Eruantien's Guide to Mining

Note for this guide I shall be using the term xp, if you are used to this then ignore this note, if you are expecting the use of sp then I am pre-empting the removal of physical levels and removal of the term sp

Why Mining

So I guess the first question most people would come across when playing FFXIV is what class shall I level? Most will find solace in the fields of DoW/M, they get to blow things up and hack enemies to pieces, this sounds a lot more fun than going up to a rock and hitting it with a pickaxe or sledgehammer.
Mining is, no matter what others may say and the “old” FFXIV development team say, is a secondary class, you will not be able to overly roam hardcore dungeons or help your linkshell with NM’s. You will however hopefully find it to be a great source of income or if you dabble in DoH help you with materials for Goldsmithing, Blacksmithing and in a minor sense alchemy.
You do need some patience for Mining, or any DoL class, so if you would rather hack away at enemies, do not bother picking up a DoL class and expect to max it out over night. For some like myself find mining and other DoL classes relaxing and calming, others find it frustrating and exhausting, if you don’t know which you are, give it a try.

tl:dr version - Mining helps with gil, and helps DoH classes Goldsmithing/Blacksmithing/Alchemy.

How to Mine

This May seem like a simple enough task, however currently the in game guides are not very helpful so down to business.
There are 2 ways to gather with any DoL class, with miner that is from a mining point and from a quarry point. Mining points are generally the bread and butter winner in terms of items, xp and ease of finding them so the majority of this guide will be focused on mining points. That said as a miner you have to equip a pickaxe with this tool you can mine at mining points, however with this you are unable to mine from a quarry, to do this you will require a sledgehammer in your secondary weapon slot.
Ok now you have your tools you are ready to set out, you have reached outside the city gates and think now what? Well then there are 2 real ways to level a DoL class, find a mine or get a guildleve. First I shall explain finding a mine as it is the harder to work out of the two.
When you start as a miner you receive an ability called lay of the land, this ability is used to find mining points, it tells you the general direction by the 8 points of the compass and a distance in yalms, this distance is the Hydalyn version of yards, this is something you will pick up over time.
Once you find a mine you will need to select mine from the menu screen and you will be given the first mining interface to select the portion of ore you wish to gather from, as below.



This portion of the interface helps get specific items, which is called the sweet spot for the items, ranging from +5 at the top of the gauge to 0 in the middle and -5 at the bottom. To find specific items you wish to gather look at external sources like www.disciplesoftheland.com and eorzeapedia. A quick note here though, not all mining points have all items use the above mentioned sites to find the specific item. I shall write further down rough guidelines where to get items however.
Once you have selected the portion of exposed ore you will be shown a hot and cold mini game shown below.



There are 2 parts of this gauge the strike gauge which is your hot and cold part of the gauge and the remainder bar, this indicates the amount of time you can strike. Now for the tricky bit, once you hit strike an orange circle will start moving up and down, you need to time this to a certain point on the gauge, until you start to feel a rhythm I suggest you try and pick just below or above the middle circle, once you have stopped the moving orange circle you will be given some suggestions as any good hot and cold game would.

1. You may get an item (congratulations)
2. You may get “you've almost gotten an item” in which case go for the same position.
3. “you feel nothing promising” this means this is your first attempt and you have not got the correct location, in which case go either above or below the middle circle, whichever you didn’t do last time.
4. Or you are getting further or closer to the location, this will be on subsequent attempts, therefore for example if you first selected the lower portion of the gauge just below the centre, then selected just above the circle and received the message you are getting closer then try and aim closer to the top of the gauge.

Although not a hard and fast rule, generally the item will be in 1 of 4 places just above or below the centre circle or just after or below the 2 ends, again after a few attempts you will start to see these locations for yourself.
You can gather a certain amount of times dependent on stats (I shall go over this later), then you need to go and find another mine.
Once you have gained some levels You will start to gain abilities, these abilities however are not activated by you, they are activated automatically when you are mining at random points in time and last until the end of that location, you will have to choose for yourself what abilities you want to equip.
As I mentioned earlier there are 2 types of points mines and quarries, the reason I haven’t gone over quarries is because there is no way of finding them with abilities at this point in time except coming across them, there is no mini game, it is purely find click and hope. Also XP gained is a lot worse than mines.

tl;dr version – Use lay of the land to find mining points, find mine, click on mine in menu, click on area of exposed ore for item you want, play hot and cold with strike gauge until you get item or remainder bar depleted.

Guildleves

In each nation there are 2 leves for each grade of node, grades ranging from 1-5. The leves are as follows:

1. Locate 3 mining points. This is fairly simple, once you start the leve a circle on your map will appear and that is the location of the mining point, you get 5 attempts for a mine once you finish one the next will appear. Once you finish gathering at each node you finish. You can fail to get a single item and still win this, the greatness of the leve however lies in the fact you can get guardians favour increasing your xp amount. And you can start at nodes higher than you would normally be able to find them. For example you would normally get lay of the land III at rank 18 however you can do the rank 20 leves (grade 3 node leves) at rank 15 increasing your xp significantly.
2. Locate 3 HQ items. This is slightly more difficult, but not by much, once again you will be pointed in the direction of the mines with circles on your map, however you get 6 attempts per location and you can continue going for 30 minutes if you know how. Fortunately you came here so I shall tell you how. The HQ items that you are searching always have a higher remainder bar as shown in the screenshot below, this is so it is easier for you to attain. However this also gives you a clue of when it is coming up. There are 2 things you can do, 1 go for the speed bonus on the leve and clean up and finish fast, or you can aim completely off from the item and miss it on purpose, this is helpful for 2 reasons 1 if you are grinding away in a location that is netting you more xp (as I stated before if you are between -5 an -8 of the level range you will be netting more xp than going for nodes your lay of the land can search for), or 2 you have taken up botany to 25, and this I suggests because this nets you the best ability for DoL, once it activates you gain double xp, therefore you wait till it activates before you decide to get the HQ item where you can get massive xp.

tl:dr version – 2 types of leves, find 3 mining points, find 3 HQ items.

