Guides:Empire Mining

This guide will show you the basics of mining and how to move on to become a professional miner. As you start out in EVE you don't have many skills and their levels aren't very high, so you need to get more skills and train them. To get more skills you need money. Currency in EVE is called ISK. Mining is one of the simplest ways of getting money in EVE.

Starting out

All you need to start mining is a ship (like the rookie ship you start with), a mining laser (you start out with a Civilian Miner), and some skill in mining.

The basic equipment important to mining (at the beginning of the game) are:

• Mining lasers
• Cargo expanders
• Survey scanners

Mining lasers extract ore from asteroids. They are fitted in high slots. Different lasers extract ore at different speeds, and sometimes you will need special lasers to extract certain ores. To begin mining, target an asteroid, get in range [usually within 10km for starting lasers] and then activate your laser. It will then start to extract the ore from the asteroid, putting it in your cargo hold.

Cargo expanders are used to create more space in your ship's cargo hold. This lets you fit more ore in your ship so that you don't have to travel back and forth between your base and your asteroids as often. They are fitted in the low slots of your ship. There is a fixed speed penalty associated with using cargo expanders, but in most circumstances this still is deemed worthwhile.

Survey scanners are useful for farming asteroids. They can tell you how much ore remains in an asteroid, allowing you to turn off your lasers before the asteroid is destroyed. This isn't terribly important if you're a new player, but if you're trying to maximize efficiency, turning off your lasers in time can end you up with a lot more ore in less time.

Choosing your starting equipment

For your first mining ship, it's best to train for and choose your ship according to your race. These ships are the bare minimum a miner should have if he wishes to engage in mining. Here's the list of starter ships by race:

Race	Ship
Amarr	Tormentor
Caldari	Bantam
Gallente	Navitas
Minmatar	Burst

For lasers, it is recommended you start out with Miner I. They are much faster than your starting mining laser. Get as many as you can use or afford. It's good to watch the CPU on your ship, as mining lasers put a big demand on CPU. Do the same thing for cargo expanders. Start with what you can use or afford, and equip as many as possible. You only need one scanner. Before you buy anything, make sure you can equip it on your ship.

Later on in the game, you'll need different equipment, ships, et cetera. If you're in a corporation, it's best to ask them for recommendations. Else you can always join the Help Channel.

Equipping modules and mining

Before you can start mining, you must equip your lasers, cargo expanders, et cetera. First, go to a station fitting service. Most stations have fitting service.

In the station fitting service, you can see all the slots that are in your ship. You have high slots for turrets,which include mining lasers and guns, and missile hardpoints. You have mid slots, for equipment like scanners, Afterburners and shield upgrades. Finally, you have low slots, for things like cargo expanders or mining upgrades. It is best to fill as many of your slots with modules as possible, provided you meet the CPU and power grid requirements, however in the beginning this is usually not necessairy.

Right-click the module you want to fit to a slot and choose 'fit to active ship', or just click and drag the module you want to equip to its appropriate slot. Most modules require you to have at least a certain level of a particular skill, like mining or electronics, to equip them. You can see what skills you need by looking at the item properties. To take out a module to open up a slot, left-click on the module and drag it to your cargo hold or hangar space.

Once you've equipped all your modules, you can go mine. Close the fitting window and undock from the station.

Once you are outside the station you need to tell your ship computer where you want to go. You do this simply by right-clicking in empty space so you get the context menu. From there, go to 'asteroid belts' and pick one of the belts in the list. Choose "warp to location" to make your ship warp to that location.

Once there, choose an asteroid to mine, right-click it and choose 'lock target'. When your target is locked you will be confirmed by an icon image appearing in the top right section of your screen.

If you are outside of range, just right-click it and choose 'approach'. Once you've reached the mining laser range of an asteroid, right-click your ship and choose 'stop my ship'.

Next, activate your mining lasers; you do this by clicking on them. They are in the bottom center of the screen. Once your lasers are activated their images will blink green. You're now extracting ore from the asteroid, and you should see how the mining lasers shoot at the targeted asteroid. The ore you collect will be placed in your cargo hold. Once your hold is full of ore, your mining lasers will automatically stop, and you should then go to the nearest station to drop off your ore, after which you can either refine or sell it.

Cargo

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. It is known as jetcan mining.

If you don't have an industrial ship and the skills to fly it yet and you're mining alone, you can not jetcan 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 drag it to your item (personal) hangar and let go. Now undock and start mining again.

