Ultimate Mining Guide! (COMPETITION)

Hello smokin mils, and welcome to the ultimate mining guide. I’m hoping this guide will teach you the basics of mining, where to train, how to make profit, and even what pick to use, so I hope you enjoy it.

Table of contents:
-Part1: Choosing your pickaxe.
-Part2: The Training
-Part3: The Living Rock Caverns
-Part4: Shooting Stars
-Part5: Other Mining Tips
-Part6: Statistics and Profits
-Part7: Mining Familiars

-Part1: CHOOSING YOUR PICKAXE
This may seem simple; just use the best pick you can right? Well yes, you should in most cases. Let’s say you’re just taking your first steps in mining, and you’re level one in the skills. You should not use a bronze pickaxe! Even at this level an iron one is already available which will speed up the mining process. As you raise your skill to level 6 for a steel pickaxe, and beyond that, make sure to always use the best one you can.

Now at level 41 mining you can use the rune pickaxe and also the inferno adze if you have one. It doesn’t matter which one you should, they are completely equal for mining. Even if the adze has the same woodcutting stats as a dragon hatchet, it was released before the dragon pickaxe, plus its main use is woodcutting, so it still mines the same as a rune pick.

At 61 mining the obvious choice would be the dragon pickaxe if you can afford it. If you’re a player who can’t yet afford it a rune pick is still good for these levels and beyond. BUT, if you’re a player going for max total, trying to be as efficient with your time as possible it would save you time in the long run to train a skill like runecrafting where you gain a lot more profit than mining first, so you can afford the dragon pick at 61 mining. The dragon pickaxe is suppose to mine around 10% faster than the rune one, so if you’re going for 99 mining that can save you hours of time.

Now there’s one last pick I’d like to talk about. It’s the sacred clay pickaxe. These are debatable on whether you should use them or not because of the time it takes to play stealing creation. The pickaxe gives double the mining experience for about 15k experience. So that means by using one up completely you’re gaining 7.5k more xp than you would have without one. Let’s say you can get 1 sacred clay pick a game from stealing creation, with the games taking 20 minutes each. You got 3 picks in an hour, getting you an extra 22.5k xp when you use them.

So basically that means if you get less than 22.5k mining xp per hour the picks will help you get the most amount of xp possible, so at the really low mining levels these picks can help you.

Now let’s do the same calculations, but instead you joined a wicked skilling stealing creation team, completing the game in 10 minutes (which is very hard to do). You play for an hour and get 6 picks, which will get you an extra 45k mining xp when you use them. If you get under that much xp per hour again you should use them but I wouldn’t suggest it after 80 mining as that’s when you can mine concentrated gold ore and get atleast 50k xp per hour.

So for the most part, do not use sacred clay picks unless you have a crazy team and get under 45k mining xp per hour. But even so the game itself is a lot funner than mining so it’s ok to play it if you find it fun, as it is still helping you mine.




-Part2: THE TRAINING

1-15
Mine copper and tin ore anywhere you can find, and drop them. This shouldn’t take very long and is how you get your first few mining levels. A good spot would be south east of varrock. ~10k Xp per hour.


15-30
You can now mine iron. There are many iron spots around runescape, but you can just continue southeast of varrock if you like. If you are desperate for money and want to bank your iron, a good place to mine would be just north east of yanille, where you can bank in yanilles bank. Powermining is ~35k Xp per hour.


30-60
At this point I highly suggest continuing mining iron, but if you’d like you can also mine coal. If you do want to mine coal at this level for some profit I suggest going to the dwarven mine resource dungeon which requires 15 dungeoneering, but it is well worth it because of the deposit box there. The coal will take a long time to mine at these low levels so stick with iron if you’re aiming for the fastest xp. Banking coal is ~20k Xp per hour.


60-77
From here either continue to mine coal for some money, or you can also still mine iron. Another good place for iron ore mining is rimmington if you’re power mining. Also at level 60, mining granite in the desert quarry becomes very good experience. You can power mine it there or you can bank it for some money as the granite is used for summoning. To do this bank at castle wars with a ring of dueling and you can teleport back near the site with a camulet if you’ve completed the quest Enakhra’s Lament. If you choose to do this you will need to bring waterskins into the desert with you. You can either bring a water tiara, or the humidify spell with you to refill them, or just grab new ones if you’re banking. You can get the water tiara from the quest dealing with scabaras. Powermining granite is ~40k Xp per hour.


77-80
At 77, either continue any of the previously stated methods, or head over to the living rock caverns. I suggest using w77 as there will be many people there to mine with you, and therefore they will keep the rock creatures off you for the most part. At level 77 you can only mine the concentrated coal ore. There is also a deposit box nearby to drop off the ores. Later in the guide I will show you how to get to the living rock caverns. Depositing the coal is ~40k Xp per hour.

80-99
From 80 on I highly suggest you mine concentrated gold ore. It is also located in the living rock caverns. You can easily gain over 60k+ experience per hour, plus you make a profit unlike powermining granite. I will talk more about the living rock caverns and concentrated gold ore later in the guide.




-Part3: THE LIVING ROCK CAVERNS

Where is the living rock cavern?



^See the north east little room? You can either climb down into that dungeon, or into the mining guild dungeon entrance.



^You will appear in the south east corner of the dwarven mine. From there run north west all the way to the cavern.



^Climb the rope that is there.



^You will appear right by the deposit box (bank). Now if you are already in world 77 like I suggest, there will be a lot of people around you. The best spot to mine the gold is to the very south east, the only mining spot that far south. There is a safespot there where the rock creatures can't attack you. And don't worry, the amount of people doesn't affect how long the concentrated ore stays for. Here is the safespot.

^

Here is what I suggest you bring:

Any armour and food will work. Don't forget your pick. Any mining familiar or beast of burden will help a lot; it's your choice on which one to bring.

So now that you’re ready, hop to w77 and start mining your gold. You can afk while mining the gold if you have your sound on, but you won’t be able to maximize your xp.
Here is the best spot to mine the gold ore:

If the ore is gone from that one, there are many other places you can run to.
I like w77 because there is usually some friendly discussion going on, so that can motivate you to keep the rs screen open because you never know when the gold ore deposit will be empty or your inventory will be full. Good luck with mining gold!



-Part4: SHOOTING STARS
Shooting stars were released in September of 2008 and are part of the Distractions and Diversions. Every 2 hours, a star will fall from the sky, all around the different mining locations and banks in runescape. Once you have reached the centre of the star a Star Sprite appears and you can claim your awesome reward!


I’m going to show you how to effectively solo shooting stars. The reason you would want to solo, and not use a team is because chances are you’ll find the shooting star first. The first person to find it gets 75x their mining level in xp! So it is well worth the extra minute it takes to solo. And even if you're just randomly mining, and you see a star fall near you tag it! It will give you a nice bit of extra experience, as you can tag them as many times as you want and still get the same xp for doing so.

So to find these stars, you need a telescope in your house. Here are the different kinds:
Wooden Telescope (Construction Level 44): 24 minute time
Teak Telescope (Construction Level 64): 9 minute time
Mahogany Telescope (Construction Level 84): 2 minute time
So as you can see the better the telescope the faster you can determine when the star will land. So here’s how the chasing works:
Look into your telescope. It will show a location and a time. The time will show something like 2-9 minutes, depending on how good your telescope is. Every minute that goes by check your telescope again to see if the start has gone yet. If it hasn’t yet it will show an updated time. If it has, quickly teleport to your first location! If it isn’t at that one, try the next one! Keep going until you find it. Below is the list of all the possible locations for each vague location the telescope gives you.

Spoiler:

The table below shows how much xp you get will for each stardust you mine. The downer is that you need 90 mining to be able to mine every single star. And also, keep in mind you will still receive xp for mining the rock once you have 200 stardust, just until you have completely mined it.

Size	Level	Xp
1	10	14
2	20	25
3	30	29
4	40	32
5	50	47
6	60	71
7	70	114
8	80	145
9	90	210

And besides all the xp you’ll get, here’s what else you will get if you cash in your 200 stardust after the star is mined:


And besides all those awesome rewards, you will also be able to mine two ores at once for the next 15 minutes! This even stacks with the varrock armour so it is possible to mine up to 3 at once! And you’ll get the experience for all of them! So I hope you enjoy doing shooting stars in the future and good luck!


-Part5: OTHER MINING TIPS
Stay concentrated
Mine your weekly stars
Set yourself a goal
Wear Varrock armour (chance at getting 2 ores for 1 rock)

Use mining familiars when you powermine
Use beast of burdens when you’re banking the ores

If you’re mining coal, purchase a coal bag from the dungeoneering skill
Have fun Mining! (If that’s possible)



-Part6: STATISTICS AND PROFITS
Level 30-99 mining coal:
260,689 coal mined
87,591,504 profit at 336 each coal

Level 80-99 mining concentrated gold ore:
169,975 gold mined
43,173,650 profit at 254 each gold ore

As of August 27, 2010 only 9,902 people have 99 mining and it continues to remain one of the most respected 99s out there.



-Part7: MINING FAMILIARS
Here I will mention all the familiars that can give you a mining boost.

Desert Wyrm:
-Needs 18 summoning
-1 Invisible Mining Boost

Void ravager:
-Needs 34 Summoning
-1 Visible Mining Boost
-1 Invisible Mining Boost

Obsidian golem:
-Needs 73 Summoning
-7 Invisible Mining Boost

Lava titan:
-Needs 83 Summoning
-10 Invisible Mining Boost
-Best mining familiar

So as you can see, all these familiars give you a mining boost. You should always use one when power mining, or mining in the living rock caverns, especially where your over 73 summoning.




Hope you liked the guide and hopefully it’ll help you in the future while training mining and star chasing. Thanks for reading!







*created by Seekingkey, proud Smokin Mils member
*special thanks to Exorti’s mining guide on the runescape official forums “Shooting Star Guide” for providing the list of possible places to find shooting stars, and the experience rates.
*Thank you RS wiki, used their star spirte pic, here’s the link: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/File:Star_sprite.png
And mining guy pic, here’s the link:
http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/File:Mining_cape_99.png

That is an extremely impressive guide. 9/10

To make 10/10 add more colour to highlight important areas.

+rep

Thanks steely I'll do that.

I was looking for ways to make it stick out more.

Any more suggestions would be awesome

It's amazing! I can imagine a few changes to be made tho, but for now it's still amazing =]

I'll leave this thread open for those who want to give constructive commentary, or just want to praise you for your genius guide =]

tnx awsome guide i will use that tnx

edit: +rep

Flora I'm so glad you like it

And thanks square glad you liked it.

I'm updating it again atm, Making it look better I hope.

Content seems good, a tad of editing required, imo. +rep

Lucy what editing do you mean, like my grammar?

Sorry, I meant formatting. Just to make it look nicer, because the content itself is good.

Ok thanks for clearing that up, any suggestions would be amazingly helpfu, but I'll see what I can do.

Good guide, +rep, I did a guide on living rock caverns for mining, you could also mention the use of familiars such as lava titans/desert wyrms/void ravagers etc. that give invisible mining boosts, which can increase speed you mine drastically.

ok tyvm I'll add that when I get a chance

very good guide u got there. put together pretty well. well done with the citing of your sources.

a few suggestions,

1) in the pictures, you mention places to go mine, make it more obvious as to where one would need to go. (ie. arrow/giant circle)

2) add more color to your text. it looks put together very well, its just all the white lettering made it a little dry to read, need to give my eyes some excitement

3) you mentioned profit a number of times within your thread, put in a chart of profits so one is able to see the numbers in front of their face.

very well done =]

really nice guide, im whit three2on0 whit his suggestions and cant u add xp rates to?

Very Nice Guide. Well written and with a lot of information. I have a friend who could really use this guide. I would rep you if i could

Just to mention this:

It's good you noted the sources, but we wont use the pics you used with the plans we have We'll try to get new pics, that aren't already used on other forums/sites

Just a correction on stars:

Unlike the Evil Tree D&D for Woodcutting/Farming/Firemaking, the star has no limit. You can not cash in star dust more than once per day, but you can always mine the sprite for experience. I also highly recommend using the sacred clay pickaxe for them because they are excellent exp, and who doesn't want double the excellence?

I also note that the star gives a finding bonus (Called a tag) that gives extra mining experience (5-10k) just for going up to it and clicking it (without mining it at all). You can do this an infinite number of times a day as well.

Other than that, it's given me some motivation to go and do some more mining myself ;D

Ok flora, they just make the guide look better

An tyvm polaris and gl mining lol

I'm hoping to finish updating this guide within the nex couple days.

There we go, tried to spice it up a bit more and correct my mistakes.

Any further suggestions on improving it are still welcome!

i think these have been mentioned already but two things i would add:

-put an arrow or circle around where to go on the fally map for the caverns. i didn't even see the words at the bottom of the picture at first. a visual would be nice. also, separate the photos a little better instead of:

pic
words
pic
words

those words could go the picture above or below.

-explain the familiars a little better. say which ones are useful there, what they do, summon level for them.

awesome guide though

just wish this xp would have been around years ago. i got 85 on iron

+rep

Thanks and I'll get around to doing all those things I hope.

I also got 85 on granite lol, was very boring..

More editing done:

-added arrows and circles to my pictures, which I should have done in the first place.
-spaced out the writing from the pictures a bit more.
-added all the mining familiars you can use.
-and I also corrected a couple mistakes that were pointed out about shooting stars.

Thanks again everyone! More suggestions are always welcome!

I'm not that disappointing that I didn't win, but does anyone have any ideas on why I didn't?

If it's because I used pics from another site I could change those haha.

Thanks for the tips,i'm currently going for 99 Mining.

Currently 86.

Sooo longg (; and thanks