Early Game Money Trick

[Xengre]

I accidentally figured this out while cooking to learn Taste talent as I talent farmed and some may have already noticed but it results in an infinite loop of free growing money usually 1-3k per two crafting attempts and can be done as early as you can buy Eggs and Dairy.

Process:
1. Buy 20 Eggs and Dairy for 200 Fol total.
2. Attempt to Cook next to merchant (no save scumming required) 10 Eggs and Dairy (aka max possible, so two attempts).
3. When done crafting all 20 of them sell to NPC the results for around 1-3k (-200 initial investment) for completely reliable net profit.

You may end up learning Taste in the process for the +100 bonus SP on each character and this is far faster than something like fishing early on. I did this at Cooking level 3 so rate may or may not be fine below that (but level 4 costs almost nothing if you level determination, like 3 SP?).

Updated Super Tip:

This can be done once you have Celine after finishing Krosse Cave making her a permanent party member and can generate 121,000 Fol per food item "Nectar" sold before even appraising for increased sell value. This is, essentially, the start of the game around level 12.

Step 1)
- Learn Master Chef which requires multiple characters with cooking skill at a certain level. In my example Claude has 4, Rena 3, Celine 5 for Master Chef lv 4. The higher the level the better but even something this low works fine. Note: This may influence it some but all 3 characters learned Talent via following my original tip until they learned it (Celine took a good bit of time to finally learn... it is RNG).

Step 2)
- This is Mandatory otherwise Nectar rate will be impossibly rare. Sole in Wine Sauce made via Master Chef (Seafood + Fruit) increases chance of creating "Nectar". Lasts 2 cooking turns (aka your full two batches of 10 each).

Step 3)
- Craft Fruit + Vegetable OR Egg + Vegetable you have a random chance of getting "Nectar". I was getting between 0 - 3 per go, but most frequently 0-1. My cooking level as I pointed out is quite low, though, and thus has a high failure rate (only 66% success rate, and then a percentage chance of that to be Nectar when it actually succeeds). Increase overall food success rate = better results. Still even this is enough.

Step 4)
- Craft Kasuzuke: Appraising effect +10% Grains + Vegetables. Use this plus your current Appraising stat (put some cheap points in this after maxing Determination, you can get a couple levels super cheap) and it noticeably boosts sale value of your Nectar even more by tens of thousands. Sell Nectar in bulk so you have to maintain re-cooking Kasuzuke way less frequently. In fact, after a single Nectar bulk sale you would be uber rich with millions, anyways, so really only need 1 even until way alter in game.

[Xengre]

Additional note: If you do this at level cooking 4 you can make even more types of food items than level 3 while the next gap of items comes at level 7 (worth or not I don't know).

To further enhance the results you can learn Group Praise (the higher the level the better, but even lower levels worth it) and after doing the crafting a good 60-80 of the egg cooking you can activate group appraise at the shop and sell it all for an increased price in bulk.

[Sishiya]

It works slightly better with Vegetables, but if you have the patience then yeah, it keeps churning out a little profit.

[Elnidfse]

Honestly if you're avoiding turning in the challenges Claude can have his fishing at like level 5 by the time you get to the castle and you can catch a small fortune instead.

[restarter]

Thank you once again, Xengre. Always offering helpful information.

[dog_force21]

Or just continue along until you can unlock more crafting options. This game is literally one of the few where you can easily find yourself making more money than you can spend.

[ChisaiiNeko]

Originally posted by dog_force21:

Or just continue along until you can unlock more crafting options. This game is literally one of the few where you can easily find yourself making more money than you can spend.

Yeap i find using the money making formation and increasing enemy spawn to make 5 encounter links to be super profitable. That and writing but that was just when i played on the PSP.

[dog_force21]

Originally posted by Nekonya (^w^):

Originally posted by dog_force21:

Or just continue along until you can unlock more crafting options. This game is literally one of the few where you can easily find yourself making more money than you can spend.

Yeap i find using the money making formation and increasing enemy spawn to make 5 encounter links to be super profitable. That and writing but that was just when i played on the PSP.

There's also the forged items that you can sell later on and replicate so you don't lose anything from making a ton and selling them.

Honestly just about anything can be crafted and sold at a profit compared to the cost of the materials.

[Mauman]

Originally posted by dog_force21:

Or just continue along until you can unlock more crafting options. This game is literally one of the few where you can easily find yourself making more money than you can spend.

Disagree....I can always use another bottle of fine grape juice. :P

[REhorror]

I just play normally and get all the money via the missions and challenges.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by restarter:

Thank you once again, Xengre. Always offering helpful information.

Glad to help.

Originally posted by Sishiya:

It works slightly better with Vegetables, but if you have the patience then yeah, it keeps churning out a little profit.

Yeah, just tested Vegetable and fishing. Vegetables seems quite RNG but does seem to slightly edge out eggs, though even better is you could do both at the same time thus going into shop menu and exiting IC as often for an overall time efficiency profit gain. Thanks.

