Miner

Miners are type of support character who mostly work in mines for ore for crafting gear, but can also be NPC slave workers.

Mining

Any character can use a Primitive Tool to mine regular iron ore and minerals. A Sledgehammer can also be used to mine these, but will also work on High Quality Minerals and High Quality Iron Ore. A Super Sledge can be used to mine any resource vein in any mine including Gold Nuggets at Redding, and Uranium Ore at Broken Hills.

Alternatively, you can command your NPC slaves to mine for you at a private mine, and strangely, they don't need any tools for that. This might not work in every mine. Read these tips about private mines, which are not really private since they appear on the map for all players.

For serious hard-core workers who want to optimize their own crafting production engine, you can use a mining character.

Tactic

You can bring a brahmin with you when mining. This will save you from going to your tent/base to unload the materials you just mined. Give everything you mined to the brahmin, and when you are done take the animal to your tent or base and unload whatever its carrying. Alternately, some miners prefer using a dog rather than a brahmin. This is risky though; players can kill your mining animal, at which point all it was carrying drops to the ground for anyone there to grab.