Newcomer / Intro Mining for Arsenic

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

Is it possible, any tips pls?

I don't really want to do surface prospecting atm, I've recently setup a Clipper miner and am wanting to learn more about mining before trying something new. I thought I'd try my luck on the rocky ring in Delkar 7B but all my prospectors are telling me the asteroids are rubbish (low material content and garbage minerals). I've obviously not grasped the intricacies of mining or locating 'what I want' as yet

 

[Chris Simon]

I personally haven't found arsenic in asteroids, but I haven't done much mining, recently, also. Anyhow, if you want high-quality materials (and more profitable metals) you need to find a better ring. In the inhabited bubble, most rings are either depleted or almost mined out. If you find your planet in the system map, you can see what state is the ring in. You want Pristine reserves. There are only a few of pristine rings in the bubble but you can google them up, if you want. Or venture outside the inhabited space where noone was mining, before.
As for the type of the ring, I have no idea where would arsenic be. My gut tells me it may be Icy, but who knows. On planets you often find it in metallic meteorites, so maybe metallic. You'll have to wait for someone else.
In the mean time, you may try and find some via missions, too

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

What I find odd though is even if you put the Arsenic thing to one side if I visit a pristine Icy Ring the ice chunks there are still only yielding low content rubbish. I'm trying to keep an open mind about mining and give it a fair chance.

 

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Icy rings will occasionally give you low temperature diamonds but other than that nothing worth mining. You need Pristine Metallic to make any cash mining. Then look primarily for the 3 Ps, with the priority on Painite.

 

[D.G.Cerberus]

I still find it hit and miss.......I found a great place once yielding all sorts of stuff including the three P's.
I then purchased a specific miner Python and parked it there.

Next trip. Same place. Same tactic.......Worst mining yields ever. I think the most valuable stuff I found was Indite!

 

[Blackpillow]

Surface prospecting for Arsenic yields results faster than asteroid belts (if Arsenic was even possible to mine via asteroid belts that is).

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

Yeah I wanted to avoid that but it does seem the game is forcing me to do it their way again instead of 'blazing my own trail', I'll see if I can find some tutorials on surface mining I suppose I have to do it sooner or later.

 

[Chris Simon]

Yeah I wanted to avoid that but it does seem the game is forcing me to do it their way again instead of 'blazing my own trail', I'll see if I can find some tutorials on surface mining I suppose I have to do it sooner or later.

It's not like that. You can blaze your trail.
You are free to do whatever you want and you are free to choose your goals. That the blazing part. But when you choose a goal, you have to follow the path that leads to that goal. That can't be completely free.
You won't build a house by mowing the lawn, so to speak. You are free to choose either, but when you choose building a house, you will have to grab a hammer.

 

[Rob_the_Sparky]

I still find it hit and miss.......I found a great place once yielding all sorts of stuff including the three P's.
I then purchased a specific miner Python and parked it there.

Next trip. Same place. Same tactic.......Worst mining yields ever. I think the most valuable stuff I found was Indite!

They seem to vary by instance, much like RES sites do. You can be gamey and jump out and return to get a new instance or just play the game as intended. You will find that the haul will vary from visit to visit in the same ring system. Once I jumped in and every rock I checked contained a "P". Prospecting many rocks to get what you want is more normal though and finding a 30%+ Painite is unusual but I will normally find one or two in a 1.5 hour mining session and sometimes more.
.
Hint and tip, 10% Painite is worth as much as 40% Gold as the selling price is so much higher. 5% Painite is worth more than 40% Silver! If you get a 10% Painite 2 material rock and a 10% Painite 3 material rock you will get more Painite from the 2 material rock as every chip will contain Painite.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

It's not like that. You can blaze your trail.
You are free to do whatever you want and you are free to choose your goals. That the blazing part. But when you choose a goal, you have to follow the path that leads to that goal. That can't be completely free.
You won't build a house by mowing the lawn, so to speak. You are free to choose either, but when you choose building a house, you will have to grab a hammer.

Well not exactly, in this case the game allows you to surface mine a mineral/material from meteorites which come from bits of asteroids, yet you do the logical thing of trying to mine asteroids and come up blank. Surely you should be free to do either and decide? I personally believe blazing ones trail includes method and objective.

 

[neilbombd]

Arsenic does occasionally pop up as mission rewards, so check things like data delivery missions where it's giving 1 commodity as a reward.

 

[neilbombd]

I just checked the mission boards when I docked there, to see if I could find any. Saw an "agricultural supply run" with 1 material as a reward, and its an Improvised Components. Sweet!

So yeah, check the boards. Arsenic has a 2.5% drop rate - I've nearly got the achievement for driving the SRV for 500 miles, and can only remember getting Arsenic once.

 

[Winterwalker]

I think Arsenic is a material, not a commodity, isn't it? In other words, no I don't think you can mine for it.

