EVE Echoes Mining and Ship Building Guide: Everything You Need to Know

One of the main questions that almost constantly shows up in EVE Echoes is how to make ISK easily. This particular problem becomes major when you simply can’t or don’t want to engage in battles. Yes, eventually you’ll need to. In the meantime, what else is there?

The great news is that there’s a lot when it comes to mining and ship building. The bad news is that it can really test you almost as much as battle. What do you mine? What do you build? What skills do you need for all of this? How much should you buy or sell for? In this new EVE Echoes guide we will be focusing exclusively on mining and manufacturing, sharing a bunch of tips, tricks and strategies, so you’ll know exactly how to deal with each part.

1. The Recommended Home Base

The home base is where you’ll store most of your belongings. In EVE Echoes, there’re 2 “requirements” when looking for a home base. The first requirement being that it has Facilities.

Again, this also includes manufacturing. So the last thing you want to do is end up having to transport materials repeatedly. While docked at a station, open Industry and tap the Facilities button found at the bottom middle of the screen. It’ll show you the nearest station with Facilities. This is where you’ll be doing your Manufacturing and/or Reverse Engineering. Now you’ll need a place to sell your stuff. Locate the nearest Trading Center.

Open up the Market. In the bottom middle of the screen is where you can find the Nearby Trading Centers button. Notice in the above screenshot that the nearest Trading Center is only 1 jump away. This makes it a lot easier to get your stuff sold. That and things bought too! From there you can easily shift your stuff back and forth without having to listen to “warp drive activated” so many times!

2. Planetary Production Gains

In EVE Echoes, your first source of income and materials as a miner/builder should be Planetary Production. So first, open up your Skills and start increasing them for Planetary Production. From there, you have to find the planets that you want to mine from and place a Development Array on them.

From there, configure your Mining Settings and click the + (plus) icon in the upper right corner to add time to the timer. Then just let it rip!

When you first start Planetary Production, it really is anything goes. Later you’ll need to get specific about it. In either case, you’ll have to safely collect all of your Planetary Productions. The recommendation is to bring some type of attack ship. Just about any you have will do. The typical case is that you’ll have more cargo hold on an attack type ship compared to a mining ship. You really want to collect everything for return to wherever in 1 trip. Get docked in the area where your Planetary Production is ongoing. Open your Planetary Production and tap the Launch button for each resource you’re mining. Wait for it all to go to the Space Hold (bottom middle of your screen).

Tap the Set as Destination button and go back to your dock screen. Tap the Auto-Pilot activate button (upper left of your screen). Your ship will undock and go to the Space Hold. Your resources will show up so you’ll only need to tap the Loot All button at the bottom of that window. Get gone. Again, it said “safely” so the “get gone” part is important!

Another important part to collecting is to watch your cargo space. If you can’t fit everything in while collecting, you’ll be leaving things behind. If you do that in a Null Security (SEC) area, you pretty much lost those resources. Anyone can grab them without a problem.

If at any time you want to move your EVE Echoes Planetary Production, you fairly easily can. You’ll need to do this when you’re getting specific about things. Check out the part of the above screenshot for the Mining Settings. First, launch and collect the resources. Directly after you launch the resources into the Space Hold, open the Mining Settings and remove all the Mining Arrays.

Tap the Confirm button to make it stick. Click the Demolish Mining Array button to the left of the Confirm button. Now you can move your Development Array to another planet. If you click Demolish the Mining Array before launching and collecting the resources, you’ll lose them.

Naturally this EVE Echoes guide is about gaining ISK. So which Planetary Production resources offer up the most ISK? Currently it’s Plasmoids and Reactive Metals that carry the highest prices in the Market. However, keep in mind that EVE Echoes can change at any given time. The prices for things can easily imitate that. Also note that manufacturing is a better source of income compared to Planetary Resource mining. So the recommendation is to keep a large majority of your resources. Then again, if you need ISK, this will do!

One of the problems in EVE Echoes is finding the resources you need from Planetary Production. Oddly enough, there’s a built-in method. Did you notice you’ll have to do a lot of jumps to get things done? Surprise! That was also your method to look for resources.

