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Why you should read this thread:
1. There are multiple instances and they all share the same resource server, meaning unless there are rolling server restarts and or lagging Item Servers all instances will share the same CY Mineral Values across the world after a server restart and all new nodes, rock formations, and mob drops will all be propagated with the same CY Mineral Value for 1-2 weeks after restart and or last mineral change.(See Node Propagation and Mineral Grade Values for greater details.)
2. Because of the above issue, we can predict the arrival of new CY Mineral Grade Values at the rate of our consumption which is currently around 2 weeks. This may not be the case if each mineral has its own resource table on the Resource server.(See Node Propagation and Mineral Grade Values for greater details.)
3. You can switch between instances quite easily and this will show you how to id your instance and how to do so.
4. The end of this guide will tell you the Current CY Mineral Grade Values, the previous weeks CY Mineral Grade Values, and estimated arrival of new CY Mineral Grade Values.
5. This guide will also touch on rock formations, nodes, thumpers, scan hammers, hard to find minerals, Node size, and Item Servers in great detail.

You should read this thread again if you already have because I have redone most of it and it no longer contains cockamamie theories. Just hard facts and relevant information.

Color Index for Thread
New Items
Subject Titles
Developer Names and High Value Information
Important Information
Note Worthy Information
Player Names
Things I would like the community to help me with.
Obviously there are some exceptions within the thread.

Introduction

This guide is focused on hopping instances to thump as efficiently as possible and hunting down the highest grade minerals and nodes and understanding how they propagate. I figured I would start my own thread because I have correlated enough data to do so and that I was starting to flood Kryyss's Advanced Crafting Guide with tangent information. Thx to Kryyss for letting me do so and his awesome guide. You can find it within Ced23Ric's Guides & Addons Compendium (UGC) along with many other awesome guides.

What are Nodes, Rock Formations, and Mob Drops

There was a discussion as what to call the nodes or veins in the ground when I first made this thread and later again after we saw that in game Red 5 labels the minerals in the ground as Nodes via the map. Also notice the Dev's call them nodes in their responses. So below are what the above items are.
Rock Formations = the rock nodes above ground that you can blow up with sonic detonators. I use to call these Nodes.
Nodes = are the veins of minerals in the ground that you extract via thumpers. I use to refer to these as veins.
Mob Drops = the minerals you get from killing mobs.

Instances

I believe everyone is aware there are multiple instances already and that you can switch between them by getting invited to a squad by the person who's instance you would like to join and then typing /joinleader. This becomes difficult to switch multiple times unless you have people in your friends list that are in different instances because 90% of the time you cannot see other instances chat. So there for cannot ask for a quick hop over. So far the most efficient way I have found to switch instances is by exiting the game completely and waiting 15-30 seconds and then logging back in. You can identify if you are in a different instance by the following:

Alt + ~ or by Alt + F1 this brings down the Console. You may have to page up and Page down to find it but every time you log in you should see in green a statement of where you are. Below that should be a line starting with Updating Pressence and ending with zoneid: 448.

The number you are looking for is the one coming after "instanceid : " which should be a 17 digit number, ya I don't know why its so big maybe Red 5 is anticipating other universes trying to log in and play I don't know. Anyhow for a simpler reference I will refer to the last 4 numbers of this huge number as the instance in my data. This is not to be confused with the "zoneid :" which I believe is the region number because it is always 448. So the New Eden Region. Also on an interesting note when your friends do stuff you can see what instance they are in as well as well as your party members, because it will be broadcasted within the console. Also let it be known that Red 5 trys to put you in the same instance as your friends to increase community building and to keep you progressing in the same instance every time you log in. :)

Below is what it looks like in game. (Thx for reminding me Interesting :))

The Scan Hammer

Colors and what they mean.
Red = Unthumpable surface
Yellow = Thumper Nearby and occupying area. (Thx Locarno)
Grey = Trace materials, however I have found 40% and higher nodes in this....
Cyan = Lower value nodes
Green = Higher value nodes
Green w/ 4 foot vertical wall = 85% node.

