Eve Mining Guide

CXVI AuroraCobalt Log:

• Beginning a Miner in EVE: Apocrypha
• Frigate Mining: Fitting a Navitas
• Frigate Mining: Jetcanning and Hauling
• Cruiser Mining: Fitting a Vexor
• Drone Useage: Mining and Combat
• Brief Re-cap and Finding a Mining Corp to Join (Coming Soon!)
• Mining operations (Coming Soon)

Hey! Aurora has upgraded to cruisers! Here is what I have uncovered about fitting a Gallente Cruiser: Vexor for mining and using mining drones.

Cruisers:

I am looking toward the Vexor as Aurora’s first cruiser, after She has trained Gallente cruisers: 2. Cruisers generally mine more ore faster than frigates, and you will generally survive better in a cruiser. Though a cruiser is a bigger, stronger, slower, ship.

Here is where race may come in. Caldari and Minmatar have cruisers specifically fitted for mining, the Osprey and the Scythe respectively. These ships are also piloted with Caldari or Minmatar Cruisers 1, as opposed to The Amarr and Gallente Cruisers, Omen and Vexor, which require Amarr cruisers 2 or Gallente Cruisers 2. Though once you move up to Mining barges the plane is level again. Note that any race can train any other race’s ships. If Aurora wanted to fly the Caldari Osprey, she would just have to start at Caldari frigate 1-4, then Caldari cruiser 1. As she has already trained Gallente to frigates 4, a skill that took around 5 days, She will be flying a Gallente Vexor.

The EVE online wiki: Evelopedia, has this to say about a Vexor:

“The Vexor is suprisingly versatile and can perform a number of roles. It works well as a mining ship – although it doesn’t mine as much per second as the Osprey or Scythe, the large drone bay allows it to defend itself better against NPC pirates which will show up in asteroid belts in and below 0.8 security, making it possibly prefered for a solo miner without friendly pilots to deal with hostile npcs. It also recieves a bonus to mining drones which can put it almost on par with the Osprey or Scythe. Additionally, the Vexor has a large sized cargo hold for a Cruiser hull (480m3), allowing it to carry surplus ammo, ore and loot.”

A Vexor is not a mining specific ship, it instead gets it’s mining bonus through using mining drones, or as evelopedia says, it can better defend itself in solo mining with defensive drones rather than mining drones. As many mining ships are very vulnerable solo, this is a tempting strategy. I recommend carrying mining and combat drones, and utilizing whichever are necessary in the moment. I will discuss Mining and defensive drones after the Vexor’s other attributes.

A vexor’s attributes are as follows:

5% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret damage per skill level
10% bonus to drone hitpoints, damage and mining yield per skill level.

Fitting the Vexor: Aurora’s will be fitted as follows (pending ISK):

High Slots (5)

• Miner II
• Miner II
• Miner II
• Miner II
• e

Medium Slots (3)

• 10 MN Afterburner
• Survey Scanner
• (empty) OR Drone Navigation Computer if you have the CPU.

Low Slots (4)

• Warp Core Stabilizer
• Co-processor
• Co-processor
• Co-processor

Drone Bay

• 5 Mining Drone I’s

AND/OR:

• 5 Hammerhead I’s

Skill pre-reqs for this fit: Electronics upgrades I, Afterburner I, Drone Navigation III, Drones IV.

Sidenote: Still working on fitting this for Aurora. Looking in empty pockets for an extra 50tf of CPU is tricky. I am upgrading my electronics to IV to get the extra 5% out of the Vexor.

For your problems with fitting check out this fitting tool:

Eve Fitting Tool

10MN Afterburner: Gives a boost to the maximum velocity of the ship when activated. The thrust that boosts the ship, and the corresponding maximum velocity bonus, are limited by the mass of the ship that uses this module. Cruiser class module. This makes your cruiser move faster. 112.5% max velocity bonus, 15,000,000N thrust. (Skill prereqs= Afterburner I)

10MN MicroWarpDrive: Similar to the Afterburner, the MicroWarpDrive gives a 500% max velocity bonus, but has a penalty of -25% capacitor. (skill prereqs= High speed maneuvering I, Afterburner IV, Navigation IV)

Survey Scanner: Scans the ore make-up of an asteroid. (I will edit with an image of survey scanner use and outcome.)

