Prospecting

Prospecting was used by miners to identify ores. Players could prospect ores by right-clicking a rock, then selecting the Prospect option. The sound of prospecting was identical to the sound of mining a rock without ore.



In the early days of Runescape Classic, rocks looked the same whether or not there was ore in them, so the only way to tell if you could mine it was by prospecting. After the release of Runescape 2 the feature was retained to give newly established players information on what ore they would get from different rocks. For more experienced players prospecting became a fairly useless feature, as they were more capable of determining what ore a rock contains by its colour (tan for clay; grey for silver and tin ore; orange for copper ore; brown for iron ore; black for coal; dark blue for mithril ore, green for adamant ore and light blue for runite ore). Following mining rocks' graphical update on 19 April 2011, the majority of rocks can no longer be prospected. Only the following things can still be prospected:


 * Living rock remains
 * Mineral Deposits in the Living Rock Caverns
 * Shooting Stars
 * Magic stones from Tears of Guthix
 * Rune essence rocks
 * Rocks in the Dorgeshuun mine
 * Rocks in the Abandoned Mine
 * Rubble in the burgh de rott old pub basement
 * Gold veins in the Arzinian Mine
 * Daeyalt veins in the Meiyerditch Daeyalt Mine c

Since the removal of the prospect option, players have been able to check the contents of a rock using the Examine option. For example the examine text for a coal rock would now be "This rock contains coal", rather the old description "A rocky outcrop".