Has there been any work done on this system in the past few years? Always looked forward to this because it fit a character of mine perfectly.

DR has a pretty impressive system (from what I've heard/read). Here's a break-down of it:

http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Mining

Not sure how rare the finds and stuff are, but it might be worth looking into if anything just for ideas.

I think any version of mining would be great. Even if it was like digging but using a pick.

Is the DR system pretty nice? I know too little about DR to make any useful comparisons.