I want that item

So now you know how to mine, you want a specific item for whatever reason, helping a friend, doing some crafting or just plain gil reward. In this section I will give you some general rules, again not hard and fast rules but generally true, if you want specifics then look up third party databases as previously mentioned.

Previously here I had where abouts you would likely find items, but with the changes in 1.19 these rules were thrown out of the window and each area has specific 3-4 types of items. To find specific items check the items available from gathering and where to find them wiki page for locations.

There are also some rules on how you can guess locations of the items on the strike gauge and how you can guess what they are from the initial remainder bar, let me go into some more detail.
All things Goldsmithing, this includes silver/mythril/zinc/raw gems usually if your VIT is high enough are in the first section of the gauge.
All things Blacksmithing obviously will be in the second section of the strike gauge the part further out, this includes items like iron/limonite/obsidian/tin
The higher your vitality the more likely these locations become a sure and fast rule.

Now for the remainder bar, as already mentioned when the remainder bar is pretty full it is an HQ leve item, however there are more rules like this that will help you with the rules mentioned above in getting that rare item you wanted.
Rare precious metals, these include mythril/gold/wyvern obsidian. The remainder bar is half full like the sceenshot below



Raw gems are the hardest item to get in the game currently even at rank 50 as the remainder bar is the smallest just as the screenshot below.




tl:dr version – read the full version you lazy gits

What are all these stats

The miner stats which are the gathering stats are fairly simple but what you want in them is down to the individual and what they want to achieve. There are 3 main gathering stats that you want to be aware of, Gathering/Perception/Output.

Gathering – This simply makes the remainder bar decrease slower. Pretty handy to have, especially when going for those difficult and rare items.
Output – Increases the amount you can gather at a specific location. Definitely the best stat you want when grinding when not in a leve, however when in a leve becomes completely pointless as the amount of times you can gather at a location is fixed.
Perception – This increases the likelihood of you gathering an hq item, so a +1/2/3 item instead of the nq. Not useful until you are going for items to craft as you will soon come to learn the quality of storage space after you are out gathering for a bit.

There are also main stats a miner should look into these are VIT as mentioned previously in the guide, helps you keep the location of the item at the place you would expect it to be. And to help assumedly with quarrying is mind. Mind is still a bit of a mystery to me.

tl:dr version – gathering = easier gather, output = more gathering, perception = more hq

Catalysts and how to get them

Catalysts could well be the new gatherers bread and butter because for 1 they are gatherer exclusive, materia is also useless without it, and for another point catalysts appear to be rarer than materia as well, so supply and demand is your friend.

So we have now established that catalysts are good things, now how do we get one. Well first you need to equip Fingerprints of the Gods that you recieve from the quest Joining the Spirit from Kokosamu in thanalan (29,20). This like other gathering abilities activates randomly while gathering. Once activates your exposed ore gauge starts to glow, this shows that you can gather a catalyst, from here you need to find the catalysts sweetspot, for miner this happens to be +5 for all currently known catalysts, if you do not aim for the sweetspot you miss your chance. If you select the sweetspot your strike gauge should also glow, otherwise you are out of luck and have missed the sweetspot. If it does start to glow take aim and swing and you should get some lovely impure dark matter called a catalyst.

tl:dr version - Equip Fingerprint of the Gods, take aim and swing

Gil, give me gil

Ok big change to this since patch 1.19 since you can no longer get money off nuggets, because well they do not exist. What you want to be doing is going for catalysts currently they are rare because the ability does not activate alot and due to the high demand of materia compared to the amount of catalysts these will be a money maker. Also make sure you stock up on the different ores, they will sell for a pretty penny, currently you are looking at mythril/cobalt and electrum as the high end ores. Also, I know it is always tempting to undercut the 20 people who have that ore up, just don't that will only hurt you in the long run.
On a side note make sure you check your companies supply missions, some of those old npcable items may be your ticket to new company gear and chocobos.

tl:dr version – mmm materia catalysts

FAQ

Q. What grade mine should I be digging at?
A. Whatever your Lay of the Land ability goes up to. This is debated but due to the fact that you get more swings on grades you can find, and the fact that you can find them I find gives faster xp.

Q. This is damn boring, why should I do this?
A. Don’t mine, if you find it boring, just don’t mine, this is a game I suggest you enjoy yourself.

Q. I can’t gather at a quarry point?
A. As I said in my guide, you need a sledgehammer in the secondary slot to be able to gather at a quarry.

Q. As a fisher what bait should I use?
A. /facepalm, this is a mining guide, I suggest you use some tin ore to get the mighty Platinum Carp.

Q. I see a mining point but I cannot gather from it.
A. This is because you recently gathered from this location, you have to mine from 2 other locations before that one becomes available again. (This includes quarry points)

Q. What Abilities should I have equipped
A. This is down to personal preference, however if you have Sweat of Brow and are in an area where you gain xp, only have that equipped, so when an ability proc's you know it is Sweat of Brow. As of 1.19 also equip Fingerprints of the Gods that you recieve from the quest Joining the Spirit from Kokosamu in thanalan (29,20), this will allow you to get catalysts for materia while gathering in certain places.

Q. How can my chocobo help me dig?
A. OK your chocobo cannot help you dig, however it will be benificial for you to use lay of the land and then get on your choco to get to that point at break neck pace. kweh!