There's a guide. READ IT. You will never be forced to use rare spawns (siler, gold, truesilver) to level. Smelting gets you minimal points; only mining the actual node can level you to the next type of ore. Tin remains green into the iron range, so mine tin until you get to iron's level (125, I believe). There is a sticky with a link to the guide at the top of this forum, so use that if you want to know what levels you need to mine, and other generally useful knowledge.