First stage of Resistance weapons seems like an awkward bottleneck

I've finally ventured into collecting some of the Resistance weapons, and the initial stage of collecting 3 x 20 memories feels like a difficult slow point – doubly so when it's beneficial to have a half-finished weapon at each stage so you can continue to collect the various tokens for future weapons.

The tokens drop in Bozja but very slowly, and having reached max rank it is actively detrimental to my progress to spend time in there now, other than filling in time waiting for the weekly Castrum run. A single death in a standard CE costs me more mettle than I gain from completing it.

So that leaves the only alternative of Heavensward FATEs: generally solo now, and not something I can do while achieving other objectives (besides maybe acquiring more luminous crystals than there are anima weapons to purchase).

It feels wasteful doing just FATEs for this step over and over, while the steps calling for more interesting content (raids and the less-populated alliances) are one-time-only and not long term to encourage people to engage with them regularly.

I feel like the memory drop rate either needs to be considerably increased in Bozja, added to Zadnor, or added to some other standard game activity that people want to run regularly.

They could drop from level 50 dungeons to complement the drops from 60 and 70 dungeons, therefore making the 50/60/70 roulette always beneficial to run. Or they could drop from trials. Or Castrum Lacus. Just make them drop from something that we can work on without having to set apart time purely for FATE farming.

To be clear, I didn't think it was too bad for a one-time process. But for trying to get additional weapons started, it's something that takes a lot of solo FATE farming every time and is incompatible with any other gameplay.


Edit to add: Perhaps memory drops could be guaranteed in Bozja and with a small chance in Zadnor? Both keeping the older zone relevant and not making you feel like you're not earning anything from Zadnor skirmishes and CEs once you're past the 6 x 30 trinket farming stage.

(Come to think of it, instead of requiring 6 x 30 of everything in one shot, needing two of each item per relic would have been a lot better for pacing. The current setup basically guarantees a mad rush at the start and no lasting value for queues.)

Completely agree. It feels so strange to me that basically every other step was far easier/more enjoyable than fate farming yet it didn't get any kind of change. Personally I would've liked to see the amount of memories go from 20 each to something like 10 each since doing 60 fates just really isn't fun or engaging, it just feels like a damn boring chore. Maybe even making them drop in Zadnor would help but I can't remember if something else already drops there.

I'd like to note that the memories are fairly easy to get if you join a cluster farm party in bozja - after 2-ish hours of cluster farming, people in all 3 zones, I got around 90 memories total (some more than others)

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

I'd like to note that the memories are fairly easy to get if you join a cluster farm party in bozja - after 2-ish hours of cluster farming, people in all 3 zones, I got around 90 memories total (some more than others)

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This pretty much... I really like the construct mount... so I wanted to have it on my main and all 7 alts... and I didn't want to pay for that money so I did cluster farm parties and double dipped. I got more memories than I needed for all 17 weapons while I got all the clusters I needed to buy 8 mounts + all the other things in the store for my main (hairstyles and such for "completion") + 50 each pure essence fragment type.

and actually, it's even better if you have one weapon with the blue, yellow, red memories quest flagged and another with the green bitter memories quest flagged so those will drop too.

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Originally Posted by weebtext

Maybe even making them drop in Zadnor would help but I can't remember if something else already drops there.

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Zadnor drops the 6 x 30 miscellaneous objects but apparently that's a one-time-only step? Which again seems back-to-front in the long term because those come from raid roulette, an activity I do regularly. I'd be very happy if the 3 x 20 memories dropped from those and I could continue to passively earn them over time. I can do that with the green memories from levelling roulette and the ones that drop from the CT raids (like it's some kind of consolation prize that I got it in alliance roulette again) and the 60/70 dungeons when I get those.

