(08-25-2015, 08:45 PM)Pastry Army Wrote: One thing I see missing here is location, and let me tell you, location is very important to the opening of the gates and you should make sure to incorporate that into your studies. And to put it simply so that it is easy to digest and use: The sight of ancient battles, and more importantly the Aether flowing within such locations are critical to the success or fail of opening the chakra.Â
Alternatively you can simply use places that are soaked to the  brim in Aether, like Mor Dhona.
Edit: Another thing to consider, simply for the sake of rp dynamics, is the possibility of the task being much more difficult, or easier, based on the levels of the individuals own internal Aether. As stated through the Thamaturge question, without an adequate level of Aether one simply can't become one. Based on that, one could reason that the same could be applied here as well. Food for thought.
We're probably way way way beyond the Spoiler threshold at this point, but just for the sake of completeness, this entire post contains spoilers.
This just seems to be the Fast-Track way to getting it done, really. Fighting another Monk that has their stuff going for them might do it for the similarly-aspected Chakra as it does for light and dark, but we don't know this for sure.
However, background aether being the most important cause for pass / fail wouldn't make sense, considering that there was a veritable army of these guys, fighting each other to open their Chakras. If you could only use specific locations of former battles to get Chakras open (which, it should be noted, cannot be used for a very long time by anyone afterwards), then it would not be feasible for a large group of Monks to exist in the manner that we know they did. Add into that the fact that you are basically getting swamped during the 50+ questline by Darksiders that want their Chakras open (which means that they have to have some of theirs open on their own), and we run into the problem of there just not being enough places for everyone to get their Chakras unlocked if this was the only way to do it.
To theorycraft beyond this for the hell of it, one of the recurring themes when it comes to unlocking Chakra is the "quickening," or something like that, of Aether, if my memory of a certain dialogue bit is correct. Large amounts of background aether floating around is one example, because the aether in your body interacts with it. Fighting another Monk is another example, because their pistons are firing, and your pistons are firing, and your aether interacts again. That said, it might be possible to "force-quicken" Aether through other means; having a Thaumaturge or Black Mage spew Aether all over the place might make things a little easier, for example (it could be argued that Yda and Papalymo did this during the 2.5 content, but that's another argument entirely). Converting a large crystal into Aether that is then absorbed or released into the environment might also serve the same purpose. If you wanted to Get Evil with it, absorbing the Aether or life force of other people, like the Bad Cat does in the final Monk quest in order to achieve Ultimate Power, might aid you in opening a Chakra as well.
Part of what makes the sites of former battles so appealing is the absolutely huge amounts of aether that were released when people fought and died; the aether of all those people allows you to get done in a few minutes spent punching wildlife what we can assume would normally take several months or years of hard work. I would argue therefore that, despite location being important as far as where aether is goes, the real clincher here is that the more aether there is around you, the easier it is to get Chakras open the first time, though large amounts of aether itself may or may not be necessary at all. Less of a decisive factor, and more of a time-saving one.
But, again, this is theorycrafting based on what we are given.