FFXIV Culinarian Leveling Guide L1 to 100 (Dawntrail UPDATE)

DAWNTRAIL UPDATED! Power level your CUL L1 to 100 in no time! CUL Levequest tips, rotations, gear updates and more!

CUL Leveling Guide 15-35

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See:
Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation


 

Culinarian Leveling Guide - Navigation: [0-15] [15-35] [35-50] | [50-60]
[60-64] [64-70] | [70-80] | [80-90] | [90 - 100]

Ixal Beast Tribe Daily Quests: Bonus Crafting/DoH EXP !

At L15+, the time is ripe to start doing these! The main purpose why I push for this is –

SAVING LEVEQUESTS!!!!
They’re valuable while leveling crafters!

Starting Quest: A Bad Bladder
NPC & Location: Scarlet at New Gridania (9, 11)
Prerequisite MSQ: Pursuit of the Past

These dailies are best used to push past “bad tiers”, or simply on your highest level non 50 crafter. I suppose you can also use them on crafting classes which are lagging behind for one reason or the other.

Culinarian Level 15-20

Level 15 Culinarian Class Quest Item: Meat Miq’abob
Level 15 CUL Leves [L]ocation: Aleport | Limsa
Level 15 Culinarian Leves Items Discussion:

I won’t recommend using leves this tier, but if you choose to…

[H][1] Raw Oyster – equal
[H][1] Dodo Omelette – equal
[C] Walnut Bread – Make a bunch of these… (Not necessarily for leves)
[RC] Apple Tart.
[L][1] Chicken and Mushrooms – equal
[L][1] Lavender Oil – If you’re doing leves this tier, might as well choose this one.

Usual unexciting 15 tier… It’s best to grind Walnut breads for future use… But for speed, Courier/Reverse Courier is of course the best to do. You also have the option of spamming Apple Tart for the next tier.

If Grinding: W A L N U T  –  B R E A D.

Culinarian Level 20-25

Level 20 Culinarian Class Quest Item: Dried Plums
Level 20 CUL Leves [L]ocation: Quarrymill | Limsa
Level 20 Culinarian Leves Items Discussion:

[H][3] Walnut Bread – As I said above…
[H][1] Grape Juice – Best Single leve on this tier.
[C] Salmon Meuniere – nope…
[L][3] Apple Tart – is equally viable..
[L][1] Honey Muffin – Too complex, Grape Juice better
[L][1] Shepherd’s Pie – highly depends on market…

Walnut bread is cheap, easy to make, and you have pretty much everything if you followed this guide. Well worth it! Make sure you hold on to some Walnut Breads… For the single leves , if you wanna do them, Grape Juice is better.

If Grinding: Make any leve item, or more Walnut Bread!

 

Culinarian Level 25-30

Level 25 Culinarian Class Quest Item: Aldgoat Steak
Level 25 CUL Leves [L]ocation: Quarrymill | Limsa
Level 25 Culinarian Leves Items Discussion:

[H][3] Chamomile Tea – Recommended repeatable Leve.
[H][1] Ginger Cookie – Makes more sense to do Pea Soup…
[C] Chicken Stock – CUL couriers sure suck…
[L][3] Eel Pie – Chamomile “should” be cheaper…
[L][1] Pea Soup – The best single leve on this tier. Not bad to grind on.
[L][1] Crumpet – Still pretty cheap, but Pea Soup is a winner.

If Grinding: Pea Soup makes an excellent grind choice. You can use this for support in HQing leve items (+CP!), and submit the extras for exp.

Culinarian Level 30-35

Level 30 Culinarian Class Quest Item: (HQ) Smoked Raptor
Level 30 CUL Leves [L]ocation: Costa Del Sol | Limsa
Level 30 Culinarian Leves Items Discussion:

[H][3] Cornmeal – Godlike. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only leve in this tier.
[H][1] Blood Currant Tart – ^
[C] Dark Vinegar–  ^^
[L][3] Baked Sole –  ^^^
[L][1] Tuna Miq’abob – ^^^^
[L][1] Cornbread – If you’re going single, this is it.

This tier is so lopsided, nothing beats Cornmeal. Do not even consider using another type of leve.

If Grinding: More Cornmeal for further abuse.

