Even though Visions of Abyssea areas have become thoroughly explored, a lot of unknown information and mysteries remain.  In case you haven't been keeping up with some of the talk and forum posting among the FFXI communities, here's some of the latest info you might have missed.


Party Monster:
Colibris and their spiteful morsel-snatching ilk may have just had their scaley asses handed to them.  Partying in Abyssea is a whole other beast.  Abyssea areas do not follow the same alliance penalties and exp chain rules as the rest of FFXI.  You're free to have an entire alliance of 18 players destroying everything they can with no restraints.  Every few mobs you kill will slightly increase the amount of experience you receive.  starting around 70~100ish and eventually it seems to top out at 600 per mob.  While such cases are exceptional exceptions, at least for now, the awesomeness is obvious.  Level penalties don't work the same way either, it appears as though experience is only adjusted for each players level.  Meaning a level 75 player will get slightly less exp, but the level 80 player gets the full amount.  Similar to the sub level 60 Campaign penalty.

What all this amounts to is that you can just say to your linkshell: "hey who wants to go party in Abyssea" and then proceed to dump anyone into a party on whatever job they enjoy playing.  Sure can still stick to a strict diet of samurais and red mages and do great.  But if that extra shmuck who only ever leveled Puppetmaster wants to go you're free to go with it.

Unfortunately a lot is still unclear about exping in Abyssea.  Certain groups wind up hitting the jackpot and have time extension chests rain down on them, while others can go without ever seeing one.  Right now it's hard to tell if this is just random luck, or something else.  It's also vital to note that furthering to advance the exp "chain" only seems to work while you stick to one single type of mob.  So be sure to inform your party not to touch any other mobs while you're in the middle of exping.  Not that damn ephemeral mob, not the freaking Titan NM, nada.  It's possible there may be ways to preserve the exp chain from one type to another but that's how it appears for right now.

Enemies:
Following Wednseday's 9 hour long server maintenence, there was a brief panic that Square had nerfed the points obtainable in Abyssea.  Enemies started out giving far less experience and cruor than they had.  Eventually however it became apparent that this was probably due to the maintenance "clearing" the strength of Abyssea enemies.  It's been understood that fighting enemies will increase the strength of those particular enemies you are fighting, but this was a surprise that entire areas appear to be influenced over the course of time.

On that possibly related note, previously unseen groups of enemies have started appearing in Abyssea areas.  In particular: Corse enemies named Weidergangers, tiny Wyrm enemies named Nauls, a Carbuncle NM named Akash, Xzomit enemies named Ab'xzomit, and an Amphitere NM that doesn't seem to want to land.


The highest teir spawned NMs in all 3 areas still remain to be seen as well.  It will be interesting to see what they have in store.

NM Weaknesses:
In case you're not already familiar, Abyssea NMs all have specific weaknesses that are helpful if you can find them.  So far it seems like these weaknesses are random and different every time so the only way to find it is either luck or a little experimentation.  A weakness can be any kind of magic or weaponskill.  Finding an NM's weakness can make it easier by crippling its movement or abilities, sort of like causing a terrorize effect.  And hitting upon a weakness can result in the NM dropping an Atma key item that grants all players in the alliance a unique Abyssea buff they can use any time.

A weakness is signified by two "!!" exclamation mark symbols appearing above the mob.  Some players have noticed seeing different green or red versions.  Which could mean that there could be two different types of weaknesses.  How that works is still unclear.

The Damn Lights:
One of Abysseas biggest mysteries surrounds the light aura messages players receive while killing enemies.  Of course, when Square makes sure not to explain these messages at all anywhere, in any form, there's certain to be confusion and speculation.

Depending upon how an enemy is killed, you'll receive a different colored light message.  Pearlescent light results from physical damage, ruby comes from using a physical weaponskill, amber results from using a magical weaponskill, and azure is magic damage.  There are also 3 other colors that might only come from chests and give special bonus effects.  Golden seems to boost experience and hence skips the standard enemies exp forward a few points.  Silvery light seems to do the same thing for cruor instead.  It's unclear so far what ebon light accomplishes.

The thing is no one is sure what these lights are for.  And so all types of speculation and theorycrafting has emerged.  It's quickly becoming as muddy as day of the week, or moonphase conspiracies.  Some of the possible ideas are:
-lights influence the type of chests that drop
-lights influence the type of weakness an NM will have.
-lights have some other separate purpose that only results from powering up its strength

Personally I think the first is unlikely but the other 2 are plausible.  But it remains to be seen.

Illustrated Maps:
That's about everything for now.  Just on one final note you should not miss Spira's technicolored Abyssea maps.  They're excellent for grasping each area with one essentialized image.