Zad Archery Mining and Gathering

Steam discussions on launch day filled up with the same subject line: Mining site. Players walked the hillside looking for a cave, a node, or a second map. There isn’t one. Mining in Zad Archery is a profession on the Gathering tab — the pickaxe icon in the left tray, under alchemy.

If that icon is missing, your window is cropped. Patch 1.0.2 put native resolution first in Settings for this reason. Read controls, then come back.

The Gathering panel

A live Gathering Lv.0 panel shows three rows:

• Herbalism — green leaf counter, a filling bar, shovel icon. In the screenshot it already sits at 12 leaves with a nearly full bar.
• Mining — rock icon, 0 ore, pickaxe, lock badge on the right.
• Fishing — fish icon, 0 fish, rod, lock badge on the right.

The left rail of that panel says Lv. Up for 15 gold and prints Lv.1: Unlock Herbalism. That is the entire “where is mining” answer in one tooltip: you pay gold to raise Gathering, Herbalism turns on first, Mining and Fishing stay locked until later gathering levels.

You do not travel. You do not place a camp. Combat keeps running on the top half of the screen while this panel is open, the same way the skill tree stays idle-friendly.

Zad Archery longplay covering progression systems

Unlock order that matches the UI

1. Ignore Gathering during the first skill-tree pass. Hour one is Arrow Fall and jobs. The beginner guide is explicit about this.
2. When gold is no longer bottlenecking charge nodes, open the pickaxe tab and buy Gathering Lv.1. Herbalism starts.
3. Let the Herbalism bar fill while you farm. Leaves are the first profession currency.
4. Keep leveling Gathering until the Mining lock drops. Only then does “mining site” exist, and it still exists as this row, not as a map pin.
5. Fishing is the third lock. Samharia’s feature list groups mining, herbing, and fishing as gathering professions that generate materials for crafts and potions.

Do not spend the gold that should have bought a gem-chance node on Gathering Lv.1. Profession power is a multiplier on an engine you already have. If Sniper is still locked, you do not have an engine.

What gathering is for

Store copy says mining vastly empowers archer skills and can transform them. Treat that as late-game, not a first-hour spike. Materials feed:

• Crafting bow bases and armor rolls
• Alchemy potions on the flask tab
• Later skill-tree branches that stay dark until the profession exists

If a skill feels stuck on MAX and still weak, you are probably waiting on a gathering or alchemy multiplier, not a hidden fourth Archer talent.

Why people thought it was a location

• The Steam page uses the word Mining as a bullet, like a biome.
• Chinese and English threads titled “Mining site” and “第2个守卫” mixed Guardian hunt language with profession hunt language.
• The itch.io demo on tablets cropped the left tray, so the pickaxe tab never rendered.
• Full-game outro cards in YouTube demos listed herbalism, mining, and fishing in one breath next to bosses, so players looked for a zone.

It is a tab. Click the pickaxe.

Practical farm while gathering is on

Leave the Gathering panel open if you like watching bars; it does not pause the lane. Farm a wave that still drops coins (1.0.2 counts gems on lower waves). Buy Gathering levels with leftover gold only. Spend blue tokens on the anvil, green gems on jobs. Do not cross-wire wallets.

When Mining finally unlocks, dump a few levels into it before you push a Guardian you already failed. Profession power is cheaper than a wipe. For spawn rules on those bosses, use Guardians and the King. For a push-versus-farm schedule, use the farming planner.

Alchemy sits in the flask tab next to this one. Brew after Herbalism is producing leaves. Cards, shaping, and masteries are extra 1.0 systems; they are not required to turn Mining on.