While I don’t have high-end mining equipment these days I do at least have a Finder F-105. I don’t have a bunch of tiers unlocked on it as that gets quite pricy. If I do get back into mining in a big way that is something I’m going to have to keep an eye out for some upgrades.

You might be thinking that sounds like a horrible place! While there are quite a lot of other reasons why it’s not a great place at this time it also offers what I’m looking for. Having a mining spot most will stay far away from is amazing. I don’t have to worry about showing up to mine and “thinking” someone else just mined out the area and having to go elsewhere.

Despite how analytic mining can be you will find many miners are quite superstitious. For all I know, that could have changed when loot was reworked a lot in the game. For now, I’m just going to assume they are.

Mining has a lot of theory-crafting about it. One of those things is getting at least a 33% hit rate for most things. There are some exceptions to that rule depending on location and what are you mining for. It’s however quite something many miners use to follow.

There are three different types of things you can mine for. They have their different costs as well when you drop a prob. Enmatters which only cost .50 PED per search used to be something I did a lot during my early and on-budget days. Ores which cost 1 PED per search was something I later got into as I had a decent place for farming high markup ores. Finally, you had treasures that were limited to a single planet and I think costing 1.5 PED per search.

You could search for all three at once or in most cases two of these types. That usually was not a smart idea. A lot of miners in the game over the long run have built up their troves of information of map information. That would contain what kind of mining materials could be found in a given area and at what depths to find them.

One of the biggest things that makes mining so attractive in Entropia Universe is the markup mining materials sell for. While a lot of stuff has a low mark up of 101% to 103%. I use to mine stuff that sold like hotcakes for 160-180%. This during its time was amazing.

I was also quite lucky back in the day. I joined a group that mined said high markup resources and was given a guided tour and all the tips and tricks they know about the spots it was found on. It was only found on one planet and sometimes you have a mining area all to yourself. Nowadays there are a few different high markup resources out there to find all over the universe.

While a lot of things have changed over time in Entropia Universe and I have no idea how much my old information is valid or not. It is also considered quite a trade secret. Although I expect over the years even if that mining material is still worth a lot that information is more than out there.

I however won’t be talking about it or giving up any of that information. This kind of makes it hard when you want to create content on things you enjoy. There are just some things you got to keep to yourself and that is one of them. Some players spent a lot of money coming up with such data themselves. It is a big deal when they share it with you.

Thankfully I’m not mining on that planet and don’t get to worry about what I can or cannot show or talk about. Instead, I just get to have some fun and see what kind of results I get.

I decided I would go on a 200 PED run. For mining is quite small but it’s an ok little trip. I however think it will make a few points about it quite clear. I will also be breaking that run down into two different parts. The how I use to mine and how I learned to mine instead.

For the first 100 PED run that I’ll be doing in the same area as the other half, I’ll just be running around and dropping probes mining for ore without much thought. There is such a thing as wanting to avoid overlapping while also getting good coverage of an area.

That without any assistance is harder than you think. It can be quite easy to get turned around, get misaligned, or even re-mine an area you already had recently. This is more or less going to guarantee you find nothing at all or a much smaller claim than your first hit if you found something.

There are also a lot of other factors that get in the way. You have to move around for trees or other objects. A lot of times you had to walk around a monster so you did not get within its aggression range. Not to mention slope terrain changes affect things as well.

The best you can do is just drop a prob. Keep walking and count in your mind to 10 or 15 or some number you are hoping will be enough that you do not have a massive overlap from your last probed dropped.

It’s quite an inaccurate way of doing things. It’s however how I went about mining for quite a while. It’s also how a lot of players who don’t know any better do it as well. You do your best and that is all you can do.

That however was also quite a small run. It’s not that uncommon to have a bit of a dry spot and come back with so little as well. While it’s hard to be certain there will be a massive difference in my second 100 PED run in the same area.

I had not used a third-party program called Little Big Mining Log in forever. I have no idea if there are alternatives these days to it or what. I’m just glad it still works and looks like they are updating it still on occasion.

This program is listed even on the Entropia Universe game launcher as something to use. The game developers are quite cool about it like some other third-party things. There is also quite a community that uses it as well.

What is Little Big Mining Log? It’s an Optical Character Recognition that also reads any chat logs if you have them enabled. It will attempt to read the screen for the player's location (though I always have to manually ping my location in-game to my chat log and it seems I could not get it to auto work without doing so). Once it has your location by pressing the correct hotkey you can tell it you dropped a probe and it will mark not only the location but if anything was found if you want.

