Mining guide.

[Majestic]

There probably are Youtube videos but this is the way I have been working it if you prefer a text guide. Hope it helps.

 

1. Open the scanner, No3 button.
2. Press Tab and click the graph in the middle of the screen.
3. Leave whatever ore you want highlighted at the bottom.
4. Press tab again once your done.
5. Run around until you pick up a signal on the graph(line with a dot), if the dot moves further away on the right of the graph go the other way.
6. Once it stops moving closer or further away open your map, zoom in and set destination on yourself which will put a marker in the world.
7. From the marker you just set, move north then south, east and west. If the distance to the ore(the dot on the graph) get closer, re-mark your map at the closest point.
8. Once your happy you can't get the dot any closer this way you should be more or less directly over the ore, re-mark your position on the map(set destination).
9. Take note of your Elevation - top right, next to the mini map.
10. When you are on your marker subtract your Elevation from the distance to the ore. The result is your target depth,  more or less directly below your marker.
11. Move some distance way from the marker, 100-200m ish, it doesn't have to be exact.
12. Press L to turn on your light, this will give you a gauge on the right of the screen that shows at what angle you are pointing down or up. Around 45-60 degrees is comfortable and makes it easy to navigate up and down your tunnels, although 75 degree is managable
13. Dig down until you reach your target depth, you will go underwater a lot, don't worry you are in a suit and can't drown. You are aiming to be at your target depth directly below your marker on the mini-map. If you over shoot before you hit your depth just dig around in a spiral, if you reach your depth before you reach the marker just dig along at 0 degree until you're under the marker.
14. Once your at the right depth below your marker, hit no3 scanner again, you should be a lot closer now.
15. If you are more than 50m away from the ore on the graph use the flatten tool to open up a large space at the end of your tunnel.
16. Run around the large space you just created following the first steps so you are getting closer to the ore again. (Alt+ Click does a manual scan)
17. Once you get below 50 m press tab, at the bottom you can set it to Short range. Just run around on short range until you're getting closer again. Increase the area you are running around in with the flatten tool again to give you more room to scan.
18. Once you are around 25-30m away you can switch to the number 4 directional scanner. This one is a lot more precise so you have to move it slowly around the screen, zig zag back and forward slowly all around you. When you are pointing at the ore with this scanner, you will hear static and see a small vertical line appear at the bottom of the scan window.
19. Once you have the line simply mine a tunnel in that direction. You have a maximum range you can reach with your mine tool from where you are standing, you should only have to dig 1 or 2 times in the direction of the ore to maximum reach. Stop and check you are still heading the right way after a short distance.
20. The ore will appear as a green highlighted material, just use your mining tool on this to extract the ore.

 

The ore chunks underground are pretty big(4-5k of ore on Sanctuary and up to millions of Litres on other planets in Mega nodes), just be careful not to lose sight of your access tunnel or mine down too much so you can't reach it. If you have trouble you can always just mine your way back to the surface.
Pending Operation is server lag, just give it a chance to catch up.
If you made too many tunnels trying to pinpoint ore you can mine dirt and block passages you don't need to make it easier. Open your inventory, at the top right select keep none precious ore, mine some soil, snow or whatever from anywhere around you. Right click the ore in your inventory and hit equip. Look at the tunnel you wish to block and with the mine tool selected hit alt click to place some of the soil. Just be aware the soil takes up inventory space too, you might want to discard it once you have blocked passages.

[Velase85]

I do something similar. I have see a few people complain about how confusing that scanner is. Very good explanation. 

[Majestic]

Addition.

Your mining tool size, speed at which you mine, how much ore you mine can all be increased with talents.

Press F2, go to Mining and Inventory and browse through the options to see which option suits you best.

 

If you have a linked container active then Ore will be placed in there. If you are out of range of your linked container it will default to your inventory.

You can place a container on your speeder by adding one in the build mode of the speeder then bring the speeder closer to your mine, just beware a full inventory and full container is a lot of weight and the default speed will struggle to move or will handle erratically with so much extra weight.

 

If you are looking for Tier 3 onward, those are likely to be deeper underground and only on certain planets/moons. You will need to train talents to increase the scanners range.

If you open your map, select System Zone at the top then click on a planet it will show you there which ores are available on each.

[Hero164]

Nice helpful guide.

It would be good to add bits about how to find tier 2 and 3 ore. E.g talents, depth, territory scanner.

[shane_msb]

Pretty sure this info is not 100% accurate, but the planet locations have been right so far. Number ranges are depth from surface not planet height. IE 100-200 means on a mountain top 500 meters height you need to dig down to 400-300.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14iHVub5lhpK4_IeshhHALnRyKDbob14npwo7OPCFvwM/htmlview?pru=AAABdG4sbF4*yoUl3hOSbG6hQvHhHOixYQ#

[Majestic]

Yeh Shane, if you are at 500m Elevation and the ore is 300m on the scanner away then you will end up at 200m elevation, the elevation is only meant as a guide to roughly judge how far you need to dig.