High sec mining
High Sec Mining
Don't do it.
You might think it's afk, but if you're trying to pay for omega, it is WAY too many hours, and it is not completely afk, and you can lose your ship.
So my methodology: Assume you wait for 400 plex for omega. Maxed skills. max fittings with laser upgrades. Maxed orca boosts. Implant. One Omega (covetor or mackinaw), One Alpha. Only the BEST ore for moon mining, jackpotted moons.
Here are my results to get omega in high sec:
Omega char, mining high sec jackpotted moon only: between 11.4 and 18.7 hours depending on R4 moon.
Alpha char, mining high sec jackpotted moon only: between 74 and 122 hours
Omega char, mining the +15% high sec ore only: between 40 and 68 hours (Stable/Glossy/Oppulent/Sparkling)
Alpha char, mining the +15% high sec ore only: between 262 and 445 hours
Omega char, mining just high sec regular belt ore: between 46 and 78 hours
Alpha char, mining just high sec regular belt ore: between 302 and 512 hours.
BTW, one week of 7 days a week 16 hours a day == 112 hours, or 480 hours per month.
If any of your skills are bad, this is worse.
If you swap out mining laser upgrades, it's worse.
If you don't have the 127 mil implant, it's worse.
If you are forced to mine a lesser ore, it can be 40% worse.
If you don't compressed and sell in a market hub, it can be worse.
If you get a maxed refiner to refine it for you, it's worse.
If you don't wait for plex sale for omega, it's 20% worse
If you don't have compression, it is way worse.
If you refine yourself it is WAAAY worse. Especially as alpha or poor skills.
If you sleep or do anything else, it's worse.
Don't try to pay for omega with high sec mining unless you have omega, and even then, ymmv.
Do this math yourself, using these tools:
https://ore.cerlestes.de/ore - ore amounts.
https://janice.e-351.com/ - figure out prices for compressed ore.
A note about mining numbers
Mining in general gives radically different numbers based on a lot of variables. So we can only make suggestions based on what the 'average' is. On the low end, mining might be 5.8 m^3 per second for a low skill venture, while on the high end you can break 99 m^3 per second.
What are your skills
What ships can you fly
What rocks you have available to you
What compression options you have (They extend the amount of time you can stay out)
Can you survive in that area (Biggest thing, why some numbers get doubled)
Where do have to transport these ores
Can you sell those ores for a good price
Do you have the option of reprocessing
Do you have the implants that the max max MAX players use
If you are prone to mistake, the doubling of these times could be triple the times, it's a common problem called Dunning Kruger effect that causes people to be overconfident of their abilities with low information. And is especially common in certain discord channels with self-important posters there.
Mining skills
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1epmzee/if_anyone_is_looking_to_make_a_mining_alt_for/ has a mining skill plan.
But if you are just starting out, stick to the mining certified plans.
Ore income levels
I thought I'd do a chart of mineral income levels per hour. This is based off this https://ore.cerlestes.de/ore chart of moon minerals. This is a live response for *compressed* ore, which is usually your best bang of your buck, OTHER than Kernite. Kernite is better uncompressed.
This is a T2 venture, with max'd alpha account skills, no implant, no boosts. 6.28 m^3 per second, 22,602 m^3 per hour using pyfa. It can be better, but just gives you a raw answer. Note, you should not refine this material as a new player, you will lose a LOT of value. An alpha with perfect skills, without implants, in a GOOD facility is only 68.3% refine rate.
To read: Pick one mineral in each of these lists. Note that the source material is WAY more useful. Edit: Note that I'm still using old tool for these prices, which change over time, so do the math yourself with https://janice.e-351.com/!
Last updated Q2-2025, all based on refined value other than kernite.
In summary, per Q1 2025:
Null 76 mil an hour if omega, rarely 47 mil an hour as alpha, but often 25 mil an hour
Poch 29 mil an hour
Low 25 mil an hour
WH 19 mil an hour
High 7.1 mil an hour if omega doing ice, rarely 6 mil an hour, but more often MAYBE 5 mil an hour. could be as low as 3 mil an hour with perfect skills.
Belt Ore
All Regions belt ore: Highest 84.7 mil an hour.
High only: 64557 Plagioclase - https://janice.e-351.com/a/MH91zc/reprocess - Highest 4.9 mil an hour.
Low only: 2825 Dark Ochre - https://janice.e-351.com/a/qtzmR3/reprocess - Highest 24.7 mil an hour. (raw 18835 kernite https://janice.e-351.com/a/BKjA0F 18.3 mil an hour vs 7.4 mil refined)
Null only: 565 Mercoxit if omega skilled- https://janice.e-351.com/a/QD1LLB/reprocess - Highest 76.4 mil mil an hour, but VERY hard to find. Dark Ochre easier and doable by alpha. so same as low, 24.7 mil an hour.
Wormhole only: 4520 Gneiss - https://janice.e-351.com/a/ddax2V/reprocess - Highest 18.6 mil an hour
Pochven(Triglavian) only: 1412 Bezdnacine - https://janice.e-351.com/a/BWdwJr/reprocess - Highest 29.0 mil an hour
A0 Stars only: 37670 ytirium https://janice.e-351.com/a/UxSl3R/reprocess - Highest 24.8 mil an hour
Can compress in upwell structure with a refinery, or with a porpoise, rorqual, or orca.
