New Mining Character Day 15 - Low Sec Mining

Having some disposable income, I decided to plunge into what some new miners will likely try to do and, also likely, get destroyed while doing it: low sec mining. The allure of higher profits and mining some exotic ore types is rather strong. Even when taking all sorts of precautions, it's still very easy to lose your ship, but it definitely adds a lot of excitement to something that otherwise may be rather tedious. Here's a few tips on making sure you survive for as long as possible.

New Mining Character Day 14 - Refining vs Raw Ore

Today I decided to finally figure out when it becomes more profitable to sell refined minerals rather than raw ore. Having only Refining IV and no standings with the corporation that owns the station (meaning 5.00% tax on refining), I set out to refine Veldspar and Pyroxeres ore as examples and go through the calculations to determine which one gives more profit according to current market conditions.

New Mining Character Day 11 - Salvaging

The basic skills necessary for salvaging were the fastest to train up. Salvaging in a nut-shell is relatively light on skill intensity. It's a good idea to train up the Salvaging skill as much as possible so that it'll take less cycles to salvage a wreck. Having good skills to boost your capacitor capacity and recharge rate is also recommended as salvagers eat up a lot of cap. I did not train any additional skills support skills though.

New Mining Character Day 10 - Optional Skill Training

Now I enter the period in the mining career that is a bit boring when it comes to blog posts - waiting for the skill training to finish. My Industry V skill is slowly being trained and there isn't much to do except mining and earning ISK. That could be good if you don't have much time to devote to playing EVE during this period anyways. I will try to mix things up a bit though so that I will be able to have something interesting to write about!

New Mining Character Day 9 - Better Mining Yield and Ore Prices

With Astrogeology skill trained to level IV, just two mining cycles is now almost enough to fill the Osprey's cargohold (with cargo expanders). The skill training is slowly progressing, now with less than 5 days remaining till being able to fly the Retriever (considering direct training). Seems now the only options are to chill and mine or to try out some other things in EVE.

Selecting The Most Profitable Ore

The process of choosing the ore to mine and sell on the market is a little more complicated than just browsing the market and mining the one that has the highest price. Each type of the ore has specific volume that it takes up in the cargo hold. More importantly, the mining yield of mining lasers and strip miners is based on cubic meters (m3) per time. So while market prices are based on price per unit of ore, your mining yield is based on volume of ore. Therefore, you have to convert the market info into the price per cubic meter of ore, rather than a unit of ore.

New Mining Character Day 8 - Crossroads and Badger Mark II

At this point in the game, if you're new, you may want to consider if you'd like to go forward with mining. You already have rather decent mining skills and ship. It'll be able to provide you with steady income to fall back on, while you explore other aspects of EVE, and you can always come back to training mining skills and continue on down this path later. If you're still very interested in mining, then let's carry on!

New Mining Character Day 7 - Upgrading the Osprey

Wasting no time, I upgraded the Osprey right way. I had enough ISK to get the best equipment for it and enough back-up ISK in case I somehow manage to lose the ship. Judging by the amount of ISK I was getting per haul, I could see that splurging on the best equipment would quickly be recovered.

Mining Osprey Fit

The Osprey (Caldari Cruiser) is considered to be the best mining cruiser out of all of the cruisers available in EVE. The runner up is Minmatar's Scythe, but only because it has 45 m3 less of cargo space. The Osprey gets 20% extra mining yield per each cruiser skill level along with 3 available slots for mining lasers and 3 low slots for possible cargohold expansion.

New Mining Character Day 6 - Flying the Osprey

And here we go. Skill training is complete, and now I am able to fly the Osprey. The income from mining is going to increase quite a bit. The Osprey sports a large cargo hold (plus 3 low slots for Expanded Cargohold modules) and is able to fit 3 mining lasers. With all the skills trained up, the Osprey will easily approach, only slightly falling short of the mining yield of the Retriever.

New Mining Character Day 5 - Mining Missions

There is a special subset of mission agents of various NPC corporation that offer mining missions. I have decided to mix it up and compare mining missions to just plain old mining. Doing missions is useful if you're manufacturing or refining as increased standings with a corporation will decrease the cost of doing those things at the corporation's stations.

Machariel Incursion Fit

The faction battleships are among the most sought-after ships for Incursion fleets. There is no denying the awesome raw power of the Machariel. Optimized to deliver the most out of projectile turrets, this ship is a powerful weapon in the hands of a skilled pilot. The following is the shield-tanked Machariel Incursion fit.

New Mining Character Day 4 - Ore Hauling

Very quickly I hit the wall when it comes to getting more profit from using a Bantam. Warping back and forth between the station and the asteroid belt started getting too repetitive and it felt like all of that time spent in transit was cutting into the bottom line. So I decided to experiment with using an Industrial ship that I got as the reward for the final Industry Career Agent mission.

Hauling Mined Ore - Using Mining Frigate vs. Industrial Ship

A big part of mining is maximizing your income. However, when mining alone, you are very likely to be warping back and forth between the station and the asteroid belt, at least in the beginning stages of your mining career. With that in mind, I decided to calculate just how much income is lost when not using an industrial ship to haul your ore.

New Mining Character Day 3 - Slight Equipment Upgrade and Relocation

Having completed the Industrial Career Agent missions, this day was all about simple and pure mining. To increase the income, I moved away from the Career Agents' system but it was still a 0.7 sec system, meaning the belt rats were still a bother to handle at times. Additionally, the expanded cargohold modules were upgraded in order to increase the cargo space.