Guides:Basic Mining

As you start out in EVE you are not very skilled, and need to get more skills and more knowledge. To do that you need money. Mining is one of the simplest and fastest ways of getting money in EVE. This guide will show you the basics of mining.

Overview

What should my goal be?

Since typically mining is a means to an end instead of an end itself, your goal should be to make as much money as fast as possible. As far as mining goes, this goal is achieved by getting into a mining cruiser, which is superior in every way to a mining frigate both in terms of survivability and income generation (in isk per hour).

Skills

What skills do I need to train?

• Mining IV: Allows you to use Miner II modules.
• Racial Frigate IV: Grants a large bonus to the performance of your mining frigate.

Note that you do not need these skills to begin mining; however, you should train them as you mine to maximize your output.

Ships

What ship should I use to mine?

When you complete your tutorial, you are thrown in the world with a newbie ship. This ship is totally unsuitable for any real mining; as such, you should acquire your racial mining frigate as soon as possible.

Modules

How should I outfit that ship?

The basic modules important to mining are:

• Mining Lasers
• Cargo Expanders
• Capacitor Rechargers

Mining Lasers

These modules are high slot modules that extract ore from asteroids.

If you do not have Mining IV, you should equip as many Miner I modules as your ship can fit. Once you get Mining IV, you should equip as many Miner II modules as your ship can fit. Don't bother with named mining lasers -- they are much more expensive and are not as productive as Miner II modules.

Cargo Expanders

These modules are low slot modules that create more space in your ship's cargo hold. When your cargo hold is full, all of your ship's mining lasers will deactivate. Cargo Expanders ensure that you can fit a full cycle of your mining lasers' output in your cargo hold.

You should equip as many Expanded Cargohold I modules as your ship can fit. Don't bother with named cargo expanders -- they are very expensive and are useful primarily for hauling.

Capacitor Rechargers

Mining lasers use a lot of capacitor. Capacitor recharger modules are mid slot modules that help your ship run mining lasers without running out of cap.

You should equip at least one Cap Recharger I module.

Systems

Where should I mine?

Ores

What should I mine?

Techniques

How should I mine?

Bookmarks

There are two ways to deal with the ore you mine. The first and easiest way is to just haul the ore to the nearest station yourself. However, there is a much more efficient way to transport ore than this one. It is known as container mining.

If you don't have an industrial ship and the skills to fly it yet and you're mining alone, you can not container mine. You will need to warp back to your station and drop the ore off there.

Once you're docked just open your ship's cargo again, left click the ore in your cargo bay and hold down, drag it to your item (personal) hangar and let go. Now undock and start mining again. Repeat as neccessary.

If you have an industrial ship and the skills to pilot it, or you find someone with an industrial ship who is willing to help you, you can container mine.

To container mine, mine as usual, only once your cargo bay is near full of ore right click your ore and choose jettison. This will launch your ore into space inside a cargo container. This cargo container has a life span of 1.5 hours, give or take. The beauty of this cargo container is that is can hold up to 27500 m3, which is a whole lot of ore.

So once you've jettison your ore, find the container that is floating in space next to your ship. Right click it and choose open cargo. Now place that window right next to your ships cargo bay window.

You can now take the ore that the mining lasers extracts in to your cargo bay and move it to the floating cargo container so your cargo bay doesn't fill up. Just left click the ore in your cargo bay, hold down, drag it to the floating cargo container and let go. You will see how the ore gets transferred into the floating cargo container.

If you are mining with the help of someone with an industrial ship (henceforth called a "Hauler"), the hauler will take the ore straight from the container and put it into their hold, being sure to always leave somthing in the container to keep it from dissapearing. Usually you should just seperate the ore into two piles, by holding shift and dragging the stack of ore to the side, then putting 1 in the stack size field. This will give you a seperate stack of 1 ore, which you will leave in the container until you're done mining. Make sure that you don't drop your harvested ore onto the stack of 1, or you'll have to seperate it again. Once the hauler has no more cargo space, he or she goes to the nearest station and drops of the ore. When everyone is done mining, the hauler sells the ore and divides up the profits between himself and the miners. Make sure you agree on how to divide up the cash before you start mining. This proccess involves at least one miner and one hauler, but you can actually have as many miners and haulers as you want. Usually it's best to have one hauler and as many miners as you can get together, all dropping into the same container.

If you are container mining by yourself, just keep on mining until you have filled your floating cargo container. Then go and dock with your mining ship, jump in to your industrial ship, go back to the cargo container and take the ore in it and transport it back to your station. Note that with this method there is a considerable chance that some one may take your ore while you're switching ships. [edit] Naming the Cargo Container (CC)

A side note there, as you can see when right clicking your jettison cargo container that is floating in space you can also name it. This is a useful feature; you can name your cargo container so that you can see how long it's been in space, making it easier for you to keep watch of the life span time limit.

Also, naming it a certain way will make it easier for the one hauling the ore to see which one to grab from ones the come out of warp. In Intermundia we use a special way to name our jettison cargo containers, especially at corp. mining operations.

