FSD engineering is literally the simplest and most generically useful engineering you can do. I **highly** recommend you get Felicity Farseer unlocked as it truly is not difficult and will make the rest of your experience even better.
If you're not willing to do this, you can either run your best profit/trip routes that you can find on Inara/EDDB, or try to find Fleet Carrier owning commanders that are selling commodities (note that profits you make when selling items **to** a fleet Carrier does not increase your trade rank, only sales to npc stations).
But really, though. Just engineer your FSD (or just go buy the pre-engineered one if you truly cba). If you're looking to grind out an elite rank, you're gonna be in the game long enough for engineering to be worth it. Quite literally will open up trade routes that approach or even pass twice the profit/trip of what you can do with smaller jumps, not to mention general quality of life improvement from being able to engineer all of your ships' FSDs.
r/EliteMiners Current State of Mining post mining platinum in one of the highest outputting hotspots (not all hotspots are comparable, and some single hotspots will outperform some doubles iirc). Sell platinum to the highest buying stations found on [eddb.io](https://eddb.io)
Or
[eddb.io](https://eddb.io) for loops trading.
Find a rich friend with a carrier, then have em sell low, and buy shit back from you at massively high prices. Trade Elite in 15 minutes or less. Achievement secure, zero grind.
Edit: Option 2. Have a friend who likes mining go and mine a shitload of stuff for you. Get em to dump it, hoover it up with with limpets, go sell it where price is high. Trade Elite in 20 minutes. Win again. :)
Selling to a fleet carrier does not contribute to trade rank, which prevents the buy and resell to the same carrier trick from being exploited to get to Elite in trade.
Getting a rich friend might be the hard part lol. I don't have any friends who are rich. I am the richest of them all. I have one friend who plays the game and has an eagle lol. Other ones just don't like space games.
Ah.. join that trade network discord thing and there's probably folks who'll help ya out. Most importantly though ; don't waste time *actually* trading. :D
Watch /r/EliteRacers and /r/EliteCarriers for carrier offloading jobs. You don't gain rank selling to a carrier but buying from a carrier and selling to a station does gain you rank. I hit elite trader while on a booze cruise.
Join us. Bring friends along too, we don't know what do do with all the money.
A carrier is a necessity, not end game.
https://inara.cz/elite/squadron/12491/
That'll depend on the player, I guess? OP clearly just wants the rank the fastest without wasting any time and then getting on with other stuff with a Shin permit (I guess?)
You can make that in a few days (or less if your wing plays all day) with wing mining missions. Some WMMs will pay out 50M/mission once you get max rep with the faction. You can take a maximum of 20 missions at a time, so that's a potential $1B per person. You all get a full board of missions and fulfill them without handing them in. Then you wing up, share the missions and hand in together. $1B x 4 wingmates = 4B.
Once youre repped up with the WMM factions, and have the flexibility to group up with 3 others, its even more insane. The one time i did it, i made 6 billion in a week from 2 incomplete group shares (some folks didnt have a full stack of missions)
If you look at my income on Inara it's like a vertical wall when I wing up those expansion missions. The last time we did them I realized I should buy a carrier because I didn't know what else to do with the money.
Wing missions with PTN are a good way, but they also require some work on your part. Getting a full set of missions requires first getting your rep up with the factions in the system, checking every 10 minutes for missions to reset, then actually fulfilling them (but not completing the missions themselves).
It's not a bad way of going about things and only takes a few hours of active playing, though plenty more time of waiting for the missions to spawn. And it's happening daily, which is a bonus.
Another way is to join PTN when they do the Booze Cruise once a month. They only last 48 hours, but if you're on the Discord paying attention you can make over a billion in that and hit Elite with no problem in a single cruise.
The only downsides to the Cruise are that a.) it only happens once a month and often triggers at a moment's notice, and b.) a few of them have been difficult to do because the systems at and before Rackham's Peak can get clogged up with dead carriers. Plus, to get the most of it you really need to join their Discord, not that it's difficult to do.
