Does the 500 tons mined to unlock the engineer have to be collected and sold or can it just be lasered out and left.....I have no inclination for mining and am looking for an easy out
Questions about the 500 mining grind for the engineer
- Thread starter Cmdr Lucca1985
- Start date
It has to be refined.
You can eject it afterwards if you like.
edit: easiest way through (not exactly out) is
using the ship with the very best WEP charge distributor you have (largest A grade, charge enhanced if possible)
class 2 mining lasers that are covered by that
a class 1 grade A prospector limpet controller (tag everything you come across to get more fragments)
at least as many active collectors (D grade is enough) as you have WEP MW - preferably more (enough to finish collecting when the asteroid is depleted)
you can get even more fragments per asteroid if you do the whole thing within 20 km of an extraction site (beware pirates though - but if you don't care about the ore, you can always yield to them)
(more fragments per asteroid = less time spend flying to the next)
Depending on your equipment and finesse the whole thing should be done in a few hours.
You can eject it afterwards if you like.
edit: easiest way through (not exactly out) is
using the ship with the very best WEP charge distributor you have (largest A grade, charge enhanced if possible)
class 2 mining lasers that are covered by that
a class 1 grade A prospector limpet controller (tag everything you come across to get more fragments)
at least as many active collectors (D grade is enough) as you have WEP MW - preferably more (enough to finish collecting when the asteroid is depleted)
you can get even more fragments per asteroid if you do the whole thing within 20 km of an extraction site (beware pirates though - but if you don't care about the ore, you can always yield to them)
(more fragments per asteroid = less time spend flying to the next)
Depending on your equipment and finesse the whole thing should be done in a few hours.
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Aw fer......fine!!!! 
I just finished mining to unlock Selene.I had never mined before but it was less boring and less time consuming than I thought it would be.Took me around 4 hours in an Anaconda.
Get your mining chops ready, because to fully unlock Selene Jean you need to mine 10 Painite for her after the 500. You can only get the Painite by mining.
Jura system Jura 7 A Ring will make mining painite easy and make mining profitable. I just unloaded a T-9 worth of 3 P's and Gold for about 7 mil. Mining is good for loading up on materials also.
Jura system Jura 7 A Ring will make mining painite easy and make mining profitable. I just unloaded a T-9 worth of 3 P's and Gold for about 7 mil. Mining is good for loading up on materials also.
This is an ironic thread. Unlocking Selene was one of the engineer unlocks that I actually thought was fun. It only takes a few hours in a good mining ship and it introduced me to a cool part of the game I hadn’t done much. I even got some bonus mats while doing it as well.
Exactly!! Mining is my chill thing when I'm tired or ranking up and doing other things and need a break.
I got my 500T done mining in a rocky ring. There's a lot of asteroids there that are pure bauxite. It's not profitable, but pretty good in terms of tonnage refined per unit time spent mining.
Hopefully one day I'll muster the motivation to hunt for Painite. I really hate how engineers work.
Hopefully one day I'll muster the motivation to hunt for Painite. I really hate how engineers work.
Thanks for your help guys, ill get on it later on
Not making fun or any kind of statement when I say this, but how wonderful it is that the world is made up of such a wide variety of people. I cannot think of a single activity that makes me bleed out of my eyes more than mining in Elite, and that's WITH limpets, imagine life before limpets!! /faints
For me it was brain jarringly dull, but I concur with others that it didn't take long, and I did make a lot of money. I'll even tell you exactly where to go. LFT 65, drop into the inner ring of planet 4. Take a Python if you can with 2 5D collectors and 1 3d prospector, all the other slots cargo bays, you'll be doing two runs in a python with 128 cargo, two mining lasers in the medium slots (more does not help, and two 5D colelctor limpets (so 6 active collector limpets) collects at almost the same rate as you can strip the chunks off). Try to mine in a direction that makes the chunks fly away from the direction of rotation of an asteroid or the rotation will kill your limpets.
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By the time the unlock became relevant, I already had mined 500t. Really, don't treat it like a grind, treat it like an opportunity to try a different gameplay Elite has to offer. Hunt for PPPs or do a few mining missions, even go into an ice belt just to notice the differences and once you're done with it, you can make a competent decision if mining may ever be again a relevant choice for you. That's the kind of advancement you don't get a counter for.
Is there a way to get painite without mining for it? I only need 10 tons to unlock Selene.
Thank you Commander! o7
Mining would be tolerable if the fragments were collected without you having to monitor each one. No limpets, just a collector just as fuel is collected (maybe a static generator or something).
Then you could be focused on actual seeking and mining of materials, and you'd see a lot more actual players mining instead of just NPCs. The game is full of material to mine, but it's not profitable vs other activities and far less exciting than pew pew.
Then you could be focused on actual seeking and mining of materials, and you'd see a lot more actual players mining instead of just NPCs. The game is full of material to mine, but it's not profitable vs other activities and far less exciting than pew pew.