CREDIT TO GANGALOO
DISCLAIMER: Everything I'm about to say only applies to DPS and Lancers. Healers are screwed in regards to speed leveling. It just doesn't work for them.
As far as my own personal experience leveling. I've gotten a Lancer, Slayer, and Sorc to 60. I'm about to get a second Lancer to 60. I have a Priest at 54, a Berserker at 42, a Warrior at 36, and a 3rd Lancer sitting at 44.
I've managed to get a second Lancer from level 1 to almost 60 (working on that today it's level 59) in an extremely short period of time.
Think I've clocked in about roughly 41 hours of actual leveling time and I'm closing in on 60 fast.
This is my personal opinion on instances and leveling in general.
BoL (the first level 20 instance) is only doing if you can:
1. Speed run it and clear it absurdly fast.
2. Only doing once.
3. Have all the quests for it and can complete them all in one run.
After you do it the first time, get some follow up quests, and the repeatables... you're better off not going in again. Don't bother doing the follow ups or repeatables it's not worth the time.
You're far better off just grinding on Basilisks from 20-23... yes even as a Lancer. Lancers have a slow BAM kill time compared to DPS but can still kill them INCREDIBLY fast if you know what you're doing. DPS classes will blaze through it even faster.
After that you should go to Celestial Hills and then grind on BAMs there until level 26. I strongly recommend even skipping the story quest in Celestial Hills... it's simply not worth doing. BAM grinding is significantly faster.
Once you hit 26 go to Poporia. I just blaze through the story quest to get to SM. By then you should be level 27. After that you can spam queue SM while grinding on Ovoliths in front of SM in between queues. Pretty much the fastest way to level as LONG as SM is speed cleared. When I was pulling stuff on my Lancer I could speed clear SM in 15-20 minutes. Granted I got a BUNCH of whiny healers crying "Zomg ZOMG SLOW DOWN ZOMG" despite DPS taking very little damage... and me keeping myself alive without heals staying at full hp the majority of the time. Just ignore those people. New healers just don't understand how speed clearing works and if they refuse to heal, you can easily clear SM without a healer (and really fast too).
Grind SM all the way to 32. After that you can go to Mistmoor Island and grind on the Nagas, Vulcans, or Crabs on that zone. Once again, BAM grinding is the fastest way to go. Once you hit level 36 you head on over to Tulufan.
At this point I wouldn't grind any of the BAMs there. It's faster to just do the story quest ONLY (no yellow quests... or very few. Just do the ones that go 1:1 with the story). Once you get the CR story quest you can just spam queue CR.
Note: THE ABOVE ONLY WORKS IF YOU CAN CONFIDENTLY SPEED PULL CR AND CLEAR IT IN 20-30 MINUTES. CR is crap EXP if you have a terrible group that takes an hour to clear it. Ultimately you want to spam queue CR and clear it stupidly fast. You can do this all the way to 42 (which you should do).
In between CR queues you should just solo Vulcans. IMO they're the easiest BAM to solo in that zone and give great exp. Fastest way to level next to clearing CR in 20 minutes with repeatables.
AFTER THIS POINT GRINDING DUNGEONS IS NOT WORTH THE TIME. Dungeons beyond CR give TERRIBLE exp, not worth doing at ALL. IMO the fastest way to level at 42 is to go to Essenia and to blaze through all the quests and Story. BAMs here are still good exp but the normal mobs starting giving such good exp and the quests are so fast/easy to do for the amount of exp they give... it just seems much faster to me to start questing at this point.
When you hit level 50 I immediately go to Serpentis Isle and grind Nagas from 50-54. This is by far the fastest way to level at that point. Better than quests and doing the story. You can do the story quest for the sake of completion, but ultimately it is very very slow compared to just killing Nagas.
At level 54, BAMs aren't worth killing any more. All mobs get a drastic HP boost, and normal mob exp goes through the roof in comparison with BAM exp. This also means that BAMs start getting a tremendous amount of HP compared to before. Level 56 BAMs especially... just not worth doing. It's much better to blaze through all the quests and the story.
The very SECOND you hit level 58 you should drop EVERYTHING you're doing... EVERYTHING. Even if you're in the middle of a quest and you're 6/12 killing the mobs, if you hit level 58, just stop killing. Go right to Kaiator and start the Argonea story quest. Do the Argon quests to level 60... all yellows and Story. This is by far the fastest way to hit 60. Doing things like LoT and ET to complete the story is NOT worth it. It's just too slow. The only time you'll want to do those is to unlock the Kelsaik quest after you hit 60. So I'd leave those until you're ready to tackle Kelsaik.
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