Skyrim:Mining

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 or the Notched Pickaxe 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.

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 (but see bugs).

Mine Locations

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:

• Corundum
• Ebony
• Geode Veins (yielding Soul Gems)
• Gold
• Iron
• Malachite
• Moonstone
• Orichalcum
• Quicksilver
• Silver
• Stalhrim^DB (can only be mined with an ancient nordic pickaxe)

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.

Related Quests

• Mine Ore: Get paid to mine ore. (radiant)

Notes

• To maximize mining efficiency, player may hold a pickaxe in their right hand and a dagger in their left, use the Elemental Fury shout, and then power attack the veins. This allows mining time for a vein to be cut down a few seconds.
• This can also be used to quickly gain extremely large amounts of quarried stone and clay.
• Every vein contains three ore, and all three are added to your inventory, but one of them does not get listed on the screen.

Bugs

• A graphical glitch can occur where the player will clip through an ore vein, stopping the player from mining the vein, and it can occur in all veins.
  • Possible reported 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 if this occurs.
• You may be unable to mine ore veins after they respawn. Leaving and reentering the mine or the cell will enable the veins and you can then mine them normally.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.3.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• 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 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.