Skyrim:Mining

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A vein of iron ore

Mining is an activity in Skyrim that involves extracting various ores from veins found in mines. The ore you obtain can be smelted into ingots, and then used to forge new weapons or armor. They can also be sold, which is most profitable if sold to one of the mine owners in the Mine Ore radiant quest.

Mining is done by activating an ore vein with a pickaxe in your inventory, or attacking an ore vein with an equipped pickaxe. In addition to standard pickaxes, Rocksplinter, the Notched Pickaxe, and the Ancient Nordic PickaxeDB can be used to mine ore. Ore veins are everywhere: all ore types can be mined from veins and then smelted at a forge to obtain ingots. All mines contain at least one type of ore, though some have more veins than others.

Veins typically yield three pieces of ore. Each piece of ore has a 10% chance of being accompanied by a random, level-dependent gem, as detailed on the Gems page. After being mined, the vein is depleted, although it will eventually respawn (see bugs).

Mine Locations[edit]

SR-mapicon-Mine.png

Places identified on the map with a mine icon are all listed on the Mines page. However, veins are found in many other locations in Skyrim. Details on the best places to find each type of ore are provided on the individual ore pages:

Note that Steel and Dwarven ore do not exist: Dwarven Metal Ingots are obtained by smelting Dwemer metal, and Steel Ingots by smelting one Corundum Ore and one Iron Ore.

Categories also exist for each type of vein, e.g. Category:Skyrim-Places-Iron Veins, listing all of their known locations. They are all found under Category:Skyrim-Places-Special Features.


Dawnguard introduces Shellbug "ore veins". They can be found on Shellbugs.

Hearthfire introduces Clay and Quarried stone "ore veins". Stone quarries tend to be found around a plot of land, and clay deposits around rivers and near stone quarries. Unlike regular ore veins, an indefinite amount of material can be mined from them (not the usual three), and you get 4 samples each time the pickaxe is swung three times.

Related Quests[edit]

Achievements[edit]

An Achievement is related to mining ore:

  • SR-achievement-Hard Worker.png Hard Worker (10 points/Bronze) — Chop wood, mine ore, and cook food
    • To obtain this achievement, you do not need to sell the ore, or even talk to any of the quest givers. Simply activating an ore vein is sufficient.

Notes[edit]

  • To maximize mining efficiency, hold a pickaxe in your right hand and a dagger in your left, use the Elemental Fury shout, then power attack the veins. This allows mining time for a vein to be cut down a few seconds. This same method can also be used to quickly gain extremely large amounts of quarried stone and clay. Don't use an enchanted pickaxe, though, or the shout's speed bonus won't work.
  • Another method of increasing mining speed if you don't have Elemental Fury is to get the Dual Flurry perk, hold a dagger in your left hand, and use normal attacks on the veins.
  • If you attempt to mine Stalhrim with only a regular pickaxe in your inventory, a "You need an Ancient Nordic Pickaxe to use this." message will appear on the top left of the screen.
  • If you activate an ore vein with an Ancient Nordic Pickaxe in your inventory, it will be shown during the mining animation, regardless if a regular pickaxe is also present.
  • Stalhrim doesn't need to be smelted, and is used in the state from which it is mined.
  • In Cidhna Mine, mining ore will complete any jail sentence in the Reach, except during No One Escapes Cidhna Mine, in which you need to escape manually.
  • Every vein contains three ore, and all three will be added to your inventory if you mine long enough, but you will not receive a notification on your screen when the second one is extracted, though you will get one if you extract a gem with it (i.e., "[gem] Added" will appear in the upper-left corner, though not the notification that you got the second ore).
  • During replenish time, the veins may regain their colored striations, but be unable to be mined. This is part of the replenishment process, though, and is nothing to worry about.
  • You can use the Transmute spell from the Alteration school to transform mined Iron ore into Silver ore, and transform mined Silver ore into Gold ore.
  • The Dragonborn add-on adds several gem geodes to various locations on Solstheim. Mining them will yield a single gem. However, the 10% chance of getting a gem (as with standard ore veins) still applies, meaning you can get two gems from the geode.
  • Time doesn't stop while mining, and therefore, magicka, health, and stamina will regenerate while mining.

Bugs[edit]

  • A graphical glitch can occur when you start to mine any type of ore vein, causing you to clip through it, interrupting your mining.
    • Possible solutions: sleeping, uninstalling/reinstalling the game from your console, avoiding the mine where the glitch first occurred, or killing all enemies in the surrounding area before mining the ore. It is still possible to manually mine the ore vein (attacking the vein with an equipped pickaxe) if this occurs.
  • Manually mining ore in Cidhna Mine can make it impossible to serve your sentence properly.
  • You may be unable to mine ore veins after they respawn.
    • Leaving and reentering the mine or the cell will enable the veins, allowing you to mine them normally.
  • If manually mining while dual-wielding, the game only checks for a pickaxe in your right hand, and counts two swings per attack if you have one. Dual-wielding a pickaxe with a dagger in your left hand greatly accelerates the mining process. Conversely, dual-wielding a pickaxe in your left hand doesn't let you manually mine if you don't have one in your right hand.
  • If you activate an ore vein while wielding your only pickaxe, you'll sheath it visibly on your hip, and then start mining with a second "phantom" pickaxe.
  • Mining may give two firewood every time it gives ore. This happens at all veins and the cause is unknown.
  • A variation of the above bug might give you an Iron Ore with each other ore. If this happens at an Iron Ore vein, you'll get two Iron Ores with each group of three swings. ?
  • Attacking an ore vein with a pickaxe may result in the pickaxe not hitting anything, forcing you to mine manually by activating the vein. This tends to happen with veins set flat against the ground or a wall.
  • When activating a vein, you may end up swinging at it indefinitely without gaining ore or depleting the vein.
    • Use the movement controls to break free of the animation, and then try again.
  • When mining clay or quarried stone, if you accidentally activate the deposit twice, you may get caught in a loop that keeps pulling you back to mining the deposit, even after you've stopped mining. ?
    • As soon as you stop mining, quickly fast travel or enter your house and the cycle will break.
  • If you activate the mining animation while sneaking, once you exit, you are no longer sneaking but the camera (if you were in First Person mode) is still down at the crouched level. To fix, simply enter and exit sneaking to bring the camera back up to the correct position.
  • After enough time has passed, it might look like the ore vein has respawned (it is colored with the ore it should contain), but there is no prompt to mine it when rolling over it with your crosshairs, and attacking it with a pickaxe gains nothing. The reverse can also be true: it might appear that is has not respawned (it appears depleted with no ore color), but your crosshairs show an activation prompt and attacks with a pickaxe gain ore. ?
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