Gardening for profit

[Dizmo]

What is the best "recipe" to use when gardening to make profit selling at the AH?
I have 5k on my character and I've never gardened before.

[DrMrLordX]

Given your budget, probably fire crystals. They're cheap, easy, and fast to grow. You will always have buyers. You will always make a profit doing it. So far as I can tell, this is the best recipe(there may be better ones, who knows?):

vegetable or herbs seeds, brass pot
plant on watersday
feed water crystal on watersday
harvest on firesday or lightsday

Also remember to NOT examine your plants when growing crystals. If you fear withering plants, use the Gardening moghancement.

I don't know if firesday or lightsday makes for better harvests, but you will probably get more crystals harvesting on or near a full moon. Adjust your day of harvest accordingly.

The choice between vegetable seeds and herb seeds is yours to make. Veggie seeds grow a bit faster and have higher crystal yields, but herb seeds tend to yield bay leaves whenever you do not get crystals(this can, and will, happen for both seed types). Bay leaves sell fairly well. I forget what the yields from veggie seeds are on failures, but it's something worth less gil than bay leaves.

[Zafron]

Originally posted by DrMrLordX
I forget what the yields from veggie seeds are on failures, but it's something worth less gil than bay leaves.

I want to say Latheine cabbages, but it has been so many months since i gardened crystals i can't rightly remember.

[Roldarin]

Veggie seeds definitely yield cabbages.

[Roldarin]

Originally posted by DrMrLordX
So far as I can tell, this is the best recipe(there may be better ones, who knows?):

vegetable or herbs seeds, brass pot
plant on watersday
feed water crystal on watersday
harvest on firesday or lightsday

How often does this recipe yield fire crystals vs. cabbages? Like say out of 10 pots?

[Tan'o]

It should be 10/10 on fire crystals. Never had a failure with this recipe.

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by Roldarin

How often does this recipe yield fire crystals vs. cabbages? Like say out of 10 pots?

That, I do not know. I think you may get "failures"(non-crystal harvests) harvesting on firesday as opposed to lightsday, or if you check the plants periodically. I think.

It's a fast recipe to grow, so you can test it yourself easily. I'm fully invested in proceline pots right now, so I can't do any testing myself.

[CarbonFibre]

Checking your plants is bad? :confused:
What effect does this have?

[Zafron]

Originally posted by CarbonFibre
Checking your plants is bad? :confused:
What effect does this have?

Examining your plants is bad only if you are trying to get crystals. If you are trying to get HQ items, you want to examine your plants as often as possible. Gardening with porc pots i examine my grows minimum 3 times a RL day.

Edited: As for fire crystal recipe i can't remember what i did.

Has anyone gotten their hands on an Arcane pot yet? I have to say i'm curious about what i could do with it but i'm so blissfully satisfied with my current gardening system i'm very reluctant to disrupt my routine to go experimenting with a 300k flowerpot.

[Brunhild]

I do a lot of gandening, and because everyone does the fire crystal growing thing, I'm trying to find a recipie that is ever more profitable.

I havn't found it yet though, grew light crystals for a while, but you only get about 2-5 at a time, so it took too long to make a stack. Trying to grow Ginger, Black Pepper and Millioncorn (for quest in Selbina) atm.

[Caspian]

Is there a thread I can look at that will explain all the gardening stuff I need to know as well as some high profit yielding recipes...I've got a budget of atleast 30k.


(I'd try to search more for it, but I'm at work right now and am short on time)

thanks

[CarbonFibre]

I got this from here a while back
http://www.koolaid-ffxi.org/garden/index.jsp;jsessionid=drvlx3nbxic0

[Bloodseed]

My LS leader has been going on about Ice Ores that he's been growing.

He's tryed to explain it all to me, but I never got a chance to write it down.

How do you grow these things? What are they for and what do you do with them?

[Bloodseed]

My LS leader has been going on about Ice Ores that he's been growing.

He's tryed to explain it all to me, but I never got a chance to write it down.

How do you grow these things? What are they for and what do you do with them?

