Mining
Mining is Valyria's gathering profession. Break lava holes and shrine stones with a pickaxe to collect Aether Shards, Disenchantment Shards and precious gems — the raw materials behind every item upgrade in the game. This page covers every number in the system: node types, pick tiers, drop rates, skill progression and the exact rules the server enforces.
How Mining Works
Every mineable node needs several successful strikes before it breaks. Each strike is called a swing. When the node finally breaks, one last roll decides whether you actually get materials out of it. Both stages are influenced by your Mining skill and the pick you are holding.
1. Find an active node
Active lava holes glow and emit heat; shrine stones are found in mining caves. A node that has already been mined out looks inactive and cannot be used until it regenerates.
2. Swing until it breaks
Use your pickaxe on the node. Each node needs a random 5 to 10 swings, reduced by 1 for every 25 Mining skill you have and reduced further by the tier of your pick. Swings that don't break the node show "You failed to mine the ore."
3. The break roll
When the node breaks, a success roll decides your reward. On success you get a stack of 1 to 5 materials; on failure the node is still consumed but you leave empty-handed. Either way you gain Mining skill progress.
4. Refine and upgrade
Take your shards to any crafting station to turn them into Large Aethernite and Disenchantment Runes, then use the Rarity Upgrade window to improve your gear.
Nodes & What They Drop
There are three mineable node types, and each one has its own drop table. Every drop in a table is equally likely, so pick your node based on what you actually need. All nodes regenerate on the same timer.
| Node | Item ID | Possible Drops (equal chance) | Stack Size | Respawn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lava Hole | 389 | Aether Shard, Disenchantment Shard | 1 - 5 | 30 minutes |
| Blue Shrine Stone | 1354 | Aether Shard, Disenchantment Shard, Small Sapphire, Small Emerald | 1 - 5 | 30 minutes |
| Red Shrine Stone | 1355 | Disenchantment Shard, Small Ruby, Small Amethyst | 1 - 5 | 30 minutes |
Best for Aether Shards
Lava Holes only roll two possible drops, so half of everything you pull out is an Aether Shard. That is the highest Aether Shard rate in the game.
Best for Gems
Shrine stones are the only source of Small Sapphires, Emeralds, Rubies and Amethysts — the materials for Giant Gem artifacts.
Pickaxes
A pick is required to mine — without one you get "You need a mining pick to mine this." The basic Pick and the Multi-tool are identical in every respect and act as the baseline. The four upgraded picks are sold by Uzgod, the dwarven blacksmith, and each one improves three separate things at once.
| Pick | Item ID | Requirement | Success Multiplier | Stack Bonus | Swings Saved | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pick | 2553 | — | 1.00x | +0 | — | — |
| Multi-tool | 5170 | — | 1.00x | +0 | — | — |
| Advanced Pick | 6495 | 25 Mining Skill | 1.15x | +12 | -1 swing | 25,000 gold |
| Modified Pick | 6496 | 40 Mining Skill | 1.20x | +22 | -2 swings | 100,000 gold |
| Enhanced Pick | 6497 | 55 Mining Skill | 1.25x | +32 | -2 swings | 250,000 gold |
| Golden Pick | 6498 | 70 Mining Skill | 1.30x | +42 | -3 swings | 500,000 gold |
Pick Efficiency — Is It Worth Buying?
Because a better pick improves three things at once, the tiers compound far harder than their individual numbers suggest. The table below shows total throughput at Mining skill 70, the point where every pick is usable, measured in materials gained per 100 swings.
| Pick | Avg. Swings per Node | Success Chance | Avg. Stack Size | Materials per 100 Swings | Relative Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pick / Multi-tool | 5.5 | 28.0% | 1.32 | 6.7 | 1.00x |
| Advanced Pick | 4.5 | 32.2% | 1.50 | 10.7 | 1.60x |
| Modified Pick | 3.5 | 33.6% | 1.69 | 16.2 | 2.41x |
| Enhanced Pick | 3.5 | 35.0% | 1.92 | 19.2 | 2.86x |
| Golden Pick | 2.7 | 36.4% | 2.20 | 30.0 | 4.47x |
Best Value
The Modified Pick at 100,000 gold is the sharpest jump per gold spent — it more than doubles your yield for a fifth of the Golden Pick's price.
Best Overall
The Golden Pick is the only tier that saves 3 swings per node, which is why it pulls so far ahead: roughly 4.5x the materials of a Multi-tool for the same time spent.
