Mining & Refining Guide

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Mining & Refining Guide

Postby Xandercrisp on Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:31 am
This is an updated version, made 10/18/2008

Mining and Refining in the CE Galaxy
The following is a comprehensive guide to mining and refining in the CE Galaxy. Please note this guide will not discuss ORSA sites and extractors except in passing- they are separate and are covered in another Guide.
Overall as a career, mining, and if you wish also refining, will produce you healthy amounts of credits and a small amount of XP. They are therefore best combined with another compatible career, such as hauling, to earn XP and level with (hauling is a good choice, as haulers will have the large cargo hold beneficial to miners and refiners). The best results can be achieved by taking part in all the activities discussed, but anyone with the appropriate skills can try separate parts as desired.

Types of Ore within CE
First off, it is important to understand the varying types of ore within the CE Galaxy. If you already more or less understand these, or just want to jump into mining first, feel free to skip this section, although I'd recommend reading it to get a fuller understanding. The ores include the following:

Ore
Just plain, basic ore - it's worth about 10 credits a unit and is very easy to get. You can get it either by mining (see below), using mining drones (see below), from an ORSA Site (extractor site) on a planet, or from loot in combat. For the purposes of this guide, we are only interested in mining and mining drones.
Ore has a few uses in crafting, and some of the NPCs you'll find around the galaxy want varying quantities of it - for example, the greeter missions require you to get some. It's most common use, though, is refining it into refined ore; it has negligible sale value on its own.

Refined Ore
Refined ore is worth at least 250 credits a unit, depending to who you sell it. You can only get it by refining ore (see below), or from loot in combat.
It is very commonly used in crafting, and is sometimes sold direct to Joe

Equipment

Equipping Laser
First off, you will need to invest in a Mining Laser Mk1, Mining Laser Mk2, or better. Which one depending on how much money and IP you want to invest. They require 10 and 15 mining skill to use, respectively. Mining lasers give a percentage increase to your scan rate. I'd personally recommend Mining Laser Mk2 if you plan starting a career of mining and refining, but either a Mk1 or Mk2 can be bought from Lock 'n' Load - try Starbase-51 in Feris.

Purchase the correct skill level, and fit the laser into a weapons slot. I'd suggest the second one so you don't try 'firing' it in combat by accident - they can be used as very weak weapons, but if you have a proper gun you DO NOT want to try this!

Improving Scan Rate
If you can afford it you will want an Asteroid Scanner Rev 1 or better the best currently being Asteroid scanner Rev 4. This will require scan skill to use. a Rev one needs Scan Tech 50, a Rev 4 needs Scan Tech 200. They all can be bought at Sonar Solutions. They all add to your scan rate number, very important if you want to find the expensive ores.

Purchase the correct skill level, and fit the Scanner(or Scanners) into the system slots of your ship loadout(the grey wrench at the bottom of your screen). you can only have one of a particular scanner at one time, but you can have, for instance, a rev 1, rev 2 and rev 3 in your three slots.

If you can afford it, you will also want a Babylon Scan Unit Type 1 or better, the best currently being a Type 4. These are Pods, and can only be made by Engineers. If you can find them, they will be on the Players Market and will set you back millions of credits. Why? They add to your scan rate without any IP or energy cost. Well worth it if you can get them. You can only use one Babylon unit of any type at a time, so get the best you can find and afford. Once you get one, plug it into your pod slot(red handled wrench at the bottom of the screen).

Asteroid Data Scanner
The asteroid data scanner is something that you can equip that will tell you what ores are in an asteroid field. It will not help with the actual mining, nor will it increase your Scan Rate. Equip the Asteroid Data Scanner the same way you would an Asteroid Scanner, in one of your system slots. Scan the asteroid field after you equipped it by clicking on the blue square labeled scan field in the top right of the navigation screen. This will give you some useful information about the asteroid field. Remember to switch the Asteroid Data Scanner for an Asteroid Scanner before you start mining.

