Mining Guide
A mine is used to bring up ore and gems from the ground. Materials accumulate in the mine as they are extracted.You will want to use Dowsing to prospect for metallic veins in the ground prior to building your mine.
Several public Dowsing efforts are under way so that efforts are not duplicated.
Metals and Gems
Each mine will contain a type of metal and a type of gem
Metals (most screenshots taken with low light/shadow settings):
| Type | Screenshot | Type | Screenshot | Type | Screenshot | Type | Screenshot |
| Collapsed mine (Danger sign) |  | Sand (Black crystals) |  | Copper (Green cystals) |  | Iron (Red and Orange crystals) |  |
| Tin (Light and Dark Blue crystals) |  | Lead (White crystals) |  | Zinc (Purple crystals) |  | Platinum (Violet and Rose crystals) |  |
| Tungsten (Light Sky Blue and Purple crystals) |  | Magnesium (Pink and Lime crystals) |  | Aluminum (Sky Blue and Green crystals) |  | Silver (Grey crystals) |  |
| Gold (Gold crystals) |  | Antimony (Blue and Purple crystals) |  | Titanium (Yellow and Lime crystals) |  | Strontium ( Pink and Rose Crystals ) |  |
| Lithium (Purple and Pink crystals) |  |
Gems
Coal
(New as of 20Nov06)
Some mines produce coal from some of the crystals. It appears they need to be repaired several times before this happens. It also appears to have some avatar-specific requirements. Not all mines produce coal at the same number of repairs. With one mine, SanderDolphin took a mine to 20+ repairs and never saw coal, whereas another mine produced coal only between levels 13 and 17 (it's now up to 22), and one as low as level 7 producing coal. Note that only some of the crystals produce coal, and that yield drops if one crystal is used repeatedly to produce coal. The appearance of a gem appears to preclude the appearance of coal. See coal for more information on the subject. ~Ouijdani
Increasing Yield
Each pull on the mine brings back a number of ore and starts a 5 second Perception and Strength Timer. It is possible to reduce this timer to as low as 1 second (about a +12 Str and Per). Higher stats does not reduce the 1 second timer (tested with +50 food, similar results as a +12 food) - SanderDolphin
Your mining skill is a key factor in determining how much ore you receive per pull.
For most people, randomly clicking the crystals inside the mine to bring up the extraction menu for each pull, or using the "W" hotkey on different individual crystals, causes the ore yield to steadily rise over time. Some other people claim that this method does not make a difference, but the majority seem to have best success with the "random crystal" method.
Over time, you will see your yield peak and then start to decline. Eventually the mine will collapse and you will need to repair? the mine. Current speculation is that if you allow your mine to rest in between sessions, it will not collapse as often (this is still unverified).
- I have a macro that clicks on each of the seven crystal groups, using an F5 view, plus a pinned general mine menu and a pinned Take that I use to track production.
- When when the macro used a fixed sequence, the yield of the mine would settle at 2 per pull.
- I rewrote the macro to use a Switch/Case structure, with a Random Integer to select one case each time. I used exactly the same code to select the points themselves, and they remained fixed. With random order selection, the yield of the mine varies between 6/7 with mining 1. - MarvL
Note: the following exchanges are quite old. I have worked many mines to breakdown, and always got about 1000 pulls. Other than these very early experiences I have never heard of anyone losing a mine at low usage levels. ~Ouijdani
- On speculation above, I had a mine which collapsed after 30 pulls after being gone for over 1 Teppy-day. ~Aoreias
- Are you sure noone else had used the mine? thats happened a few times in my research. ~Setheri
- Private mine, absolutely positive. Same results on a completly seperate mine which hadn't been mined by anyone for
- at least 2 TDays and breaking after less than 100 pulls. ~Aoreias
- I used a guilded copper mine 500 times in 1 day and the next week (still 0 repairs) i used it again 800 times, so it
- might be that people are just being impatient with the resting time limit
- With a mine of mine, I had pulled 5 times on a Thursday. On a Sunday, I went back and pulled 996 times, at that point it 'collapsed'. The mine was private with nobody else using it in-between.
- Resting a mine does NOT keep it from collapsing. Left an Iron mine for over a month, it collapsed after 3 pulls when I returned, - SpoonerandForker
- I've done some research and it appears that there is no anti-macro, imagine the workings like this, each time you mine a certain crystal (by clicking on it) you boost the yield slowly (a very small fraction that eventually will add up to 1 more per pull) but it also degrades the crystal until it starts dropping the yield, BUT if you use a different crystal in between every about 6-7 pulls from one crystal (i tend to use the different one for the main crystal) it RESETS the degradation level and so stops the yield from dropping. This does NOT counter the yield droppage before the mine collapses. Please confirm - Setheri
- More or less consistent with my experience ~Ouijdani
- I have my yield data at Users/Archilochus/Mine Data and will attempt to continue to keep it updated -- Archilochus
Mining Reference Map
Miscellaneous
- [...]This implies that the sequence of what size gems will be mined when is predetermined at the time of mine creation based on some seed (location, random, some combination thereof?). Which also supports data that regardless of ore yield the gem yield for a given mine seems constant.
- The above appears consistent with my data. Also, repeatedly repaired mines seem to experience a slight drop in gem yield. I have no data to confirm that, however. ~Ouijdani
- Does anyone know if it is still possible to tear down a Sand mine once it has collapsed? - Tazendra
Yes, it is possible, I have mined several sand/quartz mines to collapse, hoping for a huge, and tore it down instead of repairing it. ~Gemstar