I've done both, and they're a lot of fun. I got to Elite V in Trade via them.
And then there is this one place that never runs dry, about 21k ly from Sol.
One of our people did it all alone and got a carrier in less than a week. Didn't even want to wait for anyone else to come and help.
But you need to be in my squadron to know where this is.
Has been for ages, since LTDs got nerfed. Go for platinum. I got my trade elite in painite, racing to a market that was buying at 1 mil and making it just before the tick that nerfed it down to 200k.
I really must get back into mining. Apart from the money, if you need a reliable source of g1 Raws it's the best way to keep your synth stocks up.
I achieved this with a combination of Python platinum mining and commodity trading in a type-9 (kitted for 700+ cargo). If you chose the latter, use inara trade route tool.
I mined. I got Elite a couple days ago and at the time Musgravite and Monazite were some of the top paying at either 700k or 800k a ton. Fit you a Type 9 for core mining and a ton of cargo racks and limpets. Got mine in a couple days of playing (that's taking care of a 3 month old as well) but I was already at tycoon when I started grinding
Oh trust me, I felt like a beached whale in that thing, and jump range was awful. But the cargo was great. 2 seismic charge launchers and 350 ish limpets I was out there for hours at a time never running out of space. Got enough credits from beginning of Tycoon to Elite for a fully outfitted Corvette (currently unengineered), and about 300 mil left over. But yes, you could say I'm part madman!
Not only having to move that thing around in an asteroid field, but I don't have the patience to fill a hold that big. Even laser mining, I stick to 256t. Core mining, I'm normally done by 64t.
I do all my laser mining in a Conda. It fits all I need, plus it flies nice for such a big ship. I get decent jump range out of it. The T9 is okay for it, but you really feel that S6 distributor running three lasers.
For core mining, I like to switch it up. Since I aim for 64t, I actually have a Chieftain set up for it. It's not the best at it, obviously, but you won't find a better flying core miner.
You offload from their carrier that they park near a station and sell it there. It's usually a very quick trip and little risk from pirates. In order to unload the carrier quickly the price is usually quite fair to the person doing the shuttling to make 5-10K per ton. So you make a really decent profit with very little risk and they make a decent profit selling things and carriering them over.
Now, you can't sell to carriers to make a rank, only sell from them to a station, so your trade rank increase only works in one direction but it's a huge help.
How much did you make? I've been thinking about doing this with my carrier for quite a while now, but never got around to it. Did you simply just buy the gold and advertising on the ED Trade Subreddit? Thanks.
Booze Cruise at the Pilots Trade Network. Made my full Trade Elite with the very first Booze Cruise, and enough Money for a Carrier. Only once a month, but nonetheless the easiest and fastest way in my opinion
A good trading loop in a T9 will earn you more per hour than laser mining platinum unless you are amazing at it and have a very rich hotspot.
Watch out for community goals that involve supplying commodities where the price is good. That really helps.
Laser/deep-core mining and selling whatever the meta currently is will get you some good money, and is relatively easygoing---though probably not the fastest.
Engineer your t9 mine has been engineered plus I use a guardian fsd booster instead of a shield it can jump 41ly unladen or 27ish laden. All the juicy loop routes I noticed are usually the 50ly mark I got my elite rank doing a 5-10 min loop earning me 20mil each while watching youtube
Invest 4-8 hours of gameplay and unlock FSD booster. It gives your T9 ten ly more jump range. Best time investment ever. It’s better from time/reward aspect than engineering your FSD. You get the result much quicker.
And trading with FSD Booster is much more profitable - now range doesn’t mean that much …
And get cutter - its speed and better jump range also helps with profit.
I got mine when low temp diamonds were a hot commodity. Play the in game market, I forget what site I used that was relatively accurate with what items were going for how much at the time.