Ice Harvesting
N/A for alpha characters. But for completeness, if they could, this is what incomes would be like at 22 blocks per hour:
High sec only: 22 white glaze https://janice.e-351.com/a/x43fMF/reprocess - 7.1 mil an hour
Low sec only: 22 Dark Glitter https://janice.e-351.com/a/z3yr25/reprocess - 12.8 mil an hour
Null sec only: 22 Krystallos https://janice.e-351.com/a/V1NpXd/reprocess - 17.5 mil an hour
Can compress in upwell with refinery, or requires a rorqual or orca to compress.
Moon Ore
This one is not really that comparable, unfortunately, because the markets don't always exist. But it gives you an idea. Note, we do refined amounts here
High sec only: R4 - 2260 Zeolites https://janice.e-351.com/a/V05B9l/reprocess - 5.9 mil an hour
Null sec only: R64 - 2260 Loparite https://janice.e-351.com/a/3lo744/reprocess - 47.4 mil an hour (R64 is the best but hard to get)
Requires a rorqual or orca to compress.
Gas
See Gas Mining page for guide. can haul with a miasmos.
Requires a porpoise, a rorqual, or an Orca to compress.
Waste and you
Each harvester / crystal has a residue probability and a residue amount (percentage relative to the mining amount)
Every cycle you have a [probability] chance to consume an extra [amount] from the rock that just goes nowhere / gets deleted
Functionally it means you mine at the stated speed but consume the rock 25% faster / waste that extra 25%
(Waste values are different for crystals etc but the standard waste is 34% / 100% residue)
Yeah so let's take the example of a r64 moon.
You have a certain amount of ore.
Let's say for example you have (unrealistic) 10km^3
If you collect it all, it's worth 100 mil
So if you can mine at 10m^3 a second, it would mine out in 1000 seconds.
By using a t2 crystals you could mine that same moon out at 13.5 m3 a second so ... 850 seconds?
Less time.
Instead of 10k m^3 ore you only end up with 9k.
And you only get 90 mil out
All those numbers are dude on his phone making wild guesses.
But it shows the point.
You can only do moons once every so often, so it is better to use t1, get the full value, even though isk per hour.
If you have way more ore than you can ever mind, for instance, it makes sense to use t2
But often the good stuff goes quick and there is only so much isogen containing ore so you want it all.
Plus you have to deal with random crystal bullshit so.. just skip it, use t1 and consider it cost of doing business
Talk to the person giving you compression and boosts.
ORE miners are never worth it. You won't back your money.
Exhumers, yes, you'll make your money back versus barges.
A reminder, people CAN tell you what lasers and crystals you are using. https://wiki.bravecollective.com/public/dojo/wiki/mining-lasers If they're telling you not to use wasteful lasers, don't do it! Thanks to `She Who Endures` and Brave on the eveo discord for this one.
(Thanks to Mac Gunderson for his feedback on this thread!)
Mining ships
Initial mining ships can be a little confusing. If you are alpha, you are limited to the starting mining ship, called a Venture. You can do battleships, but it's not advised. You need omega to fly everything else. The usual path for these ships are: Venture -> Barge -> Expedition -> Porpoise -> Exhumers -> Orca -> Rorqual Note that you only need some of these ships if you want to provide 'boosts' to your fleet. These boosts can improve your ore by at least 33%, or even double your yield, so the break even is 4 accounts if solo mining, not counting compression.
I've also included the differences mining boosts make on these of the venture. A maxed alpha with boosts can outmine a crappy covetor sometimes.
Venture
The Venture is the easiest to use for new players as well, and can easily bring in quite a bit of money if you're mining valuable materials. You are given several if you do the Career Agents. You should use these if you don't have any money at all, and when you Join a Corporation, they often hand these out for free. They can also do gas harvesting, though the mining book is somewhat expensive for a new player.
Venture (Alpha) - 7.71 m^3 per second, the non-boosted alpha version
Venture (Alpha with boosts) - 13.8 m^3 per second
Venture (Omega) - 10.8 m^3 per second, the base level of mining for max omega
Venture (Omega with boosts) - 19 m^3 per second
Barges
The first major improvement for mining, barges come in 3 flavors:
Covetor - (26.4) Best miner with a small cargo hold, the stock one for most null groups.
Retriever - (22.7) Biggest cargo hold, great for more extended mining periods.
Procurer - (20.5) Best tanker, worst miner good for hostile locations to hold the line till you can kill tackle.
Exhumers
This is the next step up people usually take after barges, also in 3 flavors:
Hulk - (33.6) Best miner in the game, but also very expensive to run, hard to tank, but is nimble.
Mackinaw - (26.4) Biggest cargo hold, used to be the primary ice miner of all the ships.
Skiff - (22) Easiest to defend, worst miner of the exhumers. This has the ability to kill a lot of small tackle too, especially in numbers.
