XP in new zonesFollow

ToA areas can go upwards of chain 300. a mix of T-IT mobs all in same area all fast repops.

Personally, I was in an XP party in Mamook Staging Point zone roaming no more than the relative distance of port jeuno mog >> AH.

we were using usual KRT setup MNK/war x3 BRD,WHM,RDM... getting fast chain 60s. XP rate was better than KRT because the beastmen are IT giving 230 xp.

lots of fun, costs 200 SP to get there but well worth it... make sure you have your Sanction signet!

just from my experience, i figure colibris and marids wont make great exp, because of snatch morsole (steals food effect) and voracious trunk (steals one positive effect) chigoes, i get 93 exp from a DC, but they seeem a tad hard to pull XD

bees, treants, tigers, ochus, make your choice, we already got them, the new crawlers (eru-w/e's) have an insane firebreath move

trolls are a maybe,have't fought many, but they hit like gigas rofl, flans are JA aggro, nuff said

apkallu might be ok, but idk if they link, clusters are clusters, haven't been to mamook yet, but arraparago (sp?) is gonna be like exp'in in eldieme only with snake ladies and mummies instead of ghosts and dogs to worry about

there are birds in the caedera mire, but karakuls seem interesting (not) jnun and slimes, who likes exping on doomed and jellies? imps could be ok though a tad hard to pull

i haven't been through the whole expansion yet, so im not 100% sure on some, but others seem plausible in the right conditions

a note on some of the bones, they have dam high evasion

while soloing the DC ones I noticed that the thf typ skellies were awfully evasive I can only imagine the VT ones.

but wow the mamook roaming sounds pretty dam amazing

dam Altoc read your post and headed out there with a whm friend....

SE have rewritten endgame EXP

Duo VT mobs for constant Chain 5's each kill giving 200-281(our higest)exp

Stayed there for 1 hr made a little over 5k exp, this is shocking.

No more searching for campsites, no more looking for the perfect party set-up, grab a couple of friends and exp with even 2 of you is going to be pretty dam sweet.

FFXI just got a whole lot sweeter, exp an area i find fairly boring and keep to a minimum just got a whole lot easier to find.

Laters

Kaze

Bhaulfau Thickets is a great time too, right outside of the Mamool Ja Staging Point. My LS decided to try it out once, I was obviously a much lower level than them, so it wasn't as great with me tagging along, but we still made about 10k an hour. The mobs spawn rediculously fast and are easy to boot.

Only bad part about Puk's is their AoE knockback which can toss you into aggro if you aren't carefull, and their AoE flash which is brutal. I believe the knockback can be thwarted by subbing NIN, which is what most melee's subbed except me.

With me in the group we snagged chain 12, after I got my level back and a bit of buffer((still 10k exp away from what I had before getting ToAU though)), I forced a level 75 friend to take my place, I believe they topped chain 50.

Aht Urghan has a natural exp boost in sanction, and as was mentioned, the mobs respawn rediculously fast, which makes it a melee-party's dream.

EDIT: Oh yeah, you chain Sea Puk's and Mamool Ja's, I don't recommend the Wyvern, heh.

peace,
CR

Edited, Fri Apr 28 07:02:22 2006 by Roin

Curious, but what level do you need to be to XP in that zone?

Ok Thanks :]

Al'taieu:
Meh, I guess it's fun soloing, but I haven't been often since the new expansion. I can still get chain 2-3 solo on Phuabo as monk/ninja with a huge chakra macro, an XP ring, a little haste, counterstance, and a lot of luck. Phuabo attack so slowly that you can cast Utsusemi: Ichi if you counter only one hit, and Ni is pretty much free if you pay attention. Also, bring echo drops!

Phuabo: Good, See Above
Hpemde: Okay, but eh, Sinuate Rush bites. As does Temporal whatever, the AoE stun move. Still able to solo T Om'hpemdes. Also, they can undebuff themselves.
Yovra: No. Just no. Walk away or come back with friends.
Aerns: They have some really nasty TP moves and links. I really don't like XPing on them. Also, bards can't seem to sleep them. Not to mention the reraise thing could wipe your party.
Xzomits: Cute. They're honestly not so bad. High attack speed, of course, but relatively weak. I would also consider XP on these.

And inside---
Zdei: Not fond of them. At all. Optic Induration is quite possibly the worst move of all time. My record, with counterstance up, was taking a 1800ish Optic Induration with ninja and full shadows up, along with counterstance. It knocked me backwards, stoned me, killed me, dealt about 600 more to the Black Mage behind me, and stoned him, too. And ice spikes suck. No.
Ghrah: Aside from Actinic Burst(AoE Flash), they're rather fun. I could potentially solo one or two. If you could find enough of them, you could chain them.
Euvhi: Also semi-cool and interesting. I don't have many problems with these, but it was a pain to counter them once they opened up, it seemed. Farmed a few for a friend once, they were very killable as a duo, but lousy XP.

Really, it ends up as, if you wanna solo, do phuabo or hpemdes. If you wanna XP with a group, all you really can do is aerns inside the palace, they're the only thing in enough supply to make any sort of XP chain, though you could just simply kill everything. It's nothing too special or mind-blowing.

