|
Congratulations, you are now the proud owner/pilot
of a new frigate of your race's preference. This ship has been equipped
with a civilian-class weapon (varying by vessel and skill), as well
as a basic mining laser. While you have also been provided with a basic
tutorial by your local insurance company and assigned agent, this guide
has been provided as a supplement and aid for helping you decide your
future.
As you have probably seen already, this part of the galaxy does not
provide many "free lunches." Ship owners are expected to provide a service
or commodity of some kind in order to earn ISK, and often this will
require ISK before you can provide many services. The exception to this
is running simple courier missions for other ship owners, running simple
locate-and-destroy agent missions, and mining. This guide will assume
you will take up mining; however, please keep in mind that you are not
limited to always being a miner, and many other career paths are open
to you in this universe.
Initially, you will need to mine low-grade asteroids. The return is
a bit lower than you may expect for a path to fortune and fame; however,
eventually, you will be able to move on to more valuable asteroids.
For now, you will be stuck mining "common"ores. With a New player Ship
and mining laser, you are not equipped well enough yet to go after anything
worth big money, as they tend to be in systems where pirates roam. Pirates
can (and will) turn your nice new frigate into scrap if given the chance.
The asteroid ore that you initially should look for is called "Scordite."
It is one of the common asteroids, usually present in 1.0 and below
systems. The caveat is that many other pilots before you have probably
mined it out and you may not find it in the system you started in. Before
you launch out of the station, you need to check your equipment and
money.
Running those tutorial missions should have left you with a small amount
of ISK, hopefully around 10,000 ISK, if not more. If you didn't get
at least this much from your tutorial missions, you may wish to partake
in the 5,000 ISK missions the tutorial agent will then offer (involves
destroying 10 training drones at the training area in the starter system,
and retrieving the certificates they then drop, don't worry too much
about damage, as repairs to your ship are free for now). Remember to
warp back to the station if you run out of shields and/or armor. Using
this money, you will want to buy a Miner 1 from the market (if it is
not available at the starter station, gradually increase your market
search range until there is one available). If you were lucky enough
to also start with the "Electronics" skill (located under
the skill set by the same name), you may also wish to pick up a survey
scanner as well as the survey skill.
Load your new equipment by going to the refit service and removing the
basic miner from the ship. Replace it with your new Miner 1. If you
also purchased a survey scanner, load it up in one of the slots labeled
"--" (for mid point) (if you get a message telling you that
you can not mount the survey scanner due to lack of the electronics
skill, that means you bought one despite not having the skill). Once
you are equipped, check the repair service to ensure sure your ship
is repaired and then feel free to leave the station.
A suitable system for launching your new mining career should meet the
following criteria:
• Be 1.0 to 0.8 security.
• Have less than 30 other pilots in it.
• Is nearby (less than 5 gate jumps away).
• Has at least 1 station that offers both refining and market
services.
Finding such a system is actually very easy. Open up your ship's navigational
maps (the icon on the left that looks like a few white dots connected
with lines). This will trigger a query to CONCORD for the most recent
star maps and then display them with your current location. There will
also be a new window open that has two tabs: "Search" and
"Display Settings." Select the "Display Settings" tab.
With the display settings tab open, it is time to make a few changes.
First go to the "Labels" tab, and dim all options except for
"Solar Systems." Next go to the "Stars" tab. Go to "Animation,"
and make sure both options are not selected. Now select "Security
Status" under "Color stars by." This will show the security
level of the systems around you (if you cannot see any systems around
you, you may need to zoom out).
The systems you will want will be near your own (either be connected
to it by a line, or connected through up to 2 other systems (connected
by lines), and will have a white dot, signifying high security.
Once you have found a viable candidate, remember where it is, and then
hit "Number of Pilots in Space" under "Statistics:" This
will ask CONCORD for the location of pilots throughout the known galaxy
and update it on your display. Hopefully, the dot that you had your
eye on did not swell too much, but if it did, hover the cursor over
it to see exactly how many players are in the system. Any more than
15 may lead to crowding, but there are plenty of systems so don't give
up if the one you chose is also very busy. If finding a system nearby
(or even seeing a system at all) is a problem, you may want to flatten
the map (via the button labeled "Flatten"), or try zooming
out some. Once you've found a system, right-click on it and select "Set
as Destination." You can now close the map. After closing it, select
the big yellow "Autopilot" button, sit back, and watch the
stars go by.
