Returning Player Server Questions

Oh look, another returning player thread. I've had a quick search through the forums, and couldn't find many recent answers, but apologies if I've missed something that's easy to find.

I fancy picking the game up during the Discount Campaign, and so I've been doing a little reading about the current state of affairs (left around the second Abyssea era, I think).

I'm mainly going to be coming back for a bit of a nostalgic run around, and I'll probably mainly be having to play solo with trusts, as my schedule limits playtime to being pretty sporadic.

I gather most servers are pretty dead (understandable, game's old yo), except for Asura, and Odin. I was on Quetz back in the day, but am considering transferring.

So my questions are:

If I just want some fairly low-key play (ie. not super end-game), which would you say is better: not having the competition of a more heavily populated server, or having the more social aspect of a busy server?

And:

Is anyone aware of any decent EU social linkshells? Regardless of server. I gather the Reddit shell on Asura is pretty busy (no idea on quality, or whether it has many EU members).

Thanks for any answers you can provide!

The game exists in a weird place that one will never really need more than they truly need when it comes to completing the story content within the game, as well as stuff like unity and even some solo ambuscade. It's not like the past where "I need x piece from y event to help me be able to maybe beat z content!" for the lower and middle content in the ilvl XI. Stuff that requires more team coordination by design might have you seeking ways to improve things, but you'll have someone else along for the ride with their own gear and quirks to offset the slot a trust would otherwise take, so it's all good.

The gameI beat WotG /SoA / RoV just fine with trusts and sitting in the most basic ilvl 119 gear without augments on MNK, which allowed me to chip away at those things at my own pace on a dead server that couldn't really offer help. The various campaigns with dials and even the current battlefield with increased drop rates really help on the solo end of things by granting gear that is normally out of reach. I also highly recommend doing the questline to unlock the Ark Angels as trust, since they're quite strong and will do level 3 SC's off one another.

From that point, if you're still on a low pop server and soloing at your leisure, you have the interesting choice of jumping to a more populate server and gearing in advance of that, or finding something local that works out.

leviathan is like the lowest population server, and the only issue we have here is obtain-ability of crafted gear compared to some of the larger ones, as long as you can take the initiative to make your own groups for things like ambuscade.

If you can handle this video, then you can handle the server that is ASURA!!!



Each individual in this video mercs on Asura.

Come to Cerb, a few LS around for different stages of the game. Got a bunch of returning players in the social LS to tag along with.

IF you want nostalgia then come to Asura. Seeing the game full of life brings more memories than running around with AI in empty zones.

Bahamut is low population but I run a Returner LS for about 5-10% of NA server if you are interested.

Asura duh...