For those of us Relic Hunters

It's easy to get up to the simple relic now, but some of us like going even further. Two of these is the 5 Æther Oil needed, and Umbrite. So far, getting Æther Oil a week is simple, since I don't like spending 1,800 Tomes to buy it. And I use those same Tomes to get Umbrite, which is currently the only way of getting it. Why not give us a weekly that gives us Umbrite like they do with Singing Clusters?

We might get nerfs in 3.5, maybe. Regardless I agree that the recent steps of the Anima are far too gated behind Lore. I don't mind grinding but I don't like grinding the one thing over and over again which is the case with efficiently earning lore.

You can be sure an Umbrite nerf is coming. The question is will it be 3.5 or 3.55. I suspect they'll reduce the number, or reduce to the cost, or add a quest or two to earn them like clusters. Possibility they'll do more than one.

As long as the next step doesn't require a large amount of lore, I think the existing grind is okay.

The entire process is relatively cohesive.

You get GC seals from the fate grind step and from the gear-turn ins in the dungeon grind step. You can use those seals to purchase the i210 turn-in items or convert it to gil to spend on sands (or if the conversion rate is bad, you can just trade for moonstones straight up).

You get 4 UI items per day from Beast Tribes. The poetics can be used to purchase sands or UI items.

You get 1 Aether Oil per week from the weekly CT quest. The poetics can be used to purchase sands or UI items.

You get 17 Singing Clusters per week from repeatable quests.

And because the rest of the relic doesn't really require lore, you can spend all your lore on Umbrites.

That way, assuming you just do your dailies and weeklies, you get one up-to-date relic every 5 weeks (bottle-necked by the Aether Oils mainly) with no other grinding.

Currently I have 3 (and almost 4) up-to-date relics and 2 more at i210. Outside of the my first relic, I really haven't went out of my way to grind anything. I just did my normal daily routine that takes maybe an hour or two.

So yea... as long as the next step isn't a lore grind, I think the existing quest cycle is fine. The only thing I think needs changing is the singing cluster quests need to be made available regardless of your relic progression. That way, while slowly accumulating Aether Oils with the CT weekly, you can work on your i240 progress by spending lore on umbrites and can work on your i260 progress by doing your singing cluster repeatable quests. While this doesn't matter to people who've already done one relic, it'd help streamline the grind for first time relic questers.

If they do add another lore grind, though... well, I would be really disappointed at the complete lack of creativity. This entire relic has been copy-and-paste but it'd just be another slap to the face. But yea, they'd probably need to adjust how we get Umbrites then.

I think the i270 and i275 relic steps should focus much more on how to keep your players active given the upcoming content lull before 4.0. Lore grinds don't actually do that well since it just forces players into whatever is the most efficient means of grinding lore and kills everything else.

Lore grind > crafter grind or materia grind. At least you can do other things while grinding for said lore. *PTSD from materia melding for the Zeta weapons.* Yeah, that's one step I never want to see again. The umbrite and crystal sand step is similar, but nowhere near as horrifying.

Or the light grind, only because to efficiently farm light, you needed to do specific trials for roughly 2 hours before it changed and you needed to figure out what the new efficient trial was. <-- Thank goodness this step also got two or three nerfs to it so it's stupidly easy and faster compared to what it was.

This frustrated me, adding more methods to get umbrite isn't a nerf, it doesn't take any less time, it only gives variety to the content (especially with singing clusters). Honestly I loved the varied methods to get the sands, but the umbrite half turned the entire step into "grind lore to win"

I dont like the Umbrite step. I've been stuck at it for like a month. Granted I dont grind 24/7 but i'd welcome a nerf or least lower the cost to like 50-100 lore /ea

I have words to express my feelings for umbrite and they're liable to get me banned for using.

I'll be on the umbrite step until a nerf happens. My Lore is better spent on crafting mats. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by Zigabar

I'll be on the umbrite step until a nerf happens. My Lore is better spent on crafting mats. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Lore has too many uses sadly. It's bad they make one choose relic or other items like gearing alt roles and crafting etc. There really should have been alt ways to get it along with a quest like they did with clusters. For those without time relic isn't very doable.

