The Complete Miner's Guide by Halada
41Version 2.2
10. Mercoxit Mining
Pre-RMR, Mercoxit was considered to be the most valuable ore as it is the only asteroid
which refines into Morphite. Not only for that, but also because you absolutely need
mining crystals to harvest it, only true miners with good skills can mine it. Factor on top
of that Mercoxit's important volume, which made the task of getting any high quantities
a bitch, all those factors gave it a premium price. The Skiff solved that last problem, so
well in fact, that the morphite price have sunken to the bottom of the ocean with the
Titanic over the last couple of months. Mind you, it is still a lucrative business, but not as
much as before, and players who left before RMR and are coming back now will
probably ask themselves, "Holy Mother of Destruction, what did you do to my ISK
generating machine"?
Nonetheless, we move forward with the new skill you'll need (yes, as in only one):
Skills you will need: Deep Core Mining 2
Training Deep Core Mining beyond level 2 is wasted time, since the toxic and dangerous
cloud that MIGHT erupt when mining Mercoxit (happened to me once in my life) has a
range of 5KM only, and since your lasers have a range of 15km, you mind telling me
what the hell you're doing so close ? Thought so...
There really is no point mining Mercoxit in anything else than a Skiff, but this guide
wouldn't be truly complete if you did not have all the information. There are two
modules that allows you to mine Mercoxit:
While MDCM2 can be used with any mining crystals, and be fitted on any ship, they are
not as powerful as MDCSM2, which is a special kind of strip miner used for Mercoxit
mining. The regular Modulated Strip Miner II cannot use Mercoxit crystals. While the
MDCSM2 can use any crystals, since its base yield is 110 lower than the MSM2 (250 vs
360), there would be no point.
What is particulary nice about the Skiff, is that it gets a 60% bonus to Mercoxit mining
yield  per level. What this translates into in a ISK/hour ratio will be covered at the end
of this section (and again in section 12), however you may have already guessed that
with a 300% bonus at Exhumer 5, it'll be a nice one... especially for such a cheap ship.
For the sake of uberness comparison, I'll assume you are a maxed out Hulk pilot already:
250 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 1.15 * 1.15 * 4 * 1.05 * 1.375 * 1.05^2 = 3289.17 m3/cycle
Mercoxit has a volume of 40m3, so 3289.17/40 = 82.229 82 units of Mercoxit per
cycle
A Skiff fits one MDCSM2, so you'd mine around 1640 units of Mercoxit per hour. (20
cycles, like the other strip miners)