Gil Garden Guide by Egomzez
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| This article is only a guide. Information expressed in a guide is usually more opinion than fact and should be taken as such. Guides are written by players, based upon their experiences, successes and mistakes, and are meant to aid other players. However, there may be differing opinions than those expressed in a guide. Strategies and information in guides may not work for everyone. | ||
The Guilt-Free Gil Garden Guide
- The gil garden works on a simple premise: buy from an NPC; garden with specific seeds and crystals; then sell that product back to to an NPC for a profit.
Other types of Gil Gardens depend on Auction House pricing, which is all over the place. This guide, of course, is my experience and you can take it or leave it.
- The KEY to the gil garden I propose is using wildgrass seeds very specifically. The general seed recipe list has tons of recipes. I have collected together those that produce the least non sellable items. Don't skim this and think it is so easy to garden some gil.
How much can be made from gil gardening?
- On average a seasoned gardener with a 10 pot gil garden can yield up 50k every week. Buying the seeds from an NPC at $320 each means a $3,200 investment per 10 pot crop. Even if the crop only yields $15,000 worth of sellable product, then that garden has earned 4 times the original investment. A $45k harvest means you have earned 14 times your original investment. Compare that to growing saplings from cuttings where the return could be as little as 3-4x what you spend and you have to wait a month to get it.
What I propose here is not without effort and investment, but for a minimimal investment it is possible to start generating gil on a regular basis without reliance on auction house prices.
- So read very carefully, my young wonton, you got to do it just as I say or you will waste your time and gil.
Set Up
The setup of a garden is not so important, but it can make a huge difference. What pots and furniture can play an important role in how much work you need to keep a garden healthy and alive or it can influence what you harvest.
But here are the basics for setup:
- Get a flowerpot. Basic flowerpots can be bought from npcs in each city for around 1k each: The starting theory is "The pot sold in the city works best in that city." Until proven otherwise this guide operates from that.
| Around 1k for a Brass Flowerpot from Boytz in Bastok Mines (H-7) (Standing in back room of the shop just behind the AH. |
| Around 1k for a Ceramic Flowerpot from Pirvidiauce in Northern San d'Oria (D-8) (Standing near the exit gate going out into West Ronfaure at C-8) |
| Around 1k for a Earthen Flowerpot from Ensasa in Windurst Waters (H-9) (In a shop at an intersection west of MH and Orastery ) |
| For around 4k and up the porceline pot has to be purchased through Auction House or made by a high level craftsman. THey are more effecient pots. Recipe for them are 1 cermet chunk and 1 fire crystal. Buy a stack of each and go shout in Aht Urhgan Whitegate for a alchemist with lvl 80 or higher for this lvl 61 recipe. |
Don't put your pots on the ground! Get a Workbench or Maple Table. Given you have the pots and table you should automatically get the mogenhancement for gardening, which will help keep your plants alive.
Depending on what you place your pots on your initial investment for a full gil garden is gonna be around 13k, but once that is paid you wont have to pay for it again. A porcelain gil garden may run you about 50-70k, so you should know what you are doing if you are gonna spend that kind of money.
A note on setup. Looking at harvest results it may be that ceramic pots in sandy, fed water crystals produces the most profitable harvest. So setup may be more important for larger yeild. THe pot, the town and crystal - heck, maybe even the race of your character. Soon I will be putting up data to look at regarding this.
Advanced Setup
Some advanced tips for those who have some extra gil, which if you follow the Gil Garden Guide by Egomzez you can be earning lots of extra money. A good gardener will know recipes and the crystals to use. As with a gil garden, it is best to stick to a particular recipe for continued success. That means using the same crystal. If you want maximum gardening then consider placing furniture in you moghouse with elemental power that matches what crystal is used. The draw back to this is there will no longer be the added benefit of the mogenhancement of gardening, which means plants left unattend for a day may die. What is beneficial is that the elemental energy of the moghouse contributes to the harvest gotten from the plants. This proves difficult for a garden that uses fire, but for lightning and water it is easier. Also consider investing the gil to get field gear and wear it when you harvest. I have noticed I get far more yield and less frequent crystals.
Guilt-Free Part
So now that your setup is set up.
- Getting seeds the guilt-free less-time way would be to buy Wildgrass Seeds from a NPC.
In Aht Urhgan Whitegate buy them from Khaf Jhifanm on the Mhaura boat landing dock at H-11. You have to pay to go onto the dock to engage NPC. Wildgrass Seeds sell for 320 gil each. I like to put seeds up for sale on the Jeuno Auction House for 4000 gil.
