Ore's respawning

[Pocket Kobold]

Hello, I've been playing skyrim for a bit and been trying to find ways to get into black smithing, besides buying and crafting ingots with ores from blacksmith's I have been mining in mines as an alternative but I was wondering, do the ores in mines respawn? If not are there better alternatives to aquiring ores?

[gnewna]

Yes, but you have to stay out of the mine for the full... I forget if it's 10 or 30 days but I'm fairly certain it's 30. So if you want to check if they've respawned, save before you go in and reload if they haven't, otherwise the timer will reset.

[AwkwardHillbilly]

Every type of ore have a different respaw time iron being the shortest and ebony being the longest(I know from playing on PS3 before I had PC console commands haha)you just have to figure out how long it takes and usually you gotta walk into the mine and the ores will LOOK as in having full color but they won't be mineable so you have to go back out wait one more day and re-enter and they'll be ready

[𝕊𝕋𝕌ℝ𝕄-𝕂𝔸𝕋]

If you want a simple starter area, around Whiterun;

Don't forget about the various open areas that you will find ore. Around the lake/estuary/river (whatever you want to call it), west of Whiterun town, there is a gold node. I forget but I am pretty sure it is on the north bank of the little pond/bulge bit of the east end of that water system. There are more various ore nodes further along the water there.

The nodes, as Gnewna mentioned, do respawn, however you can alternate all the areas you cycle through, and once you find and log a lot, you can farm them relatively efficiently.

There are a considerable amount of ore nodes around the outer perimeter walls of Whiterun itself.

Keep your eyes peeled. I actually, (nerd badge alert), mapped the nodes I found onto a paper map that I created of Skyrim, but didn't bother doing it all entirely (bronze nerd badge, let's say).

And there are always.. AHEMconsoleCommandsAHEM