Wormhole Lessons: How to Safely Mine

One of the great things about living in a wormhole is you can be nearly self-sufficient in terms of things you use every day. Most of the resources you need for POS fuel are available in many wormholes. There are also resources available for producing ammunition and even ships and modules. In fact, in many wormholes, if you want a ship beyond a certain size you have to build it inside. The mass restrictions of many wormholes will prevent you from flying it in.

But there is a catch. Wormhole space is dangerous space. It is very hard to gather the needed resources when hostiles lurk. There is no CONCORD. There is no one to tell you who is in system with you. You are completely on your own to try and determine this information for yourself. There is no sure way to be 100% certain there are no hostile ships in the hole with you. And all ships not of your corporation are assumed hostile.

There are things you can do to greatly mitigate the danger though. The first step is to be familiar with your wormhole. What has the recent activity been like in it? Eveeye.com is a great resource for this. It will show detailed activity in your hole for the past 48 hours. It will give you generalized information for longer trend lines too now. This coupled with your own observations will give you a really good insight to the comings and goings of your hole.

When you reach certainty that you have no lurkers in the hole, you can think about step two. This step is something you should do every day regardless. Scan every square cubic kilometer of your space. Determine where every single Cosmic Signature is in your hole. You should already be an expert on your hole. You should know how many possible random wormholes can connect yours to other locations as well as were your static leads in general. Another element of being an expert on your hole is to know the relative scan strength of all your possible signatures. Start here.

As you scan the signatures down, keep track of their signal strength when you first detected them. This should be done with your probes centered on the star in your system while in their standard formation whether that is five, seven or some other number of probes. This is so you can sort out the K162s from the rest of the signatures. This is important. None of the other holes, including your static, will open until you warp to them. K162s are opened from the other side. You have no control over them. The others you can leave closed by not warping to them, but you must deal with the K162s. There are two ways of dealing with K162s.

The first way is to forget mining that day and try again another day. This may be your only real choice if the K162 is really fat (has a large mass allowance) and you have a small corporation or are the only one online. There is no safe mining with a K162 open.

The second way to deal with it is to collapse it yourself. This procedure is known to all who live in a hole. It is mastered by some. In fact, our mining last night was brought to an end because a K162 opened up. I quickly located it and got to watch a masterful collapse operation.

Once you are certain there are no open connections to your wormhole, you are ready to safely mine. There is one last MANDATORY requirement to mine safely. You must continue scanning. I'll say that again. YOU MUST KEEP PROBES OUT AND CONTINUE TO SCAN. Here's how it works. When you have all Cosmic Signatures identified (100% scan resolution) set them to ignored - all of them. Place fresh probes so your entire system is covered. Our hole is 61 AU across. One scan probe set at a 32 AU radius will cover it. I use two probes to be certain. Then, just like you would spam d-scan, spam the analyze button. If any new Cosmic Signatures appear a K162 just opened. That is all that it can be. Return to the POS immediately, your whole is no longer safe.

While the scan is clear, you can mine for as long as you like.

The new Venture, with its one utility high, is custom made for doing this while mining. We mined for over four hours last night with as much assurance of safety as you can ever have in a wormhole. It was bliss. BTW, I did not come up with this on my own. I learned it from other Wormholers as it's been mentioned in the comments on this blog. I'm just passing it on to any who might not have read the comments. It's a very effective tactic.

Fly Careful