Culinarian Leveling Guide - Navigation: [0-15] [15-35] [35-50] | [50-60]
[60-64] [64-70] | [70-80] | [80-90] | [90 - 100]

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74 thoughts on “FFXIV Culinarian Leveling Guide L1 to 100 (Dawntrail UPDATE)”

    1. Shards are like “super RAW materials” that often get overlooked. They’re the crystal looking things in the upper part of your recipe. They’re not normally considered “part” of a recipe when talking about ’em, haha.

  1. Love the guide, but I have to say you should include doing the collectible Pixie Apple Pie at 74 if you have no leve allowances left. Mats are easy to obtain except for the yak milk for the butter, which I broke down and bought, but you could always use retainers to get enough. From 74-80 you only need roughly 100 collectibles using your 100% rotation.

  2. For the leg of 40 to 50, I have found the Rolanberry cheese to be the best option, simply because other players sells stacks of 99 for very reasonable price.
    If not on your own server, shop around.

    This tip is valid for those with limited leve allowances.

  3. Night Milk can be purchased from the Sahagin vendor for 84 gil each and if you gather your own rolanberries, that may make it the best for grinding from 40-45 and makes the leve even more attractable.

  4. Here to point out that with Shadowbringers, Yak Milk is now buyable in Crystarium for 617 gil. This makes Ishgardian Muffin *buyable*

  5. Unfortunately it’s true as of June 23, 2019. The Levequest is now called Gegeruju Gets Down with the objective of 3 pieces of cornbread to Ririphon.

  6. For the Lv 40 Leves, I would definitely reconsider doing the rolanberry cheese leves. You only need two resources, requires only 5 for a turn-in and one of the highest XP at 55,774 (NQ). Pastry fish need six resources, requires 9 pastry fish for a turn-in, and its XP is the lowest at 32,049 (NQ).

  7. For people lazy like me, for levels 45-50. You can buy mulled tea from a vendor in the Kugane markets. I got a stack or 99 for about 25k gil, which was about enough to get from 45-50. Only downside is that this costs more leves.

  8. I don’t understand why you would use hasty touch 2 over hasty touch 1, it’s only 10% more success for a whole 7cp i haven’t personally really found it worth the cp

  9. Should change lvl 20 Culinarian Guild Quest item name be Dried Prunes/Plums for some people who doesn’t know English or doesn’t read the dialogues.

  10. Did the triple walnut bread leve get nerfed? It only gives 5000 exp for me. Seems very wasteful when it’s asking for so much.

      1. When the muffin is the collectable it requires 1900 points to qualify. Using HQ Yak Milk starts you at 2040, so it is prime for using a macro to mass produce them while saving leves for other craft skills.

  11. So a quick Question: The 0-15 set only gets me to lv 12. That is with making half of everything by hand then quick synthing the rest. Also lacking the Company-issue Engineering Scroll.

    Recommend adding that if you fall short, buying some Tiger Cod off the market (can also be bought in Limsa for 36gil but market for me has always been far cheaper) and making salt cod helps close the gap, can also go for lavender oil and cider if you’re also BTN or if the lavender and apples are cheep on the markets.

    1. The math doesn’t add up for 0-15. You need 130,580 EXP for 0-15. The list calls for the creation of 260 items. That’s just over 500 EXP each as a reward. Half of these will not give 200, even boosted with the CG Scroll (Salt, Syrup, Sugar). You will be to level 5 before finishing the salt.

      I did this, exactly as described above, with the CG Scroll. I also completed each of the guild missions when they became available (crafting the additional Grilled Trout and Grilled Dodo…as well as a stack of Olive Oil. Still level 12.

      1. It’s not meant to get you there 100% of the time. RESTED + MANUALS + some good exp on manual crafts should get you up there (I cannot account for RNG). Also, it provides mats that weren’t buyable (I think you can buy table salt now) which you should have a stock of. It’s more of a value move.

  12. For scrips at Lv 58-60, if you’ve got botanist levelled up, and ESPECIALLY if you’ve been muffin spamming and so have way more yakmilk than you started with: Frozen Spirits actually is lower level than Marron Glace, and yields more scrips.

  13. So for the 20-25 tier, you suggest the walnut bread triple turnin. This will give about 15.5k exp nq. However, this also requires 9 walnut breads per turnin, making this option not at all material efficient. I found it best to continue to use the walnut bread courier from the 15-20 tier, as this option onky uses 1 walnut bread for turnin, and still gives 13k exp.

