Investment Guide: Intermediate Mining

The Goal: 
Ok, so for some reason you still like mining, I know I like it too but it can get dull. This guide outlines your skill plan to fly your Retriever and also the necessary modules to fit it. If your just thinking about getting your feet wet check out my Basic Mining guide first. The first noticeable difference between starting out mining and moving into mining as a career is the isk. Your going to have to invest a lot more iskes if you want to step up your mining game. Although maybe not as much as it would cost you to get rolling into say Level 3 or 4 missions.

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The Skills:
Mining IV
Industry V
Drones IV
Scout Drone Operation III
Electronics IV
Science IV
Astrogeology III
Mining Barge III
Mining Upgrades III
Mining Drone Operation III
Optional:
Cybernetics III

Total time: 12 days, 20 hours, 40 minutes, 10 seconds; Cost: 1,225,000

This skill plan gets you flying your Retriever and will enable you to outfit it with everything you need to get started really mining. If your going to keep at the mining thing, keep training up your Mining Barge skill as that will allow you larger cargo space to haul your ore, giving you more time in space and less time traveling. Increasing your Mining skill to 5 and also taking the long skill train of Astrogeology to 5 will give you better yields on your cycle times.

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The Equipment:

You are going to need Electronics up to level 4 before you can online all three Mining Laser Upgrades. Also as an option you can get Cybernetics skill up to 1 or as high as 3 if you want to invest in the Inherent Implants 'Highwall' Mining MX-1001 for 1% mining yield increase  or the more expensive 3%.

[Retriever, Mining]
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Mining Laser Upgrade I

[empty med slot]

Strip Miner I
Strip Miner I

Mining Drone I x1
Mining Drone I x1
Mining Drone I x1
Mining Drone I x1
Warrior I x1

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Total Cost:
 33,576,500 isk The big cost here is the Retriever. I would suggest keeping your cash until you have skilled up to fly the thing. Because there is nothing as fun as 31 million isk ship sitting in your hanger that you can't even fly.

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Time Required:
The first thing to note is the 12 days training time to actually get into the Retriever that isn't to bad considering a lot of the skills you train will help increase your mining yield. As far as mining is concerned your strip miners are going to be running on a 180 second cycle time. You won't have to be as diligent at watching your roids as you were in your mining frigate.
The other nice thing is your giant ore bay, which increases in size as you up your Mining Barge skill. You can stay out mining a little bit longer than your frigate but the strip miners bring in a lot of rocks and fast so you will still be flying back to station if your flying solo. You can spend about an hour mining and make 15 to 20 million depending on the yield your skills will give you and what asteroids your mining. Its not a bad way to make some cash, I started out mining myself.

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Other Resources:
Halada's Complete Miners Guide a little out of date but the mining times and amount charts are still up to date and provide the most in depth analysis on the subject anywhere.
ore.cerlestes.de  What ore is the most profitable today? This interactive table based web application provides you with up to date ore costs.

<< Back to Basic Mining Guide
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Video of the Week: Scanning and Probing

One of my favorite examples of how to scan. JonnyPew has hundreds of Eve Online videos. Covering topics from exploration to in game commentary. If you haven't watch a few of his videos you need to. This video is about scanning and probing procedure it is well done and worth a watch especially if you haven't done the career agent tutorials.

Tip of the Week: Locking your Overview columns

When your traveling around. If you lock the very first column in your overview it will make it so your destination, the yellow icon, gate or station or what be it rotates to the top most spot of your overview. This can be handy if you are just trying to quickly warp to a gate so you don't have to scan through all the items in your overview.

Just click the ^ at the top of the column to toggle it on and off.

Character Creation Walk Through

For those of you who are curious as to what creating a character entails and have not yet played the game I have put together a few screen shots for you to review the character creation process. Also you can check out a video of the whole character creation process.

1. Choose your Race

Race will affect: Your starting area in-game. The general area in space you start at, for example, if you choose Amarr You will start in Amarr space. Two token skills, racial frigates, and a small weapon skill. You can train any racial ship skills of another race at any time later. Each race has one of three ethnic bloodlines you may choose from.

