I have a few days into the game, and I’d like to have a go at mining to build up some ISK for other things. I’ve got the Venture right now, but I’m curious if there’s a worthwhile upgrade for a newbie?
I.E. A ship that is a little better at mining speed and ore capacity, but not so expensive I can’t reasonably earn the ISK for it by mining with the Venture.
if you are an Alpha then your choice is venture only… Or a very specially outfitted battleships (Usually Rokh or Apocalypse) - they can have higher yield than venture and comparable cargohold.
if you are Omega - you want to train into barges. Or to train Orca and mining drones.
[Gnosis, Gnosis-alpha miner]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Upgraded Thermal Dissipation Amplifier I
Small C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I
Upgraded Kinetic Deflection Amplifier I
Upgraded Explosive Deflection Amplifier I
10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
[Empty High slot]
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Acolyte I x5
Hobgoblin I x5
Hornet I x5
Keep in mind that although both the rokh and gnosis may get slightly better yields, when accounting for align and warp time, you dont save much in terms of actual isk per hour. It may even be worse.
What about cargo capacity? The Venture only has 5,000m3 of space, and as far as I can tell that’s not expandable?
As for the Expanded Cargoholds, that’s something I purchase?
Alpha characters are limited to the Venture, but if you’re an Omega, the next step up is a Procurer. Procs are very affordable, they’re hard to kill when fit well, and can be skilled into pretty easily. The fits below have some Tech II modules, but you’ll be fine using the Tech I variants until your skills are trained. Train Drones V asap; Tech II drones, followed by Tech II shield/tank modules, will make you resistant to rats on belts. The scram and web is for dealing with unsuspecting gankers. If you can manage to fleet up with a few friends in these ships, you might end up earning some PVP killmails in addition to all the ore you care to mine.
[Procurer, Bait Procurer]
Damage Control II
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Warp Scrambler II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Stasis Webifier II
Strip Miner I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Warrior II x4
Salvage Drone I x1
Or for ice mining:
[Procurer, Ice Bait Procurer]
Ice Harvester Upgrade I
Ice Harvester Upgrade I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Stasis Webifier I
Warp Scrambler I
Medium Shield Extender I
Ice Harvester I
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Hornet I x5
I would advise against mining in a battleship. While it MIGHT be slightly more ISK than a venture, it is FAR more expensive and will take forever to pay for itself.
Don’t know about your situation so I have to make some guesses:
If your a high sec Alpha you can make more ISK don’t almost anything else than mining.
High sec Omega? Can train into a mining barge and then exhumer, but unless your mining with your Corp its still not a great income.
Null sec is a different story, but my guess is that does not apply to you.
It’s quite hard to beat a well fitted Venture for a new player. A Gnosis is a 25-30m ISK ship and if, as @Raimos_Okel says, you are a few days in that’s a lot of ISK. The Venture is free or at worst cheap - under 200k and rather handy miner if fitted well. It’s fitting it that’s the trick, and a chance to learn.
Meta-miners in the high slots - A Scoped or Gaussian will give you a 20% better mining rate and cost the same as a Miner I.
Go to a pair of Miner IIs as soon as you can. That’s another 25% mining rate for about a day of skill training. But they are more expensive (750k ISK each).
A Medium Shield Extender I, MWD and Survey Scanner in the mid-slots. The Meta medium shields are rather expensive - twice the cost of the hull. It’s a rare case of go for a T1. Scanner so you can see how much is left in a rock before going to mine it (efficiency) and the MWD because you might want to mine on the far end of a belt well away from the warp-in beacon. It’s slightly safer (paying attention when mining is how to stay safe!)
Mining Laser Upgrade in the low slot. You are a miner, you want best yield (m³/s).
You’ll need the Mining Upgrades Skill (an 80k ISK skill book) and about an hour of training time.
Rigs: Shield Extenders and Shield Reinforcers to even out your shield resistance profile and add shield capacity. There’s no mining rigs, so go for something that makes you a little tougher. You aren’t tough, you’re a miner. If in doubt run away and mine somewhere else.
Bung a couple of light drones. I prefer Acolyte I because they are fast, but it’s personal preference - for this case they are rather interchangeable, the NPCs a couple of light drones can handle are more an irritant than a threat.
