Here you can learn how to retrieve ore rocks from a mine, how to determine what those ore rocks contain, and how to aquire useable metal by smelting them. After the guide itself, you can find a list of mines commonly used by the guild, where they are, and what they contain. Finally, at the bottom of this page, there is a list of all the metals available and the ores you need to smelt to make them.
Note: As this is a basic guide, you will not find large amounts of data on optimum smelting ratios or information on all the various furnaces available. If that is what you are looking for, I would suggest trying the more advanced guides available from the wiki.
Knowing what you're looking for
There are an awful lot of mines in Egypt, and only a relatively small number of them are 'good' mines - that is, they produce large amounts of ore with few pollutants. Before you set out, it's worth asking around and finding out which mines in the local area are good for producing the metal you're hunting for. For good mines used by most Egyptians, see the pure metal mines list, but these may involve travel - ask your neighbours first.
Mineralogy
Before you think about going mining, you should learn the skill of Mineralogy. It can be learnt at the School of Thought for a fee of 1 Iron and 1 copper or taught to you by a friend (takes 80mins). What does it do? Well, it allows you to "see" the type and quantities of metals contained in the ore rocks that you mine. This is very important. If you blindly mine stones and attempt to smelt them, the amount of useable metal you receive will be very low... if you get any at all. Even knowing what is contained in the mine you are using is not enough, as the ratio of metal compared to "pollutants" will greatly affect your yields, and you must be able to control this. About the only exceptions would be if you are going to mine with someone that already has the skill (that way, you can leave the ore rock sorting to them) or if you use a pure mine (no sorting required).
Ore Cart
An ore cart is a must, as you cannot mine without it. However, you do not often have to build your own. A lot of public mines have ore carts that can be used by anybody. Mines that are often used by the guild have specific carts that can only be used by members, so just look around until you find one. One thing to check before mining is how close carts are to the mine itself. Position the cart you are using near the mine, and then make sure all public carts are pushed away. If you dont, you may end up placing your rocks into the wrong cart. If there are carts near the mine that you cannot move, dont worry... you wont be able to accidentally put ore in those carts either.
Note: Remember to move your cart out of the way when you are finished. It's only polite, and saves extra effort for those who visit the mine after you.
Jeweler's Pick
While a jeweler's pick is not absolutely necessary to mining, it is useful. Often you will extract an ore rock that you do not want. The reasons vary... maybe it contains the wrong metal, maybe its full of dirt/sand, or maybe its simply too polluted to use. You have two options of how to deal with the rock. First of all, you can just discard it using its menu. This option makes the rock disappear, never to be seen again. The other option is to gently break apart the rock using a jeweler's pick, also by using the rock's menu. Depending on what the rock contains, the result will vary. Sometimes the rock will disappear and leave nothing behind. Other times it will leave a bucket of dirt or limestone behind. While they may not sound useful, they are... so they are worth collecting. Finally, the rock may produce some kind of gem stone, such as diamond, ruby, topaz, etc. If a gem stone is in the rock, it will be produced instead of any dirt or limestone present.
Grilled Fish
Taking grilled fish on a mining trip is entirely optional. Like using a Flax Comb, mining is an Endurance draining action. That means that after using a mine, you must wait a minute or so before you can use it again, making mining a somewhat slow process. If you get useful rocks every time you use the mine, it can take almost 30 minutes just to get a full ore cart... and trust me, its rare to get useful rocks every time. However, with enough grilled fish you can cut this time almost in half. By eating one grilled fish you will get a temporary +2 Endurance stat increase. This enables you to use a mine every 30-35 seconds instead of every minute. Very helpful. At a good mine, I usually find that 20-30 grilled fish are enough to keep me going for around two full loads.
Note: Eating more than one grilled fish at a time will not give you a higher Endurance increase as the gains are not cumulative. Simply eat one at a time, and repeat when your stats return to normal.
