We’ll start with a common (but under-explained) system: Treasure Maps. These are easy to forget since they don’t appear in the Duty Finder. In fact, this involves one of the only group activities in FFXIV that require you to manually form a party. But once you get a group — either via your Free Company or the Party Finder — you’re in for a good time.
Treasure Maps are quick and simple. You use “Decipher” on a map and then go to where the map shows. Once there, you use the “Dig” skill to unearth a hidden treasure chest. The owner of the map must be the one to open it, which will then spawn hordes of trash enemies. Once they’re dead you can access the loot. This includes a pretty pinch of raw Gil for the whole party, some Tomestones, and a smattering of crafting materials and/or Materia to sell on the market or use yourself. There’s also a high chance that eight-player maps (like the Zonureskin Treasure Map and Kumbhiraskin Treasure Map) will spawn a portal. The map’s owner can interact with this to drag the whole party into a unique mini-dungeon.
Said dungeons mostly include more random loot and more trash mobs defending it. There’s very little skill involved besides fighting the monsters. How far you progress comes down to luck — either a 50/50 chance of picking the right door or the literal spin of a roulette wheel. The deeper you go, though, the better your chances of getting rare loot. That includes minions, furniture, and crafting materials that are exclusive to a particular treasure dungeon. This is why Timeworn Treasure Maps can be sold for quite a bit on the Market Board. Players effectively “gamble” on maps: buying and deciphering more and more in hopes of acquiring a rare drop from within a portal.
You can acquire one new map yourself every 18 hours. They’re randomly found in Mining and Botany nodes throughout the world. Once you acquire one, the timer resets, and you get another “allowance” after the 18 hours are up. From there you can either choose to use the map yourself or play it safe and sell it on the Market Board.
It’s also worth pointing out that you can stockpile multiple maps over time. While you can only hold one of a particular type in your inventory, your Chocobo Saddlebag and any Retainers can also hold one each. That’s up to four copies of any given map without paying extra money for inventory space!
As with most MMOs, Final Fantasy 14 offers various tasks and challenges that reset daily or weekly, and both can be a great way of earning some extra Gil. Dailies include roulettes and beastmen quests, both of which can earn Gil as rewards, or materia.
Additionally, there is a weekly challenge log that can earn players some easy Gil just by ticking off various tasks. Some challenges are very easy to complete, such as playing some mini-games, while others are earned naturally just through playing.
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Anemos, is an instanced area that players can access once they have completed the level 70 quest “And We Shall Call It Eureka,” given by Galiena at Rhalgr’s Reach (X:9.8, Y:12.5). This instanced area is perfect for fans of Final Fantasy 11, as much of its content references Square Enix’s previous MMO.
There is a multitude of tasks that players can undertake in Eureka and plenty that offers rewards too. Some of these rewards are prime profit-makers when put on the market board, such as the Final Fantasy 11-themed minions that can be earned from the FATEs in Eureka.
If you play FFXIV, you’ve almost certainly seen the “Adventurer in Need” bonus applied to the Duty Roulette. This provides a bonus of EXP, Gil, and special trade-in items to make Materia. The Adventurer in Need bonus is given out to players who queue into a Duty Roulette that needs a particular role. This is indicated by the role icon next each Duty Roulette. It’s an extremely profitable system for tanks since they tend to be the most in-demand player role, thus getting more opportunities to be an Adventurer in Need. This varies by server, time of day, and duty. Alliance Raids require 15 DPS players and just three tanks, for instance, so that duty skews towards damage-dealers.
That’s fine, though. Alliance Raids provide some of the greatest benefit — more Gil, more Tomestones, etc. — but also take longer than most other content. The time-to-Gil investment varies depending on the raid. You might get The Syrcus Tower (which is very quick and easy) or you might get Dun Scaith (which takes a while). Party wipes extend the process further, so recent raids increase the odds of taking more time.