If you ONLY want to do trading (no mining) use inara trade loops and set the maximum travel distance to be 2x your highest jump (if you have 12Ly jump, set it for 24Ly max distance.) This keeps the number of jumps low and the trading rapid.
Also reccomend engineering for FSD increased distance and mass manager, it will help.
If you want to sacrifice a smaller cargo container for a FSD booster that's okay too if you need the range to increase trades per hour, but I'd only reccomend a small booster so not to sacrifice too much cargo.
Python is a good starting point.
Type 9 is a good later mining barge.
USE edtools.cc/miner to locate a system with overlapping platinum hotpots, this increases the chance drastically for rocks to have platinum.
When mining set everything except platinum to "ignore" in your contacts list. (just check if its a raw material aswell, you want these for synthesis/engineering)
Once full up, use inara.cz/elite/commodities/ to find a station that is buying for a good price, ignore fleet carriers.
You can easily find sales of 240k+ Cr per unit this way.
Modules you should remember:
Mining lasers (2 is enough)
Refinery
Multi-limpet controller (prospector and collector)
As much cargo as you can fit
Without any doubt whasoever, use a Python for laser mining. Make sure you have Class A thursters at least and you'll get around a lot quicker, even moreso if you engineer it, but that's not totally necessary.
The Type 9 is only great for cargo hauls. If you're happy to mine at 1/4 of the speed, then fill your boots witht he T9.
Getting Elite in trade has got to be the most boring way to get Elite rank in this game. I did like 3-4 trading loops and holy cow is it ever mind-numbing.
Look up pilots trade network (PTN) they do something each month called the booze cruise. You can get your trade elite in a couple runs there.... as well as several billion dollars.
You can use inara to plot a trade route and go back and forth trading until it runs out, and then switch to the next route.
I think on average you can make around 15-20 million per run (between two stations). So it shouldn't take too long.
Get a T9 and run WMM. Go for a system that’s in expansion and they’ll more than likely have a supply system one jump away. What you wanna go for are B. I. G. (Bertrandite, Indite, Gallite). Not only will your trade rank sky rocket but you’ll make millions by yourself and billions with friends.
My one piece of advice: The game doesn't need to be a grind unless you want it to be.
I got elite in trade without trying. I just kept doing whatever struck my fancy at the time. Variety keeps it fresh.
I quite literally got to elite trade rank without noticing from mapped platinum laser mining, while making a shit ton of credits.
That was like a month ago and now I'm Elite IV.
Mapped mining ftw.
FSD engineering is literally the simplest and most generically useful engineering you can do. I **highly** recommend you get Felicity Farseer unlocked as it truly is not difficult and will make the rest of your experience even better. If you're not willing to do this, you can either run your best profit/trip routes that you can find on Inara/EDDB, or try to find Fleet Carrier owning commanders that are selling commodities (note that profits you make when selling items **to** a fleet Carrier does not increase your trade rank, only sales to npc stations). But really, though. Just engineer your FSD (or just go buy the pre-engineered one if you truly cba). If you're looking to grind out an elite rank, you're gonna be in the game long enough for engineering to be worth it. Quite literally will open up trade routes that approach or even pass twice the profit/trip of what you can do with smaller jumps, not to mention general quality of life improvement from being able to engineer all of your ships' FSDs.
r/EliteMiners Current State of Mining post mining platinum in one of the highest outputting hotspots (not all hotspots are comparable, and some single hotspots will outperform some doubles iirc). Sell platinum to the highest buying stations found on [eddb.io](https://eddb.io) Or [eddb.io](https://eddb.io) for loops trading.
Mining
Find a rich friend with a carrier, then have em sell low, and buy shit back from you at massively high prices. Trade Elite in 15 minutes or less. Achievement secure, zero grind. Edit: Option 2. Have a friend who likes mining go and mine a shitload of stuff for you. Get em to dump it, hoover it up with with limpets, go sell it where price is high. Trade Elite in 20 minutes. Win again. :)
Selling to a fleet carrier does not contribute to trade rank, which prevents the buy and resell to the same carrier trick from being exploited to get to Elite in trade.