Success Chance
When a node breaks, your chance to receive materials is derived from your Mining skill and then multiplied by your pick. There is a minimum of 28% and a hard cap of 90%, so no one is ever locked out of mining and no one ever mines with guaranteed success.
| Mining Skill | Pick / Multi-tool | Advanced | Modified | Enhanced | Golden |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 - 71 | 28.0% (floor) | 32.2% | 33.6% | 35.0% | 36.4% |
| 100 | 38.7% | 44.5% | 46.4% | 48.3% | 50.3% |
| 150 | 57.8% | 66.5% | 69.4% | 72.3% | 75.1% |
| 180 | 69.3% | 79.7% | 83.2% | 86.6% | 90.0% (cap) |
| 234+ | 90.0% (cap) | 90.0% | 90.0% | 90.0% | 90.0% (cap) |
Materials per Successful Mine
A successful mine always yields between 1 and 5 items. The size of the stack is decided by a chain of rolls driven by your Mining skill plus your pick's stack bonus — each extra item is progressively harder to reach. Average stack size:
| Mining Skill | Pick / Multi-tool | Advanced | Modified | Enhanced | Golden |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 1.05 | 1.10 | — | — | — |
| 40 | 1.08 | 1.21 | 1.33 | — | — |
| 55 | 1.19 | 1.34 | 1.49 | 1.68 | — |
| 70 | 1.32 | 1.50 | 1.69 | 1.92 | 2.20 |
| 100 | 1.67 | 1.94 | 2.23 | 2.51 | 2.51 (capped) |
Training Mining Skill
You gain exactly one point of skill progress per node you break — whether or not the break roll succeeded. Swings that fail to break the node give nothing, which is why swing reduction from picks and skill also doubles as a training speed bonus.
Fewer Swings
Every 25 Mining skill permanently removes one swing from every node, stacking with the reduction from your pick. A node never takes fewer than 1 swing.
Bigger Stacks
Skill feeds the stack-size roll at a rate of 0.7 per level, so raw skill is worth roughly two-thirds of a pick tier's stack bonus per 30 levels.
| Target Mining Skill | Approx. Nodes Broken (from skill 10) | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | ~635 | Advanced Pick unlocked |
| 40 | ~3,290 | Modified Pick unlocked |
| 55 | ~14,400 | Enhanced Pick unlocked |
| 70 | ~60,700 | Golden Pick unlocked |
Mining Pouches
Mining pouches automatically catch everything you mine, so your backpack never fills up mid session. Both are available in the in-game Store under Items → Utilities. If no pouch is present (or it is full) drops fall into your backpack as normal.
Mining Pouch — 100 Coins
Auto-collects every shard, gem and prism you mine. It only accepts mining materials — no regular items and no pickaxes. You must hold and use your pick manually.
Golden Mining Pouch — 500 Coins
Everything the regular pouch does, plus it stores pickaxes. With a pick inside you can right-click the node directly and the pouch automatically uses the best pick it contains — including picks in nested containers.
The Aether Prism
The Aether Prism is a rare artifact that only mining can produce, and it is the single best long-term reason to keep mining once your pick is maxed.
How to Get One
Every successful mine has a 0.1% chance (1 in 1,000) to also produce an Aether Prism, on top of your normal drop. A better pick means more successes per swing, so it also means more prisms.
What It Does
Equipped in an artifact slot, it gives a 5% chance that a roll which would have given you Aether Shards instead gives 1 Large Aethernite — skipping the 5-shard crafting step entirely.
What Your Drops Are For
Nothing you mine is used raw. Take everything to a crafting station in any main city to refine it into the forms the upgrade system accepts.
| Material | Refines Into | Recipe | Used For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aether Shard | Large Aethernite | 5 shards → 1 | Upgrading and rerolling item attributes |
| Disenchantment Shard | Disenchantment Rune | 5 shards → 1 | Stripping attributes off an item to recover aether |
| Small Sapphire | Giant Sapphire | 10 gems → 1 | Artifact: Arm +1 and mana regeneration |
| Small Emerald | Giant Emerald | 10 gems → 1 | Artifact |
| Small Ruby | Giant Ruby | 10 gems → 1 | Artifact |
| Small Amethyst | Giant Amethyst | 10 gems → 1 | Artifact |
Rules & Limits
A few hard rules are enforced by the server. If mining suddenly refuses to work, it is almost always one of these.
- 15 minute login cooldown. After every login you must wait 15 minutes before you can mine. The game tells you how long is left. This resets on every login, so relogging does not skip it — it restarts it.
- No mining in protection zones. Any node standing on a PZ tile cannot be mined at all.
- A pick is mandatory. Either held in your hand or stored in a Golden Mining Pouch. Any other tool is rejected.
- Skill requirements are enforced twice. Uzgod won't sell you a pick above your skill, and the pick itself refuses to mine if your skill drops below its requirement.
- Nodes are consumed either way. A failed break roll still uses up the node — it goes inactive for 30 minutes regardless of whether you got materials.
- Node progress is shared per tile. Swings from every player hitting the same node accumulate together toward the same break total.