New Mining Character Day 16 - The Retriever

The time has come to upgrade the mining cruiser to a dedicated mining barge. All of the skills have been trained and more than enough ISK has been earned. From this point forward, the only major step left is to train for the mining end game: The Hulk. The Retriever will provide a solid base whether you want to advance further in mining or just rely on casual mining for passive ISK grinding.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Bantam - Caldari Mining Frigate

Starting off your mining career in EVE, you can't go wrong with using the Bantam as your starter mining ship. This Caldari frigate is second only to the Tormentor in terms or available cargo space, but it sets you on the way to using the Osprey for mining - the best mining cruiser available in EVE.

Tormentor - Amarr Mining Frigate

The Amarr frigate line-up offers what could be considered the best mining frigate available if you value cargo space. The Tormentor is the only mining frigate that offers 3 low slots. The cargo hold on this ship starts off with 235 m3, but installing 3x Expanded Cargohold I rigs can bump up the cargo space way above 510 m3, depending on your skills, rigs used and how much ISK you're willing to spend on those rigs.

Mining Ships in EVE Online: Frigates

Starting out in EVE, you are pretty much limited to using frigates for some time before you can train up to cruisers and the rest of the ship classes. Nor should you really rush into using more advanced (and considerably more expensive) ships before training up all of the other supplementary support skills, but that's besides the point. When starting out in mining, all of the four races have a frigate that's more suitable for job.

Mining Kernite: the most profitable high-sec ore

Of all the common ores, kernite is the most lucrative one to mine. It is partly due to the level 4 storyline mission "Materials for War" which requires 8000 units of kernite. As a result, it is generally more profitable to sell the normal kernite ore (not its fiery or luminous variants) directly on the market, but it depends on the regional prices of the ore and its corresponding minerals. Regardless of whether you sell the ore directly or refine it into minerals, it is still the most profitable ore that is found in high-sec systems.

The trick of course is finding kernite asteroids, as they tend to be quickly depleted. The only high-sec places to find kernite are the systems under the sovereignty of the Amarr Empire. Just about any 0.7 or lower system in Amarr space will have kernite.

Unlike other common ore asteroids, kernite asteroids will only contain on average 5000 units of ore, rarely exceeding the 10000 units per asteroid. So it is a good idea to find a system with no stations. Those systems generally have bigger asteroids and less competition from other miners. Of course, in this case your traveling time to offload the ore will increase, especially due to the fact that kernite is very bulky, taking up 1.2 cubic meters per unit in your cargohold.

It is possible to find kernite in Caldari and Minmatar space if you don't want to travel to the Amarr space, but then you have to run the risk of mining in systems with 0.4 security rating and lower. Unless you have a Hulk and low-sec doesn't bother you, I would recommend mining in the safety of high-sec. In my opinion the profit margin of kernite is not enough to support the costs associated with mining in low-sec. There are other more profitable ores (for example, hedgergite) in there.

Mining Ships in EVE Online: Mining Barges

Once you have decided to seriously pursue mining career in EVE Online, training for the mining barges is the next step up from using frigates, destroyers, or cruisers for mining. It is quite an undertaking in terms of skill training time, especially if you're aiming for the top of the line mining barge, but it pays off tremendously in the amount of ore you can mine. One of the biggest advantages of using a mining barge is the ability to install strip miners, which can only be fitted either on the mining barges or exhumers. Comparing the Strip Miner I to the ordinary laser Miner I, the cycle time of the strip miner is 2 minutes longer, but it is able to harvest 500 more cubic meters of ore than the mining laser (more depending on your mining skill). Of course, the strip miners don't come cheap (~1.0-1.2 million ISK) and require mining skill level of at least IV.

A handy tool for mining: Survey Scanner

Recently I have found about a very useful tool for mining - Survey Scanner. It fits in the medium power slot of the ship and once activated it shows what kind of ore and how much of it is available in the 15km radius. This way you can see if it`s worth mining a particular asteroid.

The survey scanner is very cheap and requires Electronics skill only at level 1. If you spend majority of your time mining, there's no reason not to have this equipment installed to help you pick the right asteroids.

Survey Scanner displays how much ore is available in each nearby asteroid

EVE Mining: Using Secure Containers vs Jetcans

Due to a rather limited cargohold capacity of mining ships (although better than cargohold of combat ships), you end up having to do multiple trips between the asteroid belts and the station. And unless you have someone with an industrial ship to haul your ore, you have to resort to storing your mined ore on location before you can hop over to your own industrial ship. As such, you have an option of storing your ore in either jettison canisters (jetcans) or secure containers. Here is the summary of pros and cons of each method.

Avoiding Pirates in High-Sec Space

Don't be baited by pirates. There's a few tricks they use to get you to attack them so that they can retaliate without getting killed by the CONCORD.

If you're a miner, the first thing they do is steal the ore from your jetcans. The moment they do that, they are flagged red for you. If you take that ore back ore if you fire on them, then they are free to attack you, and CONCORD won't interfere.

Also be wary of the pirate's corpmates, who may be nearby in the asteroid belt. If you take your ore back and try to run, then you will be flagged red for the entire corp and they will be free to attack you.

If instead of the jetcans, you are using the secure containers, then they may try to provoke you by shooting their own jet canisters. When they fire on a canister, they will be flagged red for nearby miners. Don't try to engage them, because they still can't attack you without CONCORD retaliation. And don't be afraid for your secure container, unlike in the case of the jetcans, the CONCORD will retaliate if they fire on it.

The pirates resort to conniving tricks in high-sec space to try to fight you. Rest assured, the CONCORD will step in and protect you if a pirate attacks you. Don't try to retaliate in cases other than a direct attack on you unless you're absolutely sure of being able to win, because otherwise you're on your own.

Abundant Asteroid Belts

Shortly after getting more serious about mining, I have ran into a problem of asteroids being depleted very fast. I have chosen a system close to Jita for mining to save on the travel time, but as you can imagine, I was not the only one who likes being in close proximity to the trade hub. Although there are 7 asteroid belts in the system, there's no shortage of miners grabbing whatever ore they can get their hands on (not to mention a fair share of can-flippers roaming around, making jet-can mining impossible). So "the asteroid has been depleted" has become quite a familiar tune. Aside from the initial pride in the whole "I have just mined out the entire asteroid belt by myself!" feeling, the lack of ore has become quite an annoyance. But there are several ways to get a whole load of asteroids all to yourself.

Piracy in High-Sec: A story of stolen ore

Yes, there is piracy even high-sec empire space and I have found out about it the hard way. It was a little bit unexpected for me to be blown up and then extorted by a pirate corp in a high-sec space. It was a 0.7 system, to be exact.

I was mining some pyroxeres ore in an asteroid belt and putting the ore into a jetcan. There were about 5 people along with me in that belt. A few of those had the yellow pirate label on their names, but so far it was quite common for me to see those and I've never been bothered by those people, so I didn't give it any second thoughts when I started mining.