Mining
Dig through a wall in a dungeon, and you may break out ore, stone, or a gem. Only if you are trained in the Mining skill. Untrained, you cannot dig at all. Every dwarf and duergar knows Mining, and so do kobolds; anyone can learn it from Alberich in Fyrdelf, for gold.
Mining happens only in the dungeons: the generated floors under the hills, the endless stair, the Pits. A town’s walls, a hall’s, or a rock on the overworld give nothing. A wall an explosion breaks gives nothing either. You have to dig it yourself.
Does the wall hold anything?
When the wall crumbles, there is a chance it held something. Harder rock holds more often, but what it holds is harder to break out:
| Wall | Hardness | Holds something | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Packed earth | 100 | 5% | 8 |
| Makeshift anvil | 300 | 5% | 8 |
| Stone wall | 600 | 20% | 12 |
| Wall of bones | 600 | 20% | 12 |
| Granite | 3000 | 40% | 14 |
If it did, you make a check: two twelve-sided dice, plus your Strength modifier, plus what Mining gives (+8 at 100, +12 at 200), against the difficulty. Snake eyes (a natural 2) always fails, two twelves always succeed. Fail, and you find nothing, and the game says nothing: you never knew it was there.
Succeed, and what you find lies on the rubble: “You break out a lump of iron ore.” Ore and stone come one lump at a time, one more for every 6 you beat the difficulty by, at most 3. A gem comes alone.
What comes out
What you find depends on how dangerous the floor is. The precious metals and gems are rare near the surface and grow common deeper down. Mithril and adamantium are found only very deep: from danger 60 and 80, deeper than any dungeon but the endless stair of Grundlēas goes.
Each find’s share of what you break out, where a dungeon’s rock holds every ore:
A gem comes out uncut, its kind by how rare it is, its size larger the deeper you are, as gems are found anywhere. Cut it yourself, or sell it as it is.
Veins
Now and then a dungeon floor has veins: a few wall cells of one ore, drawn in its colour against the grey stone. Look at one and the game names it: “a vein of copper ore”. A vein runs on into the rock behind the wall, so digging into it may bare more of it.
A vein always gives its ore. There is no chance that it holds nothing, and no draw of what it holds: dig through a cell of copper vein and you break out copper ore. You still make the check above, but it only sets how much: fail it and you get one lump, succeed and you get one more for every 6 you beat the difficulty by, at most 3. Only if you are trained in Mining: untrained, a vein crumbles to rubble like any wall.
Which ore a vein is of follows the same rules as everything else mined. It is one of the dungeon’s own ores (below), and the precious ones come deeper down: mithril and adamantium veins lie only as deep as the endless stair goes.
A dungeon floor has veins 20% of the time: 1 to 3 of them.
Each dungeon’s ores
Not every dungeon holds every metal. A fen holds only bog iron; the fey’s own country holds no iron at all. Where a dungeon names its ores, the others never come out there. Stone and gems come out everywhere.
| Dungeon | Danger | Ores |
|---|---|---|
| Brocenburg | 6 to 9 | iron, copper |
| Bānfeld | 6 to 9 | iron, copper, tin |
| Cealdhlāw | 1 to 6 | iron, copper, tin |
| Dēopgang | 14 to 24 | silver, gold |
| Fennmynster | 3 to 10 | iron |
| Fyrdelf | 5 to 16 | iron, copper, tin, zinc, silver |
| Grundlēas | 1 and rising, a floor at a time | every ore (iron, copper, tin, zinc, silver, gold, mithril, adamantium) |
| Hellegeat | 12 to 30 | iron, gold |
| Lytelscræf | 1 to 3 | iron, copper, tin |
| Meyn Bew | 22 to 25 | none |
| The Depths | 0 | every ore (iron, copper, tin, zinc, silver, gold, mithril, adamantium) |
| Wulfeshol | 6 to 9 | iron, copper |
| Wyrtholm | 6 to 9 | iron |
| Ælfhām | 4 to 6 | silver, gold |
| Ūtgang | 13 to 15 | copper, zinc, silver, gold |
From ore to ingot
A lump of ore is no use to a smith as it is. Smelt it at an anvil: Metalcraft’s Smelt recipe, for anyone trained in Metalcraft, turns one lump into one ingot of its metal in ten minutes. The harder metals are harder to smelt, and a failed smelt loses the lump. The ingot is ready for the forge (see Crafting).
See also: Digging and walls, Forging at the anvil, and Gems.