Newcomer / Intro Core Mining - advanced tutorial

Useful to see how your firegroups were set up, though you whizzed through it too fast to follow and I had to rewind and playback half speed to catch it. Seeing that I realise I've not been using the composition scanner. Later when you put too much/many Seismic charges in one asteroid and disarmed one, I had to rewind that twice and put in on half speed to see what you did to disarm it.
One thing asteroid mining definitely teaches you, is good control over your ship. I'm on keyboard and mouse at the moment and find it too clumsy - too many keys that cannot be arranged in an ergonomic fashion. Will try one of our XBox One controllers.

One thing is for sure, you've become super proficient at deep core mining and its hard for the newbie to keep up with what you doing :)
Very grateful for your help. At least I made 8 million instead of zero last night.
 
Useful to see how your firegroups were set up, though you whizzed through it too fast to follow and I had to rewind and playback half speed to catch it.
Well, this guide is intended to be "advanced", that is - beyond basics ;) .
For basics, look up guides by Hawkes Gaming or Down to Earth Astronomy or Exigeous.
Putting limpets on abrasion blaster is common practice.
Seeing that I realise I've not been using the composition scanner.
It's irrelevant. It's just there because I'd rather have 2 groups than 5.
If having the other scanners doesn't hurt and allows me to have fewer fire groups, that's what I do.
Optimization - I know you like the word ;)
Later when you put too much/many Seismic charges in one asteroid and disarmed one, I had to rewind that twice and put in on half speed to see what you did to disarm it.
Again, that's in the basics ;)
One thing asteroid mining definitely teaches you, is good control over your ship.
Yeah, that's why I love it above all other farming methods.
I'm on keyboard and mouse at the moment and find it too clumsy - too many keys that cannot be arranged in an ergonomic fashion.
I'm on mouse and keyboard ;)
W/S - thrusters up/down
A/D - thrusters left/right
Q/E - roll left/right
Mouse 4/5 - thrust forward/backward

These two on the mouse are under the thumb on my logitech g305. If I didn't have them, I guess I would rebind shift/ctrl or Z/X perhaps. Or maybe I would move my throttle somewhere else from R/F where I have it now. Or maybe I'd remove Q/E because my mouse is set to "yaw on low roll" so I can roll with it as well.
Will try one of our XBox One controllers.
I hate controllers but it could work :)
One thing is for sure, you've become super proficient at deep core mining and its hard for the newbie to keep up with what you doing :)
Thanks :)

Yeah there's a lot in here that's above basics. This is actually why I decided to make this video at all. I look at all of those other guides out there on YT and all of these awesome content creators, whom I have to thank for most of what I know about the game.... they all fly those ships like they're actively trying not to make money. Core mining has a lot of room to be profitable, but it requires you to look alive!

Laser mining attitude bad. Racer attitude good!

Another thing is external view. Hawkes Gaming brought it up in his guide I think and many use it now. I loved it. I tried it. I was surprised how few cores I found.
So I tested it. I literally flew circles around an asteroid I knew was a core.
Results? Most of the time it totally did not look like a core when viewed with external camera, somewhere to the side of my ship.

External camera looks like a neat trick on paper, but you're shooting yourself in the foot by using it, or at least that's what my testing revealed.
Maybe I was unlucky, but you know what?
Drifting through the ring is more fun anyway ;)
Very grateful for your help. At least I made 8 million instead of zero last night.
This number still needs increasing by a factor of 15, but as long as you practice, you'll get it :)
 
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I'm on mouse and keyboard ;)
W/S - thrusters up/down
A/D - thrusters left/right
Q/E - roll left/right
Mouse 4/5 - thrust forwardackward
I must try this. I do have a mouse with buttons 4/5 under the thumb. What do you use mouse movement for, if anything?

I've watched all the other mining videos you mention, just can't understand why I don't recognise the right asteroids despite supposedly knowing what I'm looking for. Maybe it will click soon.
 
I must try this. I do have a mouse with buttons 4/5 under the thumb. What do you use mouse movement for, if anything?
If by "mouse movement" you mean the buttons 4/5, then... well... whenever you see me travelling between asteroids, boosting and using PWA, I run on throttle.
In every single other situation I use the thrusters, including mouse 4/5.
Fo example, the moment I go into Contacts panel to trigger a detonation - I hold mouse 5 at the same time, which is the reason why my ship is moving backwards while I'm in the panel.
I've watched all the other mining videos you mention, just can't understand why I don't recognise the right asteroids despite supposedly knowing what I'm looking for. Maybe it will click soon.
That's normal. I had no idea when I started as well.
This is for many reasons:
  • recording and buffering for youtube makes the fine details you can see on your screen wash out, generatic a nondescript orange blob in the video for every single core and non-core asteroid
  • different ring types have different asteroid shapes and cores highlight differently as well
  • dust and illumination also messes things up. PWA highlights cores in a DRASTICALLY different way in a clear metallic ring shaded by a planet than it does in a dusty, rocky ring illuminated by a blue/white star.

