Introduction

Mining is the process of using a pickaxe to obtain ores from rocks. The higher your Mining level, the better the rock you can mine - to obtain a more valuable ore. You should have your pickaxe in your inventory, or even wield it, and then click on a rock. A lumpy rock may have different coloured veins depending on the ore they can give, or a 'rock' may be a small cluster of three rock images (see ores below). Rocks are found at mining sites all over the RuneScape world. Details of the rocks found in different mining sites are in Tip.It's mining maps pages. You can right click on a rock and prospect to see which type of ore it contains. When you click on a rock to mine it, you will see your character swinging a pickaxe at the rock until he/she gets an ore.

Beginning miners may wish to visit the Mining Tutor, located in the mine south of Lumbridge graveyard. In addition to advice, he also gives a free bronze pickaxe to people who have lost theirs.

You can obtain different pickaxes from Nurmof the Dwarf, who sells them in the Dwarven Mine. (Pickaxes are also sold in the Dwarven city of Keldagrim.) The better the pickaxe, the quicker you will obtain the ore from the rock. Usually you will wield your pickaxe so that you can carry a full pack of ore. However, sometimes you might want to wield another weapon and just have your pickaxe in your inventory: for example, if you are superheating ores and wielding your fire staff, or mining in the wilderness and wielding your sword. Below is a table of the different pickaxes.

Pickaxes
Pic	Name	Mining Level to Use	Price to Buy	Repair Cost
	Bronze pickaxe	1	1 gp	Free
	Iron pickaxe	1	137 gp	Free
	Steel pickaxe	6	500 gp	17 gp
	Mithril pickaxe	21	1,300 gp	43 gp
	Adamant pickaxe	31	3,200 gp	107 gp
	Rune pickaxe	41	32,000 gp	1100 gp

The Repair cost is how much you pay Nurmof for repair if your pickaxe breaks while mining "smoking" rocks. More information about this is in our Random Events guide. If the head of your pickaxe is only separated from the handle, just find it (it flies several squares away from where you are mining), then use the head on the handle to reattach it.

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Mining Ores

Here is a list of the rocks you can mine and their details. Note that Jagex has updated the look of some (but not all) ore rocks in the game. The old style is a small cluster of three or four uniformly coloured ore rocks. The new look has "veins" of ore in a lump of rock. Both the old and new look for each rock are shown in this table. Some rocks are only offered in a few locations - these are included below for convenience. See the mining maps listing to choose the best location for you to mine more widely available rocks.

Mining Ores
Rock (old look)	Rock (new look)	Name	Level to Mine	Exp.	Notes
		Rune Essence	1	5	Found in the Rune Essence Mine (see the Runecrafting guide) and in the Lunar Isle mine. Used to make Runes. On a members server, level 30 miners will mine pure essence.
		Clay	1	5	Used in low level Crafting to make Pottery.If mined while wearing a Bracelet of clay wet clay will be mined.
		Copper	1	17.5	Used with Tin to smelt bronze.
		Tin	1	17.5	Used with Copper to smelt bronze.
		Blurite	10	17.5	Mined only in the Ice Caves mine south of Port Sarim/Rimmington. Used in the Knight's Sword Quest. Also used by members to make crossbows and bolt tips. Blurite ore and its products are untradeable.
		Limestone	10	26.5	Mined only in Arandar and off the road east of Varrock's Earth runecrafting altar leading to the Salve Temple. Used for quests, Mort'ton temple building, and the Construction skill.
		Iron	15	35	A very versatile ore - used to make Iron and Steel bars.
		Silver	20	40	Used in Crafting to make holy or unholy symbols, tiaras, crossbow bolts, and member quest items.
		Elemental	20	0	Found only in the Elemental Workshop located under Seers Village smithy. Mining it spawns an Earth Elemental; kill it to get the ore. Used in elemental or mind shields and helms.
		Coal	30	50	There is always a demand for this ore, used in all high level smelting (smithing).
		Sandstone	35	30 to 60	Found in Enakhra's mine. Used for quests. Experience depends on the random size of the mined rock: 1, 2, 5 or 10 kg.
		Gold	40	65	Used in Crafting to make rings, necklaces and amulets.
		Gems	40	65	Found only in the Shilo Village gem mine and the Lunar Isle mine. You can get any gem except dragonstone and onyx.
		Granite	45	50 to 75	Found in Enakhra's mine. Used for quests and power-mining. Experience depends on the random size of the mined rock: 0.5, 2, or 5 kg.
		Mithril	55	80	Used for smelting/smithing.
		Adamant	70	95	Used for smelting/smithing.
		Runite	85	125	Found in the Heroes Guild, the Wilderness Runite mine, the Wilderness Lava Maze dungeon, the path to the Light Temple, and on Neitiznot. Used for smelting/smithing.