Umbrite will get nerfed into the ground and people will be happy. Hopefully the last anima quests they add are not just another huge tomestone grind. If we can avoid repeating the past, the whole questline will be nice and smooth.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Umbrite will get nerfed into the ground and people will be happy. Hopefully the last anima quests they add are not just another huge tomestone grind. If we can avoid repeating the past, the whole questline will be nice and smooth.

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Tbh, I thought the "books" step of the whole Animus thing (or whatever part it was for the original relic weapon) was a great step...EXCEPT for the 1500 Myth tomes or WTFever it cost for them to get. If they hadn't cost so many stupid tomes, I would have thought that part of the quest was really well-designed - go out and do this variety of content to power up your weapon. A+, will not punch hole in monitor again. Why did we never get more quests like that? (Or better yet, like the original relic questline with the HM primal fights and Chimera/Hydra?)

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Tbh, I thought the "books" step of the whole Animus thing (or whatever part it was for the original relic weapon) was a great step...EXCEPT for the 1500 Myth tomes or WTFever it cost for them to get. If they hadn't cost so many stupid tomes, I would have thought that part of the quest was really well-designed - go out and do this variety of content to power up your weapon. A+, will not punch hole in monitor again. Why did we never get more quests like that? (Or better yet, like the original relic questline with the HM primal fights and Chimera/Hydra?)

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We stopped getting actual feel good content because apparently a good amount of people couldn't clear Titan HM. Thus in turn Yoshi didnt want to make the quest line "stressful" so it was turned into a LONG boring grind that anyone could accomplish in time.

The funny thing is its still purposely not done by people until nerfs/buffs happen to the quest lines instead of doing it in its current state. But yet its still catered to that type of player for some reason.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Tbh, I thought the "books" step of the whole Animus thing (or whatever part it was for the original relic weapon) was a great step...

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Uhm...as someone who did the original late, I found that was the worst step, particularly because you couldn't do multiple books at the same time (Leading to you constantly visiting the same places to kill mobs you could have killed the first time around) and because of the specific FATEs that you had to wait hours for.
The step (as a whole) made you visit every dungeon once, do every high level leve once, kill every high level mob 3-10 times and do almost every high level FATE once (I 'think' there are no overlaps, but I'm not 100% sure). Either way...I personally don't get what's particularly good about that. Maybe the fact you spent more time in the overworld? I "can" see an appeal in that. But that aside, uh...egh.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Uhm...as someone who did the original late, I found that was the worst step, particularly because you couldn't do multiple books at the same time (Leading to you constantly visiting the same places to kill mobs you could have killed the first time around) and because of the specific FATEs that you had to wait hours for.
The step (as a whole) made you visit every dungeon once, do every high level leve once, kill every high level mob 3-10 times and do almost every high level FATE once (I 'think' there are no overlaps, but I'm not 100% sure). Either way...I personally don't get what's particularly good about that. Maybe the fact you spent more time in the overworld? I "can" see an appeal in that. But that aside, uh...egh.

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Yeah, I kinda forgot about how crap the hours-long respawn on some of the FATEs were. But mostly, what I liked about it was that yeah, you were out in the overworld, doing content you hadn't bothered with in a while, and (with the exception of the fact that you needed Myth tomes to BUY the stupid things) it wasn't reliant on just spamming dungeons over and over again for tomestones. Literally, if they removed the tomestone requirement and the FATE respawn was like what it is now (they buffed respawns hugely), I would love it. Compare that to a later step, light farming, where you COULD get light from a variety of sources but realistically the best way was to just farm faceroll HM primal windows over and over...basically, I just like relic steps that have you doing a variety of things, whether it's because the game MAKES you do them or because all sources are equally viable. But any time it's tied to a tomestone currency or something like light-farming, the easiest way to do it is to just spam one type of thing over and over, and that's boring to me.

The Crystal Sand part of this most recent relic was an okay step too. But tying that to Umbrite, tome farm-fest city? No thank you.

I hate how everything in this game relies upon collecting some sort of moronic tomestone or another.

