Making Money?

[Curcio]

thanks for the info and the congrats for getting PLD50! And what I was thinking of doing is leveling up Blacksmith as well with mining!

Smart man. You can also take up Armorer while you're at it. You can support either of those completely off of mining.

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.

Don't forget to log out in an inn for the rested EXP bonus. There are multiple ways to get GC seals for EXP scrolls, including running Thousand Maws of ToTo Rak to turn in gear for seals, and doing Castrum Novum which I hear gives out 6,000 per clear, but I haven't done it so I don't know much information.

It's also important to use anima if you want to speed up your leveling process. I pretty much mined Ul'Dah using anima until 35, at which point I went to Gridania's Camp Emerald Moss and mined out of treespeak. It's close to grid if you run out of anima, and the mining there nets you a TON of mithril, which sells for a lot (160k a stack on Ridill atm).

If you need more anima, you can mine Nanawa mines for Kidney ore, and you can turn that in for Anima. Hurray! I'm not actually sure what level you need to be to start doing that, but I heard someone say mid to late 30s. I haven't run out of anima yet because I'm stingy, but it's good to know you can restore it.

And finally, make sure you use mooglebox.com's gathering tool to help you learn the nuances of mining. It will save you a load of time and you will end up netting your ores in a single swing of the pick axe .

Sorry for the wall of text. Just felt I'd give you some tips I didn't really learn until I was around level 20. There was a lot of wasted time back then.