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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.

• Vale of the Silent belt map
• Vale of the Silent 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%.

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.

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

<EFT> [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] </EFT>

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 <u>only</u> 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.

2. 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.

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.

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.

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:

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 refinery math.

The refinery system in EVE is based off of five variables that together determining your refining yield. They are:

• Your Refining skill level
• Your Refinery Efficiency skill level (requires Refining V)
• Your Ore Processing skill level
• Effect of any refinery implants
• Your standing toward the corporation owning the station where you want to refine you ore
• The refining equipment of the station

The formula to calculate your yield is as follows:

Note: todo refining was replaced with reprocessing and the formulas have changed - this needs to be updated based on the Crius release, see also Reprocess all the things.

([StationEquipment]+(0.375*(1+[RefiningSkill]*0.02)*(1+[RefineryEfficiencySkill]*0.04)*(1+[OreProcessingSkill]*0.05)*(1+[Refinery Implant %]))

To find out your yield, open the refinery window of the station and look at the percentages in the upper right hand corner; we will use the Figure 1 as an example:

The 'Base Yield' (red box) is the efficiency of the station equipment. Depending on your 'Standing' (blue box) with the station owner you may be charged a tax. The Tax is shown as 'We Take', the percentage being shown in the upper yellow box, while the actual minerals taken is shown in the lower yellow box. Lastly we have the 'Net Yield' (green box). The 'Net Yield' as displayed is actually misleading as it does not take into account the effect of any implants you may be using, or your individual ore processing skills, such as Arkonor Processing. This is demonstrated in Figure 2, in which the displayed 'Net Yield' is only 90.5%, yet there are 0 unrecoverable minerals. This is because the character has trained the relevant Ore Processing skills to 4 (+8%) in addition to having a +2% implant, giving an additional 10% to the displayed Net Yield for a Total Net Yield of 100.5%. And before you get your hopes up, let me just clarify that despite a Total Net Yield of 100.5%, you do not get an extra 0.5% minerals

Before we continue let me just give a brief word about implants. Implants are a great asset for any refinery character, since they allow attain a Net Yield of 100% (at a 40% station) without the months of extra training to get all of your ore processing skills to 5. At the time of writing, there are currently three tiers of refinery implants, all of which are for implant slot 8. They are as follows:

As a member of TEST you, fortunately enough, do not have to pay taxes; at least at the time of this writing. As for the death part… Well this is EVE. Enough said.

Now that you know how your net yield is calculated, and to calculate your “total net yield”. You can now calculate exactly how many minerals you will get from each batch of ore you refine. Now, if you have already reached a total net yield of 100% then you don't need to do any real calculations, and can simply go straight off the mineral chart in section 1.3. However, most likely you do not have a perfect refine, so let's go through how to calculate your actual mineral return based on your total net yield.

For the sake of this example, let us say that you have a RX-802 2% refining implant, are using a 40% station, and have trained Refining V and Refinery Efficiency III; here is the refining formula with all the variables entered:

So, 0.87124. For simplicity sake we will round that to 0.894, or a total net yield of 87.1%.

Once again we'll be using Arkonor as our example, and as we can see from the Minerals Chart, every batch of 200 Arkonor contains 300 Tritanium, 333 Megacyte, and 166 Zydrine for a perfect refine. But our sample refiner above has an imperfect refine of 87.1%. To figure out how much of each mineral you receive, simply take 87.1% of each mineral total.

So in our case:

• 0.871*300=261.3=261 units of Tritanium
• 0.871*333=290.0=290 units of Megacyte
• 0.871*166=144.6=144 units of Zydrine

Quick note, EVE math truncates all calculations dealing with minerals and ores. What this means is that if you end up with 297.7 units of a mineral according to the calculations, you would only receive 297 units, and 'not' 298.

As was stated above, you, as a member of TEST do not at this point in time pay any taxes. However, if this changes and you do have to calculate for taxes in the future, here is how you do so. Continuing with our calculations from above and assuming a hypothetical tax rate of 10%:

• 100%-10%=90%
• 0.90*261=234.9=234 units of Tritanium
• 0.90*290=261.0=261 units of Megacyte
• 0.90*144=129.6=129 units of Zydrine

So, out of the original 300 Tritanium, 333 Megacyte, and 166 Zydrine in our original batch of 200 Arkonor, we are left with 234 Tritanium, 261 Megacyte, and 129 Zydrine after calculating for imperfect refine skills and taxes.

