Returning player after year off, need tips.

[Estellios]

1) How do you look for a group to join up for some exp, or has that not been applied yet.

If you want to let parties know that you are looking for a group, you can set yourself as seeking party in the player search, instructions here.

If you want to see if any parties are currently looking for members, you can use the Party menu. Instructions are here (at the very bottom).

For whatever reason the english-speaking community has not been getting mileage out of these functions. As much as they complain, they work perfectly fine. Japanese players use them a lot though and for general XP they definitely won't mind if you join them.