Eve - Making Money in Hisec: Part 1 - Mining

Making Money in Hisec

When I joined DELONA, several people asked how I had managed to get 1 billion ISK in my bank.  Well, after playing EVE for over 3 years, I guess you could say I’ve learned a few tricks here and there while keeping it clean – you’ll never catch me flipping someone else’s ore cans or probing down someone’s mission deadspace to steal loot. So if you run out of ideas on how to make money, here are some hints you can use.

Part 1: Miner 2049’er

Most people know that there’s money to be made in mining.  Most people just don’t know how to do it effectively.  Yeah, it can be boring as hell sometimes, but very little actual “work” or risk involved.  Go browse the web or read a book while you’re mining – just remember to check back on your progress every few minutes.

First, start out with the mining frigate.  Each faction has a frigate class ship that has a mining bonus – that’s the one you’ll want to start out with. 

Next, start training the following:

Anchoring I.  You’ll need this to anchor secure containers wherever you mine so that you don’t have to run back to haul ore as often

Mining V.  This will let you use the more advanced Miner II’s, increasing your yield.

Faction Industrial V.  Will let you fly the big haulers so you spend less time running back and forth. You’ll also need faction Frigate III and Spaceship Command III before you can train this.

You’ll have to start out dumping you’re frigate’s load every time it fills up.  DO NOT dump your ore into a jetcan if you can help it – that’s just asking for trouble.  Some buttwipe will come along and flip the ore over into his own jetcan.  Sure they get flagged for stealing, but they know you can’t do a damn thing about it since you’re in a mining ship.  If you try to take the ore back, YOU’LL be flagged as stealing from THEM, and they’ll blow you out of the sky and probably laugh at you in local chat in the process.  So just don’t do it.

Once you get your industrial ship and anchoring skills up, you’ll be able to anchor giant cans in the belts.  Put as many cargo expanders in your industrial ship as you can.  Then buy twice as many giant containers as your industrial ship can hold.  Anchor half of them in the belt you’ll be mining as close to each other as possible, and make sure you put passwords on them.  Leave the other half in your Industrial.  Now go out and mine, dumping the ore into your anchored containers.  Once they’re full, go out with your industrial and haul the ore back.   Of course, train for bigger ships, too!  Destroyers work real nice as well because of the number of high slots they have – more mining lasers!

The next big hurdle in your mining career is to get yourself into a mining barge.  For that you’ll need:

Mining Barge V, Astrogeology V.  You’ll need this fly a Covetor. 

When you get to III and IV respectively, you can fly a Retriever, which in itself will be a step up from Miner II’s.  Once you mine with one of these babies’s, you’ll wonder how you got along with mining from a frigate.

But wait, there’s more!  If you have mining V, don’t pop for a Modulated Strip Miner II just yet, because you have to train to use the crystals.  A Strip Miner I will actually pull in more ore then a strip miner II with no crystals.   Train your specialty ore processing to level III first for the ores you’ll be pulling in, THEN get the Strip II’s and mining crystal I’s.  Get the specialty ore processing to IV, and you can use the mining crystal II’s – they burn out twice as fast, but they pull in more ore.

So, what’s next? Well, there’s some good news and bad news.  The good news is that if you can fly a Covetor, you’re about 1 day’s worth of training away from flying a Hulk, the king of miners!  The bad news is that the Exhumers skill book is about 28 mil and the Hulk itself can be 150-200 mil.  So start saving.  So, what you’ll want to train at this level:

Exhumers V.  You’ll need level III to fly the Hulk, and the extra levels will boost your output.

Mining Laser Upgrades.  Sticking these puppies in your low slots will boost your mining output even further!

So, around this point, you’ll soon discover that mining out of your anchored giant cans is getting impractical – A hulk will damn near fill a giant can in 1 cycle of its lasers!  This means more running back to haul the ore, which in turn means less time actually MINING the ore.  So, what do you do now?

Deadspace mining!  Start doing some missions for your favorite high level agent.  Eventually, one of the missions will have lots of nice ore in the mission deadspace.  That’s right, mine that ore!  Those pretty rocks will still stay there as long as you don’t turn in the mission or wait ‘til downtime.  Why is this better then mining from an asteroid belt?  Because it’s safe to use a jetcan, that’s why!  Yes, a griefer could still probe you down and mess with you, but they’re usually looking for combat ships to kill and/or steal loot from mission wrecks.  If they see a hulk come up on their scanner, they’ll probably assume you’re at a belt anyway.  And what’s even better is you’ll sometimes get ore that’s not normally available in your region, such as finding Omber in Caldari space.  Can’t get much better than that.  Just remember to rename your jetcans and pick them up every hour or so.  When you name a jetcan, it will last 2 hours instead of the normal 1 hour.

So NOW what’s next?  About all you can do better at this point is to get yourself an Orca.   50 mill for the Industrial Command Ship book, and about 400-500 mil for the Orca itself.  Ouch! But those things are amazing!  You can fit about 6 jetcans full of ore in the 3 holds, and you get a nice boost to tractor range and speed so you can grab your ore cans from far away.  Even better would be to get your Orca on another account so you can give yourself mining fleet boosts!

 

If you’d like to see the best mining guide out there, check out Halada's The Complete Miner's Guide.  This has got to be the best mining guide in all of Eve!  More for the advanced miner though, as it actually goes deep into the math on how to maximize your mining.