I keep hearing people saying you can make 10k-20k merits an hour... but how??

[Archvillain]

fake platinum hotspots in metal rich.

Oh ho ho... I think I have the opposite problem; the only hotspot in my local metallic ring is Serendibite... and I've never seen a drop of it. Going by the wiki, Serendibite is in metal-rich rings and I'm (plat mining) in a metallic ring. It's a fake hotspot! I didn't know the DSS would lead us astray like this! (But I knew something was wrong)

 

[Neilski]

Serendibite is in metal-rich rings

True.

I'm (plat mining) in a metallic ring

Serendibite can be core mined in metal-rich, metallic AND rocky rings.

It's a fake hotspot!

False.

 

[Archvillain]

Ooh, thanks. The T-9 I'm using for laser plat mining is in fact carrying all the core-mining gear, I've just never had a chance to use any of it. I guess I better start scanning for rocks I can crack while I laser mine

 

[CMDR_LS]

make sure you are in Metallic rings only for platinum. "metal rich" rings = you go poor. fake platinum hotspots in metal rich.
must be Metallic

I did. multiple times.

I'll give it another try. I still have some time before KCDII comes out haha

 

[BelExandor]

I did. multiple times.

I'll give it another try. I still have some time before KCDII comes out haha

What you're looking for is in Wargis. Planet 13. All the platinum you'll ever need.

 

[nemolomen]

One of my squad mates asked me how many merits I made per hour, so I did a tiny sample of one trip to a HazRes. It took me right at 30 minutes to run out of ammo and I got a tad over 6k merits. That doesn't translate to 12k per hour, since I had to rearm and return. I also tend to take breaks often and go outside for a cigar and such.

With Engineering mats being so, um, plentiful these days, can you rearm in the field?

So bounty hunting is an enjoyable method that nets a decent amount.

<edit> That test was solo. The bounties and merits come much faster when teamed up with your friends. </edit>

Nice!

 

[MottiKhan]

With Engineering mats being so, um, plentiful these days, can you rearm in the field?

Yes, and I do if I get a particularly good bounty hunting instance with multiple condas and clippers. But most instances are pretty average, so I don't bother with rearming. Also, I can't rearm shield cells in the field. That, and I enjoy my cigars

 

[Archvillain]

Welp. I just turned in 95M of exobio and got no merits at all!

So that sucked.

I discovered and scanned the biology today and yesterday so it's newer than Nov7. I guess 95M isn't enough to count? (Hmm, if the threshold ignored the first-discovery bonuses then the value it's checking would be much lower.)

I've never done any exo-bio before, is that an issue? It earned me a couple of exobio rank upgrades, and the notes for the first upgrade said I could now pledge to a power ...but I was already pledged to a power.

I guess it's back to mining

 

[Nowski]

I guess 95M isn't enough to count?

From what I could tell (see this comment and others below in the same thread) you need to turn in around 40M per system for it to pass the threshold.

I've also seen people talk about per-body thresholds, something which I didn't test.

Another potentially confusing point is that the popup merits notification tends to be hidden behind the exo hand-in UI that shows the credit rewards, so unless you check before and after on the Powerplay UI, you may gain merits and not even notice.

In any case, the per-hour merit rates you can get from exobiology are extremely poor compared to mining or settlement raids, for example. Even cartographic data is more time efficient. So while someone returning from a 3 month expedition may net a tidy amount of merits as a side benefit, perhaps, it's not worth doing purely as a for-merits activity.

 

[Dragsham]

Think plat think Metallica!!
But l h8 laser mining so l just do cores, sub surface etc.
So your after an allied system with the relevant ring you want, in boom, with either industrial, Extraction, or refinery or combos thereof.
I don't mine for credits so the price is negligible. But demand isnt. So demand is a requisite too.
Let's say I mined 300 monazite (cores)
I sell 10 at a time for 3500 merits.
Takes me about 2 to 2.5 hrs to fill the conda.
I'm crap at maths I'll let someone else figure it out. This was a week or so ago when I found the above criteria.
But atm where I'm at there's no such luck and im just scanning wakes and handing in 500 cp every half hour or less if I scan enuff to pop 2 level ups = 500 cps.
Dead boring.
But I'm on a mission. To boldly change a fortified to a stronghold. Solo.
Last time i looked i was level 160

 

[Neilski]

I sell 10 at a time for 3500 merits.

Selling everything at once has always been better for me than selling 1 or a few at a time. Mining doesn't have the weird & monumentally stupid bonus for selling "1 t at a time", thankfully. Try selling 10, then 20, and I think you'll find you get more than double the merits for 20 than for 10, and still more merits/ton for selling the rest in 1 hit. However, my experience is limited to selling from my 192 t Python and people have mentioned that in larger ships they sometimes don't get merits for everything they sell. The "empty any full refinery bins before selling" advice is probably important here.

