Gold Rush

A Gold Rush is an informal term in Elite Dangerous for when a confluence of various Background Simulation factors and player knowledge leads to the mass exploitation of a specific activity for unusually high profits with a minimal investment of time or effort. Most Gold Rushes were unintentionally caused by the BGS and quickly altered or removed by Frontier Developments within days of being reported. With Elite Dangerous: Beyond Chapter Four (3.3), naturally-occurring Gold Rushes were incorporated into the BGS for mining, allowing prices for Mineral Commodities to spike under certain conditions and result in an emergent gameplay event.

The first gold rush was in the premium beta of Elite Dangerous. There were only a few systems in the game, and getting credits was very hard. This was around the time they added Unidentified Signal Sources. Some of the USSs spawned gold canisters that could be looted.

Notable Gold Rushes

Location	Date	Description
Rhea
Quince
Robigo Mines, Robigo	January 2016	Slave smuggling missions from Robigo Mines allowed players to accept the missions and then immediately sell the slaves in Robigo Mines' black market without leaving the landing pad, allowing for profits of 300 million per hour with a Python with maximum cargo capacity. Doing this damaged the players' reputation with the mission giver, Robigo Cartel, but a bug caused reputation to automatically return to Neutral or even Friendly.
Parsons Station, LTT 2684	September 2017 - February 2018	Economy passenger missions from Parsons Station, LTT 2684 to Namorodo. Namorodo was less than 14 ly away from LTT 2684 and had only a single station about 480,000 ls from the main star, a distance which made the missions high-paying, and Parsons Station offered a constant flow of missions.
Allen Hub, Upsilon Aquarii	January 2018	Economy passenger missions from Allen Hub, Upsilon Aquarii to Smeaton Orbital, LTT 9360 had payouts in the tens of millions and required only one jump and a lengthy, low-effort trip in supercruise to complete. The popularity of Allen Hub missions overshadowed the similar situation at Parsons Station.
Oxley Keep, 35 Leonis Minoris	March 2018	High-paying skimmer massacre missions at nearby stations that listed Oxley Keep as the objective could be stacked and completed very quickly, resulting in players earning 200-300 million credits per hour.
Obsidian Orbital, Maia
Krylov's Inheritance, Batz		Krylov's Inheritance, Batz to Dedekind City, Teaka cargo missions
Viktorenko Holdings, CD-33 8748	December 2018	Viktorenko Holdings offered 1.6 million credits per unit of Void Opals. Players who accumulated loads of over 600 Void Opals (carried in Imperial Cutters) over several hours were able to sell them for upwards of 1 billion credits in a single transaction. This was the first of countless naturally-occurring Gold Rushes involving Void Opals post-Beyond Chapter Four (3.3).
Borann A 2	September 2019 - June 2020	Borann A 2's rings were found to have a unique cluster of three overlapping Low Temperature Diamonds Hotspots, which made mining LTDs faster and therefore more attractive than Void Opal mining despite Void Opals' higher value. This was exacerbated following the January Update, which added supply and demand effects to markets for certain mined commodities that weakened Void Opal profitability. The Fleet Carriers Update ended the Gold Rush by forcing Hotspots to regenerate.