Final Fantasy XIV's Island Sanctuary is a popular pastime for many players of the MMORPG. As is customary for the genre, it can be tough to see profits when you're just starting out, and trying to perfectly optimize your farm can take the fun out of things. However, if you go about it the right way, farming Seafarer's Cowries (the main currency of Island Sanctuary) doesn't have to be too difficult.
If you're just getting started, it might be overwhelming to learn at first. There's a lot that goes into running the island, from gathering materials in the wild to crafting feed and tools for yourself. The tutorials are pretty comprehensive early on, and the game provides you with clear tasks called "visions" to help you get started. Each vision will reward you with EXP and Seafarer's Cowries, which is a nice added bonus.
Once you've got an idea of how it all works, it's time to get into the grind. That means building workshops, granaries, and landmarks as soon as they're available to you, as well as clearing off land for more space and upgrading your hideaway. You'll get huge sums of EXP for each building you complete. Leveling up your island will earn you the chance to build more workshops, and these will be your main source of Seafarer's Cowries down the line.
Workshops are the best way to farm Island Seafarer's Cowries in FFXIV
When it comes to workshops, it's a good idea to always have them actively crafting. Downtime is lost profit, and some profit is always better than none. You won't have access to all of the possible crafts from the start, but you can craft something on the days your mammets aren't resting. Try to maximize your efficiency bonuses by starting off each day with a four hour craft, and make sure that every subsequent craft shares a category with the previous to get a chain going. Each craft with the efficiency bonus will have double the output, which means double the cowries earned from the craft.
If you'd rather not put much thought into how you fill up your workshop agendas (we wouldn't blame you), the Overseas Casuals Discord server is a great resource. It's got a bot that will plan out daily or weekly workshop agendas for you automatically, based on your current rank. Still, you'll likely be spending a lot of time gathering the materials necessary for your crafts, as well as making sure that the animals in your pasture and the crops on your farmland are providing the leavings and produce you need every week. Granaries can help with collecting the stuff you need, but that's only if you can afford to send out your mammets on expeditions at the cost of—you guessed it—Seafarer's Cowries.
So, you'll be putting in a lot of elbow grease to start. As you increase your incoming flow of cowries, you can start to automate things like your pasture, farmland, and material collection. But getting there just wouldn't be as satisfying without having to do some hard work first, would it? The hours spent mindlessly gathering materials on the island may not be the most exciting, but they do eventually pay off.