In my experience it's easy to find cores in icy rings but the sale prices are relatively low so I've typically only made 10k merits/hour there.
In rocky rings, it's much harder for me to spot the cores, but the financial (and thus merit) yields are massively higher, so I typically make more than 20k merits/hour, and my best run was over 36k merits/hour.
I'm still confused by the PWS behaviour in rocky rings though - the "glow overlap" between cores and non-cores seems quite pronounced, whereas in icy rings I have far more confidence.

Above all else though: don't grind or you'll start hating the activity and the game. I know this from bitter personal experience, and I seem to have to relearn it every time I return to the game...

 

[Jokerman]

you get a 50% merit bonus to your activites if they are activities that are especially valued by the power you are pledged to.

Which activities get bonuses from which powers is listed in this guide by Nowski


yeah, I suggest avoid that approach, or be very careful with it. That's how people start grinding and end up hating the game instead of having fun
Whichever ways you get merits, I think it's more important that they should be ways you enjoy than it is to work at min/maxing everything

On this point, set yourself a goal (and err on the modest side of the range) and once you hit it, stop, and go do something else.
BurnOut creeps up on you unnoticed and then the day comes and you kind suddently react with .. "man, this sucks" and you realize that it's not fun ....

S!

 

[BL1P]

Simplest proof: the top player in my power according to the in-game leaderboard made 2.6 million merits last week (and similar results can be seen in other weeks and other powers)

If they played 24 hours every day that would be 2,600,000 / 168 ~= 15,000 merits per hour.
More normal "top 10" scores in all powers tend to be around 500,000 merits per week, which is still over 10,000 merits per hour for anyone playing ED as a full-time job.

That doesn't of course say anything about how it's done, how long it actually took, or whether the method to do so is one you'd actually want to do for an hour (never mind for 40 or 168 of them) but it shows that it's possible.

o7 fellow Kainite

 

[mtfatboy3006]

I tried selling cartographic data - got zero merits
I tried selling exo biology data - got zero merits

mining is busted because you have to sell in the same system and 99% of the times, those hot spots complete waste of times. Wasted hours just to barely fill 33% of the cargo hull

Cartographic and exobio data have to cross a certain value threshold before they award merits. A rule of thumb for cartographic is a system has to have at least one body valued over 1M credits. That's not the real number, I've earned merit with slightly less, but it's an estimate. It's best to go far enough out for first-to-discover bonuses. I forget how much exobio has to be worth before it counts. You will earn high merits per hour, but you will spend many hours doing it.

Mineral hot spots are often a waste of time in ED, whether for powerplay or for profit. They buff (by a small percentile) the likelihood of that material occurring for deep core mining, but the results are still random and often unnoticeable. They don't affect laser mining at all. The quality of the ring is more important. Find a system controlled by your power with pristine metallic or HMC rings that buys the relevant materials (this can be a huge pain). Dropping into a random point on the ring works fine; I drop in on a monazite or alexandrite hot spot if there is one, but not a platinum hot spot, because platinum is the LEAST valuable of the highly valuable minerals to go for, so a platinum hot spot slightly decreases the chance of finding more valuable core materials instead. Laser mine Osmium, and core mine Monazite, Alexandrite, Serendibite, and Platinum. I crack painite, too, while grumbling about my luck. I like to subsurface mine as well, but that sinks probably more time than it is worth, and the seismic missile takes up a hard point that could be used for something else. You will make high merits per hour, but you will spend hours doing it.

They aren't methods that produce high yield in a single hour. It's high yield/hour over an hours-long investment. And a 10K average would require some lucky RNG, I think. I've never actually calculated, but I doubt I've ever averaged that much, especially since I tend to go for Samarium and Palladium while i'm there to stockpile in my carrier for trade missions.

 

[Kzak]

Cartographic and exobio data have to cross a certain value threshold before they award merits. A rule of thumb for cartographic is a system has to have at least one body valued over 1M credits. That's not the real number, I've earned merit with slightly less, but it's an estimate. It's best to go far enough out for first-to-discover bonuses. I forget how much exobio has to be worth before it counts. You will earn high merits per hour, but you will spend many hours doing it.

Mineral hot spots are often a waste of time in ED, whether for powerplay or for profit. They buff (by a small percentile) the likelihood of that material occurring for deep core mining, but the results are still random and often unnoticeable. They don't affect laser mining at all. The quality of the ring is more important. Find a system controlled by your power with pristine metallic or HMC rings that buys the relevant materials (this can be a huge pain). Dropping into a random point on the ring works fine; I drop in on a monazite or alexandrite hot spot if there is one, but not a platinum hot spot, because platinum is the LEAST valuable of the highly valuable minerals to go for, so a platinum hot spot slightly decreases the chance of finding more valuable core materials instead. Laser mine Osmium, and core mine Monazite, Alexandrite, Serendibite, and Platinum. I crack painite, too, while grumbling about my luck. I like to subsurface mine as well, but that sinks probably more time than it is worth, and the seismic missile takes up a hard point that could be used for something else. You will make high merits per hour, but you will spend hours doing it.

They aren't methods that produce high yield in a single hour. It's high yield/hour over an hours-long investment. And a 10K average would require some lucky RNG, I think. I've never actually calculated, but I doubt I've ever averaged that much, especially since I tend to go for Samarium and Palladium while i'm there to stockpile in my carrier for trade missions.

