Mining

MINING

Mining is one of the more lucrative activities in the game with minimal entry requirements. Mining is a low to medium risk activity with high rewards. The only threats to a common miner are minor collisions with asteroids and frequent run-ins with pirate groups that attempt to snatch your valuables by a deployed hatch breaker limpet, but otherwise are uneventful.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Mining Basics
• Mining Knowledge
• Mining Locations
• Minerals to Mine
• Bring Limpets
• Extraction Process
• Surface Mining with the Rhino
• Selling Mined Minerals
• Further Readings

MINING BASICS

Mining in its simplicity is a five step activity which involves scanning and searching for hotspots, prospecting asteroids, extraction and collection and the expenditure of selling your refined minerals to the market.

There are four ways of mining minerals from asteroid belts. You can mine minerals through laser mining, surface abrasion blasting, sub-surface displacement mining and deep core mining. To mine minerals, you’ll need a good mining ship.

• Here is the recommended Laser Mining ships builds
• Here is the recommended Core Mining ship builds

Since September 2026 there is also a fifth way: mining on planet surfaces with the Rhino SRV (see Surface Mining with the Rhino). If you want one ship for everything, Lakon’s Type-11 Prospector is built for mining and can do every kind of asteroid mining without a refit.

You might be wondering why we don’t have sub-surface mining builds. Sub-surface mining builds are very similar to core mining ship builds, whereby you can replace the Seismic Charge Launchers with Sub Surface Displacement Missiles.

MINING MODULES

A minimal mining ship should have these following modules installed on their ships:

• Refinery Refineries refines mineral chunks or fragments into sellable commodities that gets stored in your cargo rack.
• Cargo Racks Cargo Racks are important to store refined minerals.
• Shield Generator Shield Generators provides a buffer on multiple accounts, you may accidently collide with asteroids or encounter pirate groups that tries to steal your goods. All of which, the shields help you escape from punitive death.
• Good Power Distributor You’ll need a sufficient power distributor to laser mine, however its also safe to get a higher power distributor so that you can equip shields that take more energy to regenerate.
• Mining Tools You’ll need mining tools like the very basic mining laser, or the more advanced abrasion blasters, sub-surface displacement missiles and seismic charge launchers mining tools to extract minerals from asteroids.
• Prospector Limpets Prospector limpets analyzes the composition of an asteroid and displays that information to the miner. It can tell you if the asteroid has surface protrusions, sub-surface deposits or fissures.

An optimized mining ship should also carry these modules on their ships to participate in a variety of activities.

• Pulse Wave Analyzer This module is only necessary for sub-surface displacement and deep core mining. It scans a general area separating asteroids that have chunks beneath the surface.
• Point Defense This module is not really needed unless you are mining in a Resource Extraction Site. You’ll encounter pirate groups that tries to snag your mined minerals by them deploying hatch breaker limpets.
• Detailed Surface Scanner The Detailed Surface Scanner not only can scan the surfaces of planets, but it can locate mineral hotspots on rings.
• Collector Limpets Although this is an additional extra module to equip, whereby scooping mineral fragments manually is all that’s needed for mining, it makes the collection of minerals so much more efficient and faster.

SETTING UP FIREGROUPS

There are a lot of moving parts to a miner’s firegroup. To put simply, we need to organize all of your mining tools.

• Firegroup A: System Scan Tools This firegroup is reserved for the Discovery Scanner and the Detailed Surface Scanner, which is to be binded on separate triggers.
• Firegroup B: Prospecting This firegroup is reserved for Prospecting asteroids. As such the Pulse-Wave Anaylzer and the Prospector Limpet are to be binded on separate triggers.
• Firegroup C/D: Extraction / Collection These two firegroups or designated for the extraction and collection of minerals depending on the activities your mining ship will be equipped to do.
  • Laser Mining Builds will usually be a dedicated build so you can pair Collector Limpets with Mining Lasers.
  • Since any sub-surface mining will be coupled with Abrasion Blasters. You can pair Sub-Surface Displacement Missiles or Seismic Charge Launchers with Abrasion Blasters on Firegroup C and then Collector Limpets on Firegroup D.
  • If you’re doing both Sub-Surface mining activities, bind the Sub-Surface Displacement Missiles and Seismic Charge Launchers separately in Firegroup C and then the Abrasion Blaster and Collector Limpet separately in Firegroup D.

MINING KNOWLEDGE

DROPPING INTO INSTANCE

If you’re in a wing or happen to mine solo, every time you or someone jumps into the same instance as you, either a wing of pirates or a wing of system security ships will spawn in tandem. This happens too if you menu log and come back into your mining instance.

