Mining & Ore Guide

Everything a Rookery Isles miner needs: every verified ore, stone and gem, the real per-zone vein counts, the smelt chains that turn ore into ingots, and the proficiency ranks that gate the rich nodes, all confirmed against this server's live data.

Mining is one of the two heaviest-value gathering vocations on Rookery Isles (alongside Logging), because almost every endgame craft, weapons, armor, ships, houses, eats metal, and metal starts as ore in the ground. This ArcheAge 3.0 (Revelation) mining guide covers the whole loop, from your first Iron Vein to Master-rank Anya veins on Auroria.

For the underlying Labor and Proficiency mechanics shared by all life skills, see the Proficiency & Labor Guide. For what to do with the ingots you produce, see the Crafting Guide.

Requirements

You must be Character Level 52 to gather in the open world on Rookery Isles. Mining, Logging, Gathering, Farming, Husbandry, and Fishing are all gated at character Level 52 (the client enforces this), so you cannot mine, chop, harvest, farm, raise livestock, or fish until you reach Level 52. Bench crafting and processing have no level requirement, but their materials come from gathering. The Anya Vein adds a further gate of 50,000 Mining proficiency on top of Level 52.

Contents

• Requirements
• How Mining Works
• Mining Node Types
• Where Veins Spawn (Per-Zone Counts)
• The Vein That Branches Into Richer Ore
• Special Nodes: Anya, Starshard, Stone & Gems
• Full Ore, Stone & Gem Catalog
• Pure Variants
• Smelting: Ore Into Ingot
• Mining Proficiency Progression
• Mining Gear & Helpers
• Recommended Mining Routes
• Tips & Tricks
• On Rookery Isles

How Mining Works

You do not carry a pickaxe. There is no mining tool in your bag and nothing to equip. When you walk up to a mining vein, an interaction icon appears; click it (or press the action key, default F), the cast plays automatically, and ore drops into your inventory when it completes.

What actually gates mining is two things, neither of them equipment:

• Labor Points (LP). Every mining action spends Labor from your account-wide pool. Different veins cost different amounts of Labor, a basic ore vein is cheap, an Anya vein is expensive.
• Mining proficiency. This is the vocation skill you build by mining. Higher proficiency rank reduces an action's Labor cost and increases cast speed, and the very rich nodes are locked behind a hard proficiency threshold.

Labor spent equals proficiency earned, one for one. Spend 5 Labor on a basic ore action and you gain +5 Mining proficiency; spend 50 Labor on an Anya vein and you gain +50. The same Labor also grants character XP, so gathering levels your character as well as your vocation. (See the Proficiency & Labor Guide for the full mechanic.)

Mining feeds the Metalwork vocation, not Mining. Raw ore goes to a smelter; smelting is a Metalwork action that gives Metalwork proficiency. Stone and marble you mine feed Masonry. Mining itself only produces the raw rock, keep that split in mind when you plan which vocations to push.

Mining Node Types

Across the world you will see a handful of distinct mineable doodads. The table below lists the nodes confirmed in this server's spawn data, with their world counts in the main overworld file.

Metal veins vs. rock nodes. A metal vein (Iron, Anya) yields its base ore plus a low chance of the Pure variant plus Archeum Dust. A rock node (Quarry Stone and similar) yields Raw Stone plus a building stone (marble, limestone, gneiss, granite) plus a chance at a gem, and those feed Masonry, not Metalwork.

Labor cost note. Exact per-vein Labor costs are computed server-side and are not all exposed in the static data. A small set is confirmed (see the proficiency table further down): the basic "Mine Ore" action is 5 LP, the branch into richer ore is 20 LP, and an Anya vein is 50 LP. Other tiers vary; treat any other specific LP figure you see quoted elsewhere as community-reported, not server-confirmed.

Where Veins Spawn (Per-Zone Counts)

These counts come straight from the live world spawn file, mapped to zones by bounding box. They are the real distribution on this server, not imported wiki lore.

Iron Vein, the backbone node

Iron Veins are by far the most common mineable (2,186 in the overworld). The densest land zones:

The top six solid land hotspots are Rokhala Mountains, Lilyut Hills, Solzreed Peninsula, Tigerspine Mountains, Mahadevi, and Gweonid Forest. Mountainous terrain wins, cliffsides, ridges and quarry bowls are where veins cluster. (A number of veins also map to coastal sea boxes such as Arcadian Sea, Sunspeck Sea and Feuille Sound; those are simply shoreline cliffs of the adjacent land zone.)