Originally posted by Elnidfse:

Honestly if you're avoiding turning in the challenges Claude can have his fishing at like level 5 by the time you get to the castle and you can catch a small fortune instead.

^Is correct, kind of. I just tested this and fishing definitely makes more money when done right but it requires a pretty massive SP investment to actually reach just level 5 fishing. You also then need to know where to fish and the game doesn't tell you how it even works really.

Once you got the SP for fishing though, it becomes quite good.

Fishing tips:

- Near a fishing spot press R2 (or right trigger) to bring up the fishing menu that shows you what buttons do what.

- R1 lets you set bait and also see what fish are in that water so you can know if it has the fish you want and also ???? for any fish you've never gotten yet.

- Bait like small, medium bait, etc. allows you to modify fishing difficulty of catching the different specific fishes in that water. For instance no bait miight have 2 average and 2 extremely hard fish but if you put a small bait one of those extremely hard might because extremely easy while the other becomes average and like the other 2. Etc.

- Sky gets dark if you have caught the attention of a higher quality catch and you can do something similar to save scum for them without wasting your bait by tossing in > not dark? > immediately pull out of water and toss back in > rinse and repeat until dark and ta-da no wasted bait. However, those small fish can also be good bait and not all bigger fish like only other bigger fish as bait. Something to consider.

- R2 while fishing menu is up lets you "Chum the Water" with Fishy Fragrance. I don't know how long this is but it seemed probably short considering the obvious differences in my testing of getting 3-4 fish per catch (yes, you can catch more than 1 fish per attempt when you pull). I was able to find a spot and had enough types of bait that made it easy to catch some Glass Lotus which are about 3k+ each and would catch 2-4 at a time when water was chummed, otherwise 1-2 at a time without and some random fish.

I know at one point while testing I found a fish for over 11k but I've yet to figure out what fish that was and where I got it.

[Mauman]

Fishing is stupidly powerful....getting everybody up to level 7 biology for free sp (though for sanity's sake I'd still purchase the early cheaper levels) wise is a bit gamebreaking early on. I feel like sp costs have been massively amplified this time around. Though that's probably to make up for sp being way more common, the division of BP and SP, and the fact that books go up to level 7 now rather than 5.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by Mauman:

Fishing is stupidly powerful....getting everybody up to level 7 biology for free sp (though for sanity's sake I'd still purchase the early cheaper levels) wise is a bit gamebreaking early on. I feel like sp costs have been massively amplified this time around. Though that's probably to make up for sp being way more common, the division of BP and SP, and the fact that books go up to level 7 now rather than 5.

Yeah, the books are nice.

For anyone wondering I couldn't find the 11k fish but the Black Knight Dab is worth around 10k with a low level 4 Group Appraising. You can find them west on the central continent over the mountains in the desert region. Easiest way is to learn the Bunny Call skill (think green chocobo, can go straight over mountains like they're flat and runs fast) which is learned by having several party members level up the Familiar IC/Specialty Skill. Easy 100k+ in under 5 mins of fishing at basically start of the game. Just got to get past the SP sink for this and not be wasteful with SP.

[Yílõng Má]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Originally posted by Mauman:

Fishing is stupidly powerful....getting everybody up to level 7 biology for free sp (though for sanity's sake I'd still purchase the early cheaper levels) wise is a bit gamebreaking early on. I feel like sp costs have been massively amplified this time around. Though that's probably to make up for sp being way more common, the division of BP and SP, and the fact that books go up to level 7 now rather than 5.

Yeah, the books are nice.

For anyone wondering I couldn't find the 11k fish but the Black Knight Dab is worth around 10k with a low level 4 Group Appraising. You can find them west on the central continent over the mountains in the desert region. Easiest way is to learn the Bunny Call skill (think green chocobo, can go straight over mountains like they're flat and runs fast) which is learned by having several party members level up the Familiar IC/Specialty Skill. Easy 100k+ in under 5 mins of fishing at basically start of the game. Just got to get past the SP sink for this and not be wasteful with SP.

At the point when you can catch Black Dab, you can easily replicate Soulful Bowl for like half a million per 5-10 seconds.

[Visser]

so.... i was following you guys and farming some money to afford a couple grape juices or whatever that one wine is that grows in value....
I ended up having a master cook level of 5 with claude rena and celine.... tried out the different master combos. there is one that increases chance to create "nectar".
for me, its been made from master cooking fruit and vegetables.... its worth 140k+ with appraisal stuff..... here I am farming 7k or so from your hints and i land upon this...
if you have the spare time, its a great money making scheme. it will open other item creation doors for you, cause money wont be much of a problem

[dog_force21]

Originally posted by Mauman:

Originally posted by dog_force21:

Or just continue along until you can unlock more crafting options. This game is literally one of the few where you can easily find yourself making more money than you can spend.

Disagree....I can always use another bottle of fine grape juice. :P

Can't you just replicate it? Or is it one of the items that you can't?