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.

The Furthest tower north of Giddeus in West Saru there is a constant spawn of goblins and bats in a small area. You can solo them easily with a level 8-10 character. With signet the goblins will drop fire crystals and the bats will drop wind crystals as well as the goblin armor which sells for 200-400 gil. The goblins will also drop gil themselves. A ton of loot for you collect and sell within this area. Ideal for low levels to start earning in some extra gils off leveling.

Northwest of San D’oria, there is an area full of Orcs. This would be a great to get fire crystals. You can probably average about 3 stacks in an hour. 3 Stacks you can sell for about 3-4K gil. That is about 10K gil in an hour, not too bad for a lowbie character to start farming at.

Head out the gates in Bastok mines and you will see some huge hornets. The gate in South Gustenburg has no less than 20 hornets. They’re pretty close to the gate even during peak hours. This place is an ideal spot to start leveling and farming. You can average about 2-3 stacks of wind crystals and will continue to drop thru level 6. Each stack should sell for about 1500 gil or more. They also drop honey pots and wings for some additional cash.

To start you need to be around level 7-10. You get signet cast on you at your local town gates, then head out to North Gusterburg where there are a lot of Vultures. You should only kill the vultures, and nothing but the vultures, until you have a stack of fire crystals. Very good money and you can get a stack and a half of fire crystals in about an hour.

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.

The Justice Badge Quest is located in Windurst and require 1 rabab tail and 4 onions to complete. You can buy a stack of rabab tail in the auction house for 50-100 gil. In the docks of Winhurst you will find an NPC that you can give the rabab tail to. In exchange he will give you the Justice Badge. The Badge sells for 500-2000 Gil in the auction house. Once you get the badge, give him 4 wild onions and you’ll receive a scroll that sells up to 5k gil in the auction house. Again you can repeat this quest by creating a mule character and transfering 1k gil. This should be a very easy and fast quest to do.

The Warp Quest is located in Bastok. You can get you around 7-10K gil depending on your server. You will need 1k gil or a slime oil to start the quest. You first start by taking the slime oil to an NPC named “Unlucky Rat” in the Metalworks district of Bastok in exchange for a warp scroll which sells for about 7-10K gil in the auction house. Unfortunately he probably wouldn’t accept your slime oil because you don’t have enough fame built up. You will be required to run around town doing low level missions.

Here are the quests you’ll need to complete.
The Quadav’s Curse
Buckets of Gold
Brygid, the stylist
A Lady’s Heart/To Be Stylish
A Flash in the Pan
Mom, the Adventurer?
The Wisdom of the Elders/Grandma’s Wisdom
Groceries
The Bare Bones
Minesweeper

This part should take about an hour. Once you get the scroll you can easily sell it in the auction house. You can repeat this quest by creating a mule character and transfering 1k gil or the slime oil to your character.

Unfortunately in FFXI, you only receive one content ID to play with initially that lets you create a single character unless you pay an additional $1.39 for 2 more character slots. You will need to get a total of 3 slots to use this guide. You will need 3 characters, one in each major city. Bastok, San d’Oria, and Windhurst. Items in 1 city may be valued more than another depending on availability and etc. Whichever city you choose to play as your main is fine. As you complete quests, build your fame and receive rewards and items, be sure to check out the AH in other cities to check where it’s selling at the highest rate.

With your main character, send 1000 or so gil to your Windurst character. In Windhurst buy up as many paralyze scrolls as you can. It costs nearly 100 gil per scroll. You will then deliver these scrolls to your character in San d’Oria, the merchatns do not sell this scroll there. You will get a nice profit here for these scrolls but don’t overflood the AH with them.

Gardening items are usually on demand as well. You can easily harvest the crystals and resell them or feed them to your own plants. Brass pots are needed for yielding 19 fire crystals, they’re sold by an NPC in Bastok Mines named Boytz located in the building right next to the AH on the first floor in the back room. Costs about 1,100 gil per pot. Buy as many as you wish to sell then deliver to San d’Oria or Windurst. I believe you should be able to sell them easily for 3-5k gil per pot.

Here is a quick little reference chart labeling where to buy from and where to sell.

