Mining
Mining pulls ore out of mountainsides and cave floors. Smelt the ore at a forge to get ingots, the raw material for Blacksmithy and other crafting. Every swing of the pick also has a small chance to turn up a gem.
Mining is one of the four gathering skills — see the Gathering Overview for how resource spots, respawns and town bonuses work across all of them.
Getting Started
- Buy a pickaxe (blacksmiths and provisioners sell them, or craft your own).
- Double-click the tool — "Where do you wish to dig?"
- Target a mountainside or cave floor within 2 tiles.
A few rules:
- The tool must be in your hands or your backpack — a pickaxe must be equipped or held for serious mining.
- You can mine while mounted on UO Sagas (a community-voted change — most shards don't allow it).
- You cannot mine while polymorphed into a non-human form.
Each successful dig yields ore and uses up one charge on your tool. Each spot in the world holds a limited amount of ore; once you dig it dry, it refills after roughly 8–15 minutes.
Tools
Mining on UO Sagas uses one tool: the pickaxe, good for 50 uses. It doubles as a one-handed weapon — its swings use your Mining skill for accuracy, so a miner is never entirely unarmed underground.
One use is consumed per successful dig — failed attempts don't wear the tool. When the last use is spent the tool breaks. Tools crafted from colored ingots get a larger use pool, so a smith friend is worth having. See Repairing for keeping gear alive in general — but note harvest tools are consumed, not repaired.
Auto-targeting
Auto-targeting: click yourself
Target yourself with the pickaxe instead of a wall and the nearest minable tile within 2 tiles is dug. The game searches outward ring by ring, so it always takes the closest one, and the tile must be in line of sight.
If nothing is in range: "There is nothing you can harvest nearby." — no dig, no tool wear.
See Gathering Overview.
Ore Types
UO Sagas is a Renaissance-era shard, so ore comes in six tiers. (Dull Copper, Gold and Agapite do not exist here.)
| Ore | Skill to mine | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Iron | 0 | Everywhere; the only ore in towns |
 |
Shadow Iron | 60 | |
 |
Copper | 80 | |
 |
Bronze | 100 | |
 |
Verite | 110 | Requires skill above Grandmaster |
 |
Valorite | 120 | Requires the full 120 skill cap |
"Skill to mine" is the minimum to pull that ore at all; your actual success chance keeps improving well past that point, so even at the requirement you will fail often.
Where the Good Ore Is
Every mining spot has a hidden vein type that decides which ore it gives. The odds depend on where you are:
| Ore | Overland | In town | Dungeon level 1 | Dungeon level 2 | Dungeon level 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron | 75% | 100% | 40% | 25% | 10% |
| Shadow Iron | 15% | — | 30% | 33% | 31% |
| Copper | 9.3% | — | 21.6% | 30.2% | 42.5% |
| Bronze | 0.4% | — | 4.2% | 5.9% | 8.3% |
| Verite | 0.2% | — | 2.8% | 3.9% | 5.5% |
| Valorite | 0.1% | — | 1.4% | 2.0% | 2.7% |
The deeper the dungeon, the better the veins — serious miners work dungeon caves, not the mountains outside town.
Luck Helps
Positive Luck gives a chance to bump a vein up one tier before you dig it — "You stumbled across a better ore vein out of sheer luck." The chance grows with your Luck, and shrinks at every step up the ladder — an Iron→Shadow bump is the most common by far, a Verite→Valorite one the rarest, and that top step needs 50+ Luck before it can fire at all. Luck upgrades never trigger inside towns.
Gems
While mining ore you can also turn up gems. Each gem type has its own small chance per successful dig once your Mining skill is high enough:
| Gem | Mining skill needed | |
|---|---|---|
 |
Amber | 50 |
 |
Amethyst | 60 |
 |
Emerald | 70 |
 |
Sapphire | 80 |
 |
Ruby | 90 |
 |
Diamond | 100 |
See Gems for what they're used for.
Smelting Ore into Ingots
Double-click a pile of ore and target a forge. You can also target another pile of the same ore to combine the two stacks.
Each pile of mined ore smelts into 2 ingots per ore. Failure burns away part of the pile — "You burn away the impurities but are left with less useable metal."
Smelting rolls your Mining skill. Reliable smelting needs:
| Ore | Ingot | Metal | Skill for a chance | Skill to never fail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
 |
Iron | any | 30 |
|
 |
Shadow Iron | 35 | 65 |
|
 |
Copper | 50 | 80 |
|
 |
Bronze | 65 | 95 |
|
 |
Verite | 80 | 110 |
|
 |
Valorite | 95 | 125 |
Copper ore and above are refused outright if the required smelting skill is above your Mining — "You have no idea how to smelt this strange ore!" Iron and Shadow Iron can always be attempted.
Tips
- Stealth mining: a hidden miner with Stealth over 100 can roll to stay hidden while working a vein. The chance scales from 0% at 100 Stealth up toward 120 — fail the roll and you're revealed.
- Ore elementals do not spawn from mining on UO Sagas — dig in peace.
- Town citizenship bonuses can double your yield and speed up skill gain in specific regions — see Citizenship and Citizen Quests (gathering quests can be filled straight from your pick via the tool's Quest Gathering toggle).
- Mining has its own Skill Mastery with perks for double yield, tool preservation, tier upgrades and the Motherlode proc.
Town Quests for miners
Your ore is worth citizen points
The town Miner posts gathering town quests for a quantity of one ore tier — iron up to verite, the rarer tiers on the longer quest periods (daily quests stay on iron and shadow iron; monthly ones can reach verite). They pay citizen points, town score and reward currency, and count toward Town Exports.
Switch it on first. Left-click your equipped pickaxe and choose Turn on Quest Gathering. While it is on, ore of the requested tier goes straight into quest progress instead of your pack; every other ore type still lands in your backpack as normal.
Related
- Town Quests — the Miner's gathering quests
- Gathering Overview
- Lumberjacking · Fishing · Skinning
- Crafting Overview · Crafting Resources