Mining

So, once you're in your Mining Barge and you want to keep heading toward maximizing your yields, you need to look at two things:  Exhumers and Mining Crystals.  

Exhumers make up the heaviest yielding miners (short of the Rorqual's Excavator Drones) and the T2 Modulated Strip Miners utilize crystals to improve mining performance.  In fact, without crystals, there's no point in using T2 strip miners.  This skill plan will push you to Exhumers first, then to the requirements for the T2 crystals.  The only requirement here is Mining Barges V.

For those who want to get mining with skills right away, here's a skill plan that you can import into the game:

Mining in Eve is just PvP against floating rocks in space. Not that you'll shoot actual ammo, but you're nuking rocks and ice and pulling the good bits back into your Ore Hold.  It’s also a great time for being social on Teamspeak.  Why?  Well, mining is not the most exciting thing in the world, but getting to spend a few hours chatting it up with the corpies or alliance mates is awesome eve time.  Whether it’s ice mining for fuel, ore mining for caps, or just mining for money; Mining is a HUGE portion of Eve.  Hey, someone has to build those shiney ships you guys love so much.  So lets talk quickly about mining beginnings: