Science & Industry

Use this to find a safe place to mine

Use this to decide what to mine

As for ships, if you can afford one Skiff then you can afford several Retrievers, so I would go with that until you can afford several Mackinaws.

If you've been out of the game for a long time, there have been a lot of changes to ships and other stuff - I should have mentioned that.

1. You don't mine with mining frigates/cruisers any more. You use a new ORE mining ship called the Venture. It's got a big ore bay (5000m3) and can carry two light drones. It's got bonuses for both mining and gas harvesting, and it makes a great (and cheap!) mining ship. I use it all the time, even though I'm skilled to fly barges and exhumers. For small-scale ops, it's great. It's also got a +2 bonus to warp core strength, so you can GTFO if someone tries to scram you.

2. The Gallente industrial hauler lineup was altered to make each Iteron model specific to some kind of hauling. You're going to be interested in the Miasmos, which has ~50,000m3 ore bay (which can carry *a lot* of compressed ore!) and the Nereus, which is a straight cargo hauler. Whatever race your toon is, train up Gallente industrial and buy a Miasmos. Be careful, though -- a Miasmos full of compressed ore makes a tasty (and paper-thin) gank-target.

3. The Venture (and its T2 companion the Prospect) are new-ish ships meant to replace the old mining frigates/cruisers. It's a great, cheap, fast ship which I recommend highly -- and not just if you're a noob. If you have a combat alt that's skint for ISK to PVP with, you can train into a Venture in about a day and do some mining to pad your bank account, or you can live off the land a bit in remote systems. Some people use the Venture for its gas-harvesting bonus, but I doubt you'll be doing that in hisec.

4. The ORE mining barges and exhumers went through a "tiercide" process not long ago. Now, they are role-based. All of the barges have roughly the same m3 yield (regardless of the number of strip miners) -- the difference is in the size of their ore bays and their bonuses. The Procurer/Skiff is meant to be a tanky, hard-to-kill nugget for mining in hostile spaces; the Retreiver/Mackinaw has a huge ore bay; the Covetor/Hulk has a long range on the mining lasers and a bonus to cycle time. All carry a bonus for ice mining, though most miners use a Procurer for hisec ice mining. Most solo hisec miners gravitate to a Retriever, while gangs seem to prefer Covetors with Orca support. No barge is "better" than any of the others in an absolute sense, unlike before: now, it just depends on what you want to do. Given your description, I think you should think about a Retriever.

5. Gravimetric signatures have been removed from the game. You'll now see ore sites sometimes spawn as anomalies. You can get some nice Hedbergite, Jaspet, and Kernite spawns in hisec if you pay attention. The lower-security the space is, the better the spawn...but the tougher the rats. Fit accordingly. You see Kernite and Omber spawns, but they're rather pointless as you can mine all the Kernite you want in Amarr space in .7 or below systems, and Omber sucks anyway.

6. The bumping and ganking threat is overstated. Get out of the most crowded parts of Caldari or Gallente space, and you won't have any problems. Amarr space has the best rocks anyway: Veld, Scord, Pyrox, and Kernite.

Mining is still boring and a hassle in terms of logistics, but that's always been true. In terms of ISK/hour reward, though, it's a great time to be a miner. Get out there and bust some rocks!

P.S. - Let me stress this: ignore Omber. It's the worst ore in the game, by far. Ignore it, disdain it, don't waste your time on it. It's horrible.

L4 mining missions are *awful* compared to L4 security missions (and they require Gas Mining skills, which many miners probably didn't bother to skill up). Mining missions in general are terrible; it's rarely worth doing them if you can do other mission types instead. Even courier missions -- though they technically pay less -- are preferable if all you want to do is grind standings.

And mining anoms is only worth it if you can bring sufficient scale to the operation. For solo miners and even small gangs, even good anoms are rarely worth mining out if you take the logistics hassles into account. The best anom ores are the hebergite/jaspet spawns, and frankly, you can do a better ISK/hr op in a good .5 Kernite belt. By far. Staging your mining op for an anom requires getting your barges and haulers in place (and make sure you have enough tank/drones to fend off the rats); staging your ore into a POS (if you have one) or a station; and then arranging your haulers to get the ore to market. It's a hassle, and it takes a lot of time. It can be worth it, but you need scale to make it pay off. Orca support helps a lot.

Also, the above assumes you get to the anom before someone else mines it out. You may find yourself staging a huge anom op only to find the field has been mined out before you can get set up.

I'm a fan of the skiff if you're already skilled for exhumers. It's very fast, has incredible tank, has drones bonus and a 15K hold. It will give you the confidence to mine in .5-.7 systems. That said, I probably wouldn't train past a Procurer unless I didn't want to do anything buy mine.

