Quantanium Mining using a Prospector

You need approx 2M UEC to purchase a Prospector to mine Quant. It’s not possible to use a rented Prospector since Quant requires a different mining head and the addition of consumables which cannot be added to rented ships. You can mine other minerals with a rented Prospector if you wish and this guide will be useful for these scenarios too

There are other minerals you can mine with a Prospector, the top 5 by value are shown here:

Note: SC Trade Tools is an excellent resource for mining and trade information.

You typically mine raw materials as ore. You can choose to either sell the ore directly or refine it into commodity cargo and sell that instead. There is a cost both in terms of UEC and time to refining. Typically refined material sells for double that of ore so most people go for this option. To sell refined material you need a suitable cargo cargo ship

There is a lot of focus on Quant mining since its the most lucrative and this is the reason why I’ve decide to focus this article on this resource. Its also the most exciting due to its volatility

Also please note that the Prospector is a single person ship. You can achieve the same result using the Argo Mole which is a two person ship - should you have a buddy to go out mining with. I’ve heard that some people solo the Mole but I’ve never tried it myself.

The key steps required to mine Quant are

1. Purchase a Prospector. You cannot mine Quant with a rented ship since you need a different mining laser
2. Purchase mining consumables
3. Setup a station as your base for mining, which has a refinery e.g. ARC-L1
4. Prospect for Quant
5. Mine the Quant ore
6. Transport the Quant to the refinery
7. Refine the Quant into commodity cargo
8. If needed hire a cargo ship
9. Transport and sell refined Quant

Selecting a station for the base of mining is important for mining Quant. Once you mine Quant you have approx 15 minutes to deliver it to a station before it explodes. From what I understand this can vary if you bump the ship or land heavily - so fly safe once you have Quant on board.

From the research I’ve done I’ve concluded that ARC-L1 near ArcCorp is an excellent base of operations for three main reasons

1. It’s close to the Aaron Halo asteroid belt which is a massive source of mineables
2. It’s close to Lyria having a lot of Quant which is relatively easy to find
3. It’s close to Area 18 where Quant can be sold once refined

Purchase the Prospector and Consumables⌗

You can purchase the Prospector at New Deal on Lorville. New Deal is pretty easy to find since its located near the ASOP terminals where you store and claim your ship

Head over to New Deal

Locate the terminal and purchase the Prospector for around 2M UEC. Once purchased head back to the ASOP terminal and claim the ship. It will appear immediately after purchase.

Now you have your Prospector you now need to buy the following

• Surge consumables from HUR-L1 for 1,400 UEC
• Size 1 Lancet mining head from ARC-L1 for 23,500 UEC

I’d recommend purchasing Surge first since you can purchase the Lancet from ARC-L1 which is where I recommend you set up base.

Navigate to HUR-L1 via quantum travel. If you select HUR-L1 from the Starmap you might drop out early. If this happens open Starmap again and zoom into HUR-L1 Green Glade Station and quantum jump again.

When you arrive go over to the elevators, the same ones that take you to the Galleria, and select the refinery floor. Make your way over to the mining shop by walking through the refinery

Locate the refinery terminal

Purchase a good number of Surge modules to your ships inventory - perhaps start with around 5 or 10. Sooner or later you will have to return to buy more since these are key to refining quant successfully.

Setting up at ARC-L1 and purchase the Mining Head⌗

Navigate to ARC-L1 via quantum travel. If you select ARC-L1 from the Starmap you might drop out early. If this happens open Starmap again and zoom into ARC-L1 Wide Forest Station and quantum again

Once at station, if you are planning on mining for a while its best to set your respawn point. To do this head over to the Medical Clinic and locate the regeneration point.

