Guild Wars 2

The Cosmic Mining Tool consistently takes me four cycles to exhaust rich iron vein nodes, tested over ~1000 units of iron ore gathered.

Using standard mithril mining picks, a rich iron vein is almost always exhaused within three mining cycles, tested over countless thousands of units of extracted iron ore.

A mining cycle typically contains three points in time where ore is added to my inventory. With standard picks, there are regular occurances where two sets of ore is added to my inventory at the same point in time.

I have not yet seen a single “double-strike” occur with the Cosmic Mining Tool, yet owners of other unlimited-use mining tools report that “double-strikes” are a common occurance for them.

The end result is that a 1000-gem (850 with a discount) mining tool takes 25% longer to extract ore from rich nodes than the standard consumable picks.

Additional info:
- Character levels: ~25-35, 80
- Character races: Charr (~25-35, 80), Asura (80)
- Map location: each of the “Guaranteed Rich Vein” locations of Central Tyria as noted in the official wiki

My sequence is 3-3-3-1 (four cycles) using the Watchwork Mining Pick (rich nodes). No exceptions. At the last cycle the animation contains two knocks which gives zero ore.

It always takes me 4 cycles to harvest a rich mining node using ANY pick. 3-3-3-1, every time, unless RNG favors me with a double. And as for said doubles, that’s RNG. You’ll have times where you’ll get lots of doubles, and you’ll have times where you get none. Thus far, no evidence has popped up that shows the cosmic tool has a lower chance.

To reiterate, my experience using standard mining picks (principally iron and mithril purchased from Rata Sum’s merchant next to the bank) indicates a nearly 100% chance of double-strikes on rich iron ore nodes. I cannot recall even one time where a mining pick required four mining cycles to deplete a rich iron node (though I do not deny the possibility it may have happened to me a very small number of times).

As long as I can remember, it’s taken 4 cycles to fully harvest a rich node, both on orichalcum/mithril picks and my watchwork pick. And doubles have never been guaranteed in my experience; sometimes they happen, and sometimes they don’t. As a side note, the rate of doubles you get is also influenced by your servers wvw score (Gatherer reward gives you 2-3% more chance for extra resources).

As a side note, the wiki page for Gathering even says: “Rich mining veins can be gathered ten times as opposed to three and have a higher chance to give rare gems.” You get 3 hits per cycle; 10 would be 3 full cycles + 1 hit on a fourth.

First, some terminology – there are extra swings (where a node lets you get more than the normal number of attempts), and doublehits (where an ore node gives 2 ore on a single swing). Most basic nodes allow 3 swings, but randomly they sometimes will offer 1 to 3 additional swings. This applies to most of the ore (not rich), lumber and plant nodes. Doublehits are different – they give you an extra item per attempt. Normally, an attempt will give 1 item but it can give up to 2 per swing (e.g. 2 ore from 1 swing). Some ore & plant nodes do this, though I’m not sure if log nodes also do this.

With rich ore nodes, the character is allowed 10 swings (staggered 3, 3, 3, 1), and no chance for extra attempts. However, there is a chance for obtaining an extra ore on each swing. This means you will get somewhere between 10 to 20 ore from a single rich node, but getting in the high teens to 20 range would require incredible luck on the RNG. The quality of tool might impact this, but I don’t have enough evidence to confirm that. I know that when using my permanent mining tool in west Brisban, I often get about 13 to 15 ore from the fixed-location rich iron node. I seem to get fewer double-hits using regular quality tools on rich nodes in general, and fewer double-hits on higher-end rich nodes even when using perma-tools, but that could just be the effect of RNG.

Just to verify, I just did a run through various rich nodes (5 iron, 1 copper, and 1 silver). Every node took 4 cycles. I did this on my toon with the Watchwork pick, and I repeated it on a toon with a normal orichalcum pick. On Watchwork, 3 of the iron gave me doubles on at least two cycles, but the other 2 gave no doubles. No doubles on the copper or silver. The normal pick gave me doubles (some just one set, some more than one) on 4 of the iron nodes and no double on the 5th.

It has always taken 10 hits on a proper rich node. There have been some rich nodes that are anything but rich (but I think all those have been removed?), rich nodes take 10 hits across 4 cycles or 3-3-3-1 as others have stated.

Using regular pick (any tier, really) I usually “doubleswing” on the third swing of each gathering action – that is, I get two “drops” of ore and consume two uses of the tools. This leads to getting my hits 4+4+2, while animating 3 swings per action.

I’ve been using Molten Alliance Mining Pick for the past two years and rich ore node is mined four times, 3+3+3+1