1-Achieve GM miner status, or use some of the special mining gloves (occasional prizes that are awarded for bulk order deeds) so your mining skill is at least 100. Only a GM miner can read the book, also if after having read the book your mining falls below GM you wont be able to mine stone until you raise mining back up to GM status.

2-Read the book "Mining for Quality stone"

This book can presently only be bought in the new lands of Ilshenar from gargoyle shopkepers in the Gargoyle city. In the event you donīt have UO3d or Black thorns revenge (the latter is scheduled for release some time in 2002) no worries I myself am in/was in the same boat. I cant run UO3d, but I went to www.tradespot.net and asked if anyone could sell me the books at 20k each, I later found multiple vendors on more than 1 shard which sell the books for 15k to 22k. With a slight amount of ingenuity anyone (UO3d or not) can have their hands on the books (Or anything for that matter).

3-Get some shovels or pickaxes (Note there is a good chance down the road shovels will mine ore and pickaxes will mine stone. Nothing official on that, but it makes good sense.)

The different colors of Granite are found in veins of different colored ore, the most common is the plain or white granite which is found in normal Iron ore veins. You will get just about 15% granite and 85% ore when out mining.

The Selective mining trick!

Iīm sure there will be a much shorter and cooler nick name for this in a month or so...

In the beginning mining for granite is a blast, its this neat stuff that can be used to make cool pieces of furniture and decorations. But after a while the house is filled up with stone furniture and statues and you really donīt have a use for all the granite that your pulling up . The drawback is that once you learn to mine granite you cant unlearn it. So when your out mining for ore, 15% of everything your shovel puts in your pack are going to be chunks of stone. (Thats why you can go into any large mine and 4 out of 5 times just walk away with piles of granite of all colors).

Fortunately though, there is presently a little known way to turn granite mining "off" you have to have a character with 700 skill points, but most GM miners are at that level.

You set all your skills to "lock" your mining skill to decrease, then practice another skill that you have turned up so you gain .1 points in the other skill and loose .1 point of mining. Once your no longer a GM miner (99.9 skill is not a GM) you can mine ore to your hearts content and never pull up a single piece of stone. If you want to mine stone just gain that last .1 point of mining and "boom" your mining stone again.

Its the next best thing until the Dev team decides if they are going to make any mining changes along those lines.