Best ways to get SP for rank 40s DoW/DoM post-1.18?

I'm a *really* slow player of MMOs... Extremely casual... Long story short, I've been playing since Closed Beta and launch and I don't even have a rank 50 lmao.

My Gladiator is rank 42. I really want to participate in the new raid with my LS, but I realize that I'm not eligible to help out since most everyone has a rank 50.

It seemed really easy to get to rank 50 on the old levequest leve-linking system. Now, it just seems impossible. I've already done all the side quests in the game from before 1.18, so that is not a viable way to get SP.

While I can use levequests to solo, I don't know if this is going to be reasonable for getting SP. It seems like the best way to get SP is like the good old FFXI days: get a party together and grind mobs, especially in the new dungeons.

I am VERY happy with this change for the bigger picture. However, the small population of the game right now makes this a major problem:

Everyone is going to be wanting to run the dungeons, not grind for SP. This is going to persist for a while. Few players are going to put together SP parties and go out and explore for prime SP camps.

So for someone stuck at rank 42 and feeling somewhat directionless for getting DoW SP, what's your take? What should I do?

Thank you for reading.

Get a party to do levequest, then switch to grind on tough mobs that give decent SP like Raptor/Peiste/Drake. I got 45k SP with a party of 4, and we did roughly 10 leves or so, of which 6 leves I started/linked. If you have a decent party to do 5 stars r40 leves, you usually get 4-5.5k SP on completion if you start/link them, if not 600-900 SP. Grinding wise, the mobs I mentioned give about 350-450 SP in party of 4-8.

Also Story Quests now give a hefty chunk of SP. A LS mate just told me he got 38,500 SP from r38 Story Quest, you still have r46 one to look forward to.

Grind pts still give really good sp ie. raptors and other stuff. Our setup was arc x2 glad and lnc or pgl, without mages we still got 40k an hour. Our server is really dead compared to others though, so you might go alot slower if there's competition. I went from 41-50 in 7 days playing 2-6 hours each day.

You can get around 50-70k sp from leves in grid in around 2 hours. The thanalan leve's sucked in comparison imo. I was on arc so you might not see the same numbers on glad.

Btw higher star level then completing fast yeilds the highest bonuses. Also on 41-42 arc I did everything at 3-4 stars ( mostly 3). The highest bonus from one leve I've seen is 6.9k with a few buddies 5 stars completed in 3 mins. You also get small completetion bonuses(1-2k) from leves you dont have but your friends do. I didn't notice any real benifit to linking. GA can raise your end bonus by up to 2.5k far as I've seen on rank 40's

I'm in a similar position. I've been playing since open beta, but my highest classes are R46 miner (ground it up for story and also seemed to fit when I was logging on for only 2 hours after work each night) and R40 Thaumaturge. I want to be eligible to go into the dark but... alas I have 5 more ranks to soak up first.

My typical hours are also JP peak, since I live in Australia, making few English or German (my 2nd language) speakers around. Any tips for someone in these shoes? Server is Figaro.

I also have a similar position. I have a R40 LNC that i've been soloing with and crawling along. Tried shouting for a party for hours in uldah with no luck. Finally ran into a group of 42's and did leves with them for about 2hours. got more sp in those 2 hours than in the last 5 days.......If anyone wants to group with someone at R40, just let me know, i'm on palamecia.