What is crafting
In Star Citizen’s 4.9 patch crafting is the act of gathering materials and blueprints to produce equipment, for both the player character and ships, which has better-than-store purchased stats. Materials are gathered through mining and refining. Blueprints are awarded from completing missions.

Why does it matter
Every player has at some point thought to themselves “That’s a long jump,” and then minimized the game while in quantum travel. Even with the ‘best’ size one drive, the Civilian Grade A “Atlas,” a standard jump from Hurston to MicroTech, a 68 Gm jump takes approximately 5 minutes 30 seconds, and will require most size 1 ships to refuel using just shy of a SCU of QF. A crafted version of the same drive, with good but not excellent quality materials knocks the travel time down a whole minute, 4 minutes 20 seconds, and use about .75 SCU of QF, for most size 1 ships allowing a full loop route before needing refuel. These quality of life improvements are more pronounced in larger ship classes and with higher quality crafting. The time saved across a play session increases dramatically as crafted gear is used.

The Loop
RSI always discusses things in terms of gameplay loops. For crafting the loop is as follows: Obtain Blueprints, Mine and Refine, Craft, repeat.

Mine and Refine

Getting a mining vessel

Which vessel you use is entirely your choice and they are essential to the crafting process. When operating alone the MISC Prospector has the best power output which is the most relevant stat for determining if a given deposit can be mined. Vessels can be purchased in-game, purchased via war-bond, or earned through rep-farming.

Purchasing In-Game

Prospectors and Golems can be purchased for 2.8 and 1.05 Million aUEC respectively from Hurston in Stanton, Bloom, Monox, Terminus LEO stations in Pyro, and specifically the golem from Levski in Nyx.

Purchasing via War-Bond

RSI sells both the Prospector from $155 USD and Golem for $60 USD on their webstore. The prospector is available as a base-game package which includes Life Time Insurance (LTI). Both are available for 6-month insurance. Purchasing a ship via War-Bond ensures it's available immediately even after post-patch server-wipes.

Rep Grinding 

New to 4.9, both ships can be earned by doing missions for Recco Battaglia in
Nyx. Her ships come with a unique hull in yellow-and-black as well as coming with industrial grade-A
components in most ship outfitting slots.

If you are using a Golem your mining laser head cannot be switched. Sections "Mods" and "Gadgets" are most relevant to you.

Mining Heads

Generally speaking, the higher the power output the better. Power output and resistance of any given mining deposit determines your ability to crack and extract the minerals within. Your ability to crack a rock is a direct function of your laser's power output and the rock's resistance. Starting out a Helix 1 laser head is recommended. Below is a chart comparing all available laser heads.

Mods

Every laser has 0-2 mod slots, when discussing solo ships. Mods can be used to alter laser behavior. As with laser heads any benefit always comes with some drawback. Mods can be swapped on-the-fly while out on a mining site, and it is recommended to switch to what you need most in any given situation while mining. Below is a chart comparing all available laser mods.

Gadgets

Gadgets are semi-consumable equipment placed from your personal inventory on a deposit before you go to mine. Most notably, gadgets have the ability to modify ore "Clusters". They should be repaired using an SRT or SRT-Lite between each use, and can be destroyed if a deposit is overcharged. Below is a chart comparing all available mining gadgets.

Finding a Deposit

Locating a deposit is more simple than the game will let on. Firstly, on your in-game starmap, Nav tab (F2) in the mobi-glass, any location can be click to determine what ores can be found there. This is semi-incomplete as the starmap will not inform a player what can be found at lagrange (L-1) points or asteroid belts. SCMDB has catelouged every site in-verse as well as provided standard scan signal sizes.

Screening Signals

If a signal source has anything other than a "Size" return, you are scanning some man made object in space, usually another ship. In the three-part example below, a signal source is located at 12.1 km with a Size return of 17,200. Using SCMDB and knowing we are in the Nyx inner ring, this signal has to be only those found at this location. Those are Debris, Raw Ice, Iron, Torite, Bexalite, Lindinium, or Savrilium. Since SCMDB also tells you size return per signal, and a slightly zoomed in scan reveals there to be four distinct signals, in image two, this cannot be Lindinium or Savrilium, as those only spawn in clusters of one or two. From there if you divide signal strength by number of distinct signals you have 17,200/4 = 4,300 per signal. Since Raw Ice has a signal size of 4,300 this must be Raw Ice, shown in image three.

Mining

Mining is the process of leveraging a ship and its mining laser to break apart and extract ores from a deposit. It comes with several hazards and best practices. To enter mining mode press "M" on your keyboard in either SCM or NAV mode. This will extend your mining laser and bring up the mining UI.

Place your Mining Gadget

Mining gadgets apply various bonuses to a deposit. Most importantly they are the only source of "Cluster Modifier" changes. To place a gadget, equip it to your character the way you would a weapon or medipen or right click it from your backpack and select "Equip." With the Gadget in hand, EVA up to the rock and hold left click to view the placement hologram. When you like the placement location, release left click to place. Once Placed you must tune the waveform of the deposit, gray waveform, to the waveform of the device, colored waveform, until they match 90% or greater. Use F interaction to slide the Propagation, Field Range, and Axial Scatter sliders until the waveforms match. Propagation adjusts the left-to-right shape of the wave. Field Range adjusts the absolute maxima and minima of the waveform. Axial Scatter adjusts the slope between maxima and minima. Once matched use F interaction and click Activate. If done correctly the gadget's symbol, found in the top left of is UI, will appear on the deposit when viewed from mining mode aboard the ship.

