Gardening for Elemental Ores

[Tarage]

So I've decided I might end up growing my own ores for my goldsmithing. The problem is, aside from knowing to use tree saplings, I don't know what and when I should be planting and feeding. I tried to look around for a guide, but I'm willing to guess that this is a closely guarded secret. Regardless, anyone able to give me a few hints?

Thanks.

[Shuemue]

This is actually serious...

Go to Alla.


Pretty sure Pikko is/was really into gardening and made a bunch of guides.

[Isiolia]

http://www.adventuresinbentomaking.com/pikko/ would be her site for gardening.

[Thistle]

So I've decided I might end up growing my own ores for my goldsmithing.

I do this on and off for my goldsmithing mule. I'm not sure if I'm actually saving any time/effort/gil though. If you farm your cuttings, then grow cutting -> saplings, then saplings -> ores, you're looking at, what, a month and a half? And that's for a chance of getting an ore. (I did that process using 10 pots/1 mule and ended up with one ore.) Not to mention, with TH1 the cutting drop rate seems to suck badly.

You might do better with something like camping the guild for low silver ore, then doing ore to ingots and selling those for profit, then buying the ores with the money.

Some people really love gardening though, so who knows. Maybe you'll enjoy it.

[Titanss]

Mod Edit: Understand the rules, tool. No trolling this section.

[Vigilia]

It's not so much that it's a closely guarded secret, you can find the basic formula for growing ores on most gardening websites. It's that the results you get are always so random. The time investment is even longer than what Thistle said, takes about 3 weeks to grow a cutting into sapling (and SE nerfed this so you don't get 100% sapling anymore) and then a whole month to grow sapling into an ore or a rock salt or whatever...

I garden regularly but I'm a total hobbyist, the about a dozen times I've tried growing ores I've ended up with anything from 4 ores to 0 ores out of 10 pots. There's more money to be made by growing faster recipes (quantity over quality I guess) so I haven't messed about with ores much. Few things I've learnt over my time in gardening would be that set up a mule(s) for the gardening with the moghancement. Moghancement is important because it basically buys you an extra day during which you don't need to check your plants without them dying. Considering you need to check the pots daily for a month missing one day because your PC blew up or something else happened in RL it can be a lifesaver. Other than that, read Pikko's site linked above.

Another basic guide is here:
http://clanam-ff.samhart.com/node/227

[Jedimasta]

I do this on and off for my goldsmithing mule. I'm not sure if I'm actually saving any time/effort/gil though. If you farm your cuttings, then grow cutting -> saplings, then saplings -> ores, you're looking at, what, a month and a half? And that's for a chance of getting an ore. (I did that process using 10 pots/1 mule and ended up with one ore.) Not to mention, with TH1 the cutting drop rate seems to suck badly.

You might do better with something like camping the guild for low silver ore, then doing ore to ingots and selling those for profit, then buying the ores with the money.

Some people really love gardening though, so who knows. Maybe you'll enjoy it.

I managed to farm up 5 cuttings, turned them into 10 saplings and then got like 4 ores my first time around. If you get lucky, you can easily double your cuttings depending on what pot you use.

[Osede]

Gardenning for ores was used to be a good income. However, I'm believe SE did ninja to lower the rate. I was able to get about 2-3 ores from each of 10 sapling. But until the time I'm quit for gardenning, i only able to get 0-1 ore from each of 10 sapling most of the time

[solsovly]

I used to garden for ores when I came back. I pretty much never paid attention to moon phase/day/whatever. Not sure if it makes a difference or not since I never really kept track, just didn't care since I was getting the results I wanted.

My pattern basically was feed crystals whenever it was up, check plants everyday when I came home from work (usually around 6:30-8:00PM EST). It felt like I got pretty consistent results. All my mules were on the same cycle, some mules would get 0, some mules would get 3. Fairly consistent results overall with about 5 mules every month. I haven't really gardened for months though so I can't comment on any nerfs.

[Midnightjade]

I garden all the time on several mules (60+ pots) but I don't usually grow ores. I think the best way to do it is to keep one eye on the AH at all times. You need to look at supply vs demand, and seed and crop prices, and then calculate the result as profit per pot per day over time. The grow whatever looks good (and hope nobody else made the same calculation, lol). ^^

There are also a lot of variables with gardening, and so you tend to get better at it over time as you figure them all out. Pikko's website is a good place to start.