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 jetcan mine. To jetcan 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 approximately 2 hours. The beauty of this cargo container is that is can hold up to 27,500m³, which is a whole lot of ore.

So once you've jettisoned 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 extracted into 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 separate 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 separate 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 separate it again. Alternatively you can place some other item in the container, like a newly made bookmark. 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 jetcan 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.

Take into mind that there is a risk, however, to this method. Once you jettison your ore into space, other people are also able to take from that container. You will notice a "can flipper" as they are called, when they turn red while flying next to one of your container, which probably means they stole ore from it. Can flippers can also be spotted when he warps into your belt and starts flying towards your container. Once red, you are allowed to shoot at them. However this is often what they want, since once you shoot at them, they are allowed to shoot back at you without, the Empire police, CONCORD, coming after them. More often than not they have either friends or a bigger ship nearby in which they intend to kill or ransom you. The best advice to be given to new players when encountered with can flippers, is to turn the other cheek and ignore them, and definately not shoot at them. ( not kidding they will kill you)

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; 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.

Hauling

The industrial ship has a much larger cargo bay than 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 or move it to newer container. If you leave a jettison container too long in space it will implode and all items and ore in it will be destroyed. 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 into 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. The best defence against ore thieves 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 may shoot them down and their gang/corp will be unable to help them. Keep in mind they are then allowed to shoot back! And, once they have the right to shoot you, they also have the option to go back to the local station, where they have a battleship docked, switch into that, blow your ship up, and then salvage the wreck, and take your ore. The only thing they aren't allowed to do, without losing their ship, is destroy your pod.

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.

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.

Pirates

Pirates are the bane of all miners. Pirates are people (both PC and NPC) who will destroy your ship and steal your ore. PC pirates can be anywhere, though they usually stay out of high security systems. NPC pirates show up in lower security systems. The lower the security rating, the bigger the risk of a pirate attack, and the stronger the pirates are likely to be. NPC pirates do not spawn in .8 security and higher, and 0.0 systems are absolutely swarming with them. If there is a risk of pirate attack where you are mining, you may want to employ a fighter pilot (or several fighter pilots, if it's a bad system) to protect you and your mining group. If, by chance, you are mining without a bodyguard and you are attacked by pirates, you should immediately warp to a station. It usually doesn't matter which station, just warp to the first one you see. Some pirates have warp disruptors, which will prevent you from warping out. In that case, it's pretty much kill or be killed. Also note that even when you do have a bodyguard, many pirates will attack the weakest ships first, which usually means the miners. So, you may have to temporarily warp out anyway while your bodyguard destroys the pirate ships. Once the ships are gone, you should resume mining as normal.

Can Flipping in high security space some PC pirates known more commonly as greifers, will use a jet can of their own to move the ore in yours to theirs, this will cause them to be flagged to you or your PLAYER corporation, the general motive behind such an act is to cause you to either attack them, causing you to be flagged to them and only them, or for you to "steal" your ore back causing you to be flagged to them and their PLAYER corporation. This is all used in the attempt to cause your death, loss of ship, and sometimes ore. A good way to defend against such an attack is to employ a "corp-mate" form your player corporation to stand guard or to completely ignore the act, though the latter causes a loss in ore mined while you are still alive, this is only done in .5 and above as in .4 and below they'll just shoot you without warning.

How to speed up your mining

Improve your mining skills; train them to higher levels to make you faster at mining. These are the skills that are valid mining skills.

• Mining (get this to at least level 4 so you can use mining laser 2, this will speed things up)
• Astrogeology (speeds up your mining even more, needs mining level 4 and science level 4)
• Industrial ship (the more you train your industrial ship skill, the more cargo space you get - use for haulage)
• Drones (the more drones you can use, the faster the mining will go with those drones)
• Drone Interface (causes drones' yield to increase substantially)
• Mining Drone operation (will make your mining drones yield more ore when mining and allows the use of better mining drones)
  • Remember: when mining using drones, stay as close to the drones as possible, as that way they don't waste valuable time taking the ore back to your ship.

Having these skills at top notch will make you a faster miner, which in return will make you earn more money faster. Also getting in to better ships which have more slots for mining lasers will speed up things for you.

Teaming up, be 2 or more mining together. This means that one can haul and the others mine speeding up things.

Also, you might want to train for Mining Upgrades skill to be able to fit a Mining Laser Upgrade module (one for regular mining and one for ice mining). Those modules increase your mining yield at the slight expense of increased CPU usage by your lasers (10%).

