The Complete Miner's Guide by Halada
60Version 2.2
16. Exploration and Gas Cloud Mining
Although exploration does not fall within the scope of this guide, you should know there
is a special area of EVE called exploration which requires you to probe exploration sites
randomly across the universe to find various types of sites. Among those are mining
sites, where you will often find juicy roids of all sort. Especially in 0.0, those are worth
finding.
Finally, there is Gas Cloud Mining, a branch of mining that goes along exploration.
Another area of EVE that can be highly profitable when proper skills are trained. The
basics are: you fit Gas Cloud Harvesters on any ship with a turret slot (the Gas
Harvesting skill allows the use of one harvester per level) to harvest gas from clouds
found in gad cloud exploration sites and later use that gas in the process of
manufacturing boosters (drugs). This can be apparently extremely lucrative, but it
requires a lot of skills to begin with which have nothing to do with the mining
profession, and you will also face nasty rats to begin with. Therefore some PvE is also
involved.
I suggest you read Joerd's guide on exploration for a starter, and if you are further
interested, seek out other resources. Eve-Online forums or EVE-Search.com are good
places to start!
Joerd's Exploration Guide 2.0: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/0705/Exploration_2.01.pdf