Access the terminal and transfer your imprint to your current location. This means if you die whilst mining Quant you will wake up in ARC-L1 so you can get back to mining quickly

Once complete again make your way over to the mining shop by walking through the refinery and locate the refinery terminal. Purchase the Size 1 Lancet head for the Prospector (the Mole takes Size 2). Remember to move the Surge modules from the ship inventory to the local ARC-L1 inventory

Next equip both the Lancet mining head and the surge modules to the Prospector. You do this using the Vehcile Loadout Manager button from the Mobi-glass. Click on Utility and equip the Lancet from into the Weapon slot and Surge to at least two of the empty Sub Item Slots. Adding Surge to multiple slots allows you to carry more modules with you to ensure you don’t run out whilst trying to crack a massive stash of Quant. There are other consumables that you could use in addition but the Lancet + Surge is all you need for Quant.

Prospecting for Quant⌗

From ARC-L1 both the Aaron Halo and Lyria are within close reach. I quite enjoyed mining in the Halo but after researching an effective method for locating Quant on Lyria, Lyria became by far the most profitable.

If you want to mine on Aaron Halo you need to quantum travel to Hurston and drop out of quantum at specific ranges that bring you out in the belt. Cornerstone have an excellent guide that provides some insights on how best to locate Quant at specific distances from various locations. A key resource are the Mining Route Charts which guide you to dropping out of quantum at the right moment to target specific bands known to have higher densities of Quant. For example see the ARC-L1 Route Chart .

When mining the Aaron Halo travel times to ARC-L1 are much longer than say Lyria which means you must really get a move on once you have mined the Quant. I did the trip many times but you really need to be efficient in your travel to pull this off. The Quant stability timer kicks in the moment you collect your first piece!

To prospect for Quant you first make use of the ping feature Key: Tab. Set your ping angle to around 90 degrees, and certainly less than 360 degrees otherwise you’ll be chasing objects you have already passed and disregarded Key: Period (increase angle), Comma (decrease angle)

Keep pinging until your radar produces a box icon. When located fly closer and switch to mining mode Key: m. Point your mining laser at the rock to perform a further scan and identify the composition of the rocks. You are looking for a high concentration of Quant, say 35% upwards. Lower amounts means more trips to and from a station and the mining site.

If you are mining on Lyria the process is a little different and all credit goes to Hawkes Gaming for the awesome method explained here

• Set your ping angle to 360 degrees and ping
• Aim your crosshair directly at each individual box that appears
• Set your ping angle to 2 degrees and ping again
• If the icon changes from a box to two diamond icons next to each other then you have located Quant!
• If none of the boxes are a hit fly a bit further on a repeat this process again

This process is a fast method for identifying Quant since it saves you having to fly up to each individual mineral and scanning them to determine whether or not they have Quant. I typically find Quant within a few minutes of using this method.

Mining Quant⌗

Once you have located Quant and are happy with the composition i.e. there is a high percentage of Quant (or another valuable material) its time to crack the rock. The key to cracking the rock really is the Surge module.

The mining itself is a mini-game. The objective is to blast the rock with the laser until the charge level enters the optimum range. Whilst the charge level is in this range the rock will “charge up” and eventually fracture. Based on factors such as instability the charge levels will jump up/down a bit during this process. You need to regulate the power of your laser Key: Mouse Wheel Up (more power), Mouse Wheel Down (less power) to offset those changes and keep in the optimal range. Typically mining the mineral goes a bit like this.

• Laser on full power 100%
• Use the surge module from one of your slots. This corresponds to where you equipped the module back at HUR-L1 Key: Left Alt + 1 for consumable in slot 1, Key: Left Alt + 2 for consumable in slot 2, Key: Left Alt + 3 for consumable in slot 3
• If charge level is in the optimum range then apply / reduce power as needed to keep it there
• If charge level is too low keep the laser on 100%

Rocks containing Quant are very combustible so make sure you don’t overcharge the rock. Overcharging is where charge level enters the Overcharge zone. If it stays there too long it will explode. If this happens back up your ship to get outside the bast radius! When you use a Surge module the charge level will spike significantly so you need to learn to judge when best to apply the Surge as to avoid overcharging the rock.

