FFXI Final Fantasy XI Gardening Guide


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This Gardening Guide was written by Adamwsat.

Gardening for profit: An advanced approach to Gardening



In this guide you will learn the basics of gardening, including a feature much to absent in most guide, how to garden with Tree Cuttings and Tree Saplings.

Things to know about gardening before starting:
  1. Gardening is a risk, it is not guaranteed to yield profit.

  2. To start gardening it takes either quite a bit of hunting or lots of hunting, the scope of quite a bit is assuming that you are not rich, as you are reading this.

  3. Gardening takes alot of time and work, in my line of gardening I have spent hours researching the best combinations known and countless ammounts of additonal time experimenting with my own.

  4. You must be able to check your plants at least once every day (earth time), this can limit where you can go in the the game somewhat as you have to be in town to check your plants.

  5. You must use some sort of method to keep track of time in game, as the day of the week in which you garden matters.

  6. Most every convention in gardening is theorhetical, I have seen so much contradictory information online and at times it can be very hard to determine what is most likely correct.
And finally: The more time and money you invest in gardening, the more likely you will be to yield profit.

Having all factual information on gardening having been posted above, now I will discuss theorhetical methods to effect gardening:
  • Checking your plant often is thought to increase success, I myself haven't noticed a difference but luck or other factors could be influencing this decision.

  • Seeds and flower pots are thought to have an elemental attribute, commonly thought to be, I haven't observed anything personally to suggest that seeds have an elemental preference, but different pots do effect gardening, this is one of few theories of gardening that I consider fact.

  • It is thought that you can Over or under expose a plant to an element, though my studies show no true correlation with over exposure, nor really for under; As a matter of fact most of my plants planted and fertilized on the day of or opposite the element of crystal's that I am using seem to both do better, generally, when planted on either day, as opposed to an unrelated day. Feeding your plant on the day opposite the crystal is most often time accepted as the best day to fertilize, Note: Opposite refers to the element that the crystal's element is strong against.

  • Moon phase is believed to influence gardening results, In my tests pitting random moon phases again new and full moon, I have generally found that the onew and full seem to yield one more of what I am trying to grow per 40 or so plants, tho with such a small difference this could be luck, but then again it could be bad luck and it could be more of a difference...

  • The day that you harvest the plant is also thought to influence the result, in my tests I have seen no correlation, though it is is popularly thought that harvesting on lightsday helps, and also it is thought by others to help harvesting on the day of the crystal's used.
For reference the cycle of the days of the week are as follows:
Firesday -> Earthsday -> Watersday -> Windsday -> Iceday -> Lightningsday -> Lightsday -> Darksday

No that you have obtained the knowledge of the how to modify the results of your plant it would be good to know how to get the materials you'll need:

Pots:
  • Brass Flowerpot - Bought in Bastok Mines, (H-7), from Boytz's Knicknack shop or created with Goldsmithing, but it is cheaper to buy one than to craft one.

  • Earthenware Flowerpot - Bought in Windurst waters in Ensasa's Catalyst shop, (H-6).

  • Ceramic Flowerpot - Bought in North Sandoria from Pirvidiauce, near gate to Ronfaure.

  • Porcelain - Crafted with Alchemy level 72, by a far the most expensive flowerpot.

  • Arcane Flowerpot - Awarded from the rather new Strange Aparatus.
Other Furniture:
  • Workbench - Buy it in the AH. Relatively cheap and gives Moghancement gardening, which lowers the chance of plants withering.
Seed:
  • Vegetable Seeds - Easiest mosters that drop them are saplings in north and South Gustaberg.

  • Grain Seeds - Same as vegetable seeds.

  • Fruit Seeds - Best gotten from Saplings in Batalia downs.

  • Herb Seeds - Best obtained from saplings in Konchtat Highlands, La Theine Plateau, and Tahrongi Canyon.

  • Tree Cuttings - Dropped off of, to my knowledge, any gobbue.

  • Tree Sapling - Harvested from planting a Tree Cutting, I shall reveal recipe later.

  • Cactus Stems - Sabotender cactuars drop them, also a reqard from an unrepeatable quest in Bastok, Named "When you wish upon a Star", gives 4 cactus stems if my memory serves me right; requires high Bastok fame and a trip to Khazam to complete.

