Mining

Mining is a non-combat activity that allows players to excavate various minerals and ores used as resources in Cetus. It can only be performed in the Plains of Eidolon.

Gear Acquisition
Before players can begin mining, they must first acquire a Nosam Cutter from Old Man Sumbaat in Cetus. Nosam Cutters can either be bought for Ostron Standing, or selected as a free Ostron ranking reward. Players must then equip the Cutter on their Gear menu to be able to use it.

Finding Veins
Out on the Plains, players have several means of finding resource deposits.
 * Veins stand out visually as bright colored spots surrounded by light grey patches on rocks and rock formations. Red spots denote Ores, while Blue spots denote Gems. Note that the various fossilized Sentient bones littering the Plains are not rocks (despite bearing a superficial resemblance to them) and will not have any mineral veins.
 * The Nosam Cutter has several tools to find minerals from a distance. Equipping the Nosam Cutter (default hold and select the cutter) will bring up a HUD with the following features:
 * The left side of the HUD will display icons of rocks indicating the number of mineral deposits within the detector's range (higher tiers of Cutters will increase the detectable number).
 * The right side of the HUD is equipped with a rangefinder that shows the distance to the nearest mineral vein being detected (higher tiers of Cutters will increase the detection range).
 * Finally, an audible repeating tick (akin to a metal detector) will be heard if the detector is within range of a deposit. This sound will grow in pitch if the player is looking in the direction of the vein, and tick more frequently the closer player is to the source.

Mining Process
Once the player has located a vein, they can begin mining it by equipping their Cutter, and then zooming in on the vein (default hold ). This will bring up a pattern on the vein made up of white broken lines, and the objective is to trace the pattern as accurately as possible with the Cutter's mining laser. To activate the laser, press the Fire button (default ) and begin tracing the pattern. The pattern will start to fade out once the Cutter starts firing, thus players must rely on their memory to trace the pattern given, although the longer one "scans" the pattern, the longer it will take before it fades out.

A progress gauge will fill up on top of the Cutter's HUD, composed of a yellow bar that shows how much of the deposit has been mined, and 5 small mineral icons denoting the quality of the deposit affected by the accuracy of the trace. The mining is completed once the yellow bar fills up, which will reward the player with a random mineral, either an ore or a gem depending on what type of deposit was mined.

The more accurate the trace during cutting, the better the quality, which directly affects the quantity of minerals that will be given upon completion. Players can halt cutting at anytime, allowing the cutting pattern to reappear, however doing so will reduce the cut's quality, thus making uninterrupted cutting more desirable for higher quality cuts.

Cutters
Cutters can be purchased from Old Man Suumbaat for standing. More advanced Cutters feature more accurate mining beams, as well as longer detection ranges for minerals.

Additionally, the Advanced Nosam Cutter has a minimap radar and - depending on the quality of the cut - a 15% ~ 30% chance of extracting an Eidolon Gem (Sentirum or Nyth).

Gems
Raw gems can be turned in to Suumbaat for standing:

Tips

 * Mining nodes spawn in greater numbers in areas with many rocks packed closely together, such as caves, rock tunnels and Grineer excavation sites.
 * The area on the Plains where one can consistently find the most mining nodes in the smallest area is the bay known as Er-Phryah's Vigil. It is located west and slightly north of the Cetus gates, around Grineer Base #2 (as marked on the map). This bay area can be recognized by the towering Sentient bones in the local shallows, which are periodically electrified by a nearby Grineer machine. This bay and the nearby cave will almost always have 15 or more veins in a relatively small 100 square meter area, making it ideal for mining.
 * The Grineer-occupied cave to the west of the Hillside Ruins, roughly 500m away from the Cetus gates, is densely-packed with mining nodes (up to 4 in a single chamber). However, it is poorly-lit, rather difficult to navigate (nodes have been observed to in ceilings and high up sheer rock faces) and holds several Grineer and their turrets.

Patch History
Last updated: 

Minería