Leather crafting in Final Fantasy XI is another great skill to pick up. You can start making profit right from the start of level 0 skills.

Buy a few stacks of Windhurst Teal leaves, about 400 gil in AH, cheaper if bought in Windhurst. Buy a few stacks of Distilled water, 120 gil per stack at NPC in S. Sandoria Pub. Buy a few stacks of Wind Crystals, about 1.2k gil. Head out to where the sheeps are.

West/East Rond – Wild Sheep
North Gustaburg – Onary Sheep
Kon. Highlands – Mad Sheep + Rams(500 ram skin, 1000 for ram horn)
Dunes – Brutal Sheep
La Theine – Sheeps + Rams (500 ram skin, 1000 for ram horn)

Kill sheep and drop everything but the Sheepskin.
Sheep Leather = (1x wind crystal, 1x sheepskin, 1x wind tea leaf 1x dist water) skills needed 0
12x Sheep Leather = 8k (approx) ing approx. 2.5k net profit = 5.5k per stack

Sheep wool = (1x wind crystal, 2x sheepskin) skills needed 2
12x Sheep wool = 6k (approx) ing approx. 1.2k net profit = 4.8k per stack
THF sub lvl 15 would help tons or lvl up THF in west rond.

Sheep skin also sell pretty cheep at guild, or in AH, however that will reduce your net profit.
7 stack will take about 4hrs of farming
7 x 5.5k (leather) = 38.5k (not too bad for 4hrs of work)
7 x 4.8k (wool) =33.6k (also not too bad for a little more work)

So if all you do is leather, lets say you fill AH with leather 3 time per week.
3 x 7 = 21 stacks of leather 21 x 5.5k = 115.5k per week

Ores, Iron and Zinc sells pretty fast in Final Fantasy XI. Zeruhn Mines have many of these resources. Zeruhn is near Bastok City, you’ll have easy access to the Bastok Mines, AH and your Mog House. Just an FYI again, the higher your fame the cheaper the pick axes will cost for you to mine.

To begin mining, you’ll need mining gears, Field Tunica, Field Boots and Fields Gloves and of course at least 2 pickaxes. A stack of pickaxes would be ideal however. Copper ore and Tin sells for the least, you can drop those if you want to save room for Iron, Zinc and Dark Steel.

If you use ranged weapons in Zeruhn you will make mouse bat, ding bats and tunnel worms drop more than 1 item. You will probably collect some Zeruhn soots as well. They sell fast in the AH for about 2500 gil. You can also level your fame by trading 3 pair of soots to Gerbaum located at F-8 in the Bastok Mines. He’ll give you 150 gil for them as well.

Within 3-4 hours you can collect up to 40-50k gil depending on the amount of people in the dungeon.

Mining basics:
First I highly recommend the mining boots, gloves and field armor. This investment will go along way for you down the road. I’ve found the drops are better after wearing it and the most important – your pick axes break less often saving you money down the road.

Reducing Cost:
If you have a decent level of fame, your cost for pickaxes will be relatively lower – less that 200gil per axe at Boytz shop behind AH in Bastok Mines. This can also be used to make money as a stack can cost up to 3000-3500 in Jeuno and sells relatively fast. 200 x 12 = 2400 , so that’s another 500-1000gil profit.

Maximizing your Time:
Make sure you are at least level 30+ so that you do not engage agro. I would recommend 40+ so that your kill speed is much faster. Remember time = money. Wear only the mining gear, and a weapon. I remove my linkshell pearl also. If you are a BLM (AOE) or a THF (FLEE), then more power to you as I will explain later. If you can, try to finish Gobbie Quest #1 and #2 so that you now have a +10extra spaces in your bag. Now you are ready to head out, if my advice is followed you should only have 6 / 40 in your inventory leaving you with 34 spaces to fill worth of goodies.

If you have a high level BLM, go to the 2nd floor (Marked with a Greet Dot). Facing the refinery try to target a Quadav. Now what this will do is bring ALL quadavs from the other side of that small river come running to you. Only a few greater/veterans will come but the rest will be Young/Amber and Amethysts. If you cast AOE spells on them they die fairly quick and you will net a good amount of gil this way + items. Spells can range from 200gil to 1k, and Quadav Backplates can sell up to 1k in Jeuno, around 600 in Bastok and they sell fast. Usually from one of these pulls you can get about 5-10 Backplates already yielding 4-10k depending on where sell it PLUS if you sub THF on your mage you will get double the gil dropped also.

