Gardening for profit

[Caspian]

I've never actually done any gardening yet, so pardon my ignorance. Looking at the link that Z put up about the recipes w/ tree cuttings, it looks like you can use a porcelain pot w/ a tree cutting and not give it any crystals at all and it will grow 1 or 2 tree saplings. Am I reading this right?

Also, is there a link where I can learn everything about basic gardening...I mean REALLY dumbed down, b/c even after reading all these posts, I still don't understand what all I have to do.

[Zafron]

Originally posted by Prince Caspian
...it looks like you can use a porcelain pot w/ a tree cutting and not give it any crystals at all and it will grow 1 or 2 tree saplings. Am I reading this right?

Yes.

Also, is there a link where I can learn everything about basic gardening...I mean REALLY dumbed down, b/c even after reading all these posts, I still don't understand what all I have to do.

Can never go wrong with Pikko's.

[DrMrLordX]

Roldarin, I may have miscalculated on the day of planting. Try planting the seed on firesday instead of watersday.

[Redyne]

I do alot of gardening, and so far have found the elemental ores a chancy venture. The problem with a lot of the more lucrative items is that very few people have the crafting skills to use them.
I check all my pots all the time, and have never had a problem getting crystals.
Experimenting with arcane pots right now, so far the only thing I have verified is that they grow things at a slower rate then the other pots. (Ex. planted tree cuttings in all 5 types of pots, have fed all the pots already except arcane.)
Very curious to see if resulting items are different, or if it is just a different yeild. Will keep you posted.:confused:

[JP_Ikari]

Originally posted by Huaua
people dont like to share because prices drop, thats what half this thread (the ele ore part) was on. Its not comfortable to see ele ore at 300K per down to 200K per, imagine if everyone knew how to make it, were talking maybe down to 80K per if that happend

That's fine, but I'm just saying if it's a pain in the rear and you're success is like at 1% or less, then you can give the recipe, just that them succeding is another. But that's just me, like i said it wasn't directed in anyway towards Gatts and I respect his wishes if he wants to keep it to himself. But just a question, what can you make out of the Ele ores??? Since they're so HOT!.

Ikari

[Riskimew]

But just a question, what can you make out of the Ele ores??? Since they're so HOT!.

Refined into elemental beads, which can be used to make the elemental staves all the casters get all hot and bothered for. I think? there's also a bunch of level 70+ rings that may use the recipes, but I don't know for certain.

[JP_Ikari]

Originally posted by Riskimew


Refined into elemental beads, which can be used to make the elemental staves all the casters get all hot and bothered for. I think? there's also a bunch of level 70+ rings that may use the recipes, but I don't know for certain.

Thanks, everyone seems to be talking about the Darkstaff which sounds hot really hehe so that's pretty cool. So i guess i do understand why everyone would want to keep the recipe now. Also, do the BCNM 60's and 70's drop the Ele ores too?

Ikari

[Magicide]

As to the question as to whether it's more profitable to be going for tree saplings or elemental ores, the answer isn't cut and dried. Tree Cuttings are safer, as (as far as I know) there's no way to screw up the recipe apart from getting lazy and letting your plant die. Tree Cutting + any flowerpot + no crystals + check it daily = 1-2 Tree Saplings, 100% of the time. That's good, safe money.

Example: On my server (Asura), Tree Cuttings sell for 40k a stack, Tree Saplings for 100k a stack. With my 4 mules, I have 40 flowerpots going 24/7, but for the sake of ease of calculation, let's say I'm using 36 of them (3 stacks) at any given time. That's an initial investment (ignoring the cost of the flowerpots, which is quickly eaten up), of 120k gil.

In two weeks time, that 120k gil worth of cuttings will blossom into anywhere between 36 and 72 tree saplings (3-6 stacks). That's anywhere between 300k and 600k of income. Spread out over 14 days' harvest, that's between 21k and 43k per day. Better than a kick to the head, that's for sure.

Now, let's move onto going for elemental ores.

Time for the standard AH discussion caveat: prices vary with time and server, not to mention one's ability to unload one's goods once one has them in one's possession (though these are all fairly popular items, not that hard to get rid of). But for the sake of this discussion, I'm using 250k as the selling point for most of the elemental ores. I think that's fairly reasonable.

So. Same input, three stacks of Tree Saplings this time. 300k in costs up front, putting the big Mike Tyson style hurt into the pocketbooks of most mere mortals.