Drone Navigation Computer: Increases micro warp drive (mwd) speed of drones. (130-200k ISK) Makes drones go faster. Prerequisite skills are Drone navigation level III and Drones level IV.

Miner II’s, Warp core stabilizers, and Co-processors were discussed in an earlier post, info is about 3/4 down the page.

So the Vexor gives Aurora a 10% bonus to her drone’s mining yield per level of Gallente Cruiser. Why is this better than 20% bonus from the frigate class navitas you ask?

Lets discuss Drones!

CXVI AuroraCobalt: Drone Useage: Mining and Combat

Thanks for reading! More to come soon!

CXVI AuroraCobalt Log:

• Beginning a Miner in EVE: Apocrypha
• Frigate Mining: Fitting a Navitas
• Frigate Mining: Jetcanning and Hauling
• Cruiser Mining: Fitting a Vexor
• Drone Useage: Mining and Combat
• Brief Re-cap and Finding a Mining Corp to Join (Coming Soon!)
• Mining operations (Coming Soon)

Industrials / Haulers:

Though I think a mining cruiser seems to be the next step after a frigate, the industry mission agent awarded Aurora an Iteron for completing the mission “making mountains of molehills 1-10.” The Iteron is a Gallente hauler. It’s cargo capacity it 3,000m3, vs. the navitas’ 215m3. Wow. The balance? The Iteron has only one high power slot. You can trek your ore all over the many constellations of Eden, (watch out for pirates…), but you can’t mine very much ore with the Iteron.

Jettison Canisters:

Now we have reached Jettison Canisters. The Idea of Jet Caning as it is called is to take out a smaller, faster ship fitted for mining, mine lots of ore at once, and then haul thousands of m3 home at once. How is this magical feat accomplished? Jetcans.

Here is how it works:

Aurora Mines. Navitas cargo hold is full! right click on the ore in your hold, and select Jettison from the window.

No, this doesn’t destroy your ore, it actually creates a Jettison Canister, which appears on your overview. (That window to the top right that tells you what is in your current vicinity.) The cool thing about Jet cans is that they have a cargo capacity of 27,500m3, so you can mine for a while in your frigate or cruiser, all the while putting ore into the can, before jumping back to your station to get your hauler to run out and drag that ore home.

Problem 1: JetCans only last so long. I’ve heard more than an hour, I’ve heard 2 hours. I will try to time this soon and edit this post appropriately. They will eventually disintegrate into space and your ore is then gone. What is recommended is to rename your canister. To do this, right click on it,and select set name:

Then enter for the name “created 00:00″ for whatever time you created the can. I like to use the in-game GMT clock for this, then you are never wondering if your old analog clock has run out of Batts. Maybe that’s just me. If you are not ready to run back for your hauler, just start a new canister the same way you did the first one, transfer all your ore to the new canister, set a timestamp name for your new canister, and keep mining.

Problem 2: Other pilots can take the ore from your canister! It is said that in high security space, you are generally safe, but you really aren’t. Everything I’ve read says that pirates looking for easy minerals will come along and mess with canisters. It actually happened while I was taking those screenshots! The good part is that you then get kill rights on them. Ideally so you can go decimate them for messing with your can. Unfortunately, Aurora is not really equipped or skilled for pvp at the moment. So she is just getting her ore out as fast as possible.

You can anchor jetcans, and you can create giant secure jetcans, though I have not done all my homework on these yet. They may come in the next post, if pirates are inconvenient enough.

Once the jetcan is full, jump to your home station and get your hauler, and haul the ore in! You then refine it and sell it on the market!