Smelting Equipment
These are not items you carry with you. They are items of equipment placed in compounds that allow you to smelt ore rocks into useable metals. As this is a basic guide, the only equipment you need to concern yourself with is the Smelting Pot or Craft Furnace. Before you start mining, always check to make sure one of these items is available in the immediate area, and that it is set for public use. Failure to do this could result in either abandoning all the ore you managed to mine, or pushing your ore cart all the way to another facility use smelting equipment there. Niether of those are good, so make sure you check. Most public mines have a compound nearby containing the required equipment. Another thing to note is that if you find you have a choice between a Smelting Pot and a Craft Furnace, always use the Craft Furnace as it is vastly more efficient and will give you higher yields of metal.
Charcoal
Charcoal is used to fire the furnaces that smelt ore rocks into useable metal. How much you need depends on how many loads you are intending to mine. As mentioned above, the Craft Furnace is the best equipment to use for basic mining. A full load for this furnace is 25 rocks, and it takes 25 charcoal to fire the furnace. If you have the Controlled Burn skill, you dont necessarily need to take charcoal with you. You can use the delay between mining attempts to harvest wood from nearby trees and turn it into charcoal using bonfires. For more information on the most efficient ways to produce charcoal with bonfires, check out the Bonfires page.
Ok, you have all your equipment, you have found an ore cart, and you have checked that smelting equipment is available. Now you're ready to get mining.
The Extraction Bit
The first thing to do is check what level the Extraction Bit is on. To do this, click the mine and the level will be displayed at the top of the menu. After much use, a mine can have many different levels and the ore produced is often different between levels. If you know what level of the mine contains the ore you want, change the extraction bit to that level. If you are not sure, you will have to mine a few rocks from each level to find out what each one contains.
Yum... Fish is Good
The next thing to do is eat some grilled fish, if you have any. First click the "Skills" tab to show your stats. Most likely there will be a "0" next to all of them. Click your avatar, select "Special", and then click "Eat some Grilled Fish". Now your Endurance should be 2. Keep the skills tab selected so that you can see when the affect of the grilled fish ends. When it does, simply eat another fish. This reduces the time between pulls on the mine from 45 seconds to about 30 seconds.
Mining for Ore
And now... get mining! To do this, click on the mine and select "Work this ore mine". A large grey rock will appear somewhere around the mine, often with coloured crystals sticking out of it. Click on the rock. At the top of its menu, you will see what the rock contains (if anything), and how much of it there is. Unfortunatly, its not quite as simple as that... it will not say "Iron" or "Copper". Instead, it will give you the names of the actual ores, such as "Akdalaite", "Cupalite", and "Magnetite", to name a few. There are generally 5 ore types for each metal. But dont worry, you wont have to memorise all those strange names. Just check the list at the bottom of this page to find out what they are.
Also displayed will be anything else that the rock contains, such as Sand, Dirt and Limestone. Unless you are specifically mining for dirt or limestone, these three things are generally classed as "pollutants". Pollutants are things contained in ore rocks that reduce the amount of metal you get when smelting. More on that later.
After seeing what the rock contains, you have three choices. The first is to discard the rock. Use this option if the rock does not contain anything you want, and you do not have a Jeweler's Pick available. The rock will simply disappear. The second option is to break the rock apart. Use this option if the rock does not contain anything you want, and you have a Jeweler's pick in your inventory. The rock will disappear, and there is a chance that you will find something the rock contained, such as dirt, limestone or a gem stone. The item will appear on the ground where the rock was, and can be picked up. The final option is to put the rock into the nearest mine cart. Use this option if the rock contains the ore you are looking for. The rock will disappear and be added to the load in your ore cart. You can see how many rocks are in your cart by clicking it. The number will be displayed at the top of the menu. Note that the type of ore is not listed. You may want to label the cart (click Utility/Label this Ore Cart) so that you can keep track of what it contains.
What to look for
Note: The Craft Furnace is considered to be the "general" furnace type used for basic mining and metal production. They are often available at public mines, hence all data in this section assumes you will be using one to smelt your ore.
