Is Cooking pointless?

[vulcan4d]

Ok I'm starting to think cooking is pointless. I raised my cooking skill but so far I've lost more then I earned. I checked the guides to see what I can make at higher levels, checked AH for how much it's ingredients cost and for how much I can sell it, and from what I see making money with Cooking is almost impossible. I say almost because there is insect paste and meat mithkabobs but they don’t give much profit, especially considering that you can fail in making them.

I know some of you will say it's good to have your cooking skill high so that way you can make food for yourself but what's the point, you can buy the food cheaper then it's ingredients.

The only thing I can think of to make money with cooking is to make insect paste and fish for moat carps. Problem with that is you would need a lvl24 cooking skill and to get there you need some serious $$$ and Time . Is there any other way to make money with cooking?

[tomc1988t]

all the guilding you'll lose more then you gain.....until you make +1 stuff....there is no real "point" but its just sumthing diffrent to do from leveling NM hunting and gil hunting....


if you can get to rank 5 and get the airship pass you can goto the 3 main citys and jueno and solo the shit to get your own ingrediants so its all profit and it raises skill to...

[Teknoman]

Yes there is a point:
1.) some items cant be obtained other than by crafting, and also when you get crafting to a good lvl its a good sorce of income. Like cooking: at lvl 6 or 11 you can make roast mushrooms which go for about 3,500gil a stack in AH's and the material is relativly cheap too: 1 fire crystal 1 rock salt and 2 of any shroom type.
The point of a craft/guild skill is to create things out of stuff you find.

Sure you can buy materials but many useful items are made out of everyday items found while adventuring. It may be expensive now but guildskill/crafting pays off in the long run.

[kebrok]

I made a bit of money skilling up on sliced sardines. I fished for them myself though.

So far I am up in cash overall. I have been looking for the cheaper skill ups, and have been growing my own crystals.

[imac2much]

Cooking does not yield as much of a profit as some other guilds. Profit from crafting is usually made from making +1 items... and cooking just doesn't have many +1 items that people will want. For example, alchemists can make +1 items to make more ingredients (+1 of beeswax is more beeswax) or better items (+1 of silent oil is sneak potion). Whoever makes arrows (don't know the craft, but my friend does this), can make 66, 99 at a time instead of 33.

Cooking, on the other hand, doesn't have many low level recipes that yield useful HQ results. I guess there's always steam crayfish (the only one I have made so far) but it doesn't sell that fast (i.e. not much profit). Cooking is more of a 'selfish' guild... it is useful to YOU. I can make meat mithka, but they don't yield much of a profit (ingredients cost like 2-2.1k, they sell for about 2.5k), but if you use them all the time, you can make them yourself and save yourself some money. It's also very handy to be able to craft your own juices. Juices do not stack so it's more space-efficient to carry fruits and crystals with you (that do stack) and make your juice on the fly.

My cooking is level 43 and I still don't find it profitable (the only profitable recipe at this point is really insect balls). I still like it and glad I have it.. I hunt for the ingredients myself and can use a lot of drops I find from battles. (stuff people usually just throw away since they don't have enough space in AH to sell) Not too shabby, but there are better guilds out there if you're trying to make profit.

[Crow]

What is a good recipe to level cooking from 5-10? Can I make roast mushroom at level 5?

[AzzHauler]

OJ is awesome 5-10. Water crystal + 4 saruta orange. Get them at the exit gate in winwalls.

[kainzero]

it's good for mages.
juices don't stack, so some mages bring a stack of water crystals and pineapples/melons and cook on the fly. actually very useful.

mithakbobs are good but not too profitable. as for me, i need to buy that expensive fish stuff

[DannoBanano]

Overall i guess you could say cooking is most definitly not pointless, but if you are looking for a more profitable craft, cooking is not the best for that. Like said above, cooking is mostly for you or your parties. So i think cooking is great, but if you want gil, try starting another craft.

[Kenki]

Not really pointless but in term of profit making then it doesn't give you much profit. It use is pretty good at later levels. If you are a true born adventurer then you will know which monster will drop what ingredient, so you can carry other ingredients to make food on the way.

Pretty fun when your party is camping somewhere, light up a fire and start cooking ^^.

[sweetooth]

yep

Yes, the main benefit I see is being able to carry 3 stacks of 12 items, which turn into 12 items that don't stack, that I want to use in battle.