On top of that, it has a voice program that will read off what you found and give you some basic information about that find if you show it the claim deed for the resource. It’s quite a nifty little tool.

What is even more amazing is that all of my old mining data is still there from what it looks like. While I did not mine in many places on Calypso which is a shame I don’t have more data points to use now a day. I have some information at least in areas I mined the daylights out of.

It also looks like the program wanted to share all my old data points. Thankfully since it was old data it gave me an option to decline to share it with others. How greedy of me!

If I recall you can submit data for points and then there is an onsite store to spend those points on. I don’t mind sharing some of my common runs. That is however something I’ll have to dig into for another time and see what information I can look at.

Entropia Universe is one of those games if you want to mine I highly recommend you have a second monitor. So you can have the program’s map full-screened making it easy to see what is going on. Along with some other information as well if you want it’s quite a powerful tool.

After messing around with the settings a little bit it was time to use it. It is important to learn and set up different hotkeys. It won’t always catch that you dropped a probe somewhere to mark it on the map.

I can only imagine how much I was overlapping or the massive gaps between probe drops I was doing without being able to see it. I’m sure that is where a lot of the ore I did not find must have been found!

You also will notice as I’m going along on my mining trip that there are some darker green circles with a line. Those are the finds I found. I can even see what kind of ore it was when I found it, how big the claim was, the depth I found it, and other useful information.

In my second run, I was only down 12.19 PED worth of trade value. Quite the improvement over the 33 PED I was down on my other run. This is however all before markup. Markup is the thing that makes mining so powerful.

In total, I had 154.81 PED worth of ore. While I could vendor it or sell it to a reseller since I only have a small amount that is not a wise move to make.

If I attempted to list on the auction house I would only be getting 155.99 PED after markup before fees. With this small amount the auction house fees would kill my profit and end up costing me more than the extra 1.18 PED, I would be getting.

Selling raw resources is also not always the smartest thing to do. That however comes down to player knowledge and what the market is doing. Quite an easy step to take is to refine all your ores in a refiner which tends to not cost much in decay.

That however is not the only option. I could attempt to play the auction house market by trying to meet the demand for small stacks at a higher markup. A lot of the bigger miners want to sell in stacks of 100, 1k, or even more. Not everyone that needs to buy refined ore needs that much and they are willing to pay a higher premium for an amount closer to what they need.

That would also close my loss gap even further in the second half of my run. Not so much for the first half but that is just how things are. I however for now don’t want to risk listing small stacks and them not selling. I would be out the auction house fees. For now, I’ll just hold till I mine more of these ores up.

I might even see if any of the old crafters I know are still around. If I could cut out having to pay auction house fees entirely and go directly to someone who might need some of what I mined. That works out for both parties as they get a slight discount and the exact amount I if have it. I get a sale and save on fees.

The program keeps track of a lot of data for you. This is quite helpful when pouring through things later on trying to make heads or tails of things.

You will also notice that while I have been mining there are a lot of smaller circle dots in different colors that are not where I was dropping probes or where not my current finds are. This is showing all my past finds from what I can only assume were many dozens of runs.

It can be quite easy to look at this data and think you are starting to see ore clusters, dead spots, and other correlations. The fact of the matter is a lot of my old runs were not for ore but enmatters. You will also notice a lot of my new finds are not exactly on top of old finds either.

Sometimes you got to be careful to not read too much into some kinds of data. If it’s one thing the game developers behind this game are known for is playing around a lot with mining. One day you might think you found the best area ever and then it’s a total dud the next.

This kind of information is more useful for a global picture and things to take into consideration. I have a great idea of what kinds of ores can be found in this area. I also know around the depth ranges I was finding them.

There is however a lot more to mining than just finding a spot and setting up each of your probe drops in a certain way. A lot of the ores I found did not have that great of a markup. This area also did not have some even worse ores I was looking to avid.

Many miners spend a lot of time monitoring and keeping track of ore prices. Some of them might even have massive stockpiles waiting for a certain markup before they start offloading on the market. There are a lot of patterns and things the professionals have worked out.

Final Thoughts

While I did not turn a profit for my short run it was still a blast to get out and mine. Hopefully, I’ll have a few more runs in the near future. I do need to do some scouting around for a different place to mine.

Other Content

• Entropia Universe | Mining EnMatter Part 1

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Entropia Universe.