FFXIV How to Grow Thavnairian Onions

Gardening in FFXIV can feel overly complicated, though it entirely depends on the crop are planning on growing.

When I initially bought my house I had plans to grow Thavnairian Onions since they are often considered to be the most profitable crop due to the ongoing demand for new players to level up their Chocobo Companion and since there are several steps many players choose not to even try. Though I began some preparations to mass-grow Thavnairian Onions, I bailed on the idea and chose to stick to growing simple resources since I regularly forgot to tend my plants or was too lazy to want to.

Since I knew Thavnairian Onions require more patience and care than the average plant, I began Gardening with easier crops, focusing specifically on those that only needed to be planted and did not need to be tended. During this time I tried to figure out whether it was too much work for me to “fertilize” my crops every hour and whether it was even possible for me to remember to sow my crops when I woke up and “tend” to them before I logged out. Though most days this was a possibility, there were many days where I would simply get distracted by the number of tasks I wanted to complete which led me to forget to do some of these tasks.

While realistically a player can choose to do more or less for their Garden, such as using lower-tier soils instead of higher-tier ones to avoid having to purchase from the Market Board, having to Gather them manually or having to run content for Tomestones of Poetics to purchase them, or even choosing not to fertilize crops to reduce the amount of time it takes to grow them, the choice will ultimately cut into the amount of Gil you will be able to get from growing said crops.

I’ve gone into great detail on how to make Gil easily and it was honestly through my discovery of easier methods of profits that I chose to completely shelf the idea of growing Thavnairian Onions, especially based on where we currently are in the expansion. While many players have joined the game or have returned to the game, the cost of Onions continues to go down on my server and the demand isn’t very high. Now, this isn’t to discourage you from starting your journey growing Onions especially since it would heavily depend on how many players are joining your server, growing the resource and how much effort it personally takes you to grow them, but I would strongly recommend looking into other resources in the meantime to see if they are worth the effort instead.

At the end of the day, a player who is trying to make boatloads of Gil is always going to have to watch the Market Board as not only will resources go in and out of popularity, but once other players notice how profitable resources can be the Market begins to plummet and players will need to continuously undercut other players to even sell their resources. It’s truly the latter which I have no interest in. Though at the beginning of my Gil-making process, I was fine with the undercutting battles, changing Market prices whenever my Retainers came back from a Venture, this became too tedious for me and I no longer cared about making the maximum profits and preferred sticking to the resources I could sell in full stacks even if it meant less profits.

There were a few reasons for this, the main being that I was constantly running out of selling space in my retainers and while selling 1 resource at a time can churn out the most profits, you will have to be logged in the majority of the day to take advantage of this.

I understand this introduction may seem long-winded and potentially feel unnecessary, however, I bring all of this up as it may help give you a better idea of whether Thavnairian Onions are something you even want to start growing.

Note: If you have any questions about FFXIV that you want me to cover feel free to leave them in a comment below, you can also ask me while I am streaming on Twitch, YouTube or in our community discord.

HOW TO GROW THAVNAIRIAN ONIONS IN FFXIV

Though players can simply grow Thavnairian Onions by using Thavnairian Onion Seeds purchased from the Market Board, someone who is planning on making an income from Thavnairian Onions will want to grow them from scratch.

I must say, there are several times I’ve seen Thavnarian Onion Seeds for significantly less than Thavnairian Onions and while these can be a decent investment for players who simply want Thavnairian Onions for their use, they are not worth purchasing if you are hoping to make this your income in the future.

The main reason I say this is because you will not get any seeds for fully growing a Thavnairian Onion, meaning that your purchase of a seed is only going to pay off the difference between the Onion and the Seed (minus the 5% tax you pay and the 2.5%-5% you are charged when you sell.)

I’m assuming where this goes next…

There are two major steps for growing Thavnairian Onions. One is the Cross Breeding step, where players must plant certain crops next to each other to create a Thavnairian Onions Seed and the next stage is the actual growth of Thavnairian Onions.

Players can only cross-breed in Garden Patches, meaning that they must have access to a House as apartments will not accommodate these. That being said, while Crossbreeding can take place in any of the 3 Garden Patches (Round Garden Patch, Oblong Garden Patch and Deluxe Garden Patch) players should only use a Deluxe Garden Patch as they are the most efficient and will be the least likely to fail. As this is the case, I will only be covering the method to cross-breed in Deluxe Garden Patches.

The Cross Breeding step is the most daunting portion of growing Thavairian Onions. If players choose to grow seeds without the use of the Market Board they will essentially need to have 3 successful Cross Breed stages as almost all of the seeds required for the final step are only available through Cross Breeding.