While jumping around so much, open up your Planetary Production and keep looking through the planets in each area you go through. You’ll have to be a bit quick because when you jump, it’ll switch the planets.

Obviously it would take a seriously powerful memory to recall where each of these things is located! Thankfully your mobile device typically has a method to take screenshots. While you’re docked at a station safe and sound, you can only check the planets in the area you’re currently in. That will limit things a lot. If you take screenshots through all these places of the planets that have the resources, you’re all set. Simply open your Star Map and use the search button in the bottom left corner.

Of highest concern is to check out the area first using the Star Map. What you’re looking for is a place to dock before you setup a Development Array on a planet there. Once you get to that station, place any cheap item there. That’s the “poor man’s” bookmarking system! Yes, Veldspar has its uses! From there, you can easily get back there using the Inventory. Tap the Personal Assets button in the bottom left corner and you can set the destination to that station. Later you can delete screenshots that you no longer need.

3. The Joys And ISK Gaining Of Mining

Yes, it can be relaxing to kick back and make a bunch of ISK while mining in EVE Echoes. Yes, the universe is beautiful! Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to it than “just mine and sell”. You’ll have to keep your ship in one piece.

You’ll have to get your Mining and Reprocessing skills built up. You’ll have to gain mining ships. So let’s go through it all. Free Tip: Don’t pay too much attention to the YouTube videos which were made during beta testing. A lot of them really need updating.

First up would be your skills. Without those skills built up nicely, you’re losing potential ISK gains. Naturally, you’ll need to know how they work first.

First on the list is the Mining Skills. Strip Mining can be left out until you get to Tech Level 7. Below that level and you won’t have access to the required ships for it. When checking those upgrades, you’ll see a lot of numbers for different things.

The trick is to see what they apply to so you’ll know what they work on (3 dots menu). With Mining, Advanced Mining, and Expert Mining, they apply to small mining lasers. The best one happens to be the Simple Diode Miner. It’s a matter of price to gains (only a few points difference) comparisons. You currently won’t be able to manufacture High Slot items so you’ll most likely have to buy them.

Notice the Roman numerals in the screenshot above? That means you’ll need that Tech Level to use those. Currently most (or all) players are still on Tech Level 6 (7 takes 1,000+ hours of skill training). So the MK7 and 9 won’t do. But those last 3 mining lasers don’t have a Tech Level requirement.

Next you’ll really need the Reprocessing Skills (3 bars menu).

In EVE Echoes, your skills will make a huge difference. So build them a.s.a.p. The trick to these skills is to know where the stacking is and what they apply to. Showing in the above screenshot is the Skill Effects of Uncommon Ore Reprocessing.

Currently at level 4 it provides a +40% gain when you Reprocess the specified Ores. Each skill in the list corresponds to specific Ores. It won’t stack. It’s that amount as showing. To get it to stack, unlock and upgrade Advanced and Expert Skills.

When you upgrade those 2 skill sets, you’ll gain the stacking bonus. So with a level 5 Uncommon Ore Reprocessing + level 5 Advanced Uncommon Ore Reprocessing, you’ll have a +80% boost to gained minerals when you reprocess (Repo) those specific ores. Add more if you managed to get Expert Repo Skills.

Now you’ll need a ship to mine with. The really great news is that you can get a free mining ship via Advanced Tutorial rewards. It’s the Venture Training ship. It’s deemed as really great news because that ship has a nifty trick to it. Once you have a ship, you’ll need to fit it.

The Fittings for the Venture up to the Venture III can essentially be the same. To save you some ISK, you can shift most or all of your main Fittings over. Stick with at least the MK5 or Simple Diode Miner until you can go much higher. Again, don’t overdo costs only to gain a few points.

The Afterburner can be just about any you happen to have. They help with getting within range of asteroids and for escaping tactics.

EVE Echoes managed to provide you a nice free bonus towards your Rigs. You’ll definitely need Mining Rigs to help pick up the pace. You’ll gain a lot of free Rigs during your first month of playing. The great part to this is that these Rigs apply to any miner you have fitted.

