Merchants in Final Fantasy XI comprise many of the NPCs found within the cities across Vana'diel. They offer a variety of goods for sale and buy excess items that adventurers no longer need. There are five different types of merchants within FFXI, as outlined in the chart below. The merchant lists provided above provide information on three of these types of merchants: Standard Merchants, Guild Merchants, and Tenshodo Merchants. The Regional Merchants are detailed in the Regional Merchants Guide. Outpost Merchants, and the items they sell, are found in the chart below.

When looking to purchase large quantities of items, it can pay to shop around at the various merchants who stock it to find the best price. An overview of the prices that each type of merchant gives is mentioned below, but there are some merchants who will have an unusually low price for specific items. It can also be profitable to find items that are only sold in one location, and sell them throughout Auction Houses to players in other cities. The world of FFXI has a vibrant economy that the merchants listed here help provide, along with profit for players who pay attention to the availability of items and the needs of their fellow adventurers.

• Overview - Most merchants within FFXI are Standard Merchants. These merchants are found in shops and tents around the cities of Vana'diel. They sell many goods: ingredients for crafting, a variety of armor and weapons for low level adventurers plus a few at higher levels for very high prices, an assortment of basic medicines, and the occasional oddity.

Fishing 101: Getting Started

People often ask me, “Can you make money fishing, because it seems worthless to me?” And my standard answer is, “Yes, but it takes just as much attention as other crafts.” You need to pay attention to the market: look at the Auction House and find out what is in high demand and go fish that up. Or raise Cooking or Alchemy or some other craft and turn your fish into something that sells well on the Auction House. Alternatively, you could catch your fish and sell them to an NPC. But think about it this way: Fishing is the only craft where you get paid to raise your skill. No matter how bad your catches are when you fish, you still earn money every time you reel in a fish.

Until the fishing update early in 2005, all you had to do was sit around and hit a macro. That made fishing pretty boring. With the current fishing system, excitement has been introduced by forcing the player to fight a fish to reel it in. This makes it seem more like you are actually fishing. Surprisingly, this has turned a lot of people off from fishing, but that is all their loss. Not only is fishing more fun because of the change, but skillups come a little quicker too, making it not as much of a pain to raise your fishing skill as it used to be.

What and Where?

The first step to fishing is getting a rod and some bait. There are many different rods and each has a different attribute associated with it. Some rods make it easier to catch a certain fish, while some rods snap every time you fish with them in a certain area. To know more about the abilities of rods, including prices and where to get them, see Fishing 110: Rods and Bait. That section also covers what bait you need to catch each fish.

• Conquest Points (often abbreviated as CP) are given to characters with a signet on when they kill monsters that provide experience. The more experience points a character gains when killing a monster in Vana'diel, the more Conquest Points they will receive. The base Conquest Point amount gained is one-tenth the amount of experience gained, with bonus amounts given for defeating monsters in regions controlled by other nations or the beastmen. This means that a solo character who kills an Even Match monster will gain 10-20 CP. You can see how many Conquest Points your character has by pulling up the Regional Map (either via the main menu, or with the /rmap command); the character's CP will be listed in the bottom right corner.
  
• A character will only recieve Conquest Points if they have a signet on when killing monsters. Signets are given out by three different types of guards:
  1. National Conquest City Guards at the gates of the home city of the character.
  2. National Conquest Foreign Guards located at the border and outposts in regions that a character's home nation controls, as well as embassies in foreign nations.
  3. National Conquest Jeunoan Guards found in Jeuno.

Having enough FFXI Gil is the most essential aspects of the game. Gil the major currency used when purchasing or trading items. To be a good player you will need all the Gils you can get. No matter how great your game skills are you will need the Gils to get your equipments, armors, weapons and other items. Having the gears early in the game will help you advance to higher levels at a faster pace than others can. Here are some good tips to start your career in Final Fantasy XI.

Warp Quest
This method can get you about 10k gil within an hour. You need to start with 1k to purchase a slime oil. After you’ve purchased the slime oil, bring it to an NPC named “Unlucky Rat” in the Metal district of Bastok in exchange for a warp scroll. The scroll sells for about a good 7-10K. Seems easy? Well slight problem with this method is that you will need to have enough fame built up before the NPC will take your slime oil. You will be required to run around town doing low level missions to get your fame up. This is where it gets a little time consuming but 10k gil an hour for a lowbie is really good. You can also redo this quest by creating a mule account and transferring 1k gil to that character.

Just Badge Quest
The Justice Badge quest is located in Winhurt and will require 1 rabab tail and 4 onions to complete. you can buy the stack of rabab tail in the auction house for 50-100gil. Easy to do at low level. In the docks of Winhurst you will find an NPC that you can give the rabab tail to. He will give you the Justice Badge which sells for 500-2000 gil in the auction house. After receiving the bad, give him 4 wild ionions and you’ll receive a scroll that sells up to 5000 gil. You can repeat this quest by using a mule.

Fire Crystals