• if you’re in a ship full of limpets, you will be left alone by the pirates
• if you’re in a ship full of limpets, you will be left alone by system security
• if you’re in a ship with some commodities, you will be bothered by pirates It is recommended to just run away than to fight and start fresh with a new stock of limpets.

EXTRACTION FRAGMENTS

There are two types of minerals that get extracted through different kinds of mining, mineral fragments which are extracted through Laser Mining only and mineral chunks, which are extracted through Abrasion Blasting, Sub Surface Displacement Mining, and Deep Core Mining.

• Mineral Fragments contains smaller quantity percentages (3%-15%) of a full unit of a mineral and can contain combinations of two minerals.
• Mineral Chunks contains larger quantity percentages (25%-70%) of a full unit of a mineral and only contain one mineral form.

REFINEMENT

When a mineral gets collected by the collector limpet, it gets dispensed directly into a refinery. The refinery is like a sorter, whereby it collects collected minerals and sorts the minerals into its individual hoppers. When the hoppers collect abundant amounts of mining fragment to form a unit of that mineral, the hopper ejects the mineral and stores it in the cargo hold.

• if there are a mineral fragment that contains two minerals, the refinery will separate these minerals into two hoppers
• overfilled hoppers will add the remaining quantity percentage to another hopper, unless the refinery is full then the mining fragment will retain that remainder and still be held by a collector limpet
• you can eject hoppers filled with unrefined or incomplete units of minerals

THE IGNORE LIST

In the Navigations Panel in the Contacts Tab, you can blacklist mineral fragments, even mineral fragments with split minerals that prevents the refinery to refine a certain type of mineral. Say if there is a mineral fragment containing both Mineral A and Mineral B:

• if you blacklist Mineral A, the fragment will still be collected by the collector limpet, but Mineral A will not be refined, the fragment containing Mineral A will be destroyed
• if you blacklist Mineral B, the fragment will still be collected by the collector limpet, but Mineral B will not be refined, the fragment containing Mineral B will be destroyed
• if you blacklist both Mineral A and B, the collector limpet will not collect the fragment
• if you whitelist both Mineral A and B, the collector limpet will collect the fragment and Mineral A will be refined in its own hopper, the same with Mineral B

MINING LOCATIONS

Finding minerals to mine requires one to source hotspots found at planetary bodies with rings. There are three major contributing factors that affect the content of the minerals found in rings, the reserve level of a ring, the type of ring and any hotspot overlapping.

RESERVE LEVELS

Reserve levels are broken down into five states which indicates the quality and quantity of the minerals found in the rings.

• Pristine Reserves
• Major Reserves
• Common Reserves
• Low Reserves
• Depleted Reserves

The higher the reserve level, the higher the percentage of content you will find in the asteroids and the higher the quantity of a commodity you can acquire from each asteroid. The reserve level only affects Laser Mining. The asteroid content percentage purely affects laser mining and not other core mining activities.

RING TYPE

There are four distinctive rings types, all of which can be searched in EDTools.cc

• Rocky Belt
• Metal Rich Belt
• Metallic Belt
• Icy Belt

The ring type can be found in the planetary information in the systems map.

Each ring type will yield a different set of minerals and materials.

HOTSPOTS

When probing the rings to reveal its hotspots with the Detailed Surface Scanner, locations of hotspots will show up. Not all minerals will have a hotspot and not all rings will have identical hotspot locations.

Hotspots are locations with a particularly high concentration of a particular mineral. This means that no matter what type of mining you are doing you will end up with a better yield for the amount of time you spend mining. This does not mean you’ll find a concentration of the same kinds of minerals in this location, you’ll find a higher likelihood of the minerals.

Hotspots are indicated by intensity. The closer you are to the center of the hotspot, the higher yield percentage you’ll obtain from asteroids. In the Swoilz hotspot image, you can see there are three distinctive lines separating the quality and quantities of minerals found if you happen to drop there.

• Black Line: 70% quality or more of minerals found in this hotspot
• Green Line: 20% quality or more of minerals found in this hotspot
• Red Line: 0% quality or more of minerals found in this hotspot

You may find the closest hotspot using EDTools.cc.

HOTSPOTS OVERLAPS

You may encounter hotspot overlaps after probing for hotspots on a ring. Overlaps benefit the rate of the quality and quantity of each mineral that the hotspot overlaps.

In mining, there are terminologies when describing an overlap, a strong overlap and a weak overlap. The names given to the overlaps are the hotspots’ minerals and the nunber of overlaps that occur. Take the LTD3 and LTD4 overlaps as an example in the Swoilz PK-R b20-0 system.