The contents of the ore rocks you place in your cart is very important, and will affect the amount of metal you receive when smelting. The main things that will affect the yield are the number of "clusters" of metal, and the amount of "pollutant" contained.
To get the maximum yield possible from each load, you should try and keep the rocks in your cart as pure as possible. Basically that means they should contain the ore you are looking for, and nothing else. For every cluster of unwanted resource, your yield will be reduced.
Note that mixing different ores that produce the same metal will not reduce your yield. However, mixing anything else will. Dirt and Sand are the obvious pollutants here. You really dont want that rubbish in your ore when you come to smelt it. However, even other ore types that produce a different metal than you are looking for will reduce your yield. Specific numbers can be found later in the Smelting section. Of course sometimes it is just impossible to get rocks that are 100% pure. If this is the case, try to stick to rocks that have over 50% of the metal you want compared to pollutants. Your yield wont be great, but something is better than nothing.
Note: Again, all the data here is for basic mining, hence it will assume you are using a standard Craft Furnace to smelt your ore. For specifics on the more advanced (and complicated) furnaces, see the [Advanced Mining]? section.
How to smelt
To get useable metal from the ore rocks you have mined, you need to smelt them. You do this using a Craft Furnace.
You will need:
Note: Do NOT put more than 25 rocks into a cart. If you do, when you attempt to load them into the craft furnace you will get a message saying you loaded 25 rocks, and the excess was dropped and lost. These rocks cannot be recovered.
First of all, check the furnace itself. As most of them are public, there are sometimes things left inside. If its charcole or metal, its no big issue. However, if someone has left rocks in the furnace, your full load will not fit and will result in you losing some rocks, as noted above.
Next, move your ore cart so that it is close to the furnace. Click the cart, and use the menu to dump the rocks into the furnace. Assuming you have charcoal in your inventory, click the furnace and choose to fill the furnace with charcoal. You will receive an on-screen message saying that the furnace is ready to fire. Click the furnace again, and select "Fire this Furnace!". In your "Main" chat window, you will receive a message saying the furnace is firing, and that it will take 120 seconds to finish. You can either stand and wait for it to finish, use the time to start a new load or make some more charcoal. After the 120 seconds have passed, you will get another message in your "Main" chat window informing you of that fact. Click on the furnace, select "Take", and the metal produced will be there ready for collection. And thats all there is to it. Sort of.
Note - when there are multiple furnaces in close proximity, when clicking the cart you will be presented wit the option to empty the cart into the closest furnace to your avatar, rather than the cart itself.
How the Craft Furnace Works
Here is some basic data on how the Craft Furnace works, and what kind of yields you can expect when using it.
The Primary Resource is the resource with the highest number of clusters in the load. This is generally the ore you are trying to smelt.
The Secondary Resource is the resource with the second highest number of clusters in the load. In the case of a Craft Furnace, the secondary resource is the main pollutant, and will drastically reduce your yield.
As the pollution ratio is 1:1, you must ensure that the Primary resource/Secondary resource ratio is higher than 1:1. In other words, there must be more Primary resouce than Secondary resource.
All other pollutants after the Secondary resource are ignored for the purposes of smelting in a Craft Furnace.
While the yield will vary depending on the amount of clusters in the load, the average yield for a pure smelt is usually between 20-30 metal... although it can be as high as 40-45 if the mine is a good one.
There you have it. You now have all the knowledge you need to go out mining, and return with a decent load of the basic metals. Of course, theres a lot more to mining than just the basics. Have a wade through the main wiki for information on that. Some starting points are: the main mining pages, guide to making charcoal in hearths, public mines page.
