Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter Launched

[krayzkrok]

a few hours of scouring void opal and low-temperature diamond hotspots in San Tu, and as far as I can tell, zero fissure asteroids.

I’m having more success now that I’m being more selective, finding systems with low or no populations, and going to rings that are further from the main stellar body. Apparently other players mining these areas will reduce the chance of you finding fissure asteroids, so it’s best to try and find something out of the way. I’m over in the “western” edge of the bubble, having decent luck finding good sites. I’m getting to the point where I can pull up to a site, and within a few minutes know whether I’m likely to get anything - there are certain types of asteroids and patterns that yield fissures, and when I don’t see any at all I usually leave. They’re rare enough that it’s a real thrill to find one, but no so rare that I give up in frustration. When you find a good system you’ll be cursing not buying a larger cargo bay (or more limpet drones!).

I’ll have to try one of those new descent clones to get my 3D combat fix.

Yeah, ED is a slow burn, it’s not the game I’d suggest if you’re after a 3D combat fix. Brian has the right of it: Overload, and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. I know you mentioned enjoying Everspace which is the only reason I’m not including that.

[krayzkrok]

Ok, this is what you’re looking for:

In the pulse scanner they’re quite dramatically different in appearance from asteroids with surface and sub-surface deposits. Much more contrasty orange and black. Really bright orange ones are misleading, it’s these deep orange and black one, and they typically have this shape as well.

Fire off a prospector, and viola:

Or you can save your prospector and double check the surface for these tell-tale cracks:

They’re much easier to find if you put your headlights on, and use night vision mode.

After that, it’s really all about the BOOM:

Ooops, maybe a little too close, got toasted there!

Oh god, it’s so beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, here’s 40 minutes work. Not a fortune by experienced miner’s standards, but I’ll take it.

The only reason I stopped is I ran out of cargo space. I’ve also gotten far better at flying this AspX, it takes some getting used to, but I can park it nicely next to asteroids now.

[Fishbreath]

Thanks for the tips! I’ll have to try somewhere a little less-traveled, although I might get there by means of the passenger grind and an Asp, rather than the Cobra I’m running with now.

[krayzkrok]

Another great thing about mining is, the views are spectacular.

I can afford an Anaconda now, just a bit more to pimp it out with some decent gear and I might go exploring. Mining is still great fun though, I could do this for weeks.

I wonder if it’s too late to catch up the Distant Worlds 2 mob…

[Fishbreath]

Thanks to @krayzkrok’s tips, I found a few fissure asteroids, and before I knew it, was returning to San Tu with 19 million credits’ worth of various pretty rocks from the next system over, some of which sold for north of 800,000 per ton.

I went mining in a rocky ring rather than an icy ring, so the asteroids look a little different, but hitting the most distant planet’s ring system seems to have made a big difference. I came across three crackable asteroids over about 40 minutes.

[krayzkrok]

Glad to hear you’ve had success. Yes, those uninhabited and distant systems are where the gold is, as it were. The main reason I mine the pristine ice rings (other than being familiar now with the best asteroid types) is those tend to have Low Temp Diamonds and Void Opals, both of which will net 1,100,000 to 1,600,000 per ton if you find the right system and station (usually high tech). I have found a really profitable area which is only 5 jumps from where the mining is, so I’m netting 40,000,000 credits per trip. If I could double my cargo capacity with a larger ship I could make a lot more per trip of course, but so far I get a little too nervous with a cargo bay full of valuables even though the NPC interdictions are pretty easy to escape from (I’m sure it used to be a lot harder). The main threat is NPC pirates at the rings armed with hatch breaker limpets, the bastards. Also, actual players, but I’ve hardly seen anyone out here. (I’m playing in Open because I like feeling nervous)

[Papageno]

Speaking of piracy, I wish it had ever been profitable to rob NPCs. If they can rob player miners, surely turnabout is fair play.

[krayzkrok]

I assumed it would be when you’re early in the game. I mean, I’ve hoovered up plenty of dropped resources after a battle and made what felt (at the time) to be decent coin with it, but that was back when I thought buying a Cobra was expensive. I’ve seen a few NPC miners recently but I don’t have a manifest scanner to check what they’re carrying. I’ve also heard and seen the after-effects of fissure mining, which must be NPCs because there are no players around that I’ve found in my particular patch. I’ve not checked obviously but perhaps they have better things to steal?

[krayzkrok]

Ok, I’m getting the hang of this mining lark:

Oh boy! Now I can definitely buy an Anaconda. First, though, I had decided a few days ago to swap my AspX for a Krait Phantom. I think I’m in love, it’s a great ship, everything the AspX was except better, plus it looks nicer, had a better cockpit, and the engine sounds wicked. I mean, these things are of great importance!

So I’m sticking with this for a bit now, initially for more mining which is still highly addictive. At some point I’ll have to head back to Deciat and get Felicity Farseer to supercharge the FSD. Oh, speaking of which, I tried doing that by flying through the plasma (?) plumes of this white dwarf, and while I nearly died horribly it added a considerable boost to my jump distance. So that’s what the FSD boost thing is all about! :)

[schurem]

this forum needs likes.

