I've done everything in this game solo except level 68-70, and 76-78. As well as sanctum of burning souls group instance, and the cistern/main system combined group instance.
I've got just over 7 days played time. a good 20+ hours spent on gathering.
dunno what to tell ya. if you're having trouble i guess grouping is the better way to go. it's faster. at 30 you should be doing the wild-lands of zelata, connals valley and khopshef province. If the quests get too hard for you in one area, move to the next to do the first round of quests, then to the next. By the time you get through the last zone you should be high enough to work your way back. Stick to green, yellow and orange. Some orange can be tough so guage that yourself.
thats if you're going solo. if you're going in a group you can go further in each zone, until you run out of quests for the level you're at, including red quests, possibly group quests if the setup is right (tank, healer, dps). I never ran out of quests till 64. mid 50's got a bit tight, but they'll probably have that new zone up before you have to worry about it.
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i cant give an accurate number of hours because I'd grind a while, get bored out of my skull, or ****ed off at the overpopulated grind spots then log and do something else. or I'd kill 30 mobs, watch some TV, etc.
solo i could average 3-4K per kill, with moderate chance of death. (barbs are squishy so most cases 4-5 mobs at once would spell death. i think ranger is a bit worse for crowd control) Theres about 6 million experience from 78-80. so about 1750 guys between my level and 1-2 higher give or take. mobs 1-2 levels lower only give aroudn 2-2500xp, etc. I'll say with deaths and travel time averaged 4-5 kills a minute. so if you stick at it and not be lazy and unmotivated like i was (which is hard after grinding 73-78 before this) id say 6-8 hours class depending. which isn't all that bad compared to other games i guess.
if you play ToS or PoM you're probably looking at 3-4 hours. ridiculously overpowered as far as solo grinding goes. ToS can go kill 10-15 guys the same level or 2 levs higher at the same time. 4K+ per kill, plus the crazy chain kill xp bonus bringing in like 5-6K/each total.
if you're lucky you can get into a grind group with just a tos, the xp gets cut a bit but the speed at which you kill makes up for it tenfold, plus they can heal. XD
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i dunno don't need to rush right to 80. not much to do that doesn't require huge groups. i can't even get a group set up for a small 30 min 1 quest instance. its kind of aggravating. the guild is too busy all trying to rush to 80 for the raiding. or they're trying to resource grind to finish the T2 city and start T3. And compared to ffxi, and maybe even wow (didn't play enough and rarely grouped ever) the group member search or seeking a group functions are trash. May as well just say they don't exist. FFXI had the best system i've ever seen. Very easy to search/navigate and find people, simple to flag yourself as seekign for XP, quests, instance, missions, etc. bah anyway lol. /rant.
i dunno being in a 'hardcore' guild has its perks but man it can be a pain in the butt lol. but its pretty much set up so if you want a guild city you need a big, or dedicated guild. or you wait forever. the first tier city isn't bad, ND is exponentially bigger and i guess tier 3 is so retarded funcom is supposedly going to reduce resource requirements. last i heard it was currently over 250,000 basalt, etc.
which i can understand them not wanting it to be easy, or done quickly. but the resource gathering is set up so poorly that thats almost impossible to achieve even in like 50 000 man hours. theres a max of like 7 basalt nodes in the resource zone. 1-2 max in other random high level zones ( a total of like 2 zones XD ) each only holds a max of 10 basalt. the re spawn time is huge, and the resource zones aren't guild instanced. it's unrealistic, so thats probably why they figured they'd 'adjust' prices. XD