EDIT: For clarification, though, I really do think the original part of the relic questline was the best. It was a wholly unique series of trial fights that really made you FEEL like you were earning your weapon, not just "buying" it from a vendor. I can respect that a lot of people don't want to put the effort into learning those types of fights, which is why I mentioned that of the "casual friendly" steps, the books step was my favorite (minus the Myth tome requirement).

I think one way that they could nerf the umbrite step a little is allowing us to buy the umbrite with poetics as well. Think about it, you need to do the CT quest 5 times to get the 5 aether oils for the hyperconductive step and each CT dungeon is worth 100 poetics each, once you complete the CT quest for the Aether Oil, you have enough tomes for an umbrite.

Then again, just nerfing the price would work. I also expect they will introduce a quest similar to the CT trio quest for aether oils but using the Mhach storyline raids and the reward will be umbrite. (Since 3.5 introduces the final part of that raid trilogy.)

I'll be farming all the relics once the umbrite step is nerfed. Last thing I feel like doing is that god awful step again.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Tbh, I thought the "books" step of the whole Animus thing (or whatever part it was for the original relic weapon) was a great step...EXCEPT for the 1500 Myth tomes or WTFever it cost for them to get. If they hadn't cost so many stupid tomes, I would have thought that part of the quest was really well-designed - go out and do this variety of content to power up your weapon. A+, will not punch hole in monitor again. Why did we never get more quests like that? (Or better yet, like the original relic questline with the HM primal fights and Chimera/Hydra?)

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If we get an Animus clone in the Anima and it requires me to wait hours for FATEs there is 0 chance I will even bother starting it.

Iunno, its not awful. I just finished my 3rd 260,a nd will have my 4th next week. Its not too terrible, and I havent really been grinding them out, just dailies and roulettes. I can get another up to 230 once I get around to it. and I have one im working on getting to 240 too.

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Originally Posted by Rennies

If we get an Animus clone in the Anima and it requires me to wait hours for FATEs there is 0 chance I will even bother starting it.

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Yeah, I amended my statement in a reply to another poster, that I didn't care for the long respawn timers on the FATEs. But aside from that and the tome requirement to buy the books, I kinda liked doing all the old dungeons and whatnot again, and leves. At least over what basically amounts to another tomestone grind, on top of the other tomestone grinds we've had ad nauseum since the game launched.

Y'all aren't struggling with the Aether oil? You can actually get a group for LotA? Woah.

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Originally Posted by Averax

Y'all aren't struggling with the Aether oil? You can actually get a group for LotA? Woah.

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Actually, for the last run of World of Darkness to get my last oil, I got saddled with a 45 minute wait for the queue to pop, but I wasn't gonna let duty finder break my spirit! The umbrite step...that's breakin' me a little.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

I think the i270 and i275 relic steps should focus much more on how to keep your players active given the upcoming content lull before 4.0. Lore grinds don't actually do that well since it just forces players into whatever is the most efficient means of grinding lore and kills everything else.

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Didn't they say they're only going to 270? Since SE stated that they don't want relic weapons to be the same as the raid tier this xpac so I assume it's just gonna be 270.

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Originally Posted by Awful

Didn't they say they're only going to 270? Since SE stated that they don't want relic weapons to be the same as the raid tier this xpac so I assume it's just gonna be 270.

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Here's the thing: every other relic step for HW has been a glowing weapon. 260 glows. Presumably whatever step in 3.5 will not glow. So I'd expect another step to add a glow.

Umbrite has been the worse step so far, but I think it hit me harder as I was struggling with burnout and finding a reason to play anymore. I plan to do more of my second relic once it gets nerfed. Wife isn't looking forward to it either but she enjoys DRG enough for it to be worth it.

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Here's the thing: every other relic step for HW has been a glowing weapon. 260 glows. Presumably whatever step in 3.5 will not glow. So I'd expect another step to add a glow.

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Ah good point.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

Or the light grind.

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This step and the Mahatma one were two of my favorite steps to do to date, due in large part that I never felt forced to do only one piece of content that I may or may not enjoy, but instead, I had a nice, wide spread of content I could choose from to get the light I needed. The Umbrite step I like very much as well for a similar reason, that being the complete freedom to get whatever I need at whatever pace I want by doing content I enjoy. Efficiency only matters when you're one of the guys that needs to have everything "I'm first, guys!"