So is the relic even worth it in the end?

[Kanemano]

In regards to the new relic quest starting in 3.1, from a PAX East Interview with Naoki Yoshida, dated March 9, 2015;

"For those who have completed Zodiac weapons, they are planning on having some advantage for those players in this new progression."

Source;
http://gamerescape.com/2015/03/09/pa...naoki-yoshida/

[TallonOverworld]

Going to be irrelevant in 3.1 but u do get the awesome "Z" title
Or u can do crystal tower weekly for 2 weeks + 1300 poetics for the i130 weapons

But the zeta is bis because of the custom stats, I have ragnarok and Excalibur both with crit/det, so easy to keep threat

and what about the after-animus upgrades? from a sneak peek at novus it seems it requires just a few mere mils to be made which, in my current state,i can't afford and i pretty much hate crafting/gathering in order to make money. So i have to sb my whole armoury to get the materia for it? Is this the only way?

[GenericMagus]

and what about the after-animus upgrades? from a sneak peek at novus it seems it requires just a few mere mils to be made which, in my current state,i can't afford and i pretty much hate crafting/gathering in order to make money. So i have to sb my whole armoury to get the materia for it? Is this the only way?

For the Novus part of the relic quest, it depends highly on whether you want to min/max secondary stats for relic. Depending on how much money you have, a relic can be made really cheaply, especially if you're a tank(which in that case, WPD is the only thing important). In my opinion, it's best to get the Augumented Ironworks Weapon over relic if money's an issue, as the Zodiac Brave parts need 3* HQ crafts, and depending on server can get expensive, probably going to cost you 3-5 million.

[krazyrs]

gsm50 and set aside a couple hours a day to alex/sb fate farm
between selling the materia i didnt need and selling some full acc sets here and there gil was never a issue thro both zetas

[Maero]

You also can put other stats in your Novus so say instead of full crit for example, just add accuracy to finish off your weapon.
The stats can be changed at any point so you can change them later on if you could afford it. for now the important thing is to start the grind, light farming, dungeon drops, etc.
Not saying to add irrelevant materia though, lol
And i do some crafting but make most my money gathering. Dark Steel, Crawler Coccoons, etc...

[Kanemano]

On my NIN and DRG zeta, I had full Crit/Det, having crafted and spirit bonded almost all the materia myself along the way.

Casually working on PLD because of boredom, I just melded purchased materia to my PLD sword and shield, and in the end it was less than 1M (700k maybe?), and I'm on a Legacy server (meaning, things typically cost more). I stacked all T1-3 DET and CRIT, and put the rest in acc. It doesn't need to cost a lot if you don't want it to.

[TallonOverworld]

For the Novus part of the relic quest, it depends highly on whether you want to min/max secondary stats for relic. Depending on how much money you have, a relic can be made really cheaply, especially if you're a tank(which in that case, WPD is the only thing important). In my opinion, it's best to get the Augumented Ironworks Weapon over relic if money's an issue, as the Zodiac Brave parts need 3* HQ crafts, and depending on server can get expensive, probably going to cost you 3-5 million.

well i researched more and it seems by adding 25 for 3 secondary stats is the cheap way as i can avoid tier 4 but i have one question about this. Since i will most likely go this way, i start melding with tier 1 until +10(?) then tier 2 becomes available and i do one meld with tier 2 (and success rate resets?) then i can still continue melding with tier 1 or it only requires tier 2? Also since each secondary stat maxes out at +25, am i going to need tier 3?

[Maero]

No, Tier's actually are capped, so for instance if say 11 crit, you move on to grade 2 materia once that is capped you move on to grade 3 and so forth. I do not recall the exact break down of each grade but i know that the first few melds of each grade is 100% and goes down from there. So yes if you are at 25 of say 44 as example you will need grade 3 and grade IV to finish off those stats to the max
Once you reach IV materia chances to fail are high (if you are maxing certain stats like crit and det as example) I for one have botched multiple det Iv's on both my Bard Novus at the time and just recently blm. I am at IV materia for both crit and det on my Nin but am avoiding finishing off for now i think, besides i have the Augmented Daggers