In previous games, the amount of minerals found in a vein was set in stone. Now that blacksmithing is a feature, will minerals regrow after a certain amount of time as plants do?

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4 Answers

The official strategy guide mentions that ores grow back after about a month, so there's nothing to worry about.

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I haven't tried it out, but it would seem that the amount of ores in a vein do regenerate after some time.

Given that Todd Howard claimed that Skyrim has an infinite number of quests, having a number set in stone for ores seems kind of counter-intuitive.

I'll mine some ore tonight and play around for a bit to see how long it takes to respawn exactly.

I'm in steam-scorch mine near Kynesgrove right now and the malachite ore has regenerated. But, the strange thing is that I am unable to mine them (the option does not even appear), it does not give me the option so it is probably a glitch of some kind.

The same thing has happened at Goldenrock Mine (by Darkwater Crossing), the ore has regenerated but I can't mine it. Maybe it has not been long enough yet, or there is a glitch where it shows the ore to be there when it is actually still depleted. Hopefully this glitch will fix itself so that I don't have to go tramping around looking for mines to get my smithing up to 100. I want to see what the dragon smithed items are like.

Edit: Restarted the game and can now mine the ore that was replenished but not targetable.

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The last time I played Skyrim, ore regenerated quite fast.

You could go into a mine

Mine all the ore

Leave the mine

Wait 2 or 3 days

Go back into the mine to check if it's respawned (it should have, if not then wait a couple more days)

Because of a persistent bug, you will likely have to leave the mine and then re-enter the mine before being able to mine the now respawned ore, or simply wait for the minimum amount of time (I forget which)

When the ore has visibly respawned and it's the first time going, you will notice that you don't clip with it and are unable to mine it. Going outside the mine, waiting for an hour and going back in was the way to deal with this if I remember correctly.