FFXIV Gil Making Guide: Best Ways to Earn Gil at Any Level

Gil in Final Fantasy XIV piles up from a bunch of small streams rather than one big geyser. The people sitting on hundreds of millions aren't pulling off a single secret trick. They're running the same steady money loops every week and, more importantly, not throwing away the stuff most players auto-vendor. Here's how the whole picture fits together, from around level 50 onward into Dawntrail's level 100 endgame.

Selling Dungeon Loot and Materia the Smart Way

Three things you can do with a dungeon drop

Every green piece of gear you pull out of a level 100 dungeon like Alexandria, Tender Valley, or The Strayborough Deadwalk has three possible homes, and the order you think about them is pretty much fixed. Grand Company seals first, desynth second, vendor last. These days the level 100 dungeons mostly drop Epochal accessories, so think rings, necks, bracelets, and earrings rather than full armor sets.

Vending is the trap. An Epochal Ring of Fending only sells to an NPC for around 554 Gil, which is almost nothing. The same ring handed to your Grand Company as an Expert Delivery is worth 2,029 Company Seals. The math scales with item level, roughly the item level plus 1,339, so higher-level gear pays out even better. You need to be Sergeant Second Class in your Grand Company to unlock Expert Delivery, and that's a low bar, so get it sorted early.

Turn those seals back into Gil

Seals aren't Gil on their own, but the Quartermaster sells a few things you can relist on the Market Board. The steady picks are Venture tokens at 200 seals each, Glamour Prisms at 200, Cordials, and crafting mats like Coke and Hardened Sap that free companies burn through for airships and housing. Pick whichever has the best price on your data center that week. A Materiel Container costs 20,000 seals and is basically a loot box. Fun, sure, but treat it as a gamble rather than income.

Desynth when it beats the seals

If you've leveled the matching crafter, breaking gear down through desynthesis can beat the seal route, especially when the market for the output is hot. Desynthesizing that same Epochal ring, which is a Goldsmith job, spits out Wind Crystals every time plus a chance at White Gold Ingots, Black Star gems, and Battlecraft Demimateria. The catch is you need the right class leveled for the item, since each of the eight crafters handles different gear types. You unlock the whole system with the "Gone to Pieces" quest out of Ul'dah at level 30.

Materia is where the real money sits

Materia is the best passive income in the game once you understand it. The current Dawntrail cap is Grade XII, with Grade XI sitting one step below, and you pull materia out of gear by spiritbonding it to 100 percent and then extracting. The unlock quest is "Forging the Spirit," picked up from Swynbroes at The Bonfire in Central Thanalan.

Not all materia is equal, though. The red damage stats move fastest. Those are Savage Aim, Savage Might, and Heavens' Eye, which give Critical Hit, Determination, and Direct Hit, and every DPS job wants them. The yellow defensive stuff like Tenacity and Piety basically rots on the board. Crafter and gatherer materia goes for way more than combat materia, especially Craftsman's Command, because pentamelded DoH gear stays relevant the whole expansion long.

You don't even have to spiritbond if you'd rather not. Duty Roulettes hand out Cracked Prismaticlusters and Novaclusters when you queue as the adventurer in need role, and those crack open into Grade XI and XII materia. Hunt trains drop the same clusters. Anything you don't want can go to Mutamix Bubblypots, also at The Bonfire around X:23 Y:13, who takes five junk materia and gives you one random one back. That's a decent shot at upgrading your trash into something that actually sells.

One number worth knowing: any Grade XII materia vendors to an NPC for 217 Gil, which is the floor. Market Board prices float way above that, but they swing hard by data center and by patch, so check a live tracker like Universalis before you list.

Crafting for Profit Without Max Crafters

Pick one or two jobs, not all eight

You do not need every crafter at 100 to make money. The two that pay the bills with the least setup are Culinarian and Alchemist, and that's because they make consumables. Raid food and battle potions get used up and bought again, week after week, for the entire life of a raid tier. Culinarian is also the cheapest crafter to level since most of its mats come from Botanist and fishing. If you'd rather skip crafting entirely, Miner and Botanist are the most reliable zero-effort income in the game. Raw materials always have buyers, and you're just selling what you gather.

The current potion line is Gemdraughts

One naming thing that trips people up. The battle potions this expansion are called Gemdraughts, not Tinctures. Tinctures were the Endwalker line and they're finished. Gemdraughts come in Grades 1 through 4 as the tier rolls on, they're an Alchemist craft at level 100, and you get three per synth. They're in constant demand from raiders pushing new savage fights, so the price spikes hard right after a tier drops and then slides down over the weeks. Timing your sells around patch days is where a lot of the profit actually lives.

Sungilt Aethersand is the magic ingredient

Almost everything worth crafting in Dawntrail wants Sungilt Aethersand, including the Gemdraughts. You don't buy it and you don't desynth for it. You get it from Aetherial Reduction of gatherable collectables, which is Electrocoal if you mine, Goldbranch if you botanize, or a few different fish if you've leveled Fisher. Aetherial Reduction is a separate system from desynthesis, and mixing the two up is a common mistake. The aethersand is the bottleneck, so whoever controls their aethersand supply controls their crafting profit.