[solsovly]

When doing your calculation for ores, always make sure to look up the non ore results. Persikos and other profitable items usually balance out a cheaper ore price, and sometimes make it more profitable on average.

[Thistle]

he time investment is even longer than what Thistle said, takes about 3 weeks to grow a cutting into sapling (and SE nerfed this so you don't get 100% sapling anymore) and then a whole month to grow sapling into an ore or a rock salt or whatever...

Oops. I wasn't sure if it was three weeks or two, so I figured I'd go with two so I didn't make it sound worse than it was.

[Vodou]

Actually, cuttings can be under 3 weeks and ores can be much less than a month. Light ores are the only ones that are longer... more like 3.5 weeks.

[Vigilia]

Actually, cuttings can be under 3 weeks and ores can be much less than a month. Light ores are the only ones that are longer... more like 3.5 weeks.

Ah, my bad then, only ever grown light/dark.

[Kongolo]

Didnt fine anything about the elemental aura in pikko guid or maybe i have missed it..

Anyways, my experiance in gardening is on Tree Cutting and Tree Sapling seeds. farm the cutting, plant it with no crystal in use (just examin the plant once it needed a crystal and in anyday and any kind of pot) and get 1-3 sapling seeds. now planting sapling.. i have made my MH filled with Earth energy (level 2 so far max is 3) and used earthen pots for saplings and plant them in earth day and feed them earth crystal.

results from 5 pots is 1-2 earth Ore the 1-3 Kitrons results 16-10 Kitron each pot and the rest is 1-3 lighting cluster.

just a suggestion, foucs on one type of element.. have your MH aura of that element to lvl 2-3, use pot that gives same element aura to the ore u want, seed in same element ore day, feed in same element day, harvest in same element day.

wish ya luck! dm(^.^)mb


EDIT: acoding to ffxi.wiki, using Arcane pot gives more items (depents on the crystal) and 1-2 ores and no cluster!

[Eston]

I've never grown for ores, but in my opinion, definately get arcane pots. I've been growing cuttings into saplings since forever. Only problem, it takes longer to grow something in an arcane pot, but you usually get better/more results. It takes me a solid month, but I just harvested my 10 pots I was growing cuttings in and ended up with 22 saplings and 71 shell bugs(which I use to make bug broth jug pets to npc).

[Stiker]

I would also suggest investing in some Moghancement: Gardening for your mules. It won't increase your gardening results, but it will help keep your plants alive if you happened to miss a day or two of checking in a row. There is nothing more frustrating than spending over a month waiting for something to grow and then get too busy to check your plants and come back and see them all dead.

[fndragon]

Wooden Flowerpots are my weapon of choice.. i want to eventually get all 11 characters with 9 wooden and one arcane.

Same here. I've dug up quite a few of them and all 3 of my gardening mules are using them exclusively. It seems like the supply of them isn't very high on the market, though; Not much research has been done to compare and contrast wooden flowerpot yields vs. other pot yields.

From my (limited) experience they seem to be almost the yield of Arcane pots, without the doubling of the time that the Arcane pots give.

[Kyreth]

Same here. I've dug up quite a few of them and all 3 of my gardening mules are using them exclusively. It seems like the supply of them isn't very high on the market, though; Not much research has been done to compare and contrast wooden flowerpot yields vs. other pot yields.

From my (limited) experience they seem to be almost the yield of Arcane pots, without the doubling of the time that the Arcane pots give.

Hmm. Interesting, have you gotten multiple ores off a wooden pot, or is it just an improved yield on secondary results?

[Thistle]

Same here. I've dug up quite a few of them and all 3 of my gardening mules are using them exclusively.

I was going to suggest H&Cing for them as well. Unfortunately I sold tons of them before I decided to start gardening again, and I'm NOT willing to spend 60K per pot on this, so I'm just replacing on my mule as I dig them up. So far she has 4 arcane, 1 wooden, and the rest are whatever the NPC in town was selling.

Only doing this on one mule. If I get organized, I suppose I could do it on all my mules, but I'm really not feeling too into it. (Could be partially because I can get ores from chocobo digging, too. Got two today!)