Unfortunate as this is, there are many alternatives to what crops are cross-bred along the way, meaning that players can select crops or seeds that sell well on the Market Board to make up for the time spent.

That all being said, though this process can be done in a Small House by rotating which plants are grown in the Deluxe Garden Plot, it is generally better to do this in a Medium House since you can have 2 Plots or ideally in a Large House since you can have up to 3 Plots.

If you are a member of a Free Company (FC) chances are they will have access to a Large House so it may be a good idea to ask if anyone is using it or if you can have access to it. Of course, this is only suggested if you can trust your FC members as anyone with Gardening privileges will be able to harvest your seeds. Although I like my FC, I would never take the risk.

For players with access to a Medium House, you can choose to buy the least expensive seeds required for the second step so you can just focus on the second and third Crossbreeds.

As for the actual growth of Thavnairian Onions? It’s best to throw them into single-slot Flowerpots. Though you may have some Thavnairian Onion seeds in your inventory at all times, it’s not worth wasting your Deluxe Garden Patches for the Thavnairian Onion seeds, especially because you won’t be able to reliably Crossbreed with them.

If players are extra serious about this, they can purchase an additional apartment to have access to two more Flower Pots and can be added to two other player’s houses similar to having access to the FC garden.

HOW TO CROSSBREED

No matter what crops you want to Crossbreed players will want to follow this pattern:

SEED #1	SEED #2	SEED #1
SEED #2	X	SEED #2
SEED #1	SEED #2	SEED #1

You will want to use Grade 3 Thanalan Topsoil in every slot for the highest success of cross-breeding.

It is never recommended that players use any lower-tier Thanalan Topsoils for the process as these have a significantly lower success rate.

Grade 3 Thanalan Topsoil can be Gathered from timed Nodes, traded by using Tomestones of Poetics, gathered by Retainers or purchased from the Market Board. If you regularly run your dailies you should be able to stockpile a good amount, however, most players will have to tap into other methods especially if they are trying to complete all three crossbreeding steps at once.

I will only be covering the “most efficient” way to grow Thavnairian Onions, however, I would strongly recommend you look at Gardening FFXIV if you want to look at any alternate methods. I would honestly recommend looking at the options as although the method below is the easiest due to the time it takes and the accessibility to get the seeds needed to Crossbreed, I can already see much more profitable crossbreed.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE: Crossbreeding takes place the very moment you put down a seed, meaning that the first seed your place in your Gardening Plot will not have the chance to crossbreed. There are two methods of dealing with this. The first is to place your less expensive seed in Potting Soil first, then place the next seed you hope to crossbreed with it directly next to it in Grade 3 Thanalan Topsoil. You can choose to remove the seed planted in Potting Soil immediately after and replant it in Grade 3 Thanalan Topsoil for the chance for it to Crossbreed, but this is optional as the only negative is that you get 7 seeds instead of 8 in the first batch. 

As plants all have different growth periods players can harvest the seeds that grow first and choose to replant them immediately to further cross-breed. This is why having access to more than one Gardening Plot is typically recommended when it comes to Thavnairian Onions since with one plot you would have to take breaks from propagating certain seeds.

FIRST CROSS BREED STEP

Players will want to purchase Krakka Root Seeds from the Housing District Material Supplier and will want to fetch Mirror Apple Seeds from Coerthas Central Highlands X:22.8, Y:17.8.

I suggest Mirror Apple Seeds since they are not a hidden resource and players can indefinitely gather them if they want to stockpile for future yields of Thavnairian Onion seeds.

Though this cross-breed is not very profitable, the Curiel Roots they cross-breed into tend to sell frequently since many players have it set as their Companion Chocobo’s favourite food due to the XP boost. Chances are you’re selling your Curiels to the same players who are going to buy your Onions.

Unfortunately, there is no way to loop the growth of Curiel Roots, so you will need to restock on both resources pretty regularly.

SECOND CROSS BREED STEP

The reason I like the following Crossbreed is because it utilizes one of the seeds you’ve already been collecting, the Mirror Apple Seed. Not only that, but players can set up an indefinite loop to help reduce the time spent collecting seeds.

The first crossbreed would be with Mirror Apple Seeds and Old World Fig Seeds. Unfortunately, Old World Fig Seeds are a bit annoying to get since they are an Unspoiled Resource.

Players will need to head to The Dravanian Forelands X:26.4, Y:13.9 at 2 AM or 2 PM in-game time, but can gather a few of these. Realistically I would just buy a few from the Market Board since they should be relatively inexpensive and you will only need 4 seeds.

These two seeds will crossbreed into a Royal Kukuru Seed.

