Mining missions

Mining missions are given by Mining agents and require you to mine an asteroid or set of asteroids in a mission pocket - usually until the asteroids are depleted - and bring the ore back to the agent's station.

There is a risk of combat in mining missions, though the hostiles that show up tend to be much weaker than hostiles found in security missions. It is advisable to have some offensive capability (like a set of combat drones) or have a strong enough tank that you can ignore any hostiles that show up and start shooting at you.

Higher level mining missions require you to mine larger amounts of ore:

• Level 1 missions will require mining up to 2000  m³ of ore,
• Level 2 up to 6 000  m³ of ore,
• Level 3 up to 9 000  m³ of ore or 10 000  m³ of ice,
• Level 4 up to 45 000  m³ of ore, 20 000  m³ of ice or 5 000  m³ gas.

Thus, you can do high level mining missions with a low level ship, but it begins to take more time than it is worth.

Ships and Fitting

The same ship that you use for regular mining should work fine for a mining mission:

• Level 1 Venture
• Level 2 Venture or Prospect
• Level 3 Mining Barge
• Level 4 Exhumer

If you have more than one mining ship available, first note the amount of ore required and make sure your ship has the capacity. Once that is settled, a more tanky ship will make NPC attacks less bothersome.

Of course, you do not need a mining ship to do mining missions. Any ship that can mount a mining unit will do, as will any ship that can carry mining drones. However, dedicated mining ships tend to work faster and carry more ore.

If you have room, you may want to carry a Salvage Drone to salvage the wrecks of the pirates that you kill. If you have a very large drone bay, you may want to carry a set of Mining Drones - however, these drones do not add a great deal to your mining capacity, so many miners do not use them at all.

Rewards

Most mining missions provide both ISK and loyalty points. Higher level missions result in more of each.

Useful implants that can be purchased with Loyalty Points include mining yield, mining upgrade CPU penalty, ice harvester duration, gas cloud harvester duration, and reprocessing waste improvement.

Mining Mission Ores

Mining missions typically use unique ores. These are always an equivalent of the regular ores.

Note that the unique mission ores are considered their own type of ore by the game, and CANNOT be mined with the ore-specific crystals for their equivalent ore

• Augumene = Pyroxeres
• Mercium = Omber
• Banidine = Veldspar
• Pithix = Jaspet
• Arisite = Gneiss
• Oeryl = Dark Ochre
• Geodite = Crokite
• Polygypsum = Arkonor
• Lyavite = Kernite

Usually, the asteroids you are asked to mine will be entirely used up while gathering ore for the mission. That ore will be taken by the agent to complete the mission.

Regarding the AIR Career Program the Mining mission Special Ores are considered to be their equivalent for the AIR Career ore harvesting missions. Thus this is an easy way to mine Kernite (mine Lyavite instead).

In Vanguard sites a site called the Nation Mining Colony can be found. To complete it, 255 units of Lyavite are needed. Thus, you can generate income by farming (= not completing) missions that require you to mine Lyavite and selling it to Incursion runners. Keep in mind that they are likely to have a good Lyavite stock built up, before you spend time mining it you should have organized a buyer.