Mountains of Molehills (4 of 10)

Objectives

“Destroy the rogue drones and mine the veldspar for your agent. You’ll need to refine the ore into minerals when you return to the station.”

• Deliver 7,000 x Tritanium (70.0m³)

Mission Type: Mining Encounter
No gate.

• Group 1: 2 x Moth Apis (8.25k Isk ea)

Total bounty: 16,500 Isk

Overview

The fourth mission in the industrial chain returns to the concept of the first mission, providing you with a private mission encounter spot in space where you can mine from some asteroids to provide your agent with the requested minerals. The only real difference here is that you’ll have two very weak enemy rogue drones to deal with as well.

Since by now you should have the mining frigate skill trained to at least level 1 along with the free Venture mining frigate you were provided with in mission 2, this mission serves as a perfect opportunity for its use. For the offensive capabilities you’ll need, you can either occupy one of the two turret slots on the frigate with a conventional weapon, like the civilian gun from your rookie ship, or purchase combat drones from the market for this purpose.

Option 2 requires some skills trained in drones and scout drones. However, this is far more preferable since your second turret slot is best fitted with a second mining laser, also purchased off the market if necessary. Having two instead of one mining laser doubles the already impressive harvesting rate of the Venture, reducing the time it will take you to mine the asteroids by half.

If this is your first time harvesting with the Venture, pay attention to the fact that it has two cargo holds. One of them, labeled the Ore Hold, is a specialized hold where only Ore can be carried as well as where it is deposited when mined. Your regular cargo hold is quite small in comparison at 50m³ while the Ore hold is a nice 5,000 m³. Mods that affect the cargo hold of ships do not modify the specialized ore holds, so it is not worth installing these kinds of mods on the ORE mining vessels.

You’ll only need to fill about 1,000m3 of your hold with Veldspar to have enough to refine the Tritanium you need to give to your agent. However, like before, mining extra is a good idea for use later in the chain or just to sell for the isk.

Since there is no acceleration gate here, higher skilled players running this mission can bring mining barges or exhumers to quickly strip the minerals.

Mineable Asteroids

3 x Veldspar—30,000 units each, 90,000 units total (9,000m³)

Rewards:

• + 0.2242 % corporation standing
• 1 x Miner I
• 84,000 Isk bonus (2 hours, 2 Minutes)

300 Isk Collateral