- Mining level IV
- Science level IV
- Astrogeology level III
- Industry level V
It is also a good idea to train drone skills necessary for drones to act as your protection from NPCs in the asteroid belts. Mining barges don’t have the best shields or armor, so they can’t tank a lot of damage. And since you’d want to install as many strip miners as your mining barge allows, you can’t install any defensive weapons either. Training at least Drones level III and Scout Drones Operation level I will let you control 3 combat drones that are quite sufficient for mining 1.0 to 0.6 systems, but systems of 0.5 security level may get challenging. It is a good idea to upgrade your drone skills in any case.
Using mining drones is at your discretion. Personally I've found that mining drones don't deliver that much ore to make a significant difference in overall ore yield, but I always need more combat drones. So I don't use mining drones when I harvest the ore in a mining barge.
Three certificates are recommended for all of the mining barges: Basic Core Competency, Basic Active Shield Tanking, and Improved Resource Harvester. While I agree with the core compentency and acitve shield tanking, I find that Resource Harvester certificate is not essential. It really depends on what ore you tend to mine and whether or not you refine the ore itself. It is up to you if you want to work on getting that certificate, but I suggest only learning skills that you need at the moment.
Finally, here is the description of the three mining barges available in EVE Online.
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| Procurer |
Fitting slots:
High 1 | Med 1 | Low 2
Drone Capacity:
5 m3 (equivalent to 1 light drone)
Cargo Capacity:
1000 m3
Skill level required:
Mining Barge level I
This is the "entry-level" mining barge. Quite frankly, it is a rather useless ship. The only reason that it can be considered useless is because if you invest maybe a day at most to upgrade the Mining Barge skill to level III, you can fly the Retriever, which is a much better ship for mining. Procurer can only fit 1 strip miner and 1 drone. Additionally, the capacitor on the ship is rather bad. All of the negativity aside, it is a decent ship for mining and it's definitely better than any mining frigate or cruiser, but the skill requirements make it invisible under the shadow of Retriever. The only reason to consider Procurer as a viable choice is if you're short on cash and can't purchase the Retriever. The price of the Procurer at the time of writing this post is somewhere in the ballpark of 1.5 million ISK. I actually tried out the Procurer myself. I was way too excited to fly a mining barge so the moment I have finished training Mining Barge level I, I went out and bought myself the Procurer. And a day later I was flying the Retriever...
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Retriever |
Drone Capacity:
25 m3 (equivalent to 5 light drones)
Cargo Capacity:
2000 m3
Skill level required:
Mining Barge level III
The Retriever is the middle of the three available mining barges. It is an excellent mining ship. It can fit 2 strip miners and up to 5 light drones to serve as your protection. It has a decent cargo capacity, which can be further improved to accommodate 2 (or even 3 cycles, but it would be rather expensive) mining cycles of both strip miners. The capacitor is also quite an upgrade from the Procurer, so you won't be "stalling" on your way from the station and the asteroid belt in the big systems (at least not as much). The Retriever costs around 3.5 million ISK. This is a very good ship to aim for in terms of mining, and it can provide a very nice plateau, letting you upgrade skills in the areas other than mining before going further with the mining career. The better mining ships take significantly more time to train for. Depending on the attributes of your character, you may have to train for a month or two before being able to fly the Covetor or any of the Exhumers.
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Covetor |
High 3 | Med 1 | Low 2
Drone Capacity:
50 m3 (equivalent to 10 light or 5 medium drones)
Cargo Capacity:
4000 m3
Skill level required:
Mining Barge level V
Astrogeology level V
The Covetor is the best mining barge. It has got an amazing cargo capacity, backed up by lots of drones. The ability to fit 3 strip miners gives one of the best rates of ore harvesting in the game (the Hulk, the best of Exhumer-class ships, fits 3 strip miners as well). But with all of the advantages of the Covetor, getting both the Mining Barge and Astrogeology skills to level V takes quite a long time. The Covetor may also suffer from the same fate as the Procurer in the way that you can be flying the more superior Hulk shortly thereafter. In this case, however, the financial burden of purchasing the Exhumers skill book and the Hulk itself make the Covetor quite a viable option. The Covetor will set you back ~13-14 million ISK (while the Hulk costs more than 130 million ISK in addition to 25 million ISK for the skill book).
After the mining barges, the only step left are the Exhumers. Those ships are ranked in a bit of a different way, as each represents a certain specialization, but more on that later. Throughout the game, you will find alot of miners are using Retrievers. As I've mentioned before, it is a very good option to aim for if you rely on mining to provide you with income in the game.
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