The problem is which Rigs to use on your mining ship. The best 2, since you only have 2 slots, are the Efficiency and Circulation Rigs. The others are concerned with the ship’s capacitor and power grid. Both are really not a big concern while mining. The Activation Time reduction means it’ll take less time to complete a mining cycle. Each mining cycle takes 60 seconds as a standard. With the free Circulation Rig, it’ll only take ~53 seconds. Stronger versions of that Rig are available in the Market. They’ll offer up a -20% reduction. This will bring it down to ~38 seconds to complete a cycle. The Efficiency Rig will add to your Mining Skill bonuses. Again, stronger versions are available.

Now on to the actual mining in EVE Echoes. The important part is where you’re mining. If you’re in a high SEC area (0.6 and higher) you pretty much don’t have to worry. Yes, you can still get attacked. Yes, it would be a suicide move in those areas on the part of your attacker! It’s in low SEC (0.5 – 0.0) and Null SEC (-0.0 and below) that players can freely attack each other. Mining ships happen to be a popular target because they’re typically not armed.

Ideally, you’ll want to lock onto an asteroid for each of your mining lasers.

Once your mining starts tap your ship and stop it. You don’t want it to float off and end up outside the mining range of your mining lasers. You’ll gain nothing when you’re out of range. Keep going until you’ve filled your Ore Hold and get gone. Always keep a close eye on your mining operations while in low or Null SEC areas.

Also note that if you get disconnected for whatever reason while mining, you’re a sitting duck. Your best bet for mining is to pick a specific Ore and stay on it until your Ore Hold is full. Mining different asteroids will end up reducing the amount of each you bring back.

So which Ore do you mine to gain the most ISK? Here’s the trick. Don’t sell Ore. You’d lose ISK in multiple ways. Recall the skill building talk above. It’s that Repo skill set you really should have upgraded. Again, this is a guide for mining and manufacturing. So why would you sell the things you need? The idea now is to Repo the Ore, keep what you need, and then sell the rest. Now we’ll take a closer look at it and use some basic math. For this we’ll use the Venture III showing above with Pyroxeres and Dark Ochre.

First we’ll do this with Pyroxeres (Pyro or Pyrox). This is a very popular Ore. The main time you try to sell this is when you’re doing so with Advanced or Expert Encounters. You can throw in a few here and there during Basic Encounters but the gains will be a lot lower. At Basic, you’ll need 100 Pyrox to complete the Encounter. That’ll give you a 45,000 ISK reward minus fees which will come out to 40,000 ISK.

At that price, try to stick with few at very few jumps. In Advanced Encounters, it’s the same thing but with a 250,000 ISK reward. After fees you’ll have 225,000 ISK. For that much you can go further than a few jumps! Again, take into account for checking areas for Planetary Production mining.

With the Venture III setup showing in the above screenshots, you can have 6,000 pieces of Pyrox. You’ll mine 97 pieces for each laser and 291 per cycle. When you divide that, you’ll have ~21 cycles to fill your Ore Hold. Each cycle take ~53 seconds to complete. More math later (53 * 21 / 60) and it’ll take around 19 minutes to fill your Ore Hold. Roughly 20 – 30 minutes to get there, fill your Ore Hold, and get to home base.

Don’t forget the time it takes for locking onto asteroids and positioning. From here you can Repo it or jump around and complete Encounters. It depends on which you need. It’s either fairly immediate ISK or materials for Manufacturing. Keep in mind it’ll take time for the specific Pyrox Encounters to show up. But you’ll have enough for 12 of them.

How about the Dark Ochre of EVE Echoes? As it turns out, that one is packing an incredible punch!

Notice how you’ll have a bit less compared to Pyrox. That’s fine because it’s what’s inside that matters!

Every 100 pieces of an Ore will give you what’s showing in the Actual Output section. As it turns out, Isogen and Nocxium have some nice price tags to them. Just remember to keep what you need for your Manufacturing! So with 5,625 pieces of Dark Ochre, you’ll have 1,011 pieces of Nocxium per full Ore Hold of Dark Ochre.

In order to find which Ores provide the most Minerals, check the info of the Ore or the Mineral wherever you have it or in the Industry section (try to manufacture anything).

Take a look at the reprocessed Spodumain results.

