If you want to own a mine, you need to meet these qualifications:

1. Your guild must own a city with a Warehouse in it.
   • It's okay if you're subguilded to a guild who owns a city with a Warehouse in it, too. But your parent guild will get all the credit for your hard work.
2. You or a friend need to have applied the Prospector discipline [link to page] (so either you or a friend needs to be a fighter or a rogue, because they're the classes that can take it).
3. You need friends. It's possible you could sneak in and take a mine by yourself, but unlikely.
4. Get siege weapons.
5. Verify that your nation hasn't met its mine cap. Nations can only own (2 x the rank of the capital tree) total mines.

Alright - you have a city, you have a Prospector, you have a group or two, and everybody has a siege hammer, bow, or staff. Now, check the world map.

There are mines in every adventure zone. Some produce different things than others. For now, pick the mine closest to your city (you'll get more resources from it), and see what time its Window of Opportunity (WoO) is open.

Window of Opportunity FAQ

Mines are only vulnerable for two hours a day, and those two hours are called the Window of Opportunity (WoO).

Q: How do I know what time the WoO begins?
A: The mine owner's nation leader chooses the exact hour at which the Window begins for all mines owned by that nation's guilds. She's limited to times set by the game developers (we don't let you set WoOs in the middle of the night or early in the morning).

You can see all mines' WoOs by clicking on their icons on the world map.

Q: I don't like our nation's WoO.How can I change it?
A: You can ask your nation leader to change the time, but I bet you'll need a good reason. Even if you have a good reason and the leader agrees to change it, it can only be changed every three days, and never on the day of a WoO before it's taken place. You have to change the time after you've successfully reclaimed the mine that day. 

The nation leader sets the time by using a button on the nation capital city's Tree of Life Management Window.

Q: What happens if the server goes down during a mine's WoO?
A: The prior owner retains ownership of the mine, and the remainder of the WoO is called off. Come back tomorrow!

Q: What happens when the mine doesn't have an owner, like on a brand new server?
A: There's no nation leader to set the time. If the mine doesn't have an owner, its WoO starts when the server comes up (even if that's outside of the WoO time limits).

Q: What happens if nobody manages to claim that unclaimed mine in two hours?
A: Another WoO starts immediately. They'll keep repeating until somebody successfully claims the mine.

You and your friends need to visit the chosen mine during its Woo. Once you're there and it's vulnerable, the real fun starts.

Claim a Mine in Three Easy Steps!

1. You need to tear down the guard tower. Remember those siege weapons you brought along? Get to work, and keep an eye out for defenders and for NPC guards that may or may not be slotted into the tower.
2. Have your Prospector cast Prospecting Stance (one of the powers granted by the discipline), and then cast Claim Mine on the destroyed tower. Be sure to defend your Prospector well. The strategy is up to you!
   • Prospecting Stance weakens the Prospector quite a bit, especially since it includes a movement rate debuff. The Prospector can train the power if she'd like to have an easier time, but she doesn't have to - it comes with one free point already.
   • Claim Mine, a no-cost power, takes a long time to cast, and if the Prospector is interrupted, the power is cancelled.
3. Defend your claim until the WoO is over.

In other words, just casting Claim Mine on the destroyed tower isn't enough to win. Even though your guild crest is currently shown on the local map, anybody else could come along and cast Claim Mine too, and then the mine would belong to them.

The last guild to successfully cast the power by the end of the WoO is the one that gets the mine until the next day. Be vigilant - anybody could come by and snipe the claim from under your feet if you're not paying attention.

Mine Ownership 101

Let's assume that you and your friends have done a good job. The WoO has ended, and a new guard tower has sprung up with your guild crest on it. What do you do with this new mine?

The guard tower is the centerpiece. If you've destroyed it to take the mine, it'll respawn at rank 1.You can rank it up to R7 if you can hold it for enough consecutive days. Ranking the mine will give the tower more hit points (so it'll take longer for attackers to claim the thing) and gives it more hireling slots. It'd be a good idea to begin upgrades as soon as the mine is yours.

It'd be a good idea to go back to town and buy some Harvester and Mine Tower Guard contracts from the Steward, too. Harvesters will increase the amount of resources produced by your mine. Guards will attack people who want to take your mine away.

Both Harvesters and Guards can be ranked up, too - Harvesters will produce more resources, and Guards will get tougher.

Finally, you need to choose which resources to produce. All mines will generate gold, but the type of other resources depend. If your city is having trouble paying its maintenance bill, choose gold. If you need to equip your guildmates better, choose one of the resource types (but more on that later).

Every hour you own the mine, a chunk of the chosen resource spawns in your Warehouse back in town. To access the resources, you'll need to slot a Seneschal NPC into it (contracts, as usual, are available from the Steward). Talk to the Seneschal once he's in place, and you and other friended players will be able to deduct resources from the Warehouse as long as you're over the minimum balance for that particular resource type (The Seneschal thinks he can manage your finances better than you.)

Even though you need to have management access to the Warehouse to deduct resources, you don't need any special credentials at all to deposit them. Anybody can put resources in the Warehouse. Guild dues, anyone?

As long as you're bringing in resources, don't forget to spend them.The Warehouse can only hold so much of each resource, and if your mines try to spawn more than that limit, they just disappear.You don't want that to happen.

Resources and their Uses

Now that your Warehouse is full of resources, what do you do with them? Pay maintenance and make items.

Gold in the Warehouse is automatically spent on the maintenance of all protected assets in your city, provided their strongboxes are empty. If you don't want your Warehouse to spend its gold on other assets, well, don't protect those assets.

All the other rocks and trinkets can be spent on magic item creation. Remember back in the old days, when you had to play a little lottery, randomly rolling items for weeks on end to get exactly the prefix and suffix combination you wanted? Those days are over, provided you have enough of the right kind of resources for each of the enchantments you desire.

Like the maintenance plan, assets must be protected by the Runemaster to have access to the Warehouse's stores. The resources are deducted immediately after you click the checkmark to finish the item, and you'll have to wait for it to be completed as if it were randomly rolled.

Additionally, some items cost resources to create. They tend to be cooler than items that just cost gold.

And finally, resources are required to upgrade and maintain capitol cities in the territory system.

The kind of items and enchantments you can create with each resource follows the following plan. Each column represents a different type of mine, with all the available options and what they're good for.

Intensifiers make enchantments stronger, and elements, when combined with a target type (weapon, attribute, and so forth) determine which attribute or damage type is used.

Some resources are carried by monsters. If they manage to collect enough, even the guilds that'll never own a mine will be able to equip their troops with the best stuff.