Abyssea Questions

[Bled]

So i follow the forums every now and again and i see a lot about low level players leaching to lvl 99 in abyssea.

my questions is what is this? can anyone explain to me the leveling process for lowbies in abyssea? aka leveling 30-99. I thought you needed stones to enter ayssea in the first place.

also i see a lot of complaints about new palyers doing this abyssea leveling thing and then not knowing their role in a party, Wouldn't that new player have to stop at level 50 and each subsequent Limit break??? thus breaking up the straight leveling to 99 in abyssea?

Currently i have spent a lot of time soloing and i have also participated in some book burning in Gusgen and what not, however i did not know you could level in abyssea faster. I am a really old vet to the game so all i remember in this game is the old way and i have just recently been playing. Book burning is super fast by its self, if abyssea is faster i can say personally i want no part in that (you would lose all the mid game content doing that), I am just curious of the what, how, and why this is done.

[Arcon]

EXP is calculated differently in Abyssea. The way "leeching" works is to have a high level player (Warrior, most commonly) AoE large groups of mobs while you're in range. At first the EXP you get per kill will be very low, but it'll rise quickly to over 500EXP/kill and one pull will kill 20~30 mobs. And yes, you need Traverser Stones to be able to be in Abyssea, however you can get time extensions from killing mobs in there, which usually leads to a huge surplus of time accumulated (often over 500min), so you don't need to worry about that very much.

Note that this is usually a paid service. The going rate is currently 100k/h, starting at 3h. Once you muster up the original 300k, you can actually get some money from there as well, by accumulating cruor (a form of Abyssea currency) and exchanging those for gil by buying Chocobo Blinkers and selling those to a NPC.

[Shadowsong]

If you have ever platyed FF13, you will kinda understand how the experience chains in abyssea work- It's monster family related, not timed like it was before.

What- EXP chains in abyssea do not end by time like usual, they are extended constantly asl ong as the same type of mob is killed. This leads to upwards of 600+ kill a mob, where the mobs die in less than 5 seconds.

How- Becuase EXP is not longer determiend by # of party member,s you can have 18 man alliances. Becuase of this, there is always a constant stream of mobs being pulled, and mobs die in seconds.

Why- Because EXPing is god awful, is not fun, is not content, and is mearly an obstacle between you and the fun content.
Come on now, would you rather being fighting the Mighty Wyrm God Shinryu or fighting 15000 Crabs?

[Bled]

If you have ever platyed FF13, you will kinda understand how the experience chains in abyssea work- It's monster family related, not timed like it was before.

What- EXP chains in abyssea do not end by time like usual, they are extended constantly asl ong as the same type of mob is killed. This leads to upwards of 600+ kill a mob, where the mobs die in less than 5 seconds.

How- Becuase EXP is not longer determiend by # of party member,s you can have 18 man alliances. Becuase of this, there is always a constant stream of mobs being pulled, and mobs die in seconds.

Why- Because EXPing is god awful, is not fun, is not content, and is mearly an obstacle between you and the fun content.
Come on now, would you rather being fighting the Mighty Wyrm God Shinryu or fighting 15000 Crabs?

I see your point on leveling and this is where opinions vary (like i said im an old vet of FF11 so i tend to lean towards the old school line of thinking), however whats the point of paying a ton of money which looks to be at least 300k to reach your limit break at 50 and have to stop every so often for the next limit break... that just seams tedious and expensive.

[Arcon]

[..] however whats the point of paying a ton of money which looks to be at least 300k to reach your limit break at 50 and have to stop every so often for the next limit break... that just seams tedious and expensive.

It's mostly designed for people who already beat all the limit break quests and go straight to 99. You can get from 30 to 70 in one 3h session, depending on the skill of the cleaver.

[Shadowsong]

whats the point of paying a ton of money which looks to be at least 300k to reach your limit break at 50 and have to stop every so often for the next limit break... that just seams tedious and expensive.

This is a good point, and limit breaks are quite annoying while trying to burn up. However (at least when I run an exp pty), I would always let a person leave, complete their limit break, and then return to the party. Part of the joys of having 18 people alliances is that if 3-4 people have to go afk the party does not shut down, nor does it even slow down.

Also, after you have one good Abyssea party, you will have a good stock of Cruor (think conquest points for abyssea). With this, you can purchase Forgotten Keys. There is a full time position within abyssea exp parties called the "keyer" or something similar. This person's only job is to assess what is in trasure chests and to open the viable ones. This can be done at any level and would create free-leeching situations for you.
edit: Like someone above me said, when you exp in Abyssea you actually GAIN gil, since you can convert the "cruor" you obtain into gil quite easily. You wont be spending much, if any, gil at all when all is said and done.

[bungiefanNA]

One stone gets you in for 30 minutes. If the party is already established and has their own lights built, you going in at 30 to leech means they are already getting blue chests with time extensions. Every time extension adds 10 minutes of Abyssea time for everyone in the alliance. Most people now entering Abyssea past the first time don't even spend any stones to go in, since they have time stockpiled. You get a stone when you start Abyssea anyway.

If you've already done your limit breaks on one job, you don't have to do them for any other job, so you can just stand there from 30 till 99, or you can start contributing to the alliance kills in the 70s. 30-70 is about 6 hours in Abyssea, maybe less.

Midgame content is soloed/duoed now. You level as fast as you can, then find ways to skillup your weapon and magic skills (Zvahl Fortalices are a good way for most jobs), and then you just plow through the midgame content at your own pace. You find groups of people for endgame, early game and midgame are lowman events now. The level caps and other restrictions on missions were removed since so many people, after 9 years of the game being out, still hadn't completed most of them, and paired with the raise of the level cap to 99, makes them all very easy for nearly anyone to complete that wants to.

Even at 75, people didn't do events much for lower levels, the focus was to become max level and get gear for it, because all other gear was temporary to hold you over for leveling. Leveling was an obstacle to slow people down so they wouldn't do all the new content within a few weeks of release. Now there is so much content, leveling doesn't need to be there to slow you down. Thus they got rid of the time sink leveling was. Again, with 99 being the new max level, people just focus on leveling until they get there and then they start upgrading gear and doing events. Same as before, only they don't take 6 months to be able to start doing events, they take about 2 weeks.