[Xephoid]

I just want to take this opportunity to help some of the newer cooks around here. Hope it helps. It may not be the best route to do things, but it worked well for me. I'm doing this entirely from memory, so excuse me if there is a mistake or 2. Feel free to contribute to, correct, and add to the list, especially the cooking after lvl 52.

Unless stated other wise, material are bought from cooking guild in Win Water or AH. Having a mule or 2 in sandoria and bastock will greatly help to reduce the cost, and speed up the lvling process.

Always buy advanced image support. In my experience, it roughly equate to adding 3 lvls of cooking to your skill. And the cost is minimal when compared to how much you can lose in just 1-2 extra failures.

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0-3 Carrot broth. Water Crystal + 4x Sandurian Carrot = 4. Stack of 12 sells in Jeuno for 2000. YMMV.

3.1-6 Orange Juice. Water Crystal + 4x Sautura orange. Oranges are cheapest at vendor near northern exit in Win Water. Money loser. But since the material is cheap, just cope with it.

6.1-11 Sliced Sardine. Wind Crystal + 1x Barstore Sardine = 2. Great chance for lvling your fishing. If you are lvl 30+, harvest wind cluster in Tarhrogni canyon. If you buy your ingredients, you come close to break even. If you harvest/fish, you'll make about 1K per stack of 12.

11-13 Sliced cod. Wind crystal + tiger cod = 6. You can sell to the fishing guild and make a small profit (if I remembered correctly).

13.1-20 Selbina butter. Ice crystal + 1x selbina milk +1x rock salt
=4. Another money maker. You can sell it now or save it for later on. I say sell now, since you can always make more later on. And later with higher lvls, you get more chances to make more of it (HQ = more butter).

20.1-29 Insect Paste. Earth crystal + 1 little worm + 1 millicorn + 1 distilled water = 12. A money maker. Little worm can be bought from the store to the east of the guild, and water from the shop south of the guild. Very high profit margin, so you can start at 20, and just take the high failure rate early on. I annouced that I'm selling these to LS members for
200 per stack. I had 150+ orders from my LS, so I blasted through the levels super fast, and made about 10K in the process.

29.1-31 Sardine Balls. Earth crystal + 1 barstore sardine + horo flour + 1 distilled water = 12. Horo flour can be bought cheaper at the mithra vendor near win water > win port exit, but seems to only be available some of the time (when some region is under windurst control?). Cheap, easy to make, but it doesn't fly like the insect paste. Profitable if you sell them over the AH.

31.1-35 Meat balls. Earth crystal + 1 hare meat + 1 sandurian flour + 1 distilled water = 12. Little more expensive than sardine balls, but not by much. It's profitable again, if you have the patients to sell them over the AH.

35.1-39 Petfood Delta. You can start 33-34 if you are impatient. Earth Crystal + 1 rye flour + 1 landcrab meat +1 distilled water + 1 bird egg =6. One of my favorit as this can be a fairly significant money maker (high fame helps). Shop around different AHs for the best prices on stacks land crab meat and bird eggs. You get 6, and each sells for about 100 gil to NPCs depends on your fame.

P.S Congradulations, you can now reliably make Meat Mithkabobs. Unfortunately, no Cerebrus, it's no longer a major money maker like it use to as the prices has fallen to the point there is little profit to be made. Any way, if you are interested. Meat mithkabob = fire crystal + 1 cockatrice meat + 1 wild onion + 1 mhura garlic + 1 kazham pepper.

39.1- 42 Pie Dough. Water crystal + 1 selbina butter + 1 rocksalt + 1 sandorian flour = 4. A marginal money maker. Make selbina butter yourself helps to make it a little more profitable.

42.1-??? Apple pie. Fire crystal + 1 pie dough + 1 maple sugar + 1 cinnamon stick + 1 lizzard egg + 1 fairy apple. This is where I'm at. So I can't say much more beyond this point.

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Edit: 02/23/04

42.1 - 47: Apple pie, recipe listed above. Break even if you shop for the ingredients over several AH and buy from vendors. (S.Sandorian grocery sell maple surgar for 41 while San is #1, Cinnamon goes for 240 there as well if I remember right). Use lizzard eggs instead of bird eggs for higher success rate. Basically you break even if you are semi-lucky, get only 1-2 failures per 12 syn (adv.image is a must). These sell very fast over AH, or even just have your character sit in lower Jeuno with them in the bazaar.

47.1-52: Crayfish balls. Quite a profitable syn. 1 earth crystal + 3 crayfish + 1 sandorian flour +1 distiled water. Buy crayfishs over AH for 700 per stack (seen 500 per stack). Flour is cheapest if you ship from your mule in sandy (61g). Sells for 500 per stack on Cerebrus. 3K material makes 6K worth of balls. yeah baby! ^^ Might want to try start making them at 45 if you feel lucky.