Special-node zones

Starshard is a Cinderstone Moor + Castaway Strait node sitting on coastal/underwater rock. Anya veins are an Auroria-continent node, see the World Zones Atlas for what Auroria is (a lawless, free-PvP, level 50 to 55 continent).

The Vein That Branches Into Richer Ore

ArcheAge's mining is built around the idea that a vein can yield more than its base ore. In this server's data, a mineable doodad runs a chain of "phases," and some of those phases branch into a higher-value ore phase, an Iron-type vein can roll into a Gold-type phase, for example. That branch is what the wider ArcheAge community has historically nicknamed the "Fortuna" proc.

Be careful what you treat as fact here. This server's data does not contain a separate doodad named "Fortuna Vein," and there is no proc-percentage field anywhere in the data, the often-quoted "15 to 20% Fortuna chance" is community lore, not a server-confirmed number. What is in the data is the branch mechanic itself: a single vein doodad whose phase chain can step up into a richer ore roll. The "Mine the Fortuna Vein" action that exists costs 20 Labor (verified).

Practical takeaway. After mining a vein, pause a beat before walking off, if the node offers a follow-up richer phase, take it; it is the most valuable behaviour in mining. Just do not plan your evening around a specific proc rate, because the rate is not something this server's data will confirm. Treat richer rolls as a welcome bonus, not a schedule.

Special Nodes: Anya, Starshard, Stone & Gems

Anya Vein, Master rank gate

Anya Veins live on Auroria. They are gated behind 50,000 Mining proficiency, which is Master rank, a proficiency requirement, not a character level. Below 50,000 Mining the node will not respond. The skill ("Mine Anya Stone") costs 50 Labor per use and drops the Anya Pebble (item 8080) plus Archeum Dust. Three Anya Pebbles smelt into one Anya Ingot.

This proficiency gate sits on top of the Level 52 gathering requirement on Rookery Isles (see On Rookery Isles). To reach it you must first be Level 52 to gather at all, then grind Mining all the way to Master rank, then travel to Auroria, which is itself lawless free-PvP, level 50 to 55 content. Bring escorts or escape tools.

Starshard Vein, coastal & underwater

Starshard Veins drop Starshard Chips (item 2201) and sit on coastal/underwater rock, densest off Cinderstone Moor with a second cluster around Castaway Strait. Three chips smelt into one Starshard Ingot, which feeds advanced shipbuilding and some high-tier gear. For long underwater runs you'll want a breath solution, a diving item, a placed underwater air source, or a water-breathing potion (effects of specific items are not detailed in this server's data, so treat their exact numbers as community-reported).

Rock nodes, stone & gems (Masonry)

Quarry-type rock nodes are mined the same way but feed Masonry. Each yields Raw Stone, a building stone, and a chance at a gem. The verified stone-to-gem pairings:

Ruby (8077) and Topaz also drop from dedicated gem-bearing metal veins. Every rock node additionally yields Raw Stone (8008) and Archeum Dust. Specific gem drop rates are not exposed in this server's data, don't quote percentages.

Full Ore, Stone & Gem Catalog

Every confirmed mining-line item, with its item ID (useful for trade lookup and admin grants). All are level-1 items unless noted.

Ores

Two myths to retire: there is no item 48506 "Unidentified Auroran Ore", that item does not exist on this server. And item 35296 is "Abyssal Crystal," not any "Whirlpool Isle Crystal", there is no "Whirlpool Isle" zone at all; "Whirlpool" appears only in some gear names.

Building stone

Gems

Pure Variants

Most base ores have a Pure variant (Pure Iron, Pure Copper, Pure Silver, Pure Gold, Pure Archeum) that drops at a low rate from the same nodes as the regular ore and is worth substantially more. Pure Archeum Ore (17715) is the single most prized raw mining drop.

What's verified, and what isn't. Pure variants genuinely drop from the same veins as their base ore, that's in the data. But the rate, and any claim that "higher proficiency increases the Pure drop rate," is not something this server's data confirms; treat rate claims as community-reported.