I will discuss refining and Aurora’s skill choices in that area in the near future.

Well thats it for this post. I do have my post on fitting a vexor and using mining drones about 80% done though, so any day now. Hope this has been helpful or entertaining! Feel free to contact me in game if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

As always, mining is a good if slow way to EARN ISK – if you were looking for a guide on how to make ISK, click here.

CXVI AuroraCobalt Log:

• Beginning a Miner in EVE: Apocrypha
• Frigate Mining: Fitting a Navitas
• Frigate Mining: Jetcanning and Hauling
• Cruiser Mining: Fitting a Vexor
• Drone Useage: Mining and Combat
• Brief Re-cap and Finding a Mining Corp to Join (Coming Soon!)
• Mining operations (Coming Soon)

Hi again,  here to talk about the crash course tutorial; fitting a Gallente mining frigate, Navitas; using a jettison canister, and hauling your ore home.

I will also mention:

• Miner I’s Vs. Miner II’s
• Expanded Cargo Hold Units
• Warp Core Stabilizers
• CPU Upgrades
• Jettison Canisters

Tutorial:

After running through the basic movement and navigation portion of the tutorial, the guide asks you to choose a career agent. You have your choice of an industry agent, a business agent, or a military agent. Aurora of course, went industry all the way.

As Aurora is not yet a very efficient miner, I have been following along with the tutorial’s suggested industry missions, and mining when convenient.

As of this moment I am fitting my Iteron to haul for my navitas and navigating the screwy world of jettison cans and PC corps.

Initial Mining Ships and Lasers:

Frigates:

Moved out of the Velator quickly, as after running about 7-10 missions with the industry agent CXVI AuroraCobalt was awarded a Navitas! The Navitas has a -60% mining laser capacitor use. This means it uses 60% less ship power (capacitor or cap) to power your mining lasers. Thumbs up.

Every ship has low, medium, and high power slots. You can see how many your ship has either by right clicking on your ship and selecting show info, then the fitting tab, and you will see this:

Or you can look at your fitting window, from your in-game taskbar or in a station and you will see this:

A Navitas has:

2 High slots
2 Med slots
2 Low slots
3 upgrade hardpoints. (For rigs, or permanent upgrade modules. I’ll tackle these in a later post.)

High Slots: You want to have as many mining turrets as possible. All high slots should be filled with Mining Turrets. Miner IIs are optimal, if you have the skills/ISK. Miner II’s require mining IV and cost about 4-500,000ISK in Gallente High Security space.

Med Slots: 1 afterburner I or a  survey scanner I

Low Slots: 1 warp core stabilizer or expanded cargo hold I *I have placed my expanded cargo hold units on my Iteron, as I will be using a Jettison Canister or JetCan, they are more needed there.

As a result of early mission running, Aurora was also awarded multiple Miner I units, and multiple expanded cargo hold 1 units

Miner I: mining laser that mines 40 m3 of ore per 60 second round, and requires a high power slot.  40m3 would be a miner I’s mining laser yield. Your mining laser yield is affected by what miner turret you are using, what ship you are piloting, and what level your mining skill is at.

• Aurora’s Miner I’s: For each level of Mining, Aurora recieves a 5% bonus to mining turret yield, At Level 4, that is 20%. (40 + (40 x .20))= 48 As well as a 20% bonus to mining laser yield per level of Gallente Frigate. (from the hull bonus* on Aurora’s navitas.) Aurora has Gallente frigate level 3, so she recieves a 60% bonus.  (48 +(40 x 0.60))= 76.8 Aurora’s Miner I’s turret yield is 76.8m3/60s. Go internet spaceship math. If you right click on your miner while it is fitted to your ship in your fitting window, it will tell you the calculated yield with all bonuses. I have only done this to explain the bonuses, and understand how they work just that much better.
• *Hull bonuses are the innate bonuses you receive from piloting a certain  ship. (vexor, osprey, myrmidon, iteron, rifter, navitas) These bonuses vary widely from ship to ship, and are a large part of ship specialization in the game. ALL Vexors are the same, All Navitas are the same, differences are distinguished by name. Hull bonuses don’t randomly generate on ship creation or anything silly.