On the other hand, having the "Stormblood FATEs or Mhach/Ivalice raids" as a blocking step felt like really bad timing. If it was a final step or something that I could trust over time for alliance roulette to sometimes throw me into those raids? Great, I'm happy to do that and fill spots when I'm needed. But at that immediate middle point in the quest chain I just needed it out of the way so I rushed through doing FATEs and moved onwards.

If the relic steps were intended to get people doing old content, I don't think they thought it out thoroughly enough about what will keep motivating people to run them in the long term.

Even if the Mhach/Ivalice raids were the only way of collecting items for that step, they also messed up by just making it drop from any of the raids and not implementing a "Gift of the Archmagus"-style requirement to run all three raids and trade in sets of tokens. I suspect a lot of people have consequently just unlocked the Void Ark and ignored the later parts.

Likewise for the raids, with the drops not requiring people to unlock the later raids.

Perhaps a better requirement than "30 tokens from any raid" would be sets of one token from the final raid in each set of four.

So you'd need to do A4, A8, A12 and so on for the other raid series.

Or perhaps even one from each of the twelve unique fights in each raid. Twelve is still better than thirty and it keeps every fight populated in the duty finder.

If you've already done the quest chain, congrats – you've got an easy path to the relic now.

If you didn't, now you need to go through everything at least once instead of spamming the easiest level ad nauseum.

Additional progress collecting the 6 x 30 trinkets tonight, and it feels like it restricts what I can do in Zadnor. I can't join CEs because I already hit 30 of those. I can't raid the Dalriada because I'm stuck on this step knowing the next one will require me to run it, so doing it now means I'll be one step closer to being sick of it later, even though right now I want to join in.

I just want to be able to move on to the next step and come back to do the rest of this collectathon while I wait for the Dalriada raid to start with permission to collect the next round of arbitrary items.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I've finally ventured into collecting some of the Resistance weapons, and the initial stage of collecting 3 x 20 memories feels like a difficult slow point – doubly so when it's beneficial to have a half-finished weapon at each stage so you can continue to collect the various tokens for future weapons.

The tokens drop in Bozja but very slowly, and having reached max rank it is actively detrimental to my progress to spend time in there now, other than filling in time waiting for the weekly Castrum run. A single death in a standard CE costs me more mettle than I gain from completing it.

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The initial way the memories were designed to be farmed was by farming enemies: specifically the garlean legion so you can get clusters at the same time. Skirmishes in the past did not drop any memories and CEs rarely dropped them. Farming the legion enemies helped with the spawn timer of the FATEs/Skirmishes in the area. FATEs were alternatively, a faster source to get memories, but you would not be able to get clusters.

Nowadays, the drop rate for farming clusters and memories is a lot higher. Imo, just spend a bit of time hunting the garlean legions in specific zones with a group to get memories faster. These enemies generally drop memories for multiple quests - so it becomes very efficient to just farm them for multiple quests at a time while waiting for CLL or another CE to pop.

Alternatively, you can farm memories in FATES outside if you just want memories for this particular quest. The speed will always drop though since you can only get one at a time while waiting for FATEs to respawn as opposed to big wave pulls in Bozja with multiple groups of people attacking multiple zones.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

They could drop from level 50 dungeons to complement the drops from 60 and 70 dungeons, therefore making the 50/60/70 roulette always beneficial to run. Or they could drop from trials. Or Castrum Lacus. Just make them drop from something that we can work on without having to set apart time purely for FATE farming.

To be clear, I didn't think it was too bad for a one-time process. But for trying to get additional weapons started, it's something that takes a lot of solo FATE farming every time and is incompatible with any other gameplay.

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Why don’t we just make the memories for the first repeatable stage to be purchasable with Poetics?

Instead of just adding a drop, we can add a way for the first stage to be done while doing other stages of the weapon:

You can get Bitter Memories of Dying from 60 dungeons and you can get the Raw Emotions from the 70 dungeons, you could work one three different weapon stages at the same time in 50/60/70 if you allowed the first repeatable stage of memories to be purchasable by Poetics. For fairness, have the level 50 dungeons drop one or two of the first repeatable stage's memories.

