Swimming is useful, but gain 100 constitution (to swim across rivers) and buy Silver For Ferryman (not so expensive).
If you don`t have 20*20 perc*exp, you do not need rustroot.
If you want to find mine, you shold have pretty good equipment (to kill boar/bear or to run out), and you need more than 10 jars of extract.
Much easier to find abandoned mine and capture it. But nobody will buy your q10 tin exept newbies (for chests and cellars). So you need to find q40 clay first.