I have now a tier 2 and a tier 3 1/2 character - and both are rather fond of gathering. One is a crafter, and to train blacksmithing she mostly needs iron now. But, when I go out mining, I hardly can find any iron. Plenty of Copper, Silver and Gold, but very few Iron. I think that's odd: shouldn't Iron be more common that Silver and Gold? Yes, I visited some mines, but frankly I think they are a waste of time. There are so many mobs to fight, and so few nodes to mine that I count myself lucky to gather 6 copper ore and 2 gold ore in an hour - I can do much better in my favorite gathering zones! And of course - no Iron. Please, make the lower tier mines worthwhile and replace some of the copper nodes in normal zones with iron. Thanks, Ysold
The low tier mines are sort of a joke. They were put in because people felt the t5 mines were too tough for newer players, but the amount of ore is so bad they're not worth it. Better to find a "normal" scene that has iron ore in it. I can't tell you where the best places are, I never had much use for iron. But I know South Midmaer Way (t2, I think) has an okay number of iron nodes, but more importantly, it's not too tough to avoid the enemies and just gather.
I ran into that conundrum in my character's early days also. My thoughts back then were almost exactly the same. One thing I can suggest is to hang out around the Spectral Peaks on the overworld and go into the "Stag" or "Dog" encounters. The Hills encounter that only exists in this one small area has a good assortment of mining nodes, with a around 5 or so of them being iron. There's also cotton garlic and wood. Put the cotton up on a public vendor (unless you have access to your own vendor) and you can also make some gold. And, as Cora says ... South Midmaer Way. If I remember right there's also a fair number of iron and copper in South Celestial Wetlands (also Tier 2)
List of mines: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Category:Mines There is the http://sotawiki.net/sota/Lost_Whiteguard_Silver_Mine I have not done a statistical analysis of the iron ore in there vs other similar areas though. Might be worth trying as well.
This scarcity of iron in the lower-tier zones is hopefully one of the problems Atos will look into during his crafting dive. It's one of the main reasons I just gave up on crafting iron items to work my blacksmithing up and just salvaged everything I could get my hands on. My blacksmithing is currently at 123 and it's almost entirely from salvage. About the only things I've actually made have been rings and necklaces, bindings, some chandeliers and a single set of plate for my alt. Tailoring is kind of the same; most of my skill in that also came from salvage.
