Making Money?

[Manticore]

Prostitution is big in Ul'dah right now. Hurry before it becomes illegal in 2.0

[Mikita]

What I want to say though is that at certain points mining new nodes will become unbearable. The fastest (and best) way to level mining is PURELY leves.

Since leves open up to you 5 levels before the recommended level. So you'll open up level 20 leves when you're 15. Each of these "tiers" of leves provides a serious boost in gainable EXP per mine. In a lot of cases I was gaining a level every 2 leve turn ins. It gets slower when you pass the recommended leve level (Say you're 21 doing level 20 leves, and waiting to get the level 30s at 25) but it's still much faster than getting 100~200 per mine normally. Hell, I leveled from 37~42 purely on a giant rested XP bonus and 2 exp scrolls, and it all took about 2 hours.

Yes, even when you pass the recommended level for a leve -- like doing a level 30 leve when you are at level 33, it still gives a decent amount of EXP. So it's nice to continue doing leves as much as possible for leveling.

However, what you can gather while doing leves versus what you can gather out in the open is different. Gathering the higher level ores usually only comes when gathering out in the open (they don't seem to be gatherable -- or just very, very rarely when doing leves)... So it's still good to do open world gathering if part of your goal is to make some gil.

[KidaKalastus]

Just a little tip if you want to level up your gathering classes. Get Botanist to level 25 as the first thing you do. This will earn you the ability "Sweat of Brow". This ability can be used by all the gathering classes and when it activates you will get 50% more XP when gathering. This can help you a lot and getting to 25 will not be hard and is definitely worth it.

(and now a plug: check out www.disciplesoftheland.com/maps.aspx for gathering locations).