1. ABC 23:34 2. ABC 23:55 And so forth.

Number = 1, 2, 3, and so forth. This is to make it easy to FAST find what containers is the first one or the latest one.

ABC = for our corporation, you might have others mining in the same belt, can be useful tag your containers, can also be useful so people coming in to the same belts as you don't think it's an abandon container.

Time = this is so you can keep track of how old the container is, use the time from the eve clock in game. That is GMT time; don't use your own local time or any other time since you might be mining with people that aren't in the same time zone as you.

The industrial ship has a much larger cargo bay then the regular ships, so it can take a lot more ore each time it goes to the station. Many people choose to specialize in hauling, buying an industrial ship and filling it with cargo expanders and the like, and then offering hauling services to miners (for a part of the profit, of course). This is a very good way to make money, because the skills and equipment used in hauling is very different than those used in mining.

When hauling, remember that there are a few drawbacks to using a jettison container to mine in.

It has a limited life span, when it has been in space for 1.5 hours you have to start to haul (transport) your ore to the station. If you leave a jettison container too long in space it will implode and all your ore will be gone. And no, the life span doesn't get any longer because you keep on putting ore in to it. The life span cycle starts from when you jettison it in to space.

Anyone can take from a jettison container. There are people that like to take ore from other people. Anyone can come to your jettison container and take ore from it, and people who do are called ore thieves. There is nothing you can do about it; if you choose to use this method to mine you are also allowing other people to take from you. Yes it's dishonest and a shitty thing to do but it's also a hilarious and valid game tactic. The best defence against ore theives is to take the ore straight into your cargo hold as soon as it it is put into the container.

If you're above 0.4 security system and mining and some one takes ore from you, you can't shoot them. If you do concord (police) will warp in the next second, warp scramble your ship and shoot it down. So you would be the one who loses both ore and a ship if you shoot at an ore thief in a 1.0 to 0.5 security system.

The best thing to do when some one takes ore from you is to warp back to your station, change to your industrial ship and go back to pick up any ore that might be left. Also tell on the ore thief in local chat window. Type something like, "name" is an ore thief, watch out he just stole ore from me. Repeat it a few times and if the ore thief responds saying it didn't take any ore, just ignore it, keep saying he took ore from you.

At least you may have prevented the ore thief from taking any ore from some one else, and this may also make the ore thief move to another system since there might be no business for him in the system you are in.

But there is also other things you can do to speed up mining, maybe not the mining in it self, but how you mine, Bookmarks.

Yes bookmarks can speed up the whole mining process for you; these bookmarks will let you haul the ore faster.

You know how when you warp to something, say a gate or a station you always have to travel for about 15 km before you can jump or dock. This is a tedious job and slows down travel.

With bookmarks you can make it so your industrial ship gets out of warp at the exact same spot as where your jettison cargo containers are in space, this makes it of course a lot faster for you to pick up the ore if you can at once when you get out of warp grab the ore instead of hitting approach.

Also book marking the station to where you're transporting your ore to will let you once you're out of warp to dock to it right away instead of have to approach it for 15 km.

Making such bookmarks are a very important when you want to speed up your mining, and also when you're mining in a group. One industrial ship can easily sustain 3 battleships mining at full speed.

So instead of having 2 people mining and 2 people hauling, you have 3 people mining and 1 hauling. You get more ore this way, and in the end more money. [edit] Guide on making a bookmark

Ok first of we want to make a bookmark in the belt we're going to mine in. It's best if you make these bookmarks as what I want to call them spots.

If you're using mining lasers 2 you have a range of 12km in each direction, so make the most out of that. Make your bookmarks so you can reach 12 km to your left, and 12km to your right. Start from the outer left asteroid and travel in to the belt until you get 12 km from it.

Stop your ship at 12 km from it and jettison something in to space. Can be anything, 1 piece of ore, or a module or ammo. Lock on to that jettison cargo container so you can see the distance to it.

Now in space, find the location of the station where you are warping back and forth to, to drop of your ore. It's not that hard, stations in space are marked as a white square, just turn your view around and move your mouse over the white squares until you find the station your using. When you find it, click it once so it becomes highlighted with a bigger white square, this is so you can more easily see it.

Ok so you now have your jettison cargo container targeted and you have marked the station in space where you're going to. (Look at the picture above)

Now start to fly in the opposite direction of where the station is in space. If you're looking at the station icon in space, turn 180 degrees and fly away from it.

Fly away from it until you reach 15 km from the targeted jettison container. This is important; you have to stop at 15 km, since 15 km is the approach flight distance. When your ship has come to a halt at 15 km from the jettison cargo container check how well your jettison cargo container aligns with the station icon.

Meaning, your jettison cargo container should be aligned so that it's in (or very close) the stations white square in space. You should have a straight line from your ship to the jettison cargo container to the station. (Like I said, in the white square that symbolises the station in space or as close as possible). You may have to move your ship a little until you get there, make small adjustments, but the closer you get to a straight line, the better your bookmark will be.