• The LTD4, although having 4 overlaps of the same mineral is considered a weak overlap as it borders the edges of three other hotspots.
• The LTD3 is considered to be a much more stronger overlap than the LT4 considering its proximity of how close the overlaps shares its centers.

RESOURCE EXTRACTION SITES

Resource Extraction Sites also offer a bonus to your mining yield. In this case, the bonus comes in the form of increasing the number of fragments that are generated by each asteroid. In the case of a Hazardous Resource Extraction Site, the amount of fragments doubles the amount you get from each asteroid. However, this bonus only applies within 20 km of the Resource Extraction Site’s navigation marker, and also necessitates dealing with the pirates which will come to investigate your efforts.

While it is certainly possible to mine in Resource Extraction Sites, the need to either avoid the pirates, or kill them makes the operation much more complex to perform efficiently. As such many people choose to avoid these locations.

MINERALS TO MINE

You can mine any minerals there exists on the market, however, miners are obsessive over high net returns so there are a selective amount of minerals miners will go after.

This is a basic chart of the more lucrative minerals found in different types of rings. The prices are from 2022-23 and move a lot, and the September 2026 mining rebalance changed yields too, so check live prices on INARA.cz before you set off.

BRING LIMPETS

MAKE SURE TO BRING LIMPETS

How much should I bring? Fill your all the space in your cargo with Limpets. If you run out of room for your refined minerals, abandon some limpets, they are rather cheap.

MINERAL EXTRACTION

There are four mining practices a miner uses to extract minerals from asteroids:

• Laser Mining Uses a powerful beam laser mining tool to heat up and dislodge fragments from the surfaces of asteroid bodies
• Abrasion Blasting Uses the abrasion blaster mining tool to dislodge any surface deposits.
• Sub Surface Displacement Mining Uses a sub-surface displacement mining missile to eject any sub-surface deposits.
• Deep Core Mining Uses a seismic detonator launcher to open up asteroids and scooping up chunks from the cores of asteroids through fissure openings.

LASER MINING

Laser Mining is a very simple mining play style whereby the miner uses Mining Lasers to dislodge tiny fragments of minerals from surfaces of asteroid bodies. For laser mining, you just need:

• Mining Lasers
• Prospector & Collector Limpets
• Cargo Racks and Refinery

OPTIMIZING LASER MINING

To mine efficiently using mining lasers, you need to understand the ratio of number of lasers to the number of collectors being sent out and how big your distributor size is to adequately elongate your mining journey without sending out a large amount of limpets. The general advise is to use the 2D mining lasers and run 4x the number of limpets that you have lasers.

Due to the fact that there are diminishing returns for more mining lasers, there is an optimal point for each size of power distributor. And because is some of these cases the distributor rather than the lasers are the limiting factor the number of required collectors changes too.

So, the following gives you the optimal number of 2D lasers to run for each distributor and gives the time required to mine 35 fragments with optimal setups. Note that this assumes no engineering of your power distributor. Fully engineering the distributor to G5 charge enhanced with super conduits will make your distributor equivalent to one two sizes larger.

• bold indicates that the power distributor is the limiting factor
• underlined indicates the amount of lasers is the limiting factor

Collector limpet numbers assume reasonably optimal alignment for collectors meaning collector turnaround time is around 10s so you need 10x the number of fragments per second being mined.

1A Distributor :

• 1x Laser (123s)
• 10x (35/123) = 2.8 collectors

2A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 1A Distributor)

• 1x Laser (99.24s)
• 10 x (35/99) = 3.5 collectors

3A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 2A Distributor)

• 1x Laser (79s)
• 2x Laser (75s)
• 10 x (35/75) = 4.7 collectors

4A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 3A Distributor)

• 2x Lasers (58s)
• 10 x (35/58) = 6.0 collectors

5A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 4A Distributor) -2x Lasers (45s)

• 10x (35/45) = 7.8 collectors

6A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 5A Distributor)

• 2x lasers (39s)
• 3x Lasers (35s)
• 10x (35/35) = 10 collectors

7A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 6A Distributor)

• 3x Lasers (28s)
• 10x (35/28) = 12.5 collectors

8A Distributor : (Grade 5 Modified 7A Distributor)

• 3x Lasers (26s)
• 4x Lasers (22s)
• 10x (35/22) = 15.9 collectors

LASER EXTRACTION PROCESS

1. Fire a prospector limpet at a targeted asteroid by facing it. You’ll notice a few things when the prospector limpets lands and scans the composition of the asteroid, the asteroid’s total yield percentage, the composition of the asteroid’s minerals in percentages, and the material content.

