Guide to Mining
At roundstart, you will spawn at the Mining Dock. If not, go east from Arrivals until you hit the Auxiliary Tool Storage, then go south until you reach the Cargo Office.
Equipment
Every miner starts with the following equipment:
Image | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
Healing Patch | Heals a good amount of Brute damage. Good for emergency cases. | |
Mining Satchel | A satchel which, if worn on the belt slot, it is in your hands or it is in your pockets, will automatically collect ores. | |
Mining Voucher | A single use voucher, used to buy a starting item at the Mining Equipment Vendor. | |
Seclite | This seclite is attachable to guns such as the Kinetic Accelerator. |
At the lower half of the Mining Dock you can find three lockers with the following equipment. The shovel is unnecessary to take as the Pickaxe can do its job.
File:Miningequipmentvendor.png Mining Equipment Vendor
If you visit it the first time, insert the Mining Voucher and get a Kinetic Accelerator.
Later as you bring back ores to the ORM, you will get points that you can spend on the following items. Insert your ID card before purchasing anything but don't forget to eject it before you leave!
Image | Name | Cost | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Stimpack | 50 | Allows faster movemenent in restrictive armor. | |
Teporone MediPen | 50 | Regulates body temperature. | |
MediPen Bundle | 200 | Contains stimpack and teporone autoinjectors. | |
Whiskey | 150 | The true reward for your endeavours. | |
Cigar | 150 | A premium cigar for a premium price. | |
Soap | 200 | A cheap bar of soap. | |
Laser Pointer | 300 | To make presentations more interesting. Or to shine it in someone's eyes. | |
Alien Toy | 300 | A facehugger toy. | |
Advanced Scanner | 400 | Scans more frequently and has a higher radius than the basic one. | |
Hivelord Stabilizer | 400 | Stabilizes hivelord remains, preventing them from becoming inert. | |
Mining Drone | 500 | A little drone to help you with mining. | |
Drone Melee Upgrade | 400 | Increases the mining drone's melee damage by 7. | |
Drone Health Upgrade | 400 | Increases the mining drone's health by 45. | |
Drone Ranged Upgrade | 600 | Decreases the mining drone's shooting cooldown by 20. | |
Kinetic Crusher | 750 | Melee weapon. Mark a mob with the destabilizing force, then hit them in melee to activate it for extra damage. Extra damage for backstab. | |
Drone AI Upgrade | 1000 | Offers the mining drone sentience. | |
GAR Mesons | 500 | Same as any other optical meson scanner, but more fashionable. | |
Brute First-Aid Kit | 600 | A first-aid kit filled with healing patches, a health analyzer, an emergency autoinjector and a roll of gauze. | |
Jaunter | 600 | A weapon creating unsafe wormholes. | |
Kinetic Accelerator | 750 | A ranged weapon, excellent both for mining and for fighting in vacuum. | |
Resonator | 800 | A device creating small fields of energy that eventually detonate. Works better in vacuum. | |
Lazarus Injector | 1000 | Revives small animals and asteroid monsters, making them docile. | |
Silver Pickaxe | 1000 | Stronger than the regular pickaxe. | |
Lazarus Capsule | 800 | Use it on creatures revived by a lazarus injector to store them. | |
Lazarus Capsule Belt | 200 | Stores lazarus capsules. | |
Jetpack | 2000 | A jetpack, small enough to store it in your bag. Wear it on your back to use it. | |
File:Spacecash1000.png | Space Cash | 2000 | Cash in its purest form. |
Diamond Pickaxe | 2000 | Stronger than the silver pickaxe. | |
Super Resonator | 2500 | The same as the resonator but this one can have 5 fields active. | |
KA White Tracer Rounds | 100 | Causes the kinetic accelerator bolts to have a white tracer trail. | |
KA Adjustable Tracer Rounds | 150 | Causes the kinetic accelerator bolts to have an adjustable colored tracer trail. | |
KA Super Chassis | 250 | Recolors the kinetic accelerator chassis to yellow. | |
KA Hyper Chassis | 300 | Recolors the kinetic accelerator chassis to orange. | |
KA Range Increase | 1000 | Increases the kinetic accelerator's range by 1. | |
KA Damage Increase | 1000 | Increases the kinetic accelerator's damage by 10. | |
KA Cooldown Decrease | 1000 | Decreases the kinetic accelerator's cooldown by 2.5. | |
KA AoE Damage | 2000 | Causes the kinetic accelerator do AoE damage. It does not destroy multiple rocks at once. | |
Point Transfer Card | 500 | A card preloaded with 500 mining points. Swipe your ID over it to claim it. |
The Ore Redemption Machine (ORM)
The ORM is what turns your ores into sheets, making them usable by Engineers, Roboticists, Scientists, and whoever else gets access to it.
Whenever you are done with mining, return to Cargo Office. The ORM is in the northeast room. Place the ore box right above it, right click the ore box and empty it. Then insert your ID card and claim your points. These are the points you can use at the Mining Equipment Vendor.
R&D can upgrade the ORM to make it produce more sheets for fewer ores (and consequently, making your points skyrocket).
Mining
After you geared up, head to the airlocks to your west. Buckle up, then use the Mining Shuttle Console and send the shuttle to the Mining Station.
To your east there is a break room should your character get hungry. Above that is a small mech bay in case Roboticists grace you with a mining exosuit, also known as the Ripley.
