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How to Mine

Ship mining​

What ships can mine?​

What do you need?​

  • Mining head
    • The default mining head works, but you're going to want to get a better mining head
    • The Prospector takes size 1 heads and the Mole takes size 2 heads
    • Different mining heads will offer different properties. Here is a listing of those heads. My favorite is the Lancet
      • Instability: a low instability makes it easier to maintain power going into the rock
      • Optimal range: the distance your ship must be from the rock
      • Catastrophic charge rate: the lower the better
      • Charge window: the higher the better
      • Shatter damage: the lower the better
      • Optimal charge rate: the higher the better
      • Resisitance: the lower the better
  • Consumables
  • Handheld Mining Modifiers
    • If a rock is too large to crack alone with your Prospector, you can use a handheld mining modifier to change the resistance, instability, charge window, and more. You can find a listing of those here, with their modifiers, price, and locations.
    • To apply it to a rock, land near the rock, walk up to the rock, take the handheld mining modifier out of your inventory, hold 'F', place it on the rock, change the levels to match the graph, and set it. Then mine the rock.

Where can you mine?​

  • Pretty much anywhere in space where there are rocks or on planets and moons. There are, however, better places to mine. You can find a listing of those here

    • Anywhere on these planets or in these belts and lagrange points are fine to mine. It's random

  • If you'd like to go to the Aaron Halo belt 5 (a very good hotspot for asteroid belt mining), here are some ways to get there

    • From ARC-L1
      1. Start at ARC-L1
      2. Target CRU-L5 and quantum jump
      3. Hit 'U' to turn off your ship and emergency drop out of quantum AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN to 39,461,005km from CRU-L5
    • From CRU-L1
      1. Start at CRU-L1
      2. Target ARC-L3 and quantum jump
      3. Hit 'U' to turn off your ship and emergency drop out of quantum AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN to 11,855,245km from ARC-L3
    • From HUR-L1
      1. Start at HUR-L1
      2. Target ARC-L4 and quantum jump
      3. Hit 'U' to turn off your ship and emergency drop out of quantum AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN to 8,678,114km from ARC-L4
    • From HUR-L2
      1. Start at HUR-L2
      2. Target ARC-L4 and quantum jump
      3. Hit 'U' to turn off your ship and emergency drop out of quantum AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN to 8,762,084km from ARC-L4
    • From MIC-L1
      1. Start at MIC-L1
      2. Target HUR-L4 and quantum jump
      3. Hit 'U' to turn off your ship and emergency drop out of quantum AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN to 7,471,595km from HUR-L4

What should you mine?​

  • Here's what to look for in order of highest to lowest worth
    • Quantanium
    • Bexalite
    • Taranite
    • Borase
    • Laranite
    • Agricium
    • Hephaestanite
    • Titanium
    • Diamond
    • Gold
    • Copper
  • When you find a rock, you want to shoot for a percentage of 15%-20% or higher of the type of material you want to mine
  • When you break the rock, you want to extract rocks that have 100%. You can mine lower %, but you're gonna get more of the good stuff and less inert stuff when it's at 100%

How do you mine?​

Once you choose a place to go to, you can begin to scan. This is how far I like to stay off the surface. The Aaron Halo belt is in space...so it doesn't matter mining1

Hit Tab to pull up the scanning window mining2

Hit Tab again and a pulse will go out mining3

You're looking for the rock icons like you see on the screen. If you're too far away, you'll see a box like on the right. If there are no rock icons, go towards the box icons to see if they're rocks. Don't go for diamond icons. Those are for hand mining or using a ROC-DS or ROC vehicle mining4

When you find a rock, get close to it and hit Tab to pull up the scanning window. Hold left click on your mouse (or whatever your keybinds are for your stick) to scan the rock and get the info for it mining5

Hit M to get into mining mode and move close enough to where your effective range (on the left) says 'Optimal'. Left mouse click to start the mining laser. You can use 'G' to switch to gimbal mode to move the beam around using your mouse vs moving the ship with the mining beam in a fixed state. Using the mouse scroll wheel, keep your power (on the left) high enough to increase the charge level and keep that in the green zone (on the right) if it gets into the red, left click to turn off the beam and boost away! The rock might blow you up! mining6

Once successful, the rock will break into smaller bits. You can further scan the rocks to see what they're made up of and further break those down. An orange outline means it can be broken down further. A purple outline means it can be extracted. Careful though! If you're extracting quantanium, as soon as you start extracting, you'll only have 15 minutes to get your ship stored at a refinery! Ensure you break everything down and you're ready to extract! To extract, right click your mouse to change to extraction and then left mouse to initiate the extraction. Your ship will let you know when you're full, but you can see the current storage all the way to the right. mining7

It's best practice to make sure your prospector or Mole is full before leaving so you're not wasting anything!

Vehicle Mining​

What vehicles can mine?​

What do you need?​

Once you have a ROC or ROC-DS, the only thing you need is proper transport. Here's a list of ships that can hold the ROC or ROC-DS. It will be updated as ships update/are added.

Where can you mine?​

  • Pretty much anywhere there are rocks on planets and moons. There are, however, better places to mine. You can find a listing of those here
    • Anywhere on these planets are fine to mine. It's random

What should you mine?​

  • Here's what to look for in order of worth
    • Hadanite
    • Aphorite
    • Dolivine
  • When you find a rock, you want to shoot for a percentage of 15%-20% or higher of the type of material you want to mine
  • When you break the rock, you want to extract rocks that have 100%. you can mine lower %, but you're gonna get more of the good stuff and less inert stuff when it's at 100%

How do you mine?​

Once you choose a place to go to, you can begin to scan in your ship. This is how far I like to stay off the surface mining1

Hit Tab to pull up the scanning window mining2

Hit Tab again and a pulse will go out mining3

You're looking for the diamond icons like you see on the screen. If you're too far away, you'll see a box like on the right. If there are no diamond icons, go towards the box icons to see if they're rocks. Don't go for rock icons. Those are for mining ships mining4

When you get close, you should see a grouping of diamond icons similar to this vehicle mining 5

Get into your ROC or ROC-DS and turn on mining mode with 'M'. Hold your targeting reticle over the rock you'd like to crack so that it highlights the rock in yellow (versus white) vehicle mining 6

Turn your beam on (left click) and slowly raise the beam's power by scrolling up on your mouse wheel. You can lower the power by scrolling down with the mouse wheel. You can see the power level of the beam to the left of the reticle (1 in the picture). Your goal is to get the bar on the right side of the reticle (2 in the picture) to stay within the optimal zone. When you do that, the bar within the optimal zone will grow until the rock cracks (3 in the picture). Once you've completed cracking the rock, the mining beam will automatically shut off. vehicle mining 7

note

If you overcharge the rock into the red zone and it explodes, you could be damaged or die! Back away immediately!

Once the rock explodes, you should see many diamond icons on the ground. Right click to switch into Extraction Mode, then left click to turn it on. Move the crosshairs towards the bottom of the reticle over the diamond icons to collect them (1 in the picture). Continue to do this until your vehicle is filled up which you can see on the left side (2 in the picture) vehicle mining 8

Once you're done, load up your vehicle, head to almost anywhere where you can sell items (major trade terminals, R&R stations, etc). You should be able to see your vehicle in the trade terminal and sell from there.