   • Total Yield Percentage - The remaining percentage of minerals to be extracted from the asteroid body.
   • Mineral Composition Percentages - The probability of what sort of minerals gets extracted from the asteroid’s surface.
   • Material Content - The probability of how much raw materials gets extracted from the asteroid’s surface along with the asteroid’s minerals.

2. You can either start laser mining and extracting the minerals wherever on the asteroid, or you can find the asteroid’s rotational axis and extracting fragments from there to prevent limpets from crashing themselves into the asteroid.

3. Laser the asteroid until the total yield percentage says depleted.

4. Start collecting the minerals with collector limpets.

5. Find another asteroid and repeat steps 1-4 until your cargo hold is filled with refined minerals.

WING LASER MINING

In a wing, laser mining generally has its advantages. Wing mates can distribute limpets around if they find one miner to have an abundant amount of limpets to lose, and one miner who has a loss of limpets.

Prospector limpets will display total yield percentage per client, and not globally. If one miner’s prospector limpet information reads a depleted asteroid, the other miners may not have the same information readout. This makes anyone who fills up slower during the wing mining run, fill incredibly faster near the end of the run.

This feature of the prospector limpet only works for laser mining only.

SUB SURFACE MINING

Sub surface mining uses the Sub-Surface Displacement Missiles to displace deposits underneath the surfaces of asteroids. Sub-surface mining also requires the utilization of the Abrasion Blasters to dislodge any surface deposits. For sub surface mining, you’ll need:

• Sub Surface Displacement Missiles and Abrasion Blasters
• Prospector and Collector Limpets
• Pulse Wave Analyzer
• Cargo Racks and Refinery

SUB SURFACE EXTRACTION PROCESS

1. Start by pulse wave analyzing the surrounding area. You’re looking for anything that glows.

2. When you found something glowing, prospect it with a prospector limpet. Continue redoing steps 1 and 2 until you found a desired asteroid to extract from. The Prospector will show you the locations of

   • Surface Deposits: Dislodge these protrusions with the Abrasion Blaster.
   • Sub Surface Deposits: These sub surface deposits anchors will have an integrity value which is indicated as a health meter.

3. When you launch a sub surface displacement missile, you need to hold it for the remainder of its launch. At first a message will indicate that the drilling missile needs time to prepare, but by giving it a few seconds, the sub-surface mini-game will commence.

4. In this mini-game there’s two indicator meters, the top meter indicates the density of the sub-surface deposit and the bottom meter indicates the quality yield of the same sub-surface deposit.

   • you need to time the bottom meter with the top meter to displace chunks and extract them
   • in the event that you miss timed the meters, you will fail the extraction
   • every displacement extraction attempt will diminish the integrity of the deposit and gradually the deposit crumbles preventing you to obtain more from the deposit

DEEP CORE MINING

Deep core mining uses the seismic charge launchers to detonate a fissure asteroid which dislodges core chunks from the center of the asteroid. Deep Core Mining also uses the Abrasion Blaster in tandem with the Seismic Charge Launchers. For deep core mining, you’ll need:

• Seismic Charge Launchers and Abrasion Blasters
• Prospector and Collector Limpets
• Pulse Wave Analyzer
• Cargo Racks and Refinery

DEEP CORE EXTRACTION PROCESS

1. Start by pulse wave analyzing the surrounding area. You’re looking for anything that glows with an intensive red-orange emitting from the core of the asteroid.

2. To confirm if the asteroid is a Deep Core asteroid, prospect the asteroid with a Prospecting Limpet. The limpet will indicate by stating Core Detected and the mineral. It will also indicate:

   • Surface Deposits: Dislodge these protrusions with the Abrasion Blaster.
   • Fissure Points: These fissure anchors will have a strength value measured by three strength levels, low, medium and high strength.

3. You will need to charge up the intensity of the seismic charges by holding the trigger and letting go with the charge fills up the bars indicated on both the weapons HUD and aiming reticle.

   • Low Intensity Charge: Release the charge when the first bar fills up half way full.
   • Medium Intensity Charge: Release the charge when the second bar fills up half way full.
   • High Intensity Charge: Release the charge when the third bar fills up half way full.

4. The instant the first charge detonator has been set, a 120 second countdown timer and a charge mini-game will start. The objective of the mini-game is to set detonator charges corresponding to the fissure strengths, until the charge bar meets the recommended charge strength. Anything below the recommended charge strength will not break the asteroid apart, anything above the recommended charge strength will yield poor results.

