Here is a list of what cooking recipes I started with thanks to Noelie's help. (She sent me lots of eggs)

Hard Boiled Eggs
Fire Crystal
1x Lizzard eggs
1x distilled H2o. You can find cheap H2o at the restaurant in Windhurst Waters close to the cooking guild.

Once you advance your cooking level close to 4, you can start to use bird eggs to make these to get to level 6.

Then to orange juice,
Water crystal
4x saruta oranges. You can buy these cheaply at a merchant standing near the gate in Waters.
Orange juice does not stack, so I have tried selling them, giving them to mages, and using them as I have been out working on quests and missions. When you get to level 8 you can make the Salmon Sub to pass the guild test, then continue with the orange juice to level 10.


Salmon Sub
earth crystal
1x crying mustard
1x apple vinegar
1x black bread
1x La theine Cabbage
1x smoked salmon
1x Mithran tomato

After level 10

Slice of sardines. I joined the fishing guild, bought a cheap pole and some bait. One of the tips at another place said to buy and expensive kit, I did that, and lost it on my first try fishing. If you have not fished before buy inexpensive bait and practice. I was able to catch all my fish to level this off, and also harvest wind crystals off of bees, and bats. If you are too high a level to get good points, just work on a job that is low level to do this. I was able to do this without buying anything but the pole and bait. If you are in Windurst you can catch the bastore sardines right of the dock there by the fishing guild. Then go sell your food as bait at the action house.

wind crystal
bastore sardine x1


Next I started to do roasted mushrooms, this can be easily done if someone is willing to harvest the mushrooms for you. They are rather expensive to buy. I also lost lots of crystals until I hit level 13, so you might want to level something else first. Once I started to not loose so much I was able to stack and sell these at the auction house.

fire crystal
What ever mushroom x2.
(sleepshroom, danceshroom, woozyshroom.)

Next I think I can try to catch some moat carp, and try that before I go to butter.

That is about all I have for today.

Just starting

I wanted to start a journal detailing my journey through Final Fantasy XI. At this point, I am not so sure how I am going to do it but here it goes.
My sister has tried for years to get me to play Final Fantasy. Much of the delay has been that I did not have a good computer or good internet connections. Now that I have both I have started to play thanks to her buying me the game!

My main character is Sofiana, named after a powerful Deryni, in Katherine Kurtz's deryni books. She is a Mithra (a cat like race), and I am training her as a Red Mage. For someone not familar with Final Fantasy I am sure that is confusing, but if you are starting or a seasoned player you know exactly what it is.

I am in the world Leviathan. The servers for FFXI are given names to distinguish and keep them from being too busy and overloaded.
In the world I started in Windhurst. It is a very large city. I am working on cooking skills and leveling up my job and weapon skills as well.
as I blog along, I will post tips for beginners as I am finding many of the sites are not beginner friendly. I don't know that I can be any help to anyone in the game. We shall see as I go along.