Now, if you have extra Old World Fig Seeds, you can continue to complete this crossbreed, however, when you run out of Old World Fig Seeds you can change the Crossbreed to Royal Kukuru Seeds and Mirror Apple Seeds as they can also provide you with Royal Kukuru Seeds. 

You will only want to switch to this rotation if you have 4 excess Royal Kukuru seeds, though it is still possible for these crossbreeds to work effectively with a mixture of the three seeds as long as the Royal Kukuru Seeds and Old World Fig Seeds are not placed next to each other.

FINAL CROSS BREED STEP

I’m sure there’s going to be no surprise when I say this, but now it’s time to use the Royal Kukuru Seeds and the Curiel Root Seeds together and you will get a single Thavnairian Onion Seed.

There is no way to loop this step, so you will need to always have at least 4 of each type of seed, so get to stockpiling!

IS THERE A CHANCE CROSSBREEDING WILL FAIL EVEN WITH GRADE 3 THANALAN TOPSOIL?

The sad truth is that not only can crossbreeding fail even with Grade 3 Thanalan Topsoil, but some crossbreeds have multiple results, leading to a player getting a seed they didn’t want. While this isn’t the end of the world as oftentimes players can salvage this by selling the seeds that were accidentally produced, it can become quite frustrating as lengthens the process.

Players will often assume that a solution is using lower-tier Thanalan Topsoils along the way, however, this ends up burning more time than anything since these soils will require you to either farm hidden nodes or send Retainers on Ventures where they could make more profit as they are not regularly sold on the Market Board.

Luckily when players experience successful crossbreeds they will usually get more seeds than they need for the next harvest, allowing them to begin a stockpile for future yields. This also means that

ADVICE FOR MAKING MORE GIL USING THAVNAIRIAN ONIONS

When you have the Thavnairian Onion seeds in hand, it’s time to place them into a Flower Pot.

Never soil other than basic Potting Soil on the seeds as you will be wasting Gil. This is because no matter what Soil you use you will only get 1 Thavnairian Onion per yield. A while back I even did the math to see if getting Shroud 2 Topsoil from Retainers would be more profitable than sending them on regular Ventures since the crop I was growing provided the same yield for Grades 2 and 3, but I ended up discovering this also wasn’t worth it.

If you REAAAAAALLLY want to be a penny pincher you can send your Retainer out for Grade 1 Soil since they will bring back 15 but only if you seriously don’t know what to do with your retainer.

Potting Soil is only 120 Gil from Housing Vendors and given that you can make much more Gil than this from doing something more productive, I will sideways glance you if you use anything else for this in specific.

Since you can’t boost the yield of Thavnairian Onions you will have to rely on Fishmeal. Fishmeal is a fertilizer which reduces the remaining growth time of any crop by 1% per fertilization. This means that it will have diminishing returns and is most effective in the early stages of growth. I wouldn’t sweat too hard about using Fishmeal every hour on the hour, especially if a few days have passed.

FFXIV Gardening, the resource I tend to rely on for all of my gardening needs ended up doing a test on how impactful fertilizer could be on Thavnairian Onions and discovered that 120 Fertilizers can reduce the time of growth by about 4.7 days.

This means that players can technically grow and sell just about double the amount of Thavnairian Onions. Honestly, to me, this is way too much work for the average player who on average won’t even send their Reainers on short Ventures and will often just stick to one long Venture per day.

In my opinion, the use of fertilizer should be done at the comfort of the player and though it can be significant to your profits, I’d only do it if you are shovelling out Thavnairian Onions at a speed that is faster than they are growing. I can’t imagine this is very common, though I would see it being probable for other resources that are in higher demand when a player didn’t stockpile.

WHEN SELLING THAVNAIRIAN ONIONS HOW MANY SHOULD I SELL AT A TIME?

In many cases, players will only buy a single Thavnairian Onion at a time. This is mostly because Thavnairian Onions are used by newer players who may not have access to a lot of Gil or who are unsure how many Onions they will need in total.

There are a few factors that will help inform a player’s decision of how many Onions they should sell at once being whether the player is running out of sales slots. Even with the extra Retainers I have, I regularly run out of sales slots. Admittedly, a lot do a lot of crafting and selling, but this is why I tend to stick to selling large stacks of resources.

Generally, I have a rule that I won’t place something on the Market Board that is worth less than 3,000 Gil and if a resource is worth this much and is only really purchased in single quantities I will limit myself to a maximum of 3 listings for it.

I have seldomly seen listings for large quantities of Thavnairian Onions on my main account’s server, however, on my Alt’s server there have been quite a number. I would recommend players either list 1 Thavnairian Onion per slot or 8 as these are the most common needs for a player.