Aht Urghan:
Win.
Mamool Ja Staging Area, I have gotten chain #87 in one party (BRD, RDM, WHM, MNK, SAM, NIN) and #116 in another. (BRD, RDM, NIN, MNK, SAM, RNG) Hooray for Puks. Boo for people finding out about it. The only reason chain #87 stopped is because half the party was dead from a disconnected White Mage, and the #116 was lost due to other parties moving in, camping in the middle of the clearing, and claiming everything with lullaby. -_- Also, hurray for the galka monk/ninja XPing in Panther Mask, Fuma Sune-Ate, Black Belt, and Shura Togi who got extremely upset when I attempted to check him. I didn't know people like that still existed.

The XP is unspeakable there, if you can clear all the retards out long enough to kill things. It's about equal to King Ranperre's Tomb with good mages, except without the effort of putting together the perfect six people to get that 12,000 XP an hour. Sanction is also a beautiful thing.
-Dakren

MNK/NIN + RDM/WHM vs VT Imps = All the endgame xp you'll ever need.

That is all.

I had fun as a 66 pld fighting colibris. I'll paste what I put in the campsite thread:

Area: Passage in the center of G-8 in Bhaflau Thickets
Mob: Colibri
Level range: 64(?)-66

Camp is reached by heading out Al Zhabi to the Thickets, then walking past the spiders/lesser colibri, invising past the tigers, and sneaking past the marids. Close to town for easy renewal of sanction. Colibri do not link, so camp is perfectly safe. There are two spawns in the tunnel, and a few spawns (4, I think?) in the field just outside (not the one with the marids), with respawns every 5 minutes. Space for one party.

Colibri are the same level, roughly, as the flamingos in Sky. However the tank is going to need to be able to fight them without using food, so suggest being towards the upper level range. Still, as it was they hit like little girls, so shouldn't be a problem. The reason for not using food is a move they use, Snatch Morsel, that removes food effects. Note that this move ignores shadows.

Because you're working at a level range where the tank doesn't need food, the DDs are almost certainly going to be pulling hate left and right. Suggest they use cheap food for when they get hit with Snatch Morsel. In addition, there's no point in setting up a skillchain due to another move they have that removes all TP: Feather Tickle. Doesn't matter for the tank, but can frequently mess up the DDs if they're trying to skillchain, so they should just solo weaponskills instead. Also because of this, a thf to plant hate on the tank is a good thing.

The next trick the colibris have is that they re-cast any spell used against them, either on the person that cast it or on the person with the hate (usually the tank). Because of that, a blm is dangerous to have along. Of course since you're not skillchaining, the blm wouldn't get to burst anyway. However this can be used to your advantage. For a pld tanking, casting flash causes the mob to stop to cast flash back at you, which gives time to cure (they attack very fast, and getting a cure in normally is difficult). For a nin tanking, a blm can work by having them cast the spell and immediately cast stun. This will give a window for the nin to get shadows up and provoke, and then the bird will just cast on the nin, eating a shadow. Don't try this with -ga spells :)

Side note: the ability to recast spells used against them does not apply to any spells summoners use, including the level II and IV elemental magics. No idea if the birds will recast the ninjutsu enfeebles.

Using enfeebles on the mob is both a hassle because of the recasting effect, and a pain because they tend to resist pretty hard [note: not thoroughly tested, so could have just been a few unlucky resists]. As such, I wouldn't worry about it much. Not much point in the rdm enfeebling, but because of the level range you're likely to be in, having them melee is quite feasible.

Party I went with: Pld (me), mnk, thf, whm, rdm, smn/brd. The only one who ever rested was the whm. Managed over 4k/hr there without empress bands. Didn't use the bonus effects from the gate guard since HP and MP were very rarely below 50%, and food duration bonus was useless.

Anyway, a nice fun alt to Bibiki Bay at this level.

Be forewarned, SE wasn't kidding on their website. Apparently it really is a bad idea to harass the Apkallu.

I've seen reports of people meriting off them. Sure, they start off incredibly soft, no aggro or link. Apparently they build a truly nasty form of Penguin Hate though.

They begin to aggor, and link. Then link over a wider range. Their defense slowly rises to mammoth porportions (punches drop from 60 per fist to 10), as does their magic resistance (Tier III nukes for 100). They go from using no TP moves to gaining progressively nasty moves. They go from slow, single attacks to fast double & triple attacks.

Apkallu are best treated as a cute tourist attarction, at least until someone find out how to reset hate. They become Evil.

PS: I love the fact that they become evil too. Gogo SE, too darn funny.

it's possible to pull off 16k/hr in the new zones if there's no other parties there. =)

XP'd off of Imps, but things were slow with another party there. I'm not sure if I was at the prime Imp location either at the time, Caederva Mire around (J-7) to (K-6). We weren't able to gain over chain 10 because our loop was very small and others were camping nearby too. I'd like to know a prime route because there had to be better, but now that the Turban secret is out the amount of people XP'ing in that zone is nothing short of ridiculous. In other words, chain 130's are only possible with small parties, a good camp, and nobody for miles.

Last night my group took off near Arrapago Reef. Seemed like undead might be the way to go and it first it seemed that way. 350+ dmg crits and Asuran Fists for 1800+? Despite the high numbers, the XP was crippling due to -agas and the fact that they were DC mobs mostly. I was the only Monk (this was a generic party and I was the only one doing CONSISTENT high damage) but even so with 6 members these were pulling in a paltry 1k per hour for us. LOLOL yea we were bored. I don't recommend the Reef unless there's a better camping spot that we simply were unable to discover.