Logging mining returns since October 2019

kingofaces

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Tony KingofAces Hans
I'm not much of one for standard mining log posts, but I had been playing around with Excel for awhile to get it to chart my current net returns every day I close the file. I thought I'd throw an example up there, and also show you can profit off mining in this game under the current system:

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The above is net returns after TT and MU costs. I don't really do "runs" per se, but just continuously track returns and let the spreadsheet update automatically based auction, shop sales, and my inventory on website (My Account -> Items for those that don't know of it). Otherwise, it's just manually tracking probes, finder decay, amps used, and any associated MU for input costs. If I have items in hand, I also calculated a projected MU sold amount based on current MU to add on to the TT value, so some fluctuations above are changes in MU too. This chart does not include returns from trading, just pure resources I mined myself.

Generally, the chart only shows changes when I logged in to check my inventory, so there are some periods of time where you can tell I wasn't really mining much when returns were unchanged (i.e., really busy with work).

For background, this logging started after I sold my Terra 1 UL amp and went to using L level-5 and d-class amps (obviously not bought at auction when you read below). In January, I sold my my F-106 to just use L finders. Prior to this, I was doing some testing in December on finder decay while mapping Cyrene, so I wasn't really targeting good MU areas at the time. After that point, this was my main gear:

Finder: Terramaster 6 L (no enhancers)
Excavator: Genesis Star Excavator Improved (tier 1 enhancer)
Refiner: Chikara Adjusted
Level 5 amps: 100.12% MU
D-class amps: 102.61%

TT in: 70,273.13
MU in: 525.56
Auction fees: 21.73
TT sold: 69,994.80
MU sold: 6,169.86
Overall net since October: +5,344.23
TT %: 99.6%
Net % w/ MU: 107.6%


Notable HoFs: 839 iron, 523 and 953, lyst, 418 adomasite, 481 niksarium, 264 terrudite, and 442 blau.

So I've been pretty pleased with how mining has been working. TT was really good since I normally try to target an average MU that will break even at ~92% TT at a minimum. My average resource MU was only around 108.8%, but that's in part because I started mining ore more often instead of just enmatter for my shop. As long as I'm getting good TT, that makes some ore areas more feasible. Cheap amps definitely help a lot too, though I'm not sure how long I can hold those costs at the above MU as I got really lucky on some D-class crafting.

As for how to get near 100% TT long-term like this, I don't have any answers I can give out about what I do very much. I have a few half-year sets of data before this one that aren't as detailed with daily data, but I haven't been in a long-term negative since I got more serious about mining in 2017. I will say that I tend to be fickle when I mine Ashi, so most of my mining is from elsewhere. There are plenty of theories out there, and some I have done testing with others on. Other things I have privately tested that I won't post here though do seem to indicate there are ways to increase your TT efficiency, or rather keep it from plummeting.

The "black box" of how mining works and being able to do some formal scientific testing on it as a scientist to see what you can pin down or not has been one of the most fun aspects of the game for me. Some things are entirely up to Lootius, while some things you can do can help push the scales your way.
 
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Great job!

Couple of questions:

Is 109'ish% avg MU normal these days, seems kinda low!

Where do you get such low MU amps? I got a good price when buying a huge bulk, but not THAT good!

Any secret to getting such good tt returns or just a good run?
 
Great job!

Couple of questions:

Is 109'ish% avg MU normal these days, seems kinda low!

Where do you get such low MU amps? I got a good price when buying a huge bulk, but not THAT good!

Any secret to getting such good tt returns or just a good run?

109% isn't bad at all, but I used to get higher closer to 115% or better a few years ago. MU and resource distributions changed though. When you figure how much you're getting resources near 100%, those are going to pull your average down. Let's say you average 10 claims of a 140% MU resource, 20 of a 110% and 70 of a 101%. That averages out to 106.7%.

As for the amps, I craft them for myself, but almost never use resources I've mined for it (except maybe lyst). Some of it is good QR, some of it luck with HoFs or a good string of successes. The rest, especially with D-class right now, is selling some and using profits to push down my average MU per amp as I build QR. D-class prices have dropped on auction enough though that I can't really do that anymore, so I expect my MU to be higher next time on it. I invested a bit into crafting, so that's another cost I need to pay off like my excavator, so no one should think they can just craft at that low of MU outright. I surprised myself with those numbers too, so I doubt they'll stay that low in the future.

As for TT, it's not just a good run. That was over about 7 months of mining, so it's more about making sure you don't have bad runs sapping away your ped. How to do that is something people need to figure out on their own though. Especially if you're amping, it's low hit rate that really kills you.
 
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Very nice find. There are definitely things I can be learning from you :D. You avg tt is good 6 points or so higher than mine.

Might have to do more of your earlier suggestions
 
Very nice find. There are definitely things I can be learning from you :D. You avg tt is good 6 points or so higher than mine.

Might have to do more of your earlier suggestions

Thanks! I'll admit my TT had been hanging around closer to 97.5% for most of 2020, but I had a good string of HoFs this last week or so that pushed it up. I was planning to close this set of tracking out May 15 anyways though, so good timing I guess.
 
I wrapped up my runs roughly with the new VU (or rather burned through all my D-class finally), so I thought I'd update this. I started my new "run" May 14, 2020, and ended tracking today Sept. 7, 2020. I also partially ended it because the Items page is down, so I can't do my automatic daily tracking right now.

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Finder: Terramaster 6 L (no enhancers)
Excavator: Genesis Star Excavator Improved (tier 2 +speed enhancers)
Refiner: Chikara Adjusted
D-class amps: 100.72%

TT in: 35,437.62
MU in: 515.16
Auction fees: 1.64
TT sold: 35,408.68
MU sold: 3,537.38
Overall net from May 14 to Sept. 7, 2020: +2,991.63
TT %: 99.9%
Net % w/ MU: 108.3%


Instead of resetting the y-axis to zero each update, I'm just going to leave it as net gain since I started my full logging as that's what my chart is as normally. This way, it shows cumulative gain with each new starting point. The chart and numbers above don't quite match up above because the starting point should have been around 6,900 (technically were the first graph left off if I kept the axis the same). That difference is due to a little quirk in the chart I missed when starting a new run on my spreadsheet, so I should have that ironed out on my next run. The listed numbers are all correct though.

I had a few major changes since my OP. I've been crafting only D-class now and don't use level 5 amps; had really good luck crafting those with HoFs to keep MU down. I also upgraded my excavator to tier 2 about 3/4 of the way through this run. However, I also cycled much less. Been prepping for a major promotion interview + summer, so time to play has been limited.

I'm still impressed with my TT returns though. I didn't quite crack 100% TT this time, but my average MU is still around 110% since I've been remapping some areas and goofing off a little without targeting my highest MU areas only. A lot of periods when I just logged in to check my shop without mining, and late Aug - Sept was when I couldn't log my inventory automatically, so I manually checked it all today to end the run, hence the jump without logs each day to show the gradual increase.

Looking forward to more regular mining when work somewhat settles down.
 
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Hey man, some really nice results you got there, best of luck going forward (not that you need it hehe). Btw, I was wondering, I'm sure you've noticed how the MUs on oil and lyst have climbed up lately, any idea why this is happening? Do we have more crafters, less miners, or is it something else?
 
Hey man, some really nice results you got there, best of luck going forward (not that you need it hehe). Btw, I was wondering, I'm sure you've noticed how the MUs on oil and lyst have climbed up lately, any idea why this is happening? Do we have more crafters, less miners, or is it something else?

No idea. Activity does pick up in Sept, so it could be more crafters, but it’s possible MA changed some resource compositions. I haven’t been mining enough since the VU to really check it out yet.
 
