I have some questions on how the Diadem works.

[TiaHeart]

What significance

You need to fill a killcounter for your party (mostly by red tagged mobs, not purple ones. There are other ways to advance your counter, but tagging a mob first is most common) to get tracks, which spawn notorious monster/star (hard mode always) or rank 5s (in normal). The higher the rank, the more your counter progresses. The counter is mirrored by messages 1-4, than tracks pop and it resets.

Do rank 5s

All mobs do, but its not at a relevant rate. You shoot at easy rank 5s mainly to spawn tracks and stars. Not for the slight chances of gold on the rank 5 mobs, but the guaranteed one from star. If you have to kill rank3s instead, it wont be to much of a loss on gold from the ranks themselves, but maybe on the track part of the game

Our FC

In crowded farm make sure all members hit the star mob asap. Many people are to slow to get on enmity list, first comes first served. Watch wether your crew gets agro numbers on the groupoverlay. If they dont you might fail to get rewarded depending how much the ones actually on the list dps. Until people die or provoke, that is. Its not just a strength/dps but also speed/awareness thing. IMHO if you are alone hard mode and farming pteranodon rank 5s at 15 25 works well enough. There are two problems:
1. thats also where other teams will be. If you want to be alone badly, try 9 am lol
2. if you are alone, worship brachiosaur like you are supposed to. Other stars take patience with just 1 party, but that one might eat your soul

Can anyone

Farming with everyone else can net like 12 golds a run, alone 3 is a likely number. Its worth working on your awareness when and where stars pop, hit them early to get any agronumber with the fastest skill you have and then do decent dps. If you truly cant make it, you will farm at a very low rate of success. If thats the way it has to be because you fail to compete, any other place will do tbh. Lower ranks fill the counter not as much as high ones do, but they go down faster so it didnt matter much back in the days and people farmed triceratops rank 3. How this scales nowadays hearing they nerfed low rank mobs, i really cant say because pteranodon farm is great. Whatever you try, focus on easier mobs for a relaxed time.
Good rank 3: triceratops Bad rank 3: haquala or whatever those lizards are called
Good rank 4: trex Bad rank 4: pelican
Good rank 5: pteranodon bad rank 5: celphie, sanuwa
In farm sb will always pull the bad status effect mobs either by mistake or because youve simply run out of good mobs and need to bridge respawn times. If you want to do your own thing, theres no reason to approach those, you will be "slow enough" to just cycle through 5 pteranodons till the first ones respawn. That being said if you want to do your own thing, you could just keep killing stuff on your spawn island, it might eventually get you "there". Efficient is probably different, but that will take efforts even if critics disagree

To add

Hard mode, always. In hard every track spawns star->gold->210. normal is a 5/star gamble. you CAN end up with tracks popping rank5s all day and see no star the whole 90 mins. Normal or even easy is for people who dont have a choice but go from ishgard. Or gatherers. Or people who want to do tasks for eso and bail. Or because the diadem hard is currently empty whereas normal is likely filled somehow. It will however sport the side effect of getting participation reward easier IF a star spawns, because the farmers mostly farm hard, so if you do normal you "compete with worse players", without wanting to insult anyone x:

Ps: any premade can start any diadem (but really, hard spares you frustrations of not even getting a shot at gold) from anyones workshop, given its opened for public. 1 dude on a pf who provides his ride for the others is enough. Its not an fc only thing, i run PF only due to fc people being not interested, to low level, or not doing things to well/failing contribution for rewards. Thats a given choice. But keep cost for ship repairs, barrels and not going on explanation to have a diadem ride on your mind. And once you decide to go with pf its always nice to bring your best game, if its more about chillin go with friends only ^^ also many people will want parties like 1 drg 1 mnk 1 brd/mch 1 blm/smn 1 nin for loot exclusives. 4 blms are a major turnoff since its hardly better than just greeding xD