Hyperion always seems busy. Although when ninja came out I practically soloed to 50 over 2-3 days. I occasionally would get a friend to do a dungeon/hest with me (since hests give first time completion bonus per class), but I had to avoid fate popular fate areas because the sheer amount of people in them was making me crash. A combination of leves, quests, logs and hests was good, but I found going to the less popular fate areas was faster anyway. The few times I managed to join busier areas the fate mobs were so ramped up with their HP that it took longer than just going to an area with my chocobo or one or two other people doing fates for atmas where they were much weaker.