How to Improve the Relic Weapon Grind: Let's Talk about the standout problems.

Hello everyone, I hope you're enjoying your grind! (today I learned there is a 3k character post limit)

I just finished my own RDM Relic Weapon last night and its pretty much what I expected from a grind of this caliber. Now, before I begin I'd like to present my playtime to give some perspective on my thoughts. If you don't care, skip ahead to the numbered sequence. ;)

I've been playing Shadowbringers quite a lot. I joined at the tail end of Stormblood so I didn't get into any of the previous relic weapon content as it was live. For fun, I've dabbled in Eureka with my FC leader carrying me through the first zone and at the end of the day that was mostly just to get a dyable SMN top for a Glam. In Gangos, I have made the first stage of every relic weapon of every class up to where it glows, I've made 2 of the glowing 2nd stage weapons with 2 more in progress and I'm currently working on MCH's final form. That said, I've done a fair amount of each avenue trying to get quest items to progress. From this process I encountered 3 big barriers that had people around me drop off this quest-line entirely and at times slowed my own progress down. This is a bit of me complaining of course as I do find these to be problems, but the reason I point this out to discuss if there is a better way this could be implemented.

POSSIBLE DISCLAIMER: If these numbers on the older steps operate differently now I am uneducated as I've already cleared them. The current repeatable pieces I am on now will be accurate at the time of this post.

1a: Chance of Quest Pieces. When you try to do some content where you may or may not progress on your weapon its very dissuading. Now, don't get me wrong, I come from the flavor of games like Ragnarok Online where I would contest a Boss that has a 12 hour spawn time in hopes of a .001% drop... but that type of content isn't seen much these days for a reason. It has a bad feeling when you try and clear something and then when you do, you get nothing for it.
1b: Just remove that, give people the reward for their effort.

2a: The raw number of clears and the time spent. There are a lot of quests, like a ton. Most of them require you to either participate in many many skirmishes/engagements, or leave Bozja/Zadnor to do alternate content. I have to be honest, the last step of Zadnor is far better than its previous Bozja counterpart as you get far more quest pieces by just playing through the content which I appreciate a lot! It is a huge demotivator for people to see clear 30 of something though.
2b: I would propose amping up the chances of getting Bozjan related content as those items are now dated and the content has been around for awhile. If you are guaranteed 1 piece piece a clear but have a chance to get 2-3 pieces total there is more motivation to press your luck.

3a: Timeworn Artifacts in particular. Of all the steps, this one is the single worst. I've seen people pull barely through this quest after a month because its tied to the issues listed above. Heck, I know plenty who are sitting on 3-4 and just never intend to go further because of it. You either queue up for dated optional content such as Palace of the Dead which you have to put effort into to get past the low chance issue (which requires coordinating with 3 other people who have already put in this effort as well) or you have to spend 50ish minutes clearing Delubrum Reginae to get just 1 piece (admittedly that number is more like 30-40 minutes now depending on how good the crew is due to buffs to DPS)
3b: See what I list above. Give people their reward for clearing content, its an older step so lets give a chance of 1-3 per clear.

Anywho, tl;dr, no more chance of no drops and amping up the number received on older aspects of this quest-line should make this, at least to me, way less awful. If you guys have any other gripes or thoughts on how else to improve this you should leave comments here. Hopefully some player feedback can be helpful!

Liked the relic. But Delubrum would've been better if the fights weren't designed or factored around people actually using offensive actions. I'm tired of entering in an instance, to find barely anyone even using essence, let alone actions. Tanks and healers have no excuse considering how easy these are to farm, even solo across 5 minutes.

DR is about the only problem I have with the execution of how these relics panned out.. But then I guess that is more on the people being too tight, than it is a development flaw. Let's just hope in future they take this into account and scale the encounters to no essences

If SE is going to be dead set on making relic mats drop from old @$$ content, the least they could do is put them on the Roulettes. I understand their motivation, they want old content to be populated. But the way they're doing it currently isn't meeting that objective.

Otherwise, you'll just see pre-formed groups of BLU mages ripping through them like paper.

I think the problem is that DR was a content stopgap from the pandemic. It's quite clear now stacking it up against Bozja and Zadnor, that all the pittance coin drops, obtuse augment system, lack of dye on basic gear, and number of materials per completion for the relic quest were all attempts to hide that they only had essentially a slightly larger Castrum Lacus Litore or Dalriada to break out and no map, fates, fragment grind, lockbox grind, or anything else the other two steps had.

I wish at this point now that Zadnor is out with more content they go back and lighten up the DR part, its really bizarre that running DR for the latest relic step gives more materials than it does for the step when DR was new.

In my opinion, the only real issue with the Resistance weapon grind is the Timeworn Artifact step. At the very least, there should be a guaranteed drop of 1 at the end of a POTD floor 100 clear, just so players are getting rewarded for a similar amount of time as Delubrum. Other than that it's actually pretty easy stuff.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

In my opinion, the only real issue with the Resistance weapon grind is the Timeworn Artifact step. At the very least, there should be a guaranteed drop of 1 at the end of a POTD floor 100 clear, just so players getting rewarded for a similar amount of time as Delubrum. Other than that it's actually pretty easy stuff.