Trials provide the best raw Gil for the time. They’re short (some of the A Realm Reborn ones are laughably easy) and offer 4,320 Gil for the Adventurer in Need bonus. The Leveling Roulette is usually more profitable, however. It can take longer, since it’s statistically likely to be a full dungeon, but the Adventurer in Need bonus is 12,000 Gil, three (3) Materia trade-in clusters, and a few thousand Grand Company Seals. Seals can be converted into Ventures, Cordial, Dark Matter, and crafting materials., all of which can either make you money or save you money. We’ll get to the details on that further down.
Let’s circle back to those clusters (e.g. Cracked Dendroclusters and Cracked Anthoclusters). Not to be confused with elemental Clusters used in crafting (e.g. Fire Clusters, Wind Clusters, etc.) these are traded in at any Materia Vendor for, well… Materia. Though the type you get from Adventurer in Need bonuses only give you combat Materia. This is typically less valuable than crafting and gathering Materia, because it’s so damn easy to acquire, but that just means you can sell the Materia en masse to other players. Especially right before or after a major patch that adds content like a new raid.
As a general rule of thumb: buy and sell the highest possible grade of Savage Aim Materia. Most Materia is useful, but this is the most popular flavor since it enhances Critical Hit. This is a universally useful and potent combat stat. As such, players often max it out before “pentamelding” other stats into endgame gear.
This way of making Gil is for the more patient players, but it can reap big rewards. However, the player will need a property like a Free Company house or a personal house where they can tend to their garden. One of the most profitable but time-consuming plants players can grow are thavnairian onions, as players use these onions to level up their Chocobo companions.
Doing so not only requires cross-breeding other vegetables to get the correct seeds, but also frequent and diligent watering. However, it definitely will result in a lot of Gil. Welcome to Final Fantasy meets Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley.
While running Duty Roulettes, you’re bound to max out your Tomestones of Poetics. These are those red and teal rectangles burning a hole in your Currency menu. You get them for completing older content, whenever you or a party member finishes a group activity for the first time, and as a daily Duty Roulette bonus when playing as Jobs below the level cap. You can hold up to 2,000 Tomestones of Poetics at a time, just like any other Tomestones, but they’re not used for anything endgame. A lot of players even forget about them entirely. You shouldn’t!
Instead, convert them into items at any capital city, Revenant’s Toll, or Idyllshire. The one we care about in this instance is Idyllshire. The NPC Hismena, in Rowena’s Center for Cultural Promotion, sells Goblinol and Goblacquer for 10 Poetics apiece under the “Allagan Tomestones of Poetics (Other)” category. These both sell to junk vendors for a respectable 64 Gil. That’s 12,800 Gil per 2,000 Tomestones of Poetics. Note that this is the best raw Gil exchange since Demicrystal prices were nerfed.
Another profit farm is picking up Grade 3 Topsoils for gardening players. Hismena also sells “Unidentifiable Shells” and “Unidentifiable Ore” that can be exchanged for Grade 3 Shroud Topsoil and Grade 3 Thanalan Topsoil, respectively. The NPC to her left, Bertana, will make the exchange.
Here’s the very basic breakdown:
The “unidentifiable” items can be purchased up to 13 at a time, for 1,950 Poetics in total. Topsoil prices on the Market Board vary, but we typically see these two types hovering around 1,000 Gil apiece. That’s roughly 13,000 Gil per full stack of Poetics for those keeping count. One nice thing is that Topsoils are consumable. Gardeners always need more of them to produce their (much more valuable) crops. They’re always in demand and prices sometimes shoot up even higher.
Mathematically, these need to sell for at least 961 Gil per unit of Topsoil on the market to be more cost-effective than simply selling Goblinol and Goblacquer to a normal vendor. Even then you’re only making fractionally more. Remember that time is money in FFXIV. Time spent putting the item on the market, waiting for a buyer, and potentially fiddling with prices to avoid getting undercut is time you could spend making Gil elsewhere. Check the market and only trade for Topsoils when you can reliably sell them for at least 1,000 Gil, preferably more. Otherwise, the junk loot is more efficient.