[Gman]

Someone in my LS advised strongly against me trying elemental ores. This could be either because he wants to prevent more people growing them, thus flooding the market, or he might have been just looking out for me financially. You need to plant a tree sapling to grow, then feed an ice crystal at 2 feeding times. So the recipe is Tree Sapling + Ice Crystal + Ice Crystal = 1 Ice Ore (sell for 200-300k each) Unfortunatly you need to be EXTREMELY lucky to actually get ice ores.

He said I should have at least 12 saplings growing at a time to have a chance at an ice ore. Saplings sell for 10-13k each, or you can grow them from Tree Cuttings (5k each) but it takes 2 weeks to grow.

I'm currently growing a batch of saplings. I have 3 Porcelain pots, and a tree cutting planted in each. The yield when using the Porcelain should be 2 saplings per pot, so I will get 6 saplings x about 12k each = 72k gil. My initial investment was 5.5k per pot and 5k for a tree cutting (I farmed the other 2) So 20k starting, 72k back... not bad, but the growing time is 2 real life weeks!!

I also have a question about growing crystals. I would like to grow Ice Crystals, but I'm not sure exactly how... also, if I never check the plant, it will wither up... how do crystal gardeners prevent this? Thanks.

[DrMrLordX]

Don't waste your time growing elemental ore. There's more money elsewhere(you figure it out).

Growing ice crystals should be relatively simple, though economically unviable. You'd use fire crystals to grow ice crystals. See any problems yet?

Ice crystals typically cost less per crystal than fire crystals at the AH, so you'd need to grow a lot of ice crystals to make up for it. Add in the fact that yields on ALL the ice crystal recipes seem to be poor, and you've got a bad situation.

Best crystal yield seems to be earthen pot + grain seeds + fire crystal. Yields 4-6 ice crystals, some tarutaru rice, or one red rock. Plant on firesday, feed fire crystal on firesday, harvest on lightsday or iceday(I'd advocate lightsday).

An alternate is porceline pot + herb seeds + fire crystal. Yields 3-5 ice crystals or 10-22 kazham peppers. Same basic procedure as before: plant on firesday, feed fire crystal on firesday, harvest on lightsday.

All the above data is courtesy of the Bilingual FFXI site run by Eriwilde. Er, most of it. I'm still not 100% on the day of planting. Eriwilde's site says: If you plant seeds on the day which has the weak attribute of the crystal to give later, it seems more likely you get crystals.

I interpret that to mean that you want to plant the seeds on the day of the element weak vs the crystal you'll be feeding the plant later. So, if you're feeding fire crystals, you want to plant on iceday . . . hmm, wish I had open pot space to run some tests.

Don't worry about your plants dying from neglect. Enable gardening moghancement if you're really worried. Just feed the crystal ASAP once it becomes able to accept one and once the proper day rolls around. The quick growth times on grain, veggie, and herb seeds will prevent most withering as long as you feed your plant a crystal.

[Gman]

Thanks for the response. I will only need a couple more stacks of ice crystals, then I wont be using them again in the near future... it was only for selbina butter...

As for the growing ores, you're the 3rd person who has advised not to do it. I take it theres a VERY slim chance of growing one?

[evilution]

the chance isnt THAT slim... but its not a sure thing either.

go ahead and try :D cant hurt

[Darklyte]

in a pure profit-geared growth the easiest fool-proof method is definately Tree Saplings.

the recipe can be found in multiple sites/post and if u can fail on growing tree sapling.....lol quit gardening.

a slight note to take note of is that the yield rate ranges from 1-2
so u can get a minimum of 10 yields to a max of 20.

This is the safest way for profit IF u can fork out the initial head capital.

If not , the kind DrMrLord's crystal is perhaps a good way to start.

Elem ores are not the best choice for profit as in the long run growing Saplings are a safer/reliable chance of getting some decent $$.

kinda like Farming VS NM hunting ^^

[Gatts]

I covet the recipe's for Ice Ore and Dark Ore carefully. If there has been any posts on how to grow them i havent seen them, and i would never relate them because if everyone knew, the prices would drop dramatically.

The reason ice ore sells on my server for 320k instead of 200k is because nobody knows how the hell to grow it. Seems people cant keep their traps shut though of late, as more and more people tend to be mentioning they know of the recipe's.

