December 2024 - Written for EDC Academy (https://discord.gg/elite)
Originally written by anonymous, currently maintained by Winter Ihernglass (forbiddenlake)
TL;DR Laser Mining Platinum in an overlap is the current meta.
As of the late 2020 game rebalancing from Frontier, mining is not as profitable as it once was. Gone are the days of making close to a billion credits in a few hours. With that said, mining can still be a profitable venture, netting you close to 100 - 150 million credits in an hour. This will vary based on your ship, outfitting, engineering, and overall skill. Naturally it also includes luck when it comes to finding a good station to sell. Demand is now dynamic so data from third-party sites that is older than a few hours is often highly inaccurate. Overlaps were also nerfed, but they are still better than no overlap.
This guide still applies to the console/Legacy servers in general, but most third-party tools only support Live, so in particular, price websites will not apply unless they specifically say they are for Legacy.
The current recommended progression path in terms of ships is (Cobra Mk 3 - skippable), Asp Explorer, Python, Anaconda, Imperial Cutter. Here are builds:
I recommend storing a fuel scoop and an FSD booster at a station that is close to your mining spot, and then swapping out your collector limpet controllers for the journey to sell.
Another good option is to sell to a fleet carrier in-system that is buying (find a recent one using Inara). They will usually pay less than the top station, but you do not have to travel.
If mining Tritium, or just to have if you come across deposits by chance, you can add a subsurface displacement missile and up-size the power plant if needed (keep it A-rated).
For core mining builds, please see this document.
NB - If you cannot afford to properly outfit, you cannot afford to buy the ship at all
If your build has one DO NOT USE IT AS A PROSPECTOR! Use the separate, A-rated prospector limpet controller instead, and you will literally get more chunks out of the rock.
It’s a good idea to use a Mining Multi Limpet Controller for collectors, as it can send out more than the same size collector limpet controller.
Platinum.
Despite Frontier's desire to have core mining become more profitable, and even with the fixes to the Pulse Wave Analyser, laser mining is still king due to how slow and inconsistent core mining is. Even though Painite was nerfed very heavily it is generally still better than core provided you have somewhere to sell. But the meta is considered to be Platinum, as it is very easy to get, sells for a similar price to Painite, and overall galaxy wide demand seems to be much higher. Osmium also tends to sell well for a similar amount at the same stations as Platinum, meaning your mining runs will be much faster, as it is common to find Osmium in Platinum hotspots.
Please note: mining is HEAVILY dependent on the method of mining and the type of ring. For details, see the “minerals by mining method and ring type” link above. For the purposes of this document:
Ring A is the inner ring, followed by B, and rarely, C. If you drop in the wrong type of ring, and try to mine the wrong way, you will have a bad time, even if it says it’s a hotspot.
(Platinum does form cores and does have hotspots in metal-rich rings, but cannot be laser mined in metal-rich rings. Many commanders see the word Hotspot in a metal-rich ring and assume that means they can laser mine there, but the game doesn’t work that way. Don’t be that commander!)
As a side note, many people often ask about LTDs in the Academy - Low Temperature Diamonds were heavily nerfed in terms of price, demand, and ease of acquisition, even in a triple hotspot, so I would recommend sticking to one of the more easily available materials.
If you are still interested in core mining, the good news is that pretty much every material sells quite well, around 800k per tonne at high demand stations.
For reference I’ve created a table below so you know how to obtain some typically chosen materials (more in depth sheet available here):
Laser Mining: | Core Mining: |
Platinum ⭐ | Grandiderite |
Painite | Alexanderite |
Osmium | Musgravite |
LTDs (Not Recommended) | Void Opals |
And here are a few hotspot overlaps. You can find the nearest overlaps to you using the Miner's Tool. Please note the ring.
For the purposes of this guide, I am only going to be covering laser mining. If you’d like to find out how to do core mining, please visit Hawkes Gaming YouTube guide here.
Now that you’ve gotten your ship outfitted, and stocked up on limpets (purchased from the restock tab under advanced maintenance) it’s time to head to an overlap. When it comes to overlaps, you want to enter the ring in the spot where the two circles are overlapping. Here’s an example. You will need to fire a probe from your Detailed Surface Scanner to see the hotspots, and probe both rings if there is more than one, so that you know where to drop. Aim for one of the thick yellow/orange bands as you are approaching. If you can’t see the yellow/orange circles, this is a common bug that is sometimes fixed by relogging, but if it is not, you can still drop close to or in between the waymakers. Do not go too fast or you will take damage from the emergency stop.
Now that you’ve arrived at your hotspot, you’re going to want to wait for around 2 minutes to let the NPC pirate scan you. They spawn when you enter the ring, or when you log back in inside of the ring. Once they have completed their scan it is safe to begin mining, as they will not spawn again. (Sometimes pirates do not spawn. If you’ve waited 5 minutes and see no other ships on your contacts, you should be good to go)
Keep in mind that for both your lasers and limpet controllers they will need to be bound to a firegroup before you can use them, like so.
