Welcome to the Miner merit badge guide for Fallout 76! As with all of the Possum merit badges, make sure you’ve earned the Possum rank before beginning. While the Miner merit badge isn’t difficult, it is a bit tedious and time consuming, but it’ll be worth it once you’ve earned your next backpack upgrade. Before we get into our guide, here are the requirements.

Pass “Miner” knowledge exam at an exam terminal
Complete the Lucky Strike quest (x/5)
Sign in at Garrahan Mining Headquarters
Sign in a Hornright Industrial Headquarters
Acquire a Miner Hat or Helmet
Acquire a Miner’s Lamp
Acquire a Miner Uniform
Acquire a Mole Miner Guantlet
Acquire a Pickaxe
Acquire a Super Sledge
Build a Mineral Extractor – Aluminum in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Build a Mineral Extractor – Copper in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Build a Mineral Extractor – Gold in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Build a Mineral Extractor – Lead in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Build a Mineral Extractor – Silver in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Build a Mineral Extractor – Steel in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Build a Mineral Extractor – Titanium in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
Take a camera picture of an Aluminum Deposit
Take a camera picture of a Coal Deposit
Take a camera picture of a Copper Deposit
Take a camera picture of a Gold Deposit
Take a camera picture of an Iron deposit
Take a camera picture of a Lead Deposit
Take a camera picture of a Silver Deposit
Take a camera picture of a Black Titanium Deposit

If you’re looking for the answers to the Miner knowledge exam, you’ll find those down below in an expandable tab. The Lucky Strike quest is a quest you start after buying a mining map from one of the U-Mine-It! vending machines. Yeah, before this quest we hadn’t used them either, but it’s a thing. You’ll probably want to be in power armor (Excavator will net you a mining bonus for normal mining, we haven’t confirmed a boost for this event), or use a gas mask because sometimes the air is more rank than my Aunt Betty’s breath after Fasnacht.

You’ll need to visit and sign in at two of the major mining companies’ headquarters, and then gather a bunch of mining paraphernalia. Note on obtaining items: some items can be obtained from other players (including the following suggestions), some must be obtained naturally by the player.1) Receiving the item directly from a friend. 2) Picking up from a container, placed by another player. 3) Purchasing from a vendor, sold by another player. 4) Finding the item naturally in the world.

If you don’t have all of these already, maybe double up your search with the Uranium Fever event, as you can find a lot of this lying around, and you can either make a load of caps, or get plenty of scrap while you’re at it. We’d recommend taking your camera pictures of the various metal deposits before building the extractors, because that seems…well…more intuitive and less silly? But you do you.

Two notes about the extractor location map we’re posting. We’re sorry it’s so incredibly dark, but that’s how we found it. Oh, and given the fact that we found it, we weren’t the ones who created it, but it’s been floating around Discord servers and websites for a while, and we’ve never seen proper attribution. So, we’re sorry, but it’s still the most useful tool for this job.

Miner Knowledge Exam Questions and Answers.

Brendan got a part-time job mining coal for Garrahan Mining. He remembers from geology class that coal is mostly made up of a single element. Which element?: Carbon
Brendan joined the local labor union. But Brendan was tricked! Because unions are the first step on the road to what?: Communism
Fire-setting is an old mining technique used up until the Middle Ages. Miners would set fires near a rock face and then douse it with water. What did this do to help the miners?: Fractured rock with thermal shock
Girls love diamonds! Mark wants to get Dana a diamond ring so she’ll like him. What part of the world mines the most diamonds?: Africa
Hannah wants to help out the local miners, but doesn’t want to be a miner herself. Instead, she wants to learn to operate a vehicle and transport the mined coal to where it’s needed. What vehicle should she learn to operate?: A train
Hannah’s father is a uranium miner. He explains to her that you can mine uranium with a process called “leaching”. What does leaching do?: Dissolves minerals for safe extraction
Mary wants to use landfill mining to excavate an old landfill. Removing hazardous waste is her main goal, but what’s an added benefit of landfill mining?: All of the above
Mining can be dangerous work. Luckily, the Garrahan Mining company developed a suit to keep miners safe, and even increase productivity! What is this suit called?: The Excavator Power Armor
Our many nuclear energy plants run on uranium fuel. What part of the world mines the most uranium?: Red China, unfortunately
Samuel is working at a strip mine. Strip mines use huge machines that can move tons of dirt every hour! Samuel wants to learn to operate these machines. What are they called?: Bucket-wheel excavators
Susie was working at a Hornwright Industrial mine when she lost her job to an auto-mining robot! What should she do now?: Get a job at Garrahan Mining today!
The California Gold Rush brought lots of would-be miners to the west coast of the United States. What year did that famous Gold Rush kick off?: 1848
Today, Alfonso can get a safe and profitable job working at a local coal mine. But in the old days, mining was very different! One important mineral was really dangerous to mine, because it could cause dehydration. Which mineral?: Salt
When mining coal, it’s important to watch out for dangerous gas build-ups, called “damps”. But which of the following is NOT a “damp” in coal mining?: Towel damp
Which of these local mining companies employs the most miners in Appalachia?: Garrahan Mining
You know there’s a vein of coal deep under a certain mountain and want to get in to extract it. What kind of mining could get you to it quickly?: Quarrying
You want to open a new mine, but aren’t sure if your enterprise will make a profit. What should you do to find out if there’s a chance at some cash?: A feasibility study
You’re going down in a coal mine and decide to take a canary with you to help detect toxic gasses. What do you call an animal used in this way?: A sentinel species
You’re looking to take a job with a local mining company. Where in Appalachia could you find mines looking for workers?: Mount Blair
You’re starting work on a new underground mine. You’d like to dig horizontally into the side of a mountain and extract its minerals. What do you call this kind of mining?: Drift mining