Grismar's EVE Wiki : IceMining

Ice Mining

This article explains Ice Mining, as part of the articles on Player Owned Structures (Starbases).

The article is based directly on Zhuge Liang's excellent guide on the eve-online.com forums (oog). It has been added to this Wiki to make it available in the IGB. You can also download this guide in PDF format (oog), as converted by Bobozobo.

Note that these articles are maintained independently from the guide and the PDF. Changes and corrections made here will not appear in the guide or PDF. Several additions and changes have already been made as the guide on the forums is slightly out of date.

On this page:

• [2.] Ice Mining
  • [2.1] What, where and Why?
  • [2.2] Types of Ice
  • [2.3] Mining Barges
  • [2.4] Skills needed

Related pages (the other chapters):

• [1] PlayerOwnedStructure
• [3] MoonSurveying
• [4] MoonMining

[2.] Ice Mining

[2.1] What, where and Why?

With the Exodus expansion, Ice Fields were introduced into the EVE galaxy. Ice fields are similar to asteroid belts, but instead of containing asteroids they contain ice ore which you can only mine by using a Mining Barge fitted with Ice Harvesters. Ice belts are dotted around empire and 0.0 space. The ice in 0.0 space belts are rarer but have ice ores with more variation of content. You can find systems with ice fields using the EVE Explorer.

[2.2] Types of Ice

Ice types are race based, certain ice will only give you the Isotopes needed to run a specific Control Tower. For example: Glacial Mass yields Hydrogen Isotopes which are needed to fuel a Minmatar Control Tower. The specific ice types are generally found in their respective factions space. So you will only find Glacial Mass in Minmatar regions or 0.0 regions with Minmatar related npc's such as the Thukker Tribe.

What is common to all ice types is that they all yield some Liquid Ozone, Heavy Water and Strontium Clathrates - which are also essential fuels for your POS. The amount they yield of each varies.

[2.3] Mining Barges

You can only mine Ice with a Mining Barge. Ice mining has a very long cycle time and each unit mined (block of ice) is 1000m3 in volume. You reprocess Ice as you would ore in a station. Alternatively you can process ice in your POS's Refining Array (Mobile Refinery) and get 100% yield.

[2.4] Skills needed

To mine ice you need:

• A Mining Barge (Industry V, Science IV, Mining IV, Astrogeology III)
• Ice Harvesters (Mining IV, Ice Harvesting I)

To refine ice you need no special skills, but to improve the yield in refineries that aren't very good, this one helps:

• Ice Processingl (Refinery Efficiency V, Refining V, Industry I, Hydromagnetic Physics IV, Science V, Engineering V)

---

Current EVE version: 2.13.4561 (Dragon)