I mine them all manually. Apart from when I was first training my smiths and gave in and bought a few k iron from NPCs. But my usual consumption is in the low hundreds per week so it's no great chore.
I am like Jill I mine my own except when I have been building up a smith or tinker and ran out so bought some. Love the iron golems though makes fast work of restocking my stash
I Generally mine my own, unless i run out with a few items left to make, then I have been known to buy some
There is so much to do in this game that there are not enough play hours to do it all so.... depending on my time constraints I mine or buy.
i actually collect almost all metal armor and weapons from hunting, bring them home and ID them and smelt all the non-worthy. I tend to get about 1000-1500 ingots each time i do this which definitely build up. Highly recommended although extremely tedious, i have created some organize macros to make filling the chests a bit easier
Whenever I see people actually doing or even talking about recall mining (these days), I picture something like ^ . I then... Laugh Laugh some more smh Calm down for a sec and catch my breath Look up the ingot per hour elemental farming on my spreadsheet Compare Proceed back to step 1
Recall mining is not about maximising ingots/hour... It's the poorest Elemental farming isn' the max either Golem mining is max Manual mining is in the middle Each method has its pros and cons. Which one you use is entirely dependant on your situation, preparation and upfront investment
I run a vendor shop: Atrium Mart. Where do I get my ingots? I buy iron from other people. Colored ingots I do not use or need (At the moment). Yes I could get it cheaper by buying it myself from NPC's, but I just don't have the time to babysit several vendors until they spawn with 999 ingots. I'm trying to get into recall mining, but haven't yet. As my shop focuses on wood-based goods anyway, ingot usage for me is low. I'm just so busy in RL and my play time is so infrequent / valuable. So actual playing time is devoted to what I enjoy the most: restocking and managing my vendor shop. Can't even remember the last time I was in a dungeon...