A recently added skill, "Mining Foreman" listed under Leadership skills, adds a +2% mining bonus per level as long as you are in a gang that has been converted to fleet and you are the assigned booster.

A general progression for ships for the would-be miner is as follows: 1. Mining Frigate for your Empire (Tormentor, Bantam, Navitas or Burst) Skills Required: Frigate II 2. For haulage: Industrial ship for your Empire (Sigil, Badger Mk I, Iteron, Wreathe) Skills Required: Industrial I

The best of the industrial ships is in the Minmatar line, (Wreathe, Hoarder, Mammoth) At around 800,000 ISK, the Mammoth is quite cheap, and carries the second largest amount of Ore of the industrials (the Gallente has the Iteron Mark V, but this requires level 5 of the faction industrial, a much slower training time). It is recommended to train for this even if you aren't a Minmatar pilot - due to the increased size of the cargo hold.

3. Mining Cruiser for your Empire. (you could skip this step and go straight to barges, but the training to get up to the mining cruisers is negligible, and you'll get a much better yeild in your barge than the Procurer, the first mining barge, which can only equip a single strip miner).

Skills Required for a mining cruiser: Cruiser II

Recommended to train at this stage: Mining IV or V, Astrogeology to IV, Refining V, Refinery Efficiency III

4. As noted aboveIt's normally not worth considering the first level of mining barges - they can only use 1 strip miner, meaning that the cruiser can probably outmine it, instead, spend your time training Astrogeology to IV, increasing your overall yeild, then head for Mining Barge III to get a Retriever - which requires Astrogeology IV). The Retriever can use 2 Strip Miners, and therefore has double the yield of the Procurer. From there, train Astrogeology to V, and then get your Mining Barge to V. Skills required for a Retriever (2 strip miners): Industry V, Mining IV, Astrogeology IV, Science IV Additonal skills required for a Covetor (3 strip miners): Astrogeology V, Mining Barge V

As you probably know you're serious about mining at this point (it takes at least a month to get from Retriever to Coveter, so it's probably not going to be trained by someone who isn't - it might be a good idea to get Mining V at this stage

5. Mining exhumer (elite mining barge) This is the big one, and luckily it doesn't take much more training after your Coveter - in fact, all the skills trained for a Coveter are needed here. 2-5 days training time, tops - the Hulk (the mining specialization of the mining barges can tank much more easily, making it better for low and nul sec mining ops, it keeps the 3% bonus with the Mining Barges skill, and gets an additional 3% bonus with each level in the exhumers skill. It's also really big, and has more Powergrid and CPU, allowing it to tank more easily. Additional Skills required: Industry V, Spaceship Command IV

6. Orca (optional) - the Orca doesn't actually mine. It grants a large bonus to other miners in it group and functions as a massive industrial ship. Skills Required: Mining Foreman V, Mining Director I, Industry V, Spaceship Command V

Additional skills for advanced mining: Refining - reduces the amount of minerals lost when refining ore at a station Refinery Efficiency - further reduces the amount of minerals lost when refining ore at a station

NB. It is not recommended to train Refining and Refinery Efficiency to level 5 each, you can get a 100% yeild (minus tax) in empire space with Refining V, Refinery Efficiency III and the relevent skill with the Ore you're planning to refine at level III, also.

Metalurgy - has nothing to do with mining, but is required to learn Mining Director. It also speeds up training of the aformentioned Ore-specific refining skill Mining Director - required to pilot the Orca, allows the use of modules that boost the mining rate of others Ore Specific Refining Skills (required to use the crystals required as ammunition in the high end Strip Mining lasers that Mining Barges and Exhumers use - ie Veldspar Refining) *edit* metalurgy is not required for the orca and is only required for high refining skills like arkonor etc. not veldspar.

Bookmarks

(Note: With the addition of Warp to 0km, this information is largely obsolete)

But there are also other things you can do to speed up mining, maybe not the mining 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 within 1.5 - 2km of your jettisoned cargo container, this makes it a lot faster for you to pick up the ore. This way once you get out of warp you may grab the ore instead of hitting approach.

Also book marking the station where you're transporting your ore to will allow you to dock once you're out of warp instead of having to approach it from 15 km out.

Making such bookmarks are 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.

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 at what I want to call 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 off your 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 field)

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.

Yu may ask, "Why do I 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.

Bookmarks for travelling

You can also make bookmarks for traveling; 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. of course this is not really a worry anymore since warp to zero has been intoduced

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.

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.

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 corps' 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 someone else to pick up.