To condense the entire mining strategy down to a couple of lines you'll...

1. want to find the nearest mining trainer in your area, buy your pick, and...


2. start doing routes along the hills and mountains in whatever area you happen to be in. Just run along the base of those hills for awhile, you'll find stuff.

Some WoW Mining Tips

1. Try to keep your skill as high as possible at all times. That way when you travel to the next zone you won't see too many ores that you can't mine.
   


2. Keep your mineral detector (on your mini map) running at all times. When you're running for your life (on your PvP server) from that Gnome and his level 70 Warrior pet you might notice a node or two.
   


3. If you don't need (or want) to sell of all your ore for gold then you can go to the nearest forge and smelt you ore into bars. This will work up your skill faster than running around looking for the lost node of Desolace.
   


4. If you have lots of cash you can just buy a bunch of ore, skip the mining, and do a bunch of smelting. That'll get your skill up fast. Sell or use the bars when done.
   


5. In all the zones there will be a few deposits that require a skill higher than you have, unless you've been working to keep your skill high.
   


6. Try to keep yourself around yellow and orange nodes. Scan the node and note it's color in your tool tip. Red nodes will refuse your advances, while green nodes won't give you much skill improvement for your efforts.
   


7. You'll find plenty of ore as you run around killing things. Take a few extra rounds, near the hills and mountains, and you'll keep yourself in ore and get your skill up fast enough.
   


8. Into the mines: Most mines and deeper caves are good for at least a couple of nodes. Plus you have all those mobs in one place just waiting to give you some easy XP and drops.


9. Keep in mind that while ores, of any type, like the hills. They never pop up right on the flatlands, but if there's a hill or mountain in the middle of a flat area you'll see them lurking there.

One thing to keep in mind is the ore nodes all spawn on whatever timer the Game Lords of WoW have decided to set. What this means is that as you circle any zone you'll probably find some nodes popping up reliably and a few that don't.

Also, things change. With any given patch the nodes in a particular area might be moved, removed, or changed. For example, the nodes around the Dark Portal (in the Hellfire Peninsula) were reported to have been removed as of Patch 2.1. You can still find ore in other parts of the zone, though.

Make your own WoW mining map by gathering the Gatherer addon and dropping it into your addons collection.

This sweet little WoW addon will make a permanent mark on your main map everytime you find an ore node (as well as herbs and treasure chests.) This is invaluable if you travel through the zone a second time, or if you're circling the zone for your gathering, or you bring another character through the area.

If you'll only be going through any zone once, ever, then it's not so much use.

Every ore has a minimum required skill to successfully mine it, just like all the other skills in WoW. If you want to level your skill as rapidly as possible try to only mine (or smelt) ores that are orange or yellow at your level.

For example, when you get your skill to the point where you can mine & smelt tin ore, then stop working with copper unless you're looking for ore to sell.

Pricing of the ore:

Drop by your favorite auction house and check out the prices for the various types of ore.

Depending on the server, and the demand of the moment, prices will run from about 1 gold for a stack of 20 copper ore to 20+ gold for stacks of the rarer ores (eg: Silver ore.)

Frequently the raw ore will sell for a lot more than the bars that are smelted from the ore, but not always, so check out the bars, too. Copper bars, bronze bars, silver bars, etc.

For the most part your WoW gold mining will be a two step process - mine some ore and sell it for the gold (on the Auction House.) If you are selling all your ore, rather than using it or giving it to your friendly neighborhood blacksmith, make sure you have an auction house mule.

It'll make your life much easier.

Are you using your Mining skill to power your Engineering skill? then you need to look at this Killer Mining & Engineering Guide

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