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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
