Miner
Mining in Elite Dangerous is a very manual process; the player must use a mining laser to chip off pieces of an asteroid, which are then scooped up to be refined on-board. As time consuming as it can be, a miner with the right technique can make just as much money as they would in other professions.
To mine, the player must have a ship equipped with a Mining Laser and a Refinery. The player will need to use the mining laser on an asteroid until a chip breaks off, at which point the player will need to fly close enough to the chip that they can guide it into their cargo scoop which will then allow them to refine the chip by using the Refinery module which can be accessed through the ship's right control panel. It is recommended that players obtain system data from the Universal Cartographics in order to determine what asteroids are mineral rich and as close to "pristine" as possible which will ensure that the player gets the most 'bang for their buck'.
Equipment
- A ship
- A great choice for starting miners is the Cobra Mk. III, due to the size of its cargo hold, internal compartments, and its manoeuvrability. It can also fit the Class 2 mining laser.
- Mining Laser
- Required to extract the ore fragments from an asteroid.
- Higher quality lasers may extract ore fragments faster.
- Refinery
- Required to process the collected ore.
- Some refineries have multiple bins to process several types of ore simultaneously.
- Collector Drone
- Automated collection massively improves profit per hour by collecting fragments automatically.
Locations
Mining is currently possible at asteroid belts or planetary rings which are not Icy, although it is the most profitable in a Pristine Metallic area. Asteroid belt points of interest can only be scanned at very close range (c.5ls). Asteroids in planetary rings can also be mined from - RES are common places for NPC miners to congregate in, but pirates will also spawn here.
You can fly to asteroids (either clusters or planetary rings) in supercruise, just like any destination within a system. When you have arrived, you will see a number (from a handful to many dozens) of asteroids, which you can then mine. A good starting spot for mining are systems with industrial economies.
Mining Locations change in both quality and quantity which when presented one through five, one being the highest and five being the least are currently;
- Pristine
- Major
- Common
- Low
- Depleted
As stated in GalNet, players are currently unable to mine Icy asteroids for resources leaving the availability to Rocky, Metal Rich, and Metallic asteroids, metallic being the most optimal location.
Locations of planets with pristine metallic rings can be found here .
Guide
Make sure to bind a Mining Laser (preferably in its own firing group) just like you would do with any other weapon in game. Fly within range (being 500m) of the asteroid and blast away with the Mining Lasers. You have to hold down the trigger for a while (depending on the quality of Mining Laser you have bought) before a piece of rock chips off.
Now select the fragment of rock as a target. They are quite small so not always easy to detect visually but they do show up as white contacts on your radar. When selected, you get details of the contents of the fragment, e.g. Bauxite (9.7%) Coltan (21.2%). Note that the first mineral named shows up in the HUD, but doesn't necessarily represent the most valuable mineral!
The mineral content is how much of a ton of cargo can be extracted from the fragment. E.g. if you scoop and process three 35% Indite shards you end up with 1 ton of Indite. Fragments range in mineral content from ~5% to ~65% and all fragments from the same asteroid are similar.
Having chipped off a piece of rock you now have to scoop it up with your cargo scoop. To do so you have to engage your scoop (just like you would with your landing gear or hardpoints), then fly slowly towards the target. Upon engaging the Cargo Scoop you will find that a blue box will have appeared on the lower left of you HUD. On there you should, if pointing at the rock, see an icon in the crosshairs (the box). Continue to fly slowly towards the rock while holding the rock in the middle of the cargo scoop's crosshairs until you have successfully acquired it.
Asteroid fragments are more difficult to scoop than regular cargo, as their movement is more complex (not to mention the fact that you want to avoid hitting an asteroid while you're focused on scooping!) For this reason, it's advisable to use very slow speeds of 15 m/s while scooping. What's more, fragments will "decay" over time, meaning they slowly lose integrity until they disappear.
