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Hi all,
I played FFXI many years ago when the game was relatively new. Out of boredom, I decided to give the game another look, but I've noticed the game's population has taken a major hit. This is to be expected since the game is as old as it is, but what's the best way to level these days? I can't imagine there being very many low level parties, and without a group, leveling as I know it will get very difficult very soon.
They've doubled the xp earned per kill, and now have training regimes (Field Manual and Grounds Tome) that provide bonus xp after killing a certain list of targets (they changed it so they can be set to auto-repeat, so don't have to keep running back anymore). If you integrate this into your play sessions (be that solo or teamed up with others), you level at a vastly superior rate than in years past. If you review the lists, you can also see that you may not have to follow the typical pattern of the past either--the books bonuses can sometimes help compensate for lower xp/kill, allowing you to maintain a decent xp/hour rate, which is really nice once you find a way to make it work to your advantage (slaughter easier mobs much faster, collecting the bonuses more frequently).
Lower level party play varies from server to server, but it does still happen, just not always the traditional party of 6--see it a lot as smaller groups of 4 or less. This may be hit and miss on some servers/nations though. Might find yourself using the search function more often--might work in your favor to put something in your /seacom (like jobs/level, areas you want to go, |Team Up?|,etc. and keep your flag up while tooling around, never know when it might actually pay off. But, even if you don't get into groups, you can do a lot more (and faster) solo with the way things are setup now.
Note: the older wiki is getting a bit flaky lately...if you have issues with it, you can try a newer Gamer Escape one, some sections aren't exactly in synch, but a lot of info is there also: Field Manual, Grounds Tome
Once you hit 30, will want to hit Jeuno and kick of the Abyssea story lines and get your traverser stone generation started. Hopefully, by then you will have made some friends (or caught up with old ones) and have a pool of knowledge/support to pull from to help you walk through all that content...it's a lot to try to put into a guide here. A lot of that info is out there on the wiki's (FFXIclopedia, GamerEscape, there are others, but these are popular).