# How mining works > Finders, probes and bombs, locating a claim and extracting it, and why mining feels so different from hunting. Source: https://www.entropiacentral.com/guides/mining/how-mining-works Last updated: 2026-07-30 --- Mining is the quiet activity. There is nothing shooting at you, no armour to buy and no healing to pay for. You walk, you drop, and occasionally the ground has something in it. > **Before anything else:** mining loses money against the trade terminal, structurally and for everyone. What you recover comes from selling resources to other players, mostly crafters, above terminal value. You are competing with other miners for their business, not with the game. [This is an economic game](https://www.entropiacentral.com/guides/economy/the-economic-game) explains why that is the only frame in which the rest of this page makes sense. ## The loop 1. **Drop** a probe or a bomb using a finder. 2. If something is found, a **claim** appears at that spot. 3. **Extract** the claim with an excavator. 4. **Sell** the resource, at markup where it has any. That is the whole mechanic. The depth is in where you drop, what you are looking for, and what the resource is currently worth. ## Finders, probes and bombs A **finder** is the tool that searches. Different finders have different ranges and depths, and like every tool they decay per use. What the finder drops depends on what you are looking for: - **Probes** search for **enmatter**, the organic family of resources. - **Bombs** search for **ore**, the mineral family. You choose which by loading the corresponding consumable. Most miners specialise in one or the other, at least for a given trip, because the good areas differ. The [finders wiki](https://www.entropiacentral.com/wiki/finders) covers the tools, and the [materials wiki](https://www.entropiacentral.com/wiki/materials) covers what comes out of the ground. ## Claims A successful drop produces a claim, which has a size. Bigger claims hold more resource and are worth more. Extracting takes time proportional to the size, using an excavator that decays as it works. The interesting property of mining, and the reason it attracts a particular kind of player, is the shape of the outcome distribution. Most drops find nothing. The cost of a drop is fixed and known. The payoff is occasional and variable. It is a much lumpier experience than hunting, where every kill returns something. ## Cost per drop The cost of mining is easier to calculate than hunting because there are fewer components: **probe or bomb + finder decay + excavator decay on what you extract** No ammunition burn that varies with the target, no armour, no healing. This makes mining unusually easy to budget: a trip is a number of drops, and a drop has a known price. It also means the only lever on the cost side is equipment choice, and the only lever on the income side is where you drop and what it finds. ## Where to mine This is the whole skill of the activity. Resources are not uniformly distributed, and different areas favour different materials. What miners pay attention to: - **Which resources an area is known for**, since that determines the value of what you find. - **How heavily an area has been worked**, since popular spots are heavily covered in drops already. - **Land areas**, which often have their own resource profiles and charge a tax on what is extracted. See [Land areas](https://www.entropiacentral.com/guides/world/land-areas). - **Depth**, since deeper finders reach resources shallower ones cannot. Community knowledge about where to find what is a real asset and a real trade good in this game. ## Mining versus hunting Worth stating plainly, because new players often try one and assume the other is similar: - **Mining has no defensive cost.** No armour, no healing, no dying to a creature you misjudged. In dangerous areas creatures are still a hazard, but they are an interruption rather than a cost centre. - **Mining is lumpier.** Long stretches of nothing punctuated by finds. Hunting returns something from most kills. - **Mining involves more walking.** A large part of the activity is moving between drops. Vehicles help. - **Mining scales differently.** A bigger finder does not increase cost per drop the way a bigger weapon increases cost per kill; it changes what you can reach. Neither is better. They suit different people, and plenty of players do both depending on mood. ## Refining Raw ore and enmatter can be refined into more processed materials, which are what crafters actually consume. Refining is a small activity in its own right and adds value to what you dug up. Whether to sell raw or refined is a market question and it changes. Check both prices before deciding, because the answer is not stable. ## Recording it Because mining is lumpy, the gap between how a trip felt and how it went is even wider than in hunting. A trip with no finds feels catastrophic and may be entirely normal; a trip with one large claim feels like a strategy and may be luck. [Entropia Central Tracker](https://www.entropiacentral.com/tracker) records mining sessions the same way it records hunting, which is the only way to get a real answer out of a distribution like this one.