Ice mining is probably only really worth it if your sales port is in Boom state, and you can pick up missions (high tech systems often yield mining missions too). Myself, I tend to go mining first, fill up the hold then, when in port check the missions and accept the ones I can fulfill immediately, for a bonus with what I've got onboard (less stressful that way).

Advice is right, Metallic is the best yield followed by Metal Rich, lastly Rocky. I personally wouldn't bother with prospector drones much, though in a Clipper I expect you can afford the slots. In Python, I use two collector module plus 7 slot refinery, medium laser, it's all powered off when I'm away from the mining site. I carry discovery and detailed surface scanner (also have SRV aboard for excursions) but it really is worth taking the time to find a Metallic ring (try searching for mining threads in the forum here for known sites if you prefer). You are supposed to get a better yield at the RES sites but I tend to go african and park away from them. Outside the bubble where I work, with KWS scanner being mandatory, if you've no cargo aboard you can decide whether a bounty is worth engaging any NPC's you encounter (if you do have cargo they WILL attack) but, after initial contacts when arriving, you'll be left alone after that and can relax pretty much totally.

It's a slow and steady operation mining, best done while listening to the radio or something but if you do a couple of runs to get the feel of it and organise your refinery, there are a few tricks to filling up your hold faster (eg. bust open the asteroid, then move your ship so the cloud of fragments is roughly where the limpets line up to enter your cargo scoop. The drones will clean up in seconds) .. In other words it is possible to "get good" at mining so it's something I do quite a bit, as steady predictable money plus a few bounties here and there are fun to collect.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Well not exactly, in this case the game allows you to surface mine a mineral/material from meteorites which come from bits of asteroids, yet you do the logical thing of trying to mine asteroids and come up blank. Surely you should be free to do either and decide? I personally believe blazing ones trail includes method and objective.

Hmm, disclosure at the start: I'm not a dev, have no knowledge other than what I see, hear and read online.

Right, now thats out the way. I believe the reason that the Engineers has you do so many different things, SRV materials, mining, POI's, signal sources, trading, combat, scanning, wake scanning etc. Is because the developers realised that everyone just grinded the latest moneymaking activity and then complained there was nothing to do.

By saying: If you want mods you have to diversify the players that have never done X, Y or Z in game now experience it and may find they enjoy it.

Yes it's kinda sucky if you want to play a certain way but I can see why they've done it that way and not just allowed you to "buy" engineer mods. Im not sure how Arsenic has become so rare, I was exploring for a number of months, rarely went down to planets but still came back with 25 pieces. Saving them for when I eventually unlock Palin. Still working on rank 5 for Farseer atm

 

[Chris Simon]

^^I think that's a great re-wording of Sandro's quote, that they want to encourage players to step out of the comfort zone to experience the entirety of the game.
To me it sounds like a good idea.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

I think Arsenic is a material, not a commodity, isn't it? In other words, no I don't think you can mine for it.

I have mined arsenic in ice rings. But it took a lot of mining to get any.
However, when the material value was trippled, FD nerfed the amount of materials in roids. Ice rings were never very good for materials before the nerf, but now they are next to useless.
Even metal-rich rings which used to have High yield roids have been nerfed so that they only have Low yield.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

However, when the material value was trippled, FD nerfed the amount of materials in roids. Ice rings were never very good for materials before the nerf, but now they are next to useless.

Ah-ha that ties in with what I'm seeing also, so it was possible but now its a waste of time without the game giving you any indication of that.

When I went mining for Praseodymium it wasn't a chore it was a nice break away from combat, trading and missions, I was actually looking forward to doing more mining and getting better at it. Probably what FDev should have done is pick a different material for the FSD engineer that pushes your progression and used a surface mining element on a different upgrade starting with something common and then pushing you towards rarer elements for the higher upgrades. Instead your being forced to do everything at once if you want the max upgrades which frankly is 'normal behavior' and you also need a lot of it to guarantee a decent outcome which again is to be expected having invested all that time.

Anyhow that explains it ty for that. Guess I'm off to learn surface mining if any kind sole fancies teaching me I'll be lurking around Founders World this morning.[wacky]

 

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Surface mining is not that hard. Get a surface scanner and find a planet with a good percentage of what you want, select a flat area of the planet, then drive around in the SRV chasing the scanner hits (you can travel much faster in a flat area). Best do a search interpreting the SRV scanner if you have not done that before.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

I'm going to try my luck on Shinrarta Dezhra A 1 (as im near Founders World), apparently that has 2.2% Arsenic to see how that goes before looking further a field. Bought a Cutter with 4 SRV's due to the inevitable death of the fist few lol

 

[CMDR Jago Kain]

I strongly recommend any newbie prospectors watch the tutorial video that's available through the game menu. I wasted half an hour shooting the scenery before I watched it and learned about blue points of interest and how to find them.