Mining—The Three Axe System a guide by Boom Boom Ray Axe one: My Gargoyle's Pickaxe Axe two: My Vanquishing Battleaxe Axe three: My Trusty Lute (still an axe!) My Template: Swords, Tactics, Anatomy, Lumberjacking, Mining, Music, Peacemaking With this setup I am able to also harvest wood while enjoying the awesome damage bonus lumberjacking gives. With peacemaking the healing skill is not necessary—healing potions suffice. Where to get Gargoyle's Pickaxe: Smithing small bulk order deeds. Or better yet, buy them from another player. There are over 15,000 of them in-game. What a Gargoyle's Pickaxe does: Two things. First, it raises the ore level of a vein. Iron becomes Dull Copper, Verite becomes Valorite. Second, it offers a chance to summon an ore elemental. Except for Dull Copper veins, there is also a chance of summoning masonry related ore elementals. My personal best is 8 elementals from one vein. What to expect: Colored ore elementals each drop 25 large ore, Masonry ore elementals drop 2 ore of a random size. They all drop gold, gems, and sometimes magic items (in varying quality). Dull copper, shadow iron, copper, bronze, stone, and sandstone all drop about 100gp, and 2 gems. Gold, agapite, and verite drop about 300gp, and 2 gems. Valorite and marble elementals drop about 500gp, FOUR gems, and "decent" quality magic items. (force/power/harderning/fortification all pretty common) Other items that help: Prospector's tools raise the ore level of a vein, much like the gargoyles pickaxe, but you only use it once, before you mine. It does stack with the pickaxe, (so you can get valorite and marble elementals from a vein that is normally agapite) but, it seems to have less range than a mining tool. Some areas I am able to mine return "That is too far away." when attempting to use a prospector's tool. Mining gloves are awesome, they improve your chance to smelt, so they also improve your yield. An earth shattering axe would be another interesting addition to the toolkit. If you're going after anything but dull copper, a low average would be to get 2 colored ore elementals, and 2 masonry elementals. That's 100 colored ingots, and probably 4 masonry ingots. But your luck could be much greater. I've had 6 valorite from one vein. I've had 6 Marble from one vein. Don't forget dull copper elementals. They don't have a masonry "cousin". My greatest lucky pick was the time I got 8 dull copper elementals from one vein. That's 400 dull copper ingots from the same vein that a miner without a gargoyle pickaxe would get maybe 30 iron ingots. A note on magery: should you wish to pickup magery and drop lumberjacking, or even peacemaking from your own template, (and breakup the Tri-axe awesomeness) be advised of three things. Some elementals are totally immune to magery. Some elementals REFLECT magery. Some TROLLS can smell magery, and will come looking for you. Thank you for reading. --Boom Boom Ray
