How am I meant to level with a friend now?

[LuxLex]

Either you lie, or you're EXTREMELY bad at it.

I mostly soloed and didn't use any of the exploits like failing leves... I guess that makes me bad at it.

I soloed/duoed to 70 in XI and then polished off my levels in exp alliances. They have since added even better methods of gaining exp, which would have saw me get to 90 in two months instead of 4. (Only for the first job with level breaks and other things to do which slow a person down)