Mining
Having bought and fitted your new laser, you need to find an Asteroid Field - there's one in Ethan, just up from Feris. Make sure you have an empty hold, and click on a field, then look at the 5 icons in the top right of the navigation screen (below your fuel status). You want the laser one(to me it looks like a red-handled baseball bat), 2nd from the left - click it to enter the mining screen. If you instead click on the asteroid field again, you will get a screen that gives you the option to Mine Asteroid Field or Return to navigation screen. either way is good.

You should get a screen with two squares on the left representing your weapon slots; hopefully, one of which will have a picture of your laser. On the right should be your Current Scan Rating. The final total of all your Asteroid Scanners and your Babylon Scan unit will be multiplied by your Mining Laser bonus to get your Current Scan Rating.

Click the image of your mining laser(this will cost one fuel) and you should get a second screen with three boxes in it. These are the ores you can tractor into your hold(at one fuel per box). They will tell you the type of ore and the amount of ore. You will gain XP based on the type and amount of ore you tractor into your hold. Basic ore, for instance, gives you one XP per ore. Below the three pictures should be the amount of space left in your cargo bay. If you are filling up the last space in your hold, you can take less than the amount of ore shown.If your hold fills up, you can't mine any more.

Eventually you'll fill your hold, and get a message saying you can't mine any more. You now have a heap of ore, which you can take either to an Orbiting Refinery for refining, or to a Commercial Stores/Joe's/player market for storage or sale - try Cinq Port in Kelsey, for example.

Note that a bigger hold will allow you to fetch more ore on each trip, and is therefore well worth investing in for a miner. Likewise a ship designed for mining, with a bigger hold, and more energy is well worth the thinner armor and hull for a miner.

Wreckage Located
While mining you may find some wreckage. This notice will appear below the ore window. Such loot will automatically be placed in your storage area. It is of use to Engineers, who can make pods out of them. All of it can be sold or bartered.
Crystals & Junk Salvaged Items

While mining you may find you a crystal or salvage. They will appear in the third loot window. Each asteroid field has a finite number of Crystal and Junk, which is replenished at random intervals. Crystals are very valuable and are used by crafters to make superior items that have better performance, lower requirements, or that use less power. They vary in rarity a fair bit, so don't be surprised if you don't see one for a while.

Junk salvaged items can be recycled using some special devices that fit into your Cargo Expander slot, but again, the higher level players can do this more efficiently, and therefore often buy up junk to recycle.

Both salvage and crystals are often best sold on the PM for low-level players, and will make you quite a bit of credits! They also can be saved, as several NPC missions require them. At present, I would recommend the following prices to be the minimum you wish to sell for (you can try for more if you like, indeed, best to do so if the PM is not flooded) in order to make a fair return on your find. Remember, prices in the game can fluctuate wildly over time, so this price list could become inaccurate if circumstances change in-game.

Grey - Used to lower energy requirements - 50,000 credits
Green - Used to improve performance - 25,000 credits
Yellow - Used to reduce level requirements - 40,000 credits
Blue - Used to lower skill requirements - 65,000 credits
Red - Used to improve damage - 2,000,000 credits

Junk Salvaged Items - Recycled for commodities - varies wildly on type, but around 15,000 to 60,000 credits seems normal.
Mining Drones - for lots of Ore!

If you have serious amounts of credits and are at least level 15, you can look at getting some mining drones to collect ore for you. They come in several types, both store-bought and player made versions, of which the player made versions are vastly superior in both drone skill level requirements and ore gathering ability.

To use one, you have to get one, have sufficient drone skill, and approach an Asteroid Field. You then select the first icon on the left of the 5 icons, which will take you to a screen allowing you to deploy your drone assuming you have done everything right and meet its requirements.

This done, the drone will contentedly trundle across the system depositing an amount of ore at the local Orbiting Refinery every hour. You can get up to 5 drones going at once to speed things up. Should you ever want to move them or change them (or if you want to do an IP reset) you can recall them from the 'View Drones' option on the top right drop down menu, in which case they will appear in one of the system location