Miner II: Mines 60m3 of ore per 60s round. (Before skill/ship bonuses) Also you can mine from 12km away from an asteroid with miner II’s, as opposed to the miner I’s 10km.

Afterburner I: Gives a boost to the maximum velocity of the ship when activated. The thrust that boosts the ship, and the corresponding maximum velocity bonus, are limited by the mass of the ship that uses this module. In English, Afterburners help you warp faster. Time=money, traveling=time spent, less travel time=more money! (1MN; 10MN; 100MN versions available. 1MN=Frigate class; 10MN=Cruiser class; 100MN= Battleship class.)

Survey Scanner I: Scans the ore make-up of an asteroid.

Expanded cargo hold I: expands the cargo capacity of your ship by 17.5% and requires a low power slot. Means you can mine more ore before returning to a station or jettisoning* your ore.

Warp core stabilizer I: When activated this unit attempts to compensate for fluctuations and disruptions of the ships warp core. In english- Enemy ships, pirates, npc rats, might have any number of warp core scramblers or disruptors. Scramblers and disruptors keep you from warping to safety. All bad. Scramblers effectively count as 2 points AGAINST your warp core, Disruptors count as 1 point AGAINST. A warp core stabilizer counts as one point TOWARDS your warp core, effectively negating one disruptor. (2 stabilizers negate a scrambler) As a mining ship with (hopefully if you are mining effectively) no weapon turrets… being able to warp out is very important. You have to train the skill Warp Drive Operation 1 to use warp core stabilizers, but it costs about 25,000ISK and only takes about 8 mins to train.

Drones: It is recommended to use a drone in your navitas, though I will not discuss drones until the next post when I mention fitting a Mining Vexor.

FITTING your ship: Just because you should have Miner I’s or II’s in all of your high power slots, does not mean you will be able to. You have to conform to CPU and Powergrid restrictions. This was not a problem with my Miner I’s on the Navitas, though it will be when I add a warp core stabilizer and or other med slot items.

Every ship module in EVE (to my knowledge) has a CPU requirement and a Powergrid requirement. I will look at a Miner I as we should all have one of these at this point.

A Miner I requires 60 tf of CPU usage, and 2 MW of powergrid usage. As the Navitas has 150 tf CPU total and 23 MW Powergrid total, it is not a problem fitting 2 miner I’s. Though when I throw a warp core stabilizer in the mix:

	CPU tf	Powergrid MW
Navitas	+150 tf	+23 MW
Miner I	-60 tf	-2 MW
Miner I	-60 tf	-2 MW
Warp Core Stabilizer	-30 tf	-2 MW
Totals	0 tf	17 MW

The modules barely fit, and I cannot fit my afterburner or scanner. To solve this little CPU problem, you can look into Co-processors.

Basic Co-processor: Anyone can fit a basic co-processor, the only skill requirement is Electronics 2, which everyone starts with. However, These take up a low power slot, and only boost your CPU output by 6%. For the Navitas, that would make the CPU output raise to 137.8 tf from 130 tf. Not  HUGE boost, but sometimes it can be enough to do the job.

Co-processor I: The next step up from a basic co-processor is a co-processor I. These require you to train Electronic Upgrades 1, and boost the CPU output by 7%. Again for the Navitas, this would only improve your CPU output to 139.1. Though Note that since these bonuses are by percentage, they scale with your ships CPU. Looking at a Vexor with a Standard CPU of 270, the Basic co-processor would boost that to 286.2.

Co-processor II: Requires Electronics Upgrades 4, and boosts CPU output by 10.0%.