One you get an isk reserve you can get a retriever/mackinaw to use when you feel like the system is safe. I used to see a lot more ganking around Dodixie than Amarr.

An Orca boost will make a big difference in yield if you can make friends with one in local (or offer a tip).

i am surprised to see people mostly only suggest using barges. while it is true they are cheaper to use and loose it will always be better to use an exhumer. if you are worried about ganking and you are afk then skiff is your only option. you can use it anywhere in hisec and i have never seen one ganked (not saying they don't just never seen it). when it comes to mining then ice is the best and the skiff is great for this (check amarr space at the mo it is not too crowded and the ice is a good price). someone said that the mining speed of the exhumers is not so different but that is not my experience. the hulk is a beast and mines much faster than a skiff but has to jet can or have orca support. the mac feels a bit weird now since the changes and i rarely use it but than huge bay is great for solo mining. if you use anything other than skiff/proc don't afk. unless you have the ability to compress then prioritise ice mining. always ask for boosts miners usually do, i always do.

This.

Exhumers are a waste of ISK IMO, unless you have a sufficiently large mining organization with Orca support etc. and can make good use of the (slightly) increased cycle-time that exhumers give you over barges. In my experience, exhumers don't gain you much for hisec mining. The extra tank is great if you're in nullsec and have to tank tough belt rats, but hisec miners aren't going to survive a determined gank by going with an exhumer -- all you're going to do is give the gankers a more expensive killmail.

That being said: absolutely do use T2 strips + crystals. The increased yield is definitely worth it. If you're in a .9 system and don't have to worry about rats, or have combat support, then use mining drones as well.

As I've said before, the danger of ganking in hisec is very overstated. Get out of Caldari/Gallente space and you'll be fine. I've run Retrievers all day in .5 systems bordering on nullsec, and I've never been bothered. If you're getting bumped, just orbit the rocks instead of sitting still, or just move on to some other system. If you're really paranoid and belong to a mining corp, station a couple of combat pilots to fly CAP while you're mining. If you factor in the occasional gank as a cost of doing business, losing a barge once in a while is no big deal. It can even liven up a boring mining op to see some ganker get Concordokken when he blows up your defenseless barge. Smart miners will have a spare Retriever waiting at the POS, so gank is going to cost you about five minutes to re-ship and get back to the belt.

If you've got 200M ISK to throw around, invest in a POS and a compression array, not an Exhumer.

Is the Rokh still a viable option for mining? 8 miner IIs and slots for tank. I used this years ago, but not sure about it after the changes.

Consider selling the raw ore. Check if the refined minerals are worth less than the ore. This is more likely now, due to the removal of mineral compression by means of modules. Most applicable to low end ore, like Veldspar.

Compressed ore is generally better than the raw ore, but requires more investment to get started on.

A skiff costs more than "only a few million isk", it might help to clarify a bit :D. Assuming you mean it literally and have less than oh...10 million, I'd suggest starting in venture and mining up to a procurer, then a retriever, and the considering your options.

If you have 100 million or so, you could start with a retriever and a procurer. It all depends on how much cash you have.

In any case, after you've boostrapped your way back into a couple mining boats, then you'll need to decide if you want to stick with mining or start missioning, station trading, etc. for your isk. Mine your way into your next ship (or maybe that ship plus 1 spare). Then go forth and conquer Eve.

A lot of things have changed including the way meta modules are named, ore holds, the way skills are applied, the different barge/exhumers tiers, etc. The first order of business is to actually look over your character and their skills and try to sort out what you can and can't do. A _LOT_ of skills have been split and renamed over the past couple of years and there were also free skill points given out for downtimes and other issues.

A few pointers in no particular order.

1) all mining ships have separate "ore bays" that only hold ore. Make sure to look at your ship and find the ore bay. Many a new miner has freaked out when their lasers shut off and their hold was empty.

2) Ice/Ore capacity is no longer increased by rigs (because of the aforementioned ore bay). That means you can afford to slot defensive rigs (to plug resist holes for example, or to toughen your shield tank).

3) Veldspar and scordite are always in demand.

4) Refining has been nerfed hard. Ore compression is the new refining. Unless you set up your own POS you're not going to be able to compress in high sec. Don't bother with a POS until you're sure you're sticking with mining.

5) Back-end systems are usually safer than systems right around trade hubs. Ammatar space is quite nice (has Amarr minerals, isn't hella far from Jita, lost a bunch of ice fields so it's not so interesting for gankers ). On the other side of the map, Dumkirnir and around there is nice (IIRC, Hek is the nearest trade hub). It's near the eUni HQ in Aldrat. There's a couple nice mining systems down short pipes, (a few with no stations which are fine in a mack/retriever). It's busy enough to sell ore but quiet enough to feel remote.