In an ideal society, everyone makes money together. We all hold hands, sing songs and decorate our houses in Final Fantasy XIV. But not me, everyone is competition.
This ain’t market day in pre school, this is the market board. A fair market, and ethical wages for your retainers should not concern you. We’re talking about pure, unadulterated capitalism here. So let the dark secrets you learn here be a warning, that a free unregulated market might sound good on paper… but only one person can win that one. And if I had a say in that, it would be me.
One of the frequent complaints you’ll hear about the market board are those damn undercutters. The practice of putting up an item on the market board for a lower price than what’s currently the cheapest to sell faster. Now that’s a valid complain, you can lose potentially millions of gil like that. That’s on you you, because you expected to get the maximum value out of that item you just got from Heaven on High. But nothing is guaranteed. Personally, I’m all for undercutting others just so my wares sell faster. And there are two reason’s for that. First, you’re ensuring the stagnation of someone else’s net worth. Why you may ask? Because in order for you to be rich, everyone else must be poor. And the second reason is just as simple, spite.
Gil that sits in your Free Company chest, or in your inventory can’t grow. Its static and if you like it or not. As in the real world, inflation is a thing and with every second that money isn’t put to use, it loses value. So we invest like the good, forward thinking and ruthless economists we are. While we do our basic sales, we should always but some money aside for these kinds of investments. Housing items, minions or certain glamour’s that are expensive too craft?
Look at the cost of material and then what the item crafted will sell for. As long as we can turn a profit after taxes, we turn a profit and make our money grow. A current example would be the Varsity Jacket, a popular glamour item that, at least on my server goes for 1.9 million per jacket. The only expensive ingredient is the Exciting Fiber for around 1.5 million per material. We only need one of them and the jacket is fairly easy to craft, since no one will bother with high quality for a glamour item.
So now by just buying the material and selling the crafted the jacket, we make a fat profit of 400k gil for little to no work. And even if someone else has the same idea. The chances that we are losing out on profit, with a 400k margin are little to none. It’s not important how much of a profit you make, as long as you are turning one. It was a good investment. Now you are free to apply this principle to other strategies. Material or food way cheaper on another world in your datacenter? Go buy it for cheap there, and sell it on your own for a profit. Just keep in mind the 5% tax you’ll have to pay when buying or selling items.
Class quests make for dependable income for players wanting Gil. This is because many players go to the market board and buy items, rather than taking the time and care to craft them themselves. If players look up what items are required to complete class quests, just craft several copies of that that item and watch as players line up and buy it.
Of course, this will require leveling up a crafter. It’s highly recommended that players level a crafting job anyway, as crafting is a big part of making Gil.
Roulettes are a slow and steady way to make Gil. Not only do players automatically get a bit of Gil, but they can get loot worth selling. Unfortunately, most loot doesn’t sell for much. However, the more difficult roulettes have a different story. Highest level players can do Expert Roulettes and get the best of the best materia that is currently available.
Selling that materia on the market board every day will add up the Gil rather nicely. Also, many of the dungeons of Final Fantasy 14 are gorgeous and worth seeing more than once.
This method requires you to have a High-Level Crafting Class, so it can be quite expensive and/or time-consuming at the start if you didn’t level it up yet. The combined price of materials is most of the time much lower than the price of a ready Gear piece, which creates a room for profit. There are two main approaches to this method. First – you gather all crafting materials by yourself. This way you maximize net profit at the expense of time. Doing this minimizes the initial investments and allows you to maximize your profits from gathering. Second – you buy crafting materials on the market. This way you minimize time consumption at the expense of profits. Doing this requires a big initial investment, but if you have some Gil already, you might as well use it to make even more.