If you are having trouble fitting your ship, or want advice on new modules before you train all the skills and watch your wallet tick down to 2,335.00 ISK, Try Posting your questions about fitting in the EVE forums. If you make an informed post, you should get some great feedback. I recommend you read the Sticky thread “New to Ships and Modules?” advice thread before posting. They are very specific about what to include in a post of this nature.

Go to this Eve forum here: Eve Online Forums: Ships and Modules Forum

Aurora’s Navitas fitting for now:

High slots: 2 miner I’s
Med slots: Empty
Low slots: 1 Warp core stabilizer/Empty

I chose not to bother with the afterburner for the moment as Aurora was in a frigate, and left her other med and low slots empty to avoid training for a co-processor just yet. I will train for afterburners and add one or two when Aurora hits cruisers and climbs into a vexor, as they are slower ships, and will definitely be shinier with an afterburner.  Shinier=faster=makes me more money.

So that covers fitting out a frigate – next post will explain what to do with all the ore once mined: jetcans and hauling.

Looking to start a mining Character in EVE online? Don’t feel like doing enough research to write a thesis on mining? Then you have come upon the right blog.

CXVI AuroraCobalt Log:

• Beginning a Miner in EVE: Apocrypha
• Frigate Mining: Fitting a Navitas
• Frigate Mining: Jetcanning and Hauling
• Cruiser Mining: Fitting a Vexor
• Drone Useage: Mining and Combat
• Brief Re-cap and Finding a Mining Corp to Join (Coming Soon!)
• Mining operations (Coming Soon)

I was a casual EVE player who was fairly frustrated by the difficulty in finding information- GOOD information- about the different aspects of EVE online.  So here is my account of creating a mining character in EVE, from creation through mining god.  (Eventually.)

If you were looking for a guide on how to make ISK, click here.

Part I should cover the character creation process, initial skill selection, and attribute selection.

As CXVI Aurora Cobalt is a Gallente Pilot, everything here will be based off of the Gallente race. Though after the Apocrypha expansion, race matters less in creation, and more in ship selection, as you have to train the skills to pilot separate ships.  -We’ll get there when we get there.

Character Creation:

With the coming of the Apocrypha expansion, character creation has been highly simplified. Race, bloodline, gender, etc. matter very little or not at all. Characters begin with identical attributes and skills,  excepting that each race receives it’s respective turret (gunnery) skill at level 3, and it’s own frigate skill at level 2.

So I created CXVI Aurora Cobalt, a Gallente, Gallentean, Miner. (Race, Bloodline, Specialization)

Skill Training:

Going the route of a miner? Check out our skill training guide here.

All new pilots begin with the following skills.

Electronics: 3
Engineering: 3
Shield Operation: 2
Gunnery: 2
Mining: 2
Mechanic: 2
Navigation: 3
Science: 3
Spaceship Command: 3

As a Gallente pilot, CXVI AuroraCobalt also has:

Small Hybrid Turret: 3
Gallente Frigate: 2

Many skill plans tell you to train learning skills right off the bat for the first 7-10 days. I am rather excited about getting Aurora going, and would rather not train these VERY first. I recognize that they are important for learning other skills faster later, but I would like to get to fly a better ship than my starting frigate for the next week and a half. Here are my first few days of skill training.

Hull Upgrades: 1
Shield Management: 1
Repair Systems: 1
Refining: 1

First four skills are given by the tutorial and take around an hour to train. They allow you to use basic equipment thrown at you in the tutorial.

Mining: 3
Gallente Frigate: 3
Mining: 4
Gallente Frigate: 4
Gallente Cruiser: 1
Gallente Cruiser: 2 (Here I can go fly a Vexor, which is the Gallente Mining Cruiser.)
Learning: 1
Instant Recall: 1
Analytical Mind: 1
Spatial Awareness: 1

“Skill books are expensive!” You may say. Well. I have a mysterious benefactor… Odds are you might have a friend playing too, or this might be your mining alt. If you have absolutely no way of getting your shiny new pilot gloves all over a pile of ISK, try begging in 1.0 space. It works fairly frequently.  Remember: A half-million ISK might seem like a lot now, but in a few months it will be chump change.  So ask around.