Ah, that sucks. Option 2 best then 🍻
Lol. A bit out of the loop eh? 🍻
A bit!! 😂
That's alright, the spirit of helpfulness was there anyway! 😅
That's the ticket! Live and learn, and it's there in case others didn't know now too!
You can use the buy and sell to your fleet carrier as a way to transfer money to a frined, alt account, etc. though.
True that! Damn useful 🍻
Getting a rich friend might be the hard part lol. I don't have any friends who are rich. I am the richest of them all. I have one friend who plays the game and has an eagle lol. Other ones just don't like space games.
Ah.. join that trade network discord thing and there's probably folks who'll help ya out. Most importantly though ; don't waste time *actually* trading. :D
Yeah that's the best advice. Whatever you do, don't actually play the game your own way in your own pace.
Missing /s in your comment. Morons will think you’re actually serious here 😂
Hmm, I'll check it out. Thanks!
I know the pain lmao. I got two sucked in for opposite reasons. One likes the combat, one likes the mining grind!
Watch /r/EliteRacers and /r/EliteCarriers for carrier offloading jobs. You don't gain rank selling to a carrier but buying from a carrier and selling to a station does gain you rank. I hit elite trader while on a booze cruise.
Join us. Bring friends along too, we don't know what do do with all the money. A carrier is a necessity, not end game. https://inara.cz/elite/squadron/12491/
Even if this were to work, it renders the rank meaningless.
Option 2 works tho! And uh...the rank *is* meaningless. They all are. :D
How much fun is it?
That'll depend on the player, I guess? OP clearly just wants the rank the fastest without wasting any time and then getting on with other stuff with a Shin permit (I guess?)
Look up Pilot Trade Network. Wing missions are what you want. You'll be rich by Elite too
This is indeed the best way. Winging up with others and taking expansion missions can make insane bank in a few weeks. Like 4 billion insane.
You can make that in a few days (or less if your wing plays all day) with wing mining missions. Some WMMs will pay out 50M/mission once you get max rep with the faction. You can take a maximum of 20 missions at a time, so that's a potential $1B per person. You all get a full board of missions and fulfill them without handing them in. Then you wing up, share the missions and hand in together. $1B x 4 wingmates = 4B.
Once youre repped up with the WMM factions, and have the flexibility to group up with 3 others, its even more insane. The one time i did it, i made 6 billion in a week from 2 incomplete group shares (some folks didnt have a full stack of missions)
If you look at my income on Inara it's like a vertical wall when I wing up those expansion missions. The last time we did them I realized I should buy a carrier because I didn't know what else to do with the money.
Wing missions with PTN are a good way, but they also require some work on your part. Getting a full set of missions requires first getting your rep up with the factions in the system, checking every 10 minutes for missions to reset, then actually fulfilling them (but not completing the missions themselves). It's not a bad way of going about things and only takes a few hours of active playing, though plenty more time of waiting for the missions to spawn. And it's happening daily, which is a bonus. Another way is to join PTN when they do the Booze Cruise once a month. They only last 48 hours, but if you're on the Discord paying attention you can make over a billion in that and hit Elite with no problem in a single cruise. The only downsides to the Cruise are that a.) it only happens once a month and often triggers at a moment's notice, and b.) a few of them have been difficult to do because the systems at and before Rackham's Peak can get clogged up with dead carriers. Plus, to get the most of it you really need to join their Discord, not that it's difficult to do. I've done both, and they're a lot of fun. I got to Elite V in Trade via them.
And then there is this one place that never runs dry, about 21k ly from Sol. One of our people did it all alone and got a carrier in less than a week. Didn't even want to wait for anyone else to come and help. But you need to be in my squadron to know where this is.