P.S Congradulations, you have just reached another landmark. Now you can reliably make Fish mithkabobs without image support. 1 stack of 12 Fish mithkabob = 1 fire crystal + 1 barstore sardine + 1 neobomite + 2 shall shells + 1 blue tail. On cerebrus, 42K of material makes 60K worth of Fish Mithkabobs currently. But it doesn't sell as fast as meat mikabob (takes me about 2 days to sell 12 stacks using 3 mules). Might want to hurry, because when the majority of cooks reach lvl 50, the prices of the fish kabob might plunge just like Meat kabobs did. Also keep in mind that there is a baseline failure rate, even when you are over the item's syn cap. At 52, there is still a good chance that you'll fail once every 12 syn. But given the 18K profit margin, failing once means you'll just make 15K instead of 18K. :spin:

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Update: 03/31/04
Correction to pie dough as some have pointed out, it caps at 42, not 43. Thanks for picking that up. ^^

Ok, have been leveling my subs and other things. Also leveling cooking at this point appears to get much more expensive and slow down.

52.1 - 55: Baugreen Sautee = 1 fire crystal + 1 baugreen + 1 selbina butter. This may not be the best way to go, as it does not sell well in the AH. So you are forced to sell back to the Guilde for about 185 gil each (selilng to other NPC yield greater loss). You basically lose about 100 gil per syn due to the cost of fire crystals. I had a bunch of crystal left from leveling my sub, so I just used them.

55.1 - 61: Stone cheese = 1 dark crystal + 1 selbina milk + 1 rock salt = 4x stone cheese. You'll lose a little bit of money on this. They don't sell to guild, and almost nobody ever buys it on the AH. At least it's very cheap to make, and you can sell it back to NPC for about 70 a piece, so provided that you never fail, you only lose about 50 gil per syn. Or you can save it and turn it into the guild for guild points.

I stopped leveling my craft at 60, because I don't see a HUGE profit potential in cooking even at high levels. Cooking even at 60 is really just a something for you to save money with over the long run by making your own food. For big money, I'm leveling another craft to 60+.

[Masamoon]

Very nice. This should be stickied.

[hasbean]

Very very helpful Xephiod .. thank you much

[ACslater]

good info xep, need to make my own kabobs

[FuZi0n]

Can you make good money in cooking??I have about 50k I could put into it if I would bring in good money.

[Xephoid]

Unfortunately, most crafts don't make money, at least not alot of money from what I see.

The problem I see is:

(1) Too much competition. On cerebrus, when I first hit 36 in cooking, meat mithkabobs were selling for 2800-3000 per stack (3500 in jeuno). So for a few days, I was cranking out meath mithkabobs, and along with 2 mules, I was making about 7-9K a day. Then within a week, the price dropped to 2300-2400 a stack. There goes almost all of my profit margin. The only explaination is that all the NA players are hitting the same lvl now.

(2) People aren't willing to pay too high of a premium for a non-durable goods. Food are meant to be eaten. Once you eat, it's gone. People aren't willing to pay a huge amount of money for something that last 30 minutes.

(3) The lvling factor. There are always people who are lvling their craft. Many of them wealthy, so they are willing to do thing at a loss by paying high prices for the ingredients. Most of the tiem, the cooking guild in win water has ingredient prices jacked way up do the all the lvling that are being done. Which cuts into profit margins for establish craftsman.

Unfortunately, I have arrived at the conclusion, with the exception of super high lvl crafters, there is little money to be made from any craft, at least not consistantly. You can probably sell the ingredients for almost as much as you craft your items for.

The only exceptions are when you are super high lvl, and you get high quality items left and right. In that case, yes, you can turn a profit. For example, if you are making meat mithkabobs, you have a chance of making meat chiefkabobs in the process. The greater your lvl exceed what mithkobab takes, higher your chances. But to have a significant chance, you need to be at least 30-40 lvls higher. So that means your cooking needs to be in the 60's before you get any significant quanities for chief kabobs (which sells for about 2-3 times what mithkabos sells). There's the bulk of the profitability in any craft -- HQ items.

[mrrhypon]

The economy has everything to do with balance.

If the price drops very fast cooking-ppl won't synth meat-kabobs because they make to little profit. Then you will see there are only a few meat kabobs on sale.

When there are only a few meat kabobs on ah you will see the price will go up, up up again .

( Many available -> price down
( Few available -> price up

[NewMorning]

This is just the kind of thing i was looking for.

thanks

[Leatherface]

great guide, thanks

[soki]

I don't understand the NPC's in this game.. Here's what has been going on between me and the vendors at the Culinarian guild in Windurst:

Day 1: Bought 2 stacks of San d'Orian Carrots, then NPC was sold out
Day 2: Bought 2 (not stacks) San d'Orian Carrots, then NPC was sold out
Day 3: Bought 2 (not stacks) San d'Orian Carrots, then NPC was sold out

Why does this happen? I was there at 5:00 when it opened on day 2 and day 3.

[Rawls]

SE went into detail w/ the amount of items a NPC has in stock... they get new shipments in every day and depending on how well they sell that item may or may not be availble later

NOTE: do not quote me about the daily shipments thing, it was just for the sake of example

[soki]

Argh, that will surely hinder my progress =(
Was told you could do 1-40 in a day with enough gil, but not when the NPCs are like that :/

[Tomoh]

Wow! Using this guide, I got up to 16 in a week. Thanks!

Yes, my pace is slow

[Exponen7]

0 -> 40 in 3 days, nice guide

[Taoist]

>>montgomery burns voice<<

excellent...