Cracking

Cracking is the process of breaking a rock into smaller harvestable chunks is the majority skilled portion of the mining and refining process and constitutes the major share of actual gameplay. To crack a deposit approach until your Distance Reticle reports you are within acceptable range to begin the process. If your laser power is considerably more than is required, you should increase distance from optimal. If your laser power is less than is required but pretty close, it is possible to exchange more instability and safe distance for a minor increase in power by decreasing distance. Left click to turn on your mining laser and use mouse-wheel to change throttle, the percentage of your full power being used. When the green bar in the power level reticle begins to move, you have begun charging the rock. The goal is to manage power level to keep the charge bar in the Optimal Window until it fills completely while avoiding overcharging the deposit. Upon successfully doing so, the deposit will break apart into either sub-crack deposits (orange outlined) or harvestable deposits.

Extracting

While still in mining mode, alt-left clicking will switch the laser to extraction mode. The Power Level UI will be switched for an extraction rate and cargo currently aboard UI. After scanning the harvestable chunks (purple outlined) and choosing to harvest, left click to begin the short process of storing the ore aboard your ship.

Best Practices

• As you charge a deposit you will notice fissures begin to form. If you place your laser on a fissure the power level response will become more leveled and controllable. The more fissures that collect at any given point under the laser the more noticeable this effect will become.
  
  
• Find the zero-point. If you can charge a deposit at all, then there is some balance between laser throttle and distance where the charge level neither falls nor increases. If you can find this point, it becomes trivially easy to crack any deposit, no matter how thin the Optimal Window is.
  
  
• Pick up any mining gadgets immediately following a crack. If a mining gadget is still attached when a deposit is harvested, it will be destroyed.
  
  
• Harvest from as low an "Inert Material" content deposits as you can. Installing FTLR Mods does reduce the amount of waste rock picked up, but it is best to harvest from as-close-to-pure deposits as possible. You only have so much space in your cargo, try not to fill it with Inert Material.
  
  
• Never mine with your shields down. This requires that you perform cracking operations in SCM mode with power assigned to your ship's shield generators. Shields have marginal increase in resistance to explosion damage as compared to raw hulls, and even if a deposit is not overcharged, some explosion damage is still dealt. To avoid a costly repair bill and to survive in event of an overcharge, ensure your shields are powered.
  
  
• In the same vein as keeping your shields charged, thrust back just as a crack is finishing. Shields mitigate damage, often absorbing it completely. In the event that a given deposit imparts more explosion damage than others, if you quickly increase distance to a deposit as the crack finishes, you will avoid the damage entirely instead of only relying on your shields.

Hazards

There are two main hazards while mining. Overcharge and Crashing.

Crashing is obvious, but worth mentioning. Mining ships are rugged but not particularly durable, and cockpits are the lowest health pool sub component on any ship. Since a miner is often pointing his/her cockpit directly at the deposit, it is easy to apply too much thrust while maneuvering and bump it. These bumps can lead to ship death.

Overcharge is the primary hazard. The red overcharge window on the Power Level UI will begin to fill if deposit charge level is too high. As it fills, the damage amount and area of effect of finishing the crack increases exponentially with the level of overcharge. A small amount of overcharge will not kill you or your ship. However, any more than a quarter and you are in serious danger of catastrophic detonation. Best to back off, let the deposit cool down, and try again.

Refining

Refining is the process of depositing ore at a station so it can be turned into material useful for selling and crafting. Refining can be done at most major stations, for a complete list reference UEX.

Refinery Bonuses

All refineries have increases or decreases to any of the ore types found in-verse. Some of these are as high as 10%. To get more out of the effort you already put into extracting the resources, it is best to find a refinery which will increase your yields after refinement. The UEX link above has a list of these bonuses.

Picking a Method

When you arrive at the refinery terminal at your chosen refinery deck you will be prompted to create a work-order to refine your goods. In this work order you can choose to abandon some components of the collected ores to lower the time and cost of refining. Refining can take as little as a handful of minutes to as long as a few days, likewise it can return as high as approximately half of your ore as usable material, or as little as a tenth. The method is entirely up to you. As you browse the refinery methods note in the top of the UI that the Speed, Cost and Yield are given generally. Crafting is done in the cSCU per item, ensure you've refined enough of the materials you need before starting a craft.

Below is an example of Speed, Cost, Yield variations for the same mining load across three of the more well used refinery methods for the same ore load.

Quality

Quality for any mined material can, nominally, go from 0-1000, with 0 being unusable in the crafting process to 1000 being the maximum possible bonuses. Functionally the minimum for all ores is 330 and the maximum is 960. Any component of a blueprint crafted with 330 quality will yield a -6.8% stat adjustment. Any component crafted with 960 quality will yield a 18.4% stat adjustment. 500 quality is the same as store-bought and is also the quality yield from dismantling looted or store-bought goods.

Master Crafted

The vast majority of equipment has an approximately 20% boost to a secondary stat, and 40% boost to a primary stat when Master Crafted with all components using 960 quality materials. For most FPS weaponry that would be a 20% boost to damage per bullet and 20% boost to penetration (ignoring armor values) or rounds per minute, those being the primary stats. Secondarily a 20% reduction in recoil or 20% boost to handling. This pattern holds true for every blueprint. For the purposes of this guide, referencing the mining laser chart, a Helix 1, with the 40% boost in mining output and the 20% boost in structural integrity, with max power mods can now handle deposits twice the size of a base Helix 1.