Also, if we go the Poetic route, when we spam CT for Loathsome Memories, we could also be building up our Poetic stash to purchase memories from the first repeatable stage.

Another option would be to allow those memories to be purchasable by Bozjan Silver Coins. While running DR, getting Timeworn Artifacts and/or Raw Emotions, you will also be getting silver coins to spend on memories for earlier stages. So, three weapon stages being worked on in one event.

If you do both Poetics and Bozjan Silver coins, every stage of the weapon that comes after the first stage would help get those first stage memories. No more FATE farming.

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Originally Posted by Xtrasweettea

Why don’t we just make the memories for the first repeatable stage to be purchasable with Poetics?

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Because the first repeatable stage of obtaining your relic weapons already require you to use poetics - and there's no way to avoid this stage unless you stockpile poetics ahead of time. Only the first relic weapon is free of charge, the proceeding ones require you to exchange poetics for Thavnairian Scalepowder. Telling someone that they're immediately stuck from continuing to upgrade their relic after getting their relic and emptying out their poetics unless they farm even more poetics is a terrible feeling. Immensely so when you cleared all your roulettes that gave extra poetics only to find out you need to go back and farm even more ... but this time there's no additional poetics from daily roulette.

And they're trying to incentivize encouraging people to do Bozja content, not make it obsolete by making other methods easier to obtain the relic weapons. It's just a lot of people complained Eureka relic weapons had to come from doing Eurekan content (go figure), so they offered a way to make the Bozjan relic weapon without Bozjan content. However, it's still required to do Bozjan content if you want to complete the relic.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Because the first repeatable stage of obtaining your relic weapons already require you to use poetics - and there's no way to avoid this stage unless you stockpile poetics ahead of time. Only the first relic weapon is free of charge, the proceeding ones require you to exchange poetics for Thavnairian Scalepowder. Telling someone that they're immediately stuck from continuing to upgrade their relic after getting their relic and emptying out their poetics unless they farm even more poetics is a terrible feeling. Immensely so when you cleared all your roulettes that gave extra poetics only to find out you need to go back and farm even more ... but this time there's no additional poetics from daily roulette.

And they're trying to incentivize encouraging people to do Bozja content, not make it obsolete by making other methods easier to obtain the relic weapons. It's just a lot of people complained Eureka relic weapons had to come from doing Eurekan content (go figure), so they offered a way to make the Bozjan relic weapon without Bozjan content. However, it's still required to do Bozjan content if you want to complete the relic.

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You should have read the rest of the post before posting your response. You would’ve read about using Bozjan silver coins as another option (which is a way to keep Bozjan content alive). I also stated to add drops to level 50 dungeons to add a level of fairness. I did not remove the option going into Southern Front and doing FATES. You could still do Southern Front and FATES if you choose to go those routes.

The whole post was about not only Tomestones, it was mostly about using the later stages of the weapon to make things easier for earlier stages. SE did this with making DR drop the last two repeatable stages of the weapon. I did this with my four tank weapons: did 30 runs for the Raw Emotions and at the same time, I had my WHM weapon open for Timeworn Artifacts. By the end of all of those DR runs, I had 90 Timeworn Artifacts. I have completed an entire step for that WHM weapon and five other potential weapons.

Agreed, getting 60 per weapon is extremely tedious, and i dont feel like completing a second relic weapon like this[at 41 memories atm]
Wish they reduced it down to 10 or made the drops guaranteed in bozja/zadnor in perhaps 2 per fate than 1.

If this is the stage I think it is, I got hundreds of the three different memories (or whatever) from the three different zones, from cluster farming. I do not recall this being the most annoying part of the relic grind. It was DR.

