so I bought a mine, any resources or advice on running mines?


Advice


While at an auction house my character bought an iron mine that has a high chance of mithril. The mine is infested with unknown monsters and the equipment and facility are ruined. After the monsters are clear I would like to buy new equipment and reestablish the mine.

Does anyone know of any resource books or webpages with info on the costs of opening/maintaining mine?

Tips in general in relation to mines?

Any tips on what could be done with the mine aside from and as well as mining?

~Thanks!


Why did you buy a mine without knowing how to operate and run one?


I would recommend perusing the downtime section of Ultimate Campaign.


I Hate Nickelback wrote:
Why did you buy a mine without knowing how to operate and run one?

Because how many chances do you have to OWN A MINE?


My cleric was adventuring in a mine, use locate object for the mithril.
Apart from that and stone shape i don't have any experience.


Little Skylark wrote:

My cleric was adventuring in a mine, use locate object for the mithril.

Apart from that and stone shape i don't have any experience.

Nice!


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I Hate Nickelback wrote:
Why did you buy a mine without knowing how to operate and run one?

Same reason you would post in advice thread without giving advice.


rat_ bastard wrote:
I would recommend perusing the downtime section of Ultimate Campaign.

This is very helpful, Thanks!

Grand Lodge

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Don't dig too deep. You will wake the Evil That Sleeps Below (tm)
Don't dig too shallow. You will have people falling through the ground into your mine.
Don't dig too far, or you are likely to stray into lands owned by dwarves, and this makes them grouchy.

Liberty's Edge

I seem to remember greyhawk 1E having a mine that was formed by a meteorite and turned the local folks(dwarves) into undead flesh craving zombies straight outta walking dead.

I believe their leader was a high level dwarven cleric lich.


Ultimate campaign appears to not deal in mines, logging operations, farms etc... Disappointing, still it may give you an idea of what to expect and what your responsibilities are and what the actual perks are.


Are you a GM? If so I have some recommendations as to such investments in your game. If not, do you have a reasonable amount of influence in determining rules for things not covered explicitly?


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Generally the way I run investments in my games is this:
Is the investment at least reasonably theoretically viable?
In this case, does the mine actually contain minerals of a sort likely to be viable economically considering the distances involved to any markets that could absorb them?
If so, and I'm going to assume the answer is yes, you have a potentially worthwhile investment.

Now investments have two factors that increase their profitability. The first is what guys like Warren Buffet call an 'economic moat'. That is, is there a substantial factor preventing your product from being a pure commodity (like a South Dakota wheat farmer)? Are the minerals from the mine particularly rare, is their access particularly easy (think Sutter's Mill from the CA gold rush), do you have access to super productive miners by comparison to the median miner? etc.

The 2nd is the risk involved. Given the infestation of demons and other monsters, etc in your mine, that factor is taken as given.

The next step is what I call 5/10/15. Investments neither risky nor with economic moats return 5%. With one, 10%, with both, 15%. This is after all taxes, wages, fees, bribes, normal security costs, etc.

So if a risky mine with an economic moat (say it's the main source of bloodstone gems, sound familiar?) would return 15% with an initial worth of, say, 10,0000 gp. Each year it'd return 1500 gp, and you could further invest in it (investment possibilities are pretty obvious, expansion of the mine, improvement of extraction, etc), all returning around 15%. But every few years, as it's risky, the GM is free to plague you with some new issues, like the deep earth gate to hell.


Oh, one note. The 5%/10%/15% benchmark is based on your world being a developing economy---typically recovering from whatever great apocalypse motivated all the creation of the many dungeons littering it. If your world isn't like that, but is instead something like Europe pre-plague, tightly caught in a Malthusian lock, reduce this to 4/8/12 or even 3/6/9. If your world is even moreso a recovering economy, like 1 year after the Change in SM Stirling's Dies the Fire, right after the Cataclysm in Dragonlance, or a couple of years post Rain of Colorless Fire, your opportunities for returns may be even higher, like 6/12/18 or even 7/14/21.
Btw, for the math averse, a REALLY old rule is the rule of 72. For a doubling time (time to double your money in an investment with reinvestment), divide your rate of return into 72 and it is that many years, roughly. So an 8% return doubles in about 9 years, 12% in about 6, etc. It's a handy rule of thumb for those without amortization tables or Calculus.


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user407145 wrote:
Tips in general in relation to mines?

Undead workers can't complain about unsafe conditions or try to unionize.

Shadow Lodge

chaoseffect wrote:
user407145 wrote:
Tips in general in relation to mines?
Undead workers can't complain about unsafe conditions or try to unionize.

I was going to suggest constructs but there are pros and cons as to which one to choose

undead are obviously much cheaper,
but constructs are better PR

your best (at least short term) is summoned monsters especially earth elementals, such as summon monster 2
craft a wand of summon monster 2, get to work


Summoned Monsters last for rounds per level so you're looking at only 15 minutes of mining time per 4,500 gold wand.

Shadow Lodge

hmm true, strike that, just cast it yourself,
or if you are high enough level go for the planar ally spells


Thanks for all the advice!


It appears you have an investment in a quarry, the GM assigns a value to your quarry and you get a percentage with a chance of disaster or breakout year. [url]http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/ultimate-campaign---inves tments[/url]


Iron mine? Great. You just dig it down in a shallow pit, activate it, and cover it with dirt, preferably so it doesn't look like anyone dug there. Oh, and make sure you and your stay away from where it is.


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Factors nobody's really touched on:

1) How close is the mine to the nearest settlement? One mile? Two? Eight? If it's more than four miles or so, you may need to invest in constructing some bunkhouses on the surface to house your workers. You'll probably want at least 20 of those (thats 4 teams of Laborers under downtime rules) but the more you spend time and money recruiting, the more ore you can pump out. If you're a particularly heartless bastard, you could say you've been "docking the pay of your workers for providing room and board" and collect the GP bonus the bunkhouses generate when used in a profitable fashion.

2) Transportation: Can you offload your ore within a day's ride, or will it take several? You'll want to invest in a Heavy Wagon or two, and purchase yourself ten oxen per wagon (takes 4 oxen to draw the thing, you'll want a spare set per wagon, and a few extras loitering around). This, of course, means you'll also have to invest in stables to house your oxen. Hopefully the DM will let you handwave the price of animal fodder, or else just go "Yeah, you get it in bulk. A year's supply for X". You'll also need to hire one Driver per wagon, and you'll probably want to hire at least 10 guards to protect it from raiders.

If you do strike mithril, you'll probably want to double the guard.

3) Food. Workers eat. Depending on how well you want to treat them, it might be worthwhile to use the Downtime Rules to construct a nearby Farm or two, plus some animal pens, to provide consistent "free" food for the mine. You'll also probably want at least 3-4 Storage rooms to store supplies, and another 2-3 for ore you've drudged up.

4) Will you be selling raw ore, or refined ore (ingots)? While refined ore may fetch a slightly higher price, it also means you'll need to build smelting facilities and hire additional men to man them.


Azixirad wrote:
I seem to remember greyhawk 1E having a mine that was formed by a meteorite and turned the local folks(dwarves) into undead flesh craving zombies straight outta walking dead. I believe their leader was a high level dwarven cleric lich.

Yes! The Greyhawk Adventues hardback describes that, as "The Pits of Azak-Zil".


user407145 wrote:
I Hate Nickelback wrote:
Why did you buy a mine without knowing how to operate and run one?
Same reason you would post in advice thread without giving advice.

So, the same reason you posted to mock me? There's such a thing as lightheartedness. I see you don't believe in it.

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