2. Choose your Bloodline

Bloodline will affect: What you generally look like before you start editing your physical character.

3. Customize

After completing the character creation process you can only change the appearance of your hair, scars and tattoos. You can change the character profile picture at any station for no cost. To Resculpt your character will cost one PLEX or roughly $20 dollars.

4. Choose your Identity

Ancestry will affect: What your little bio says in-game. Education will affect:What starting system you will be directed towards in the in-game tutorial.

5. Take your Portrait

Always blinking for the camera.

Everyone will see your portrait in game so make it fun. That is a quick look at the menus and choices for creating a character.

Also check out some of my other guides and tutorials here.

Patch Day: Retribution 1.1 Patch Notes

You have had a long hard day at work you get home and oops "Server Down" Its patch day so catch up on your reading during maintenance and downloading the new patch. Patch notes can be found here. If you want to read Devblog features and such you can find those and other patch news here.

I haven't had a lot of time to read up about Ret. 1.1 been pretty busy in real life for the past month or so. I can't say any of the new features really stand out to me personally. I am excited about the dueling system I plan on exploring that a little bit more. But other than that I am kind of watching all the Battlecruiser changes from the sidelines I wish I had enough isk to invest in some Battlecruisers speculation a little bit but not this time around.

Other UI improvements always a plus but other than that I am looking forward to summer hopefully I will be in better position to invest more things by then. Anyway have fun with the changes when they go live.

Video of the Week: Industrial Manufacturing

This is the first in a five part video series about industrial manufacturing and selling those items on the market. If you are at all interested in the industrial route you need to review these movies.

Belated 2013 Goals

After much thought a contemplation, yes I know its the middle of February but I have finally thought up some decent goals for 2013. I had put off making any goals in large part due to the fact that I really didn't even know how I was going to acheive these goals. But after the better part of a month and a half  reading and reviewing I think I finally have my Eve Online Goals for 2013:

I want to have a freighter pilot skilled up.
I am going to pay for a freighter without using plexes.
I am going to be producing enough through manufacturing and trade to not only pay for my freighter but also to keep pace with my reinvestment goals.

Maybe these are not so much 2013 goals as thing I want to work towards. Because I think I can do faster than a year. Keep in mind I am not starting out with much in the way of capital no plex selling here. It might seem dumb to some but to be honest my character is to low skilled to even be flying or using expensive modes anyway.

Tip of the Week: Patch Day Skill Que

This is more of reminder than a tip. Patch Day is on Tuesday Feb. 19. In case of long down times make sure you que up enough skills to cover you for at least a day or two. Also I would note in this patch a lot of skills are being changed especially ship skills so find something useful that won't get stopped mid training because it doesn't exist anymore after the patch.

If you have any questions read the patch notes or the devblog.

Investment Guide: Basic Mining

The Goal:
Skill up the most basic mining skills to start your adventure as a miner. For the most part everyone tries mining at least once in their Eve career. It is one of the most basic and simplistic income generating operations in the game. I personally started out mining myself and it gave me the funds I use today to have fun with. So try it out once it is not for everyone and can be very slow type of game play.

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The Skills:











Mining - Skill at using mining lasers. 5% bonus to mining turret yield per skill level.

Mining Upgrades - Skill at using mining upgrades. 5% reduction per skill level in CPU penalty of mining upgrade modules.

Drones  - Skill at remote controlling drones. Can operate 1 drone per skill level.

Mining Drone Operation  - Skill at controlling mining drones. 5% Bonus to mining drone yield per skill level.

Afterburner - Skill at using afterburners. 10% bonus to Afterburner duration per skill level.

Shield Operation(This may be trained already.) - Skill at operating a spaceship's shield systems, including the use of shield boosters and other basic shield modules. 5% reduction in shield recharge time per skill level.