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Gems

Often you can obtain magic gems (sapphire, emerald, ruby or diamond) when mining; a gem will appear in your inventory and the ore you are mining will still be in the rock. No xp is obtained from this. Wearing a charged Amulet of Glory (members only) will significantly increase your chance of mining a gem. Members can also mine special gem rocks in Shilo Village and on Lunar Isle to get gems (normal ones plus three special "precious" gems: opal, jade, topaz) - 65 mining xp is gained for each gem mined from these rocks. Gems are used both for Crafting and for crossbow bolt tips.
The various gems obtainable through mining are shown below (note: Dragonstone and Onyx gems cannot be obtained this way):

Magic Gems
Sapphire	Emerald	Ruby	Diamond

Precious gems
Opal	Jade	Red topaz

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Miscellaneous Info

A few more things to explain about the skill of mining:

• Your character will continue swinging until he/she gets an ore. If someone else is mining the rock and the colour changes to grey - it means the other person got the ore. You should move on to another rock or wait till the ore respawns in the rock and the colour re-appears.
• Mining Coal is a good way to get some cash. It is always in demand by smiths around the world, because it is required in all medium and high level smithing.
• The Mining Guild is an area restricted to players with a mining level over 60. It is an extended area in the Dwarven Mine and has many coal rocks as well as a few Mithril. It also offers a short path to Falador's east bank. For more details, refer to the Dwarven Mine map.
• The Coal Trucks mine west of McGrubor's Woods is also a good place for members to mine coal. Load the carts with up to 120 ore, fill your pack, then return to Seers Village to unload and bank it all.
• You can buy a Dwarven Stout from the Inn in Falador and other pubs around Runescape. Drinking it will raise your mining and smithing by one level for a couple of minutes.
• Jagex states that Braindeath 'Rum' will increase a member's mining level temporarily, and reduce many other abilities. The amounts depend on your stats. Braindeath 'Rum' can be bought from Mos Le'Harmless pubs (to order your rum, you must carry a Book o'Piracy; you can re-obtain the book from Bill Teach in Mama's Pub or from your player-owned house bookshelf).
• Gold is often used to train Smithing and thus mining it can be a profitable business. One of the best places for members to mine gold is the Arzinian mines that can be accessed after completing the Between a Rock... Quest. A nearby dwarf will deposit your load of gold in the bank for you, but charges several gold ores. If you wear an activated ring of charos (from the Garden of Tranquillity quest), you can charm him to reduce the fee. Note that you must keep one inventory slot open for removing your gold helmet to leave the mine, or else you can log off and back on to exit the mine with 28 gold ores.

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Levelling

Now, as for how to level - if you are very dedicated, you can get 85 mining in two months, maybe one and a half. Remember, if you want to level very fast, get on a server with a lot of people. The rocks will spawn faster on a busier world, and if you get a place to yourself, you will be able to mine very fast. The "higher" level rocks take the more time to respawn (rune rocks might take up to 30 minutes, as opposed to clay ones that respawn almost instantaneously). As a general idea, on a full server the respawn time is around half of the time on an empty world.
Also, remember that your pickaxe type affects how well you mine. Always use the highest level pickaxe that you can.

There are many who advocate dropping ore to level faster. Most people take 30-60 seconds to drop a full load of ore. If you are mining for level and pick a location as recommended below, you will find that you can run (not walk) to a bank and deposit the ore in about half a minute or less. The return trip will also take half a minute, so you end up using the same amount of time, but benefit by having banked the ore. Also, banking the ore requires considerably less clicking. When your run energy drops, you might want to drop a few loads while it regenerates.

Alternatively, you can drop the ores you mine while you wait for the rock to respawn. For example if you are focusing on a cluster of three iron rocks, you could mine the three and then drop them while they respawn. Then continue the cycle.

Tips noted below by a circle (o) instead of a solid bullet indicate advice that applies to P2P only. However, additional P2P hints may be included in the F2P tips.

