paired with Cartography.
Mining is a gathering skill in Ultima Online, rated as Beginner difficulty to train. This guide walks you through everything you need to raise Mining from 0 to grandmaster, including the most efficient training methods, the targets and items to use at each skill range, and the gains you can expect along the way. Whether you are building your first character or optimizing a finished template, the breakdown below will help you train Mining as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Below you will find an overview of what Mining does, a step-by-step training guide, recommended skill ranges, any bonuses Mining provides, and the templates that pair well with it. If you would rather skip the grind, UO King can deliver a ready-made character or the gear you need to support a Mining build on your shard.
Mining is the primary gathering skill for metal resources in Ultima Online. Armed with a shovel or pickaxe, a miner works ore veins in mountainsides and caves, then smelts the raw ore into ingots at a forge. Those ingots feed Blacksmithy directly, which makes Mining the natural first half of a smithing career. Higher skill does more than fill your pack faster: it unlocks the colored ores used for magical armor and weapons, and at Grandmaster it opens up gems, granite, sand, and other specialty resources.
Gain skill by digging ore with a pickaxe or shovel. The type of metal gathered depends on skill level and luck on some shards.
| Skill Range | Training Method |
|---|---|
| 0.0 – 30.0 | Train from Miner NPC |
| 30.0 – 100.0 | Mine repeatedly in various mountain or cave tiles |
0.0 – 30.0
30.0 – 100.0
Mining rewards climbing skill with access to rarer and more valuable materials:
- Colored Ore Access: Each tier of colored ore has a minimum skill before you can smelt it into ingots, and a more skilled miner is more likely to strike a colored vein in the first place.
- Smelting Skill Gains: Smelting colored ore raises Mining noticeably faster than smelting plain iron, so working colored veins doubles as an efficient training method.
- Grandmaster Resources: At GM you can dig up crafting gems, and after reading the appropriate books you can also gather granite (for Stonecrafting) and glass-quality sand (for Glassblowing) with no cost to your skill cap.
Raw ore is smelted into ingots at a forge, and the yield depends on the size of the pile:
| Ore | Weight | Ingots per Successful Smelt |
|---|---|---|
| Two small piles | 2 x 2 stones | 1 ingot |
| One medium pile | 7 stones | 1 ingot |
| One large pile | 12 stones | 2 ingots |
Colored ores are the heart of the skill. Each color needs a minimum Mining skill to smelt, spawns at a set rarity, and grants distinct bonuses to armor and weapons crafted from it:
| Ore & Ingots | Min. Skill | Armor Bonuses | Weapon Bonuses | Spawn Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron | - | - | 100% Physical Damage | 50% |
| Dull Copper | 65 | +10 Physical Resist, +50 Durability, -20 required Str | 100% Physical Damage, +100 Durability, -50 required Str | 11.2% |
| Shadow | 70 | +3 Physical, +2 Fire, +7 Energy Resist, +100 Durability | 80% Physical / 20% Cold Damage, +50 Durability | 9.8% |
| Copper | 75 | +2 Physical, +2 Fire, +7 Poison, +2 Energy Resist | 70% Physical / 10% Poison / 20% Energy Damage | 8.4% |
| Bronze | 80 | +3 Physical, +7 Cold, +2 Poison, +2 Energy Resist | 60% Physical / 40% Fire Damage | 7.0% |
| Golden | 85 | +2 Physical, +2 Fire, +3 Cold, +3 Energy Resist, +40 Luck, -30 required Str | 100% Physical Damage, +40 Luck, -50 required Str | 5.6% |
| Agapite | 90 | +2 Physical, +7 Fire, +2 Cold, +2 Poison, +2 Energy Resist | 50% Physical / 30% Cold / 20% Energy Damage | 4.2% |
| Verite | 95 | +4 Physical, +4 Fire, +3 Cold, +4 Poison, +1 Energy Resist | 40% Physical / 40% Poison / 20% Energy Damage | 2.8% |
| Valorite | 99 | +5 Physical, +4 Cold, +4 Poison, +4 Energy Resist, +50 Durability | 40% Physical / 10% Fire / 20% Cold / 10% Poison / 20% Energy Damage | 1.4% |
A few practical points on veins and tools: valorite is the rarest strike and iron the most common. Each ore spot yields a fixed total amount per pass, which can be all iron or a mix of iron and colored ore, and the spot has a random chance to change what it produces on each respawn. Once you meet a color's minimum skill, you still only have about a 50% chance of actually pulling the colored ore from that vein. Tool durability varies: an NPC-bought pickaxe or shovel lasts around 50 uses, an exceptionally crafted one about 100, sturdy tools from Bulk Order Deeds roughly 180. A prospector's tool bumps a vein up one color tier (for example, verite becomes valorite), and a gargoyle's pickaxe also raises the vein one level and stacks with the prospector's tool, so an agapite vein can be lifted to verite and then to valorite. Gargoyle pickaxes can additionally spawn a matching-colored Ore Elemental.
Grandmaster miners can also collect other resources. Six crafting gems appear randomly when mining at GM, and after reading 'Mining for Quality Gems' and setting the tool to 'ore and gems,' jewelry gems can drop as well. Crystalline Blackrock spawns for GM miners in Ter Mur. Granite, learned from 'Mining for Quality Stone,' weighs 1 stone, stacks, and is used for Stonecrafting; glass-quality sand, learned from 'Find Glass-Quality Sand,' is dug from beaches and coastlines for Glassblowing. Both books cost around 10,000 gold, are consumed on reading, cost no skill points, and do not affect the skill cap. Saltpeter can be mined from niter deposits in dungeons or from boats, but only high-luck miners find them.