Level 4 Mining Mission Summary

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
203

My current High Sec mining mission fleet and the missions I use them for are listed below, have tested these post patch with the waste mechanic and all still work.

L4 Gas Venture
• Gas Injections
• Like Drones to a Cloud

L4 Ice Retriever (w/Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I)
• Cheap Chills
• Ice Installation

L4 Ore Retriever
• Not Gneiss at All

L4 Ore Porpoise
• Arisite Envy
• Feeding the Giant
• Geodite and Gemology

As a general rule I will regularly decline the ‘Mother Lode’ mission and on the off chance I get it twice in a row I will just go do something else while waiting out the cool down on the penalty for declining a mission twice in four hours.

2 Likes
204

Posting here to say:

People actually read this thread.

2 Likes
205

Are mining missions viable these days? I just found this thread

1 Like
206

Does the mission ore no longer count towards the activity tracker?

I no longer see any progress in my tracker. but before the mining-waste-update the ore, ice and gas from the missions was counted.

1 Like
207

Amos:

Yes they are! But the following caveat must be added: CCP did NOT fix mining missions when they added the residue mechanic. Therefore, all mining missions MUST be run with Tech 1 or faction gear, which includes any mining laser, strip miner, gas harvester, or drone. This is a pretty significant nerf to ISK/hour, unless you use faction mods…which could lead to expensive lossmails. Rewards for standings, LP, and ISK are still pretty good.

I’ll add that I still run L4 mining missions and I have a dedicated toon. I still highly recommend the Endurance though I find the Procurer to be pretty good, too.

Good luck fly safe.

2 Likes
208

We could do with an Alpha summary, to quickly see what is possible at alpha lavel

209

Alpha can’t pull any lvl 4 or 5 missions

210

For Alphas:

Alphas can certainly pull any Level 1, 2, or 3 mining mission and complete them with the only ship available to them: the Venture. There MUST be one strong caveat: there is a level 3 mission (Stay Frosty) which requires ice mining and must therefore be declined automatically (Alphas cannot mine ice).

As for m3, two level 3 mining missions bulk out at 9,000m3 which is two Venture-loads. I must caution Alpha toons against running mining drones in any mining mission as many do have NPC rats, therefore an offensive drone setup with a passive shield tank is recommended.

As a final reminder: ALL mining missions regardless of level MUST be completed with Tech 1 or Faction mining gear with a 0% residue stat.

/msd

4 Likes
211

Hello thread. I have recently been running mining l4s for ORE then selling rewards to corp/alliancemates and its pretty cool, nice to be actually making money mining with only 1, fairly low sp character. Currently my setup is 1 retriever for ore, 1 for ice, and a venture for gas and… thats it, its very low effort, though the lp/hour is also accordingly low.

Also outer ring is empty as ■■■■ so lmao, wish they had security agents (i thought i saw a level 4 sec agent, bur dotlan says no. Will check when i get home.)

212

That’s not true, I do them with Miner2 and no problem, no loss on special ores.

213

Felix:

Don’t know what to say…maybe they patched something. Or you got VERY lucky. I’ll try it out tonight and see what happens.

/msd

214

So what happened? :slight_smile:

215

My current High Sec mining mission fleet and the missions I use them for are listed below, have tested these post patch with the waste mechanic and all still work.

L4 Gas Venture
• Gas Injections
• Like Drones to a Cloud

L4 Ice Retriever (w/Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I)
• Cheap Chills
• Ice Installation

L4 Ore Retriever
• Not Gneiss at All

L4 Ore Porpoise
• Arisite Envy
• Feeding the Giant
• Geodite and Gemology

As a general rule I will regularly decline the ‘Mother Lode’ mission and on the off chance I get it twice in a row I will just go do something else while waiting out the cool down on the penalty for declining a mission twice in four hours.

And just a reminder: ALL mining missions regardless of level MUST be completed with Tech 1 or Faction mining gear with a 0% residue stat.

3 Likes
216

Howdy all:

Just stopping in to post an update of my own.

CCP has apparently coded all mission ore to ignore the residue mechanic. Therefore, Tech II mining gear is perfectly viable as a tool for Level 4 mission mining. I have personally tested Miner IIs, Mining Drone IIs, Ice Mining Laser IIs, and Gas Scoop IIs. I HAVE NOT tested Modulated Strip Miners with crystals, as I do not use Exhumers or Barges for this work. I tested Bandine, Augumene, Lyavite, Mercium, Green Arisite, both Gas clouds, and both ice rocks…no residue.