One the rock breaks apart, scan the smaller segments for Quant and if required break those rocks too. Typically you will need to break down the rock 2 or 3 times to obtain harvestable ore. You should only need to use the Surge the first time. You can come across some really massive rocks in the Verse, some of which you simply wont be able to mine alone using a Prospector. This is something you need to work out as you go. When you point your mining laser at the rock the outline tells you if the rock needs to be broken (yellow highlight) or contains ore that can be colleted (purple highlight)

Once all the rocks containing Quant or other valuable materials are highlighted in purple it’s time to start collecting. To do this switch to extraction mode Key: Right Mouse Button point the laser at each rock and suck out all the Quant.

Remember the 15 minute timer starts from the moment you extract the first Quant, so make sure you have cracked all the rocks before you start collecting.

Once you have hoovered up all the Quant head back to HUR-L1 and land. Head up to the ASOP terminal and store your Prospector - at this point you are safe and the ship cannot explode. The Prospector has a siren and when it starts to go off you know you only have a few minutes remaining. If you really are miles away from safety you can choose to jettison the Quantanium Key: Left Alt + j (I think you need to be in mining mode to do this). Jettison only applies to Quant i.e. if you are carrying a mixture of Quant and non-Quant materials the jettison will remove the Quant and leave the other minerals in place.

Refining Ore⌗

Now you are safely at a refinery station and hopefully have a Prospector full of Quant its time to refine the ore into commodity cargo and increase its value.

Again go over to the elevators and select the refinery floor.

Head over towards the mining shop but this time go up the stairs to the left hand side of the shop

then enter it

Once in the room locate and interact with one of the terminals. From the terminal

1. Select your Prospector from the Material Location dropdown
2. Click Setup Work Order button
3. Choose Ferron as the refining method. Each method offers a different ratio of yield, time and cost. Generally the slowest methods give the best yields.
4. Submit the order

The terminal will tell you how long you need to wait before the ore has been refined. This time will elapse whether or not you are in game or out. You may submit several orders concurrently.

Transporting Refined Commodities⌗

Go over to the elevators, the same ones that take you to the Galleria, and select the refinery floor. Make your way over to the mining shop by walking through the refinery

Locate the shop

Locate the vehicle hire terminal where you can rent the Cutty Black

You only need to rent the Cutty Black if you lack a suitable cargo ship. Rental of the Cutty is around 33k UEC each day. If you like mining you should probably save up to buy a cargo ship. There are plenty of good alternatives to the Cutty Black for transporting goods such as Freelancer, Connie Taurus, etc.

Once you have hired the ship head back up to the refinery terminal and view the status of your jobs. If you want to collect an order (load refined Quant into your ship) choose your Cutty Black from the Select Storage Option drop down list and click Collect. At this point the refined material will be loaded onto your ship.

I’ve read that its important not to overfill your cargo ship e.g. imagine you have loaded 5 SCU of cargo into a ship with a 7 SCU capacity. If you then collect an order of refined Quant which is 5 SCU the ship will reach its 7 SCU capacity and any over spill (in this case 3 SCU) will be discarded!

Selling Refined Commodities⌗

Once you have loaded up your cargo ship it’s time to sell the minerals and generate some cash. To do this you should fly over to a station that accepts Quant e.g. Area 18, locate the the Admin office and sell your minerals. Once at the terminal select location as your cargo ship and click Sell. On the right hand panel you should see the mineral(s) contained in the cargo ship. Click on each mineral, confirm the amount you wish to sell (all of it!) and then click the Sell button. Repeat this for each mineral.

You can use the SC Trade Tools site to determine where you can sell your Quant and other cargo types

As you can see from this screenshot 94.5 SKU of Quant banked me over 800k UEC. Quant mining can be super lucrative! The Connie Taurus I used in this run has a capacity of 174 SKU so I could have carried almost double the refined Quant that I had here!

When transporting refined Quant from the refinery to a city you are vulnerable to piracy and would make a really nice catch. Bear this in mind when you plan how to transport your valuable cargo. We should see more instances of piracy in 3.18 due to the cargo refactor and the introduction of soft death - so it will be a really exciting time to be a miner and cargo runner! (ahem and pirate)