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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The following is an Abaddon fit for capsuleers just starting out fighting Incursions. For those who are upgrading to the Incursions from Level 4 missions, this might seem like an odd fit, but keep in mind that Incusions are fought as a fleet and there will be 2-3 logistics ships in the fleet whose job is to keep you alive. The Incursion fits are equipped with buffer and resistance tank. The resistances (EM, kinetic, thermal and explosive whether for armor or shield) should be at least above 70% or very close to it. The resistances and buffer will keep you alive in case logis are having trouble keeping up with incoming dps.
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.
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.