   • when the countdown timer reaches 0, all detonators that’s been set on the asteroid will detonate
   • you can make the detonator charges higher than the corresponding fissure strengths, however, the bar upon detonation might yield poor results
   • in Odyssey, this bar is more sensitive so you might have to be more cautious when setting charges at the appropriate level, sometime going lower

5. If every detonator is set to fulfill the recommended charge detonator before the countdown, you may look into your navigations panel and go into the Contacts tab. There you can find the detonator’s charges.

   • you can fast track down to 10 seconds and detonate charges before the 120 second countdown
   • you can also disarm a charge, but you cannot set another charge on a fissure that a charge’s been disarmed

6. Move around 1 to 2 km away from the asteroid, as the detonation shock and debris may damage your ship.

   • if the detonation jumps over the recommended yield level, and display a warning of “Detonation Yield Charge Exceeded. Yield Forecast Poor”, this is only a visual bug and will not impact the yield
   • anything above 10 chunks is considered a good yield

7. The asteroid will breakup into smaller asteroids, which will reveal hidden surface deposits which can be dislodged by the Abrasion Blaster.

SURFACE MINING WITH THE RHINO

Since update 4.4.1.0 (2 September 2026) you can also mine on planet surfaces with the Rhino, a 3-seat mining SRV made by Vodel. For now it is only available through ARX early access.

• You need a ship that can fit the Large Planetary Vehicle Hangar (large ships such as the Anaconda, Corvette and Cutter) and a Detailed Surface Scanner.
• Map a landable planet or moon with the DSS. It now shows Planetary Mining Locations.
• Land, deploy the Rhino, find deposits with its Planetary Mineral Scanner and place mining rigs. The rigs dig over time, and the Rhino refines the output in its own refinery (72 t of cargo).
• Collect your rigs before you leave. Active rigs can self-destruct when you board your ship or leave the instance.
• Deposits run out and refill slowly, so a site you have mined may not be as good when you come back.
• Surface mining brings its own new commodities, such as Diamond, Iridium, Bastnäsite and Magnesite. Their prices are still settling.

SELLING MINED MINERALS

After extracting, collecting, and refining, it is now time to sell your mined goods to the market. If you’re planning on a long-trip from an out of reach mining hotspot, it is generally a good idea to sacrifice some cargo racks for a fuel scoop and/or a guardian frame shift drive booster. Travelling with a shield generator is also recommended as pirates will hunt your ship’s full of goods along the way.

Selling minerals to the market is rather difficult as different markets from different systems offer different prices for the same minerals. Without the help of a third party website like INARA.cz or Spansh will make this trek very difficult and highly risky without a place to exchange your refined minerals for credits. When looking for a suitable market to sell your commodity to there are some key components to look at.

• Last Updated Last updated is the time of when the market’s been last updated by a user using a EDDN Listener like ED Market Connector or ED Discovery. Generally when searching a suitable market, anything as recent as 6 hours ago would have a somewhat accurate reading on the prices offered at the market. However, the longer the timer since the market was updated, the more inaccurate the market information will be.
• Demand Demand is the next thing you’ll want to look at. Demand is the amount of minerals that the station is offering to pay for that amount. If you over supply a demand, you will get paid less than what the price is offered for the same commodity. A general tip of advice is to look for
  • a market demand of 2-5 K units for a market that was last updated by 30 minutes ago
  • a market demand of 5-10 K units for a market that was last updated by 1-3 hours ago
  • a market demand of 10-15 K units for a market that was last updated by 3-6 hours ago
• Landing Pad Size Landing Pads are another restrictive property you’ll have to pay attention to. Stations and outposts are split between Medium and Large sized Landing Pads. If you’re in a Large Sized ship, you cannot land at an outpost. You can transfer commodities from one ship to the other however, if the ship you are attempting to transfer over has smaller cargo space than your current one, you’ll need to abandon some commodities before you can transfer to a different ship.
• Price Price is the final thing you’ll want to worry about, unless you are super greedy about finding the station with the highest sell prices. Generally, it is better to sell your commodities that a safer, more guaranteed but cheaper market, than a more sporadic, non-guaranteed but highly paid market. The more time you spend looking for a station to sell your mined minerals, the more risk you carry as you’ll be hunted by pirates, and may lose all hope in selling your goods. If you are mining in a wing, you’ll get a credit bonus than if you are mining solo when you turn in your profits at the same time, in the same instance.

FURTHER READINGS

If you are looking for a more in depth guide to mining with a community that specializes in mining, please visit r/EliteMiners or by visiting their discord server.