The one concrete Pure-variant efficiency that is verified is at the smelter:

• Pure Archeum Ore smelts 1:1 into an Archeum Ingot (one Pure Archeum Ore → one Archeum Ingot, no Coin required).
• Regular Archeum Ore smelts 3:1 (three ore + a Coin → one ingot).

So Pure Archeum is three times as ingot-efficient as regular Archeum. The older claim that Pure ore "yields more ingots and a chance at higher-tier ingots" is not verifiable beyond this specific Archeum 1:1 path.

Smelting: Ore Into Ingot

Raw ore isn't directly useful, you smelt it into ingots at a Smelter (the in-world station, doodad 557, found in towns), and ingots then feed Metalwork, Weaponry, Masonry and Handicrafts. Smelting is a Metalwork action and grants Metalwork proficiency, so even a pure miner picks up enough Metalwork to process their own ore.

The base smelt pattern is 3 ore + 1 Coin → 1 ingot for every standard metal. Verified recipes:

Higher alloys chain upward. Once you have base ingots, you combine them into stronger ones:

• Sturdy Ingot (8319): 8 Iron Ingot + 1 Copper Ingot + 1 Silver Ingot + 1 Opaque Polish + 1 Coin → 1 (Smelter).
• Sunridge Ingot (16325): 10 Sturdy Ingot + 5 Mysterious Garden Powder + 1 Rough Polish + 1 Coin → 1 (Smelter).

Stations that smelt. The basic recipes work at the Smelter (557). Larger batch recipes (e.g. 10x or 100x ore at once) are gated by Metalwork proficiency and run at the Complex Processing Shelf (9109), the Multipurpose Workbench (8000129), or the Smelting Furnace (6443). Stone gets crafted into Stone Brick (8343) by Masonry, not Metalwork.

On the LP cost of smelting: specific per-ingot Labor numbers are not all exposed in the static data, so this guide does not quote them as fact. Carry Labor for both mining and smelting and expect the cheaper metals (Iron, Copper) to cost less per ingot than the rare ones.

Mining Proficiency Progression

Mining uses the same proficiency rank ladder as every vocation. There are 31 ranks total; the client shows the first 12. The cumulative point cap of each rank is below, note that rank 1 is Amateur (there is no "Basic" rank), and 50,000 is Master, which is the Anya gate.

The ladder continues past Famed (Renowned 260k, Great 280k, and on up through Sage tiers) to Legend at 1,000,000. Rank-up is free in this build once you hit the cap.

What each rank actually does for a miner:

• Higher rank lowers an action's Labor cost and raises cast speed. The data confirms the direction, higher rank is cheaper and faster, but the exact percentage at each rank is not cleanly decodable, so ignore any "5% / 10% / 15% / 20%" ladder you've seen elsewhere; it's invented.
• Master rank (50,000) unlocks Anya Veins. This is the one verified Mining node gate most players will hit.
• The two richest mining nodes, Mystical Stone Pile and the Unidentified (Unknown) Vein, gate at 230,000 Mining, which is Famed rank. Those are the only other verified Mining proficiency node gates in the data. (Abyssal Crystal, by contrast, carries no proficiency gate in the data, only a higher Labor cost.)

How fast does Mining climb? Because Labor spent equals proficiency gained 1:1, your Mining rank rises at exactly the rate you spend Labor on mining. Reaching the 50,000 Master gate is a long grind of thousands of vein actions, most miners get there by mining everything they pass while questing or running trade routes rather than grinding it in isolation.

A note on pushing many vocations. You cannot freely Max every vocation at once; pushing a proficiency past its early caps consumes Vocation Points and Specialization Snowflake items (a soft economic limit, not a fixed "you may master exactly 2" rule). If you intend to be a serious miner, plan to push Mining and Metalwork together, since Metalwork grows for free as you smelt your own ore.

Mining Gear & Helpers

No gear is required to mine. A few items are commonly cited as helpful, but the precise effects of these are not detailed in this server's data, so treat the specifics as community-reported rather than server-confirmed:

• A diving solution for underwater Starshard runs, a craftable diving apparatus, a placed underwater air source, or a water-breathing potion. Without one you'll surface for air long before a Starshard reef pays out.
• Gathering/labor-reduction items (e.g. a worker's-compensation style cloak) are sometimes used to trim Labor cost on gather actions; confirm the actual effect in-game.

