Maximizing SP on leves

[Kenshiin]

I read through Kanican's LJ post but I had a few additional questions. I posted this on there too but I figured I'd ask it here as well.

I know you understand the SP numbers pretty well so I wanted to ask you a question. I've been told that you start losing sp per mob if you have a party over 8. We've been running the different leve paths to level up and occasionally we'll have around 10 people. My linkshell thinks it's best to split up into two groups of 5 to get the max links in each group. I feel it would be better to stay in one group and do each leve twice. Could you run the numbers and see which way would be best? If it's better to stay in one group would you be able to figure out where the cutoff is to where it would be beneficial to split up.

Also you might want to look into when there are 5-9 people in a party and the possibility of running each leve 2x without the maximum number of links. For example is there more SP to gain by running it 2x with 3 links than 1 time with 4 links.

Thanks

[Amastacia]

More links is less efficient than more repeats in terms of pure SP gained, but the time cost is substantial.

If you want to get the most XP for the group with the least waste of time or links, your best bet is very likely going to be splitting into 2 groups of 5, and doing 2 runs each (5th person linking is a waste, so either break it up or do a full link + a no link).

When you have 8 or less, it's an easy decision to do 2x runs with max links, with 9 it's pretty borderline depending on level and jobs (if having a group of 4 makes you turn the difficulty down too far or takes too long, it'll end up being less efficient). 10+ is almost always worth splitting up assuming you have 2 magey types.

If Kaeko or someone wants to "run the numbers" they're more than welcome to. I'm speaking purely from anecdotal experience, primarily gained by seeing how much SP was gained total in a given night, and how long it took to get that SP. Group sizes over 8 start to lose efficiency rapidly, especially with the human element (and management thereof) mixed in.

If everyone in your group is 33+, you can focus in on doing Levinshower at Nophica, then Dunesfolk, Ranine Reveries, and All Cracked Up (if you get full links it is worthwhile) at Broken Water, then Hoary Toads at Bald Knoll for SP (or even skip Hoary Toads if anima or time is tight), and use the last 3 slots for milking junk leves that have useful factions or rewards associated with them (e.g. lots of Broken Blade... assuming you eventually want to do NM leves). Preferably at Nophica, BW, or BK for conservation of anima.

There's pretty much no reason to go to Grid for 30+ leves, and little enough reason to go to LL (there are a couple of decent leves there, but whether it's worth doing them is heavily dependent on time and anima available). You can pretty much just stick to Thanalan if you only have a couple hours a night to do leves or want to spend less anima.

[tachikoma]

As someone who has taken several jobs from 20-50 with different statics over the last 5 months I can say that the best strat for max'ing sp is to get 8ppl together and do double runs all together. By having 8ppl in a party the leve's fly by in a mater of minutes. Adding more ppl lowers sp slightly but were taking 10-20sp per mob not much and by having 8ppl you can do each leve fully linked 2x. With 8ppl all with the "Good" sp leve's you can see over 100k+ a reset even in T2 fatigue. You can do 20-50 in about 3 weeks in an 8man group.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Yep, 20-50 for a single job in about 3 weeks if you go every reset. Or you can get like every job from 24-36 in the same amount of time. Just depends on how you wanna play your cards.

[Kenshiin]

My linkshell still is trying to convince me that the max link is 4 (so 5 people total) after their extensive testing. Where can I send them to show them they are wrong?

[Jamison]

My linkshell still is trying to convince me that the max link is 4 (so 5 people total) after their extensive testing. Where can I send them to show them they are wrong?

One option is to do 3 links, kill a mob, add the 4th link, and see that the SP is the same.

[Kenshiin]

Another question, For a single leve, would a party of 4 get more total SP than a party of 8 that ran a leve twice? For example, a party of 4 would get 500 sp a kill where a party of 8 would get 350 SP a kill but because the group of 8 does it twice they would get a total of 700 SP.

[Kyroc]

Max links is 4 + the original, if anyone else links on top of that it is a waste

[Hiroishime]

its the original + 3, basically 4 same leves.