In-Depth Mining Guide for World of Warcraft

Thanks for your interest in TGEXP’s In-Depth WoW Mining Guide.

This guide is updated for patch 8.3

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Q&A

Below are some of the questions you might be asking regarding the Mining profession, and the answers that I’ve come up with for them.

What’s in this WoW Mining Guide?

It primarily focuses on the mining routes of every zone (unless they don’t have a good route).

It’s short and sweet, telling you how much of what ore/stone I’ve gathered in a given area within a set time limit. Most of the ore in question will lead you directly to the material page on my website. This goes the same for the zone names.

Due to this guide getting a refresher, a lot of that isn’t available yet, however.

Where do you get Mining?

Before you get started with this profession, you’ll be needing the profession. So here’s a list of the different trainers you can find throughout the world. The links will take you to WoWHead pages.

Continent: Eastern Kingdoms

Continent: Kalimdor

Continent: Northrend

Continent: Outland

Continent: Pandaria

Continent: The Broken Isles

Continent: Ashran

Continent: The Lost Isles

Continent: The Wandering Isle

How do you find ore?

Got your Mining profession? Great! On your minimap, there’s an icon you can click that’ll extend a dropdown menu. Find and check ‘Find Minerals’ and you’re good to go!

What professions benefit Mining?

You can get any profession you want, but the four that go great with this profession are either Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, or Engineering.

What are the best races for Mining?

  • Druids will help you pop in and out of flight form fast when mining out in the open world.
  • Highmountain Taurens will provide you with a racial bonus to mining speed.
  • Demon Hunters are nice for indoor use (such as caves and dungeons), regarding their speed at getting around.

What addons should I get for Mining?

highly recommend Gathermate2 and WoWGatheringNodes. They’re two addons that coexist with one another in order to show you all the locations of the different ore of the world. I also use both FarmHUD and Routes.

Why are there missing expansions?

Either it’s because I’ve been slacking, or because I’m reworking this entire page for patch 8.3, which means going through every zone and mining each location for 30 minutes to gather data.

If you find something else missing or wrong, feel free to contact me.

Mining Aids

These will come in handy while you’re mining, but they aren’t all specifically needed. They’ll make your gathering life a little bit easier.

Bags

Enchants

Equipment

Useables

Mining Essentials

The books are what you’re going to need in order to start mining in specific continents. The techniques are extremely beneficial to Legion mining–the higher-ranked the technique, the better benefits.

Books

Techniques

Ore & Stone Locations

Here’s the real reason you’re reading my WoW Mining Guide, right?

Throughout this section, you’ll find the links to various ores and stones you can acquire via the Mining profession. The links will take you to the freebie pages that tell you about the mats in question.

This section is to keep everything in front of you, so you can find what you’re looking for and the information you need. Such as the best place for an item without an overload of information.

The routes in this section offer you full view of the maps in question, at a reduced resolution of 1280×720. In order to get the full resolution of 2560×1440, you’ll need to purchase my In-Depth Farming Guide. It offers a variety of routes for each zone, with all the data I’ve accumulated over the years of farming.

Note: These routes were timed for 30 minutes on a Horde Tauren Druid (unless stated otherwise).

Vanilla WoW

Coarse Stone

Copper Ore

Dark Iron Ore

Dark Iron Ore is only obtained through two different places: Molten Core and Blackrock Depths, but MC is the go-to place for miners. As far as smelting goes, you’ll need to use the anvil in Blackrock Depths.

  • Molten Core – full run
    • 48

Dense Stone

Gold Ore

The only thing you can do with Gold Ore as a miner is craft them into bars, which then benefits a variety of other crafting professions, including crafting parts to the transmog Blackforge Mail.

Heavy Stone

Iron Ore

Large Obsidian Shard

  • The Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj – full run
    • 1
  • The Temple of Ahn’Qiraj – full run
    • 5

Mithril Ore

Rough Stone

Silver Ore

Small Obsidian Shard

  • The Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj – full run
    • 15
  • The Temple of Ahn’Qiraj – full run
    • 18

Solid Stone

Thorium Ore

Tin Ore

Truesilver Ore

The Burning Crusade

Adamantite Ore

Eternium Ore

Fel Iron Ore

Khorium Ore

Wrath of the Lich King

Cobalt Ore

Saronite Ore

  • Icecrown (Route 1) (map)
    • 132
  • Icecrown (Route 2) (map)
    • 154
  • Sholazar Basin (map)
    • 139
  • Wintergrasp (map)
    • 300

Titanium Ore

  • Icecrown (Route 1) (map)
    • 12
  • Icecrown (Route 2) (map)
    • 23
  • Wintergrasp (map)
    • 25

Cataclysm

Elementium Ore

  • Uldum (map)
    • 319

Obsidium Ore

Pyrite Ore

  • Uldum (map)
    • 32

Volatile Earth

  • Uldum (map)
    Timed for 1:10:13

    • 25

Volatile Fire

  • Uldum (map)
    Timed for 1:04:30

    • 25

Volatile Water

  • Uldum (map)
    Timed for 44:01

    • 26

Mists of Pandaria

The information below is based on having the Mist-Piercing Goggles on hand.

Black Trillium Ore

  • Dread Wastes (map)
    • 3
  • Kun-Lai Summit (map)
    • 4
  • Townlong Steppes (map) 
    • 2

Ghost Iron Ore

  • Dread Wastes (map) 
    • 342
  • Kun-Lai Summit (map) 
    • 367
  • The Jade Forest (map)
    • 283
  • Townlong Steppes (map)

    • 236
  • Valley of the Four Winds (map)
    • 524

Kyparite

  • Dread Wastes (map) 
    • 83
  • Townlong Steppes (map)

    • 83

White Trillium Ore

  • Dread Wastes (map) 
    • 11
  • Kun-Lai Summit (map)
    • 13
  • Townlong Steppes (map) 
    • 4
  • Valley of the Four Winds (map)
    • 4

Warlords of Draenor

Blackrock Ore

Leystone Ore

True Iron Ore

Legion

Empyrium

Felslate

Battle for Azeroth

Monelite Ore

Osmenite Ore

Platinum Ore

Storm Silver Ore