EVE Ores

There was some confusion on the rookie help channel (when is there not) so some details on ores in EVE Online may be in order, in particular for storyline missions.

• Level 3 storyline missions may require Omber.
• Level 4 storyline missions may require Kernite.

The "may" is because storyline agents can offer a variety of missions, courier or combat in addition to "acquire some ore". Veldspar and Scordite are required for level one and level two missions respectively, but those should be easy to acquire most anywhere. If they are not easy to acquire, you are probably running low-level missions in nullsec in which case you hopefully know what you are doing?

Another complication is that the storyline mission depends on missions you probably ran somewhere else, so the level of the storyline agent is irrelevant: a "level 2" storyline agent can offer a level four "acquire kernite" mission if you completed your 16th level four mission for a nearby agent for a particular faction, or that same "level 2" agent could instead offer "acquire veldspar" if you've been recently running a lot of level one missions, for some reason. Agents must have a level so storyline agents have one, even if it has no bearing on what they offer. Presumably a game could set storyline agent levels to NULL and put in special code given that they generate missions for a variety of mission levels, but that would push the complexity elsewhere.

Anyways the comment in help was that "Omber should be sold at level four storyline agents" which is sort of wrong in various ways:

• Any of Veldspar, Scordite, Omber, and Kernite can be sold (usually at a markup over market value for extra profit from lazy mission runners as complicated by other players who aim for that same extra profit) at any storyline agent station.
• Sales will depend on nearby agents who offer level one through four missions, inclusive, at the same or some nearby stations, possibly even several jumps away.
• There must be enough players running the missions to generate enough storyline missions and thus lazy demand for the particular ores for the particular mission levels.

That is, if there are no level three mission agents nearby, Omber will be a bad ore to sell at a storyline agent system, as there will be nobody running level three missions and thus no "acquire Omber" missions generated by the storyline agent. So, to determine what ore to sell where (for a markup, hence this whole exercise in figuring out where certain ores can be sold for above market value) one needs to know where folks are running what level of mission agent, and then to offer the appropriate ore for that mission level at the appropriate storyline agent or agents, usually only Omber and Kernite as those are harder to obtain. The plurality of agents is because some mission systems, Oursulaert for example, are equidistant from the nearest storyline agents in Halle and Balle. As far as I know, the storyline agent selection is random in the case of a tie. Balle, being a 0.5 security system often inhabited by problematic people (be sure to mark the known ganker corporations and alliances as "terrible" standing so they better stand out in local chat) can be more exciting than Halle, a 0.7 security system not so often occupied by problems nor is Halle adjacent to a lowsec system like Balle is. Nobody has bothered me, yet, when running storyline missions in Deacon, but your results may vary depending on your ship, any scouting you do, backup you have, when you play, what your character looks like on zkillboard, etc.

Note that "above market value" may not make sense: if ores can be sold for more, then the market value is necessarily higher on account of that. A better term might be "for more than what refiners are willing to pay based on mineral value and other factors such as transportation costs" but that takes longer to say. Outside of the special ores for storyline agents, ores are usually purchased to refine into minerals used to build ships and other components, though a player could also mine the ores directly, at the cost of the time taken to do so, plus various risks depending on exactly what ore is being mined, and where, and some players really do not like mining as it takes a lot of time and may not be exciting enough for their brains.

Omber and Kernite in particular have a history: at some point there was a scarcity patch that removed various high security ore anomalies (I was not playing then, so have no direct experience of that) such that one typically had to go to lowsec or worse to obtain the relevant ores. The result was not folks banding together to mine in lowsec (well, some did, but not enough) but rather that prices for things that depended on Pyerite and Isogen went up, as the minerals Pyerite and Isogen from Omber or Kernite (among other ores, most of which were not available or were rare in highsec) became a bottleneck or critical factor in the ecology: only a few groups had the manpower to mine them in bulk, and therefore could charge extra for that. Everyone else had to nibble at what they could, or do without, or eat the higher prices. This may remind some of certain less than stellar aspects of what passes for Capitalism these days, such as price-fixing rent across a country.

Solo mining in lowsec (or worse) can be miserable: just one other person in the system can be a critical threat, and finding an empty system to mine in may cost you a lot of time (and risk) to get to, and there will likely be explorers who will notice you and be in or come back in a PVP ship, or tell their PVP buddy that there's someone to shoot in system so-and-so. Maybe they've even already scanned that ore anomaly and are already in warp to it after they've jumped into the system? That's not much time to respond, and the choices are generally to dock up (in which case you are not mining) or to go elsewhere (in which case you are not mining and may still be hunted) or to grab a combat ship (in which case you are not mining and will most likely lose to a dedicated PVP pilot) or to be okay with getting blowed up, possibly a lot (in which case there is loss of ship, ore, and time). Maybe you can find a large enough group who have more or less secured some backwater and join them, in which case you might be shot at less and there may be a standing fleet nearby to help you when there is trouble. However I'm not very group minded so have little to no experience here, and I don't speak Russian for the areas I'm often near.

For some reason scarcity was rolled back. Omber and Kernite sites now (again?) spawn in highsec systems, and other sources of Pyerite were added, Mordunium in particular, to help remove some of the ore bottlenecks. I say again? as there used to be various ore anomalies to scan down, but 2010 or so was a while ago and I only recall finding some ore anomalies but not exactly what they were called or what they contained, and the new ore sites look nothing like what I recall seeing way back when, and anyways back then a Vexor with some mining lasers was about the best I could do given a lack of skill points. A Vexor was and is a pretty terrible ship to mine in. Naturally other people now complain about the falling prices and overproduction of things, but so these things go.

price history of omber

Can you guess when the Omber changes went into play? For those who cannot view images, there is a drop in price around the time of November 2025 when a new release was rolled out, from something like 350 per unit to around 130 per unit, and Omber at storyline stations used to sell for even higher than 350.

P.S. Omber and other fancy ores were not totally removed from highsec, the "Serpentis Lookout" has various fancy ores in it, or various agent missions or escalations may also have ores, especially at higher agent or escalation levels, though these may be rare. Processing a Serpentis Lookout requires at least two accounts: one to run the site, and another in a Porpoise or Covetor to hold the first room open while the other account goes back for a Covetor or Porpoise to mine out the site with. You can warp out of the site, but it will despawn after some amount of time, in which case no ore for you, so ideally several accounts are required to hold the site open long enough to mine it out. Multibox, or have friends playing at the same time who are also interested in mining and who are near enough to you and have the relevant ships available when you find the random site. Also the site will despawn after maybe a few hours if you are too slow at mining the ore, so you ideally need mining barges and a Porpoise, or other such dedicated ship combinations for other sites, or enough players to get through all the asteroids in less capable ships. A time-saving option is to instead buy what you need from the market, but that could cost more.