Returning Player Looking For Ls

back after not playing for 4 years only my r/ex gear is remaining looking for a social ls to regain my stuff and hit 99

We dont have ls's anymore. you just shout for stuff and pay people to get it for you.

Or if you want this done quicker, get a mule and win the game.

really no ls's..? well then im lost

you'll be fine. exp can be easily solo'ed, once you get bst leveled and buy a perle set then you can make money to buy anything else you need.

all missions and quests can be solo'ed except the last limit break which again money helps.

There are still LS's around. Just have to look. There are mostly socials. But my LS is a social and we do events cuz we're friends. But yeah alot of the content today can be done with pickup parties. Nothing like the big HNMLS's a few years back. You still see a few of the event LS's though just not a whole lot.

Yeah, a LS isn't really needed these days, though that's not to say there aren't any still around. If you ask around enough, you're bound to find one.

In the meantime, here's some info about how things work these days.

First, you'll want to get familiar with Grounds of Valor. BG Wiki has a good explanation of it, though for checking out the actual training programs, I prefer Gamerescape as its tables are easier for me to read and a bit more complete.

You can do these pages solo/low man, but people also do page burn alliances in several places. Generally, you'd want to do the following (note that I haven't played in 2 months so this might have changed):

1) Solo to level 10~15
2) Do page 1 in Gusgen Mines party/alliance until ~30
3) Do page 1 in Crawlers' Nest party/alliance until ~60. Lowest possible syncee there is 35, though 40+ is preferred.
4) At 55+, go to Bostaunieux Oubliette and do either page 2 or page 4. The latter is more popular, especially with the Japanese playerbase. If you do page 4, you can stay in the alliance until 99 if you'd like.

It's usually pretty easy to get invited to the book burn alliances. Just show up in zone with your flag up, and make a polite shout such as {Hello!}{Any vacancies?}{job}

Note that this is just one method for leveling these days. The other main method, and the one that's usually recommended by a lot of people, is the following:

1) Same as step 1 above
2) Same as step 2 above
3) Go into Abyssea and leech experience from 30-99.

One way to do step 3 is to pay for leeching. You'll see shouts in Port Jeuno for this quite frequently. Another method is to join a party as the key person -- i.e., the person in charge of opening treasure chests, which contain temp items, xp, cruor (Abyssea's currency), and items. Usually you'll want a bit of cruor first so you can buy keys. Worms or frogs in La Theine Plateau[A] are probably the most popular non-leech xp camps on Valefor.

Once you're in the upper levels, you'll want to start working on your empyrean gear (often called AF3) for your jobs. For example, here's the empyrean gear for your highest job, Dark Knight:

Bale Armor Set
Bale Armor Set +1
Bale Armor Set +2

You upgrade the armor with items that drop from NMs in Abyssea. A good many of the NMs can be soloed by certain jobs; I usually go DNC/NIN, but NIN/DNC is also a popular Abyssea solo job, as is BST. Generally, though, you'll want to get these items in a small party, as triggering yellow weakness will increase the chance of the items dropped. Yellow weakness is triggered by certain magic spells, so usually, a seal hunting party looks like this:

Tank (either NIN/DNC or THF/NIN)
BLM, often sub BRD
BLU
WHM

People sometimes go without a BLU or BRD spells. They're not necessary, but for 100% chance at proccing yellow, you need BLM BRD NIN BLU WHM.

One final thing: you might have been familiar with FFXIclopedia as a source for information. It's still around, though a while back the core group of maintainers created their own multi-game site called GamerEscape. I greatly prefer GamerEscape's interface over that of FFXIclopedia, so that is what I use for information on older game content (including Abyssea NMs; there's a lot of good info on strategies there).

For the latest content and the mathematics behind the game, though, you'll want to use BG Wiki. In my experience, it runs the fastest of the three wikis, and the detailed information on the newest content is much better than what the other two wikis have. These days I tend to go to BG wiki first, then fall back to GE if BG doesn't have what I'm looking for.

I'm kinda bored today so feel free to ask me any other questions you might have about returning to the game. {Welcome back.}