This trick works very well. Go check air elementals pets under scrolls-summoning. You can buy the Air elemental in Jueno for 800gil and I sell them in Bastok for 3000gil. This works for a ton of other items. Any quest item for a city is always considerably cheaper in the next town over. There is way more than 100gil difference in prices in an astounding number of items. I play on two computers and have one at the Jueno AH and one at the Bastok AH. I then rummage around usually spells since that seems to be the highest profit at the moment. I’ve done this trick a ton of times making a minimum of 500gil on a bad trade and 10k gil on some rather rare equipment.

While I will agree that things like crystals and other common items ie. low level gear this would hold true if you check many items you will find ways to make gross amounts of gil.

Tip 6: Be familiar with all the NPC merchants and their wares. Yes, it’s a daunting task. But that’s what Allakhazam’s database is for. You need to know what merchants sell what goods, and under what conditions. Most merchants have items they **only** sell if that kingdom is in first place in Conquest for the week. Regional vendors only sell items if that kingdom controls that region for the week. For example, many cooking ingredients can only be obtained from the Lower Elshimo regional vendor. Since that area (Yuhtunga Jungle) is often controlled by beastmen, one possible strategy would be to find out what ingredients the vendor sells, then stock up on the in-demand ones while the region is under player control. When it reverts to beastman control, you have a firm grip on the market for that product and can often set your own prices. You create a short-term monopoly on the product, until you run out of supply or the region gets retaken by players.

Tip 7: Diversify! Please, for the love of all things good and pure, do NOT put all your eggs in one basket. Find MANY ways of making money. The market is extremely fluid and sometimes volatile. What might have made insane gil last week might be a big waste of time this week. The more methods you have of earning gil, the more likely you’ll survive (or even flourish) in an unstable market. If you were farming cockatrice meat and suddenly everyone else is doing it too (and subsequently, the price drops), start making mithkabobs. If everyone’s eating mithkabobs faster than the cooks can make them, start farming cockatrice meat. Money doesn’t disappear, it changes hands. Your job is to follow the money. Ask yourself “Who’s making all the money right now, and what do they want that I can offer them?”

Tip 8: Start a production chain. Many miners already understand this one. So, I’ll use mining as an example. Mining can be a wonderful way to make money. HOWEVER, if you sell the ores, you’re just lining the smiths’ or goldsmiths’ pockets with gil. They’re charging a markup on your ores. So, start smithing or goldsmithing yourself! Turn those ores into ingots, then turn the ingots into products (or just sell the ingots directly). Generally, with each stage of a product’s life you make a profit. You profit from mining the ores… you turn the ores into ingots and they’re worth more. You turn the ingots into products and they’re worth even more. You’re forcing your item to appreciate in value. So, instead of selling an ore for 500 gil, you’re selling a piece of armour for 3000 gil.

Tip 9: If you need start-up capital to build your gil-making empire, go do some quests. SO MANY quests in this game will reward you handsomely. Allakhazam has an entire database devoted to quests, their requirements, and their rewards. If you do the teleport scroll quests, the drain/warp/aspir scroll quests, Utsusemi, Selbina Clay, etc, you’ll have a huge bankroll to start investing. You’ll also have a whole lot more fame (which helps too, since it raises the prices NPCs will buy items from you for and lowers their sell prices) and a map of the Crawlers’ Nest (always handy!) Unless you need that quest reward for your job(s) that you’re levelling, you can sell it for a big boost to your bank account. But don’t go crazy and spend it…take the time to consider HOW you’re going to spend it. You want to take that money and turn it into more money. Find a way to do that.

Tip 10: Spend wisely! If you can save 100 gil by walking across town, do it. If you can walk (and farm on the way) instead of riding a chocobo, do it. If you have a lot of worthless junk that you just want to get rid of, instead of throwing it away, take it to the city you have the highest fame in and sell it to an NPC. Every single gil will add up over the course of the game. If you save 10 gil on every transaction you ever make, you could have half a million gil extra (or more!) by the time you reach higher levels. That’s that much more you have to invest. The more money you have, the more money you can GET. Don’t waste a single gil. And don’t just hold onto your gil, either. If it’s not out in the world, it’s not earning its keep. Find somewhere to invest it. Don’t walk around with 400k… Walk around with 20k and have the other 380k earmarked to spend to further your money-making goals.