Typically I have a pre determined path that I toggle sprint while randomly pushing 4. Your best bet for a quick scan of an instance is the edges of the melding. Rich nodes are found here much easier than within the interior of the map and most of these you don't have to get meld thumps with (Meld = aka melding big walls of purple/blue shit on the edge of the map, Meld Thumps = thumping so close to the meld that a different more dangerous and more XP lucrative spawn comes when you drop a thumper.) And if you do meld thump its probably wise to bring a friend.

Also every 85% node I have come across you will not only see green when you scan, but it will be vertical wall about 3-5 feet as well so these nodes are pretty easy to pre-ejaculate to on your scan hammer before you get the actual scan back. Every other node can be any percentage and the colors can be anywhere from green/brown or both. (You would think they would gauge the colors better, but they aren't.) In beginning beta they use to have huge vertical walls that gave you an idea of the total percentage of the node, why they changed it I have no idea.

Nodes

First it should be known that typically there are two types of nodes, single and double. Single nodes tend to have the ~ values 25%, 40%, and 85%. Double nodes with ~ 25%/25%, 30%/30%, and 45%/45% these values fluctuate as in you may get a 40%/49%. Either way the 45%/45% node is the most efficient node you can get why? Because 45% plus 45% is 90% and that is higher than 85%. What do these percents mean? It means that this is the percent of the value of mineral you will get out of the earth vs sifted shitty dirt. Example. So my thumper can hold 1,000 Minerals on a full thump, I am on a 85% node I shall receive 850 minerals on a solo thump and 150 of shitty sifted earth that I roll up and throw at my friends at the crafting station.

Rock Formations

Rock Formations or rock mounds with different color gems scattered across the world that can be detonated with sonic detonators to yield ~120-180 of a given mineral, up from ~10-50 of the corresponding resource. Color Coded as scene in the world.

Azurite - Blue (may have been temporary taken out of game)
Bismuth - Teal/Yellow Combo
Brimstone - Yellow
Coralite - Cyan
Ferrite - Orange
Quartz - Black at a distance, Purple up close
Silicate - Red
Regolith - Yellow (Very Similar to Brimstone, see individual picture below)

Regolith Rock formation

Below was where you could find the various rock formations around the current world. However, I took the map out because they changed the locations of many of these. If some one would like to post an updated map that would be awesome. :)

Thumpers

The new thumper completion times:
Stock = 1-2 players 10,000 Health 250 capacity ~3min duration
Improved = 2-4 players 12,500 Health 1500 capacity ~4min duration
Advanced = 4-5 players 15,000 Health 4500 capacity ~5min duration

Will be getting xp and exact durations for better overall output calculations from all 3 thumpers. However it looks like Red 5 finally set them up properly so you have motivation do get in those 5 man groups.

Node Size and or Overall Volume
(This information may have become outdated.)

Raichyu had requested that he would like to know the overall size and or volume of nodes and if they were all the same. I too was interested in this and came to conclusions that nodes hold overall volumes between 10-12k total resources. Since thumper volumes were changed the previous data has become outdated. The current data was based off of old information and new thumper volumes. Meaning it could be wrong. Please post if you find otherwise.

From this math we can extrapolate that a Node will give 9-10 Advanced thumps, 24 Improved Thumps, and 48 Stock Thumps.

Hard to find minerals
(This information may have become outdated.)

Azurite
Azurite use to be able to be blown up via dark blue mineral rock formations and I believe it still can be thumped out of the ground, however unlike all other minerals it seems to only be able to be found on the edge of the melding and one center location on the map.(Center location not yet proven however.) Basalt I have not found how to harvest as of yet, however I am told you can get Basalt from doing the Harvest pvp match.

Below are some pictures that identify confirmed locations of Azurite thumper nodes with yellow X's. It's to my knowledge now that Azurite nodes can spawn anywhere around the edge of the melding. However after checking on the center location Aldones mentioned, I was able to confirm that the waterfall acts like a melding spawn location and can in fact spawn an Azurite node, so the red X has been replaced with a yellow. So my final conclusion is that Azurite nodes can only spawn near melding locations and that there is a melding location in the center of the map.
Thanks to Sofiel, born2slide, and Aldones for the additional locations.

