Retainer ventures are the closest thing to passive income in Final Fantasy XIV: you send a retainer off, go do anything else, and they come back with items on a timer. Done well, your retainers quietly earn gil around the clock. Done carelessly, they haul back vendor trash.
Each retainer has a class (a combat job, Miner, Botanist, or Fisher) and can be sent on ventures that return a batch of items after a set time. The quantity they bring back scales with the retainer's relevant stats — item level for combat, gathering/perception for gatherers — so leveling and gearing your retainers directly increases their haul.
Two ventures can take the same amount of time and return the same quantity, but if one brings back an item worth 50 gil each and the other an item worth 5,000 gil each, the difference is enormous. The whole game of retainer income is pointing each retainer at the ventures whose output sells for the most on your world right now.
That's exactly what the Retainers tool does — it ranks ventures by the current market value of what they return, so your retainers come home with the most valuable haul available to them, not whatever was first in the list.
Ventures won't out-earn active crafting or flipping, but they're free gil for near-zero effort — the perfect background layer while you play. Stack them on top of the active methods in the main gil guide and they add up over a week without you thinking about them.
See the best ventures on your world → All gil-making methods →
XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.