Now check the selling prices of Nocxium!

Now check the buying prices!

One of your best bets in EVE Echoes is to try to gain an immediate sale. It’s as the name implies. There’s a lot less travelling to do! When you’re in a Trading Station and checking those prices, you can’t rely on the Station prices too much. The Sellers list showing above will provide pretty much the lowest prices in your areas. The Buyers list showing above will provide the higher prices most of the time (not always). So find a happy medium.

So right around 1,000,000+ ISK will be gained with an immediate sale at that price. Don’t forget fees. Back to the math based on the Venture III. You’ll gain 90 pieces of Dark Ochre for each mining laser. It’s 270 per cycle. Again it’ll be 21 cycles to fill your Ore Hold. The rest comes out the same. So in about 1 hour worth of mining, travelling + setup, and selling, you’ll gain around 2,000,000+ ISK. Take into account for interruptions/attackers/re-locking.

Currently it’s Dark Ochre that gives you the most gain for your time without having to endanger yourself heavily. Don’t forget the included Tritanium and Isogen in the package! If you want to go all out, you should go after Arkonor (Megacyte) in very low Null SEC areas (-0.8 and below). The other ore is Crokite (lots of Nocxium).

4. The Gains Of Manufacturing

One of the best methods to gain big ISK in EVE Echoes is through Manufacturing. You’ll need the skills of course and you’ll want that home base with a Facility. The main idea being to reduce the costs of the ships you want to build and/or sell.

After all that and the mining, you’ll only need blueprints. Those blueprints are a 1 time use only here. So mind what you’re doing before you buy. While you’re browsing the Market for blueprints, check their costs and the prices of the results. Try not to spend more than what you’re making including materials. Currently it’s Destroyers that can gain for you the easiest. Several of them have hefty price tags too!

In order to gain blueprints in EVE Echoes, you’ll need Reverse Engineering. First you’ll need to upgrade the appropriate skills.

In the bottom middle area of the screen, you’ll see your chances for successfully creating the blueprints for ships. To check to see which skills are needed to increase that chance, tap the exclamation mark to the right of the rate.

The higher the Tech Level required to successfully create the blueprint is, the lower your chances will be. From there, the chances will be increased the more you upgrade the specified skills. So if you wanted to build industrial ship blueprints, you’ll need ORE Skills nice and high. The nice part to this is that the Datacores and often the Ship Debris are not overly expensive. This is especially compared to buying blueprints.

5. Safely Mining And Collecting

One of the biggest concerns in EVE Echoes is getting your mining ship blown to tiny pieces. Even if it’s a small chance, there’s still a chance that someone will attack your mining ship no matter where you are. Thankfully, there are ways to reduce the risks and costs. The main method is to simply keep a close eye on your mining ship. That and be able to recognize attack type ships icons.

Two out of the three icons, which appear in the upper right corner of your screen, are other mining ships. Not always will “Venture” be showing there. So basically, whenever you see another ship icon that isn’t recognized as a mining ship, immediately get gone. Even before you start mining, preferably while you’re still docked, set a destination to just about anywhere (home base works!). That way you’ll have a 1 tap exit strategy.

Another method is to get a cloaking device fitted on your ship. It will cloak you so you can’t get attacked. The bad news is that it only lasts 20 seconds. Then again, 20 seconds to use an Afterburner and eventually warp out should do. The really bad news is that cloaking devices are costly.

Previously the Venture Trainer was deemed as being really great. It’s also the one you only want to fit MK3 miners only on.

Don’t fit anything else onto it. The problem is that the further you go into dangerous areas, the more risk you’re taking. Of all the Venture ships available, it’s the only one you can insure. So if you get attacked in a Null SEC area, even if you got blown to space dust, you didn’t lose more than what you mined and 2 MK3 mining lasers.

Compared to the potential gains, the Venture Trainer becomes a lot more profitable. Minerals such as Megacyte and Morphite both are in the 3,000 ISK each range. So don’t aim for puny things when you’re in a Null SEC area.

And this ends our mining and ship building guide for EVE Echoes. If you have anything to add to our list of tips and tricks, be sure to let us know in the comments!