Although, i will say ive given up on growing plants and i believe guilds hold a much higher yield, time and effort vs. money wise.
Im sick of having to ditch perfectly good party's because its time to check on or feed my plants.

Of course this doesnt mean that i'd tell you the recipe.. i think 3-4 weeks of someones time is worth 320k at least, and would never make an attempt to drop the price by spilling the beans, and ruining it for everyone who knows and makes a living off of it.

[Greywen]

I never got around to doing any tradeskills but uh how do you tell what day is what ^^;;

[JP_Ikari]

Ok, Gatts I do get the part where everyone has their own "secrets" and such, and I do get the part where "what's the point if I do this tradeskill now that my Ele ores will drop to 60,000gil". But lets see this logic. Assuming that the Ele ores are so easy to make (and from what you guys have been saying it isn't), why keep it to yourself?? Does it make you feel better that you can make an Ele ore and sell it for 350,000gil while everyone is wondering how to? I mean seriously, put yourself in this position. If you're one of those people that's wondering how, wouldn't you want to know how to grow one???

Sorry, I'm not flaming on you bro, it's just that I hate the fact that when someone knows something, that in turn will make everyone benefit off of, but yet you keep it to yourself. It's cool that you want too, I won't stop you from that, but since gardening requires time, effort, cash (for the pots) and attention, IMO it would be a lot harder to keep track of something like that. Unless you know your chance of getting one is less than 10%. Sharing recipie is 1 thing, sharing tricks as to how to grow it like if you can yield 4 out of 5 tries, then I would understand why you would keep it for yourself. Heck, the economy on every server is so unbalanced that I guess this is one sure fire way to make money. Again, sorry Gatts, I'm not flaming you, I just wanted to point out something that I'm not very comfortable with. Keep your tricks to yourself, but things like recipe's share it, at least then they have an idea how to make it. It's gonna be up to them if they can do it.


Ikari

[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 :(

[Mizu]

I wouldn't recommend making ele ores .. not becaus the worth drops, just becaus there are many other profitable ways to get money.
I'm lv 54 woodworker so i got about 200k and invested it in pots and cuttings (not all ^^) .. however ... plant them .. wait ... and earn much money, with about 12 pots you "can" make a stack sapplings wich's worth about 100-150k.
take the money and buy new pots + sapplings
than return ... return .. return .. return .. /doze .... and earn more and more money ..... :sweat:

[Zafron]

Originally posted by Gatts
I covet the recipe's for Ice Ore and Dark Ore carefully. If there has been any posts on how to grow them i havent seen them, and i would never relate them because if everyone knew, the prices would drop dramatically.

The reason ice ore sells on my server for 320k instead of 200k is because nobody knows how the hell to grow it. Seems people cant keep their traps shut though of late, as more and more people tend to be mentioning they know of the recipe's.

Although, i will say ive given up on growing plants and i believe guilds hold a much higher yield, time and effort vs. money wise.
Im sick of having to ditch perfectly good party's because its time to check on or feed my plants.

Of course this doesnt mean that i'd tell you the recipe.. i think 3-4 weeks of someones time is worth 320k at least, and would never make an attempt to drop the price by spilling the beans, and ruining it for everyone who knows and makes a living off of it.

totally untrue. People don't grow high end ores because it is a pain in the rear. I suspect the only way to be significantly more profitable than cutting growths with sappling growths, is if you were to adhere to the law of large numbers and garden with sapplings using a huge initial investment in a few dozen pots over several different mules.

the recipe for successful high end ore growths is definately no secret.

a site with high end ore recipes (http://somepage.com/ffxi/gardening/combined.html)

very thorough tree sappling site in JP (http://www.geocities.jp/ff11seed/plant.html)

And of course Pikko has been kind enough to post her sappling results on Pikko's Pots (http://www.swapsonian.com/pikko/recipes-item.html#iceore), where she posts the recipe for ice ore.

Ive found others but these are the ones ive bookmarked. Any experienced gardener will be able to apply fundamental gardening knowledge about moon phase and planting/feeding/harvesting days to use these recipes effectively.

[Riskimew]

Zafron beat me to it.

