Pop Farming In 2025

Heyo! Im curious what sorts of strategies have settled as ideal for pop farming Abyssea nowadays, especially now that mastery levels have changed what weaponskills some jobs can access.

Specifically I see a few conditions that need to be satisfied:

1. You need as many red procs as possible, close to 100% (I believe the only two real contenders for this atm are War and Nin right?)

2. You need ideally both a solid physical and magical AoE "cleave" skill, to maximize ability to cleave enemies while not gaining any light

3. You need a non garbage magic WS that you can use to quickly farm your amber light up

I was, at the time, using War for this, as it hit most red procs but I could also use Aeolian Edge or Fell Cleave to farm boxes.

However, I believe Nin comes out marginally ahead with 1? 2? additional red procs it can do.

But that was back before we had Mastery levels and could get our sub job higher. Has this changed things and enabled warrior to get another red proc? Or does nin still perform better?

Also, Id suppose that 18% movespeed gear is also a pretty critical factor...

Edit: Looking at it, it seems that its viable for warrior to get all the weaponskills just using +skill gear, though great katana requires you to get Agelast Torque or Moepapa Annulet if you dont have the mastery levels for nin subjob levels yet

NIN/WAR can hit all the red procs without the need for mastery levels. It also has access to Aeolian Edge and elemental ninjutsu.

This was settled already. NIN is ideal for the reasons mentioned above, as well as the additional movement speed at night.

Does nin not have access to movespeed+18 during the day? If so, it's not terribly much better, War seems like it also can hit every red proc without mastery levels too, and it has aeolian edge as well.

So it just boils down to Nin having 18% movespeed at night? Thats it?

Everyone has access to +18% from the ring. Ninja gets 25% from AF feet from dusk til dawn.

Well aside from the ring, I shouldnt have to say that because the ring is All Jobs

I meant *other* than the ring, and the other couple of very rare, hard to get, or very high opportunity cost things that give 18% movespeed, like chocobo knife or etc.

Aside from that.

Looking it up, seems like the answer is no? Best they get is Danzo sune-ate which is only 12%, same as War

So Nin gets 25% movespeed at night, but same movespeed during day, thats its only upside it has over war it looks like?

There is no 'other than the ring'. You always get the ring because it only costs a stack of HP bayld and some regular bayld to exchange. You don't have to consider any options that would be rare, hard to get or high opportunity cost.

The "ideal" is a nin/war and thf/blm dual box.

Nin/war can do all the procs if you have weapons for them - check daily points and ambu vouchers. Lvl1 scythe and GKT are the hardest to find for Nin.

Thf with a TH8 set will halve the time you need to spend killing NMs.

Thf/blm so thief can also AOE tag regular mobs for pop items for you. Can also aeolian edge AOE kill on both nin and thief.

If solo I do thf/ I think war
Missing a few procs imo is ok when you have more than half.
I found drop rates for pop items to be abyssmal

Would also go thf/war if solo.

I'm lazy so I just used Bst to farm amber chest with a THF mule to pick up KI and pop all the NMs.

As can WAR/NIN. Just need a lv1 GKT and Katana and Headbands and you’ve got it.

That way if there’s anyone who didn’t want to invest time into NIN for any reason but already had WAR, problem solved

Doesn't War need at least ML4 to gain enough skill to do all the WSs? I think it's for katana it needs skill, or gkt can't remember.

I also think thf/war is best solo option. you end up missing 3 red procs, but get thf8+. all 3 can cleave so that's a mute point. I reset the nm if its annoying to pop or timed.

I think it was gkt, but I feel like there was some +skill gear you could use(maybe also from abyssea) to unlock the WS. Been too long lol

Koki is 175 and /NIN gives 139 at 49, so you need another 36 somehow. Merits are 16, Combatant's is 15 and you could either get Bushi, Faz Helm, or like 10ML to hit 36, right?

10ML is something like 3 Peach Power runs, I think? Not unreasonable.

ML10 is 167,497 EP

Thats 45 minutes with a competent party on Locus mobs without a cor.

Other than SAM being useless for it. SAM can jinpu EP 30-70k/h depending on trusts, how many mobs free, gear, etc.

Moepepa Annulet or whatever, ring from Dyna Valk D iirc

That's what I use, cuz combat torque is a *** to farm but lv75 sea torques are like 1/100th the effort

I'm pretty sure I killed that stupid warder of whatever in escha dozens of times, no drop :(

Went 1/1 on dyna ring, and sea torque took like 15 minutes.

Yeah, what I'm saying is if you want an easy job to make that can use all the WSs, it's Nin not War. Merits, mpaca set and you're off.

Don't bother building lights. That's a huge waste of valuable farming time. Most people should have more traverser stones than they can ever use, due to the fact that they keep ticking even if your sub is inactive. Just get in, set max time and go to farming immediately. When your time starts running low just exit and re-up real fast.

Thats the exact opposite of my strategy lol.

I go all in on lights and just farm boxes.

Heh, I prefer not trying to farm a whole section in one go, eventually the monotony gets boring for me, so whenever I've farmed empy items it's usually in 1 or 2 hours sessions. So never felt like building lights was worth the time.

There are head bands that also add skill from abyssea

If you're solo, theres no point cleaving*. But if you're multiboxing, you're likely to finish faster cleaving, ergo maintaining lights would be your best bet.

*doesnt mean you should just roll with 0 amber. Crack those red boxes or build a bit of amber. You'll still likely be cleaving for the pop items to spawn NM's, so might as well put yourself in a position to roll the dice and maybe get lucky with a big box.

Magic WS kills are great for building amber, single target not aoe.

Can do some kills while waiting for repops if you find yourself in that position.

I preferred just chilling for 10min rather than try hard farming lights. Empy farming is not so bad if you don't try to make it a 60m sprint. Take it easy, take breaks in between.

I suppose it depends on which NM's you're going after. One that takes a lot of KI's to pop the main boss, yea chest farming seems smarter, especially if you have more than 1 body to store KI's on. But for Apademak, I think it's quicker just farming pops, even with multibox. To each their own I guess.

Edit: I just hate having to sort through all the chests.

I usually would farm in long 8 hr chunks of time, cuz once you max out lights you wanna keep em that way

I found for most step 2 and 3 pops, chests were way faster than farming pops by hand.

Stage 1 zones seemed often faster to farm by hand if you have enough mules