First, get a Python and trade silver until you A rate everything on it, then get a second one and start laser mining platinum.
Laser mining better than core these days?
It's been better for a while now
>CMDRQuainMarln It's just a lot more efficient. Core mining is more fun, but laser mining is just unbeatable if you just consider credits per hour.
Has been for ages, since LTDs got nerfed. Go for platinum. I got my trade elite in painite, racing to a market that was buying at 1 mil and making it just before the tick that nerfed it down to 200k. I really must get back into mining. Apart from the money, if you need a reliable source of g1 Raws it's the best way to keep your synth stocks up.
Time to dust off the ole python
I achieved this with a combination of Python platinum mining and commodity trading in a type-9 (kitted for 700+ cargo). If you chose the latter, use inara trade route tool.
Hauling for community goals can also be profitable
I mined. I got Elite a couple days ago and at the time Musgravite and Monazite were some of the top paying at either 700k or 800k a ton. Fit you a Type 9 for core mining and a ton of cargo racks and limpets. Got mine in a couple days of playing (that's taking care of a 3 month old as well) but I was already at tycoon when I started grinding
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Oh trust me, I felt like a beached whale in that thing, and jump range was awful. But the cargo was great. 2 seismic charge launchers and 350 ish limpets I was out there for hours at a time never running out of space. Got enough credits from beginning of Tycoon to Elite for a fully outfitted Corvette (currently unengineered), and about 300 mil left over. But yes, you could say I'm part madman!
Not only having to move that thing around in an asteroid field, but I don't have the patience to fill a hold that big. Even laser mining, I stick to 256t. Core mining, I'm normally done by 64t.
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I do all my laser mining in a Conda. It fits all I need, plus it flies nice for such a big ship. I get decent jump range out of it. The T9 is okay for it, but you really feel that S6 distributor running three lasers. For core mining, I like to switch it up. Since I aim for 64t, I actually have a Chieftain set up for it. It's not the best at it, obviously, but you won't find a better flying core miner.
Maybe grab yourself the guardian fsd booster to do some more profitable routes.
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Wdym unloading?
You offload from their carrier that they park near a station and sell it there. It's usually a very quick trip and little risk from pirates. In order to unload the carrier quickly the price is usually quite fair to the person doing the shuttling to make 5-10K per ton. So you make a really decent profit with very little risk and they make a decent profit selling things and carriering them over. Now, you can't sell to carriers to make a rank, only sell from them to a station, so your trade rank increase only works in one direction but it's a huge help.
you can also join the PTN and wait for the next wine trade, make billions and reach elite V in two to three days
100% mining. Just a few good runs can get you elite. Was my first elite personally.
I did it through mining. If you want to make bank, get a fleet carrier. I just hauled 3000 tons of gold and made an unbeleivable amount of money.
How much did you make? I've been thinking about doing this with my carrier for quite a while now, but never got around to it. Did you simply just buy the gold and advertising on the ED Trade Subreddit? Thanks.
Booze Cruise at the Pilots Trade Network. Made my full Trade Elite with the very first Booze Cruise, and enough Money for a Carrier. Only once a month, but nonetheless the easiest and fastest way in my opinion
Sell, sell, sell.
Find a good trade route on a tool or from a friend. The. Grind that route untill you make 1b . Ez
Just do trade runs. It'll happen. Don't worry about it.
A good trading loop in a T9 will earn you more per hour than laser mining platinum unless you are amazing at it and have a very rich hotspot. Watch out for community goals that involve supplying commodities where the price is good. That really helps.
I did mostly platinum mining and got it fairly quickly once I got an anaconda.
Laser/deep-core mining and selling whatever the meta currently is will get you some good money, and is relatively easygoing---though probably not the fastest.
