by X’Genesis Qhulut by X’Genesis Qhulut
6th October 2021
Botany (herbalism in WoW) and Mining both work similarly. I’ll demonstrate with Mining. It is somewhat more complex than mining in WoW.
You need to switch to your gathering “job” and activate the Prospect ability. This spell is given to you when you start learning Mining. That lets you see mining nodes, and also see them on the minimap as little “pick” icons.
The Prospect ability automatically activates when you gain the Auto Prospect trait (passive ability). It is a toggle, so you can just leave it on.
If you don’t see any you could use “Lay of the Land” ability which may find mining nodes further away.
Once you find one (and they will tend to come in clumps near each other) you can walk up to the node and RH click on it.
Once you do you will see a dialog box like this:
Now you have some decisions to make. :)
If you haven’t mined this type of mineral before you will see a little icon in the shape of a bag. You may want to mine that first so it goes into your mining log.
The big percentage next to the item is the chance of mining it. For a beginner miner it might only be 40% or so.
You can see the item level of the mined rock. A higher item level will give more experience when you mine it.
Next to the curly icon (the High Quality or HQ icon) is a percentage. That is the chance that you will get an HQ item instead of a normal quality item. High quality items also give more experience.
Now we look at our mining toolbar:
If the chance of getting the item is less than 100% you can choose to spend some of your Gathering Points (GP) on Sharp Vision which will improve that chance by 5%/15%/50% depending on which one you choose (underlined in red). The higher the percentage boost, the more GP it will cost, and you will run out of GP fairly quickly.
If you are keen to get a HQ item (perhaps you need it for crafting or a quest) then you can also spend GP on Unearth (underlined in blue) which will boost the chance of getting a HQ item.
You can also choose Bountiful Yield which increases the number of items you get.
The Gathering Points are depleted when you use these boosts, but gradually return over time. Also mining in general gives you gathering points back.
Your primary stats here are Gathering and Perception.
Gathering points improve your chance of mining something. Perception improves your chance of getting a HQ item. Also Perception increases your chance you will “see” an item. With low Perception you might be in an area which is supposed to have a certain ore, but it won’t show up on the list of ores in a node. Get some gear with +gathering and/or +perception to help with that.
Also you can meld (enchant) in those stats if you gear has spare slots.
Unlike WoW, the nodes repop very quickly.
You can see from the earlier image that there are four mining nodes in close proximity. What you can easily do is just rotate between them. By the time you have mined the fourth one the first one will have repopped. This is much easier than running all around a zone in WoW to find ore nodes. Even if there are other players around the game seems to make different nodes for them, so you don’t have to fight over them. Plus, you can even have two players mining the same node without any detrimental effects.
The Sneak ability is another useful one you get early on when levelling Mining and Botany. Once activated you become invisible to mobs up to 4 levels higher than you. This lets you stroll past agressive mobs and mine or gather herbs without interference. Later on you get an Auto Sneak trait (passive ability) that automatically turns Sneak on when you go into Mining or Botany jobs.
If you just want a particular type of ore, then check the “Quick Gathering” box before selecting which ore type you want. It will then do all of your gathering while you watch.
You can open up your Gathering Log (default key mapping: B) to see a list of nodes you can find (there is a search function). Items that are ticked you have already found. (Items already found can be obtained by a retainer on your behalf if they are high enough level).
If you click on the zone name (on the right) then the map will open with the place to gather shown as a highlighted circle.
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