The basics of farmingFollow

First, a disclaimer – if you’re looking to be spoonfed information about where to go and what to kill, this isn’t for you. If, however, you’re curious about how to get started with serious farming, and how to select the right place for you, then read on!

Further, a little information about why I’m writing this guide. I run a linkshell that originally was meant to serve as a group of people interested in farming together or separately, but either way, doing it a LOT in order to ensure that we always have the money for appropriate gear for our jobs and levels. It’s since evolved into a regular linkshell, but that’s how we started… and as I spend a good 90% of my in game time dedicated to finding new ways to make money, my Skinks have often looked to me for farming ideas. They brought in lots of things I never thought about, too… and together, we’ve gathered tons of info about the best ways to farm up gil in Vana’diel. Now I’d like to share some of those basics with the Allakhazam community!

First things first – the basics!

Before you can figure out where to farm, first you need to figure out what farming is really all about. In order to farm efficiently, the mobs really need to con as too weak. Some jobs can handle easy prey (up to a certain level, typically), but every moment you have to spend resting is a moment in which you’re not making money. Personally, I find that farming in places that have lower level creatures than those that most of my peers (similar levels) take on, because I hate having to stop and rest. If I’m going into a place where things may be a little more difficult, I take along a stack or two of Selbina milk (cheap and it stacks), in order to decrease any downtime I might have. This, in this end, is really up to the individual according to the job and play style. If you don’t mind resting (say, you’ll use the downtime to smoke, make a sandwich, etc.), then farming easy prey or more difficult too weak mobs isn’t a big deal for you. If you’re like me and rabid about efficiency and making as much money as quickly as possible, you’ll want to choose easier mobs.

Second, you’ll want to keep travel time and costs in mind. Ideally, you want to farm in a location that is easily accessible, and offers some way to get back and forth between a city and the farming spot as quickly as possible. Even with several gobbiebags, a good farming run will fill your pockets quickly, and you’ll want to be able to dump completed stacks or extras fast and get back out there. Personally, I make judicious use of outpost teleports, chocobos, my airship pass, and the crags when farming. But Monkey! Those things cost money! Well, folks, they do indeed cost money… but in order to make money, sometimes you gotta spend money. If you’re farming efficiently, trust me… you won’t even notice that 800 dollar outpost tele fee after a while (that’s what I pay if my nation doesn’t control the region). You’ll pay it with a smile, knowing you’re about to pull down so much gil that 800 bucks is piddly. To me, at least, spending that money is a better investment than the time it can take to walk here or there.

Third, consider space. This means gobbiebags, mog safe expansions, and often, the investment of a mule (or four, as I have). But everyone knows that, right? Here’s something, however, that a lot of people don’t seem to consider. I see a lot of people farming in their full armor in easy areas. Why do that? Why not leave half that crap in your mog safe? Every piece of armor you don’t need can potentially be another stack of tiger fangs, or beehive chips, or cockatrice meat, or whatever you’re chasing, and another stack means you stay out longer and make more money while spending less (on travel costs). The more space you can make on your person and in your mogsafe means you can spend more time in the field making money, and less time running back and forth or transferring stuff off to mules.

Fourth, LEVEL A THIEF JOB TO AT LEAST 15. I can’t stress this enough. I’ve tried farming without using my thief job, and unless you’re having a lucky day, the drops just don’t even compare. Sub it or go main, but take a level 15 thief job whenever you farm. You can thank me (and everyone else who’s said this) later. Otherwise, choose the highest level job you have that’s best suited for farming… or, if you’re wanting to go after crystals, the lowest, of course. I personally tend to farm with my thief, at level 31, but I know some people who like samurai for farming, others who like paladin or black mage. This part is up to you – just make sure you’re wearing the letters THF somewhere!

