Two part question, plz advise

So I just bought the box and first sub. Currently level 62, just about to finish heavensward. My first question I want to preface by saying that I do not mean any disrespect for anyone who plays this or any other game for the story. I am not that guy. I am strictly an endgame player. Plenty mmos had slow starts til you got to endgame. What am asking is, is it possible to enjoy the endgame if you literally have absolutely zero desire to pay attention to the story?

Question two: how do I get my relic weapon. ty.

1: It is indeed possible to enjoy the endgame without knowing about the story. If you want fights with plenty of mechanics and enjoy pushing your role to the limit while executing them, then by all means hit endgame and play the fights for the fights alone. That said: I don't feel it's fair to say this game has a slow start until you reach endgame, in either the story or the battle mechanics. While things certainly ramp up in both cases, the content leading up to them is definitely worth doing (albeit for the difficult stuff like Extreme trials, Binding Coil, or Savage raids, you'll have trouble finding people willing to do them at their intended level), if only because things learned in earlier fights pop up again in later fights.

2: Ok, to this I would have to ask why you want one. If you're trying to push for endgame, relic weapons are definitely not for you, as they are pretty big time sinks that can indicate a dedication to the job, and while there's justification for doing them when they're current, doing the relics from previous expansions has no point unless you're looking for fun glamour options or simply wish to show off that you're willing to put in a lot of time for the sake of doing so. I worry that you might assume they're like items from other MMOs that grow with you, or that they have special effects you may want and just... no, they're an endgame weapon option that requires a huge grind instead of difficult content, allows some stat customization, glows, and has more lore attached to it than other weapons. That said: If you do want a relic weapon, this page has a lot of information on them https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/C...:Relic_Weapons , and the two you have access to are the Zodiac weapon for A Realm Reborn, started by talking to Gerolt in Hyrstmill in North Shroud, and the Anima weapon started by talking to Rowena in Idyllshire.

Well as far as gearing up goes, only the current relic series matters. You need to complete shadowbringers AND the Stormblood Ivalice alliance raid series (this second bit can be tedious to get queues for as people try to avoid running it in alliance roulette by deliberately lowering the gear level, squeenix needs to implement some sort of fix to curb this). Then a quest called Save the Queen appears in Kugane's market district and you go from there. Stage 2 of the weapon series is actually set to come out next tuesday (and unlike stage 1, it'll presumably be a proper grind).

The older relic weapons are purely for glamour purposes at this point. If you still wanna go for it (as a side note, for the first two relics mentioned below, I highly HIGHLY recommend being at least 10 levels higher than the weapon involved so you can unsync the content that will be required. You will likely go insane if you try to do the Zodiac weapon sync'd):
Zodiac:The ARR weapon starts in Hyrstmill in the northeast of North Shroud starting with "A Relic Reborn". Note that the Zodiac weapon is easily the biggest and most tedious grind of the relic weapons, AND will cost 1-2 million gil if you don't have crafters at level 50 with the crafting tomes unlocked (something of a grind in itself, though not nearly as bad as it used to be).

Anima: The HW relic starts in the Idylshire tomestone shop with the quest "An Unexpected Proposal". As far as time sinks go, the Anima weapon is much less intensive than the Zodiac weapon in a sense. The biggest grind about the Anima weapon is that it requires a metric butt ton of poetics spent on various materials. You'll cap your poetics like 5-10 times in the process. As for actually running content, you basically just have to run multiple dungeons and trials once and run stage 9 of Alexander Savage like 20 times (once again, be at least level 70 for this, 80 is better. You can often find farm parties for this particular step in Party finder, and if there isn't one up, you can make one yourself and people will generally join. You can probably get by with about 5 level 80s). Also you can skip the first step of the Anima weapon if you have a completed zodiac weapon by sacrificing the Zodiac weapon (this is actually ideal, because it lets you buy replicas of the Zodiac weapon's various stages from then on without needing the completed product in your inventory, normally have to have it on you to buy them), but don't complete the Zodiac weapon JUST to skip this step, it takes MUUUUUCH longer to do a zodiac weapon than to do the first step of the anima weapon.

