Good places to farm exp?

[Inferius]

I am at entrance to Giruvegan.
Wanna level up all my characters to 60lvl before going there

[Hinnyuu]

I would suggest you finish with Giruvegan first. The Great Crystal which is available right after is an very solid source of XP at the 40-60 level.

That being said, XP/levels are only a very minor factor in this game. I would recommend you focus on farming gear instead, which has a much higher impact on your performance; conveniently enough, the Great Crystal also provides a lot of that, including some of the best items in the game.

[DigginTiger]

I would personnally go for a place where i know i would have to farm anyway later on. This means if you don't have 6 hell gate flames already and you plan on unlocking the tournesol at the bazaar (best 2 handed sword imo) your destination could be the FEY WOOD, right next to where you are currently (and more precisely the area where you can find tons of kerberus/tartaros.
And, never know.... maybe it's your lucky day and you'll find a muramasa by killing the crypt bunny in the same area.
Have fun!

And yes, Hinnyuu is right when he says gear is much more beneficial on the efficiency of your party than your average level. Moreover lvl 60 is waaayyyy enough to come through giruvegan.

[Razzle]

Originally posted by Inferius:

I am at entrance to Giruvegan.
Wanna level up all my characters to 60lvl before going there

Depends on your jobs however go to the Henne Mines Site: Pithead Junction Cyou would have to do a few hunts to gain access to that local, then you would need to have Sleep/Curing magic or Oil and fire along with sleep.

By doing that particular location you'll get like 20 levels in 1 hour or an hour in half

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Avj.Razz:

Depends on your jobs however go to the Henne Mines Site: Pithead Junction Cyou would have to do a few hunts to gain access to that local

Pretty sure that area requires you to have 10 Espers as well as a complete a specific hunt. Which means you cannot go there before Giruvegan.

[Blind]

The best xp in the game is IN Giruvegan, there's a floor where undead minions spawn very rapidly for like 2k experience each. It's comparable to other endgame farm, but they are RAPID. However, this is dangerous if you are incapable of OHKO'ing said undead... plus, Evil Spirit occasionally spawns which you'd want to avoid that this point in the game.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Dr. Dro:

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Pretty sure that area requires you to have 10 Espers as well as a complete a specific hunt. Which means you cannot go there before Giruvegan.

nope, can be done as soon as you get access to the mines through Ozmone Plain. that's the place I was referring to, actually. all you need to do is do what I said before, have time battlemage spam break or use a skill that causes the game, instead of your character to kill off the jellies - they'll respawn indefinitely and keep on being killed by the game, which will respawn more - it still counts as you defeating them and that means you earn xp and lp, or with cat-ear hood, gil as well. I've over 12 million gil because of that.

Pretty sure Pithead Junction C is part of the deeper part, while Pithead Junctions A and B are the ones available on the first visit to Henne. You can get in the back way through Feywood, but the innner parts will still be blocked (including Pithead Junction C). I'm always willing to be wrong, though.

[Blind]

If you plan to farm the Abysteel room - Gambit the Disable spell, they are extremely vulnerable to it

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Dr. Dro:

Going in through the backdoor to the Henne Mines from the Feywood isn't a good idea if you're <Lv. 50, i'd say... the Abysteel bats at ~65 would do quick work out of your party.

It certainly isn't a cakewalk, but a good tank with Main Gauche can survive fairly well at low level. I always go there asap to farm early Karkata.

[DigginTiger]

Originally posted by Dr. Dro:

Henne Mines' gate switchboard, time battlemage spams break with reflect equipped, while others are unarmed, idling, with high enough defense so jellies do not damage them and preferably with either reflect, or confuse/poison-resisting accessories.

Level 99 overnight.

Yeah mate, keep on killing the game with such crap!
leveling should never be an issue if players try to get what the game has to offer like unlocking good items at the bazaar, completing the bestiary and finding everything there is to grab like magics and techniques.

Yes the jellies trick is fun to try once, but don't fall in the trap of getting to lvl 99 doing litterally nothing OP, all you will achieve there, is to kill your gameplay experience , but it's of course my personal opinion...

[Hinnyuu]

Level barely matters anyway. It's such a minor thing compared to gear, be lvl 99 all you want you'll still need the right gear and the right strategy. You can't just cheese superbosses by overleveling them.

[Vayne]

Altho henne mines is really good place for levelling, i usually save it for last until level 85+....i farm from some different place such as barheim passage, nabreus deadlands and from exploring.

[Blind]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Level barely matters anyway. It's such a minor thing compared to gear, be lvl 99 all you want you'll still need the right gear and the right strategy. You can't just cheese superbosses by overleveling them.

Mathematically, if you solve for level, the damage formula basically states that Level is a direct damage multiplier. A level 75 character deals 1.75x damage with any formula that calls for level.

