High‑Sec Mining in 2026: What We Were Promised vs. What We Got
Over the years CCP promised that high‑sec resource availability would “improve” and become “more accessible” for solo and casual players.
But the current 2026 reality shows the opposite.
Several ores that used to exist in high‑sec are simply gone, including all ores that provided mid‑tier minerals like Nocxium, Zydrine and Megacyte.
These minerals are now exclusively found in low‑sec and null‑sec ores.
What high‑sec miners can still mine in 2026:
Tritanium
Pyerite
Mexallon
Isogen
What high‑sec miners can no longer mine at all:
Nocxium
Zydrine
Megacyte
This means a solo high‑sec industrial player can only mine one of the four minerals required for T1/T2 industry.
The rest must be bought, imported, or obtained from dangerous space that solo players cannot realistically access.
So instead of being “buffed,” high‑sec has effectively been nerfed:
Less ore variety
Less self‑sufficiency
More dependency on the market
Higher costs for solo players
Fewer meaningful mining options
If the goal was to make high‑sec more viable for industry, the current ore distribution does the exact opposite.
High‑sec miners have fewer tools, fewer choices, and less independence than ever before.
It would be great if CCP revisited high‑sec ore diversity and mid‑tier mineral availability, because right now the system is working against the players it was supposed to help.
you said : that Ducinium en Eifyrium could be found in high sec as moon mineable ores /materials but These ores belong to the “Abyssal Ore” group. They can be found exclusively in:
Pochven: The region taken over by the Triglavians. They appear here in “Ore Anomalies.”
Abyssal Deadspace: You can sometimes encounter them in the pockets you enter using Filaments, though the yield there is often lower than in Pochven.
Calling my information ‘outdated AI’ doesn’t change the mechanics.Ducinium and Eifyrium are Abyssal Ores found in Pochven and Abyssal pockets — not in high‑sec belts.That’s why solo high‑sec miners still cannot mine Nocxium, Zydrine or Megacyte from belt ore.
Border Ore Anomalies are not high‑sec belt ores. They are special sites that spawn only in 0.5 border systems and require scanning, travel and risk they are not part of the basic ore‑to‑mineral loop that solo high‑sec miners rely on.
“My point remains the same: high‑sec belt miners cannot mine Nocxium, Zydrine or Megacyte from belts in 2026. Border ores, abyssal ores and Pochven ores are separate systems and do not change that.
You do not have to scan them down, they just show up as a warpable beacon. 0.5 is high sec. You are just digging your self a hole here. It’s not a sin to be wrong, especially as a returning player. This is such a weird hill to die on.
The Difficulty Curve Has Become a Wall — Not a Path
There’s one more thing that needs to be said, because it explains why both new and returning players are walking away:
The difficulty curve of EVE today is nothing like it was six years ago.
Back then:
the meta was complex, but understandable
progression felt achievable
high‑sec income was enough to build toward something
returning players could catch up without going bankrupt
Today:
the meta is overloaded with systems, mechanics and requirements
the progression curve is stretched across years, not months
high‑sec income is too low to support meaningful growth
returning players must invest huge amounts of ISK (or real money) just to reach the level they had years ago
And that’s the real problem:
If I had to start EVE today as a new player, I would quit after three days. Not because the game is bad — but because the curve is simply too steep.
A game where the first steps feel like a 2‑year commitment will never keep new players.
And a game where returning players must spend hundreds of euros just to “catch up” will not keep veterans either.
This isn’t about difficulty.
It’s about accessibility.
EVE doesn’t need to be easier — it needs to be fairer, clearer, and more rewarding at the start.
Until that happens, the game will continue to lose the very people it needs most:
the new pilots and the returning veterans who once loved it.
The curve is far less steep than it used to be when I started in 2017.
EVE now has a much better tutorial, AIR challenges to guide new players, the addition of the Agency to make gameplay choices explicitly visible and easy to find, skill points to catch up handed for doing daily tasks, homefronts and abyssals that offer much better ISK opportunities for new players in HS than ever before.
Back then players had to figure all that out by themselves. Nowadays the game holds your hand as you play; the learning curve of EVE has never been flatter and the start never more rewarding than now.
So I’m not sure why you are complaining about the learning curve becoming steeper.
But I can speculate.
What also changed compared to when you played last time is that you no longer need to engage your brain as much. It’s not needed anymore to confidently post on the forums these days. Searching info takes less skill, you could just rely on whatever (incorrect or incomplete) data AI confidently tells you without verifying it’s correctness, and then let AI write a lengthy post and various equally lengthy responses for you with minimal effort.
I can see how this game might have become more difficult when practicing critical thought is much more rare than it was in 2020.
Whats wrong with these people that keep arguing based on AI nonsense walls-of-text despite being told facts by actual players? It’s becoming a real pest…
High‑sec mining isn’t “wrong”. It’s one of the core activities the game has supported since day one, and it’s still the first contact point for most new and returning players.