Quadav Backplates: 600-1000gil
Spells: 200-1000gil

I’ve attached the maps of Palborough mines with all the mining locations known to me (Marked in red). Now, you will want to explore the routes to maximize your travel. My route is 1st floor (F-7) to (H-7) to (I-7) to B on 2nd floor to (J-6) to (J-7) to (J-8) then to the 3rd floor towards C to (J-6) and (J-9). I do this repeatly going backwards and forwards. Try to toss anything less than Zinc unless you want to build up your crafting skills.

Zinc: 200-300gil
Silver: 400-500gil
Iron: 500-700gil
Mythril: 1000-1300gil
Platinum: 15,000+ gil. ***Sell when demand is low, people will pay up to 30-40k when supply is low.

If you’re a high lvl 50-60+ you can go to the 3rd floor and cast a spell on a Quadav behind closed gates. This will train 20+ quadavs (olds/coppers/brass/greater/onyx/vets) to come rushing to you. These 3rd tier quadavs will net you more gil / drop with Treasure Hunter as well as plenty of fetish parts. When you kill enough Quadavs there’s also a chance for an NM to spawn, but I usually don’t wait as time = money. Kill Funguars as they drop sleepshrooms that sell for 1-2k a stack. Kill any type of Scorpion and they can drop scorpion claws and scorpion shells and the plantreaper scythe. As well, you can get the Palborough Key used to open treasure chests which usually net you 1-2k in gil or item.

Fetish Parts: Sell to NPC for 200gil each.
Sleepshrooms: 1000-2000gil / stack
Scorpion Claws: 500-600 gil
Scorpion Shell: 900-1100 gil
PlantReaper Scythe: 1200-2000gil

So as you can see, there are tons of things to kill at relative ease. Once your inventory is full, you can continue to train quadavs for gil or you can head home to sell your loot. If you have Warp then just simply warp home, otherwise you can take the boat on the 3rd floor (Marked in Blue) which takes you directly to Zeruhn Mines which is just a short distance from Bastok mines.

Fishing in Final Fantasy XI would be the ideal job to get. Unlike mining which you will lose alot of money early in the game and will take massive amounts before making profits, you can easily bring in some extra gil early with fishing. If you have the option try Windurst because you can easily raise your skills there for a bit. Here’s a chart for referent to help you choose a rod, bait and price.

So now then, to start off, you will need about 3000 to 4000 gil unless you already have a rod. Next, buy a Glass Fiber Fishing Rod. 2.1k in Windurst, but if you can somehow get one from San d’Oria, they were 1.8k there the last time I checked. These get lots of bites and work for small fish that can start earning you money immediately. For the bait, you have 2 choices, if you want to take your chances and go for the big money earner immediately, buy as many Balls of Insect Paste as you can afford, and head to a nice freshwater fishing location.

Port San d’Oria is a good place to start. Plop down next to Gallijaux and Joulet for a while and fish for Moat Carps.
Windurst Woods is also a good place. I recommend heading up to the bridge by the Dhamel farm and fishing from that bridge facing south.
Zehrun Mines I think also can get you moat carps, but I’m not sure how often.

The other option is to buy a Sabiki Rig. These can catch you up to three fishes at a time, but they cost a little more than a ball of insect paste. If you go for this one, I recommend heading for a saltwater location.

Port Windurst is a great place to go. By the Fishing guild you can catch up to three bastore sardines easily at level 0 or lvl 1 fishing skill with image enhancement from the little taru there. Try for Bastore Sardines.

After a couple of good catches, say, oh, about 12-24, you may notice you start to get a great decrease in the number of catches or even just bites. This means your beginner’s luck is over!!! At this point you have 2 options:

Get some fishing gear. You can depend on fisherman’s gloves, tunic, boots, or whatever to help you raise your skill and keep catching those money makers. You can also raise your true skill by fishing some of that have lower level caps, like cobalt jellyfish or crayfish.

As soon as you hit around lvl 7 fishing skill, with or without equipment, try back at the money making fish again.

Rumors:
-If you constantly get the “Didn’t Catch Anything” message, try moving around, not a whole bunch, buy maybe 3 feet to the left or the right. Moving about generally helps, for me at least.
-I usually hit enter on the end of the third time he sways back and forth after getting a bite. (you know how the character sways back and forth after he gets a bite, He kinda plays tug of war with the fish)

Selling your fishies So, once you get a stack of 12 moat carps or Bastore sardines, head to you local auction house and put them up for acution, they usually go pretty quickly. On my server, Moat Carps went for 4k while bastore sardines went for 700, but you can catch 3 sardines at a time so its not bad.