Although players will need a total of 10 Thavnairian Onions to max out their Chocobo, chances are every player is going to take advantage of the two free Onions you get for doing side quests. *cough* I say even though I didn’t end up doing this by mistake.

If you choose to sell more than 1 Thavnairian Onion at a time, I strongly recommend regularly checking if you are being undercut since it’s going to be much harder to sell multiples than a single one.

I would personally avoid listing random quantities of Thavnairian Onions, however, I’d be curious if this works out for you.

WHY I WOULDN’T RECOMMEND GROWING THAVNAIRIAN ONIONS IN FFXIV

There are several reasons I wouldn’t recommend growing Thavnairian Onions at least not full-time. Although my typical recommendation is to always rotate the resources you are selling or the tasks you are doing simply because of Market Board fluctuations, I feel more strongly about this in regards to Thavnairian Onions than most other resources.

My suggestion would be to focus on growing Thavnairian Onions a year after an expansion launches or during times when there aren’t many players on a server. I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but the logic behind it is that it is much better to stockpile an expensive resource before it is heavily in demand and to focus on the less demanding resources during peak playtime to shovel them out as fast as possible.

While yes, sometimes a single sale can make as much profit as multiple little sales, a resource that stays on the Market Board for weeks makes no profit while those which are selling rapidly, even at lower costs are chipping towards your overall income. That being said, as I’ve mentioned in my article on Shards, Crystals and Clusters it can be quite shocking that such a basic resource can make heap loads of Gil and when do these resources get utilized the most? During peak playtime.

Though not the most common, I’ve sold shards for 90 Gil each meaning a single Gardening Plot meaning that I could make 72,000 Gil a day from a single gardening plot (if you use Grade 3 Shroud Topsoil). The current average on my server is 48,000 Gil a day (again using Grade 3 Shroud Topsoil) which is still generally pretty good given it is a daily income given a Thavnairian Onion sells for about 90,000 with around 2-8 being sold a day, further supporting my belief that it is not very important to constantly be growing Thavnairian Onions and instead rotate between the resources you grow as chances are you will have an overstock of Onions sooner or later.

The main reason I would recommend against growing Thavnarian Onions is simply due to the amount of time it takes to grow these resources. Even with fertilizer, Thavnarian Onions take a long time to grow and have the chance to wilt if a player is not careful. Though the Wilt mechanic is common among many crops, the cost of a Thavnairian Onion wilting compared to an easier plant to crossbreed is much more costly, not only from a Gil perspective but also from a time investment perspective.

While yes, once a player sets up their first yield of Thavnairian Onions this process becomes a lot more straightforward and it will not take nearly as much time since you should always be guaranteed a steady supply of Thavnairian Onion seeds, one mistake can lead you back to the beginning unless you are purchasing the required seeds from the Market Board which can be arguably as costly as starting from scratch.

I would strongly urge new players to avoid Thavnarian Onion growing at all costs and only recommend it to those who *cough* may have an addiction to the game since growing these will require you to be logged in daily. While there is some workaround when it comes to tending your crops as tending them at any time will be suitable enough as long as you have not missed a timer, accidentally forgetting to tend your crops is a mistake every player can make. Even my husband who plays the game daily and is generally regimented has messed up his Thavnairian Onions a few times, leading him to also give up.

Now, the extreme plus side to this is that when the market is really good for Thavnairian Onions you can expect profits of over 120,000 Gil per Onion as long as the Market isn’t too oversaturated. Again, this is why my biggest recommendation is to stockpile during low seasons to make the most profit during the high seasons.

CONCLUSION

I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on growing Thavnairian Onions, especially if it is your main source of Gil and you are newer to the process. Of course, I understand that many players don’t want to share their “secrets of Gil making” but since I personally don’t get too precious about that, I’m hoping others in the comments will feel the same.

My questions are, do you agree with my analysis on whether it’s worth regularly growing Thavnairian Onions or do you also take time off to garden other resources? I’d also like to know, whether or not you’ve been known to fail harvests and what your methods of ensuring you don’t were. I tend to set alarms for myself to do tasks throughout the day but I always end up dismissing them thinking I’m going to remember to do them later and never do.

Finally, I’d love to know whether or not you’ve found using fertilizer to be worth it. As the use of Fertilizer tends to only be worth it when you are shovelling our resources I would assume that it can be helpful during peak seasons, but since I would be a player who stockpiles on Thavnarian Onions versus growing them to sell them immediately, I don’t think I would find it very useful.

And if this is your first time discovering how to grow Thavnairian Onions, do you think you’re going to start? Let me know in the comments below!