Regolith
This mineral was added to the game around ~Sept 19th and found by KingBradley. It seems that it is even rarer than Azurite and and be found in rock formations that look very similar to Brimstone around the melding and in the ground via nodes in scarce locations.

KingBradley said: ?

I've found Regolith at the way point marked below. I only managed to mine 5,1k out of the vein before it depleted. Though, I was using different thumpers, canceling 2 adv thumpers before completion and running several Imp and stock thumpers fully trough.

Item Servers

Many people bitch about how when they hit "I" it doesn't just boom open up like other MMO's bags or inventory do, this is because your character and inventory are on two separate servers. I say item servers, but I believe they hold more than just your inventory, but your tech tree, battleframe garage, and the mineral node propagation. Why? Because when the item servers are under a lot of load we see changes in mineral values as instances fall behind and we see instances with trace minerals only. Now most of the time I think this is just a bug and I relog and its fine, but it could be I am just on a new instance without the problem I haven't looked into that but I will. Most people also wonder why the hell did Red 5 do this? Well if they didn't when shit involving the item server shit the bed you wouldn't be able to kill bugs or move your character and the whole game would be completely ******, kind of like why in a business environment you don't have your exchange and active directory on the same box and or virtual server.

Here is a post made by UltimaSage from Red5 about proving that the node propagation and the Item Servers are linked and that all instances pull from one Server that has all the resource information that Red 5 currently wants handed out and or is randomly generated by that server and is handed out to all the instances when they require new resources or the Item servers are restarted.

Kryyss said: The reset time is something I have intentionally not mentioned yet because when the servers go down it appears to blank all of the resource information prior to the server resetting. Now that we know the item server is distinctly seperate to the game server and is responsible for the resource tables it must mean when that connection is broken the item server has to start over again. Once the game is stabilize we will need to see if there is a pattern to resource shifts.

UltimaSage said: The resource shifting is a little messed up right now. On startup, a server will request resources from the web, and the web removes them from the pool. All servers share the same resources since they are grabbing from a common place. The issue is that we have game servers crashing pretty consistently right now, so the resources are being burned through at an alarming rate. Once things stabilize, the resources should stabilize as well.

This confirms that item servers and node propagation are linked and that load on the servers effect the rate at which they propagate.

{Must read/Point of Thread}Node Propagation and Mineral Grade Values

All the information said on this topic and what I am about to re-elaborate is an elaboration of the three quotes made by Dev's and found by Sphynx87. All instances pull from one server/source that says, "ok the current CY Value is this and it will be this until people use X amount of minerals via drops, rock formations, and nodes." X is dictated by Red 5 and at our current rate of consumption seems to be around 2 weeks. This means you will see the same CY values for about 2 weeks after a server restart and that you wont see new values put into thumped out nodes, new rock formations, or dropped off mobs.The set values will continue to be re-propagated until the X consumption value has been reached. Once this value has been reached you will see new Values appear in the world from mobs first, then newly generated rock formations, and then finally nodes in the ground. So the old CY Values will stay in the world until you thump them out of the ground. Hence you will see variation of two different mineral values after X consumption has been reached. Also this leaves the possibility of seeing even more than two sets of values of CY Mineral Grade Values after 6 weeks, however this will probably be very unlikely at the rate at which people thump.

At this point in the game we saw that on an item restart it took two weeks for new propagation to take place. And at that time it seemed it was for almost all mineral types. However, after that first initial propagation we have been seeing that it seems to be occurring now one at a time and that each mineral has its on X consumption factor. Although this number seems to be different across the board, which hints towards the fact that Red 5 is most likely manually changing the mineral values at their whim. More information to come as we find it :)

Below are quotes from Dev's that explain how the process works. Ultimasage's quote above also ties in.

Virgil said: Approximately 2 weeks per type, plus or minus one week depending on quality and the favor of the resource gods.

Thumper nodes, on the other hand, pull their resources from the world at the time of their creation, not at the time of thumping. They can hang around a while, so (assuming server stability) you might find older stuff in areas that haven't been thumped in a while. If you think the resources changed during thumping, what probably happened is you managed to mine out one node, but another one containing different resources was close enough that you started hitting it instead.