To save time on scouting for metal rings, you can use the Elite Dangerous Merit Miner website to find the right kind of rings for your power.

Elite Dangerous Mining Helper

meritminer.cc

 

[mtfatboy3006]

To save time on scouting for metal rings, you can use the Elite Dangerous Merit Miner website to find the right kind of rings for your power.

Elite Dangerous Mining Helper

meritminer.cc

That's good to know. I've been using some of the older tools, which don't filter for everything at once.

 

[subzerofun]

Hey nice to see my site meritminer.cc mentioned here . You can indeed make an absurd amount of merits via mining. Once you are past level 100 it is more of a tool to influence a systems control points. But from what i have seen it only accelerates the expansion of already popular factions.

I wish the spread of users in different factions would be more diverse - if you look at systems owned it is just too one-sided.

I'm playing for Archon but seeing how the surrounding systems expand i can't do anything than looking at systems at the border beween factions being snatched away. Can't put enough time in to really influence things and i doubt the community for Archon is that big that i can direct some attention there.

I've added a new 3D map and plan to expand it maybe for other powerplay stuff too, but first i need to add some more mining features (Acquisition radius search, powerplay statistics showing systems owned etc.): https://meritminer.cc/map

Anyway just wanted to brag how much merits you can make when you find the right system (photoshopped two screenshots together!):

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

Hey nice to see my site meritminer.cc mentioned here . You can indeed make an absurd amount of merits via mining. Once you are past level 100 it is more of a tool to influence a systems control points. But from what i have seen it only accelerates the expansion of already popular factions.

I wish the spread of users in different factions would be more diverse - if you look at systems owned it is just too one-sided.

I'm playing for Archon but seeing how the surrounding systems expand i can't do anything than looking at systems at the border beween factions being snatched away. Can't put enough time in to really influence things and i doubt the community for Archon is that big that i can direct some attention there.

I've added a new 3D map and plan to expand it maybe for other powerplay stuff too, but first i need to add some more mining features (Acquisition radius search, powerplay statistics showing systems owned etc.): https://meritminer.cc/map

View attachment 417238


Anyway just wanted to brag how much merits you can make when you find the right system (photoshopped two screenshots together!):

View attachment 417235

View attachment 417236

View attachment 417237

Hail Archon!

I have finally pledged back yesterday after an 8 year break (from the game) and find now this amazing tool nothing else than created by one of the Kumo crew. Amazing! Great post BTW (I love screenshots).

I am yet to get in touch on their Discord channel to see how I can help efficiently (I doubt that the weekly tasks I completed within an hour will make a difference, although I did get an encouraging 16700 merits...suspecting this will slow down week after week though).
So, apart of ranking up faster (remind me at what rank we get the Kumo burgers decals??), is merits mining helping your Power if done strategically?

 

[subzerofun]

I am no expert in power play - i must confess that i spent more time with programming than playing the game since power play 2.0 came out.

But the main benefit of using the mining approach is that you can reinforce/undermine the control points of the system where you sell the goods. And since the amount of merits in mainly tied to selling price you can cherry-pick good mining & selling combinations to give you the max payout.

If you play strategically you can pick a system that is getting undermined by different powers and you can reinforce it (if mining is available) there by looking what you can mine and sell there. Same goes for when you want to undermine the enemies systems. The easiest are where good mining locations are to be found. But that means the other side has the same opportunities!

You can also use the site to search for Unoccupied systems, which you can acquire if you put enough control points in it between cycles. And here mining can also help you to influence this faster.

Unfortunately i have no idea about the relation between merits and control points and after some searching through the forums and on google i could not find a single source explaining this the way i'd like to see. Maybe someone has put up a reddit post i did not find, or it is buried somewhere in the forums here. I'd really like to find an exact formula between gained credits, merits (mainly sold amount divided by 1340) / control points.

In the whole page of https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Powerplay there is only one mention of "Control points" ... all the information on Elite is always so scattered.

I really would like to extend the How-To section on the website with information on how merits influence the control points.

I'd like to show control points in the map too, but from what i have seen there is no way to get that info from player logs. Only the game itself can access this data. That is a shame, as it would be really useful to filter systems that are losing to undermining enemies. Or help by focusing on Unoccupied systems that just need a few points more to get to the next level of control.

 

[Archvillain]

I've added a new 3D map and plan to expand it maybe for other powerplay stuff too, but first i need to add some more mining features

On the subject of new features, I was going to offer that the biggest difficulty I've seen people struggle with is understanding how to use meritminer because some of the features are powerful rather than intuitive, so some help/explanatory info would be popular...

...but I just returned to meritminer.cc to double check my memory of it and you've already gone ahead and added all that! (And judging from my first glance you've done a fantastic job of it too)

Seriously nice work!

Given how nice this tool is, and how free it is, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the (completely optional) donate button at the top right. Good work deserves support.
(Not to mention remembering to support the other tools we tend to take for granted too)