So, if the profit generation rate we want to match is the low-end 21k, and let's say the harvest time of our saplings is 28 days (i'm not sure how accurate that is, so correct me if I'm wrong), we need to generate around 580k of profit in the month to match our saplings day for day. That means 880k of raw income to offset the cost, or a grand total of ~4 elemental ores. That's a 4/36 success ratio, or 11%.

For those still caring (and conscious), in order to match the top end of 43k per day, you need ~120k of profit, or ~150k raw income. That's 6/36 successes, or a 17% success ratio, to match a tree cutting gardener that buys for 40k/stack, sells for 100k/stack, and always gets 2 saplings per cutting.

Of course, my times may be off, the prices on my server may differ from yours, and in general, your mileage may vary.

But I would look at a general number of around a 20% success ratio, or 2 elemental ores per full mog house of 10 flowerpots, before thinking about switching over to ore from saplings. That means figuring out your days to plant, feed, harvest, the moon cycle, your moogle's favorite color, the home phone number of at least 2, preferably 3 GM's, and whatever else it is you need to know in order to get those damn plants to poop out that damn ore.

Still, once you reach that point (or higher), the rewards for growing ore start to accelerate dramatically. And, of course, if the market values change, so too should your strategy.

As a final word of caution, I would never get into trying to grow elemental ore until you have at least 2-3 million gil to play with. Any less and a single dry spell could wipe you out; I've heard horror stories of people blowing their entire 600k in life savings on a gardening venture, looking for elemental ore, and winding up with a bunch of handfuls of rock salt to show for it. The rewards are high, but so are the risks.

[Adamwsat]

don't post here much but here goes:
On my server, Midgarsrmor, last I bought:
20 Porcelain Pots and 2 stacks of Tree Saplings for 500k, not too bad.
Now Dark ore on my server sells for 500k last I checked, so as long as you can get 2 dark ores, out of 20, the profit made will be greater than that of making saplings, for my server at least:
Do note though, even with good experience in Gardening getting dark ore can be hard, it requires great research and planting on perfect moon cycles and day, and fertilizing on right day, and of course harvesting on same day. Over all I say that an amateur gardener should stick with saplings, also stick with them if you are poor. My suggestion is planting a few loads of saplings and eventualy use a batch of sapling you got to make dark, or whatever sells best on your server, ore. I started gardening with about 20k, and after upgrading my pots to porcelain and stocking up on a boat load of saplings, I have nearly 1 million gil, and I just started gardening in retail about a month agao.

Disclaimer: What allowed me to do this is studying lots of gardening statistics and formulating my own recipe that has a, roughly, 45% yield of ore. Gardening is not an easy way to get rich, it requires research and time to do properly.

[DrMrLordX]

Adamwsat, dark ore on midgardsormr has crashed. It's at 300k gil now. Unless something changed in the last two or three days . . . and have you really tested your dark ore recipe? It's one thing to study, but it's another thing to run tests.

[Adamwsat]

I have but not extensively, and I haven't started Dark to be honest, I'm doing Ice, which sells for a bit less, by my last check, but sells quite often. Pitty that Dark isn't selling well because I was gonna switch to that, oh well...
and as far as my study goes, I have tried batches of ore using the same method and averaged one per batch, with the exception of porcelain which gives a few if done perfectly....
Very hard to do right, I factor in most things thought to increase chance including days, moon cycle, and I check it frequently, three times a day. I don't know if checking it often helps but it is rumored to, no way to prove it really, so I fgure why not do it since seed costs so much =D

[Roldarin]

Originally posted by DrMrLordX
Roldarin, I may have miscalculated on the day of planting. Try planting the seed on firesday instead of watersday.

3 out of 9 pots were fire crystals. Better. Certainly cheaper than the AH. But I still can't imagine how someone gets 10/10 fire crystals.

[Ixaera]

Actually, I did best with fire crystals planting on any old day, but feeding water crystals on firesday. Harvesting on firesday might also help, not sure.

From what I understand, if you want crystals, feed the crystal it's weak to on the crystal you want's day. (water crystals on firesday, earth on lightningsday, etc.) If you want items (ores, rocks, other) you feed the recipe crystal on its own day. If you were going for la theine cabbage (for whatever reason) you'd plant vegetable on watersday, feed water on watersday, and harvest on watersday. Some say doing ALL three on watersday might actually overnourish, so use your own discretion with that rule of thumb. It generally works, though.

Got 8/10 pots on fire crystals once. Of course, I don't do the fire crystal thing much, so that's out of not very many tries.

Use herb or vegetable.