At some point when you start going through the career missions in Eve Online, you will get a few different special offers. One of these (current) offers is called Enhance Your Mining Experience.

Is this a good offer? Should you spend money on Eve Online? Lets go ahead and dive into these questions.

What is the Enhance Your Mining Experience Offer?

Now that you’re doing career missions, you might find this offer popping up. For me, it showed up when I

This particulare offer pops up while you’re doing career missions. For me, it showed up while I was doing Balancing the Books which is the Industrialist – Entrepreneur career mission arc.

This mining experience offer includes the following:

• an instant unlock of mining skills
• fitted Retriever (mining barge)
• 30 days omega
• 100 PLEX

Lets look at each of these package perks a little deeper.

Instant Unlock of Mining Skills

I personally haven’t used this offer, however, I believe that this means that you won’t have to spend isk to buy the skill.

To sit in a Retriever, you need the following skills:

• Mining barge I
• Astrogeology III
• Mining IV
• Science IV
• Industry V
• Mining frigate III
• Spaceship command I

By the time you get to the career missions, you should have:

• Mining III
• Science IV
• Industry I
• Mining frigate I
• Spaceship command I

Mining barge and astrogeology are omega skills so you will still have to fully train them once they’re unlocked. I’d also guess that the strip miner that the retriever uses would be unlocked and ready to train.

Fitted Retriever

I doubt that the ship that is provided as part of the Enhance Your Mining Experience offer would be T2. So it might look something like this:

[Retriever, Retriever cheap Belt T1]
Damage Control II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Compact Multispectrum Shield Hardener

Strip Miner I
Strip Miner I

Medium EM Shield Reinforcer I
Medium EM Shield Reinforcer I
Medium Thermal Shield Reinforcer I

Hobgoblin II x5

Veldspar Mining Crystal I x2
Veldspar Mining Crystal II x2

This ship will cost between 50-70 million isk depending on where it’s bought and the value of the components on any given day.

30 Days Omega Time

Generally, when Omega is used in a package, it gives excellent value for the money. However, in this case that’s not true. 1 month of Omega is currently $20 and this package is only giving a $2.00 discount. Not worth it in my opinion!

100 Plex

The current value of PLEX, if you were to buy 100 with your credit card right now, is $4.99. If you wanted to turn around and sell the PLEX right now, you can sell 1 PLEX for 3,980,000 isk.

If you were to turn around and sell the 100 PLEX in Jita you’d get somewhere around 398 million isk. This is a respectable amount. For instance, you could put down the 250m deposit to do rent a Praxis for the Eve Rookies Incursions. You could buy a ship to do missions. You could even do quite a bit of frigate and destroyer pvp!

Is the Mining Experience Offer Worth the Money?

I’m the last person who will tell you to not buy an Eve Online package. If you have the spare cash, there’s been some amazing packages with great value. However, is the mining experience offer that’s given to new players worth the value?

In my opinion, not really. I’m not mad that CCP is selling fitted ships. I just don’t think that the tiny discount to Omega, a handful of PLEX and a Retriever that will probably get blown up by high sec gankers is worth it. There are much better offers out there!

What do you mean the Retriever will be blown up?

Situational awareness is the art of knowing what’s going on around you. Someone who has played the game awhile will develop the skill as a player to:

• know who the ganking corporations are an how to spot them
• keep the local window open
• WATCH their local window and know what to do when there’s a spike
• how to use DOTLAN or Eve Gatecamp Check to see if there’s any ganks in the area
• not to mine close to a trade hub

However, a player who’s given this particular offer isn’t going to be in the know quite yet. AFK mining is quite alluring, or watching Netflix on the other screen and only half paying attention to what’s going on in Eve. THAT is when a new player is going to lose that Retriever.

So what’s the verdict? This package isn’t worth it for someone going through the career missions. It’s being offered way too early. Someone doing career agent missions should be in a Venture until they get used to mining and learn more about the danger from PLAYERS.

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