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Originally Posted by Xtrasweettea

You should have read the rest of the post before posting your response. You would’ve read about using Bozjan silver coins as another option (which is a way to keep Bozjan content alive). I also stated to add drops to level 50 dungeons to add a level of fairness. I did not remove the option going into Southern Front and doing FATES. You could still do Southern Front and FATES if you choose to go those routes.

The whole post was about not only Tomestones, it was mostly about using the later stages of the weapon to make things easier for earlier stages. SE did this with making DR drop the last two repeatable stages of the weapon. I did this with my four tank weapons: did 30 runs for the Raw Emotions and at the same time, I had my WHM weapon open for Timeworn Artifacts. By the end of all of those DR runs, I had 90 Timeworn Artifacts. I have completed an entire step for that WHM weapon and five other potential weapons.

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Oh, I definitely did read it. There's just no more point to doing Memory hunting if silver coins are used because it'll only incentivize Dalriada runs in Zadnor, not Bozjan Southern Front. Zadnor will be both more valuable from a mettle point and for farming Memories by getting Dalriada to spawn faster. People wouldn't be bothering with CLL if they can straight up buy the memories or go FATE farm elsewhere because the efficiency then became that much more higher. People rarely spend Silver coins on Blade gear as well because we have better ILV alternatives (ILV 525 vs ILV 530 augmented cryptlurker & savage gear). Other than for glamour, all those silver coins would the be spent on memories.

Not a very good solution for keeping previous content alive in that case as the only incentive to do Bozjan Front would then be for CLL runs for loathsome memories. In which case, more people would just be there to pop into Bozja, ask whether CLL was up recently, and then leave instance if not up. No one will be actively spawning FATEs there or doing CEs other than the ones who are doing the content for the first time. After all, the rate of gaining memories here will not be as effective as Dalriada, and dying is a huge mettle loss compared to Zadnor.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

If this is the stage I think it is, I got hundreds of the three different memories (or whatever) from the three different zones, from cluster farming. I do not recall this being the most annoying part of the relic grind. It was DR.

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You are on point there.
This is why I drag my FCmate who’s new to BSF relic into cluster farm group.

I may be late to experience this ease of grinding because I finished all mine in early day of the relic’s inception, but based on my friend’s testimony, the 3 colored memories drops ridiculously fast that they don’t want to farm HW FATEs anymore because cluster farm is also an added benefit.

That being said sometimes I still see random PF to farm those memories pops up now & then. Just not as often as before.

DRn phase is 5 times faster but nonetheless still tedious because for whatever reason using even veteran/platebearer is ‘too much effort’ to put in that people rather get carried & effectively slowing down the run.

If prior expansions are anything to judge, I expect the process to get “easier” with the next expansion, or for alternative options to appear.

…or the content might just be shelved away entirely…

I would personally change it to something like this, taking into consideration the seemingly intention the devs had to encourage people running old content while also not outright completely discourage running Bozja content:

1st step (current 202020 memory): Do 3 FATEs on each of the HW areas (dropping total amount of FATEs you have to do from 60 to 18) and run each of the Crystal Tower Raids once.
2nd step(current 6 Antitower runs): Queue to 3 job specific level 60 dungeons
3rd step (current 15 BLU syrcus tower runs/3 Castrum Lacus Litoire): Do 3 FATEs on each of the SB areas (18 FATEs total) and run each of the Shadow of Mhach Raids once.
5th step (current run 10 Mocciane Arboretum (Hard): Queue to 3 job specific Level 70 dungeons and run each of the Ivalice Raids once.

The idea behind these changes would be to make the Relic grind less monotonous by encouraging diverse old content running and preventing things like Antitower speedrunning.

The only step I have no idea how to fix would be the DR one since any alternative I can think of would be better than to run it (unless you make said alternative incredibly RNGy and grindy (like current PoTD is), and any alternative too lax would have DR queues taking forever come the new expansion preventing people from progressing the Bozja/Relic questline.

