Valkurm Dunes - Still Viable?

Hi, I'm a lvl 14 RDM on Ragnarok. I'm an OLD returning player from way back when FFXI had little to no expansions. Back then, Valkurm Dunes was /the/ leveling spot for 14 - 20ish and it was usually swelling with parties. My question is...

Is it still even workable anymore? I went there yesterday and today and for the last twelve hours there have been maybe 1 or 2 stray people my level and the rest were a handful of high lvls idling. I didn't see parties /anywhere/. Is there some better way to level now? Or has everybody simply moved on to the higher levels and its hard to party now?

I think pretty much everyone at those levels do Grounds of valor, it's basically doing x amount of mobs for exp reward.
You can read more about it here: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Grounds_Tome

Example: in Inner Horutoto Ruins, if you do page 2 you have to kill 2 Blade bats and 3 golblin weavers. Once you've done that you get 270exp plus the exp you got from killing the 5 mobs.

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Originally Posted by Lumian

I didn't see parties /anywhere/. Is there some better way to level now? Or has everybody simply moved on to the higher levels and its hard to party now?

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Learn to use Fields/Grounds of Valor books.

Solo is a good way to level, but you can get faster experience in a Gusgen Mines party (~10~30), or a Crawler's Nest party (~30~70), or even a Bostaunieux Oubliette party (~60~99), however you can start to enter Abyssea (and you should do the quest for this so you start gathering stones asap) at level 30 (although not every party will take you).

Expect your skills to gimp out a little when leveling in Level Sync'd book burns.

I see, thank you both for the info. It's really helpful. :)

Also a few things I forgot.

http://ffxiclopedia.org
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/
http://www.ffxiah.com/

If you ever decide that you want to join the one true server, Valefor is always waiting. Good luck.

all you have to do is open the abyssea quests up to the point where you enter one and report back I believe to start accumulating stones so dont worry about pts there just get the quests started when ur able. By the time you get aby pts u will have plenty.

The old pt model is dead so look to the book burns or soloing pages to lvl. You can literally 1-99 in a day once u get the hang of it

You can of course still go to the dunes if you want. But the days of 200 people in that area fighting over camps are long gone.

You can also add ffxi.gamerescape.com/wiki to your reference list. :)

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

You can also add gamerescape to your reference list. :)

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You could, but there wouldn't be much of a purpose. Old wiki for low level/old content, BG wiki for new stuff/specific game mechanics, anything else is a waste of time.

You'll find GoV to be insanely fast compared to what you're used to, you can repeat pages after they've finished and you can set them to automatically repeat. The important exp tends to be from page, so it doesn't matter if you're getting 1 or 2 exp a kill, because they faster you kill the faster you hit page and benefit from the exp. As you do more pages your exp received will increase until a cap is hit. At Bost with leeches (60-99 camp) you're looking at 4.1k at cap and you do have to be synced, so with a good party killing 8 leeches is quick and you get a LOT of exp as a result.

Alternatively, if you have some cruor from Abyssea, which you won't have on a new character, but for when you do, you can buy Forbidden Keys and become a key whore from level 30, where you job is to open chests in Abyssea exp parties as parties tend to leave spots open for key whores, it just means the level 75+'s can focus on killing and can also keep their cruor. There are also people who sell spots to leeches, though obviously people don't necessarily like people leeching.

There's also soloing, with pages the exp is higher so you're still getting decent enough exp. Because GoV camps tend to be for easier mobs, it is possible to get away with a low man if the parties aren't there (which happens sometimes) and those small (maybe 3 man teams) can just grow and the structure for those parties isn't as strict, people tend to turn up, if they're the right level and there's a free space, they get an invite.

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Originally Posted by wish12oz

You could, but there wouldn't be much of a purpose. Old wiki for low level/old content, BG wiki for new stuff/specific game mechanics, anything else is a waste of time.

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GE has all of the same "low level/old content" ffxiclopedia has, as it was a 1:1 duplication when it was created. GE is also slightly neater and tidier as it is still being managed, maintained and administered.

You're welcome to your opinion, but that doesn't make it accurate.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

GE has all of the same "low level/old content" ffxiclopedia has, as it was a 1:1 duplication when it was created. GE is also slightly neater and tidier as it is still being managed, maintained and administered.

You're welcome to your opinion, but that doesn't make it accurate.

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Imitations are never as good as the original, so take your go bots and gtfo.