Plus boiled eggs add +8 hp and +8 MP and stack, great for starting a new job at level one when +8 of each helps, and they are a Stackable food.

AZZ may have meant Windhurst Waters , as there is an NPC there that sells oranges at the gate leading to West SarutaBaruta, at about G-2

hehe, Some really nice person gave me 5 orange juice today, I guess cause she wanted to keep making em to level up skill, but couldn't sell em fast enough.

[LikeWhoa]

If you just flat out want no money, dont craft. Period. It costs alot of gil to lvl crafts until you get to the more profitable lvls.
if you want money theres 3 things you can do that dont involve lvling a craft. Fish moat carp, endlessly camp NMs, or farm crystals and other items crafters use. Thats it. Out of all those i'd say fishing is your best bet because camping NMs takes tons of time and patience, plus you gotta beat out the other people camping it, while with carp you buy a stack of insect paste for 300, fish up (if you're lucky enough or have high enough skill to get a carp each cast) 12 carp, sell for 3500 (or whatever your server is at) and pow, instant 3k profit (usual average of servers), and all you put in was the time to fish them up. Do that for around 4 stacks of carp and use the profits from those stacks to buy all 4 of the fishing equips (total +4 skill) to help you catch carp more consistantly. If you fish for the long run the equip will be worth it and you'll be bringing in the cash in no time at all. Just every now and then dedicate a single day to just carp fishing and you'll pull in around 15-20k per hour (or so says my friend).

[Nivage]

Fishing's nice - if you don't want to level your character. Why not go out and kill something that drops the ingredients you need ? There's mushrooms, meats, skins, and more plus at the same time, if you're in the right place, you'll get crystals as well. I farm my own ingredients (except juices) and that way I can still level my character and afford new gear.

[tonka]

if you want money theres 3 things you can do that dont involve lvling a craft. Fish moat carp, endlessly camp NMs, or farm crystals and other items crafters use. Thats it.

That's not true. You're missing the biggest money makers in the entire game really.

In other RPGs crafting = making money, that's not the case in FFXI. There are 2 separate tasks: making materials, then crafting it. Making materials is where the money is.

Harvesting, Loggin, and Mining are your big money makers. Gardening is also production but currently most of the things you can garden are much cheaper to buy from conquest vendors (unless you can get some cheap tree cuttings).

[sweetooth]

I dont know

I don't know, I'm only 3 in Clothecraft, and I can already go out of Windurst, kill some Yags, and get the wind crystals and Yagudo bead necklaces to make 3 spools of grass thread.

Then with a earth crystal, the easiest to get, and a stack is like 300 gil, the grass thread is grass cloth.

Then two grass cloth, 1 grass thread, and sheep leather [ From a goblin helm, broken down with a wind crystal] and I have a Brais, a level 11 pants for whm etc.

I can sell them for 1,000 gil and have it gone in like an hour, I can sell for 1,200 and have it gone in like a day.

From that, I get xp from Yags, crafting skill ups, and something to sell for 1k plus that I know sells well.

The pieces may sell for about the same, but that's the point, I really don't lose anything, and I raise my skills, and this is at only level 3, I think if people look for what sells and what doesn't sell too well [ Cape ] then you can at least break even, and maybe even profit a little at even lower levels of crafting.

People just have to look at the Market.

For low level cooks, I think the best is boiled Egg.

Egg [ lizard or bird, bird eggs drop from carrion crows ] + Distilled water [ in shops it sells for 12-14 gil ] + Fire crystal

And as to Gardening, the Pots are a ONE time cost, so the only thing you pay for on each growing cycle are seeds and crystals.

You can farm a whole Stack of crystals in one harvest if you know all about gardening, and with 10 pots going at once, its easy to literally grow almost 10 stacks of crystals in 10 days.

There are variations that make it tough to get exactly what you want everytime, but when sapperlings drop veg and herb seeds, and about any level 12 can solo those, you can basically come away with about 7k profit [ if you bought the seeds ] in 10 days, and 18k profit if you farmed the seeds yourself.

So I think those that can't make a profit from crafting, or gardening, or fishing.. etc are just not really trying very hard.

I'm not saying you'll be rich overnight. If you are only crafting for profit, you might as well just find what ingredients sell well at AH and are always out, and farm those. There are fewer steps in just selling the ingredients, so those wanting just profit, should go that way.

Then you can buy your +1 items From us