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The Equipment:

 
If you haven't done the career agent tutorials you will be given a Venture and the skills to fly it. Remember with this fit you don't have any offensive weapons which means you need to mine in either 1.0 or 0.9 sec space. In 0.8 sec space and below enemy npc's or belt rats as they are called will shot you. So switch out your mining drones for some offensive drones like Hobgoblin I.
 
[Venture, Beginning Mining]
Mining Laser Upgrade I

Small Shield Booster I
1MN Afterburner I
Survey Scanner I

Miner I
Miner I
[empty high slot]

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]


Mining Drone I x1
Mining Drone I x1

For more up to date mining fits see the Venture fits on the UniWiki.

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Total Cost:
1,069,500 isk not to be bad if your just finishing up the career agent tutorials and need to make a little isk before you move into your favorite play style be it missions or pvp whatever keeps your ship in orbit.

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Time Required:
The Miner I and Miner II cycle time is 60 seconds. The asteroids will vary in size and take you around 4 to 6 cycles to completely mine out. Your second limiting factor is your cargo size. Once your full you can either fly and sell at market or drop it off in a nearby station I found in a frigate it takes me about 60 seconds to fly from one gate to the next. Hope this helps you get started in all your mining fun. P.S. As a miner bring a book or find some good internet articles to read mining can be slow going.

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Other Resources:
Halada's Complete Miners Guide a little out of date but the mining times and amount charts are still up to date and provide the most in depth analysis on the subject anywhere.
ore.cerlestes.de  What ore is the most profitable today? This interactive table based web application provides you with up to date ore costs.

Next Guide Intermediate Mining

 

How I Plan Out a New Character

What do I do when I plan a new character? Well I take a few things into consideration namely well I have them all outlined here in the Quick start guide. Exactly what notes do I make before I start out:

With the start of this blog I started a new character. So let me outline what I plan before I start a new character. First thing on my list is a name and this is usually the hardest thing for me to come up with so I usually leave it blank and move on. Next I keep in mind I need to remap my attributes once I get in game. To correlate with this I have laid out a pretty exhaustive skill plan in EveMon. The next things on my list is Implants with Bakar I had some extra isk on hand so I bought a full set (1 implant for each attribute a total of 5 implants) of +3s. At the time it cost about 50 million isk. The next thing I write down is sort of a reminder for me is Ship Insurance and Update Clone. When I make a new character I am always switching from ship to ship and need to make sure I have insurance on them if I am doing anything dangerous. Also make sure to update your clone so you don't lose skill points. You want those bad boys and it would be sad if you wondered off into some low security space and got podded. The next thing I think about is what my overall goal for this character is going to be. I do this because I get very distracted by all the little lights floating around New Eden so I need something to bring my focus back. The last thing I list is the amount of isk I need to transfer to the new character. This is of course if you have any isk at all to spare for a new character.

For example this is the considerations and planning I have had with my latest character:
Name: Bakar
Remap attributes: According to EveMon Plan
Implants: Buy a full set of +3's
Ship Insurance / Update Clone
Missioning and Exploration
Transfer: 30 million for skill books plus some pocket change for buying ships and things.

Its a quick check list I can go over each time I login to make sure I am still skill training and working towards my goals.

Video of the Week: Understanding Economics

This video has nothing to do with Eve Online. It does however have everything to do with Eve Online's economy. The video 10 Principles of Economics Translated pretty much describes the Eve economy in a nut shell. If your thinking about getting into trading or something a kin to it. Good Luck. Enjoy.

As a side it is however very important when trading in Eve Online to understand at least a few simple economic principles. I will try and put together a few simple guides and outline some reading for those who might want to learn more on the subject of economics and their implications to Eve Online's economy.

Happy Trading.

Battlecruiser and Destryor ship skillz

Ok I don't know how many of you frequent jestertrek.blogspot.com but he has been giving some very good advice that I thought I should duplicate here. If you are just starting there is one thing you should understand that Eve Online or CCP has a policy that when patching and changing around skill requirements the standing rule is if you could fly it before you can fly it after the patch. Now in this case were looking at Battlecruisers and Destroyers skills they will soon be split into the four racial battlecruiser and destroyer skills respectively. This goes out sometime during the summer so you should get on top of this. Anyway read Jester Trek's full post about this here. Also I have the Devblog post linked below.