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Originally Posted by lezard21

I would personally change it to something like this, taking into consideration the seemingly intention the devs had to encourage people running old content while also not outright completely discourage running Bozja content:

1st step (current 202020 memory): Do 3 FATEs on each of the HW areas (dropping total amount of FATEs you have to do from 60 to 18) and run each of the Crystal Tower Raids once.
2nd step(current 6 Antitower runs): Queue to 3 job specific level 60 dungeons
3rd step (current 15 BLU syrcus tower runs/3 Castrum Lacus Litoire): Do 3 FATEs on each of the SB areas (18 FATEs total) and run each of the Shadow of Mhach Raids once.
5th step (current run 10 Mocciane Arboretum (Hard): Queue to 3 job specific Level 70 dungeons and run each of the Ivalice Raids once.

The idea behind these changes would be to make the Relic grind less monotonous by encouraging diverse old content running and preventing things like Antitower speedrunning.

The only step I have no idea how to fix would be the DR one since any alternative I can think of would be better than to run it (unless you make said alternative incredibly RNGy and grindy (like current PoTD is), and any alternative too lax would have DR queues taking forever come the new expansion preventing people from progressing the Bozja/Relic questline.

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Personally I'd just tie it to daily roulettes- a choice to get whatever you need instead of tomestones. Or just be able to trade tomestones directly for the things you want, albeit at a rate that's not really THAT good.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Personally I'd just tie it to daily roulettes- a choice to get whatever you need instead of tomestones. Or just be able to trade tomestones directly for the things you want, albeit at a rate that's not really THAT good.

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They would have to do it so that you can get whatever it is you need even if you've already received your daily roulette bonus, otherwise you'd be gatekeeping relic progress till daily resets.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Oh, I definitely did read it. There's just no more point to doing Memory hunting if silver coins are used because it'll only incentivize Dalriada runs in Zadnor, not Bozjan Southern Front. Zadnor will be both more valuable from a mettle point and for farming Memories by getting Dalriada to spawn faster. People wouldn't be bothering with CLL if they can straight up buy the memories or go FATE farm elsewhere because the efficiency then became that much more higher. People rarely spend Silver coins on Blade gear as well because we have better ILV alternatives (ILV 525 vs ILV 530 augmented cryptlurker & savage gear). Other than for glamour, all those silver coins would the be spent on memories.

Not a very good solution for keeping previous content alive in that case as the only incentive to do Bozjan Front would then be for CLL runs for loathsome memories. In which case, more people would just be there to pop into Bozja, ask whether CLL was up recently, and then leave instance if not up. No one will be actively spawning FATEs there or doing CEs other than the ones who are doing the content for the first time. After all, the rate of gaining memories here will not be as effective as Dalriada, and dying is a huge mettle loss compared to Zadnor.

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My post was an address to Iscah OP... who was not happy with how the first memory step was done (and I partially agree with). I came up with alternatives. These alternatives are activities you would be doing anyway when it comes to making the weapon.

Zadnor and Dalriada do not drop Silver Coins. That zone and that CE only drop Mythril and Platinum coins. You cannot make change into Silver coins from those two coin types. You can only convert Mythril to Platinum.

People already jump from zone to zone asking if CLL spawned. That's been happening since day one. My idea was not going to create this problem.

As for spending silver coins. Yes, that's the point: I have 1,345 sitting in my inventory. I already squashed a stack of 999 back in July. I want to spend those coins on something that could be used towards the weapon, hence the idea in the first place. I am not interested in the gear for glamour.

If my ideas are going to cause major problems, then what ideas do you have that will not cause that severity of problems?

I dont disagree thats its a pain, but its only a pain ... once.

I would prefer something easier for sure. unfortunately, any of the relic series from ARR forward are going to be designed as time sinks to have you getting something to do, if you desire, until the next expansion. this time, rather surprisingly, they have given the 180 phase, to do only once.

