Asteroid Mining

You might be looking for:

• Ice Mining
• Gas Cloud Mining
• Moon Mining [Depreciated]

If you have completed the in-game tutorials, then you already know the basics of mining; fly to an asteroid belt and shoot mining lasers at rocks. However there is a bit more to the profession then just shooting at rocks. Whether you are new to mining or returning to it, this article will teach you all the practical knowledge you need to make a profit harvesting ore.

A miner has two choices for selecting a mining site: asteroid belts and gravimetric sites. Both are viable but we will focus on asteroid belts for now, as gravimetric sites are a more advanced topic that will be covered in later parts of this guide.

Nearly every system in EVE contains asteroid belts and the number of belts varies from system to system. When deciding on a system to mine it is always advantageous to look for a system with a high number of belts. Another thing to consider is the security status of a system. The lower the security rating, the better the quality of the asteroids. High-Sec and Low-Sec systems (1.0-0.1) only contain low-end ores. If you want valuable high-end ores, they are only found in Null-Sec (0.0) space or wormholes.

Since the market value of the minerals is always in constant flux it is hard say definitively what you should mine every time in order of best to worst. However, as previously mentioned in this article, the most lucrative ores do tend toward those found in 0.0 space such as Arkonor, Bistot, Crokite, and Gneiss (there is also Mercoxit, which will be discussed later in this guide). However, do not be too hasty to dismiss the other ores, since many of them can be nearly as profitable to mine as the high-ends listed above; depending on shifting market prices for minerals.

DOTLAN is an excellent resource for looking up both belt maps and sec-status maps.

• Outer Passage Belt Map
• Outer Passage Security Status Map

In every belt you will see that the asteroids are made up of 15 different varieties, though it is very rare to see all 15 in the same belt. In addition to the 15 normal ores, you will also see two variants of each normal ore type beyond the regular one. The first variant gives an extra 5% minerals when refining and the second will give an extra 10%.

NOTE: The Small and Medium Ore Anomalies are not affected by a system's TruSec Status and will always spawn base value rocks.

Once you have mined your ore and hauled it back to the station, the next step is to refine the ore into its base mineral content. There are 8 kinds of mineral, 3 high-end types and 5 low-ends. Low-ends include Tritanium, Pyerite, Mexallon, Isogen and Nocxium; while the High-end minerals include Zydrine, Megacyte and Morphite.

• See Refining for more information about processing ore into minerals.
• See Ore Security Class for information on where to find ore.

Raising the Industrial Index in a System allows for the installation of Ore Prospecting Array Upgrades in the iHub. There are 5 total levels that can be install each one unlocking a new ore anomaly. Each anomaly type (Colossal, Enormous, Large, Medium, and Small) has a set amount of resources that spawn with it, and they have their own re-spawn timer.

NOTE: The Small and Medium Ore Anomalies are not affected by a system's TruSec Status and will always spawn base value rocks.

Below is a list of ore contents and timers.

Ore Anom Respawn CCP post

Ore Anom Contents CCP post

Note: The Enormous belt contains 500,000 units of Dark Ochre, despite the CCP post stating it should contain 50,000.

Venture ORE Frigate

Prior to the release of the Retribution Expansion, the way you would start out your mining career would be purchase a frigate or cruiser of your race that had bonuses to mining; such as the Bantam or Osprey. However, in the Post-Retribution universe you have the shiny new Venture, an ORE frigate designed solely as an entry level mining ship; and this is where you will likely be starting.

Your best approach is to train Mining Frigate III, then train your Mining to 4. The Mining Frigate gives you a 15% bonus to mining yield, and Mining IV allows you to fit T2 mining lasers in addition to giving a base 20% skill increase to mining yield. Following that you should train Mining Upgrades I which will allow you to fit a Mining Laser Upgrade I (+5% to mining yield per laser) in your low slot. If it does not fit you should train up your Electronics level

[Venture, Basic Venture]
Mining Laser Upgrade I

[Empty Mid slot]
[Empty Mid slot]
[Empty Mid slot]

Miner II
Miner II

[Empty High slot]
[Empty Rig slot]
[Empty Rig slot]
[Empty Rig slot]

This is the basic Venture fit, you can fill in the empty slots however you so choose, but an AB and some shield extenders would be the recommended additions. Do keep in mind though that the Venture, and indeed all the ORE mining ships have a second larger cargohold that only holds ore, and is unaffected by cargo mods or rigs so don't bother fitting them.