Here is a chart showing which ores produce the various metals. Mixing ore types that produce the same metal will not affect the yield. Note that "advanced" metals, such as Bronze and Steel are not shown. This is because these metals are not "mined" as such, but are produced using two different ores in an Amalgamation Furnace. For details on making advanced metals, see the Alloy page or the main wiki.
| Metal | Ore 1 | Ore 2 | Ore 3 | Ore 4 | Ore 5 |
| Aluminum | Akdalaite | Corundum | Diaspore | Hibonite | Painite |
| Antimony | Berthierite | Bystromite | Paradocrasite | Senarmontite | Valentinite |
| Copper | Covellite | Cupalite | Cuprite | Digenite | Tenorite |
| Gold | Auricupride | Calaverite | Maldonite | Weishanite | Yuanjiangite |
| Iron | Bernalite | Fayalite | Hematite | Kamecite | Magnetite |
| Lead | Asisite | Blixite | Laurelite | Litharge | Shannonite |
| Lithium | Gricite | Liberite | Sicklerite | Tavorite | Tiptopite |
| Magnesium | Brucite | Fluborite | Kotoite | Periclase | Suanite |
| Platinum | Braggite | Genkinite | Hongshiite | Luberoite | Yixunite |
| Silver | Eugenite | Jalpaite | Nauamannite | Pearceite | Proustite |
| Strontium | Acuminite | Celestine | Jarlite | Ohmilite | Tausonite |
| Tin | Abhurite | Berndtite | Cassiterite | Romarchite | Stistaite |
| Titanium | Anatase | Brookite | Kleberite | Osbornite | Rulite |
| Tungsten | Ferberite | Jixianite | Rankachite | Sanmartinite | Wolframite |
| Zinc | Ashoverite | Danbaite | Matraite | Sweetite | Wulfingite |
Alphabetically Sorted for quick reference
| Ore | Metal |
| Abhurite | Tin |
| Acuminite | Strontium |
| Akdalaite | Aluminum |
| Anatase | Titanium |
| Ashoverite | Zinc |
| Asisite | Lead |
| Auricupride | Gold |
| Bernalite | Iron |
| Berndtite | Tin |
| Berthierite | Antimony |
| Blixite | Lead |
| Braggite | Platinum |
| Brookite | Titanium |
| Brucite | Magnesium |
| Bystromite | Antimony |
| Calaverite | Gold |
| Cassiterite | Tin |
| Celestine | Strontium |
| Corundum | Aluminum |
| Covellite | Copper |
| Cupalite | Copper |
| Cuprite | Copper |
| Danbaite | Zinc |
| Diaspore | Aluminum |
| Digenite | Copper |
| Eugenite | Silver |
| Fayalite | Iron |
| Ferberite | Tungsten |
| Fluborite | Magnesium |
| Genkinite | Platinum |
| Gricite | Lithium |
| Hematite | Iron |
| Hibonite | Aluminum |
| Hongshiite | Platinum |
| Jalpaite | Silver |
| Jarlite | Strontium |
| Jixianite | Tungsten |
| Kamecite | Iron |
| Kleberite | Titanium |
| Kotoite | Magnesium |
| Laurelite | Lead |
| Liberite | Lithium |
| Litharge | Lead |
| Luberoite | Platinum |
| Magnetite | Iron |
| Maldonite | Gold |
| Matraite | Zinc |
| Nauamannite | Silver |
| Ohmilite | Strontium |
| Osbornite | Titanium |
| Painite | Aluminum |
| Paradocrasite | Antimony |
| Pearceite | Silver |
| Periclase | Magnesium |
| Proustite | Silver |
| Rankachite | Tungsten |
| Romarchite | Tin |
| Rulite | Titanium |
| Sanmartinite | Tungsten |
| Senarmontite | Antimony |
| Shannonite | Lead |
| Sicklerite | Lithium |
| Stistaite | Tin |
| Suanite | Magnesium |
| Sweetite | Zinc |
| Tausonite | Strontium |
| Tavorite | Lithium |
| Tenorite | Copper |
| Tiptopite | Lithium |
| Valentinite | Antimony |
| Weishanite | Gold |
| Wolframite | Tungsten |
| Wulfingite | Zinc |
| Yixunite | Platinum |
| Yuanjiangite | Gold |