Preparation
Once the shuttle docks, head east, then north and enter the Mining Station EVA.
- Equip a hardsuit and a breath mask from the racks.
- Dispense an Oxygen Tank from the Tank Storage Unit.
- File:GPS2.png (Optional) Take a GPS from below the blue mechanical toolbox. It can come handy should any kind of accident happen to you. If you click on it while it is in your hands, you can set your own tag.
- Grab an Ore Box from anywhere on the station and pull it after you (with control-click). You will empty your Mining Satchel into it frequently as the satchel itself is rather small.
From here you have two choices. You can leave to the safe eastern side where there are far less minerals but no monsters whatsoever - or take the more dangerous but more rewarding western path.
Process
To mine a rock, click them with your Kinetic Accelerator or with a pickaxe in your hands. You can mine multiple tiles at once with the pickaxe. If you use the pickaxe on the ground, you will mine sand, which is needed to make glass.
Keep the satchel in your pocket and walk over the ores to collect them. If the satchel is full, empty it into the ore box you are dragging with you.
Result
Miners don't have to deliver materials directly to departments - you can if you want some upgrades from R&D or a Ripley from Robotics.
- Scientists need everything (except for plasma glass) but little metal and glass. In exchange, they may give you a Mining Satchel of Holding (which is an infinite ore satchel), night vision meson scanners and much more.
- Roboticists need everything (except for plasma glass), especially metal and glass, for building exosuits, upgrading cyborgs and implanting people.
- Cargo Technicians can ship plasma sheets for supply points.
- Engineers use metal, glass, plasteel (and sometimes plasma glass) for building and repairing.
- The Clown and the Mime can make use of bananium and tranquilite as the Roboticists can make exosuits for them. These exosuits almost never get approved, though.
- The Bartender can make cocktails from uranium and silver. They are as healthy as they sound.
- Medbay might need gold for curing very rare viruses.
Bonus Loot
There are items, crates, and small rooms scattered around on the asteroid, all waiting to be looted. The crates are password locked and they can be opened after solving a mastermind puzzle (with the help of a multitool) or by shooting it enough times in vacuum with your Kinetic Accelerator.
Every asteroid monster has its own drop. Basilisks and Goldgrubs drop diamond and uranium. Hivelords drop hivelord remains that fully heal people upon consuming it (including regrowing limbs and fixing internal damage) - however, they go inert in 4 minutes, unless they are stabilized. Goliaths drop goliath plates that can be attached to mining hardsuits or Ripleys, increasing their defence.
File:Firstaidkit2.png Dangers
Mistakes can and ought to happen when you are working in a dangerous environment.
- Have a GPS on you and activate your suit sensors (by right-clicking on your jumpsuit).
- Ask for help. There are usually two or three miners working out there and the Quartermaster can ask for a Paramedic if everything else fails. If you start to suffocate, bleed or you collapse, use the cargo frequency (:u) and announce it immediately.
- Similarly, if another miner is in trouble, consider lending a hand. Use your GPS to locate them.
- A dead miner is a bad miner. If you are injured and unsure about your condition, head back and get checked out. Playing the hero out there most often ends in an untimely death.
- If you are on the verge of collapsing and/or you start stammering, open the box in your bag and use the emergency autoinjector.
Suffocation
The asteroid has no breathable atmosphere. Always have internals on! If for some reason you lost your oxygen tank or your breath mask, use the one in the box located in your bag.
Physical Trauma
Every asteroid monster deals brute damage when they get in melee range.
- If you start bleeding, use a Healing Patch to fix yourself up. If you still bleed, head back to the Mining Station. There is a small Infirmary on the west side with a first aid kit.
- If you bleed even after you are seemingly fine (no bruises), run straight to Medbay. You have internal bleeding.
- If you are about to collapse, stab yourself with an emergency autoinjector (found in the box in your bag).
- If your bones move in your chest/groin or you keep dropping items, go to Medbay for a surgery.
- If you start gasping because of broken ribs, announce it over the radio and then start running.
- Every kind of injury can be healed with Hivelord Remains, including lost limbs.
Freezing
One of the asteroid monsters, the basilisk, freezes its target. Some races don't react to it well.
- Use Burn Patches against burns, located in the First Aid Kit in the Infirmary (west side of the Mining Station).
- Teporone is a chemical that restores your body temperature to normal. You can find it in Teporone MediPens or in the MediPen Bundle, both purchasable from the Mining Equipment Vendor.
Tips
- If you have your satchel in your hand, pocket or on your belt, it loots everything as you walk.
- There is a small medbay on the left side of the mining station with a Sleeper.
- There is a small kitchen on the left side of the mining station with Donk Pockets. Warm a donk pocket in the microwave then eat it. You'll produce Omnizine.
- You can ask for a Kinetic Accelerator AoE mod from R&D. It makes your kinetic accelerator destroy multiple rocks at once.
- Kinetic Accelerators can destroy electrified grilles without electrocuting you.
- Sonic Jackhammers (random loot on the asteroid) can take down airlocks and walls, including reinforced ones.
- Monsters revived by a lazarus injector will be only hostile towards other, aggressive monsters.
- Pickaxes are great against space vines.
- Mining drones can be repaired with a welding tool.
- Kinetic Accelerators and Resonators work best in vacuum. If you have to fight, try to bring the fight to underpressurized areas.