- More time consuming guilt-free method would be to farm seeds by killing saplings;
- Treant Saplings at Caedarva Mire are Level 64 and drops can include Fruit Seeds, Wildgrass Seeds, Treant Bulb, & Grain Seeds . Thanks to User:Guario for this suggestion.
Garden Part
The key to making big money is going to be using mules. A single 10 pot garden may only net you about 10 - 45k every 5 - 6 days. I have 70 pots running so that nets me around 200k every harvest. Being methodical and making a habit of gardening is important for consistent success.
Examine Plants
Frequency
At the bare minimum, I hear, a person can plant seeds and only go back to feed them and harvest. I caution against this. It is foolhardy. One reason is it leaves plenty of opportunity to forget and lose a crop. Check gardens at least twice a day is my suggestion. You can get away with once a day. A real life day starts at Japanese Midnight: 11am EST.
You might even check the garden 5 - 6 times a day. As time goes on we will see how this contributes to crop. I imagine you can get by with checking the garden once a day, but gettting in the habit of twice or more means you won't neglect it - so plants won't die. A crop of dead plants is a sad thing. I have done it, so I know.
Moogle Messages
When examining plants the moogle will, per each cycle, give one of two messages . For example, moogle says. "It's doing well!" during the growing phase, then I reexamine the plant until moogle says "It's growing well!" Sometimes the more attentive or positive moogle messages comes up in the first examination. How ths impacts the plant is yet to be seen. Do the messages relate to the state of the plant? From observation the messages seem to appear randomly and inconsistently. the only thing I seem to notice is that if I examine the plants more frequently than twice a day then toward the end of the process the plants all tend to come up with the most positive message first.
Mogenhancement
What is really important here is that if you are lazy or busy - or your mom won't let you log on regularly - you MUST have the mogenhacment for gardening, which you get by having lots of earth based furniture. A workbench and pots should do it. Now for advanced students who are getting all sorts of other mogenhancements ( like the one to reduce your xp loss on the account of death - lightning ) then you have to be more diligent about checking your plants. The gardening mogenhancement keeps plants alive longer if you forget to check them. Without it they die fast. Let me repeat: THEY DIE FAST.
Consequences
Keep in mind that if you are ignoring my advice and gil-gardening wildgrass with earth or wind then you really need to check your plants as often as possible since fewer examinations means greater chances you will get crap loads of crap - unless of course you need mounds of cheap and useless worms and rock salt. BUT - here is the catch. Checking the palnts too little increases likelihood of junk, checking them frequently seems to increase bounty, but does not seem to effect frequency of crystals or Gysahl Greens. On average I say I 2-4 out of 10 pots produce crystals. If I only examine once a day then 2-3 of the remaining 6 may be gysahl greens, which are worthless, except for choco digging.
Cycles
Day 1 The first cycle starts the moment you plant the seeds until, I assume, Japanese Midnight. Nothing appears to be in the pot when you look at it. When you engage the moogle the two messages are : "There are seeds in the pot!" and "There are seeds planted in this flowerpot!" This should be a no brainer. One message says the seeds are in the pot and the other says they are planted. Since this is gardening I think it obviously important that the moogle has actually planted the seeds. Kupo! ( Mind you this is just a hunch )
Day 2 The second cycle is a growing cycle and there is a green ball in the pot. When you engage the moogle the two messages are "Its doing well!" or "Plant is growing well." Again note the difference in the message. In one the moogle apparently could give a flying rat's butt about the plant and in the other the plant is "growing". Growing is good.
Day 3 The third cycle is also a growing cycle, like the previous. The plant graphic grows a bit larger.
Day 4 The fourth cycle is a feeding cycle. When it is time for feeding the moogle may tell you, during examination, that "the plant isn't doing so well." : Usually you feed the crystal and things go back to the afore mentioned messages with the plant looking the same. If you let the plant go a day in feed cycle without checking it, then when it is fed it immediately goes into the fifth cycle noted by the graphic getting larger
Day 5 The fifth cycle is flowering cycle. A shoot comes out of the top of the plant. The moogle messages are "The plant is flowering!" and "Beautiful flowers are blooming, kupo! They're so pretty, kupo!"
Day 6 The sixth cycle is flowering / harvest cycle. When the flower shoots glow you will know its harvest time. Again the moogle has two messages: "Kupo! This plant is ready to be picked, kupo!" and "It's grown so big, kupo~. It's ready to be picked now, kupo~.", My experience seems to be that if I check the plant when it is ready for harvest then I get more crystals. Harvest without examining during this cycle. For best results: harvest on full moon is ideal. Harvesting on the day that is dominant to the crystal you end up harvesting seems one way to discourage crystals. So harvest on the day of the crystal you feed.
