Final Fantasy XIV: Cookie Monster

Last week I was surfing the internet looking for information on levequests in Final Fantasy XIV. I've played enough EVE Online to know if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Still, anything involving cookies deserves a look.

Overpowered?

The method is easy. Just do the "A Cookie for Your Troubles" levequest found in The Crystarium as many times as possible. "A Cookie for Your Troubles" is one of the levequests in which the objective can be fulfilled 3 times, meaning the listed reward is earned 3 times. Given that turning in high quality items doubles the gil reward, doing the levequest can earn a player around 18,000 gil. 

The only limits to how much gil a player can earn is a player's levequest allowance. The levequest allowance increases by 3 every 12 hours, with a maximum of 100 allowed. The 100 levequest allowance led one source stating that doing the levequest can earn a player 1.8 million gil. A figure I would never earn due to the work involved making 900 Coffee Biscuits.

Caffeinated Cookies

The recipe is pretty simple. The only complication is the requirement to craft the Upland Wheat Flour and Garden Beet Sugar. The devs were nice enough to put a calculator to determine the amount of raw materials required to make up to 99 copies of an item. For the current exercise, I entered in 90, the number required to complete 10 levequests.

10% of 1.8 million gil

Gathering enough materials to make 90 cookies does not take very much time. I kind of got carried away, especially since I use coffee beans and garden beets in other recipes. Instead of making 90 cookies, I made 180, enough for 20 levequests. With my crafting skills and equipment I didn't need to use high quality materials to make high quality cookies. I plan on selling the HQ items for some extra gil.

Making cookies with the puppy

The major problem with the cookie mechanic is time. Just to create 180 cookies requires performing 100 synthesizes. I didn't use a stopwatch, but figure that took around an hour. Then add the time required to turn in 180 cookies. Figure that took another 20-30 minutes.

Still, even with the time involved, the rewards aren't bad:

• 358,412 gil
• 1,218 fire crystals
• 546 water crystals
• 9 bomba rice
• 6 coffee beans

I received 1991 gil for each cookie. Looking on the market board, high-quality Coffee Biscuits are selling for 1000 gil. Turning in the cookies to complete the levequests definitely makes a bigger profit. However, I can make more gil selling different cooked items on the market.

In the future, I won't try to make hundreds of thousands of gil by making a huge amount of cookies. But I do like eating Coffee Biscuits while gathering for the additional gathering points. If I need to pick up a quick 100,000 gil, I might make a few extra for the cash.