The best zone in the game for experience grinding is Renior's Drafts.

While it's certainly possible to do endless laps of the zone to max your level...that takes forever. Instead, you can earn ~2.1M experience every 20 seconds by endlessly (and efficiently!) pummeling a hapless Gestral merchant named Grour.


Getting to Grour is pretty easy; he's not really hidden so much as just buried deep in the zone. Fortunately, there's a shortcut for that.

Step 1: Enter the zone. If you're been here before, you can use the entrance flag to Fast Travel to the Golden Tree. If not, you'll have to hoof it toward the end.

Step 2: From the Golden Tree flag, turn around and jog down the ramp. You'll pass a pair of large statues on either side. When you do, turn slightly to your left and you should see a grapple point to the top of a nearby building and the telltale lamplight of a Gestral merchant.


Step 3: Grapple up there and get ready to rumble!

So, you've found Grour. Now it's time to take him out efficiently.


Like all the other Gestral merchants you can fight, you'll be asked to select a single character to complete the challenge. So far, so good. Unlike most of his kind, however, Grour cheats by bringing along a couple rather durable friends.

The secret to making this fight worth doing involves a little advanced preparation.

If you're following this guide, I strongly recommend using Maelle as your duelist. You could probably use other characters to do the job, but I've found Maelle's ability suite is easily adaptable to get you through the earlier fights (when you're closer to level 90) and into the later fights (when you're closing in on level 99).

The bread and butter abilities for this grind are Burning Canvas and Gustave's Homage. You should also equip Phantom Strike once you're near the end of the grind, because eventually you'll be strong enough to use it to shave an action off your runs. More on that later!


This build wants easy, immediate access to Virtuose Stance. It also wants a lot of burn applications dealing as much damage as possible. That means you're going to want to equip a L33 Medalam.


You'll want about 250 points of combined pictos/lumina skill points properly equip your duelist for the job. More is, of course, always going to be better. Fewer is manageable, but the less you have, the harder it gets to keep the runs efficient.


The above example requires 180 lumina points and 80 points of "free" skills via pictos selection.

Some interactions of note:

• Your must-haves are Painted Power, Double Burn, Burn Affinity, and Last Stand Critical. After that, you're just piling up all the "I'm alone, I'm going first, and I'm going to nuke this fight quickly" stuff you like best.
  
• You need enough AP manipulation to spend 5 AP on your first action, 8 AP on your second action, and 5 AP on your third action. You will not be dodging or parrying anything, so don't count on those for extra points!
  
• I didn't use Cheater, but if you have 40 points to burn, it certainly doesn't hurt.
  
• The only defensive power you're taking is In Medias Res, and that's only to activate the damage boosts from Shield Affinity and Powerful Shield. You can use Base Shield instead if you don't have IMR, but it costs twice as many lumina points.
  
• You can use Powered Attack if your AP generation is good enough to still get in the attacks your need with the drainage. I didn't need it, and decided to forgo it.

And with that, you're ready to fight!

Done correctly, you're going to clear this fight in less than 20 seconds and you're going to nab about 2M experience for your trouble. Here's how:

• Use Burning Canvas on the Contorsionniste (that's the twitchy thing on the left).
  
• Use Gustave's Homage on the the Aberration (that's the dark sword thing on the right)
  
• Use Burning Canvas on the merchant

That's it! You're about 2.1M experience closer to your goal.


Why Burning Canvas?
Because the Contorsionniste is weak to fire, and you're going to absolutely destroy it with the combination of weapon skills and luminas we put together for this. Trust me on this; it's even stronger than Pyrolyse because of the extra hits and how the damage scales with applied burns. If you're closer to L90 than L99, you might have to wait until the burns tick to actually secure the kill, but no matter - you won't have to hit it again.

Why Gustave's Homage?
You don't strictly NEED to kill the Aberration with GH; loads of other skills can one-shot it just as well. I like it because it's strong enough to do the job and it also forces you back into Virtuouse Stance afterward. That makes it easier to one-shot the merchant afterward while you're still in the early L90 range.

Why Did The Merchant Get a Turn Before Step 3?
You might not have enough speed (or you're not using Cheater). It doesn't matter, though; the merchant's first action is always to grow bigger, which is a wasted turn. You can stick to the plan and still enjoy the sweet, sweet +20% bonus you'll get for a no-damage clear that doesn't involve any dodging or parrying at all.

Sometimes, the Contorsionnist spawns with his weak point exposed, like this:


If that happens, you can use a different skill order to clear the fight even faster:

• Use Free Aim shoot the Contorsionnist directly in the eye (once is enough)
  
• Use Phantom Strike to attack all enemies at once, killing the Controsionnist and the Aberration in one fell swoop
  
• Use Burning Canvas or any other attack to polish off the merchant

You should be able to level up once every 10 minutes or so from L90 to the cap. Enjoy your achievement...for those who come after.