I believe "newbies cant mine" is an exaggeration.

Particularly about comment saying changing serpant spine mines ruined iron mining for newbies. Afaik there are other decent places to mine iron, including northern grunvald barrens, and serpant spine foothills, the latter being my new favorite spot to do so.

I reccomend lower-mid level folk check these places out. In northern grunvald there are hints laying around hinting at a "motherload", and there is either a single sand elemental or nothing at all huarding that deposit.

Serpant spine foothills has many iron nodes scattered around as well as fighters that are pretty good for leveling on and making some additional cash

 

You can totally mine as a newbie. Owl's Nest mine is great for new players with a bit of level under their belts, fighting 2 large wolves at a time can be challenging, but it's easy to run away if needed and it can also be a decent place to level up a few skills while waiting for ore to respawn. Another great way for a newbie to get ore is in the overworld encounters. Most of the time, you get sucked into a lower level encounter (aim for the Red Sash Bandit encounters in the Hidden Vale map), and if you don't, lots of them are fairly easy to run out of (high level bandits with archers can get you pretty well, and if you're not careful, elder wolves are nasty if you aggro) or mine around the enemies (high level skeletons such as hardened versions are clustered about a point, avoid aggro and you can mine at least 1/2 the encounter map then leave without taking any damage).

The biggest issue I see is the lack of mining in the high 2- and low 3-skull areas. Yes, you can mine in more normal zones, but many of those zones I've found have too high of a fighting: .ore collecting ratio. So many people gripe that the game need to "enforce" specialization, but then so many of what appear to be the same people argue against "easy" mining, meaning you still have to be a strong fighter to be a good miner, thus diminishing the argument towards specialization. I don't mind fighting a bit, but when I'm fighting more than I'm mining, and get constantly interrupted when I'm trying to mine/gather/skin, it is not a good trade, IMO.

 

Agree that's there's lots of places that you can get ore, even at low level, but I still think that having a mine in the 3 skull range would be good for the game. Other than owl's nest, which is a very small starter level type thing, all of the mines are in about the same difficulty range. Zones can be cloned and there is already a mechanic in place for lower resource yields in lower level zones.

Another option that I think would be good would be to lighten the difficulty of some passage zones. Those are mostly crystals with a little bit of ore, so the reward is already more in line with lower level stuff anyway. It doesn't make sense for them to be full of elementals and big slimes.

 

So because you can get a pittance of ore scattered around non-mine zones it is okay for new players? It isn't like they'll need tens of thousands of ore to level crafting, they'll be fine. They will be able to get gear elsewhere and won't need to gather ore for it. Yep, all is good.

 

Yep. Sarcasm aside, @Merlota you're correct. Level up your character and then take on the high level mines. "Mommy, I want it too. Big brother has it!"

 

Another place you can get some ore as a newbie are the random encounters. I never run away from them and they have different types of materials, usually trees and ore.

I understand the frustration of being unable to be solely a crafter. Has anyone tried to be a crafter and do as little fighting as possible?

 

I remember having to work my way up to iron mining. Is that not still a thing? Can new players mine silver too?

 

Yes, and gold as well from random encounters. All the while keeping in mind that it doesnt take to long to be capable of mining serpant spine mine.

Yes. Starting the game with 10,000 ore is not ideal for anyone trying to sell ore.