Maybe there should be a 'How to grow elemental ores' or Gardening sticky post on this board - the question always pops up, and it isn't a protected secret anymore. At least not by me, I'll scream the recipe to everyone who will listen. :P

For people who didn't/can't check those sites..

Porcelain pots, tree saplings, 2 of the same element = shot at ore of that element. It's rare even with that combination, and there are day and moon factors to take into account, but that is the recipe. So if you want fire ore, put a tree sapling in your porc pot and put in two fire crystals.

What I'd really like to see is some information on the newly-added ancient pot. That thing is out of the reach of most players, as far as I know (gotta get lucky on a strange apparatus) and I believe it's rare/ex, so it should grow some interesting stuff.

[DrMrLordX]

*sigh*

Until the level 74 rings become hot enough to start selling en masse, there will never be enough raw demand for any elemental ore except ice and dark ore for anyone to really want to grow the stuff. Even then, there's only a limited amount of demand per type of ore per server. Saying that "it's worth it to grow elemental ore" is untrue because only a few people can really take advantage of the market. If the information becomes widely available on how to get high yields when growing elemental ore, the ore itself loses value. I wouldn't advise growing the stuff because I'd be giving you bad advice. I have stopped growing ore myself, because I am satisfied with my techniques that got me consistant 40% yields on dark ore. I could crank out 12 dark ore every 3-4 weeks using 3 characters. And you know what? It ain't worth it. I could possibly refine my recipe to work even better. It still wouldn't be worth it if ore prices keep crashing.

Midgardsormr's dark ore market crashed from 500k-300k recently, mostly because of . . . chocobo diggers. Surprise surprise *) There are occasional lulls in supply now, when it's possible to sell ore fairly well, but due to the long growth periods associated with dark ore, you'd pretty much have to hold it after getting it to hit the market at the right time. Pain in the arse. When I first started growing it, I could sell it within an hour of harvesting it for 500k or more. One sold in under 5 minutes.

The two sites listed by Zafron only provide limited data on how to produce elemental ore. Similar data(in fact, superior data) has been available for months on Culture Shock which was linked months ago(and went relatively unnoticed for a long time, apparently).

If you use the data provided on the listed sites, you'll get anywhere from 0-40% yields, depending on how you decide to do things.

[Erasmus]

Hehe dark ore and light ore and ice ore is one place where EVERYONE should hope for a price drop.

a) The price isnt stable yet and its not due to over selling. Due to the incredible demand for these ores ( used to make elemental staves) and the methods used to produce them, the price will never drop too low. I'd say not below 100k. The only ways to get these are either 1) time consuming ( 3-4 weeks to grow from saplings with low chance of yield) 2) require high lvl ( BCNM 60) or 3) require significant monetary and temporal investment. Such as Chocobo digging. It would take you around a million gil to raise your digging skill to the point where you would have a chance to dig an elemental ore.. not to mention several months.

b) price drops on ore, thus beads, thus staves. Then you have WHMs with light staff ( +10% cure potency) and dark staff ( +10 mp while resting) and blms with ice staff ( +15 elemental and +10% ice dmg and +4 int) and suddenly your pts become better. You get more EXP per hour.

[Zafron]

Originally posted by DrMrLordX
The two sites listed by Zafron only provide limited data on how to produce elemental ore. Similar data(in fact, superior data) has been available for months on Culture Shock which was linked months ago(and went relatively unnoticed for a long time, apparently).

If you use the data provided on the listed sites, you'll get anywhere from 0-40% yields, depending on how you decide to do things.

oops i meant for the second link to be culture shock, but i cut and pasted the wrong bookmark.

This is the link for culture shock (http://www.polsta.jp/~hiya/FFXI/culture.php)

[Roldarin]

Originally posted by Tan'o
It should be 10/10 on fire crystals. Never had a failure with this recipe.

I just finished doing this a few days ago. 3 pots out of 25 were Fire Crystals. All the rest were the veggies. I used the recipe:

vegetable or herbs seeds, brass pot
plant on watersday
feed water crystal on watersday
harvest on firesday or lightsday

I have a workbench and a maple table in each moghouse I grew stuff in. I made sure I didn't examine any of the pots. Am I missing anything?

[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 (http://www.swapsonian.com/pikko/index.html).

[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.