Now that you have the required materials, it is time to learn how to garden.
  1. Put one or more pots some seed, and some crystals into your moghouse's "Mog Safe".

  2. Talk to your moogle and select the "Layout" option, and place the pot, or pots, in your house as decorations.

  3. Talk to your moogle and select the "Garden" option.

  4. Select the pot in which you wish to plant the seed, and then select the option to plant seeds, and then select the seed you wish to plant.

  5. After this continue to check it daily, by selecting the pot, and then the option to examine it.

  6. At some point, variant on the type of seed, a new option will appear, an option to Fertilize the plant with a crystal, as a side note, during this stage your moogle will always say, "The plant doesn't seem to be doing well" or similar. This is normal.

  7. Continue checking it every day, if it is a Fruit seed, Tree Cutting, Cactus stem, or Tree Sapling it will at some point be ready to fertilize again.

  8. After some ammount of time your plant will begin to glow, once you select that plant you will notice that there is a harvest option, now one bug I have noticed is not allowing you to harvest which has only happened to me once, but If you happen to encounter this just try again later and it should work.

  9. After harvesting you will get items from the plant and your pot will be once again open for a new plant.
The stages of a plants change the appearance of the plant, this is what the growth cycle of a Tree Cutting looks like:

How it appears when first planted.
How it appears when first planted.



After a bit of time to grow....


After a bit more growth...
After a bit more growth...


Notice that the flowers are glowing, this indicates that the plant is ready to be harvested.
Notice that the flowers are glowing, this indicates that the plant is ready to be harvested.



Now on to what most people have been waiting for, recipees. Now before I start I must say that I am limiting myself to recipees that should not hurt the economy of your servers, as most gardeners would Mug me if I posted how to get Elemental Ore or Gold Beastcoins. Yet I can share a few recipees, one of which being one of the best things I have found to make money, and research gardening.

Fire Crystals, the best I've found is: Brass Pot- Herb Seed + Water + none, has about a 1/3 chance to be fire crystals, average yield of 13 per yielding plant for me.
This recipe is good because it usually gives decent profit to investment ratio with low start-up cost.

Tree Saplings: Any pot- Tree Cutting + None + None, has a 100% success rate, the only recipe to feature it at that. Actually you can sometimes even get 2 Saplings from one cutting. Useful if you want to experiment with Saplings but can't afford them, also good to sell.

I cannot give any other recipees that are both good and won't make me the most hated gardener ever, just try to experiment with the different theorhetical conventions mentioned above and you are bound to, at least, find a decent recipe with Tree saplings.
Also most of the common seed recipees can be found in most every other guide...

As far as finding other recipees, most are easy to find on the internet, unless they are particularly valuable. For making money I reccomend you start with Fire crystals if it is your first time gardening, so If you fail you wont loose as much gil, and then plant a few batches of tree cuttings, and sell them. Use this money to buy cuttings to raise into saplings, then experiment with the saplings. Once you have enough money buy the saplings rather than garden them and if luck is on your side you will soon become wealthy. To put things into scope, once I found my first great recipe, Ice Ore, I made a batch of 10, costing roughly 150k, and made one ice ore, selling for 500k at the time. That is a 350k profit for a process that takes weeks to do, so it is not the best method for fast money, but considering the low ammount of work, once you have your recipee worked out, the gil is quite good. I garden for less than 10 min a day to work two character's pots making, at this point due to economic crash on elemental ore, usually 500k, but sometimes 900k, for both batches. However, there have been times when I have gotten only one ore even with the best recipe for it, yielding only a 200k profit, and in researching you'll get 0 occassionally, which makes for a 150k loss per character. All in all gardening is heavily based on luck as well as knowledge.

All in all Gardening is best done for entertainment or for the challenge, or perhaps to add to the gaming experience itself, not just for money, tho it is decent for that purpose too. Gardening is for those that loathe to gil hunt weak enemies constantly, or camping that NM for hours on end. I hope this is of help and is able to assist fledgling gardeners with their research, as well as possibly convincing others to start gardening. I find gardening to be one of the most underrated, yet most entertaining parts of thus game.

Also though I didn't use any of these sites in my guide they do have useful information partaining to gardening:
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