You should continue to mine in the Venture Until you get Mining Frigate IV, Mining IV, and Mining Upgrades I. From this point you will continue on and train into a Mining Barge, which will be covered more in-depth later on in the guide.

There are two primary ways of mining. The first is to mine until your cargohold is full, then fly your ship back to the station to unload, and the second is to stay in the belt and transfer your ore into a jetcan as your ships cargohold gets full.

1. Solo mining until your cargo hold is full, flying to station to dump the ore, returning to continue mining, and earning a living with this process is possible but not efficient. The travel time back/forth between asteroid belt and station every time reduces mining efficiency, since your mining lasers could be continually mining for the entire time.

1. To Jetcan mine, fill your cargo hold with ore, then jettison the ore into space. This will create a jettisoned can (jetcan), with a capacity of 27,500m³. As you continue mining, move the ore from your cargo hold to the jetcan. When the jetcan is full, switch to an Industrial ship and haul it to the station. Make sure you haul or refresh your can at least once every 90 minutes, as jetcans will expire and pop around the two hour mark. One method of keeping track of this is to set the name if the jetcan to the time at which it was launched so that you can know at-a-glance how long the can has been in space.

The main drawback to using this technique is that anyone can open your can and steal your ore, since it is unsecure. However, this is not likely to occur in our space since stealing ore from blues is frowned upon, and any neutrals will likely just kill you out right, and not bother with your jetcans. This is made most efficient if you have an alt that can do the hauling for you.

For the sake of thoroughness I will add that if you are tinfoil hat level paranoid about people stealing ore from your jetcans, then Giant Secure Containers can be used instead, however this method is most inefficient as they only hold 3900 m³ of ore.

Mining drones are not to be ignored, as they can significantly raise your ISK/hour. Mining drones will approach an asteroid on command (Mine/Mine repeatedly), and gather ore, flying back to your ship to deposit them every cycle. Skills such as Mining Drone Operation and Drone Interfacing will influence the yield of your drones. Note that Mining Drones cannot mine Mercoxit or Ice.

Notice how Harvester Mining Drones are slow despite their greater yield. This means that by the time they arrive at your ship to drop off the ore, your Mining Drone I/II would already be mid-cycle. The Harvester Drones are also very expensive, rendering them not worth the cost.

Each race has its own set of haulers. What is great about EVE is that you are not limited to fly only one race. Instead, I suggest training for the Gallente Miasmos. The Miasmos was introduced along with other Industrials in Odyssey. The Iteron I-IV were repurposed into specialized haulers with separate bays for specific item types, and the Miasmos specialized bay holds ore, and lots of it.

This chart shows how large your specialized cargo bay is depending on your level of Gallente Industrial. Note that it doesn't take a high level of Gallente Industrial skill to be a very effective ore hauler!

You still get the regular cargo bay on these ships though it's smaller than it used to be, but this also means that since the size of the specialized bay is affected by your Gallente Industrial skill and not fitted rigs and modules, you are free to fit warp stabs, nanos, tank etc to make your T1 more survivable.

There is a wide variety of different types of mining lasers available in EVE and to help make sense of them here is a breakdown of them for you:

As a new miner, it is highly unlikely that you will have your refinery skills trained to any great extent, and as a result any refining you do will lose you up to 35-40% of your minerals. Luckily for you test has several Player Services that will refine your ore in return for around 1% of the minerals. As for selling your minerals, you will likely find that with the exception of Tritanium and possibly Pyerite, you will earn more money by paying to have your minerals shipped to a high-sec market hub such as Jita or Amarr.

With that we come to the end of our introduction mining. From this point on we will be delving into the more advanced and nuanced aspects of the mining profession. So strap yourself in and pour yourself another drink (you'll need it) as we dive into the wonderful world of Refining And Efficiency.