You just have to learn it.

I suggest you try what I do when entering a new ring type or a ring with different conditions:
  • reset your brain and your expectation of how cores look
  • trust (the Force) that there is a way to tell a core from afar. It is different and you will learn to notice it.
  • fly over to every asteroid that shines
  • take mental notes of every rock you find that was shining but did not have a core. Things like: size, color, brightness, shape, how far it was when you pinged it.
  • after checking ~15 asteroids that aren't cores, start looking for ones that look different. Cause cores are different. Keep in mind that PWA is erratic and you need to ping all asteroids at least twice, looking more or less in their direction and from not too far away in order to tell.
  • take super-careful mental notes of every core asteroid you manage to find. Things like: shape, size, color, brightness, how far it was when you pinged it.
  • in addition, when you do find a core, identify it by fissures first without using a prospector. Take some time flying around it and try to memorize how it differs from other asteroids, particularly other shining non-cores.

By the time you find your third core, you will be good.
 
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As far as recognising cores goes I strongly suspect your graphics system and settings have an influence so you should consider pictures and videos as hints rather than definitive as to the appearance of cores.

Every time you find a core study how it looks on your system and always use the same settings such as night vision on so you don’t change the look.

I set the Pulse Wave Analyser to my secondary trigger which has a secondary binding of one of the rotaries on my throttle so I ping continuously as I make my way through the ring, the same effect can be achieved by placing a weight on the bound key.
 
I have just spent a half hour over lunch break finding only dimly glowing orange rocks with nothing in them of worth - no fissures, and I'm in the same hotspot that WreckRoot was in with me last night. When he found a good asteroid, it looks different and what I'm expecting to my PWA too.
I have no custom colours on my HUD (got rid of my cyan colour scheme earlier today just in case it screws things up).
I don't get it - I just don't find them when I'm on my own.
 
Anyone having issues core mining? I was mining and my ship exploded with no explanation? No enemy, full health n Shields, experienced core miner, playing in solo also , bit baffling as was just finishing collection from a core and exploded lol was not moving or pressing any buttons, was waiting for limpets to deliver, hmm
 
Anyone having issues core mining? I was mining and my ship exploded with no explanation? No enemy, full health n Shields, experienced core miner, playing in solo also , bit baffling as was just finishing collection from a core and exploded lol was not moving or pressing any buttons, was waiting for limpets to deliver, hmm
Maybe one of the limpets delivered a proximity mine? :LOL:

In all seriousness, though, you can check your logs (journals) - they are in C:\Users\%username%\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous
If you don't understand them at first glance, you can post them here (maybe create a new thread for it, though) sowe can take a look and tell you what happened. If it's something worthy of support ticket, maybe, or just something you overlooked.
(like accidentally turning on silent running and cooking your ship - that's a popular trick. :p )
 
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Forgot to mention i'm on Ps4, yeah did think i may have turned on silent running by accident lol(yup I've done it before lol) but my ship just exploded no heat warning or anything,
 
I'm going back out to try again , hopefully ship stays intact lol , 6 mil rebuy is a pain(Python) but i love core mining, will chalk it down to silent running even though i know i didn't switch it on and had no heat warnings ,just exploded, cannot give a explanation as to why it exploded other than silent running , so just to justify it in my head i switched on silent running by accident even though i know i didn't lol
 
Quick update , was mining again before , no problems this time so maybe i did hit silent running but don't recall it? such a noob mistake if i did lol
nice little haul and my mining ship :)


Don't think about it too hard, I'd say. Last updates borked a lot of things, so maybe it really was some sort of server hiccup or something.
Happy blasting, mate. :)
 
If you were looking at your screen, stationary and just blew up - I'd say it could be a bug.
My next bet in this scenario of being accidentally blown up when waiting for limpets is that you put yourself in the way of a rotating asteroid.
 
Definitely not hit by a asteroid, and nothing on radar as the usual pirate check was already done , still baffling as to why it happened, i spent around 3 hours mining after it happened and no problems, I've been core mining for 4+ years on pc and ps4 and only hit silent running once in that time and never once killed by a pirate or other enemy, i forgot at the time that the ps4 records the last 15 minutes gaming, i could have played it back and seen what happened, :)
 
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