Mining

Overview

Mining is the profession of extracting ore from asteroids; this 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 are best suited and optimized to mine and how best to haul the ore to a refining station and then to the market. All miners should attempt to maximize their efficiency which is typically measured by the amount of m3 a player can mine in a cycle and is considered the golden standard. For example Veldspar is the most common and cheapest ore in all of EVE and has a volume of .1m3; Scordite is the next most common ore but has a volume of .15m3. Therefore, Veldspar is mined 3/2 times faster than Scordite so in order for Scordite to be more profitable than Veldspar its market price must be 3/2 greater than Veldspar. If it isn't then it is actually more profitable to mine Veldspar even if its market price is lower (since each cycle gives greater amounts of ore).