Have been mining quite a bit over the holidays and as I've been asked a lot, I thought I'd share my findings.
1. Where to go
- Once you have found a hot spot for the stuff you want to mine (i.e. void opals), don't drop directly into the POI by closing in and hitting J when you are below 1Mm. Instead fly to a random spot within the marked area. Chances are you will find a spot where nobody has been before. Cracked asteroids are persistent.
2. How to locate crackable core asteroids
- After entering the ring, lock on the hotspot POI as an orientation and fly towards it in a zic-zac course.
- While cruising towards the POI keep using your Pulse Wave Scanner. You really(!) want an A grade one for maximum scanning range.
- Telling core asteroids apart from other ones can be a bit difficult and requires a bit of practice. There a a few things to keep in mind, though:
a) Core Roids always appear very bright yellow. It can differ from rig to rig but once you have found a few, you know what to look for
b) Core Roids inside a given ring always have the exact same shape. Once you have found one, if you see a bright yellow roid with an obviously different shape or size, you are safe to ignore it.
c) Once you found a candidate, close in and either fire a prospector limpet into it or, if you want to save limpets, eyeball it with ship lights switched on and look for fissures, before firing a limpet. If unsure fire a limpet. They are cheap.
3. How to crack it open
- While this seems to be a no brainer, there's a way to do it with maximum efficiency in order to save seismic charge launcher ammo and time: Look for weak fissures and plant a full yield charge into 2 of them. Fine tune to optimal yield range with setting additional, weaker charges into strong or average fissures. With a bit of practice you can reliably crack a roid open with as little as 3 charges.
4. How to collect stuff
- Like everything else, efficiency is important to maximize profits per hour. More limpets mean less time wasted. 5-6 have proven ideal (this means you need at least one size 5 and one size 3 controller) as you have to wait a bit anyway for the asteroid parts to drift apart so you can blast the remaining chunks off from their inside. If you use more than 6, they are probably finished collecting the freed chunks before you can enter the roid with your ship. If you use less, you waste valuable time you could spend looking for the next roid.
- Also don't waste too much time trying to hit the chunks with more than one abrasion blaster. It's tempting but try not to lose too much time for a few chunks. The next roid is already waiting for you not too far away
- Personally I have found that filling you cargo hold 1/3 with limpets before going to mine is sufficient when using 5 collector limpets and eyeballing roids for fissures. As long as you are unsure about how many limpets to carry, rather bring too many limpets than too few. You can alway jettison some to make room as needed.
5. Where to sell
- Before selling your freshly mined minerals, look up the best prices on INARA or other sites. The selling price for Void Opals as an example ranges from 180k/t up to 1.6 mill/t, so doing a few jumps to the highest paying station is worth the extra time it takes.
1. Where to go
- Once you have found a hot spot for the stuff you want to mine (i.e. void opals), don't drop directly into the POI by closing in and hitting J when you are below 1Mm. Instead fly to a random spot within the marked area. Chances are you will find a spot where nobody has been before. Cracked asteroids are persistent.
2. How to locate crackable core asteroids
- After entering the ring, lock on the hotspot POI as an orientation and fly towards it in a zic-zac course.
- While cruising towards the POI keep using your Pulse Wave Scanner. You really(!) want an A grade one for maximum scanning range.
- Telling core asteroids apart from other ones can be a bit difficult and requires a bit of practice. There a a few things to keep in mind, though:
a) Core Roids always appear very bright yellow. It can differ from rig to rig but once you have found a few, you know what to look for
b) Core Roids inside a given ring always have the exact same shape. Once you have found one, if you see a bright yellow roid with an obviously different shape or size, you are safe to ignore it.
c) Once you found a candidate, close in and either fire a prospector limpet into it or, if you want to save limpets, eyeball it with ship lights switched on and look for fissures, before firing a limpet. If unsure fire a limpet. They are cheap.
3. How to crack it open
- While this seems to be a no brainer, there's a way to do it with maximum efficiency in order to save seismic charge launcher ammo and time: Look for weak fissures and plant a full yield charge into 2 of them. Fine tune to optimal yield range with setting additional, weaker charges into strong or average fissures. With a bit of practice you can reliably crack a roid open with as little as 3 charges.
4. How to collect stuff
- Like everything else, efficiency is important to maximize profits per hour. More limpets mean less time wasted. 5-6 have proven ideal (this means you need at least one size 5 and one size 3 controller) as you have to wait a bit anyway for the asteroid parts to drift apart so you can blast the remaining chunks off from their inside. If you use more than 6, they are probably finished collecting the freed chunks before you can enter the roid with your ship. If you use less, you waste valuable time you could spend looking for the next roid.
- Also don't waste too much time trying to hit the chunks with more than one abrasion blaster. It's tempting but try not to lose too much time for a few chunks. The next roid is already waiting for you not too far away
- Personally I have found that filling you cargo hold 1/3 with limpets before going to mine is sufficient when using 5 collector limpets and eyeballing roids for fissures. As long as you are unsure about how many limpets to carry, rather bring too many limpets than too few. You can alway jettison some to make room as needed.
5. Where to sell
- Before selling your freshly mined minerals, look up the best prices on INARA or other sites. The selling price for Void Opals as an example ranges from 180k/t up to 1.6 mill/t, so doing a few jumps to the highest paying station is worth the extra time it takes.
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