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Originally Posted by Xtrasweettea

My post was an address to Iscah OP... who was not happy with how the first memory step was done (and I partially agree with). I came up with alternatives. These alternatives are activities you would be doing anyway when it comes to making the weapon.

Zadnor and Dalriada do not drop Silver Coins. That zone and that CE only drop Mythril and Platinum coins. You cannot make change into Silver coins from those two coin types. You can only convert Mythril to Platinum.

People already jump from zone to zone asking if CLL spawned. That's been happening since day one. My idea was not going to create this problem.

As for spending silver coins. Yes, that's the point: I have 1,345 sitting in my inventory. I already squashed a stack of 999 back in July. I want to spend those coins on something that could be used towards the weapon, hence the idea in the first place. I am not interested in the gear for glamour.

If my ideas are going to cause major problems, then what ideas do you have that will not cause that severity of problems?

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Oop, that was my mistake. I keep on thinking Platinum coins is the silver version cause of the color. Thanks for correcting me.

Silver coins come from DR right? In that case, the first memory step taking Silver coins would be way too easy to get since it becomes a requirement to spam DR for Timeworn relics at a certain point. Doubly so if people farm DR for Timeworn Relics and Raw Emotions.

Instead, I would say it would work if the coin requirement are converted to Bozjan Gold Coins, but the amount can't be too small per memory. By doing Gold Coins, it incentivizes doing the weekly DR quest and adds a little extra for past relic steps with excess coins without completely reducing the purpose to farm memories in the Southern Front.

Alternatively, it could also work if people can also trade in memories by giving a large amount of regular Bozjan Coins (like 100 to 200 for one memory or maybe more). These would be ways to supplement memory farming in FATEs and CEs rather than farming clusters if people don't want to farm legion enemies, but will still require a fair amount of farming to do to gather the coins. After all, you can get coins from FATEs / Skirmishes and CEs, but also get coins by trading in notes you already possess. This will guarantee getting memories if you just want to farm FATEs and CEs. Plus, it incentivizes doing CLL in Bozja more since it guarantees 100 bozjan coins per run.

I meant to reply to people but it has gotten overly late, so tomorrow.

But I think the key issue is that while I understand relic weapons are generally meant to be time-consuming, the 3 x 20 memory step is particularly time-consuming in a way that can't be easily overlapped with time spent on other tasks, combined with the fact that the overall process of collecting the various stages benefits greatly from having a relic underway at each stage of the process.

To be fully efficient with the later steps you need to get at least four relics underway, and all of them need that first hurdle of dedicated time collecting memories.

I tried farming from single enemies tonight after people suggested it here, but there wasn't a party available to join and the drop rate doing it solo seemed worse than from skirmishes.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I meant to reply to people but it has gotten overly late, so tomorrow.

But I think the key issue is that while I understand relic weapons are generally meant to be time-consuming, the 3 x 20 memory step is particularly time-consuming in a way that can't be easily overlapped with time spent on other tasks, combined with the fact that the overall process of collecting the various stages benefits greatly from having a relic underway at each stage of the process.

To be fully efficient with the later steps you need to get at least four relics underway, and all of them need that first hurdle of dedicated time collecting memories.

I tried farming from single enemies tonight after people suggested it here, but there wasn't a party available to join and the drop rate doing it solo seemed worse than from skirmishes.

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I’d suggest joining cluster farm discords. There’s one for Aether that I’m in, I’m sure there’s one for your DC. They organize farm parties that allow you to stay in one zone while others farm the other zone. It’d be hard doing it individually, because cluster farming individually is… big yikes levels of annoying.

If you join a group, you’ll both cap out on your clusters and have plenty of memories. You can also wait around, typically others are also shouting “LFG cluster farming,” so send out invites when you see them.

Typically I don’t even do the farming myself when I’m in a group- I always do star mobs and/or weather sprites while THEY do the hard work of cluster farming, and everyone benefits :p /lh

Another alternative is to set up a PF for BSF cluster farming.