Ores

Ore is the first source of income for a lot of pilots: you can extract it from asteroid fields with your ship and from planet surfaces on foot, and every station buys it. Each type has its own price, and the same cargo is worth more on the frontier than near the Sun.

Types and prices

Ore is counted in units of 0.1 t, and the price is per ton. These are the base prices, before the station’s adjustments:

Ore	Price per tonne
Iron	45 ¢
Nickel	60 ¢
Water ice	20 ¢
Raw crystal	110 ¢
Iridium	300 ¢
Helium-3	400 ¢

Example: a ton of iron is worth 45 ¢ at the base price; 10 t of iron, 450 ¢. The same ton of helium-3 is worth almost nine times as much.

Ore mined in space and ore from an ore block on the surface are the same item: the iron in your hold and the iron in your backpack add up.

Asteroid fields

Each asteroid field has one ore type, always the same for every pilot. Most are iron and nickel; rare ones are few:

Field ore	Chance of a field being this type
Iron	42%
Nickel	24%
Water ice	16%
Raw crystal	12%
Iridium	5%
Helium-3	1%

To mine, set the field as your target, get close to it and hold [F] by default (you can change it in SETTINGS › KEYS). The ore goes straight into your hold. Extraction is faster with:

richer fields;
the mining bonus from your equipment (suit gloves and tool);
your ship class: the Mining ship extracts twice as much.

With a full hold, extraction stops and the game warns you. Sell or discard something before carrying on.

Surface

At landing sites, ore comes from the terrain:

World type	Ore
Icy	Water ice
Volcanic (basalt)	Nickel
The rest	Iron

There are two ways to collect on foot:

Deposits: the site’s collection points. Collecting ([F]) gives the site’s ore and, now and then (5% of the time), iridium instead.
Raw ore block: breaking a block with the pickaxe gives 0.2 t of the site’s ore.

On foot, ore goes into your backpack and, if it fills up, into the hold (your ship is at the same site). See Surface.

Selling

Docked at a station, open the MARKET tab. The Sell ore row shows how many tons are in your hold, the price per ton at this station and the total; SELL sells all the ore in the hold at once, of every type. The SELL button in the hold list (inventory) does the same.

Ore in your backpack isn’t sold: store it in the hold first. You can also sell ore to other pilots on the market, in the Ores category.

Some station missions ask you to deliver tons of ore; when you deliver, the game uses the cheapest ores in your hold first.

Frontier and saturation

The price a station pays changes with two factors. The panel explains both next to the price (“frontier +40%”, “saturated market −20%”). The price shown is for iron; the other ores go up and down in the same proportion.

Frontier

The farther from the Sun, the more the station pays: +4% for every light-year, up to +150% from 37.5 light-years on.

Distance from the Sun	Iron per ton
Solar System	45 ¢
10 light-years	63 ¢
25 light-years	90 ¢
37.5 light-years or more	113 ¢

That’s what creates trade routes: mine close to home and sell far away, with a Freighter to carry more per trip. Keep fuel in mind, since it also gets more expensive on the frontier.

Saturation

Each station remembers how much ore it bought recently. Every ton sold there lowers the next price, down to at most −60%, and the market recovers on its own, about half a ton per minute. Saturation is saved: it doesn’t reset when the server restarts.

Example: at a Solar System station with no saturation, you sell 30 t of iron for 1,350 ¢. Right after, the price there is 20% lower (36 ¢ per ton). Within an hour, the market is back to normal. If you have a lot to sell, you earn more by splitting the cargo between stations.

Water ice

Ice sells cheap, but it has another use: the station refinery turns it into fuel (8 per ton). See Fuel.

Crystal and iridium at the workshop

Raw crystal and iridium are also needed to craft rare, epic and legendary equipment, and crystal goes into the torch recipe. Sometimes it’s worth more to keep them than to sell; see Workshop.