The big rub here and where caution must be advised is with mining drones. The problem is issuing orders to drones with partially complete cycles, which can lose their ore. I haven’t actually had this issue, as I let my drones “cycle out” before issuing orders to return or swap rocks. But others have mentioned it as a problem, YMMV.

A new mechanic worth mentioning is EDENCOM systems. There are several very good systems with L4 mining agents available. EDENCOM Fortress systems give a system-wide 10% mining boost. Sadly, this applies only to mining lasers and not gas harvesters or ice lasers. It does make Not Gneiss At All quite fast to complete, in my experience.

My current L4 mining fleet:

L4 Gas Venture for Gas Injections and Like Drones to a Cloud

  • Shield tank with thermal resists
  • NO AB (not needed, you gotta orbit the cloud close)
  • Drone damage amp in the lows
  • Rigs: Ionic Field + two Purgers
  • Two Acolytes (Imperial Navy best, drones are weak to EM)

L4 Endurance for both Ice and Not Gneiss

  • carry ice laser and ice upgrades in cargo, swap as needed.
  • Salvager in utility high
  • Drone Mining Aug + Ionic Field for rigs
  • three Mining Drone IIs, three light combats to local flavor

Like Shriven, I decline Arisite Envy, Feeding the Giant, and Geodite and Gemology.

Take care and fly safe!

/msd

5 Likes
217

DRONE UPDATE:

Hello again everyone!

Well I posted that I had no issues using mining drones…but the game code had a nice surprise for me. I was running Not Gneiss at All, drones and laser happily mining away. The laser popped the rock and the drones flew back. ONE UNIT SHORT. Yep, it happened to me.

After some careful experimentation, I have the following tips if you want to add the extra yield from mining drones to your L4 Mining Missions:

  • any mining drone is fine, T2 drones are exempt from the residue mechanic
  • DO NOT let your laser pop the rock with drones mining. Either get the drones back in the bay, or shut off the laser and let the drones pop the rock. Don’t mix and match.
  • DO NOT command the drones to come back with a partial cycle. Let them complete a 60 second cycle and drop their ore. Then recall and store. If an emergency arises abandon drones and GTFO. This may cause loss of ore regardless.
  • DO sit back off the asteroid far enough that you can command the drones to return after ore is deposited. My optimal is 6000m for my Miner IIs, so I sit 10-12km away, wait for the ore deposit, then command before the drones can “open up” on the rock. This will slow your drone yield, can be slightly mitigated with a Drone Navigation Computer or rig. Actually having a lower level of “Drone Sharpshooting” might help.

Since most of us consider this an AFK activity, this drone management may not be worthwhile. YMMV.

Fly safe!

/msd

4 Likes
218

These days a Retriever with T2 Gas Cloud Harvesters is a faster gas mining ship than a Venture so it’s now viable to run all L4 mining missions in a single ship.

1 Like
219

Thread update! New findings here!

First of all I hope everyone who reads this is doing well. Just wanted to add some new findings and information for all my Level 4 Mining Mission friends.

First off, the latest reply was exactly right. The Retriever can be fit with Gas Harvesters, allowing it to complete every mission herein presented completely solo, allowing a “one-ship” L4 mission wrecking crew.

Thats all fine and good, but I still love my 1x Endurance 1x Venture setup and decline the “big” ore missions. It just dents my ISK/hour too much.

I’d like to also encourage those of you who mine not to sleep on the new-ish Empire Border Rare Asteroid anoms. These pop up randomly on 0.5 security border systems and are pretty disgustingly lucrative in my experience. Use your Agency scanner and filter “Ore Anomolies” and “high sec”.
Mining order: Ytirium/Jet Ochre/Crokite/Ducinium/Efyrium

I’d like to share a very important finding I made a couple weeks ago as I was power grinding mining missions on a brand-new toon. Several Eve references and commentators state that Level 3 mining missions are best for raising standings until you get to Level 4, or even better than Level 4 if you are purely after standings.

I have found something that blows this whole theory out of the water. The single best way to quickly boost any mining NPC corporation standing is the Level 2 mission “Unknown Events”. With the social 3 skill trained, my mining toon gets better than 0.11 percent standing increase, while every other level 2 OR 3 mission awards less than 0.05 percent. The only exception is the mission “Pile of Pithix (L3)” which awards somewhere between 0.07 and 0.08%. In fact, in some cases “Unknown Events” awards more standing than some Level 4 missions!

