We have now gone over the elements of seeds and Gardening Moghancements as well as taken a look at the basics of planting, feeding, and harvesting. We now have everything we need to become a sucessful gardener. But where do we go from here? Can we use this knowledge to grow otherwise costly items? Can we grow rare ores and coins? Does money really grow on trees? Read on to find out.

Tree Saplings - The only "recipe" in Gardening

I mentioned last time that there is no such a thing as a "recipe" in gardening. I said that it's about the methodology and not the method. Well, this was only partially true. In truth, there is actually one honest to goodness recipe in gardening.



Tree Saplings cannot be farmed off of any enemy in the game. They cannot be purchased from an NPC or quested for (to the best of my knowledge). The only way to get them are to grow them from Tree Cuttings.



To get Tree Saplings from Cuttings, plant them, and don't feed them. It's that simple. After a couple of weeks, you will get Saplings.



Now, you can use elemental knowledge to improve your Saplings result. Remember Tree Cuttings are Ice elemental, and Ice beats Wind. Thus, if you plant Tree Cuttings in a Porcelain Pot on Iceday, and then harvest as close to a full moon as possible you will get more Tree Saplings than you otherwise would. In fact, planting them this way is the only way to guarantee that you will get Tree Saplings. So, for those of you needing a chart:

• Plant Tree Cuttings in Porcelain Pot on Iceday
• Do not feed the Tree Cuttings any crystals
• Check the plant each day
• After two weeks, harvest the plant nearest the full moon
• Say hello to Tree Saplings

Elemental Ores

These have become my big cash cow in the game. If you are like me, and are sick to death of farming, then these puppies will be your ticket out of Smallsville.



In order to get the Ore you want, you really need to recall the steps detaled last time. Elemental Ores can only be harvested from Tree Saplings. Tree Saplings have a dark elemental affinity. Thus, you will want to plant them on Darksday. Any pot will work, but Porcelain and Arcane work the best.



Feeding the Sapling is where things get complicated.

• First crystal feed day, feed the Sapling a crystal that is the same element as the day. (E.g., Earth Crystal on Earthsday)
• Second crystal feed day, feed the Sapling the same crystal from the first day, but feed it on the day you planted the Sapling, Darksday. (E.g., if I fed Earth Crystal for the first feed, I would now feed Earth Crystal again except on Darksday)

Harvesting the Ore should be done on the day that is strongest against the elemental affinity of the Tree Sapling, Lightsday.



The exceptions to this are Light and Dark Ores. For these, the planting should be the same day as the Ore you want, and the harvesting should be opposite. These ones will be fairly hard to do simply because they run the risk of oversaturating your crop (e.g., you get Rock Salt).

Getting Gold Beastcoins

The final Advanced Result we will look at is Gold Beastcoins. Gold Beastcoins give us a great way to plan out other advanced gardening results on our own. With the basic methodology we can grow just about any other type of beastcoin or nugget that we want.



We start by looking up Gold Beastcoins elemental affinity. We find it is "Fire". Thus, we want to plant Tree Cuttings (Ice) on Iceday. We then want to feed on Lightsday. So we will feed a Light Crystal on Lightsday for the first feeding.



The second feeding will depend upon the pot we have used. If we are using Brass, then we already have the sufficient balance we want (Ice/Fire). If not, then we will want to balance out with a Dark Crystal on Lightsday.



For harvesting, we want to avoid Firesday because our Iceday planting would oversaturate. We also want to avoid Iceday because our desired Fire would undersaturate. Instead, what we want to do is harvest on a Windsday closest the full moon (if you don't understand why on Windsday, see the elemental wheel again).



Using a similar methodology, you can grow and harvest any of the expensive coins and nuggest in the game.

Tools of the trade

You now know all you need in order to start pulling excellent profit. Gardening is complicated stuff, but it isn't mystical by any means. Once you get the basic methodology down, you will be able to grow just about anything you want. You will get failures to be sure, but you will also get a lot of success.



In order to really get the most out of your gardening, there are several tools available which you should know of:

• First, if you have a Palm OS based PDA, then you really need the Final Fantasy XI Timer for Palm. You can use this to figure out the upcoming days and moon cycles.
• Pyogenes Timer is another great resource.
• SomePage.com has a great gardening page.
• Finally, Allakhazam has a great list of links for Crafting in general that includes some on gardening.

Good luck!