So the last few days I took what I would consider cheaply 3x3 hammers out mining to get a ‘real feel’ for what values in product they are bringing in currently since it has been a long time since I ‘played strictly as a miner’.
I wasn’t paying attention to how many hammers I used. I think it was 2 but it could have been 4. Later this week when I have time I’m going to be a bit more thorough on it if I get the chance. I’m pretty sure this was based off 2 hammers only though.
My target spot was a tier 6 planet. I went after gems but I did not ignore fossils, tech, ore, etc.
I had about 2k gems, 7k iron ore, 2k copper, then a stack or so of large fossils + other smaller fossils + 1.5 stacks of tech as well as mineral fragments(sulfur etc).
I ran around and priced what the hammers I used might be bought for. Was surprised to see the range in prices. If I were to sell the kinds I used I’d price them around 5k and I saw many shops selling them at that price but there were quite a few as high as 15k and a smattering in between of 7-10k. The location that had 5k priced has about 30 of them so I’m using that as my baseline value here.
So for best case cost of 10k (and worst case of 30k) this is what I made after running around to baskets this morning. Most gems sell to request baskets for 30c though rarer ones are bought at 90-130 so factor this accordingly. So many baskets buying iron ore at 4-6c and when you have 5-7k iron that tallies up fast.
After you get established as a miner you can invest in extractor machines and coils to extract essence from large fossils. This sells well also or you can choose to mint it. The extraction requires more investment but you can do this after your first few mining trips of selling all the ore and the gems.
All said and done this is what my expenses were:
2 - 5k hammers for a cost of 10k (worst case scenario they cost 30k at the expensive shop’s’)
2 persist pies @ 300 each for a total of 600
10 brews for a total cost of 2500
So it cost me 13,100 credits to go mining and my gross profit overall was 134k. That’s a rough net profit of 121k for the time length of basically 2 pies.
The key here is knowing where to sell to. Before you decide to go mining to make money, familiarize yourself with shops that buy large quantities of items. Go to your location tab to bookmark those shops so you can easily find them. Create a location token so you can warp there making it hassle free.
Mining may not make as much money as it ever did when gems sold for 500 and hammers cost 50k but the biggest barrier I repeatedly see is people just not knowing how and where to find places to sell to.
(It might be a wise idea if sell baskets had portals directly to them that said ‘SELL HERE’ instead of a cute shop name as things are just simply hard to navigate right now)
Edit: >Malk for diamonds and coal and titanium, mine in bright yellow hotspots from 0 - 25 or so. Houchus for sapphire, tech, iron, and fossils - i think from 80-150? I stick between 90-120 (it depends on the mountain you are mining if you should go up or down). I go to Altinans for silver/large fossils. I do not have any specific spot I go to. Bounce around until I find a hotspot that hasn’t been mined yet. Sometimes this is hard.
Mining is how I got my foothold in the game financially, my favorite way to earn coin, zoning out with it and selling the stuff I get. I sometimes sell to baskets, particularly at The Golden Fist for mining stuff, but if you set up shop stands and sell cheap enough like I do, it goes quickly, might take awhile and some advertising for people to find you of course.