Hey man, some really nice results you got there, best of luck going forward (not that you need it hehe). Btw, I was wondering, I'm sure you've noticed how the MUs on oil and lyst have climbed up lately, any idea why this is happening? Do we have more crafters, less miners, or is it something else?

Now that migration ended, there could just be more peds going into EP recycle crafting
 
Jan - May 2021
TT in: 49,345.17
MU in: 1,175.84
Auction fees: 11.25
TT sold: 47,899.7
MU sold: 3,665.00
Overall net : +1,032.44
TT %: 97.1%
Net % w/ MU: 102.4%


Equipment was primarily Terramaster 6 (L), and I've started using DSEC Seeker 30 (L). Excavator is tier 2 Genesis Star Excavator Improved, though I just stopped using enhancers at the end of this run since they are confirmed bugged. Burned through 194 D-class amps crafted at 102.75%. The below graph is starting from January since before that, I was doing some testing and other projects that weren't really normal mining for me.

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I've only been semi-active the last year, but I figured I'd post what somewhat recent mining has been like. Still working on getting used to the new job, so when I have been on, I've been screwing around a bit more than being careful mining (major dips in the graph are indoor mining). TT was a bit lower than in previous logs, and even with 107% overall MU of claims, I was only ahead 1k this time. D-class costs went up a bit too this time compared to my previous averages of 101.6% MU cost to craft.

Still, not bad for mostly just messing around randomly when I've had time the last year. Now that work is settling in, I'll be curious how this will look going forward when I can mine more purposely.
 
This is really interesting. my aim is to skill free and looking on a year to year basis, i see about 6000 ped increase over 1 year that is 500 ped per month.
it seems to me that total tuenover is less than 10.000 ped per month tho...
compared to hunting that is really low... i am low level but i shot about 120k ped per month (such return would be a dream for me hunting tho)
do you mine only on waves or in all moments?
 
Equipment was primarily Terramaster 6 (L), and I've started using DSEC Seeker 30 (L). Excavator is tier 2 Genesis Star Excavator Improved, though I just stopped using enhancers at the end of this run since they are confirmed bugged.
Can you please elaborate why do you think that enhancers are bugged?
 
Can you please elaborate why do you think that enhancers are bugged?

This is really interesting. my aim is to skill free and looking on a year to year basis, i see about 6000 ped increase over 1 year that is 500 ped per month.
it seems to me that total tuenover is less than 10.000 ped per month tho...
compared to hunting that is really low... i am low level but i shot about 120k ped per month (such return would be a dream for me hunting tho)
do you mine only on waves or in all moments?
Keep in mind I was playing with very reduced hours with this run, so it wasn't that many drops compared to what I've done in the past. A D-class amp is 4 ped a drop (8 if it's enmatter/ore), plus the DSEC L30 with 1 ped for enmatter and 2 ped in probes for ore. If I were the type to just keep dropping to "power through" downturns, that's 11 ped per drop with both resource types that can be cycled pretty quickly. That is not how I mine though since "turnover" that way can quickly become burned PEDs if you aren't careful.

That said, I wouldn't particularly recommend mining for skilling unless that is the profession you are skilling for. It takes both some time/ped investment to figure out how to profit mining, so it is not guaranteed free skills for everyone.
 
This is really interesting. my aim is to skill free and looking on a year to year basis, i see about 6000 ped increase over 1 year that is 500 ped per month.
it seems to me that total tuenover is less than 10.000 ped per month tho...

It simply is so. Finder drops so many times per minute, 100ish meters take so much to run, then maybe there's a hill or smth and then there's excavating the finds. A 2k ped run can take 4 hours easy and then consider that mining doesn't have this right-click thing which solves most of hunting loot so somehow trading your finds must be accounted for too. You can surely achieve a volume comparable to hunting in indoor, but these are not really the best of times for that.
 
Hello,
Nice results!

Can you explain me, why you changed UNL finder for L ?
 
Hello,
Nice results!