Eureka: Starts in Kugane, the quest is "And we shall call it Eureka". Unlike the other two, you don't need to be overleveled to do the Eureka weapon because it all takes place in an instance that caps your level at 70 (you do have to be at least 70 though). Eureka is a different beast than the rest, inside the zone eureka, you have a brand new level to grind (going all the way from 1 to 60 over the course of 4 zones). Each zone has a grind to upgrade your weapon (outside of light farming in zone 2 and getting logos actions in zone 3, it's largely just gathering crystals from killing special enemies). The first weapon will take a fair amount of time to get, but subsequent weapons will go faster because A:You'll be at cap level already so don't gotta do that again and B:you'll have gotten the logos actions already so you don't gotta do that again either, just gotta farm the materials needed. I highly recommend you look up the finished products for the Eureka weapons before committing, because many players consider them very hit or miss in terms of how they look (and miss more often than hit, though there are a few cool ones).

As a final note, you can't get a weapon for a class that wasn't out when the weapon series was current. So for instance, you can't get a zodiac weapon or anima weapon for samurai or red mage since they came out during stormblood.

Edit: Also as far as the current weapon series goes, note that the Relic Weapon only becomes best in slot on the very final update, until then it's considered catch up gear (the first step was ilvl 485 at a time when 490 was the best you could get without running savage, the new step will likely be 495 since players can get 500 now for their tomestone weapon) The current best weapon is the weapon that drops from the final fight of the current savage tier, with the upgraded tomestone weapon being second best.

It is indeed possible to enjoy the endgame by itself. But a word of caution needs to be issued. You only get 3 major endgame content patches (savage tiers, 5 if you don't count ultimate in those) every two years. And although there are some other content patches for less difficult content, the vast majority of patches will be story related.
All that to say that even if you, like me, are mainly interested in endgame, there's real value in following the story to the end. Think of it as an investment, you slogg through it now so that you can enjoy the patches more once at cap.

Ah, ty for such good advice. Idk what I'm doing in this game yet obviously, so where do I get better weapons? I'm maxed on poetics atm and cant figure out how to buy a lvl 60 weapon. I'm BLM if that matters

Progress the MSQ until you reach Idyllshire. Then you can buy a i270 Shire weapon for poetics from the vendor there.

You could also buy a crafted weapon off the marketboard. Keep in mind that since content syncs you down you only need gear as good as your MSQ level since you won't have any higher level stuff unlocked.

So my character is literally at the exact place you're referring to. Every time I click weapons on her inventory, the screen is blank

I finally figured it out. Got a bunch of jewelry and a weapon that is to some nice folks in that area, and got invited to some novice group to ask questions

So getting an end-game viable weapon can be done a few different ways. The very best ones will drop from the savage raid(or ultimate for the patches they add one), but you obviously need something equipped to clear those fights. As was already mentioned, doing the relic grind will get you a weapon a little behind best in slot(by the final stages, these often have your choice of stats and the very end will equal the best raid weapon - 4-6 months after the raiders got said weapon). By spending the current tomestones and a special item from the story-mode raids you get the tome weapon, and the savage raids(or alliance raids 4+ months later) drop an upgrade item to turn that into an almost BiS. Every patch will typically have an extreme trial that drops a good weapon for the current tier. And finally, the easiest to get "starter" weapon to get into all of that would be a crafted one(upgradable in a catch-up patch). If you dont have gil for the crafted, you alternatively grab one of the other options from last tier and do a couple upgrade steps along the way. That was all very dry though, so lets include some links to illustrate the point. So the current tier items go up to ilvl 500(505 for weapon). The crafted weapon you could consider the starter is level 480, while its upgrade is 490(upgrade purchased via tomestones). In about 10 days the relic grind will be updated to allow the current 485 to be upgraded to an estimated 495. Meanwhile, the tomestone weapon is 490, and its upgrade is 500(upgrade from alliance raid or earlier savage raid floors). The current extreme trial drops a level 495, and if you arent lucky with drops you can buy it from a vendor for 10 of the tokens you get for clearing the fight(the eorzean database doesnt have these links live yet as an anti-spoiler thing) - the previous patches extreme drop was level 485. And finally, the weapon these are all being compared to is the one from the savage raid at level 505.

The next major patch(dec/jan) will add new versions of basically all those(aside from the upgraded crafted). Relic and extremes will likely continue to climb by 10-20 levels per step, raid crafted and tome will jump 30 levels all at once.