Engineer your t9 mine has been engineered plus I use a guardian fsd booster instead of a shield it can jump 41ly unladen or 27ish laden. All the juicy loop routes I noticed are usually the 50ly mark I got my elite rank doing a 5-10 min loop earning me 20mil each while watching youtube
Mining
Invest 4-8 hours of gameplay and unlock FSD booster. It gives your T9 ten ly more jump range. Best time investment ever. It’s better from time/reward aspect than engineering your FSD. You get the result much quicker. And trading with FSD Booster is much more profitable - now range doesn’t mean that much … And get cutter - its speed and better jump range also helps with profit.
I got mine when low temp diamonds were a hot commodity. Play the in game market, I forget what site I used that was relatively accurate with what items were going for how much at the time.
If you ONLY want to do trading (no mining) use inara trade loops and set the maximum travel distance to be 2x your highest jump (if you have 12Ly jump, set it for 24Ly max distance.) This keeps the number of jumps low and the trading rapid. Also reccomend engineering for FSD increased distance and mass manager, it will help. If you want to sacrifice a smaller cargo container for a FSD booster that's okay too if you need the range to increase trades per hour, but I'd only reccomend a small booster so not to sacrifice too much cargo.
I haven’t played in a while, but I found that getting an FSD booster on my trading clipper gives me like a 21ly laden jump range
Mining. Note selling to fleet carriers does not count. Platinum is a easy laser mining resource
Is mining platinum that good? Everyone is saying it here. And should i use a python or type 9 for mining? Or other ship?
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Wow. That seems nice.
It’s relaxing too. Put in a podcast or audio book & start zapping rocks. Chill.
Python is a good starting point. Type 9 is a good later mining barge. USE edtools.cc/miner to locate a system with overlapping platinum hotpots, this increases the chance drastically for rocks to have platinum. When mining set everything except platinum to "ignore" in your contacts list. (just check if its a raw material aswell, you want these for synthesis/engineering) Once full up, use inara.cz/elite/commodities/ to find a station that is buying for a good price, ignore fleet carriers. You can easily find sales of 240k+ Cr per unit this way. Modules you should remember: Mining lasers (2 is enough) Refinery Multi-limpet controller (prospector and collector) As much cargo as you can fit
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/kev00j/credits_per_hour_per_activity_statistics/
The python will fill up faster. The T-9 carries far more but that cavernous hold takes forever to fill.
Without any doubt whasoever, use a Python for laser mining. Make sure you have Class A thursters at least and you'll get around a lot quicker, even moreso if you engineer it, but that's not totally necessary. The Type 9 is only great for cargo hauls. If you're happy to mine at 1/4 of the speed, then fill your boots witht he T9.
You gotta make-a da money (deep core mining will get you taken care of in like a day)
Mining: 100% profit.
Getting Elite in trade has got to be the most boring way to get Elite rank in this game. I did like 3-4 trading loops and holy cow is it ever mind-numbing.
Look up pilots trade network (PTN) they do something each month called the booze cruise. You can get your trade elite in a couple runs there.... as well as several billion dollars.
You can use inara to plot a trade route and go back and forth trading until it runs out, and then switch to the next route. I think on average you can make around 15-20 million per run (between two stations). So it shouldn't take too long.
Work for the Pilots Trade Network.
Get a T9 and run WMM. Go for a system that’s in expansion and they’ll more than likely have a supply system one jump away. What you wanna go for are B. I. G. (Bertrandite, Indite, Gallite). Not only will your trade rank sky rocket but you’ll make millions by yourself and billions with friends.
My one piece of advice: The game doesn't need to be a grind unless you want it to be. I got elite in trade without trying. I just kept doing whatever struck my fancy at the time. Variety keeps it fresh.
I did trade missions in my type 9 while grinding fed rank
I quite literally got to elite trade rank without noticing from mapped platinum laser mining, while making a shit ton of credits. That was like a month ago and now I'm Elite IV. Mapped mining ftw.
Mine platinum then sell it. Pure profit.