For Alliance 1-300:

Copper/Tin: Best spot I've found in grinding Copper for Alliance is Elwynn, though it's abundant in all start zones. Tin is a common spawn in Redridge as well, so you won't have that much trouble.

Silver: For me silver was a real pain, the spawns aren't the greatest so just check all around, though I found several in Arathi Highlands.

Iron: Arathi Highlands is a good one to grind, but you can go to Stranglethorn vale to mine a ton of it too. Iron should not take long to pass by due to its frequency in the appropriate level zones. If you are an engineer, check out STV east mountains for a gnome that sells a mechanical dragonling schematic.

Gold: Another rare spawn, but I found it easier to get gold than silver. If you're in Arathi highlands, check around the caves before heading to Hillsbrad Foothills. Check the yeti cave. If you are in Stranglethorn the Crystalvein mine is chock-full of spawns, and it isn't a frequent grinding spot.

Mithril/Truesilver: Ah, mithril. It takes a while to get past mithril because you're going to be needing a lot of it for your other proffession (if you have one that uses mining). Check the Hinterlands, it is full of spawn points and you can level it pretty easy if you can dodge the mobs. If you are high enough check the Green Dragon place for spawns.

Truesilver is a rare spawn of mithril, so the most places it could be would be hinterlands. Personally I searched all over and found little truesilver, so I went back and bought a stack of 20 truesilver ore and smelted all of it, it was enough to push into Thorium.

Small Thorium: You'll want to look for this among the 48-60 level zones. If you are Horde (for whatever reason reading this) Blasted Lands in the Nethergarde Mine is the place to go. If you are Alliance these nodes will be unmineable. Still, Serpent's Coil and basically all the rugged terrain of blasted lands can spawn Thorium, but you will also have some mithril and truesilver. It will take some points of directly mining it to get skill up to smelt it. It's a bit frustrating getting mining high enough to move onto Rich Thorium, but read the Western/Eastern Plaguelands block below.

Rich Thorium: Western/Eastern Plaguelands is a nice curcuit to run around looking for rich thorium. Silithus is ideal if you can handle the bugs in the hives though because the thorium isn't mined often in the hives in Silithus. There are a few nodes in Un'goru which aren't frequently mined but I would suggest skipping it. If you're that high up, Winterspring is good grinding because of the infrequentness of players around there.

Now....before you know it you are ready to head to Outland and enjoy mining Fel Iron in Hellfire until 360. (365?) (If any horde are still listening, you can just replace Redridge/Elwynn with Durotar/Barrens and most everything else applies.)

My mining guide:

http://www.wowguideonline.com/mining.html

Typo: Guildes->Guides

Imo, the best place for Mithril is in Badlands. I went around 4 times if I remember correctly, with crusader aura, I want to say I got more than 80 ores, but I cant recollect. I'd def say I got more than 70 ores.

The best places that arnt overfarmed.

Badlands for Iron, Truesilver, and mithril mainly
Hinterlands...theres a spot to the north called serdane i think it is. High lvl elites that will crush you. Stay against the rocks and you will get about 3 mithril veins.

Overfarmed places you should avoid at peak hours.

Tanaris, Burning steepes(reap this place for all its worth on offpeak hours), Un'goro

Also when powerlvling from 1-450.....dont be lazy and buy ore....Everything you collect you should sell on the ah. I powerlvld my hunter from 75-375 in 2 days without buying ore...Sold all my ore and made over 1k gold. Just take the extra time to mine and it will pay off.

Do this on offpeak hours and you will get rich.

Go to burning steepes do a sweep through it. Move to blasted lands and do a quick sweep there. Than move to Badlands. Than by the time your done in badlands burning steepes will be full of all the goodies. Grab the dark iron ore even though its crap on the ah just because a small or rich throium vein spawns there normally.

see what i would like to know where is the best place to grind from mining cobalt to rich saronite stuff

http://www.wow-professions.com/wowguides/wow-mining-guide.html#65

It shows where to go at what level, and a map with the route you should take, very useful.

I have trouble mining thorium and these really helped me thanks guys

Yeah, I'm kind of stuck at the Thorium stage as well but hopefully this guide will help me.

Best place to mine for thorium and mithril is felwood. As of tonight with GatherMate add-on, i counted 34veins. 16 Mithril, 13 Thorium, 4 trusilver, and 1 gold mine. I've yet to find better, although guildies swear up and down about Silthias.

And where exactly in Stranglethorn Vale is the best place to find Iron? Specificity would be nice.

Here are circuit maps for every ore and every zone. Updated all the way to 450.

http://www.wowguideonline.com/miningmaps.html

If you want to see my mining guide go to the following link. It also links each zone to its circuit map by ore type.

http://www.wowguideonline.com/mining.html

If your in a zone which hasn;t got many players in it and your not interested in selling or using the ore a quick way to fast track your mining skill is to tap the mining nodes for the skill point but dont loot. if you then do a complete circuit of the larger zones (say roughly 5 mins) and come back you can tap the same mining nodes again and get the skill upgrade...

rinse and repeat for super fast tracking of your mining skill

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Q u o t e:
Typo: Guildes->Guides

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So this means i cant get the best guide help on wow related things i'm beginning to learn WITHOUT winning popularity contests?

This sounds a lot like raiding to me.