Parte the second – Location, location, location

Now that you know how to farm, you’re ready to decide where to go and what to kill. There are several ways to go about this. The first, which I don’t recommend, is to choose to hit one of the big farming areas, the ones everyone knows about. You know the places I’m talking about. The biggest one, I think, is Jugner Forest (and the only one I’m going to name). It seems to me that as soon as everyone hits 30-32, they decide to trundle off to Jugner to hunt tiger fangs. Well, the problem with this is that EVERYONE does it… which means farming tigers gets to be rather like camping NMs. That isn’t great for money making unless you’re talking about a drop worth several thousand gil, and while tiger fangs are all well and good, unless you have a whooooole lot of ‘em, they’re not going to buy you a pair of leaping boots, a jujitsu gi, or a scroll of Erase.

So if you don’t want to go to the big, well-known areas, where do you go? Well, that’s what we’re here to figure out. The best advice I can give on this is to pick a decently busy time on your server and do a /sea all on the level of the job with which you wish to farm. See where other people are! Now, you can write off the obvious leveling areas. You’re not going to farm there, and you know what these are. But look at the other places. Are those people HELMing? Some of them will be, and you can usually pick those out, too. Camping NMs? Cross those off your list. What you have left are likely to be farmers. Now, I know a lot of people turn on /anon to farm, but that’s okay – you just want to get a general idea anyway. Make note of some of those areas, and then come back here. It’s research time!

Let’s return to our example of Jugner Forest. Assume that most of the people your level seem to be farming there. Well, you don’t want to go there. Instead, you want to go to a similar level location. So take a moment to consider the areas with similar level creatures. You’ve got Pashhow, Meriphataud Mountains, and Qufim, off the top of my head. Now, you don’t want to farm in Qufim, for obvious reasons, and probably not Pashhow (because you’ll be fighting with all the goobbue chasers), so look up Meriphataud. Check out the creatures there. What do they drop? What can you make money off of? Can you get there easily? Check it against the things we discussed in part one, and think about the mobs in the area. If this suits you, you may have just found a good place to farm!

But wait! Monkey, how do I decide if the creatures there are worth farming? Well, my personal rule of thumb is to pick a place with either:

a) at least three different tops of mobs with juicy drops or;

b) one mob with great drops that is just EVERYWHERE, all over the place.

Again, this is a decision that’s up to you. If you’d like, instead of choosing by area, you can choose by creature. Want to farm bees? Start looking up all the different bees and where they live. Then start checking those areas on your server and look for one that isn’t too heavily farming. Then all that’s left is a lot of bee slaughtering, and some cackling when you start raking in the gil from beehive chips.

No matter how you choose your location, be sure it’s one in which farming is less frustration and more ease. Farming can be a pain, but it doesn’t have to be, even if you don’t really like it (as I do). I think a lot of people hate farming because they choose places that are over farmed, or drops that don’t stack, or things that don’t sell quickly. If you can avoid those pitfalls, farming will bring in plenty of gil and not make you toss your controller or keyboard (or both) across the room.

Step 3 – Profit! (or, other things to consider)

This section will include some good general tips on making farming a little easier and a little more profitable. I hope this information is helpful to you; it’s certainly made my gil-making career a lot easier.

1. Low level skills in many crafts = THE GOOD

A lot of decent, common drops don’t stack, like sheepskins or Yagudo necklaces, or are worth more in a refined form (beastcoins, or so I hear… my smithing skill is zero, but I know a lot of people who turn these into ingots as they farm). So if you’re out farming and think it’s a good possibility you’re going to be raking in the sheepskins, pick up a stack of dark crystals, windurstian tea leaves, and distilled water before you head out. Turning these into leather is easy and well worth the money spent. If you haven’t chosen a craft or two, this can help you to decide what you might enjoy focusing on, as well, which will end up making you even more money later on. And the more non-stackables you can turn into stacking items, the longer you can stay out in the field, and the more money you’ll make. Remember, this is all about efficiency.

2. STEAL, STEAL, STEAL

You didn’t just go through the pain of leveling that thief for the drops – you’ll also want to figure out which mobs are good to steal from, and use that ability as often as possible. Personally, my favorite thing to steal (at my current levels) is silver beastcoins, which I send to a linkshell mate to turn into silver arrowheads, so that I can craft silver arrows for profit. While this takes a little more effort than just hanging on to ‘em until I have a full stack, it maximizes my profit, and I enjoy the satisfaction of crafting. If you don’t, steal anyway, steal often, and steal until you have stacks. Steal is a farmer’s best friend.

