Accidentally Dropped My Conquerer.....

[Gwydion]

If they're going to give you that bad of a deal they should at least refund you the currency (i.e. rocks) needed to upgrade it. Unless you have a full wallet of gil that takes longer than everything before it.

While I agree with your refund idea in theory, the reality is that there is probably a software tool that exists for SE employees to execute and specify a character ID, which in turn lets that person select from a list of items to restore. My guess, total educated guess here, is that this tool hasn't been updated in 15 years and is error-prone OR has a hardcoded list of items to restore, which no one bothered to updated in a very long time.

Worse, if such a tool doesn't exist, than someone has to run a query directly on a database to restore your character's item and I sincerely hope that's not the case, but these are some possilble, plausible, technical reasons for why SE has such stringent policy on restoring items. It's super unfortunate, because if SE would open-source some of these components, they would get the attention they deserve from dedicated fans.

It were up to me, or if I were to design it, your base REMAs would be "backed-up" to a REMA key-item at the each NPC: Switchstix, Magian Moogle, Abquhbah, etc. The text of the key item contains a list of your completed base weapons. If something is missing from your inventory when you speak to the NPC, you get an option like "...I lost something very special." ...and the NPC replies with: "...Was it this?" and you automatically /emote /confused in response.

Simple. Effective. Done. However, the reality is that TODAY, such a task would take away from already scarce development resources and such a feature would mean that the already light, modest, road-map, would be stretched even further.

Sad, but true.

P.S. I hope when SE re-adjusts monster-levels in older areas that they also reduce the respawn timers for some mobs. 6-10 minute waits can be rough.