Near the Nephtys Plains in Everspace 2, a bit of exploration will lead you to discover a mining station. It is mostly abanded, although a few Outlaws may be flying around the area.
Take these out, then you can focus on the area challenge of breaking open the hardened ore patch. You will need to think about this one, as it is one of the interesting puzzles that are scattered throughout the game.
If you look around the area you will see a mining laser is drilling into a large asteroid quite close to the hardened ore patch. That asteroid is filled with detonators. You can use these to blow up the asteroid. To do so, you need to arm them all. These are daisy-chained, so arming one will start a five-second time, and you have that long to arm the next one.
If you can’t get one armed in that time, the timer will reach zero, and you will need to start again. It doesn’t matter what order you arm them in, so just find a good route that suits your skills and fly around the asteroid, arming all the detonators. When that is done, make some space and the asteroid will explode, freeing up the laser. It will now be shooting past the hardened ore patch, but there is a way to solve that.
If you look past the mining laser you just freed up, you will see the second one in the distance. Fly to it and on the back, you will find a reflector panel. You can pull this off and fly it over to the first laser, and now comes the awkward bit.
You will need to carefully fly into the path of the laser, using the reflector shield to bounce the laser into the hardened ore patch. This can take some delicate moves, so don’t get frustrated. Aim your camera so it is directly pointing at the laser, with your ship between the two, and this should make it easier. Hit the ore patch with the laser for a few seconds and it will break, giving up a bounty of loverly, rare ores.
