I've attached the maps of Palborough mines with all the mining locations known to me (Marked in red). Now, you will want to explore the routes to maximize your travel.

Ores, Iron and Zinc sells pretty fast in Final Fantasy XI. Zeruhn Mines have many of these resources. Zeruhn is near Bastok City, you'll have easy access to the Bastok Mines, AH and your Mog House. Just an FYI again, the higher your fame the cheaper the pick axes will cost for you to mine.

Buy a few stacks of Windhurst Teal leaves, about 400 gil in AH, cheaper if bought in Windhurst. Buy a few stacks of Distilled water, 120 gil per stack at NPC in S. Sandoria Pub.

Okay, I've spent a few days with the game (all weekend) and I must say that after some initial frustrations with the interface I'm finally taming the beast and beginning to really enjoy the elements of FFXI that make it unique.??

Combat. The first person to hit a mob gains access to the mob along with his/her party. No one else can engage the mob. When you hit a mob it's name will turn red, meaning it's aggro'd on you and you can hit it. Everyone else will see the mob as "purple". A purple mob name means it is locked and cannot be engaged.

"Main" menu - This shows up in the upper right, it opens with the press of the "-" key on the NUMERIC (numbers all the way to the right) keypad. This is where nearly all of the general game functions can be accessed (many things here have hotkeys).

In order to perform any kind of action on something it must be targeted first. The fastest way to see what you can do is to press "Enter" once after you have a target, that opens the "Action" menu. This gives you everything you can do with that target (Attack, Magic, Trade, etc..)

In third person view it moves the camera faster than it turns you (unless you're standing still). You can also click and hold the right mouse button for mouse look, but be advised this is super senstive and the axis are reversed.

Programmable hotkeys, these are like the hotkey bars in EQ. It is here you'll map spell casting and special job or weapon abilities so that you don't need to fish around for these in the "Action" menu while in combat. To use these you'll need to configure them in the "Main" menu ("-" key on the numeric keypad).

Conserve space by stacking items. This is a bit inconvenient for PC users of other MMO's but the best way is to open your inventory. In the upper right of the screen you'll see two menu options one of which is labeled "Sort". Select this then answer "yes". This will sort your items and auto-stack anything allowed to be stacked.