Is mining a viable profession?

IRID1UM

Hi guys, returning player here!

I played in 2001 and loved being a miner. Before picking up  my shovels again, I wanted to ask if mining even is viable any more in terms of selling the ingots.

If so, how are ingots sold? I used to have the prices in my profile and would stand at the bank shouting. Is this still what ppl do?

Also, how can I find out the value of the ingots?

Thanks!

Skett

Ingots sell well unfortunately they have been script mined for many years so your competing with that. I still mine ingots and buy them for my smithy 

I also mine in cove at the headless miners and use there shovels and pickaxes hoping to get  gold ones those sell well if your lucky getting one GL

keven2002

Short answer to your question is yes - ingots do sell but the real question to ask is whether or not the time you spend mining warrants the price you will get per ingot. 

Several things have changed since you probably last mined some ore. 

Skett is correct in that mining became (and is) scripted which caused the Devs at the time to "fix" the scripting issue by randomizing ore veins. You can no longer mark runes to a verite vein to build your stock because they randomly move around. This change ultimately ended up hurting the actual players that wanted to mine because it makes it very hard to go mine a specific metal. 

Rising Tides (aka High Seas) was introduced, maybe 10 years ago?, which made "pirating" a new thing where you can scuttle NPC ships and ransack them. Resources are on these ships (ingots/wood/leather) now and they are plentiful. It's not uncommon to scuttle a merchant ship and walk away with 300-500 of each valorite/verite/agapite ingots. Combined with the ore locations being randomized, it's probably more effective to go pirate for resources rather than mine them.

My take on this is that if you wanted to sell ingots; you are going to need to beat the price of someone selling them for a lower price due to the fact that they ran a script from server up to server down and probably didn't actually spend much time at the keyboard. They will most likely be able to undercut your price bc they have very little time invested. That being said, if you just like to mine and making a little coin is just icing on the cake then absolutely, you will be able to sell ingots as long as you are competitive on price.

Skett

Well said @keven2002

I assumed he liked to mine as I do from time time to its like fishing relaxing

@IRID1UM the High Seas add-on is by far the best expansion imo and is only $15 come with extra house and bank storage increase. if you dont have its well worth it to buy.

  https://www.ea.com/games/ultima/ultima-online/ultima-online-high-seas-booster/buy-microcontent

https://www.uoguide.com/Ultima_Online:_High_Seas

https://uo.com/2012/09/17/ultima-online-high-seas/

Urge

Something Kevin and Skett didn't touch on is that you can buy Mining for quality stone and Mining for Gems books from Royal City smith/stonecrafter. A quick toggle on your shovel allows you to mine granite that is used in building custom house walls/floor tiles. The special gems are used in imbuing and will sell well. 

You will also now mine small pieces of blackrock that is used to make blackrock soup which is the only thing a bane dragon will eat. 

You can also trash all of these for brit cleanup points and get cool stuff. 

Enjoy and welcome back.

IRID1UM

Hi all!

Thanks for your comments to my questions and for the insights provided.

I will just pick up mining again and see how it feels these days. If it proves to be too time consuming, I can still drop it and do something else.

Any tips on how I can find out the worth of the ingots? Is there a place where one would find an ingot market? On the Atlantic shard.

Thanks!

Urge

Single click yourself and use vendor search. Under item name put commodity deed and whatever you're looking to price.

I haven't used search in a long time for granite but there was a bug where all types would just show as granite.

IRID1UM

Thanks, I will try that once I'm back from my holidays!

Pawain

IRID1UM said:

Hi all!

Thanks for your comments to my questions and for the insights provided.

I will just pick up mining again and see how it feels these days. If it proves to be too time consuming, I can still drop it and do something else.

Any tips on how I can find out the worth of the ingots? Is there a place where one would find an ingot market? On the Atlantic shard.

Thanks!

In the New Magencia bazaar you may find a vendor that will buy your ingots.