Miner: Difference between revisions

This is a rough table on which minerals, metals, and chemicals are most valuable to mine. These prices will be lower or higher (even up to 8 times) depending on demand in the station you're selling to. It can be helpful to screenshot the nearest station's metal, mineral and chemical market prices to ensure highest profit, since varying demand of different resources can result in great variation of profit. Note that this information below is not often updated, and it is recommended to check third-party tools such as [https://eddb.io/commodity eddb.io] or [https://inara.cz/galaxy-commodities/ inara.cz] for up to date prices.  High value minerals such as Void Opals or Alexandrite are gemstones, obtain exclusively via core mining.  The only exceptions are Painite in metallic rings, and Low Temperature Diamond and Bromellite in icy rings, which can be mined with lasers.

* Asteroid fragments will display on the ship's radar as grey boxes.

* Use the System Map to find systems with asteroid belts or rings that have the description "Pristine Reserves" and "Metallic".

* Mining in planetary rings is more effective as there are always plenty of nearby asteroids to choose from (unlike belts).

* For maximum profit, focus on mining highly valued metals or minerals (like Painite, Platinum, Palladium, or Low Temperature Diamonds).

**Rocky and Metal-Rich rings are best for core mining, for various gemstones such as Painite, Musgravite, or Monazite

* Use prospector drones to double the yield of asteroid fragments.

* If the asteroid's fragments have low concentration (below ±15%), don't waste your precious time and try a different one.

* Even if your cargo is full, you can still fill up the refinery to 100% per slot. When you return to a starport to sell your cargo, this frees up space and each full refinery slot will go into your cargo hold. Treat it as extra cargo space.

* Enabling Night Vision is useful especially when mining in the massive shadow of a planet.

* The material content (Low, Medium, High) does not affect the amount of metals, minerals or chemicals that the asteroid contains.

* Keep an eye on the fragments; in some cases, they will get themselves stuck inside the meteorites. This will make it so your collector limpets will launch themselves into the rock; destroying themselves. If you notice a drone die early quickly look out for this and add it to your exclusion list as soon as possible to avoid more limpet loses.

* You can craft additional limpets via [[synthesis]] and you are very likely to pick up the components for them while mining; however they are incredibly wasteful of [[Nickel]], which is a common engineering material. Use this only in a pinch such as seeing rare materials with no drones.

* If you are only mining for access to [[Selene Jean]]'s engineering then always go to planetary rings. You can still use prospector drones to increase yield but you will be instead looking for group asteroids so you can collect as much as possible as fast as possible as you generally won't be too concerned with profit in this scenario. In fact, more common ores may be desirable due to being able to refine them faster. Use as many collector limpet controllers as you can equip with as big of a refinery as possible as well to help out.

* Always avoid or run away from NPC pirates while carrying mining cargo unless piloting a ship that is combat capable or equipped with a [[Fighter Hangar]]. Pirates almost always use [[Limpet Controller/Hatch Breaker|Hatch Breaker Limpets]], which means dealing with them involves a high risk of partial or total cargo loss.

== Guides ==