To get started, you’re going to want to start firing off prospector limpets at asteroids. Keep in mind you can only have a limited amount active at once, so be patient and wait for them to make contact with the asteroid before shooting out more. This is also why you will periodically hear “Prospector Limpet Failed” as your old ones are killed to make room for new ones.
After your prospector limpet successfully engages with an asteroid, you’re going to want to target it as you would a Nav Beacon or another Ship. This will then show you the contents of the asteroid in the targeting panel, just like this (material content refers to presence of raw engineering materials and can be ignored). When you find an asteroid with a good amount of your desired resource (>30% or multiple desired resources), deploy your hardpoints and cargo scoop, and without targeting any chunks, fire out your collector limpets. If you are targeting chunks with your collectors deployed, they will collect only that and then expire, so it’s best to just keep your prospector limpet targeted so you can keep track of how much is left in the asteroid.
Put 4 pips to your WEP capacitor and begin firing your mining lasers anywhere on the surface of the asteroid, it’s recommended to be in close proximity to the asteroid if you can, so as to speed up the rate that your collector limpets work at. If the asteroid is spinning, you are going to want to move along the axis of rotation otherwise you or your collector limpets are going to suffer some damage.
Now that you’ve shot off some chunks, your limpets will collect them and bring them to your cargo scoop, and they will be processed into your refinery bins. Once a bin reaches 100% it will be processed into 1 unit of the resource. To avoid your bins becoming clogged up with unwanted resources, you can add chunks to your ignore list using the contacts tab, and your limpets will ignore them, and your refinery will not process them. You continue along with this process until your hold is full or you run out of limpets. If you are doing it correctly you are quite likely to fill up your hold faster than you use limpets, so don’t be afraid to jettison some of them from your inventory to free up space.
The markets in Elite Dangerous are dynamic, as such the best place to sell your haul one day, may not be so hot the next. For this reason we will rely on third party tools such as Inara to locate good markets to sell. Keep in mind that the best place to sell may be some distance from your mining spot, so I recommend storing a fuel scoop and an FSD booster at a station that is close to your mining spot, and then swapping out your collector limpet controllers for the journey.
Due to personal preference I’ll demonstrate how to find stations using Inara. You’ll want to use the commodities page to locate your chosen resources page, Platinum for example. You’ll then want to set your current system as your reference system, and select sell under the buy or sell field. Make sure to also select the appropriate landing pad size for your ship. For example, I set my filter up and sorted the bottom table by sell price. You’ll notice plenty of stations have not been updated very recently, as denoted by the far right hand column. Those are the stations we want to avoid, even if the sell price is somewhat better. Ideally you want to head to a station updated less than an hour ago, since the longer the entry has been on Inara, the more likely it is that other commanders have sold and met the demand at the station.
Lastly, you’re also going to want to find a station with a demand at least 4x that of your haul. Otherwise your sell price per unit will be reduced due to bulk tax.
DO NOT USE AS A PROSPECTOR!!!!!! But it’s good to use one as all collector limpets.
The Type-8 is a very poor laser miner due to its extremely small power distributor, few medium hardpoints, and large limpet corridor.
The new (October 2024) Mandalay is an upgrade to the Asp Explorer for laser mining, but it is currently only available for ARX. Here is a build.
The new (December 2024) Cobra V is the best small laser miner, but it is currently only available for ARX. Here is a build.
No, no, no. Never go shieldless, ever, it is a very bad idea. One mistake and you will die, and potentially lose hours of progress, which is an extremely frustrating experience and not worth the extra space. Other players are idiots.
That would be due to a similar reason as per the above question. Survivability is important, especially if you are playing in Open. There is no good reason to not run shield boosters, and plenty of good reasons why you should.
If you’re new, you are going to want to just fill your hold. Limpets are inexpensive and you can always dump if you have too many. Over time you can develop a sense of how many you will need for a run.
No. Always A-rate your prospector, as prospectors increase yield based on grade, meaning you literally get more fragments out of a rock.
For several reasons, but the biggest is that (other than the size 7) the controller is C-rated, which literally means it gets you fewer minerals from laser mining if you use it as a prospector. If you want, you can use a multi-limpet controller, as long as you only use it for collectors.
The Type-9 is a very slow ship, with a weak power distributor, that cannot handle 3x 2D lasers. You’re better off doing shorter runs in an Anaconda.
The Type-6 only has small hardpoints, and a small hardpoint literally drains a rock at a third of the rate of one medium.
You want to aim for optimal uptime when it comes to firing your lasers, this is why in the builds there are 4 pips to weapons. This is based on the ship's power distributor and how long it takes with constant firing to be depleted. As for 1D mining lasers, they are incredibly energy inefficient so for the same reason as above I don’t recommend using them.
They won’t get much use when mining Platinum, but could be useful for mining Tritium.
Ask in #mining-help on https://discord.gg/elite .
Black adder errors happen when your inventory suffers a desync between your game and the game servers. This can happen in one of three ways:
