Mining is perhaps one of the more chill activities you can be doing in Eve Online, depending on where you are mining. While not the greatest ever ISK earner, it is the backbone of the industry. It is often a rather enjoyable way to wind down after a long day.

The nice thing about mining is that it’s something you can jump into quite early on in Eve Online. I've covered some of the AIR Career program mining tasks that will get you set up for early game mining rather quickly in the past.

Naturally, mining in a Venture can get you started. Is not being near what I do nowadays. Granted, these things have amazing bonuses for harvesting gas clouds in wormhole space.

While I sometimes dream of going back into wormholes. That entire process can be quite the undertaking. Not to mention the risks involved in doing so. While perhaps one day I'll turn into someone who does day trips into a Wormhole that spawns in my area. I don’t see myself gas mining any time soon.

For quite some time, a lot of people who mine in high sec would see something like the Hulk to be their main end goal. Unless they wanted to provide bonuses to a fleet. It’s kind of funny, but after all these years of playing Eve Online off and on again, I still can’t fly one.

It’s not that I could not go out and start the training for one. It would only take about 16 days of training remaining to do so. I just don’t like the fact that the hull for the ship alone costs around 250-270 million. That is before fittings and all of that.

People love to go around and gank hulks in high sec. They do offer a nice phat and easy target. Funny enough, some people try and set up their hulks for tanking. Yet, that rather defeats the purpose when much cheaper ships can out mine them at that rate.

Instead, I go for the middle of the road with mining barges. I prefer the Covetor. While its mining hold of only 9k is quite lackluster over another great option called the Retriever. I am usually never mining alone. So, the small cargo hold is usually not an issue.

The hull of these things only runs around 60 million ISK. Add in a few more million for modules and other things. The costs of replacing one of these, if ever needed, are not that bad. In fact, after a couple of hours of mining, you are already at the replacement cost, even mining in high sec with one of these. Assuming you are mining in a fleet with a bonus.

A big advantage mining barges have over the mining frigates is the ability to use modulated strip miners. A huge catch is that you also need to have trained the mining crystals to use in this type of module. Otherwise, its mining yield is frankly not that great.

At this level of mining, being able to use the right kind of mining crystals is huge and can take a lot of training time to acquire. That is why I'm kind of glad I just mined high sec ores, as I only need Simple Asteroid Mining Crystals to do so.

To save a little bit of ISK, I even craft my own. Any extras I'll sell on the market. Making it a kind of fun item to craft. If they don’t sell at the price I want. I’ll just end up using them anyway.

There is an exception to using mining crystals. If there are special ores to mine for a mining event, or if I'm mining ice. I’m not using the modulated strip miners. In Nice, they have their mining laser called Ice Harvesters that don’t require crystals. As far as special event ores, I'll just use normal strip miners that don’t require a mining crystal.

When it comes to the crystals themselves while there are a few different kinds. There are also three variants of each type. There are A’s that provide the lowest mining yield but the lowest residue loss. These are great if you want to mine the most you can out of an asteroid before it gets destroyed.

Since I'm just mining rather common ores, and there are more than enough to go around where I mine. I prefer to go with B’s. They give you a bit more mining yield, but they have a much higher residue loss, so asteroids tend to go a lot quicker.

There are then the odd ones out, the Cs of mining crystals. Players just refer to them as belt killers. They are meant to clear out asteroids in an area quickly and just kind of suck. I’ve never had any use for them. I also don’t craft any of them either. As I don’t see a reason for them in high sec mining.

Outside of all that. Mining is just about going out and sitting in an asteroid belt for hours on end, zapping rocks. I find it a great time to chat with others and just be lazy for a better word of it.

For a while now, I've tried to work out the maths when it was ideal to have someone in the fleet flying an industrial command ship. Those kinds of ships give different bonuses to the mining fleet from mining range, crystal volatility, and module duration.

Being able to sit about 30km away from something and being able to mine it is great. The lower module duration means faster mining, and was the biggest thing I'd consider. If not enough people were online to mine. It just did not make sense to have someone not mining their usual amount and be in a mining command ship instead, where, at best, they were just mining a tiny amount or none at all.

Since returning to Eve Online, I also noticed a rather odd trend. You would see two people, and one of them would be in a mining command ship giving a bonus. Usually, they were in something in a Porpoise, and for the longest time, I just could not work out why anyone would ever do that. Having two mining barges would yield more ore mined per hour.

For the longest time, I just assumed the main reason for doing this was the 50k base mining hold that you can increase a little bit with skill. You would lose less time having to haul back to wherever you refine. That still did not quite make it worthwhile in my eyes. I, however, could see if someone wanted to be rather lazy; that would be great.

I was almost right but not quite. As something we did not have the ability for in our corporation until recently was someone with ore compression skills. We knew it allowed you to compress ores down a bit, but being in high sec and not needing to transport ores far, that just did not seem worth it.

That was until you started compressing in the asteroid belt. While it has some cost to it. Instead of needing someone to haul for everyone. Even my Covetor, with its tiny 9k mining hold after compression, does not need to make a single trip back to a station in a fleet before we kill the asteroid belt.

It is insane just how much ore you can fit into your hold after it’s been compressed. I start to see why now the lazy among us out there that are boxing some mining alts have a mining command ship on the field.

These things have now spoiled me to the point that if there is not one online, I'd rather just go do other activities than mine. As with someone hauling ores for you. You need to go into your mining log and work out how much of each ore you mined for that mining session. Unless the hauler divides up the ores as they pick up from for each person individually, so they remain separated.

Final Thoughts

Always a fun part of returning to a game like Eve Online. Things slowly change over time. Even with something so simple as mining. Every time I return to this game, there is always a slight change and a new way to think about doing something.

The changes are not usually enough that you feel like you know nothing at all. More times than not, you can return and just pick up where you left with things mostly feeling the same old same old. Yet, almost every time, there is that slight change that makes you rethink everything for the better.

Information

New to Eve Online or a returning player? Use my recruit a friend referral link and get 1 million skill points on signing up or logging into your Eve Online account (can only be claimed once per account). Disclosure: I might receive in-game rewards.

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.