Help Mining for iron

philmo · Oct 31, 2016

I have only done a little mining a long time ago, I need to find some Iron and fancy a change of scene by doing some mining.

Any advice would be welcome, I plan to kit out my Anaconda as I will need to take the Iron with me to my engineer stop to start the ranking up progress to get a better FSD.

1) Where am I best to go ?

2) Do I need a refinery, I note it suggested somewhere if I am only after core minerals that I do not need one.

3) Any advice on limpit numbers (cost is not an issue) - will also gut ship to do this.

Thanks in advance

Grumpy jawa · Oct 31, 2016

Metallic belt, no refinery needed. Just blast rocks and limpets will collect the engineer stuff.

S~P · Oct 31, 2016

Can also get iron from surface mining, just need a SRV.

philmo · Oct 31, 2016

Grumpy jawa said:
Metallic belt, no refinery needed. Just blast rocks and limpets will collect the engineer stuff.

Thanks, can search for metallic rings via a filter ?

S~P · Oct 31, 2016

If you are going mining rings you should take a refinery, collector and prospector limpets, may as well make some money as well. Also worth mentioning that some mined commodities are needed for engineering I. E. Platinum etc.

goemon · Oct 31, 2016

philmo said:
Thanks, can search for metallic rings via a filter ?

here is a list with a handy tool: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...of-the-wild-A-list-of-pristine-metallic-rings

...

you want as many active collectors as possible, ~5 per medium mining laser. a condas distributor can easily sustain 3 mining lasers, so fit enough to have 15+ active limpets.

Soulwind · Oct 31, 2016

I'd load up with a prospector and refinery. May as well make free money while your at it. You'll also b wed some platinum and osmium for some upgrades. Also need painite for one of the engineers. At a metallic ring you'll also find lots of nickel, sulphur, and phosphorus to use in the low grade grinding stage.

JetsonRING · Oct 31, 2016

Been playing since June, '16 and have never had to mine for iron, have always received it as a secondary "materials" mission reward.

Praseodymium now, that must be mined for that level 2 FSD upgrade.

IndigoWyrd · Oct 31, 2016

JetsonRING said:
Been playing since June, '16 and have never had to mine for iron, have always received it as a secondary "materials" mission reward.

Praseodymium now, that must be mined for that level 2 FSD upgrade.

Pretty much any rock on any planet will likely produce iron.
Not too unusual from Asteroids either.
Iron is pretty much anywhere you look, does not require refining, and I often have to jettison excess iron because it fills my materials hold.

Limoncello Lizard · Oct 31, 2016

If you are mining for materials, rather than ores. Metal rich and rocky rings are actually better than metallic ones. Take a prospector controller and search for High material content roids.
If you are after specific materials, don't deploy limpets. Check the fragment cloud in the Contacts tab in the lefthand menu, select the fragmetns you want and send a limpet for each. This uses lots of limpets, as each limpet will only collect one fragment, but it saves time.

philmo · Nov 1, 2016

Limoncello Lizard said:
If you are mining for materials, rather than ores. Metal rich and rocky rings are actually better than metallic ones. Take a prospector controller and search for High material content roids.
If you are after specific materials, don't deploy limpets. Check the fragment cloud in the Contacts tab in the lefthand menu, select the fragmetns you want and send a limpet for each. This uses lots of limpets, as each limpet will only collect one fragment, but it saves time.

Ahh ok - did my IRON search last night. Did get some (stupidly found that I already had some from past mission rewards). I did look in some Metal and Rocky rings but did not egt that much iron, maybe I have was looking in the wrong place. But to be clear for Iron (apart from planet surfaces) metal rich and rocky rings are better ?

Limoncello Lizard · Nov 1, 2016

philmo said:
But to be clear for Iron (apart from planet surfaces) metal rich and rocky rings are better ?

Iron is in all ring types, even icy. But it's all random what you get. There does appear to be some distiction between ring types for the rarer materials (cadmium, niobium, tin, tungsten), but for the common ones (C, Fe[iron], Ni, P, S) it doesnn't matter. But for larget amounts of materials, rocky and metal rich are the places to mine, yes.