Expedition Frigates
These are good at spot mining or danger mining. These are often cooped by PVP groups as well, so be careful around groups as they might think you're trying to kill them.
Prospect - (12.6) Gas Mining with a cov ops cloak is this ships forte. Has a large hold, and can easily switch fits. The most common hot dropper because it can fit an industrial cyno, allowing for black ops battleships to drop on people.
Endurance - (11.9) Less used, primarily used to mine ice. Note that it can come close to barge levels of income.
Industrial Command Ships
These provide mining boosts and compression. The type you use matters based on what you are mining.
Porpoise - The first booster you can fly. It is low mass for wormholes, but can fit medium Gas/Asteroid ore compressors. Only really used for belt an anomaly/gas mining. Note, a lot of these tend to be bait tanked and used as tackle too, so be careful :)
Orca - This is a baby capital ship with a bunch of downsides, unfortunately. Only really use these in high sec, they are just giant targets without the ability to tank outside of it. In high sec, https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Orca_Guide has a good guide on using them. I do NOT recommend them, mostly because it implies high sec mining, which I've said is bad. Can fit a Large Asteroid/Gas/Ice/Mercoxit/Moon compressor!
Rorqual - The best mining support ship in the game. This is primarily used to provide boosts to fleet mates through a variety features, including a Capital Asteroid/Gas/Ice/Mercoxit/Moon compressor, an Invulnerability Core, and even a bridge module to move your mining fleet around! If you scale to 5 Omega accounts, this is required usage, and often you use two of them in larger groups just to move the mass amount of ore you gather!
Thank you Sl1imJ1m and Draygon 152 for the idea and the text!
Boosts aka Mining links
Why should you join a corporation? Because you can get mining links. This is a HUGE increase, depending on what they're flying and if they have an info link put in.
Unboosted hulk - 33.6 m3/sec at 19.5km
With implant:
sieged porp with t1 strips hulk: 53.4 m^3/sec at 41.1km
sieged orca with t1 strips hulk: 57.8 m^3/sec at 43.7km
sieged rorqual with t1 strips hulk: 78.2 m^3/sec at 51.5km
With implant:
unsieged porp: 51.2 m^3/sec at 39.6km
unsieged orca: 52.5 m^3/sec at 40.5km
unsieged rorqual: 55.5 m^3/sec at 42.2km
And I'll give a few other numbers out here:
This Hulk could make 22 mil an hour in high sec without boosts. Or with an orca, 37.87 mil an hour.
An unbonused alpha venture without links could make 38.66 mil an hour doing r32, the second best moon in null sec, more than the high sec hulk with max boosts.
That same hulk in null sec could be making 355 mil an hour doing the same r32, or 250 mil an hour doing belt ore, or 247 mil in pochven, or 116 mil in wormholes.
Haulers
I'll mention haulers as well, just because moving this much ore can be challenging. These t1 haulers are useful for 'jetcan mining'. Note that compression makes most of these pointless, as they are entirely too easy to destroy in empire and more dangerous space. All can fit Interdictor Nullification but take upwards of 10 seconds to get into warp. All of these run the risk of being suicide ganked once you hit 10 mil isk.
Miasmos - The best for moving large chunks of ore and gas. Has a Mining ore that can hold asteroid and moon ore.
Kryos - The best for moving minerals and ice ore. Has a cargo hold that holds a lot of these products, note again easy to kill.
Hoarder - The best for moving gas and ammo. Has a cargo bay that can hold a lot, but again easy to kill.
Epithal - I'll mention it as it can haul Planetary Interaction products.
Nersus, Sigil - Can overtank these to make them harder to kill while carrying more
Sunesis - A destroyer, can hold upwards of 1.7k m^3 of stuff while being sub 2 second, making them very hard to catch!
Transport ships, Freighters, and Jump Freighters
Most of the game uses these ships to move large volumes of materials safely.
Blockade Runners (Viator etc)- Can warp cloaked, but only hold like 10 k m^3. But compressed ore is 1/100th the size, so a single one can hold a LOT.
Deep Space Transports (Occator etc) - These can hold 60k m^3, can fit a lot more variety of modules, and are MUCH harder to catch if you know what you are doing. Can have a REALLY good tank too.
Freighters (Charon etc) - These are used to move bulky stuff that is not that expensive. Once you break around 1 bil isk, these are vulnerable to suicide ganking.
Jump Freighters (Rhea etc) - These are the primarily logistics ship for the entire game. They teleport 10 AU at a time, can be cyno'd in with a venture, are not just expensive but fucking expensive, and are easy to make a mistake if you're not educated on a lot of mechanics. This is what every other hauler is competing with.
Attempt at a table might delete. sorry!
Ore
Sec
M^3
One Hour Venture
Value per hour
circa Q2'2023
Arkonor
Null, Anom, WH
16
1,395
8 mil
Bezdnacine
Trig
16
1,395
42 mil
Bistot
Null, Anom, WH
16
1,395
6 mil
Crokite
Low/Null Anoms
16
1,395
12 mil
Dark Ochre
Low/Null Anom
8
2,790
24 mil