So, as a new addition, I’m updating some of the popular mining mission hub suggestions to include whether or not they have convenient access to one (or more) level 2 agents so that “Unknown Events” can be added into your standings grinding routine.

This is really great news for those of us grinding Thukker Mix. They have two L2 mining agents but only one L3 (in low-sec). Also, L3 mining missions are not more time efficient. “Pile of Pithix” and “Beware They Live” are the two best for standings, BUT they bulk out at 9000m3 AND require combat. In fact, Pile can have quite a lot of DPS on the table and you do NOT want to be running this in a Venture. “Unknown Events” almost never has rats unless run in a lower security system, such as a 0.5, and then its only random belt spawns.

So here are some more Mining Mission hub suggestions. Search this thread higher for more suggestions from myself and other players:

ARAMACHI (0.5) The Citadel - Caldari - Minedrill and Poksu Mineral (credit Major-Domo)
One L4, four L3s, and 5(!) L2s in one system…this is a standings raising machine of a system

HOGIMO (0.6) The Citadel - Caldari - Deep Core Mining, Poksu Mineral, Lai Dai
(credit Major-Domo)
Three L4, four L3s, and four L2s in one system…another standings raise factory.
There are two Lai Dai R&D agents in system. Run their daily missions for datacores and another quick tick to your 16 needed for a storyline mission.

AIRKIO (0.9) Lonetrek - Caldari - Top Down, Minedrill, Hyasyoda
Three L4s and four L2s (no L3 fluff) AND a Minedrill storyline in one place. Easiest way to grind up three mining corps at once. One of my personal favorites for its proximity to Jita and safety from gankers.

PASHANAI (0.5) Genesis - Amarr - Amarr Constructions
Two L4s, an L3, and an L2 two jumps away. The reason I love this one so much is Pashanai is on a string of 0.5 systems that frequently spawn the Empire Border Rare Asteroids anomoly. When you can’t grind missions you can mine that sweet, sweet Ytirium for millions a load. There is plenty of compression in local structures, too.

TRYTEDALD (0.9) Heimatar - Amarr - Joint Harvesting
A strange hub of Amarrian mining agents deep in the space of their arch enemies.
One level 4 and two level 2s and a same-corp in-system storyline agent. Joint is a great one for Amarrian players for its vast reach. JH has at least one L4 mining mission giver in each of the four empires main regions. Trytedald is on the Derelik border and can get gas cloud spawns, as well as close access to Empire Border Rare anoms.

Suggestions from higher up the thread (do your homework):
INARI
ALDILUR
GULFONODI
AUFAY
HAGEKEN
NM-OEA

As always I look forward to your comments. Fly safe!

/msd

6 Likes
220

Nice write up with some good info…

:+1:

1 Like
221

If you want to grind CORP standings, the best way is to run distro missions (assuming the corp has them available)

And make sure the system closest to the agent has a storyline agent that is ALSO in that corp. When you run the storyline you get faction standing and a ton of corp standing. The corp standing from distro missions is horrible but level 2’s can be done in a magnate and there are several corps that have multiple level 2’s in the same station.

The easiest way to get thukker standings is buy it from the farmers in Hodrold.

Since I’ve run countless distro missions I’ll spill a tip few people know:

You know how sometimes a distro agent will send you a zillion jumps away? That’s povchen. It would have been closer but the single route to it was seized by the triglavians.

Distro agents send you by LIGHT YEAR distance. Not jumps. Some agents have a small cluster of “receiver” stations. Ever notice that they always send you to certain stations and NEVER others even tho they are the same number of jumps away? That’s why.

So when people say level 1 's send you 1-3 jumps away and 4’s send you to a different constellation… they have no idea what they are speaking.

You have to manipulate the storyline agent. Some corps have a dearth of level 3’s and terrible storyline agents. Just grind level 2’s then. Or don’t accept, or reject it and do another 16.

If you want to pay a super cheap way is to just pay for the agent raise, not the corp. The agent at 5.0 is fine

2 Likes
222

Is that also true regarding security missions ?

Do you know what is the LY limit per mission level ?

FWIW many missions are limited to system/constellation/nextconstellation, eg some L4S missions can only spawn in same system.