World of Warcraft Resource Center: Mining Guide 1-450

First, visit any trainer in the main cities of old Azeroth - just ask a guard, and learn Apprentice Mining.

1-65

Download the following addon: Gatherer

This addon shows you every Mining node location on your map, like you will see on the pictures in the guide. The addon and the databse can be found here.

I recommend you to get the following enchant: [Formula: Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining] you can just buy any low level gloves from a vendor and enchant that one with this Enchant, equip the gloves when you level your mining. Check the Auction House and if there is any [Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining] available, buy it. When you reach the thorium part, it will save you a lot of time because you will be able to mine the Rich Thorium Veins a lot sooner.

When you have around 30 copper Ore, go and Smelt them and repeate the cycle, go mine ores then smelt them. Save the Copper Bars, you will need them.

Durotar - [Copper Ore]

Dun Morogh - [Copper Ore]

Alternative Map:

Basically just every starter zone. I won't include mining ways for these, because you can find copper everywhere you go.

Elwynn Forest

Darkshore

Azuremyst Isle

Tirisfal Glades

Mulgore

Eversong Woods

65-125

Learn Mining Journeyman.

[Tin Ore], [Silver Ore], [Copper Ore]

This is a really bad part, Tin is the hardest to find there is not a single zone, where you can only find Tin, there is always Copper or Iron aswell. I usually mine Tin until 75, then I smelt all of my Ores. After that, I turn my Copper and Tin Bars into Bronze Bars. This should take you around 90-95 Mining skill.

At 75 you can learn how to smelt Silver Ore. This will help you get your skill to 125. Silver Ore and bars sell for rougly the same, buy the ore and sell the bars at the auction house. However on some high populated servers, Ores are extremely expensive, then you should just mine Tin and Smelt Bronze until 125. If you find any Silver Vein, smelt the ores before you reach 115 in Mining, because it's better to smelt them while they are still yellow or orange and Smelt Silver turns green at 122.

Thousand Needles

Redridge Mountains

125-175

Learn Mining Expert.

[Iron Ore], [Tin Ore], [Gold Ore]

At 155 you can learn how to smelt Gold Ore. Buy 30 Gold Ore and smelt them, that should get you around 175. Same as with Silver Ores, buy them if they are not expensive, smelt them and sell the bars at the Auction House.

Arathi Higland

Thousand Needles

175-245

[Mithril Ore], [Truesilver Ore]

At 230 you can learn how to smelt Truesilver Ore, this should help you to level up to 245. When you reach 225, don't forget to visit your Mining trainer.

The Hinterlands

Tanaris

245-300

[Thorium Ore]

This one is a tricky part. Thorium is pretty rare and are farmed by a lot of players, because it's damn expensive.

Get 5 skill by mining Small Thorium Veins. Then visit your trainer and learn how to smelt Thorium Bar. You should buy around 50 ores from the Auction House and smelt ores until 270 (you can mine nodes until 270, but it will be a lot slower), so you will need only 5 points until you can mine Rich Thorium Veins (you can mine them right away, if you have this enchant: [Formula: Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining]). When you reach 270, you can sell the Thorium Bars at the Auction House for almost the same price you bought them.

I only recommend Winterspring for players level 65 or higher. You can go there at lower levels too, but there is like 2 place where you will have hard time to get in and mine those Rich Thorium Veins. Eastern Plagueland is better if you are lower than level 65. If you go to Winterspring and you play on a high populated server, usually there is always someone there who already farm the area. It's the best place and if you can't find nodes there, it's because the place is already farmed by someone else, not because the place suck. If this is the case, go to Silithus which is also a really good place, but I also don't really recommend it to lower level players, all of the Rhich Thoriums are in caves there which are filled with level 60 mobs, of course you can clear the caves but it will slow down the leveling speed.

Winterspring

Silithus

The red areas are the caves. There are usually 2-3 caves in every red area and they are filled with Rich Thorium Veins. You should be using Gatherer by this time already, it really helps you a lot. When you reach 275, you can just go from caves to caves and you can skip the Small Thorium nodes.