Level also affects technick accuracy, your accuracy is about a 1/3 of normal when under the target's level

Other than that though, it's minimal.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by BBX:

Mathematically, if you solve for level, the damage formula basically states that Level is a direct damage multiplier. A level 75 character deals 1.75x damage with any formula that calls for level.

Level also affects technick accuracy, your accuracy is about a 1/3 of normal when under the target's level

Other than that though, it's minimal.

While correct, it's only one of two multipliers. The other involves enemy stats and your weapon attack power ONLY - if that is low, multiplying it by your level isn't going to be huge. In fact, it can even be 0 or less, in which case you could be lvl 10,000 and still do 0 damage.

Because of this, higher attack power weapons are disproportionately more powerful. The formula for e.g. the damage of a sword is:

[WeaponAttackPower * (Random<1~1.125>) - EnemyDEF] * [1 + STR * (lvl + STR) / 256]

Let's take for example a weapon with 100 attack, on an enemy with 99 defense. Assuming constant lvl/STR (and disregarding the random factor), you would do 100-99 = 1 damage before multiplying by level factor. Now let's take a weapon with 101 attack, and you would do 101-99 = 2 damage (times level factor) - DOUBLE the damage for a weapon with 1% more attack power!

Or, to give realistic examples: let's say you're attacking Yiazmat (36 Def) with Kumbha (117 AP) and Masamune (111 AP). The difference in attack power is ~0.54%. But as before:

111 - 36 = 75 for Masamune; and
117 - 36 = 81 for Kumbha as damage before level multiplication (and disregarding the constant random factor)

75, however, is a whole 8% less than 85! That's FIFTEEN TIMES the difference in actual damage output than the difference in attack power value would lead you to believe; which doesn't mean that one weapon deals fifteen times more damage, just that the gap is fifteen times wider than you would think looking at the values.

So, while level scales quite directly, weapon attack power DOES NOT, and strongly favors more powerful weapons. Gear is much more important than level, because it's not a direct linear scale.

EDIT: To my embarrassment I of course have to admit that it's not 0.54% but 5.4%, meaning it's not fifteen times but 1.5 times better - which is still significant (and only becomes larger as the gap becomes wider) and doesn't change the fact that gear is of tremendous importance, but does make it less egregious than I portrayed it. Leaving original post intact as testament to the shame of a humanities PhD trying to do basic math.

[Blind]

Ya, that's an 80% boost going from level 0 to 80, when there's tons of other multipliers to consider

[DigginTiger]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Originally posted by BBX:

Mathematically, if you solve for level, the damage formula basically states that Level is a direct damage multiplier. A level 75 character deals 1.75x damage with any formula that calls for level.

Level also affects technick accuracy, your accuracy is about a 1/3 of normal when under the target's level

Other than that though, it's minimal.

While correct, it's only one of two multipliers. The other involves enemy stats and your weapon attack power ONLY - if that is low, multiplying it by your level isn't going to be huge. In fact, it can even be 0 or less, in which case you could be lvl 10,000 and still do 0 damage.

Because of this, higher attack power weapons are disproportionately more powerful. The formula for e.g. the damage of a sword is:

[WeaponAttackPower * (Random<1~1.125>) - EnemyDEF] * [1 + STR * (lvl + STR) / 256]

Let's take for example a weapon with 100 attack, on an enemy with 99 defense. Assuming constant lvl/STR (and disregarding the random factor), you would do 100-99 = 1 damage before multiplying by level factor. Now let's take a weapon with 101 attack, and you would do 101-99 = 2 damage (times level factor) - DOUBLE the damage for a weapon with 1% more attack power!

Or, to give realistic examples: let's say you're attacking Yiazmat (36 Def) with Kumbha (117 AP) and Masamune (111 AP). The difference in attack power is ~0.54%. But as before:

111 - 36 = 75 for Masamune; and
117 - 36 = 81 for Kumbha as damage before level multiplication (and disregarding the constant random factor)

75, however, is a whole 8% less than 85! That's FIFTEEN TIMES the difference in actual damage output than the difference in attack power value would lead you to believe; which doesn't mean that one weapon deals fifteen times more damage, just that the gap is fifteen times wider than you would think looking at the values.

So, while level scales quite directly, weapon attack power DOES NOT, and strongly favors more powerful weapons. Gear is much more important than level, because it's not a direct linear scale.

Correct, good example of that is the "slime" ennemy in the zertina caverns that you can fight pretty early in your adventure. Even at 2 or 3 times the slime's level you will still be hiting that thing for 0 damage if you don't have mid/game weapons.

i remember kicking the ass of that guy with the spear looted by fideliant, the koketsu or the cypres pole in the original version, but since most of these weapons have been considerably nerfed and alll the good remaining ones recquire your character to have the appropriate job...i could not farm any winged helmet until my ulhan (bash) joined the party.