The reliable, verified levers on your output are your Mining proficiency rank (cheaper, faster actions) and simply mining in the densest zones listed above.

Recommended Mining Routes

Important: this server's data has no zone level-range column, so the "this zone is for levels X, Y" routing in older guides is not server-confirmed. Route by vein density, which is confirmed. Remember the baseline: you must be Character Level 52 before any of these routes will work, because world gathering is gated at Level 52 on Rookery.

• Step 1, Build your early ranks in Lilyut Hills or Solzreed Peninsula (Nuia) / Mahadevi or Gweonid Forest (Haranya). These are the most accessible high-density Iron zones near the starter regions. Loop the cliffs and quarry bowls.
• Step 2, Grind the bulk of your proficiency in Rokhala Mountains or Tigerspine Mountains. Rokhala (276 veins) is the single densest Iron zone on the server, and Tigerspine (139) adds Unknown Veins and a quarry pile. Both are contested Haranya zones, expect occasional PvP.
• Step 3, Run Starshard out of Cinderstone Moor. It has the densest Starshard cluster (plus 20 Iron Veins on land); Castaway Strait is the secondary spot. Bring a breath solution.
• Step 4, At Master rank (50,000 Mining), fly to Auroria for Anya Veins. Mistmerrow and the other Auroria zones hold the 252 Anya Veins. Auroria is lawless free-PvP, level 50 to 55 content, run with a guild or escape utilities. See the World Zones Atlas.

Tips & Tricks

• Take the richer phase when a vein offers it. Pausing a beat after a vein to grab a follow-up higher-ore roll is the most valuable mining habit, just don't plan around a fixed proc rate, because none is confirmed.
• Smelt as you go. Carry Labor for both mining and smelting. Ore stacks fill bags fast; ingots stack tighter and are lighter to haul to a trade hub.
• Mining is non-competitive between players. Each vein's roll is resolved per interaction, so two miners running parallel loops don't steal each other's rich rolls.
• Batch your Unidentified Ore. Save Clear/Lucid/Vivid Unidentified Ore (level-20 items) and identify them when you have spare Alchemy Labor.
• Push Mining and Metalwork together. Metalwork rises for free as you smelt your own ore, so a dedicated miner gets self-sufficient ingot processing at no extra Vocation-Point cost.
• Mine in the dense zones. Vein density (not time of day, there is no confirmed dawn/dusk proc bonus on this server) is what actually moves your ore-per-hour.

On Rookery Isles

Two things on Rookery Isles matter to miners:

• World gathering requires Character Level 52. Every world gathering skill (Mining, Logging, Gathering, Farming, Husbandry, Fishing) carries a character Level 52 requirement, and the client enforces it. You cannot mine, chop, harvest, farm, raise livestock, or fish in the open world until you reach Level 52. Below Level 52 a node simply will not let you gather. Bench crafting and processing carry no level requirement, but their materials come from gathering, so Level 52 is the real gate on the whole production chain. If you are Level 52 or higher and a node still refuses to interact, that's worth reporting in Discord.
• **The Anya Vein gate is a separate proficiency gate on top of Level 52. Anya Veins additionally require 50,000 Mining proficiency (Master rank)**, exactly as in canonical ArcheAge. That is a vocation threshold layered above the Level 52 character requirement, not a replacement for it.

This server is ArcheAge 3.0 (Revelation), not the later "Erenor" patch. The top crafted gear tier here is Ayanad; if you've read mining guides that talk about Erenor-era mining, that content postdates this server's era.

See also

• Gearing Supply Chain, the full path from gathered material to best gear
• Proficiency & Labor Guide for ranks, Labor pool and XP-from-labor.
• Crafting Guide for turning ingots into gear.
• Metalwork, Armorsmithing & Weaponry for smelting ore and forging the metal gear your ore becomes.
• Carpentry, Masonry & Construction for what your Raw Stone and building stone feed.
• Logging & Lumber Guide for the other heavy gathering vocation.
• Gear Progression for the crafted tier ladder up to Ayanad.
• World Zones Atlas for where every zone above sits.