3. Be prepared!

If you’re farming in a place with HELMing points, take pickaxes or sickles or hatchets. It never hurts to take a chop when you run past a logging point, because you never know when you might get lucky and happen upon an oak log or something similar. While the chances are low, it never hurts to try. Also, I’ll tell you… my favorite farming area (which I’m not going to disclose, sorry!) has some decent HELMing points, and I’ve saved many a crappy farming session by turning it into a HELMing session. Sometimes the drops just aren’t there… but you can always mine or log or harvest, and then you haven’t wasted your travel costs or time.

Thus ends my guide, and I hope it’s at least been an interesting read. Please, feel free to add information or point out something interesting I may have missed!

Great post.

Thank you for taking the time to put this down for everyone.

Not only can new people get a lot out of this guide, veterans like myself can learn alot also.

You have inspired me to take to farming with renewed vigor!

Rate up! ^^

Thank you... that makes me feel all the typing was worthwhile! Personally, I love sharing little farming tips and ideas with people. There's so much out there that no one person can know everything, and so often I get bowled over by a really good piece of information and I find myself raging to get out there and farm again. ^^

I just wanted to add something here. If you are a farmer using crafting to make extra money/space then that's wise. But if you are a crafter using farming you need to be careful.

Some people think that you make alot of profit from some recipes farming your own ingredients, but frequently this is not the case. Always check how much money you would make just selling the ingredients you farm on the AH compared to selling the final product, factor in the time you spend farming.

Sometimes you can make more money faster just buying the ingredients in town & doing more synths. This isn't always true, but be aware of it.

one thing about TH1 thats not mentioned here and should be:

with a thf level 15 you have TH1 which does increase drops
of the COMMON ITEMS it does not increase the rare drop rate
example: using TH1 while farming on goobbues moss drops were 12 to 1 tree cutting as apposed to without TH1 where the moss drop rate would vary from 1/1-2/1 tree cuttings.

this has been tested on several mobs with rarer drops and has proven true on all of them so if your farming for tree cuttings TH1 may not be advantagious.

your far better off getting to TH2 for farming this will rebalance the rarer drop rate items you recieve while still getting higher quantities of all drops.

I still don't get how people can make a enough money off of farming to by Leaping Boots, Sniper Rings, and other very high price items. I went farming once and I hardly made any money, not enough to buy anything with other than, maybe, a stack of Meat Mithkabobs.

I'm not going to ask you to say your farming location but how much money do you make an hour farming there?

Prepping for Monday morning with a BUMP.

Well, I know from some of my friends that it does get better at higher levels, but it's still not going to be some crazy amount that will make you rich in an hour or two. ^^ Though even at my levels, if I hit a good moon phase (farming seems to be better closer to the full moon), I can make almost 40k in about an hour and a half in a couple of different areas. I just prefer the one I spoke of above because it seems more consistent, and has that fall back if the drops sucks.

To me, farming is just good consistent money, something I do three or four days a week so that on the fifth day, I can go buy a new set of armor or up a craft by ten levels, or do a gobbiebag, whatever. Farming ensures that I'm never hurting for money.

However, if you fish... I might continue with that. I've heard the money to be made there is ridiculous. I can't do it myself; I've tried, and it bores me out of my mind, and if I hook up the second TV or something to watch a movie, people I know see me standing there and send me /tells, so I might as well just be paying attention in the first place.

This surprises me as well, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it in my guide. I rarely farm alone these days; I'm either with Samanosuke (who posted in this thread) or with my friend Cactusapo. They both have the ability to heal, which I don't, and I have TH1, at least, which Cattus doesn't have, but Samano does when he subs thief. Either way, we go a lot faster, with less downtime, and tend to make just the same amount of money. Further, we can take on EPs for crystals sometimes, which just adds even more gil on top of everything else we're raking in.