That's interesting. I stumbled into this problem back in December, during the anniversary event. I had an army of level 60s collecting dust since SL (used to get an 8th guild bank tab), and I wanted to turn them into "budget twinks" that can hold their own and get some source IDs that I felt I didn't have enough 70s to reliably get otherwise, or were being unlucky with (e.g. agi daggers, guns). For most of those 60s, this meant getting at least the 415 weapons off Zal'kir in Thaldraszus.
My partner offered to help, since she got TWW and her own 50+ chars (many originating from that same SL project) were already well on their way to 80 by then. So, we grouped up, and... couldn't get into the same phase in- or outside of Valdrakken, regardless of which characters we tried, who was the leader, and who initiated party sync. Mousing over the phasing icon on the party frames kept telling both of us that the other character is in Timewalking, despite all of the characters being in "present time". On that first day, we actually gave up, and I went digging for solutions.
To elaborate on the circumstances (in case that helps pinpointing the exact problem for future reference), both of our accounts had the DF campaign completed (locking us into "adventure mode"), but none of the characters have done any questing in DF, so no intro for either of us. This should, in theory, exclude all phasing-related issues, and we should have been in the same phase -- and yet, we were not, and the phasing icon on the party frames clearly stated this. I do vaguely recall her trying to get on a DF campaigned char too, but I may be misremembering that. The one she originally tried first was a timerunner that went straight into TWW without ever touching anything DF-related.
I found the Chromie Time solution after some searching on the internet. It did seem far-fetched, that this one thing of having the lowbie in actual DF Chromie Time could fix the problem, since they were, for all intents and purposes, already locked into "DF Chromie Time" for simply being below level 70. I mean, I consider myself a rational person, and coding is one of my primary hobbies. I honestly didn't think this should make any difference whatsoever. Regardless, we tried it the following day (it couldn't hurt, right?), and what do you know: it worked. The party sync immediately pulled the high level char into the leveling phase (and restricted its level).
Since then, we used this method dozens (probably hundreds) of times, and it worked every time. And that's not all. It worked with every combination of no-DF/DF intro/DF-campaigned characters we threw at it. That is to say, with this solution, which "phase" of DF questing the characters are in appears to be 100% irrelevant. I've also helped others doing this, and gave these instructions as the definitive answer to people having problems grouping their lowbies with 70+s in DF. Not one of them came back to tell me "it's not working". And it's all because of that one step you decided to nitpick on.
Now, while I was typing this, my partner went to bed, so I went ahead and tried the following scenarios, right now, right here, to make absolutely sure at least one of us is not talking out of our ass here. Bear in mind that as noted above, both of our accounts have previously had the DF campaign completed, and are locked into "adventure mode" (I don't know of a way to undo this). In all tests, the low level character was in present time.
1. Lvl 40 Rogue, 2/5 DF chapters + Lvl 80 Monk, 3/5 DF chapters:
Didn't work. Who was leader and who initiated party sync didn't matter. The 80 was scaled down, but did not get pulled over to the leveling phase.
2. Lvl 11 Druid, no DF ("Aspectral Invitation" available) + Lvl 80 Monk from above:
Didn't work. Same results.
3. Same as above, Druid now picked up "Aspectral Invitation":
Didn't work.
4. Lvl 40 Rogue, 2/5 DF chapters + Lvl 80 Warlock, 0/5 DF chapters ("The Dragon Isles Await" available):
Didn't work.
5. Lvl 11 Druid, no DF ("Aspectral Invitation" available) + Lvl 80 Warlock from above:
Didn't work.
6. Lvl 11 Druid + Lvl 80 Warlock, now both on quest "To The Dragon Isles":
Didn't work.
Finally, with this last pair, I quested both chars up to the adventure map, picked "Thaldraszus" for both, and turned it in to Alextrasza in Valdrakken. Still no dice. In all of these scenarios, activating DF Chromie Time on the low level characters solves the problem. I'm afraid I won't be creating a starter account to test the scenario where one of the parties is locked into "campaign mode phase", but I would love to see your own up-to-date test results on the subject!
Of course, it is also entirely possible that I missed some minor detail, that there is something else other than DF CT that can make this work, so if something pops into your head right away, please indulge me, and I will try it out when I get a chance. Peace.
