It’s E3 week! That means the world of Games is running around like a headless chicken, screaming and crying at the same time. All the new games announced, new trailers, first looks at gameplay and maybe even some new hardware. It is always so much to wrap your head around. Exciting, but tiring to keep track of. Let’s take 5 minutes and think about something else instead.
Elite: Dangerous has the perfect solution; when you need something a little more therapeutic, it’s time to go mining. Now, I don’t mean grab your pickaxe and head off down the pit; it’s much cooler than that. – It involves lasers. In addition to cargo space you need to outfit your ship with 4 things. Mining Lasers, a Refinery, prospector limpet controller and a collector limpet controller. Once you’ve got those and a hold full of limpets you are ready to go.
(Limpets are small drones that you buy that you can send out to either collect fragments you’ve mined off or to prospect rocks so you know what is inside of them.)
Mining is a simple task, you can go to a planetary ring system or asteroid belt and enter either a Resource Extraction Site or just drop in anywhere you like. RES tend to have a lot of ships and, as a consequence, a lot of pirates in them – so I usually opt for the drop in anywhere approach. Send off a few prospectors, find a rock I want to mine and then get started. You have to spend your time monitoring a few things not least of which is making sure your ship doesn’t get clobbered by a spinning asteroid. Which does happen if you aren’t careful.
While you are juggling a few different tasks, it’s nice and easy to do. I can’t forget to mention how beautiful the game is, if you are a fan of Space and the potential wonders out there you would love to see with your own eye – this is the perfect way to experience something like them for yourself.
As crazy as it sounds, there really isn’t many games that are more therapeutic than this one can be… assuming, of course, that you don’t get shot at by pirates.
