Quick question before bed:
You guide doesn’t really go into what to do about all the sand and gravel. It’s doesn’t really feel like the whole strip mining thing works properly in this situation.
Also it might be worthwhile adding some tips about lava and other things that experts like yourself may take for granted. Like it only takes digging down 1 block to stop a whole flow of lava from coming for you.
Good call. I’ll add those tips.
I’ve had really good hauls of Umbris from 180 - 200 as well on some previous planets. Not the current planet though.
Updated to include a section about lava, sand, and gravel.
Thanks for the update. I guess I was wondering whether to bother getting it out of the way, lest the be hidden seams behind the sand.
Great guide btw!
I don’t bother. I just move around it. Technically, yes, you could miss a seam but I’m guessing the probability that:
Is very, very low.
By extension you can also leave 3 blocks between the shafts, especially on topaz mining. The probability of there being something hidden is low, and even if there is, the seam isn’t big so it’s not a big loss 
This is a fair point. I know I’m allowing for potential loss in not clearing sand and gravel but for some reason my OCD forces me to leave only two blocks between my rows or I feel bad about life.
Additionally, clearing sand and gravel sticking out would be extra work but ensuring two blocks between rows isn’t so I go ahead and do it.
You’ll still randomly switch both hands at times for no reason even with the option to switch both hands turned off 
Sorry for the necro but this is a guide afterall that is still relevant.
Added two more mining techniques that are faster but less efficient and showed a recent topaz yield.
Excellent guide, by far the most comprehensive guide available for mining I’ve seen. I have considered trying to put one together myself but I am just so terrible at structuring a guide as well as this.
Would you be offended if I offered a few constructive critiques and possible corrections though?
Thanks!
And, not in the slightest. By all means, please offer corrections and critques. I love constructive criticism.
Excellent, I’ll do so when I get home from work in a few hours.
I presume you wouldn’t mind if we put a version of this on the website tutorials page? (dhusk is helping me with the website so I doubt he’d mind)
Ok so here goes… sorry in advance, I just think this is an awesome guide but I’d Iike to offer some alternative ideas and possibly corrections. Feel free to dispute anything that I have to offer as well, I could be wrong myself 
The “Characer build” section
I would argue that the Energy Regeneration Epic is a higher priority than the Energy epic, because without the regeneration it takes a really really long time to regen all the energy, so I think you might want to swap which on is in the mandatory and which one is in the optional section.
The light source epic I personally feel should be in the optional section too, I understand this is really a personal choice thing and you are trying to aim this at a newer player so I understand why you like it. I personally prefer to be able to switch my light source off so I can view my atlas in the dark, the heat map is far easier to use in the dark which is especially useful for hitting those “white” patches.
The Planets and Elevations section
I think the table needs a bit of refining personally to show the possible spawn altitudes and then the “sweet spot” altitudes also, along with an explanation that some sweet spots will vary based on surface distance, diamond and ruby are the only gems that should be mined at a specific altitude, all the rest will vary based on the terrain above ground, I feel that a lot of people fail to understand this and do all of their mining at one particular altitude and this will not give you ideal results. This post shows it well (click the advanced section to get the sweet spots) and is basically my mining bible.
I can assure you that the best topaz mining location I use on Galan is mining at an altitude of 200 - 210. If you don’t believe me I would be more than happy to give you a location token for it so you can try it yourself.
I also feel you should add some other planets. Norkyana for Amethysts which are arguably easier to mine than emeralds are on Shedu. Houchus for sapphires as they are just as densely packed as topaz are on Galan, the hot spots aren’t as large but they are large enough that I can mine sapphire just as fast as I can mine topaz.
Rift sweet spots are 35-45 (i have a feeling that this varies based on surface distance also but I am not 100% certain)
Blink sweetspot is mantle to 10
Umbris sweet spot can be anywhere from 140-190 and the stuff spawns all the way up to 200+ inside the highest mountains. The sweet spots for this most definitely vary based on surface dustance and if you try to mine at one fixed altitude I guarantee you your yields will be disappointing.