On that note, we deployed a pretty significant performance update to the items service today, and one of the extra things in it was an update to resource pools that should compensate for the server issues. Hopefully they'll be operating closer to our intended schedule now.

Imbalanced said: It depends on the quality of the resource. For an average resource our expected resource lifetime is about 2 weeks.

Virgil said: Thumper nodes work differently, so that's expected. Thumpers get their resources at the time the node in the world spawns - then they hang around until a player collects the resources out of them. If an area hasn't been collected for a while, you might find something "old" in it. The fix I made only prevents server issues from forcing the pools to cycle faster. It doesn't change any nodes that already pulled resources.

Other than things like that, it's completely impossible for different servers to give out different resources - there's only one place the resources come from, that system talks to all the game servers, and it doesn't know which game server it's talking to. With this system, we couldn't make different game servers have different resources even if we wanted to :P

Imbalanced said: Thanks for the feedback! The server restarts are indeed the bane of our crafting and resource systems.

One major design goal for the overhaul of the resource population system was to create a meta-game to resources - we want to create surpluses and shortages for a given resource. Imagine the implicatios of a new, very high value coralite appearing in the world. That coralite will be perfect for making some types of items and horrible for making others. For example, let's say servos made with his new resource are amazing - they are the new must have item. As players fit the constraints of that item into all of their appropriate frames, other items with cheaper constraint costs in every category gain value. That poor silicate 142 you thought was horrible makes an HMG that fits perfectly in the rhino build you're working on - all of a sudden its valuable too. Every new resource has the potential to completely change the face of the current item landscape. Builds from week 2 shouldn't look anything like builds from week 10, which will be different from week 100. Seeing this meta rollout over weeks, months, and years - alongside similar balance and gameplay meta-level understanding that you can gain over that same time, should lead to exciting, constantly evolving pvp and pve experiences that I cannot wait to see (and take part in).

Also keep in mind that we set crafting costs extremely low for this push to test that these systems are working as we intend - but long term, expect more expensive recipes, especially once trade gets in.

Imbalanced Said: Simple answer is, no this is not our final plan for how resources can be earned.

It's not our long term plan to have all loot drops giving out all resources. And we are planning ways to have activity-specific rewards. In addition, we have some plans to add resources that are exclusively earned for completing high end content. (ex. You earn a special rare coralite once thumping past a certain depth - only earned from this advanced/expert content).

Another thing to remember about resources is that each one has it's own duration and although it's disabled currently, each pool has a max size. So, if a pool is "mined out" it will disappear earlier. With these combined- we are expecting resource pools to change frequently. With an average lifetime of about 2 weeks and 2-3 of each resource active at a time, a new resource quality (ex. Ferrite 457) should enter into the game more often than once per day.

On ~Thur Sept 20th Red 5 changed values by ~33 percent (and that's a huge rough generalization because each minerals got changed differently according to how their 5 stats were. Also note that I say "changed" because most had decreases, but few of them had increases to their values. I.E. the Silica and Quartz in the current spectrum. So note it wasn't a flat CY Mineral Value change. This was either a algorithm based off their states or they tweaked each mineral individually. So all you minerals within your inventory should be different. Wish I knew the actual algorithm. Thx for the help on this Interesting.

Essentially previous CY values were just place holders and not correct. They have now been properly adjusted to meet the 5 stat values. Your resources weren't upgraded or downgraded they were just properly labeled. Below are Dev links secured byelamous nalo.

UltimaSage: The five stats used in the crafting process have not changed. The formula that displays an estimated value of the resource has changed due to definition of resources changing slightly. This means that while the presentation to the user of color quality may be different, the actual numerical value used in crafting is identical. Resources did not upgrade OR downgrade. At all.

UltimaSage: Resources were not nerfed. The five stats on the resources did not change, just the interpretation of them in the CY-XXX value.

UltimaSage: The CY-XXX values are merely interpretation of value. The actual value of your resource has not changed, only the interpretation of that value. The stats that feed into crafting are no different than they were before the patch.