• Right mouse click on the space view after you have exited
the station.
• Select Asteroid Belts.
• Select any of the asteroid belts listed.
• Select Warp To and the distance from the asteroid belt
you want to stop at.
• The distance depends on what security level space you are
in and how well equipped your ship is, but don't forget that there might
be NPC pirates patrolling the asteroid belt and if you warp too close
to them, they might attack your ship. Select 60 km to begin with and
work your way down. No need to take too much risk.
• After arriving you will see a bunch of asteroids. You can
get information about asteroid by right clicking on it (open context
menu) and then clicking on "Show info." Information about selected
asteroid will be displayed. The most important (and the only) information
is the available ore.
• In order to start mining you have to be less than 10 km
away from the asteroid. Lock onto the asteroid (right click context
menu-> Lock target).
• Upper bar now will contain one target, the asteroid. At
the bottom of the locked target, the distance to it will be displayed.
If you are too far, right mouse click and select approach.
• For the purposes of the guide, your choice of asteroid
to mine makes no difference. Activate your mining laser by left click
on the laser icon - which is the item on the right by the number two,
currently glowing green to indicate that it is active.
• The mining laser will be activated after 10 seconds. If
you have two mining lasers, you can activate both lasers simultaneously.
Automatic mining can be started by holding CTRL and clicking on the
mining laser. This process will continue until there is no more space
in your cargo hold. You can also deactivate the mining laser by right
clicking on mining laser, then choosing "deactivate."
• When an asteroid is depleted, yield can drop to just a
few bits of ore (a corresponding message will be shown). Wondering where
the cargo hold is? Context menu on your ship then choose 'Open my cargo'.
• When your cargo hold is full you should warp back to a
station.
• Now we need to dock to the station. You can approach station
with the same maneuver as an asteroid, but instead of selecting Warp
to, select Dock from the context menu. This will make your ship warp
to the station and automatically dock.
• After arrival, open the cargo hold of your ship and move
the mined ore to your hangar (items) floor.
• Our next step (if you want to refine the ore) is reprocessing
of ore. Note: There is a minimum amount required for ore processing,
which differs between ore types . Therefore you may have to
repeat asteroid mining few more times, before you achieve the set amount.
• When there is enough ore, you can start reprocessing. It
can be started from service of space station (upper toolbar in station
UI).
• On the left side of window are listed items that can be
refined or recycled. On the right side of window are buttons for actual
refining.
• Finally, you'll have to sell your ore or minerals (if you
refined the ore). The best way to do this is to take a look in the market,
look up the ore or minerals, and see where the buy orders are (or try
and quick-sell to see what you get as an offer).
• It is usually better to sell the ore unrefined as your
refining skills give you poor yield when refining the ore.
This is what separates the advanced miners from the novices. A novice
miner will bookmark the position of a good asteroid, and when returning
later will spend time ap proaching it from 15km away, where his or her
warp cuts out. An advanced miner will bookmark a position 15km beyond
the asteroid in a line from the station that they are based out of,
and thus when warping to '15km to bookmark' will appear right on top
of the chosen asteroid and be able to mine immediately.
• In order to set your bookmarks, first set a bookmark on
an asteroid that is roughly in the position that you wish to mine from.
Ensure that you don't have any big asteroids between it and the station
that you're working out of, since it may interfere with your incoming
path.
• Warp out to the station, and back to within 15km of the
bookmark. Set your camera behind your ship on the way in; it may be
easier this way. Now double click your speed control (setting you to
max velocity), and continue for 30km. Stop your ship and add a bookmark.
Label it something sensible - like including a short identifier for
the system, the belt, and the number of interesting asteroids in close
proximity to the warp in point.
• For the first few, you'll want to test them by warping
back to the station, then back to the bookmark to check that they are
ok. Once you've done half a dozen then you'll be confident with this
process. • You may also wish to set a bookmark 8km beyond
the station in a line from the belt. This will allow you to warp to
a point where you can dock immediately instead of having to ap proach
the docking perimeter. It is not strictly necessary, very useful. •
Another quick note here: when belts are in a similar direction from
the station, a single station bookmark can work for more than one belt.
Eventually, you'll want to get a new ship. How long this will take will
vary by race and where you are, since a lot of corporations often manufacture
ships (that is, player corporations, not NPC) that are below the normal
cost of the ship. Below is a table of good second ships you should look
for on the market to upgrade to next. |