Now that you have the rock in your hold you will find that, if going to the right hand menu under the tab Cargo, you have some names of minerals in there. Press the minerals you want to refine. Maybe you have picked up 15% gold and 10% Indium. Then you can press the Gold and the Indium so that when you next time pick up some Indium and Gold they will "stack" on top of what you have already. The % stands for the amount of percent it is of a full "stack". One full "stack" gives you 1 ton of cargo (one unit of whatever mineral you have collected).
You also have the option to "vent" the contents of your refinery. This is useful if you have a nearly-full refinery of bauxite and you find an asteroid with gold.
In the upcoming update, 1.3 Powerplay, there is the introduction of drones which can be used to collect the ore pieces and this will drastically speed up the mining process. More details of how this will work will be released when the patch goes live.
Values
This is a very rough guide to which minerals and metals are most valuable to mine. These prices will be lower or higher depending on demand in the station you're selling to.
| Minerals: | Average price per ton |
| Painite | 33000 |
| Bertrandite | 2700 |
| Indite | 2400 |
| Gallite | 2100 |
| Coltan | 1500 |
| Urannite | 1000 |
| Lepidolite | 700 |
| Rutile | 400 |
| Bauxite | 200 |
| Metals: | Average price per ton |
| Platinum | 18800 |
| Palladium | 13500 |
| Gold | 9700 |
| Beryllium | 8500 |
| Osmium | 7000 |
| Indium | 6200 |
| Gallium | 5500 |
| Silver | 5000 |
| Tantalum | 4200 |
| Uranium | 2800 |
| Lithium | 1700 |
| Titanium | 1100 |
| Cobalt | 800 |
| Copper | 600 |
| Aluminium | 400 |
Selling
The value of a mineral is scaled to the supply/demand meaning that selling minerals where there are tons of other players selling the same mineral is a bad idea. Systems that are both refinery economies and have an asteroid field will tend to give you a lower price compared to what you would get if you were to travel somewhere more distant to the source (source being asteroid fields).
Styx is an excellent example of where we see a massive drop in prices. It has both mining equipment for sale, is very close to the spawn point for new players, have mineable asteroid fields and is a refinery economy (means it will have a constant demand for minerals to refine), it is therefore going to be very popular to sell minerals there, which is going to lead to a price drop due to a saturated market.
Pirates and other miners
Pirates can be a problem. They occasionally do a fly-by and scan you. They might even attack. You can prepare for this eventuality in several different ways:
- If you have brought some pew-pew of your own, a bounty or two never hurts to cash in when returning to the station. Of course, rigging your ship for combat might reduce your cargo space, so you would have to travel a lot more between your mining site and the station every time your cargo hold is full.
- You could always take the brave route and run like hell, though that might be kind of frustrating when you still have 10 of those 50% platinum fragments floating in front of you, ready to scoop. Nothing a few missiles mightn't take care of for you - with time left over for the scooping.
- Lastly, if you're in a system where the ruling faction is your ally, the security forces are prompt to respond, and will take care of your pirate problem for you. "Nothing to see here, be about your business commander and have a nice day". Gee, thanks, mr. policeman :)
It's kind of a dirty trick, but if you see other NPC miners out there zapping away, it's usually worth it to mine the rock they're currently working on. They seem surprisingly good-natured about you grabbing their spot, even.
Tips
- 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).
- Focus on mining highly valued metals or minerals (like Platinum, Palladium or Gold).
- If the asteroid's fragments have low concentration (below ±15%), don't waste your precious time and try 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.
Trivia
- Added in the Beta 3 Update which went live on October 28th, 2014.
News
30 OCT 3300 GalNet News: Mining Special report! According to the experts at Wreaken Construction and Mining, all you need is a refinery, a mining laser and a little luck. Most rings in known space are depleted but for the individual there is still some money to be made. The Current equipment is not configured to work with ice rings and the best yields will be found on metal rings far from populated space. Our contacts at Stellar Cartographics, James Urquhart, was keen to point out that data is available in any of the mapped systems, showing both the type of ring/belt and the level of reserves. Reserves have been categorised from Depleted to Pristine and the belt composition comes under one of four types.
— In-Game Galnet News
Gallery
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A Mining Laser