Remember: Though it may be difficult to figure out what to train right away, train relevant skills. The first 1.6 Million skill points you are given a 100% bonus to skill training time. Use it wisely. If you don’t have money to buy skills, Ask for money.

This is my jumping off point. I am having issues getting into my EVEmon and the EVE forums as you are not allowed to sign in to the EVE main site until your account is three days old. This is to prevent scamming, and litter all over the forums. That said, I can’t stand it. Makes it impossible to do so much for the first three days! When I get Aurora into my EVEmon and look things over more closely, I will post a more detailed piece on skills, and why I chose what I chose.

Attributes:

Before Apocrypha, your character’s race, bloodline, and specialization would have altered your character’s attributes and skills at each turn. With the coming of Apocrypha, new pilots begin with all of the same skills, and they ‘remap’ their neural patterns, or attributes.

Heres how it works: Each skill’s training time is affected by primary and secondary attributes. For example, the mining industry skill is primarily affected by memory, and secondarily affected by intelligence. This means that the higher your memory and intelligence, the faster you train your mining skill. So obviously, you want the highest attributes possible. Learning skills are a way to boost your attributes.

To see what attributes affect what skills, Open your character sheet, and right click on the skill you are interested in. Select ’show info’ then make sure the ‘attributes” tab is selected. You should see something like this:

As for Learning skills, you can see above that I have planned:

Learning: 1
Instant recall: 1
Analytical Mind: 1
Spatial Awareness: 1.

These give me a +1 respectively to the attributes memory,  intelligence, and perception per level.

As memory is the attribute that primarily affects industry and therefore mining, it is a necessity. Also, perception is recommended, as it primarily affects your spaceship command skills, which govern a pilot’s ability to learn new piloting skills (frigate, cruiser, mining barge). The higher a character’s memory and perception, the faster they learn new skills associated with mining and piloting ships. Also, I put points into intelligence. Intelligence affects how fast you train many skills.

For my miner, I decided to use one of my neural remappings to change my attributes to focus mainly on memory and perception, which primarily affect my industry and piloting skills respectively.

Starting attributes for every character are as follows:

Intelligence	8
Perception	8
Charisma	7
Willpower	8
Memory	8

This leaves me 39 stat points to play with. As the minimum for any stat is 5 points, I plan to re-map Aurora as follows:

Intelligence	7
Perception	11
Charisma	5
Willpower	5
Memory	11

Though after I have trained my learning skills above each to level 1, my attributes will look like this:

Intelligence	7 +1
Perception	11 +1
Charisma	5
Willpower	5
Memory	11 +1

Not sure where to put your attribute points? You can always load up your EVEmon, which you NEED, trust me, and it will help you. I cannot access CXVI AuroraCobalt in my EVEmon yet, as I mentioned above you are locked out of the forums for the first 72 hours, 3 days, of your account. EVEmon has a feature where you can enter your skill training plan and hit “calculate attributes” or something similar, and it will tell you what exact attributes are optimal. I will post a better piece on this when I am let into my accounts after the 72 hr. block, and link it here.

Okay, side note here. The Evelopedia says that the minimum points you can put in an attribute is 4. Though when you get in game, you will see it is actually 5. Whether this means they have coded something wrong, or that you need a base 4 points, and then you have to place at least 1 point in every attribute when you remap for a total of 5 minimum, I don’t know.  Below you can see the 4 white bars in each attribute indicating the mandatory points in each attribute. However you are unable to remove the 5th point. Not sure what is up, but thats the way it is.

Alright. Well that is part one. I got into the game without wasting too much time, and I am now running missions through the crash course tutorial in-game. I will update soon about where I decide to go with CXVI AuroraCobalt: skills, ships, lasers, reputation with NPC corporations, fleets, joining a Player run corp -and why.