Everything anybody forges in this realm started as a rock that somebody hit with a pickaxe. That somebody can be you, and the good rocks are worth more than most monsters carry.
Mining is the simplest job in Britannia and the one the whole economy sits on. You walk up to a mountainside or a cave wall, you use a pickaxe on it, and ore falls out. Then you carry it to a forge and smelt it into ingots. That's it — and every blacksmith, tinker and jeweler on the shard needs what you're carrying.
The reason it's worth a character slot is coloured ore. Ordinary iron is cheap. Above it sit dull copper, shadow iron, copper, bronze, gold, agapite, verite and — the one everybody wants — valorite. The rarer the colour, the better the armour it makes, and the more a smith will pay you for a pile of it. A single valorite haul can out-earn an evening in a dungeon.
The honest downside isn't danger, it's weight. Ore is heavy, your pack is not infinite, and the walk back is the whole game. Half of being a good miner is solving transport: a strong character, a pack animal, and a way to get home instantly. Sort that out and mining turns from a chore into a printing press.
You get 700 skill points in total, which is seven skills at 100 (Grandmaster). Here is a sheet that works, and why each line is on it. You can load this exact spread on the hero sheet in the magazine and slide the numbers around.
| Skill | Points | Why it's here |
|---|---|---|
| Mining | 100 | The job. It also controls smelting — a low-skill miner destroys ore trying to turn it into ingots, so there's no such thing as a part-time miner. |
| Blacksmithy | 100 | So you're not just a supplier. Your own ore plus your own hammer means you keep the whole profit instead of selling rocks at rock prices. |
| Tinkering | 100 | Makes your own pickaxes and shovels, forever, out of the ingots you just smelted. Buying tools with mining money is a tax you don't have to pay. |
| Arms Lore | 100 | Pushes up the quality of what you forge. This is the crafting skill fighters keep mistaking for a combat skill — on this sheet it finally belongs. |
| Magery | 100 | Not for fireballs. For Mark, Recall and Gate Travel, which is how four hundred stone of ore gets home before you die of old age. |
| Meditation | 100 | Mana back fast, so the travel spells are always ready. These two lines are your delivery van. |
| Hiding | 100 | The dungeon mines hold the best ore and the worst company. Hiding is how a miner with no combat skills walks out with the valorite. |
| Total | 700 | of 700 |
Skills are 700 points; stats are a separate budget and miners should dump almost all of it into Strength, because Strength is carrying capacity and carrying capacity is income. A miner at 100 Strength hauls roughly twice what a 50-Strength one does per trip.
A pack llama or pack horse carries a lot and costs a few hundred gold. It's slower than a gate and it can be killed, but it frees 200 points. Plenty of good miners run that way — just accept the longer walk.
Skills go up by using them, and they go up fastest on a task that is just barely hard for you. Climb the rungs in order — each one stops paying off, and that's your cue to move up.
Any NPC blacksmith or miner will push Mining to 30 for a few hundred gold. Do the same for Blacksmithy and Tinkering while you're there. This is the best money a new crafter ever spends.
Minoc is the mining town, and the hills around it are wall-to-wall ore with a bank and a forge a short walk away. Dig, fill up, smelt, sell, repeat. Unlike combat skills, mining gains don't care how dangerous the rock is — steady beats clever here.
Around now your smelting stops eating your ore. Stop selling raw ore to NPCs and start stockpiling ingots instead; ingots are what players actually buy. Put a forge and anvil in the house and the round trip gets much shorter.
Coloured ore shows up far more often in the dungeon mines than on open hillsides. This is where Hiding earns its hundred points. Work Covetous' mining level, come home, smelt, and watch the good stuff start to pile up.
Grandmaster Mining is a gate, not a milestone: at 100 you can quarry granite for stonecrafting and gather sand for glassblowing, and your smelting stops failing entirely. Grind the last stretch in the dungeon mines so the grind pays for itself.
A miner's kit is almost embarrassingly cheap, which is the point — this is the profession you can start with nothing. Spend the money on transport, not on tools, because you'll be making your own tools by the end of the week.
| What | Where | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Several pickaxes | Any blacksmith, or tinker your own | They wear out and break mid-trip. Carry at least three. Once Tinkering is up you'll never buy one again. |
| A shovel | Provisioner | Does the same job as a pickaxe on open ground. Cheap spare, and lighter in the pack. |
| A pack llama or pack horse | Animal trainer, any stable | Your mule. Four hundred-odd gold for several hundred stone of extra capacity, which pays for itself on the first load. |
| A runebook and blank runes | Mage shop | Mark a rune at your forge, Mark another at the mine. Those two runes are the entire logistics problem, solved. |
| A prospector's tool | Tinker, or a mining bulk order reward | Upgrades the ore in a spot by one colour grade. Small thing, big money over a few hundred uses. |
| A forge and an anvil at home | Blacksmith shop deed, or tinkered | The difference between smelting at home and queueing at Minoc's public forge. Put them next to your ore chest. |
The right room makes training three times faster. These are the spots worth a rune.
The mining town, and the only correct first answer. Hills full of ore, a forge, a bank and NPC trainers all within a minute's walk.
Caves full of ore with a far better chance of the coloured stuff. Bring Hiding and a rune home — this is where the real money is.
Closer to the big bank if Britain is your home town. Safe, dull, endlessly productive.
The single biggest upgrade a miner can buy. Mark a rune on the doorstep and your round trip drops to under a minute.
Ore is far heavier than the ingots it becomes. If there's a forge anywhere near the mine, smelt there and carry ingots home — you'll fit two or three times as much in the same pack.
Each piece of ground gives up a few loads and then tells you there's nothing left. It isn't broken and it isn't you — walk a short way along the rock face and start again. New miners stand in one place swinging at nothing for ten minutes.
Coloured ore and open season on you are frequently the same address. In Felucca another player can kill you and take the entire load. Check which facet you're in before you fill your pack, and go home more often than feels necessary.
Shopkeepers pay almost nothing. Smelt it, and either forge it yourself or sell ingots to the players who need them — especially the coloured ones. A pile of valorite ingots is worth many times the same pile of ore.
Britannia runs on favours. These are the people you want in your party and on your friends list.