Hi. New player. I’m having trouble finding systems that aren’t mined out constantly. I mean I’ve jumped away from the Gallente starter area a good distance. I even went into 0.4 and 0.3 space. No freaking ore. Lots of rats. Am I doing something wrong?
Couple of options if the belts are mined out:
- Look for ore anomalies
- Find a 0.5 system, check out every moon looking for one which has a moon mining station and has recently pulled out a chunk of moon ore. The owners of the station might not like you mining “their” rocks, but it’s not illegal
Good luck!
I know it’s a bit odd to see so many systems mined out, try going to a .05 or .06 system- those tend to have ore a bit more consistently
Yes you are definitely doing something wrong. First, stay out of low sec, there is absolutely no reason to mine there unless you want to get blown up by another player. Second, fit an interceptor with a survey scanner and start going system to system checking out belts until you find one that is not mined out with decent sized asteroids. As others have said, 0.5 and 0.6 systems are typically good as the asteroids will be larger. But most importantly, try and find a system with a player owned citadel with a compression array.
As suggested by @Vlad_the_Impala use the Resource Harvesting tab in the Agency to find Ore Anomalies. You won’t find much Veldspar but the ores in the anomalies are generally better than those in belts.
I also recommend moving away from the starter systems and trade hubs. Backwater systems are less competitive - the downside is you need to haul your ore farther to market.
1 Like
Also less chance to have a refinery that allows you to compresss.
Just place your own, it’s very cheap.
Do you mean place an athanor?
with a reprocessing module.
An Athanor comes with it’s own issues - the price is roughly 750 million ISK and about 150K/hour for fuel - assuming the only service module is the reprocessing/compression array. Owning a structure also exposes you to war declarations.
I recommend buying a Miasmos to haul your ore to a structure where you can compress it (compression is free unless CCP changed it when I wasn’t looking).
Better yet, get a Porpoise and you have a single hull that can mine and haul both ore and ice. It is a larger investment - both in cost and skills required.
To find a public structure with a reprocessing plant use the Neocom menu -> Utilities -> structure browser. Set the service filter for Reprocessing Plant.
You don’t need to leave it running all the time.
Put your stuff in the athanor, once a month online the module and compress, then ofline themodule. I think it’s 2day worth of fuel for onlining. Instead of 30 days per month.
create an alpha account, make it own the structure. One alpha account per structure. Costs 60M to destroy the structure, plus the hours ; meanwhile the drop is only 20M from the reprocessing module. Replace an athanor one day after they destroy it. After a month they will stop wasting time and money on you.
1 Like
You’re not using Dotlan effectively.
Here’s the region view for The Forge.
You don’t have to be in The Forge but I’d reccomend staying near a market hub and far enough from lowsec that lowsec players that like to moonlight as gankers are likely to find another target before they find you.
Sort the region you’re interested by number of belts. Investigate the stats for the high belt systems.
You want a low number of jumps, none or very low in system deaths, and high number of belts.
When you check the system in game, you want a small population in local.
Then you want to research trig recon squads, tank your fit, and train up light combat drones. I massively advise the Procurer if you’re just starting out. Prioritize tank over yield, as a new player shiploss will take a longer time for you to recover from. A cheap Procurer fit is your best bet.
Then never mine afk ever, and have an escape plan ready to go. Practice your escape plan so it’s automatic - in a middle of an attack you may get panicked. Practice is your friend.
Also, consider joining a nullsec corp. I hisec mine, it works for me. But I’m a weirdo. Most people will enjoy corp mining in null better than solo in hisec. And most people will enjoy combat or exploration more than any kind of mining. Invest your gaming g time wisely so you don’t burn out.
Fly safe! o7
2 Likes
Wise words. I would suggest practicing on SISI as well. (the Test Server)
Stop suggesting new players to train Interceptors, they don’t need it and even that ship safety does not protect them from losing it. Waste of time skilling it.
Or assuming that new players have the skills for it. I can’t fly interceptor myself and I started almost 3 years ago. Never needed it. And that only real usage of it requires ■■■■ ton of related skills maxed out to do its job.
Recommending new player to deploy citadel, just wow. Even when it costs 200 milions, not 60, to destroy it (unless FOB rats does the first part and it is low power, then only 100mil) just the hassle with buying one, hauling it from Jita to destination system and then buying and hauling fuel and keeping it fueled and paying the fuel is absolutely unrelistic task for a new player which can go wrong on many occassions.
Terrible idea.
@Mikezxcv81 first, who the hell told you that mining is something you should do? Forget mining, basically lowest income activity in highsec that get you no experience of the game at all. It is also boring af. Jump into Gnosis and start doing anomalies (and then escalations) or security missions.
If you, for some nonsense reason, want to mine in this game really badly then take the time and scout the space. You are looking for a system with a public citadel that can compress/reprocess the ore, prefferably 0.5 or 0.6 (not lowsec) and with lots of belts as well, so there is very low chance that other players or npc miners will mine it all out before you can start playing that day. There are many systems like this, but I will not tell you their names, you need find them yourself.
Alternatively, find a corporation focused on mining/industry and join them, you can mine for them and if you are lucky you won’t realize they are exploiting you or they actually won’t.
2 Likes
Anomalies. I’ll check it out.
Also, 100% agree with this.
I could set up an Athanor if I wanted to. In hisec I like a nice quick Concord response time to force gankers to pay through the nose if they want to pop me before Concord comes up to make them go boom.
That rules out moon mining for me, so I’d just be using an Athanor to compress… And it’s not worth it.
If you base yourself close to a market hub, an 840k m3 frieghter haul of ore should come in at 10 million or less per haul. An Athanor costs around 750 million ISK.
If we ignore fuel costs, you’d have to send 75 full shipments of uncompressed ore to market before an Athanor would start delivering an ROI as compared to hauling contract costs… But with the added bonus that it might get popped. And refineries have the longest possible exposure windows for reinforcement.
For small scale play, the risk-to-ROI doesn’t make sense. But as you build up your size (corporation) and get further away (lowsec/null), they start to justify themselves - particularly when you throw moon mining into the mix.
If you want to do Athanor stuff, set up in a system that already has some that are open to the public, or join a corp that runs them. Don’t set one up yourself for small-scale solo or small-number play in 0.6+ hisec. Not worth it.
1 Like
Can you use a raitaru for compression instead of an athanor?
It’s the reprocessing facility you need more than any specific structure.
The Standup Reprocessing Facility is a service module that allows the use of a reprocessing and compression facilities when installed into an Upwell technology structure. The default reprocessing rate is 50%, which may be further enhanced by the use of Standup rigs.
Can be fitted to: Engineering Complex
Can be fitted to: Refinery
Can be fitted to: Citadel
1 Like
What if you mine and compress (or buy) in high sec, haul to null / wh (you have an alt in a large alliance), reprocess there, and ship back to high sec for production or direct sales?
Get your own Jump Freighter, too, maybe.
Well, if you base yourself close to a trade hub, of course your athanor will be destroyed and you will be ganked.
We were talking in the case of backwater system :
And in the case he could not find a backwater system with a reprocessing facility available.
Please don’t quote me out of context.