[krayzkrok]

Knowing you like it is enough, @schurem. ;)

I’ve never been more addicted to this damn game, each night it draws me in for 2-3 hours, there’s so much that I want to do and yet the evening is so short. And then I land in a system with a white dwarf and I’m in awe, my plans out of the window!

[NI1]

Oh boy! Now I can definitely buy an Anaconda.

You definitely should! It’s incredible how the size and mass of the three big ships comes through when flying them. Just getting them through the mail slot is an experience - especially in VR.

The Anaconda is just so versatile. There’s tons of both hardpoints and internal slots so it can be made to do everything. The huge jump range definitely helps. But my personal favourite is the Federal Corvette. Feels a bit like flying a Star Destroyer :-)

[Sam_Jones]

Good lord the rewards in this have been inflated since a couple of years ago. I think it took me two years from game launch to accumulate around 200m credits. You’re getting over half that for a single transaction!

[meeper]

Many thanks to you, @krayzkrok! I outfitted my AspX with the build you posted and decided to go experiment in some icy rings. 30 minutes later (after I figured out that you should target your limpets to get the full report), I found three core asteroids and loaded myself up. I could have sold my void opals for 700k pretty much anywhere, but followed your lead and sold in station willing to pay a bit more. The result?

Mining in VR is pretty damn awesome, too. Particularly the clouds that cracking an asteroid produces.

[conVurt]

So I figured this weekend that this void opal mining rush was a good enough excuse to fire the game back up and see what all has changed since the last time I logged in. After rebinding some keys on my joystick, relearning how to use the new/changed exploration tools, and recalling some of my ships from the ass-end of the bubble, I watched a couple of helpful youtube videos and had at it.

ObsidianAnt’s How to Mine Void Opals for ~100 Million Credits per Hour
Down To Earth Astronomy’s How to Locate Mother Lodes

And yeah, including the couple of hours I spent researching things and watching videos, after about 10 hours in total this weekend I had made about half a billion credits, for a conservative 50M CR/hour. Admittedly using a Krait MkII, but there wasn’t anything special about the build other than after equipping all the mining tools and doodads I still had 128 tonnes of cargo space. Anyone trying to amass enough CR to buy one or more of the bigger ships, hands down this is probably one of the best, not to mention non-exploitive, ways to do it.

More importantly, mining is a lot less boring when it’s more like prospecting and less like busy-work. I totally recommend trying it out.

[krayzkrok]

Awesome, @meeper. Yes, sorry I forgot to mention targeting your limpet. :) I’m at the stage where I’ll dump Low Temp Diamonds if my hold is nearly full and I find another rock with Void Opals in there. I feel so 1%.

It feels like a gold rush right now, I wonder if Frontier will nerf values in an upcoming patch. I hope not! At least, not yet… the more money you have, the more you think you need. It’s fascinating psychology.

I nearly bought the farm last night, plugged an asteroid with 4 charges with 15 seconds to go, backed up… into another asteroid! Argh! I was about 400 m from my ticking time bomb, which was likely to end in disaster, but I managed to boost away after the initial charges but before the crack itself. Phew.

[Kelan]

Dang! I really need to find time to do this. I have wanted to upgrade to a decent sized combat ship forever and this may give me a chance to do it within a reasonable time.

Thanks for all the updates and info!

[meeper]

I’m still flying around in my AspX mining build, but I’m going to be buying something new tonight with some of the 800M I have banked in the last few days.

One thing I didn’t realize – it’s important to change rings periodically. I made a mint on Saturday at one ring, but I went back to the same ring on Sunday, spent hours searching, and came away with only one void opal rock. Then I went to a new ring, and it was crowded with options again.

[krayzkrok]

800M I have banked in the last few days.

That’s impressively fast, I’m way behind you. But yes, changing rings is good. I spent much of last night fruitlessly searching for a third core after my second, then decided to head to a base to sell it; 8 jumps later and the prices have dropped, darn it. I’ll keep searching!

[conVurt]

For finding places to mine and sell, here’s something that’s worked for me:

I go to Inara’s commodities page and select the commodity I’m interested in, in this case, void opals. That page has a best sell tab, which tells you the best places to currently sell at. I check out the various stations on the list, go to their individual pages and see how much traffic the system they’re in is seeing. Lower is better, because some if not most of that traffic is gonna be selling void opals and tanking the demand.

Then I use another tool, eddb.io’s body tab, to look for pristine icy rings, and in the reference system spot, I throw the system I intend to sell at, and 50 in the maximum reference system.

This will spit out a list of nearby systems, which I then go and explore. Any pristine icy rings I find I target the ring with a probe from my detailed surface scanner, and it will show me any hotspots. It may take a few tries to find a new system, but don’t fret, as they’re out there. The current ring I’m using has three void opal hotspots and about a dozen of other sundry minerals. The odds of all three of them running dry before the price crashes in the nearby hot market are low. I’m much more likely to get bored of raking in all these sweet, sweet credits long before then!