Once you have your ship aligned with the cargo container and the station at 15 km make your bookmark. You make a bookmark by going to the left menu, click people and places. When People and places window comes up click the tab places. Now at the bottom of your people and places window you have a button called Add bookmark, click it. You will now get a new small window asking what to label this bookmark, make sure you label it something you can understand later on when looking at it, say weeks later. Something like; Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 if you're in the solar system Ellmay and ant the belt VIII-1.

If you don't label your bookmarks with something you and others can understand you wont be able to figure out what the bookmark is good for at a later time and you will have a lot of bookmarks in time. You wont be able to share the bookmarks you made because no one else knows what it's for.

When you've finished making the belts bookmarks you need to make a bookmark for the station. So warp to the station you're using to drop of you ore at.

When you come out of warp, don't dock. Just try to align your ship in a straight line from where you came out of warp and fly through the station until you reach 12 km.

So in basic language fly straight forward at 180 degrees from where you came out of warp. (This means you will fly through the station to reach 12 km, use a small vessel large ones just get stuck in the stations gravity filed)

This is the same method you used when doing the belt bookmark only thing that is different is that you don't have a jettison cargo container or the station icon to try to align in a straight line.

You can do it this way because the station is so much larger then your jettison cargo container, so that if you don't get a straight line it doesn't matter that much, just as you come some what close to it.

Why you have to use 12 km for station are because they have a bigger radius (they're huge). As you may have noticed when you dock at a station you do it when you're about 1500- 2000 meters away from its centre. And then we add a 1000-15000 meters for error. So we get 12 km as a limit to use for making bookmarks at stations.

Once you have reached 12 km from the station make sure your ship stops there (either target the station to see at what range you are, or move your mouse over it to see the range), make your bookmark, label it something like, Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 Station.

Then you will know later on that this is the bookmark to use when I'm mining in the belt VIII - 1. [edit] Bookmarks for traveling

You can also make bookmarks for travelling; say you have a travel road where you jump through a couple of systems. This takes time, since you once again have to approach each gate from 15 km.

You can then use the same method as making bookmarks for belts, but as with making bookmarks for gates you need to use 12 km as the range. If you use 15 km you will most probably miss the gate with a few 1000 meters and still have to approach it. [edit] Creating Folders in your People and Places

A tip here, create folders in your people and places window to organize your bookmarks. For example, if you have a lot of bookmarks for Ellmay mining fields create a folder and name it Ellmay Mining fields. Then move your Ellmay mining bookmarks to that folder.

Yes it's a little work, but on the other hand, it's a few minutes work to keep your bookmarks in order and you will be thankful for it in the future when you have a few hundred bookmarks and are wondering what the hell bookmark number 21 named blabla does.

Ok so you have now made a bookmark for the 1 spot in the belt, if you know your going to be mining there for a while you may want to create another bookmark for spot 2. A smart thing when making several bookmarks in the same belt is to add a number to them also like this. Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 1, Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 2, Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 3 and so forth. This will make it easier for you if some one asks you where you're mining, you can answer, I'm at Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 spot 2. And they would then know that your using the bookmark Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 2 so they can if they have the same bookmarks warp directly to you. [edit] Sharing bookmarks

Ok so say you've made bookmarks and want to share them, so how do you do this?

It's easy, have your people and places window open, make sure you have clicked the tab places. Find the bookmark/s you want to share and click it once to highlight it, push down the keyboard key shift and hold it down, left click the bookmark and hold down the mouse button. Now drag it to either, your personal hangar, your cargo bay or the corp. hangar.

Just make sure the surface you drag it to is empty, then let go. You should now see an exact same bookmark labelled the same way where you dropped it.

If you're the one that wants to import a bookmark, just left click it, hold down, drag it to your personal hangar or cargo bay (you can only import a bookmark from one of those places). Then make sure your people and places window is open, hit the tab places, now drag the bookmark from your cargo bay or your personal hangar to your places window. Same thing there make sure you drop it in an empty area other wise the bookmark will not import.

If you're having problems understanding the basics of making bookmarks, ask one of the more experienced members to help you with it. Because bookmarks is something almost everyone uses, and therefore something you need to learn how to both make and use.

Also remember, bookmarks are often something important, made by either you or some one in your corporation. You don't want to share them with others, don't have them lying around in a floating container in space or in your cargo bay.

Why not?

Because say you're mining in low sec or travelling in low sec using bookmarks. Let's say you've made copies for a friend but haven't handed them over yet, or you just joined up in the mining operation and just got the bookmarks from a friend and have them in your cargo bay.

Then a pirate shows up, he blows up your ship and finds the bookmark in the debris.

The pirate now has a way to direct warp to the group who is mining if he comes back later, or if it's a safe spot bookmark (safe spot is a place in space where you make a bookmark so no one else can reach you) he can now then warp to that safe spot and if the others are there waiting for the pirate to leave, well you can imagine the rest.

Don't travel around with bookmarks in your cargo bay, don't have them lying in a jettison cargo container for some one else to pick up.