My point isn’t that high‑sec mining should be the best activity. My point is that the long‑term progression curve for players who start in high‑sec has become steeper and more expensive than it used to be.
If CCP didn’t want high‑sec mining to matter, they wouldn’t keep updating it, balancing it, and designing new content around it.
So saying “you’re doing it wrong” doesn’t address anything I actually said.
And honestly, if anyone wants to understand how the game feels for new or returning players in 2026, spending some time living in high‑sec and progressing the way they do would be very eye‑opening.
It’s easy to say “you’re doing it wrong” from a veteran perspective — it’s much harder to see the game through the eyes of someone starting over.
The game changes over time and certain activities become more or less lucrative, one can assume that this is mostly deliberate on CCPs part.
For instance, when I started playing ninja salvage (probing down level 4 mission runners in a T1 explo ship and salvaging their wrecks) was a lucrative profession, then CCP released an expansion focussed on exploration and suddenly the loot from salvage was available in hackable cans in explo sites, and the market crashed, rigs got a lot cheaper and all us poor ninjas were out of a job.
After that I joined a corp (The Lost Shadows) who were highsec pirates, alongside the usual highsec stuff (wardecs, mission jumping etc.) we used to gank haulers. Not frieghters, t1 haulers, because in those days you got insurance payouts even if it was CONCORD which destroyed your ship, so you could meta fit a fleet of ruptures for only a few million more than the insurance payout and thus the range of profitable targets was significantly larger. Then CCP nerfed that so we had to find other things to do.
If your chosen playstyle has been nerfed, then one can only assume that it is being discouraged and is not meant to be, as you claim, “the first contact point for most new and returning players”
I’m sorry, I have never mined and do not know the first thing about it, so I can’t really suggest what you should do to make it work for you, but I do see people talking about it in my alliance comms and they seem to manage to make enough ISK to be happy. Perhaps you need to consider joining an alliance in a more lucrative area of space?
Well, this is a bit subjective……it really depends on a few factors.
I mine in high sec all the time. From my view, i dont worry about isk or isk per hour or any of that silly stuff. I mine or do other tasks for the enjoyment that the game brings me. Thats all it is for me.
Other players who are a bit more serious about it….isk per hour is a big deal to them. The amounts of isk theyre generating is really their only focal point. Once one has made the amounts that are obtainable in dangerous territories, theres never going back to the chump change that high sec delivered.
It just all depends on what the player is really after and what they believe how much effort should be focused in it. Some folks still think that a bill is a lot of isk….while to others its a mere pile of change to them.
Highsec income is, if anything, far too high at present.
HS moon mining was a mistake that should be rolled back wholesale, level 4 missions should all be moved to lowsec, and T5/T6 abyssals should always give a suspect flag.
I’d argue that in L4 missions themselves are somewhat okay, as content. But the payouts in Bounty and LP should be reduced and Burner missions should always lead into LowSec. Then they’d cap out at 150m/hour in a maxskilled Marauder and max-knowledge in how to blitz them properly. Imho a good income cap and somewhat matching T4 Abyssals in a good ship with a pilot who knows what he is doing.
traces need to be opened within 4 AU of a gravitational body like a planet, a moon or a star (no more deepsave running, if you do it, you expose yourself like every missionrunner does)
traces can be scanned out with Core Scanner Probes (they are an energy signature, not an object like a ship, deployable or a drone…)
I mean, yes you are using AI to write a lot of these posts, I can tell without tools, but I just want to let you know, ai checking is commonly available now, but the bold “long-term progression curve” and the double length dashes are dead giveaways, so don’t feed us crap and call it cake.
You say the that old players have to spend, but they don’t, you simply aren’t accessing the tools CCP has given you. They give free SP, and most activities pay more than ever, if you can’t make 100 mil isk per hour I don’t know what to tell you, you can do it in frigates 3-10 mil frigates often less.
Someone even pointed out that if it was just you having an issue with getting the minerals there is a high sec avenue for that, so I’m not sure what you want.
If you just want to sit and mine belts, you can do that, but it probably wont make what I consider the baseline for isk making activities. That’s by design, I started playing eve in like 2012, and I’ll tell you, it didn’t make the baseline then either.
Plenty of corps with safe space to fly in with good ore. Just saw one of those new ore sites the other day, we’re eating good, you are choosing not to eat.
Maybe they need to up the rewards on interfering with level 4 missions in highsec.
Ninja Salvaging used to be a profitable business, but I’m not sure how to make it so again without nerfing exploration and pushing the cost of rigs back up.
Maybe mission pockets could be FW, so if you’re fighting Angels in the mission then Angel Cartel FW players can probe you out and attack you without fear of CONCORD in the mission.
but These ores belong to the “Abyssal Ore” group. They can be found exclusively in: