The War Within Mining Specialization Guide and Builds

This guide will walk you through the various Mining specialization paths in War Within, providing you with the knowledge you need to maximize your efficiency as a Miner.

War Within introduces three new Mining specializations, each unlocked at levels 25, 50, and 75. These specializations offer unique advantages that can significantly impact your mining experience.

In this guide, we'll dive deep into each specialization, exploring the best ways to invest your points and offering insights into which paths might be less beneficial. I'll break down every specialization and sub-specialization, giving you a clear understanding of how to optimize your build. By the end, you'll have a set of example builds that you can use as a starting point or adapt to suit your personal mining style.

Table of contents

#Plethora of Ore

Plethora of Ore is where you'll gain most of your extra skill in Mining. For 50 points, the center node grants a +85 skill boost to all mining nodes and also adds +45 Deftness, +105 Finesse, and +60 perception to every node you gather.

It's the best value for your knowledge points, and regardless of what you're mining, this will give you a solid boost.

Sub-specializations

Plethora of Ore includes three sub-specializations, they are all the same but each tailored to a specific type of ore. For 40 points, they provide +55 skill, +180 Deftness, +30 Finesse, +60 Perception and unlock the ability to refine Quality 1 (Q1) ore into Q2, and Q2 into Q3.

Maxing out one of these sub-specializations will boost your Null Stone yield from that specific ore by 500%, as you'll stop receiving Imperfect Null Stone when mining it.

Typically, you need to gather 5x Imperfect Null Stone to create a single Null Stone, so this is a significant bonus. Null Stone is rare and used for many recipes, making these sub-specializations highly valuable.

#Mining Fundamentals

Mining Fundamentals gives +225 finesse, +195 Deftness, +180 Perception and +20 skill to all ores you gather and enables mounted gathering once you've invested 60 points.

While mounted gathering is convenient, the additional Null Stone you get from Plethora of Ore is more valuable I think. I'd only recommend investing points into Mining Fundamentals first if you can't live without mounted gathering. If you play a druid, you already have instant mount casting with your flight form, so maxing out this specialization wouldn't be my first choice.

The best perk from this spec is the passive ability to replenish 1 Vigor from gathering ores. You don't have to spend any points into it to get this bonus, you will get it from just unlocking the specialization. For this reason, you should always unlock Mining Fundamentals as your first specialization. The vigor you gain from gathering is essential for minimizing downtime. Without it, you'll find yourself grounded often, waiting for vigor to replenish.

Rich Deposits

You will find plenty of Rich Deposits, but it's not worth investing any points into this early one, there are much better choices.

Seams

I encountered only about three Seam nodes while gathering thousands of ores, making them extremely rare in the open world. They're mostly tucked away deep inside caves, which often isn't worth the effort to reach. Don't invest any points into this unless more of these nodes are added to the game.

#Mastering the Mysterious

Mastering the Mysterious gives +45 skill to gathering Empowered mining deposits and you will get more CD reduction on your overload ability. You will also gain one additional charge of Overload Empowered Deposit once you've invested 45 points.

The cooldown reduction is quite minor. It goes from 30 minutes to 34 minutes, meaning you only need to mine 21 ores instead of 24 to fully reset the cooldown.

You would mostly want spend points here for the extra charge of overload. With two charges you have more time to look for more valuable elemental deposits without wasting a lot of cooldown reduction while you try to find the right deposit.

Sub-specializations

Each subspecialization give you extra skill and some extra cooldown reduction when picking these specific ores. The cooldown reduction is 42 minutes instead of 30 (not all ores, only these empowered)

Crystallized

You will go from not getting any Crystalline Powder from overloading to getting 1-3x.

Weeping

You can loot a few extra Writhing Sample.

EZ-Mine

Spending 40 points into this will give give you some extra mining speed when you mine EZ-Mine. However, it won't improve your mining speed for the shattered fragments after overloading. Overall, it's not worth allocating points to this specialization. You can easily mine these if you just get close or jump one them.

Webbed

This will give you more Weavercloth. But, you can only get Q1 cloth from the spiders.

Recommended Specialization Build

Now let's see step by step how you should spend your points. I'll outline an example build with some alternative path here and there.

First 50 - 90 points

I think delaying mounted gathering for later will make you more gold because of the increased Q3 mats and Null Stone drop rate, but it's hard to put a gold value on it because it's a much more enjoyable process to gather while mounted.

So, I'd say if you highly value mounted gathering, then go for Mining Fundamentals (60).

Otherwise, I'd recommend starting with Plethora of Ore (50) and Bismuth (45) to get to the increased Null Stone drop rate.

If Null Stone is very expensive, you can also go Plethora of Ore (10) and Bismuth (45) to get the increased drop rate sooner.

Next 90 points

From here, I'd max out the other two ores, or at least one of them. So, Aqirite (45) and Ironclaw (45) starting with the one that is more expensive.

If you go Aqirite, you should only farm in Hallowfall or Azj-Kahet. In the other two zones there are no native Aqirite, you can only find camouflaged ones.

Next 60 points

Once you max out all ores then you should max out Mining Fundamentals (60) to unlock mounted gathering and get some extra Finesse, Deftness and Perception.

Spending the rest of your points

You have most of the important skill trees at this point, so you can just fill out the rest as you see fit.

I'd go for them in this order:

  1. Mastering the Mysterious
  2. Rich Deposits
  3. Outlawed Techniques / Weeping
  4. Webbed



I spent a lot of time farming ores, so I hope you found this guide useful! If you have any feedback on the guide—whether it's about areas that could be improved, or if you found typos, or errors—please don't hesitate to let me know. Your input helps make the guide better for everyone!