Levels	Information
1-20	Copper and Tin ore will be the only ores you can mine easily. For F2P, the ores at the mine south east of Varrock are the closest to the bank. Just a note, if you mine equal copper and tin ores and smelt/smith them, you can get 14 or 15 smithing with only 20 mining levels. The Port Khazard mine on P2P has 3 each copper and tin ore spawns and a nearby bank in Yanille (to the south west). If you don't want to bank the ore, you can either drop what you get or sell to a general store. Dropping can happen anywhere, but the closest general store to a mine is the Rimmington mines. You can make some good money there. When do you change from Tin/Copper to Iron? You will want to monitor this from time to time, but the principle is easy. Since Tin/Copper give half the exp points per ore as Iron does, you will want to switch to mining Iron for experience when you get the Iron ore in double or less the swings as it takes you for Tin/Copper. For instance, if it takes you on average 2 swings to get the Tin/Copper but 4 for Iron, then switch to Iron -- your exp pts per hour will be the same. If the iron takes only, on average, 3 swings, then it will be faster experience per hour.
20-60	This is where you will have the most competition. Iron will be -- hands down -- the fastest way to gain experience, but many other people are mining it as well. The Hobgoblin Mines have 27 iron ore spawns. It is in the wilderness, but if you have only a pickaxe and the iron you mine, you won't lose anything. Bring some food and an alternate weapon. Hobgoblins will readily attack you for the first 15 to 20 minutes you are there. If you are F2P and want to bank the ores, the South-east Varrock mine is probably best. It is about 4 clicks from the Varrock east bank. If you are P2P, competition will be less. There are many more mining places. I would suggest the Port Khazard mine. It has 9 iron ore spawns and a nearby bank, so you can get rid of your ore faster. The bank in Yanille is 3.5 clicks from the northern most group of 4 iron rocks. Another good P2P iron mine is in the Lumbridge Caves, accessible during and after the completion of the Lost Tribe Quest. You have the option to sell the ores to Mistag or to bank them in Lumbridge Castle. South of Ardougne (4 clicks SW from the south bank) along the road, there are 6 iron rocks. If other locations are crowded, this is a good alternative. At level 30, you can begin mining coal. Coal is always needed for higher level smithing, so it is always in demand. Because the spawn rate for coal is much slower than iron, your rate of gaining experience will be lower, but you can weigh the loss in experience against the profit potential in selling coal. At level 55, you can begin mining mithril. Find a place with iron spawns and some mithril rocks as well (such as the P2P Port Khazard mine). Grab each mithril rock as it respawns until you have a full load. With the invention of the members ring of forging, the value of iron increased. Thus, in P2P, iron is a viable profit making ore. Smiths are anxious to buy iron because using it with the ring of forging they can obtain more experience points for their money.
60-85	Hey! You're level 60 now! You can now enter the mining guild. Now, decide if you want to make money or continue levelling. If you wish to get some money, try the mining guild. It has a whole lot of coal to be mined. It won't be the fastest way to level up, but you will be able to sell what you get. Did you know that you need almost 60,000 coal to get to level 85 mining from level 60? That's several million gp if you sell it all. Or, if you want to get experience, find a secluded place with no one around. That way you can get the ores. You need almost 86,000 iron ore to get to level 85 mining from 60. Sound like a lot? It is. I would never suggest trying to get straight there. Grab a random level every once in a while. You won't get burnt out as easily. Mining granite (level 45) is a great way for members to powermine (mine and drop ores). It is found at Enakhra's mine in the Kharidian Desert, is at least as fast as iron, and should be dropped since it is useless except for some quests. (It cannot be smithed.) However, the desert effect applies at this mine, so bring waterskins!
85-99	Congratulations! You're at level 85 finally! You can mine rune. Rune isn't the easiest thing to get. There are always pkers to worry about (if you mine in the Wilderness) and the competition with other miners is fierce (especially if you mine in the P2P Heroes Guild). It will take quite a bit of time to learn tricks to get a lot of money. Good luck! Just a note: Many, many people are level 85 mining, 86 is more impressive. Continue mining in a secluded place dropping iron ores.

Now go off and have fun mining, whether it be for exp or for the ores (to sell or to smith). But do watch out for the Random Events that you could encounter while mining. Don't forget to use our extensive collection of mining maps under our Atlas section of the web site to help you along your way.

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Mining Aids

Mining Aids
Pic	Name	How to Obtain	Use
	Varrock Armour 1	Obtained by completing the easy tasks of the Varrock Achievement Diary.	Gives the chance to mine 2 ores at once, up to and including coal ore
	Varrock Armour 2	Obtained by completing the medium tasks of the Varrock Achievement Diary.	Gives the chance to mine 2 ores at once, up to and including mithril ore
	Varrock Armour 3	Obtained by completing the hard tasks of the Varrock Achievement Diary.	Gives the chance to mine 2 ores at once, up to and including adamantite ore

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Cape of Achievement

Once you have mastered the skill and reached level 99 you may want to buy a Mining Skill Cape from dwarf at entrance of mining guild in Falador. Refer to the Achievement Capes guide for more details.