This guide will let you know how to mine Iron in V Rising. Go through the guide and follow the step-by-step instructions to farm it.
You will need higher-quality bronze weapons to deal damage. The crossbow does decent damage, and you can only mine it by doing damage. You need to have the merciless versions of the weapons to get the iron ore. To get these, you must farm the named NPCs and kill little lackeys in the bandit camps to get recipes. Or get a bunch of papers from the research desk and random research.
You have to farm these and kill all the enemies in the area to get the recipes. After that, get your merciless weapon, and then you can farm iron.