Mavoc: The 5 stat values did not change, those are what make the resource valuable. Just the min max ranges changed. The quality number is just a calculation of the total stat values that is then used to find the percent inbetween the total min and total max.
ie if your totals looked like this
stats = 2615
min = 1575
max = 4165
the quality would be around 401.5
Disclaimer: my math may over simplify this feature, but should be close enough to explain what happened to the quality numbers

Mavoc:The colors are just a visual representation of the quality, and the quality is just a representation of the value compared to the min max ranges. The stats are the true value and they didn't change.

Color Coded Mineral Grade Values

0 - 167 = Grey(Salvage)
168-334 = White(Common)
335- 501 = Green(Uncommon)
502 - 668 = Blue(Rare)
669 - 835 = Purple(Epic)
836 - 1000= Orange(Legendary)

This confirmed from a PM from Mavoc.

Previous CY Mineral Values
Azurite -----413, 303, 552, 186, 223, 284
Bismuth --- 125, 533, 217,582, 311, 165
Brimstone - 467, 230, 328, 401, 639, 568
Coralite ---- 137, 334, 277, 312, 263, 45, 37
Ferrite ----- 304, 764, 415, 772, 257
Quartz ----- 403, 255, 222, 108, 462, 422
Silica ------- 192, 327, 241, 12, 338, 62, 254, 19
Regolith ---- 241, 323, 31

(Last confirmed time of mineral grades below: 12/2/2012)
(If out of date check T3mp3st909's site, he keeps a pretty tight ship.)
Current CY Mineral Values
Azurite -----408
Bismuth --- 543
Brimstone - 371
Coralite ---- 565
Ferrite ----- 185
Quartz ----- 407
Silica ------- 253
Regolith --- 493

Server Restart Times
Previous restart time ~6am Est Wed 08/15/2012
Last restart time ~12am Est Thur Morning 08/16/2012
It seems at this point that each mineral type has a consumption value and we burn through them as we mine them.

New Propagations
~Aug 30 (Azurite, Bismuth, Coralite, Quartz, Silica)
~Sept 15 (Azurite only)
~Sept 18 (Bismuth)
~Sept 19 (Regolith)
~Sept 21 (Silica)
~Sept 23 (Ferrite,Quartz, Brimstone)
~Sept 26 (Silica)
~Sept 27 (Coralite)
~Oct 1 (Azurite)
~Oct (Bismuth)
~Oct 3 (Silica)
~Oct 8 (Quartz, Ferrite, Regolith)
~Oct 13 (Brimstone, Coralite)
~Oct 21 (Quartzite)
~Oct 24 (Regolith)
~Oct 25 (Bismuth)
~Oct 28 (Azurite, Ferrite)
~Oct 30 (Coralite)
~Nov 2 (Azurite, Brimstone, Silicate, Regolith, Quartz)
~Nov 5 (Bismuth)
~Nov 7 (Coralite)
~Nov 12 (Ferrite)
~Nov 13 (Coralite)
~Nov 16 (Quartzite, Silica)
~Nov 17 (Azurite)
~Nov 19 (Bismuth, Brimstone)
~Nov 20 (Brimstone) A really fast turn around, curious to what brought this about. Cause if it was cause of the patch we would have seen other minerals change with it. Via more users and more thumping.
~Nov 22 (Silica)
~Nov 30 (Ferrite)
If you are aware of a Item Server restart please reply with the time and date of restart and if you can its change of mineral grade values and your instance number.

If you notice any new mineral values please reply with when, what mineral, and a screenshot if possible.

Thx Mwako, Drogith, Chris_H, Joker_Prime and hsl3274 for posting updated values.
Thx FapFlop for the image map combining.
Thx Mithur for the Azurite Info and recent CY value change info.
Thx Aldones for the Azurite location.
Thx born2slide for the Azurite node locations.
Thx Sofiel for the Azurite node locations.
Thx Gaidan for the Azurite value and Biotech advice:)
Special Thanks to PanFiluta, Sphynx87, KingBradley, T3mp3st909, elamous nalo, Interesting,Locarno, and Gunney for all help gathering this info!

If I missed anyone and you feel you should be mentioned please send me a message in my inbox and I will update accordingly.

Thread last updated 12/2/2012