Mining & Refining

The Jag gives Ferrite Shale, and Mining needs a Mining Cutter equipped. With the starter Salvage Cutter each attempt takes about six seconds; a success gives you one or two shale. Your chance of success improves as your Mining skill grows, and Mining stops on its own if you run out of room to carry more. A charged Power Cell can speed this up.

The Loadsteel Cutter is a second Mining tool, made at Fabrication 5 on the Fabrication Station. It is its own tool rather than an improved Salvage Cutter, and it needs Mining 5 to equip or use. It is heavier, at 8 kg.

It mines faster whether or not it is charged: a Ferrite Shale attempt takes about 4.8 seconds instead of six, and a Galvanite attempt about 7.2 instead of nine.

A Power Cell does something different for it than for the Salvage Cutter. A charged Salvage Cutter mines faster; a charged Loadsteel Cutter mines at the same speed, but every successful attempt gives one more ore than usual — two or three instead of one or two. If you only have room for the usual amount, you still get the usual amount. Your chance of success and the XP an attempt pays stay the same.

One Power Cell gives it ten charged attempts, used up one per attempt whether it succeeds or not, just like the Salvage Cutter. A new Loadsteel Cutter comes off the machine with no charge. Once its charge runs out it keeps its faster base speed and loses only the extra ore.

Deep Jag, the lower workings southwest of The Jag, gives Galvanite once you have reopened it — see Brace Yourself. It is harder rock and slower going: about nine seconds an attempt, with a lower chance of success that keeps improving until Mining 40. A success gives one or two Galvanite and noticeably more Mining experience than shale does.

Galvanite is unusually conductive, but it does not generate power on its own. Your starter Salvage Cutter handles it, and a charged Power Cell speeds it up the same way. So does a Loadsteel Cutter.

The South Cut is reached over the South Access Track, two walks south of the Crash Site (see Travel & Scavenging), and you need Mining 5 to mine there. Oil Shale is heavy — 600g a piece, five to a tile — and each attempt takes a full minute, before your Cutter and any Power Cell change that. Your chance of success starts at 35% at Mining 1, the same as everywhere, and climbs until Mining 50, where it is certain; at Mining 5 it is 40.30%.

A successful attempt gives two, three or four Oil Shale, equally likely, and 100 Mining experience. An attempt that misses the success chance is not wasted: it still gives one Oil Shale and 20 Mining experience. A charged Loadsteel Cutter's extra ore only comes with a real success.

A success can also turn up a find: about one success in twenty gives an Uncut Sapphire, and about one in a hundred gives a Motherlode Slab. An attempt never gives both, and a missed attempt never finds either. A Sapphire adds its usual 30 Mining experience, so the attempt is 130 in all; a Motherlode Slab adds 150, so it is 250. The Slab is a single unbroken 12kg specimen of layered shale with an amber seam, it does not stack, and it is Ultra Rare: its tile shimmers wherever you carry it, and finding one posts an ULTRA RARE FIND System line in General saying who found it and where. A Sapphire from The South Cut is not announced.

Mining has one setting for what happens when your Inventory is nearly full, and it belongs to each character separately. It is Off by default, which is the safe choice: Mining will not start an attempt unless you have room for its smallest full success and for any one find it could turn up — at The South Cut, that is two Oil Shale and room for either a Sapphire or the 12kg Slab — so you never lose a find. The cost is that Mining stops sooner.

Turn Prioritize primary resources On and Mining keeps going as long as there is room for one ore. A success keeps as much of its ore as fits, down to one, and still counts as a full success with its full experience. A find is then only kept if there is room left after the ore. If there is not, it is lost for good — even an Ultra Rare one — with no experience, no announcement and no way to claim it later. Nothing is rerolled or swapped for something that would fit. A low-yield attempt is always exactly one Oil Shale. The setting applies to every kind of Mining, and changing it never rewrites an attempt that has already resolved.

Now and then a successful attempt turns up something extra in the rock: a rough, uncut gemstone. It comes in addition to your ore, never instead of it, and a failed attempt never finds one. A find is rare — you can mine for a long while without seeing one — and an attempt turns up at most one.

The Jag can give Uncut Quartz or Uncut Topaz. Deep Jag can give Uncut Topaz or Uncut Sapphire. The South Cut can give Uncut Sapphire or, far more rarely, a Motherlode Slab. A find shows on the attempt's result as a purple-framed tile beside your ore — the gems keep that purple frame in your Inventory too — and the Mining experience on that result is one total: the ore's usual amount plus a bonus for the gem. Quartz adds 10, Topaz 20 and Sapphire 30, wherever you find them.

Uncut gems stack only two to a tile, and Bix will buy them — see Credits & Trading. A Loadsteel Cutter's extra ore is only ever extra ore; it does not turn up more gems.

Unless you turn on Prioritize primary resources, Mining only starts, and keeps going, while you have room for your ore and for a find. If your Inventory is that tight when one turns up, the find is always kept; it is the ore that may come up short.

Some finds are announced. When someone finds Uncut Topaz at The Jag or Uncut Sapphire at Deep Jag, a System line appears in General chat saying who found it and where; a Motherlode Slab at The South Cut gets an ULTRA RARE FIND line. The other finds are yours alone to know about.

Refining is only available at the Abandoned Processing Yard. Refine lists what you can refine right now with what you are carrying — plus any recipe a Mission is pointing you at, with what it is still missing. Recipes, beside it, lists every recipe your Refining level knows, whether or not you have the materials. The recipes below show what is still to come.

A failed attempt says so: any Slag it makes, or any input a failed Galvaferrite pour hands back, is shown as what the failure left, not as something you refined.

The Slag a failed Refined Ferrite or Galvanic Stock attempt makes is a bonus, never a requirement. You do not need room for it to start or keep refining; the attempt still finishes, spends its ore and pays its Refining XP. Slag is kept for as long as you have room, and whatever will not fit is thrown out. Turn Auto-discard Slag on and every bit of it is thrown out instead. It is the same setting as the Practice Welding bench's, so changing it in one place changes it in the other, and it stays until you change it. The result and history say when Slag was discarded, so it is never counted as something you are carrying.

Auto-discard Slag only covers Slag from a failure. A pour that makes Slag on purpose still puts it in your Inventory and needs room for it, and a failed Galvaferrite pour always gives back the input it returns. The product you are actually refining still needs room too, and Slag you keep can use up that room.

Before you start, pick how many batches to run. It starts at one, and the minus and plus buttons change it by one, up to as many as your carried material pays for. Or press Max to keep refining until there is no material or no room for another batch. The console shows what one batch takes and how long it lasts, and for a recipe that never fails, what the whole run adds up to.

A batch counts whether it succeeds or fails, so a run of five is five attempts, not five guaranteed results, and Refining stops by itself once the last batch you chose is done. A Max run has no number to reach: it keeps going while the next batch can start, so a failed Galvaferrite pour that hands back one of its inputs just leaves more to pour. Either way, if there is no room or no material for the next batch, the run ends there and says why.

If your inventory changes before you press Start and the number you picked no longer fits, Refining will not quietly run fewer — it tells you the new most you can start, and you choose again.