Firstly, you have to unlock Retainer Ventures; to do it, complete “The Scions of the Seventh Dawn” Quest, hire at least a single Retainer and complete 1 of 3 lvl 17 quests in 3 major cities:
After that, assign a Class to your retainer, provide him with gear, and send him on a Venture. Available ventures are Botany, Fishing, Mining, Hunting, Highland Exploration, Field Exploration, Waterside Exploration, Woodland Exploration, and Quick Exploration. Ventures often get you items that are not worth too much, but the real value comes in numbers and those start to add up after a while. This method, while not too profitable, can be performed unbelievably quickly, which makes it great as an on-the-side moneymaker.
Gathering classes will not net as much Gil as crafting, but it doesn’t cost anything either. All gathering costs the player is time. Look on the market board at what is selling for decent Gil that is gather-able, then go ahead and gather while watching a T.V. show.
It is an easy task to do while working on something else. In terms of what gathering class is the most profitable, many would agree that it is the Mining class.
I get it. FATEs are tedious. The public events see an explosion of fresh players leveling up their characters every expansion. After that, they’re mostly empty. There are simply easier, more enjoyable ways to grind EXP. They don’t provide a great deal of money, either, and even the Grand Company Seals can be acquired elsewhere.
Notice a couple of things about that assessment, though? EXP, Gil, Seals: FATEs provide it all. They don’t provide much of any one thing, but the various values add up for the relatively short time it takes to run multiple FATEs. That’s not even including the better moneymaker of FATE grinding: Bicolor Gemstones. This unique currency is only awarded after completing a Shadowbringers or Endwalker FATE. You get 14 for a full, successful clear. You then turn them in to buy animal parts from Gemstone Traders throughout those expansions’ regions. Two gemstones will get you a single hide, bottle of milk, etc.
These prices vary (like everything else) but selling up-to-date materials at a conservative 300 Gil apiece would net you 2,100 Gil per FATE — plus the Gil and Seals from the FATE itself. Unlike killing the monsters for their hides and other crafting materials directly, there’s also zero random chance involved, and you’re not competing with other players for the kill. In fact, other players can cooperate with you to make the process even faster. This lets you complete a great number of FATEs in the hour it takes Retainers to collect the same materials.
If you really stick to it, you can even reach the best FATE moneymaker. That’s Bicolor Gemstone Vouchers, baby. Anyone can use 500 of these to buy some unique cosmetics and wow are they a grind to get. You need to first complete 360 total FATEs (60 in each Endwalker region). This will unlock the right to purchase Bicolor Gemstone Vouchers from Sajareen in Radz-at-Han (X: 11.1, Y: 10.2) and/or Gadfrid in Old Sharlayan (X: 12.7, Y: 10.4). Each voucher will set you back 100 Bicolor Gemstones (which amounts to a little more than seven successful FATEs per voucher). But a single voucher can sell for more than 100,000 Gil. Depending on your server. The reason being that nobody actually wants to grind those 360 FATEs or the several thousand necessary to acquire 500 vouchers. Most folks buy them from those brave few that farm them instead.
his will require you to have a Gathering Class on your character. If you don’t have it already, the high time consumption of this method will become even higher (leveling up takes time). The gathering is the simplest of all available Gil-making methods, but it has some nuance to it nonetheless. The nuance comes from the supply-demand relation. In simple words: you want to gather materials that are in high demand constantly (check the market statistics), as they will sell quickest and for the best price. This means that you should start with research (just like with other methods that involve market usage) and identify the best gathering targets. After the research is complete, it is time to spend hours upon hours farming, because after all, hard-earned money smells the best, doesn’t it?
Obviously, for hunting/grinding you want a character with as high DPS as possible to finish off your enemies quicker. You can check our DPS ranking for FFXIV to find out what are the best classes in that manner. This may not directly reflect how profitable playing a certain class is, but it should still give you a general overview how fast certain classes are for PvE combat.