More actions
Only Explorer class pilots have the Prospect skill and thus only they can get at the valuables inside Prospecting Nodes.
Nodes
- Prospecting Nodes come in 6 varieties.
- Any of these can also be Pop "rocks".
- Individual nodes may have from one to as many as four types of ore in them.
- Normal nodes include only the level of ore stated on the outside and/or one level immediately lower.
Colors can indicate level
- Level 1s are Light Blue
- Level 2s are Green
- Level 3s are Light/Greenish Yellow
- Level 4s are Yellow
- Level 5s are Dark/Orangish Yellow
- Level 6s are Orange
- Level 7s are Pink
- Level 8s are Purple
- Level 9s are Dark Blue
For images and an enumeration of the various types at each level, see the Prospecting Nodes pages, the colors are perhaps best seen on Crystal, Glowing, and Gas. The page List of Ores has location data which only tells you which sector to look in, it does not tell you where in the sector to look. SOME of the specific location data can be found on page Prospect Locations; however, this is far from complete.
Fields
When a deposit field is completely mined out, excluding Pop "rocks", an explore bonus is shared by all players who participated in the mining out, as long as they are still online and in the same sector. This bonus can be from a few hundred XP to several tens of thousands depending on the field size and level of the ores being mined.
- Fields are usually limited in physical size to about one or two navs travel.
- Fields are usually limited to three levels of ore when each rock is selected. Left-click inside the target box in your HUD to see what specific ores are in a particular deposit.
- Most fields for bonus purposes consist of only one type of deposit.
- Several fields can overlap or even be co-located.
- A few low level fields, usually small, contain more than one type of deposit. To get the bonus, you have to mine everything in the area.
- Fields do regenerate; usually this will not happen while they are being mined.
Skill and Mechanics
- You do not receive XP for any ores more than three to four levels below your maximum skill level.
- Mining one unit of a higher level ore uses about twice the energy as one unit of the next lower level.
- That 200% player made prospecting device significantly lowers both the time to mine an ore and the amount of energy required.
- With a prospecting device installed, you can mine ores of higher level than your skill.
- Prospecting stops if you are attacked. (your tractor beam does not, unless you change target or warp out.)
- You may not prospect while cloaked. (your tractor beam will work while you are cloaked.)
- Ancient Artifacts occur ONLY in Rock. They are rare but not impossible to find.
Refining
See Refining.