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I got three relics in a day (RDM, DRK, SAM), it's really quick and easy to finish the last step. Even by just doing Dalraida (which is what I did for everything but my WHM's). However, now I am completely out of weapons to finish, because of this DR step grind. It's awful. I did one DR last night, and I used the best Lost Actions, and Damage essence I had, and it was one of the longer runs I have ever been in. DR seems to be taking longer than it ever did before. It's an actual nightmare. It's not the last stage that will burn me out again, it's the same thing that did it before: DR grind.

The entire series of steps was poorly planned from the start- save for the latest one-time steps actually being intuitive to complete through Zadnor out of the gate.

Loathsome, Timeworn and subsequently Raw Emotion is the biggest headache. If you want to do Bozja content you're punished, as speed running CT/POTD/70 dungeons is the far more efficient method. In the scope of progressing both mettle and relic items, DR is the only option. Yet, if you don't preform a coordinated group I've averaged an hour of time invested to get... a pittance. It makes absolutely no sense that DR gives as few items as it does for the time.

It's honestly off-putting that the 'best' way of completing these relic steps is to do POTD and get BLU mages to speed run the applicable duties. Bozja just feels like it has no value. I'd love to get my honors higher, but I'm essentially shooting myself in the foot by trying to actually do the new content and progress relics that it's supposed to be tied to.

I'd be furious about PotD being a step if I wasn't already boycotting Bozja on principle, and so never reached that step.

In 6.X, I hope SE either actually DOES go back to the ARR/HW model; or at least doesn't lie again about how the relic can be obtained "without doing Eureka 3.0".

Having the stuff mostly be unlocked through roulettes and duty finder was AMAZING - it gave a reason to log on every day for a week or two per relic, per step; and it actually filled things that sprouts are currently waiting 30+ minutes a queue for...
... I'd even go so far as to say that one reason Heavensward was so fondly remembered for me was that it gave some real long-term more-or-less-solo (at least DF) content through its relics; which has been SORELY lacking ever since Eureka showed up.

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Originally Posted by Gedatz

(today I learned there is a 3k character post limit)

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Make a post, then edit the post and you no longer have a (feasibly attainable) character limit.

Imo this was the easiest and least frustratingly grindy of all the relic weapons I've attempted, which admittedly does not include eureka. I have one zeta weapon and am putting off attempting more until... I mean ever, probably, unless I get really intensely bored someday, and I'm still not finished my heavenward bow because I saw light farming and noped out faster than... light. Heh.

Whereas this I've just had a class on every step passively collecting parts for months so I was just shy of having two ready to go right off the bat, and after collecting one I'm right back to having something on all but the green memory step which... seems to be the fastest. And I've got excess of almost everything, so it won't take too much longer before I have all of the relics I even halfway care about. Worked well for me because I was doing bozja anyway, half because my friends are doing the stuff all the time and half because I wanted the hairstyle and other stuff myself.

The worst step imo is the 15 timeworn artifacts. This one is the real bottleneck in my experience. Delubrum takes for freaking ever with most groups - like I don't even understand what half the groups I run into are doing, for it to take as long as it usually does. A 30 minute run is fast asf and I've had like, maybe three or four of those in my 50+ runs. It'd be great if the number of artifacts you get like, doubled for subsequent artifacts, because as it is I mean... yikes.

It does kinda screw people who don't want to do Bozja too, because I mean... Isn't that the step where the alternative is potd? That was a hard no thanks from me. I have everything maxxed and spent more time than I want to think about leveling in potd. The only time I'll be going back is when I go for floor 200 again.

Well, what *I'm* going to talk about relates specifically to the original ARR Relics, but *holy mother of god* are these "Books" tedious!!! I feel like completing even a single Book should be a satisfactory step in this chain. Or perhaps have one single "Book" that has all Duties you need from all the individual books.

That way, it's more encouragement to queue for group content, and the running around for random enemies all over the game world feels... bad. It feels bad, man.

Not to say "old Relics should be completable in like a single weekend" or anything, but these Books are just a really excessive time-waster, moreso than it really ought to be.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Make a post, then edit the post and you no longer have a (feasibly attainable) character limit.

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Thank you for the protip!

And it really does look like a lot of people feel the gating with what feels like a slog of content is the problem only to get a small reward. The one thing that was pushing me through DR personally was the chance of getting the hair for some mad gil but even that is removed now as the hair is achievable through Zadnor.

I'd like to thank everyone who took time to share your opinions also, I hope this sort of vision can give people an idea of some of the rougher spots in this questline and would encourage more people to share their thoughts!

The main thing that is a headache is that people don't to grind the fragments just for rng chance to get the essence you want. They should of never implemented it to begin with. The loathsome crystal should of been a one time quest as well. DR should drop 3 minimum at this point for the grind. I think when they plan this it sounds good on paper but when actually put to use not so good. Why have us do all this grind when in November they will become another cosmetic? At least you can power yourself up I am not sure how much a difference it makes but I am sure it helps now.