This attitude is one of my biggest pet peeves sorry, lol. I very often don’t get to exos until 2 or 3 days after they spawn if I am at work. I look at the “resources” screen shot in the Exo thread and that will show say Umbris at 0.65% in the first hour of the planet spawning, then 3 days later I get there and it says Umbris is now at 0.55%. This tells me that very little of the available umbris has actually been mined and a quick look at an atlas will show me plenty of white-hot spots on the heat map. I can assure you, if you know how to read your atlas and you understand the way the lucents spawn then you will have no problems finding plenty of the stuff right up to the day the exo dissapears. If you are on a white-hot spot and it looks like swiss cheese underground… then guess what, all that swiss cheese mining was done at the wrong altitude. Sometimes this actually makes it really really easy to find the big clusters that are sitting in the the only altitude that has been left undisturbed at that location.
First and foremost, thanks so much for the great response and feedback! Much of what you said, I agree with and will likely make adjustments to the guide as a result!
Some areas I personally don’t agree with are as follows:
I disagree with this as carrying a light source means you’re taking up an extra inventory slot. You have the 5 points to spare in a mining build so why not take the Light Epic?
This could likely be due to what you said earlier about elevations and “sweet spots” varying on a case by case basis. The two spots I hit for topaz and got the yields I mentioned in the post both were optimal around 135-145.
Fair play to you hah. That said, it’s mainly about efficiency for me. If you arrive at a spot and it’s “mined out”, of course there is still going to be a lot of lucent there but you’re going to have to poke around the outskirts of hotspots or hit sub-optimal altitudes to do so and your yields are going to be substantially less than the person who got there first and strip mined it across the sweet spot altitudes. If you’re fine with, say, going through multiple pies and brews as you jump from mined out spot to mined out spot and, further, if you’re fine coming away from each spot with 1/2 or less of what the person who was there first got then more power to you but personally when I get to a spot, if it’s mined out at all the good altitudes, I don’t bother. I’ll explore to find another zone that hopefully isn’t mined.
In all, though, I really do appreciate the great and thoughtful feedback. I’ll update the post with the things I agree with and then also add a section at the end which contains stuff that I don’t personally agree with but that may work for others!
Thanks for taking it all so positively and for the replies!
This is definitely one of those skill options where opinions are going to vary from player to player so I’ll concede that you make a fair point… but I will say that my miner has 3 separate mining skill pages (1 for each planetary protection) so that gives me a further spare 8 points that I still won’t put into the Light Epic, haha. I take the jump height epic because I have it on every character and it’s a luxury I just can’t live without. I also take the gathering epic and the stealth epic so that I can use my miner as a goo/kindling/boulder/plant/mineral seam collector as well. I do realise those are all very much luxury skills to have on a miner though
Yes it definitely is, my spot is on a giant pancake plateau that has a surface altitude of 240-250, I do feel from my own experiences that the higher the altitude of my topaz “sweet spot” the sweeter the spot is. I could be wrong though, I have no facts to back this up, just my own experiences and assumptions. Maybe I should do some actual testing on this myself and see what sort of results I can get at varying altitudes.
Any chance that I could get a location token from you for the Topaz spot you mine to do a comparison run against my spot?
Fair enough, I specifically target the bright spots on my atlas when I go to an exo late in it’s life to avoid the spots that have been beaten up bad As you say this does often require me to hop from spot to spot so it is certainly not peak performance mining I admit. I just get irked every time I see someone telling people not to bother mining an exo because all the lucents were “gone” in the first hour or 2. Like I said, it’s a pet peeve of mine, haha.
All my grapples are glow. I feel strongly the opposite - that light source is taking up 5 precious points.
I also use a glow-magnet-strength hammer for my off hand now when mining. It gives glow, magnet and can be used for “cleanup” if I want one seam but don’t want to “waste” a 3x3 hit (or make a messy mess with 3x3)
This is on my main; on a character that doesn’t need tax epic, I might use some fall damage protection and kinetic protection perhaps.
Haha, yes everyone is going to have a personal preference one way or the other on this.
My reasoning is that I really do take different approach to mining these days, I measure my level of success on how much of a resource I can gather in 45 minutes (1 pie buff) rather than how much I can get per hammer. So I hit everything with my 3x3 super speed hammers, even that lone single block of coal. I mine with max control and make an absolute mess of a mountain when I go mining so I need the loot stick to ensure I gather everything, and of course my loot sticks always have glow on them.
I like to have glow on some fast bombs in offhand so I can use dura hammers instead of speed : )
