Where Do You Go?
Before you start planning out the ship you’ll be taking on an adventure into extraction, there’s another thing you’ll have to know. Where the hell do you get this ore? There’s a couple of locations that you can snap up some of that yummy, unrefined goodness and stick it into your cargo hold.
Somewhere around one in three of the systems you come across while skimming around the galaxy has these strange and mystical places called Resource Extraction Sites. An example of the most logical name given to a game element at the 2015 Captain Obvious awards, the Resource Extraction sites will be your home while mining in Elite: Dangerous. They are usually found in asteroid fields or the rings around a planet (as pictured above). Each one is full of wildly spinning asteroids full of tasty credits — err, I mean tasty minerals.
The most consistent of these two options is more often than not the rings around planets. While there can be no denying that they’re much harder to find than asteroid clusters, the amount of raw rocks on offer to break apart is nothing short of incredible. You’ll often find rare and expensive minerals out in clusters, but for a steady flow of cash nothing is wrong with hanging around in the rings of whatever planet is pretending to be Saturn.
Much can be said for taking the time to research your intended location with the Galaxy/System Map before actually going there, as will be explained later.
For the best return on your investment of time in Elite: Dangerous as a miner, it’s generally a good idea to head for Belt Clusters. These are small collections of asteroids which often house the most precious of metals. They aren’t exactly peaceful locations though…
These asteroid belts and clusters are not safe. In fact, to call them safe could not be further from the truth. Even when you disregard the wobbling rocks the size of a small city, pirates like to make their home in fields like this. They lie in wait to make any miner’s haul their own, so stay safe.