This quest is ideal for level 12, but the higher the better. You’ll need to solo a level 9-10 crab that does shell and def boost.

Buy a stack of Quus (under food in the AH), it sells for 1-1.5k per stack. Then go to S. Gusta Lighthouse in the SE corner. Around back is a bush with a ??? when you target it. Give the bush 1 Quus and a named crab will spawn. Kill Bubbly Burnie, a lvl 9-10 mob, and loot the Steam Clock. He also randomly drops land Crab Meat (which sells for 250 gil at vendor or more at AH) and Water Crystals.

The Steam Clock is marked Lore so you can only have one in your inventory at a time. Take it to Bastok Markets and give Malene the clock and she will give you 500gil and some fame. You can find her in the house next to Sororo’s Notary shop.

To make this quest faster, do the Backalley quest by buying an Amaryllis from the AH for 400gil and give it to the little girl just outside the residential area in Port Bastok. She will teach you how to use the back alleys and you can enter the mog house in the mines and exit from your mog house in the markets. It saves a ton of time doing this, the only faster way is to be a lv17+blm and warp, or a 25+ thief and /flee.

This quest is repeatable and I’ve done it over 1000 times so far. My character’s fame is maxed in Bastok and I get quests that I can’t even find info on from almost every NPC. Not bad turning 1k into 6k and it only takes a lvl 12+ character for it to be really easy, less if you have decent equipment or duo it.

You can also get a group together and we did this for faster exp. Give all the Quus to one person. Have that person go to the lighthouse and spawn the fish. Have everyone pass on it except one person. The Fighter at the lighthouse just passes every time and the other 5 of us ran back and forth. We made about 10k each in an hour using this method.

If you don’t want to be trapped in price changing of Quus, you can try fish Quus at the jetty near fishing guild in Windurst. Make sure you use the right bait and rod. I recommend Sabaki rig and Carbon rod.

If you are extremely lazy, you can also just buy the Quus in Windhurst and San for 1k a stack and sell them in Bastok for 2k a stack.