Of course if you don't have the patience to calculate out our yield there are ore calculators out there, however most do not calculate for refining implants. So search around a bit to find one that suits your needs. That, or build your own in excel.

Continuing forward with this guide we are going to be discussing the various mining ships and the benefits of each. However, in order to be able to most accurately compare mining ships we must mirst understand the actual yield that each of the ships is capable of. Unfortunately the only real way to understand what your yield is and how it breaks down in terms of your income efficiency is with math. Lots of math.

As you have likely already figured out if you read through the Refining section (or played EVE much at all really), the bonuses from your skills stack. So since your Mining skill gives you a 5% bonus to mining yield per level, if you trained your Mining to level 4 you would be getting 5%*4=20% bonus from that particular skill. Furthermore, the bonus you get from a skill is added to any other bonuses you get to that particular ability, such as Astrogeology which also gives a bonus to mining. So if you have Astrogeology trained to level 4 (which also gives a 5% bonus per level to your yield) in addition to having Mining at level 4, then your yield would be calculated as follows:

Base laser yield * 1.20 * 1.20 = X

So if you are using T2 Mining lasers, which have a yield of 60 m³/cycle, then you would get:

60 * 1.20 * 1.20 = 86.4 m³/cycle (note that your yield calculations are not truncated nor rounded)

Cycles determine how many seconds your laser needs to complete a full, well “mining cycle”. The ore you mined will appear in your cargo hold at the end of that cycle. Named, T1, and T2 mining lasers have a cycle of 60 seconds (1 minute) and strip mining lasers (T1 and T2) as well as the Modulated Deep Core Miner II have a cycle of 180 seconds (3 minutes); but also have a much higher yield in comparison to lasers to make up for the greater cycle time. Ice harvesters will be covered in a later section, as the whole ice mining system is quite different from the asteroid mining system.

Cycles and yield are directly linked. Because of the cycle time difference between strip miners and mining lasers, that makes comparing the yield of a mining barge, and the previously mentioned Venture mining frigate difficult. We could divide the barge's yield by three to bring it to 60 seconds, or bring both of them on a per hour ratio, but this is not precise because of the way EVE truncates the number of units of ore you get per cycle.

Since we know strip miners do 20 cycles per hour and mining lasers 60 cycles per hour, to make the comparisons as accurate as possible, we'll once a again use Arkonor as our comparison ore, and compare how many units of Arkonor a mining strip/laser will harvest compared to another. By taking the yield over the period of an hour we will get a slightly more accurate yield.

Additionally it should be noted that the cycle time of your mining laser is not a cooldown such as you would see with a ship's offensive lasers, instead it harvests the ore continuously throughout the cycle of the module, depositing the ore into the hold at the end of each cycle. However, if the mining strip/laser is deactivated partway through its cycle, you will receive the amount of ore corresponding to how far through the cycle you were at the point of deactivation. So if for example you stop a mining laser with a cycle time of 60 seconds at around the 30 second mark of its cycle, you will receive approximately 50% of the ore that you would normally get from a full cycle.

Here's a table to summarize the different mining amount of each laser and their cycle times:

For now don't be concerned about mining crystals; they will be covered in depth later on in this guide.

It may be easy for some to become confused as to the amount of ore they will get when doing a “show info” on their strip or mining laser. It's in fact very simple to find out, you just have to know how. You simply have to divide your yield per cycle by the volume of the ore you're mining, and truncate the result.

Again, here's an example with Arkonor. Using a hypothetical yield of 1291.17 m³ per cycle, The amount of Arkonor you would get per cycle is:

1291.17/16 = 80.96 units, or 80 units per cycle.

So you would end up with 80 units of Arkonor in your cargohold after every cycle.

Since mining lasers and strip miners always mine the same volume of ore throughout their cycle, regardless of the number of units in that volume, a more useful measure of how many minerals you are actually mining over a given period of time can be determined from the refining yield per m³ of ore, rather than per batch. This also makes calculating the transport and storage needs of your future minerals simpler, as well.

The following table shows the yield per m³ of each type of basic ore (see also ore.cerlestes.de):

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.