    Loce your guides! This is probably the 4th or 5th I’ve used for crafting/gathering. Keep up the good work!

    1. During the 20-25 tier, the walnut bread turn-in [H] works really well in conjunction with Grape Juice [H] since they’re picked up from the same NPC and turned in to the same NPC. It nearly doubled my speed. Not to mention grape juice is very cheap to craft, making the material to EXP cost fairly low. The bread, as you mentioned, is not though. I turned in left-overs for dat easy exp.

    1. I’m going to assume you were able to HQ Ishgardian Muffins at 52? I’m finding it a bit hard ;( (I have the old 2.0 gear) 359 Craftsmanship/344Control 340CP

  14. For levels 15-20 the Leve called Rustic Repast in Aleport is by far the best way to go. You can buy the Chicken and Mushrooms from an NPC for 37 gil. The leve gives 12218 exp and 185 gil and is a quick run from the leve giver to the receiver.

  15. ok so from what im noticing, courier leves are the best EXP of any tier, meaning if you were to have someone helping you level rather than doing it alone, would you consider purely sticking to couirer leves as they give the most bang:buck ratio in terms of leves:exp?

    1. For the most part, yes. If cost is not an issue, courier leves are great. One thing courier sucks at? TIME. At level 35 onward, courier leves are slow as hell since they are NOT NEAR ANY AETHERYTE, and can increase “time spent” to level by up to 10 times.

      1. I tried cornmeal but I find dark vinegar to be better. It uses the same grapes I was making juice out of and pays over 90k for hq

  16. In the level 1-15 guide you need 99 rye to make 33 rye flour not 33

    awesome guide man really helped me out keep up the good work

  17. With Night Milk purchasable from the Reputation Vendor (Sahuagin) now, it makes Rolanberry Cheese for level 40-45 and the Rolanberry Lassi for 45-50 great choices. Highly recommend doing those now.

    1. ABSOLUTELY!!!! I was going to comment this, I have been using this guide and I was looking at Pastry fish and I cannot see how that is going to be easy whatsoever. Good guide but I really didn’t have to follow it exactly as I had lvled botany and had kept many things handy with retainer space especially HQ items.

  18. Haven’t made any comparision with the others, but the Gridanian Walnut’s has severely jumped up in price (at least on my server), especially since they long back ago (10/15/2013) removed them from the Shopkeep in Drybone. Is it still the best, and most valid choice to skill up on (lvl 15-20)?

    1. First off sorry for the super late comment! I also noticed the oddly high price of the walnut, making walnut bread a less ideal choice for those without (or too lazy to fetch with) botanist.

  19. Salt Cod Puffs aren’t as bad as the guide makes it seem, since NQ salt cod can be bought from either the potwatch or independent culinarian npc near each town’s market board for 15g.
    Other than that, great guide!

  20. I’m not sure what/when it changed, but the levemete in St. Coinach’s Find for level 45 leves asks for “cups of Rolanberry Lassi” instead of Tomato Pie. The description still sounds like Tomato Pie, but the objective itself states otherwise.

    1. Also! Thank you for the awesome guide =) With it’s help, and 99 leve allowances, I got from 1-50 in about 3 days and a total of ~12 hours.

      On my server, I was actually able to MAKE money buying leve items off the market boards and just running leves from 25-50. I literally did not have to craft a single thing during that time and I made ~15,000g profit. Crazy.

    2. It could possibly have changed in a recent patch due to the difficulty of tomato pies craft. I will investigate!

  21. Even while using a scroll and manually crafting every single thing I still only made it to the very start of level 12. (Second to last pie made me level) I think they may have changed some stuff around in the latest patches.

    1. Crafting the same item won’t yield the same EXP each time! The more quality you manage to get, the higher exp you will receive! In the case of not reaching 15, you may want to use the Courier leve of your tier, and the “reverse courier”

    2. I was lvl 11 and just got on my pie dough grind. I bought enough material’s to make 99 of them (less then 2000 gil). I’m now lvl 14 about to run it back.also I’m not using scroll’s

  22. This is superb, thank you for spending the time to compile and write this up. Very much looking forward to the guides for other trades. Just hope that it’s not too affected by the Leve XP changes in 2.1 (some singles bumped up, triples bumped down?).

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