Can you explain me, why you changed UNL finder for L ?
Mostly because UL finders cost more per drop if you’re using enhancers to reach a target depth than to simply use an equivalent limited finder like Terramaster 6. UL is almost never worth it except maybe early on when you don’t have the profession level to mine deep enough, but do have access to a higher tiered UL finder.
 
So I finally hit my first tower, so I figured it was a good time to gather up the stats and start a new log. Just before the tower, I was actually right at 100% TT, so I was already pretty happy before I hit that.

I've just accepted I don't have as much time to play as I used to with the new job, so while I can't easily drop all day, I can increase my amping carefully while maintaining TT. I've gotten to the point I can get Terra 6 amps cheap enough to be worth using, so while I only used a few this time, I'll probably be shifting to more of them in the next run rather than primarily D-class. Otherwise, no significant changes compared to before except using the DSEC L30 when amping.

Only downside to my current style is that I can't always chase MU, especially while targeting lower MU (though still profitable areas) to fill out my shop stock. I won't complain about MU with good TT rates though. I do sell a few amps to push my overall MU costs down from crafting, but it's honestly the HoFs crafting that keep MU low.

Finder: DSEC Seeker L30 (L) (no enhancers)
Excavator: Genesis Star Excavator Improved (tier 2 enhancer, quite using once I realized they are bugged)
Refiner: Chikara Adjusted
D-class amp: 209.8 amps @ 101.62% MU
Terra 6 amp: 3.86 amps @103.33% MU

TT in: 54,785.5
MU in: 802.34
Auction fees: 20.32
TT sold: 60,445.09
MU sold: 4,402.54
Overall net since May 2021: +9,239.48
TT %: 110.3%
Net % w/ MU: 116.6%

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Net amount in the graph is overall gains since starting the most recent log in May. The y-axis includes net gain from previous logs since starting this automated tracking in 2019, so that's nearly 21k gained in two years while not playing too heavily.
 
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So I finally hit my first tower, so I figured it was a good time to gather up the stats and start a new log. Just before the tower, I was actually right at 100% TT, so I was already pretty happy before I hit that.

I've just accepted I don't have as much time to play as I used to with the new job, so while I can't easily drop all day, I can increase my amping carefully while maintaining TT. I've gotten to the point I can get Terra 6 amps cheap enough to be worth using, so while I only used a few this time, I'll probably be shifting to more of them in the next run rather than primarily D-class. Otherwise, no significant changes compared to before except using the DSEC L30 when amping.

Only downside to my current style is that I can't always chase MU, especially while targeting lower MU (though still profitable areas) to fill out my shop stock. I won't complain about MU with good TT rates though. I do sell a few amps to push my overall MU costs down from crafting, but it's honestly the HoFs crafting that keep MU low.

Finder: DSEC Seeker L30 (L) (no enhancers)
Excavator: Genesis Star Excavator Improved (tier 2 enhancer, quite using once I realized they are bugged)
Refiner: Chikara Adjusted
D-class amp: 209.8 amps @ 101.62% MU
Terra 6 amp: 3.86 amps @103.33% MU

TT in: 54,785.5
MU in: 802.34
Auction fees: 20.32
TT sold: 60,445.09
MU sold: 4,402.54
Overall net since May 2021: +9,239.48
TT %: 110.3%
Net % w/ MU: 116.6%

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Net amount in the graph is overall gains since starting the most recent log in May. The y-axis includes net gain from previous logs since starting this automated tracking in 2019, so that's nearly 21k gained in two years while not playing too heavily.
Where ya gettin dat terra 6 from?
Hook me up?? :)
 
Where ya gettin dat terra 6 from?
Hook me up?? :)
I craft mine, though keep in mind that MU is from selling a bunch of them to push my MU costs down. It takes a bit of work to craft them even around auction prices. I sell most of mine out of my shop (need to restock them soon) or sell some on auction. It’s a trickier one to make pencil out, so I don’t know how it will go long term.
 
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