Day 7 The seventh cycle is also flowering / harvest cycle. It is the same as day 6. Happening across this accidentally, I forgot to harvest a set of plants and 24 hours later the plants were still in harvest mode, ather than dead. I had not examined them, but when I did harvest them the yield was double than normal. SO - What I suggest is sitting through two days of being able to harvest and see if, in fact, there is a larger yield. Note: It is unclear how long until the plant with die so be careful. Also, waiting doesn't seem to change the rate at which crystals or gysahl greens are harvested.
Gil Part
NPC Sales
The brilliance of a gil garden is that what is grown can be sold to any choco stable NPC. Sticking solely to feeding wildgrass water, fire and lightning, I find that I produce two classes of crop. Sellable and Usable.
- SellableGaridav Wildgrass, Tokopekko Wildgrass, Sharug Greens, and Azouph Greens. Grass is the more profitable while greens are worth about half as much. For the best product have your garden in Windurst and feed them lightning crystals - this produces the least crystals and grass, but has a consistently higher yield of greens. Ice crystals, though I use them less frequently will produceZegham Carrot and Vomp Carrot which has same value as grasses. This is strictly NPC sales.
- UsableThe rest of what is harvested from crops is usable, sorta. The gyshal green sell poorly to npc. They are great if you want to level up your choco digging skill, but you may get lots of them so in the worst case scenario you might sell them in AH in windy, sandy, or bastok. On a good day I can sell them for about 6-800 a stack, but many come back unsold. Crystals are good too, but after your first 15 harvest cycles you will ahve way more than you need, unless you craft alot or turn them in for rank quests. AH sales of crystals is also poor and laborious, though I find fire and water do sometimes sell reliable. I let my mules put them up and save my main character for other AH sellable items gained throughout the rest of the game.
- The best NPC to sell to would be the choco stables NPC in the city where you ahve the highest reputation. The npc that has given my best price regularly is Pikini-Mikiniin Mhaura at G-9
AH Sales
I never sell grass, carrots or greens at AH ( accepting gyshal ). If you have the patience to sell them on AH then you can make a bunch more gil, but be sure to check the dates and how frequently things sell on small town auctions. The greens sell real slow, though they are way over priced. Jueno/Whitegate prices are all over the place and I would rather be buying new gear and juggling inventory than managing ah sales. Also watchout because I notice in the Jueno AH the stacks sell for less than what NPCs will sometiems pay.
Crystal Systems
There is a very distinct system within the gil garden that allows you to transform one crystal into another. So if you have about 4 stacks of light crystal but you need dark, then you can transform them through you gil garden. This is not isolated to the gill garden. All seeds that grow will transform cyrstals accordingly. So if crystal transformation is more important then you can use herbs seeds which have one the shorters harvesting periods.
 Burning or Heating | ||
 Diluting, Dissolving, or Liquifying  Disintegrating or De-synthesizing |  Mending, Repairing, or Blessing  Decaying or Aging |  Freezing or Congealing  Carving or Cutting |
 Bonding |
Harvest Systems
Get what you want and nothing more. As a gil gardener avoid using crystals that may produce items that are essentially worthless, like Rock Salt, Little Worm or La Theine Cabbage
DO NOT GARDEN WILDGRASS WITH WIND CRYSTALS
Stick to fire, water, and lightning for sure-gil gardening. Here are the 3 basic setups that have yielded the greatest harvest for me:
| Ceramic | Earthen | Brass | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Water |
| Fire |
| Lightning |
|
You can take a risk and garden with Earth Crystals, Dark Crystals or Light Crystals to get Colored Rocks for leveling Goldsmithing.
Crystal Side Garden
If, like me, you use multiple gardens then consider making one be your crystal garden. Since I like using water crystals on my wildgrass garden then I need water crystals, which I can farm in Pashhow Marshlands - if the weather is right. OR you can garden vegetable seeds with lightning crystals. Vegetable seeds can be dropped from Wandering Saplings in Jugner Forest or Steal them for a few extra. Thief level 15 subjob is also helpful. Vegetable seeds harvest in half the time of wildgrass and with Vegetable Seeds and Lightning Crystals you either get Water Crystals or Wild Onions - which the onions sell for about 8 - 14k in Windurst Auction House. These go well together because you feed the wildgrass gardens and make gil off vege ah sales.
Recipe Link
Gardening: Wildgrass Seeds Recipes
Good Luck. Let me know if this helps you get some gil or if there are other good guilt-free gil gardens to be had.