Scrips: Purple for leveling, Orange for the endgame

Crafters and gatherers earn two scrip types, and the split is simple. Purple Scrips are the leveling currency. They buy Master Recipe books, Regional Folklore tomes that unlock the good gathering nodes, and mid-tier materia. Orange Scrips are the endgame currency, and they're what you spend on Grade XII materia, which is the biggest resellable scrips have to offer. Both cap at 4,000 held, and neither has a weekly earning limit anymore, so you just grind until you're full. A top Orange scrip craft right now is Rarefied Tacos de Carne Asada out of Culinarian, and the go-to Purple craft is Sykon Bavarois.

Easy entry points while you level

Before you can grind scrips, there are a few low-friction money taps. Grand Company Supply and Provisioning missions give you one daily request per crafter and one per gatherer, and turning in High Quality items doubles the reward. Free seals and experience for stuff you'd make anyway. Custom Deliveries are a weekly loop worth 12 deliveries total, with no more than 6 going to a single NPC, and they pay straight Gil plus scrips. The current Dawntrail delivery NPCs are Nitowikwe and Tiisol Ja, both unlocked around level 90 after the "Dawn of a New Deal" quest in Solution Nine.

Allied Society quests are another slow-but-steady tap, and the craft and gather tribes are what matter here. Moogles and Namazu cover the older expansions, Dwarves and Qitari are the Shadowbringers pair, Loporrits and Omicrons handle Endwalker, and Yok Huy plus Mamool Ja are the Dawntrail duo. Twelve dailies a day across all of them, paid out in experience, Gil, and reputation.

Retainers do the work while you sleep

Set up at least two retainers and send them out constantly. The standard advice is one combat retainer and one Miner or Botanist, since a combat retainer brings back hides and meats while a gatherer brings back ores and logs. Quick Exploration takes an hour and two Venture tokens and can return surprisingly rare items, while the longer 18-hour Exploration runs are pure set-and-forget. Venture tokens come from Grand Company seals, which loops right back to all those Expert Deliveries from the first section.

Treasure Maps and Weekly Money Makers

Treasure maps are the best gambler's income

If you want big single hits of Gil, treasure maps are the answer. The current Dawntrail party map is the Timeworn Br'aaxskin Map, gathered from level 100 nodes on an 18-hour timer, and it can open a portal to Cenote Ja Ja Gural. You gather the map, Decipher it to reveal a dig spot, dig up the chest, kill the guardians, and then there's a random chance a portal spawns. The portal is the whole point.

Cenote Ja Ja Gural is five rooms of chest-and-door choices, and the Gil scales hard as you go deeper. Chamber one pays about 3,000 Gil per person, then 5,000, then 7,500, then 10,000, and the final chamber drops 100,000 Gil each, with tomestones sprinkled throughout. It also leaks Grade XI and XII materia, Dawntrail crafting materials, minions like Honeysuckler and The Lawnblazer, and rare cosmetics including the "Doing the Wave" hairstyle. Most groups run eight players and rotate "one map, one portal" so everyone gets a turn hosting. The solo map, Timeworn Loboskin, has no portal dungeon but is still worth grabbing for the base loot.

Wondrous Tails pays out weekly

Khloe Aliapoh in Idyllshire hands out a Wondrous Tails journal every week, and it's one of the best time-to-reward ratios in the game. It's a four-by-four grid of sixteen duties. You complete duties, earn up to nine stamps, and try to line up rows. The big payout is hitting three lines, which can reward MGP Platinum Cards or Certificates of Commendation that you trade for rare minions and mounts. Even just filling the journal to nine stamps can net you a Gargantuaskin treasure map, which is itself worth running. The trick is that old duties can be run unsynced, meaning you outlevel them and blow through extremes and raids in minutes with a Party Finder group. Knock it out every Tuesday after reset.

The Challenge Log is free weekly Gil

The Challenge Log is a checklist that resets weekly and is worth up to around 95,000 Gil if you clear most of it, plus a pile of MGP. A lot of it happens naturally, from running dungeons to doing FATEs to gathering, but some entries are pure profit for low effort. The "Venture Bothers" entry, which asks for fifteen Exploration ventures, pays 4,000 Gil, which is a nice kickback on top of whatever your retainers dragged home. If you gather or craft at all, the crafting and fishing entries are basically free money.

MGP has its own weekly loops

Gold Saucer currency converts into Minions, mounts, and glamours you can sell. The Fashion Report runs weekly and the community solves the outfit every Friday, so hitting 80 points is trivial once you know the theme. And 80 points pays a flat 60,000 MGP. The Jumbo Cactpot is a Saturday lottery where you pick a number, and the Mini Cactpot is a daily scratchcard puzzle that can drop up to 10,000 MGP. None of this is huge Gil on its own, but the Minions and mounts you buy with MGP can be flipped if they're tradeable.