So what do you get? A ship costing under 500k ISK that can mine Veldspar at about 1.5m ISK/hr. Basically, the first hold full of ore pays for the ship - everything else is profit.
With T2 miners that’s a 2m ISK ship that can mine at 1.8m ISK/hr in high sec.
You’ve also got a spare high slot for a probe launcher (you’ll need to drop the MWD to an afterburner) if you fancy running into Wormholes and mining there. Keep that ship cheap - you’ll either loose it or come out with a good haul. You will take losses - bookmark your exit wormhole!
However - you aren’t going to make your fortune mining; not if you are just starting out. It’s a good way of earning a little pin money, and to see how you like mining (I like mining - there’s a nice relaxing puzzle box feel about selecting and efficiently mining the best rocks, and a mining fleet is quite sociable). There are many ways of earning ISK, try a few. Specialising in something is where the best income comes from, but it’s early for you to do that unless you have a particular burning desire for something.
That gnosis has lower yield than max yield venture with slightly higher (at best +28% with t2 rigs) cargo capacity. Not worth it, imo.
[Praxis, Alpha miner]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
500MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
[Empty High slot]
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
[Praxis, Alpha miner]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Small Shield Booster II
500MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
[Empty High slot]
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
[Apocalypse, Alpha Miner]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Co-Processor II
Small C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I
Cap Recharger II
100MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
[Rokh, Rokh fit]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Expanded Cargohold II
Co-Processor II
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I
100MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
[Empty Med slot]
[Empty Med slot]
[Empty Med slot]
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Higher, if you do Project Discovery while mining.
Instead of MWD its better to set up rewarp points on the static belts and use them to move around. Survey scanner is rather useless as well - at most you’ll lose a fraction of a minute of efficiency. Save survey scanners for barges and exhumers with their long cycles. In the freed mid slots its better to fit more tank and just ignore belt rats in HS (unless you are in caldari space and get perma-jammed by them).
Let me save you alot of pain.Mining is ■■■■ go do something else
Well, Omegas just got a Gnosis and a Praxis for free, and I remember I mined gas at one of the recent events in a Praxis because of the rats.
But if OP is into mining, a Mining Barge is what he longs for. About one week of training you should invest.
Gas harvesting… easy to do and is 10 fold more profitable than any ore mining an alpha can do.
Bad advice. Don’t be stupid.
Terrible advice. Learn to play Eve before distributing your nonsense.
Flagged as inappropriate.
I don’t usually give out advice to new players.
But I do CALL out rubbish when I see it coming from older players.
Don’t listen to their rubbish about flying a praxis or any of the battleships as a newbie.
Use a normal venture or join a corp and get extra mining profit from a fleet booster.
If it looks stupid but works - it ain’t stupid.
I listed benefits of certain BS fits(not perfect but will work) as mining platforms compared to max yield (t2 miners + T2MLU) Venture.
It’s stupid and you should know that.
He’s a new player not a 6 month old alt.
Play Eve properly you silly person.
Flying mining Praxis will take just as much time as flying max yield venture, or even less because you dont really need to learn mining frigate and mining upgrades skills. Being able to use full flight of at least light drones might take some time to learn but they will be useful on almost any ship.
@Raimos_Okel, as you may have noticed there are many strongly held opinions on how to fit ships, and indeed even which is the most appropriate ship to fly for any particular task. It’s why I don’t post detailed fits, but only what I’d be thinking as I built a ship I would want to fly.
I’m also trying to take into account how much capital you may have to invest in the ship - I expect you’re not exactly loaded with ISK and a 50m ISK hull is somewhere in the future regardless of how effective it is.
I remember being poor.
@Ms_Steak has a good point over dropping the survey scanner - the mining lasers are less of a liability for wasted time since they cycle faster, but I’d still keep the MWD mainly because I can’t be bothered setting up the bookmarks - I’m an itinerant miner, never mining in the same place.
But that’s my personal preferences.
The fitting simulator, and applications such as Pyfa exist for a good reason.
There are skill overlaps with many ship fitting ideas - yes, training Drones to V is always useful, training shield skills will help with the tank (toughness) of the Venture, and will help with Caldari ships and many of the Minmatar ships. You may want to look up the Magic 14 Skills - the very common skills that help with almost everything.