Here I am trying to do an Empyrean weapon and wasting so much time from lotto spawns.
Absolute MINIMUM time if you get pop on first kill every time is 16 hours. I just spent 8 hours killing the ONE place holder for 8 hours straight before I got the NM.
Solution: make all lotto spawns (or at least the ones used for Magian trials) have force pop items like Behemoth and crew.
Seeing as how the abyssea NMs still need farmed, HMP, and rift cinder/dross leave quite a lot of grinding you won't see every single person with an Empyrean. It still is a large time and money investment to get it to 119-3.
So tl;dr Change lotto spawn NMs to force pop with item as happened with Behemoth. At least change lotto spawns used for magian trials.