Zodiac Weapon Questline vs Anima Weapon Questline - Your preference?

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

the 1 step of the relics were good , after primals.... all went downhill....to grind hell of not fun allowed

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Commenting just to say this exact same thing. When they removed unique battle content in favor of making it a "dead content revitalizer to fool people into thinking old systems don't get dumpstered in this game" I have never been interested in advancing a relic again. It's not even about the faceroll-easy content we grind (though I don't think the old relic was THAT hard...), it's more about the fact that the devs basically showed they have no interest in making the content we spam viable again by it's own merits, when they can just shoehorn us into it for the relic.

I'm sure when interest in PotD wanes it'll be part of the next relic step somehow, if the new floors fail to breathe life into it. LoV? Coming soon to a relic quest near you!

As someone that's done them both pre-nerf. They fairly the same. They both ask you to run dungeons, do fates, beast tribe quests, hunts, turn in company seals, craft HQ items ect.

To me the anima is slightly better because only half the steps require any real time commitment. Right now the only time consuming step of anima is the 240. When zodiac was out, almost every step was comparable to the 240 step. Every step took around 50+ hours to complete. If you look at anima, only the 210 and 240 steps were time consuming.

Not only that but but the Zodiac atma part was terrible. Once you got all the atmas it bumped the item level up 10 but didn't actually change any of the stats from the zenith.

I guess the part that gets me is if ppl think that relic is too boring, then your basically complaining that 90% Of FF14 is too boring, because anima is basically asking you to do everything except raiding. And honestly, I'm kinda starting to agree.

Zodiac/atma by far the worst. There was no need for the rate to be so darn low when first introduced. Had they learned from it? Not really
Some of you have not done atma before any nerfs, otherwise you would know how bad it was :(
Anima i much prefered and only thing would have been nice is multiple options to obtain Umbrite just like there was for sand.

Zodiac pre-nerf was so much worse it's not funny; most of it was due to the bad RNG with Atmas and the dungeon drops (I got really lucky with both these steps my first zodiac, but even then it was still terrible). Light farming, even doing garuda/t4 speed runs on bonus, was insanely monotonous and boring. And then there were the hours waiting for that one fate per book to spawn (speaking of monotonous, this step is the reason I don't grind dungeons for tomes. BrayHM farming for hours...)

And yet I did this twice...but I learned my lesson; my second animus will be almost 240 if I could be bothered to run the dungeons (queue times are my issue right now)

I don't miss the materia stages with the first relic. That cost was way too much for many and this Umbrite/Sands phase is a neat way to accomplish the personalization of stats. It's a grind but personally it keeps me busy. Working on my Sphere of the Last Heir now.

Here's the big difference between Zodiac and Anima: less RNG. Aside from the Luminous Crystals stage, all of the Anima steps are guaranteed. Zodiac had horrible RNG in terms of Atma, Book Fates, and dungeon Zodiac drops.

Zodiac.

I think it has aged far better than the Anima weapons can possibly... Anima weapons is essentially just a constant currency grind at this point, that'll get easier with time but not more entertaining, it doesn't remotely feel like an epic quest at this point... Zodiac weapons? Epic probably isn't the right word, but it at least feels like a quest in parts, and the inclusion of the Undersized Party option, along with general nerfs to its RNG/etc., have made it a lot more entertaining in my eyes. I'm definitely more incline to complete Zodiac weapons, than farm Luminous Crystals...

If you completely ignore item levels (and this is XIV, so why not), I'm incline to go with Zodiac weapons from a glamour perspective as well... Especially with the most recent additions... Christ most of those are ugly, even the names... Hope these are the final forms of the Anima weapons, I want "traditional" ultimate weapons, didn't much like how Kannagi looked, but Kannagi was a "traditional" ultimate weapon name... Thank f*ck for the glamour system, if SE didn't slap achievements on all these weapons I'd probably not even bother beyond the i210 stages...

Even pre-nerf, I'm incline to prefer Zodiac weapons... Some of the stages were particularly sh*tty, Atma and Sphere Scrolls spring to mind (although I enjoyed Alexandrite maps, something I think Unidentified items could have benefited from a lot), but the quests at least had direction for the most part... Luminous Crystals were worse than Atma IMO, 10 dungeons was just... OK... The Unidentified items stage was a condensed and much less interesting version of the quest for the actual Zodiac weapon... Oil from Crystal Towers quest is just boring... The current stage I only remotely like because of the characterization the Anima gets in that little page, that's the best I can say about it... It's just farm Esoterics... OK, there is nothing annoying like the RNG the Zodiac Sage had, but there's also nothing remotely engaging about it either... At this point it's just grind tomestones for weapon, in which case I'd just get the tomestone weapon... Even the Anima itself, while interesting, is not going to be interesting on repeated attempts... What engages me with the Zodiac weapons now is the actual process and seeing what I can solo from various parts of it, the Anima questline has nothing like that, save the 10 dungeons... Zodiac weapons were hit or miss at the time, but they've aged well and removed the RNG a lot... Anima weapons are just a lifeless grind that'll get shorter over time, but never any more entertaining...

The FIRST step (getting an i80) - challenging the 3 Hard Mode Primals - was great, outside of that step the Zodiac weapon quest was garbage pre-nerf. The team took the right steps forward with the Anima - allowing multiple paths during "grind" phases, or use of alternate classes - to make it a bit easier (and faster) pill to swallow.

Right now the only issue I saw that carried over is the Gil barrier (in Zodiac it was the materia/sphere scroll, in Anima it was the 4x 4xHQ items) - for those who only focus on battle classes (like myself), and dont have the time to develop a high income flow - the high cost to attain these items prevents this group from progressing their weapon.

TL;DR: Anima > Zodiac

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Originally Posted by decoy_effect

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Right now the only issue I saw that carried over is the Gil barrier (in Zodiac it was the materia/sphere scroll, in Anima it was the 4x 4xHQ items) - for those who only focus on battle classes (like myself), and dont have the time to develop a high income flow - the high cost to attain these items prevents this group from progressing their weapon.

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Then its a good thing that you now only need NQ versions and can get them for 5k GC Seals each from the GC vendors.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Then its a good thing that you now only need NQ versions and can get them for 5k GC Seals each from the GC vendors.

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Yup the 3.38 nerf this week really helps this issue in the Anima quest line, so will finally get around to the 2 alt Awokens that have been sitting in my retainer inventory.