Tomestone and Hunt Currency Conversions

Know your three tomestones

There are always three tomestones alive at once, and the principle matters more than the names since the capped ones rotate every even patch. You've got the permanent one, Tomestones of Poetics, which catches every retired currency forever. Then there's the current uncapped Dawntrail tome and the current capped one that locks at 450 a week. Right now those are Mathematics and Mnemonics, with the exchange NPC Zircon sitting in Solution Nine. Don't hoard a capped tome you're not spending, and never sit on a retired one, because the next patch deletes it. Auriana in Mor Dhona is the universal exchange NPC for anything that's been phased out, so spend or swap before each major patch's maintenance.

The Poetics to Gil pipeline

Poetics don't buy anything you can resell directly. The old relic reagents like Thavnairian Mist and Radz-at-Han Quenching Oil are market-prohibited, so don't bother trying to flip those. The real move is to buy Augmented catch-up gear with Poetics, say Augmented Cryptlurker or Augmented Credendum depending on your level bracket, and hand it straight to your Grand Company as an Expert Delivery. That turns Poetics into Company Seals, and Company Seals turn into Ventures and Glamour Prisms and all the other resellables from earlier. It's an indirect pipeline, but it's the main way to drain a bloated Poetics wallet.

Sacks of Nuts from the Hunt

The Hunt is the most Gil-efficient thirty minutes you can spend in the game if a train is running. Killing elite marks pays Sacks of Nuts, 40 for an A-rank, 100 for an S-rank, plus 100 for each weekly B-rank bill off the Dawn Hunt board in Tuliyollal. Take those nuts to Ryubool Ja in Tuliyollal and trade them for retired tomestone gear that goes straight into Grand Company deliveries, materia, or cosmetics like the Wild Ride Barding. Hunt trains also drop the Cracked clusters that turn into materia, so you're double-dipping every run.

The older hunt currencies still work

Centurio Seals come from Heavensward and Stormblood hunts, spent at the Forgotten Knight tavern in Ishgard, and Allied Seals come from ARR hunts, spent at the Hunt Billmaster in your starting city. That NPC is called the Hunt Billmaster, not "Bill the Hunter," since the name comes from the mark bills you carry. Allied Seals buy Grade VII and VIII materia through Maudlin Latool Ja, and Aetheryte Tickets from either currency save you teleport Gil forever, which adds up more than people expect.

Bicolor Gemstones from FATEs

Every FATE you gold pays Bicolor Gemstones, 16 each in Dawntrail zones, with the hold cap raised to 1,500. The Gemstone Traders in each zone sell resellable goods, and the repeatable picks are Grade VII and VIII combat materia, Cordials, and the occasional tradeable minion. Kajeel Ja in Tuliyollal and Beryl in Solution Nine are the main vendors. FATE grinding is dull, for sure, but if you're already doing it for a relic or a Shared FATE mount, spend the stones on materia before you log off.

What Actually Is Not Worth Your Time

Market Board flipping on thin margins

Buying up cheap tradeable items and relisting them higher sounds like easy Gil, and a few people do it well, but for most players it's a trap. The Market Board takes a tax on every sale, the market shifts while you sleep, and someone with deeper pockets can undercut you all the way down to nothing. If you do flip, stick to stuff you actually understand, and never tie up your whole wallet in one bet.

Old treasure dungeons when a new one's out

Once the current treasure dungeon is live, the older ones drop lower-grade materia and mats that the market has moved past. Aquapolis, the Excitatron 6000, the Lost Canals, they're fine for nostalgia or if you have a stack of old maps lying around, but they're not your money plan. Run the current map and the current dungeon instead.

Fishing as a primary earner

Fishing has its moments, and it's the best way to grab certain aethersand sources and exclusive minions through retainers. As a day-to-day Gil engine, though, it's the weakest of the three gatherers. Miner and Botanist gather faster, sell steadier, and feed more crafts. Treat fishing as a supplement, not the main course.

Relying on loot boxes for income

The Materiel Container from Grand Company seals, the retainer Venture Coffer, the Cenote Ja Ja Gural gamble minigame, all of these can drop a million-Gil minion, and usually they drop something worth a hundred. Chasing the big pull is fun, but it's gambling, and a Gil plan built on gambling tends to trend toward zero. Take the steady income from seals and deliveries first, and treat the dice rolls as a bonus.

Auto-vending before you check the alternatives

The single biggest leak in most players' economy isn't a missing income stream. It's the stuff they vendor out of habit. Green dungeon gear, materia they think is useless, capped tomestone currency piling up because they forgot to spend it. A quick check on Universalis, or a trip to the Grand Company Quartermaster, turns a 554-Gil vendor sale into 2,000 seals' worth of resellable goods. That gap, repeated across hundreds of drops over a few months, is the difference between a broke character and a comfortable one.

Spend an hour a week running the steady loops, the roulettes, the retainers, the Wondrous Tails, a couple of treasure maps, and the Gil mostly takes care of itself.