High sec mining

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.

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.