Mining

Overview

Mining is the profession of extracting ore from asteroids; these ores can then be refined into minerals which in turn are used in the production of all player created items in EVE, such as ships and modules. It is one of the few professions that is immediately available to beginning players and most EVE billionaires started their careers by mining. In its simplest form, mining can be accomplished by finding an asteroid site in a system and mining its asteroids with mining lasers.

Prospecting

Efficiency

Before mining, it is best advised that players determine what is the most profitable way to mine. This involves determining what asteroids to mine, where to find these asteroids, which ships (and skills) are best suited and optimized to mine and (in most cases) how best to haul the ore to a refining station and then to the market. All miners should attempt to maximize their efficiency (and therefore their profitability) which is typically measured by the amount of m3 mined in a cycle of a mining laser. For example Veldspar is the most common and cheapest ore in EVE and has a volume of .1m3, Scordite is the next most common ore but has a volume of .15m3. Therefore, for every cycle, 3/2 more Veldspar is mined than Scordite. To be more profitable Scordite's market price must be in turn 3/2 greater than Veldspar. Since the market is player driven ore and mineral prices are ever changing, hence miners should always check the market for the most efficient ore/mineral to mine for.

Asteroids

Asteroid belts can be found in most systems either on the overview window or by right clicking and using the Asteroid Belt section(Ombey's 2D Maps contains information on the number of asteroid belts in a system). Each asteroid belt has several properties: what asteroids compose the asteroid belt, what asteroids are present and the overall quantity and quality of the asteroids. In empire space there are six asteroids: Veldspar, Scordite, Pyroxeres, Plagioclase, Omber and Kernite. However only a subset of these six asteroids can be found any system depending on which faction controls the region. Low-sec and 0.0 space each have their own respective set of asteroids (which is compounded, so low-sec space contains all the empire space asteroids and 0.0 space contains both empire and low-sec asteroids). A complete list can be found at ToxicFire's ORE Map. Keep in mind that asteroids only spawn after downtime so there will be belts that are devoid of a certain asteroid (or any asteroid in some cases) because other miners have already mined it out.

Ships

There are three types of ships used in mining: a mining ship, a industrial ship and a mining support ship.

Mining Ships

In general any ship that has a turret slot is capable of becoming a mining ship. Caldari ships typically make good mining ships because of their CPU capacities but each race has a frigate with mining bonuses and typically players will receive one upon completion of the tutorial mission. A typical progression of mining ships would be to start out in a racial frigate, then advance to a mining cruiser or a mining barge and then finally to either a mining battleship or a exhumer.