OSRS Mining Guide For Beginners

Mining is probably the most expansive skill in the game, with 14 different types of rocks, tens if not hundreds of mines throughout the world of RuneScape, and being directly associated with the skill that supplies people with weapons and armour. Mining in itself, just ores and bars, accounts for more than 15% of the RuneScape economy.

 If you want to train Mining, make sure you have enough OSRS GP ready.

Introduction to OSRS Mining

Mining is a simple, almost self-explanatory skill. To increase your mining level, you mine ores. The higher you raise your level, the more types of ores and rocks you can mine. Once you know your way around mining well you will be able to tell the content of a rock simply by looking at its colour. However, if you do not, there is a handy feature to help you. If you are unsure about rock, you first want to right-click on it, then click "Prospect." Your character will then proceed to tell you what is (or perhaps is not) in it.

If you have a pickaxe in your inventory or you are wielding it, you can start mining by finding a level 1 ore, which would be either clay, tin, or copper. It will come slowly at first, but as your level improves, you will find that you get the ores faster with each try.

After you successfully mine an ore, the rock you mined it from will go "grey" temporarily. This means there are no ores available in the rock. Once its color returns, you can mine it again. The time it remains empty depends on several things. First, each rock has a separate "base" respawn time or the amount of time it takes for the ore to return. This base changes by the number of people on a server; the more people in the world, the faster the respawn time, and the faster you get your next ore.

OSRS Pickaxes

Pickaxes are the only tools required for mining, however, in order to use the best ones, there is a requirement. This table shows the types of pickaxes, the mining level required to use one, the attack needed to wield one, and the cost to buy one-off Nurmof, the pickaxe seller. Nurmof's shop is located in a room behind the anvils in the Dwarven Mines. The better the pickaxe you use, the faster you will be able to mine ores and the higher chance you will beat other people to them. Remember, even if you do not have a high enough attack level to hold one, but have enough mining, you can still use the pickaxe! For example, if I had 34 mining but only 27 attacks, I could not hold an adamant pickaxe, but I could still use it if I had it in my inventory while mining.

Mining Events To Look Out For

While mining, like any other time, there are a number of random events you can encounter, among which are these unique random events.

Rock Golem - Rock Golems are monsters that appear at times when you try to mine rock. Their level depends on your combat level, as with other aggressive random events. If a very low combat level (under 3-10), you will receive a level 14 Rock Golem, level 11-20 will receive a level 29. Level 21-40 get a level 49, level 41-60 get to level 79. Level 61-90 will get a level 120 Rock Golem. 90+ combat players will receive a level 159 Rock Golem. Rock Golems throw rocks at you, so merely putting yourself on the other side of an ore-containing rock will no longer protect you from it.

Gaseous Rock - It will appear in the form of a rock with green-gray bubbles coming out of it. When you see this, DO NOT attempt to mine this rock, because it will then explode and you will have damaged your pickaxe, which you can have Nurmof fix (use the damaged pickaxe with Nurmof to have him fix it). If nobody attempts to mine a "bubbling" rock, it will return to normal after 20 seconds or so. The price to fix a Rune pickaxe is 1100gp, for other types it would be less.

Broken pickaxe - In this case, the pickaxe head flies off while you try mining and lands on the ground within sight of the screen. You must simply pick it up and use it with the handle to fix the pickaxe. You may then continue mining.