Mining

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

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 Minerals
Out on the Plains, players have several means of finding mineral deposits.
 * Mineral 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.
 * 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.
 * The right side of the HUD is equipped with a rangefinder that shows the distance to the nearest mineral vein being detected.
 * Finally, an audible repeating tick (akin to a metal detector) will be heard if the detector is within range of a deposit, and this sound will grow in pitch and tick more frequently the closer players are to the source.

Cutting Minerals
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 brings 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, though 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 affects the quantity of minerals that will be given upon completion. Players can halt cutting at anytime, allowing the cutting pattern to appear again, 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 a chance of extracting an Eidolon Gem during cutting.

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