The great ship skill changes of summer 2013 - Devblog 2.2013

Back to the balancing future - Devblog 11.2012

Update: These skills changes are due sometime this summer if not sooner.

Tip of the Week: In-Game Web Browser

To open the in-game browser go to the top left hand corner of the screen if your neocom is left aligned. Click the E, open Eve menu, scroll down to Accessories, then scroll down to Browser. You can also use the Browser bookmarks to go directly to sites.

The browser is fully functional you can change your homepage and add and remove bookmarks. Note some sites that use flash plugins like youtube.com don't work very well on the in-game browser.

Investment Guide: Basic Planetary Interaction

Basic Planetary Interaction
Intermediate Planetary Interaction
Youtube Basic PI Guide

The Goal: You have a few million isk laying around. Instead of letting it sit in your wallet why not have it making money for you. The below skills will allow you to start a modest Planetary Interaction(PI) system without breaking the bank or your skill que. But will start paying you back in the long run. PI does have a slow pay back so don't invest if you need the cash on hand soon.

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The Skills:

 
Your industrial ship skill will allow you the cargo space to carry a command center, needed to begin on a planet. A command center takes 1000 m3 of cargo space to carry.

Remote Sensing - gives you the skill to scan planets from the comfort of your home space station. The ability to gather and analyze remote sensing data from satellites in orbit around a planet and produce properly calibrated surveys.

Level 1: allows scans within 1 ly
Level 2: allows scans within 3 ly
Level 3: allows scans within 5 ly
Level 4: allows scans within 7 ly (Roughly 8 to 9 jumps away)
Level 5: allows scans within 9 ly

Interplanetary Consolidation - For each level in this skill, you may install a command center on one additional planet, to a maximum of 6 planets. You can have only one command center per planet. Cannot be trained on Trial Accounts.

Command Center Upgrades - Each level in this skill improves the quality of command facility available to you, in turn allowing for a greater number of connected facilities on that planet. Cannot be trained on Trial Accounts.

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The Equipment:

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Service Fees:
Variable Launch Fees based on amount of goods being transferred off planet.
Customs Fees in High Sec are 10% for all customs offices. With the Rubicon expansion this will change as you can train a skill that will lower the NPC Custom Fee's to 5%(at level 5) plus player tax if the Customs Office is operated by a player.

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Total Costs:
5,631,000 isk (rough estimate) before Customs Fees and Launch Fees. The outline above will give you 3 planets and several command center upgrades to start a modest PI production system.

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Time Required:
You can reset production to run for 30 minutes or a week. Depending on your schedule. If you keep your planets close to your home station it will only take a few minutes to fly out to the systems where your planets are to gather your goods.

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Other Resources:
UniWiki Planetary Interaction
UniWiki Planetary Commodities - most valuable resource table out there for PI.
EVElopdeia Planetary Interaction
Factory Planet Info
Current PI Product Prices Spreadsheet
Eveplanets.com 
30 Day Plantary Interaction Challenge - great guide on maximizing your output with higher PI skills you could reach 134 million isk a month with PI.

Eve Online: Basic PI Video Guide

Find Other Investment Guides Here >>>

Video of the Week: Battle of Asakai

Ok I don't know who you are or what your doing reading this but one thing is for sure if you have heard of Eve Online you need to watch this video.

Over the weekend a massive battle ensued in the Asakai system. The local system reached over 2700 players at the peak of the fighting.

The game Devs have posted all sorts of stats on the battle. Battle of Asakai Devblog Stats

Tip of the Week: Taking Screen Shots

So I was flying around yesterday doing some missions when this screen just grabbed me. I was fumbling around trying to remember how to take a screen shot. I finally found the Print Screen button and mashed it a couple of times coming up with the above shot. I knew it would look awful with the UI all over the screen so I did a quick search. To drop the ui from your screen simple hit CRTL+F9. Then you get pretty pictures like the one below. Happy picture taking...