Relic weapons situation post expansion

[Asael]

Thanks for the info.

To reply to your question, past trends gives us an insight on how future things might play out, which I have effectively used to to predict that the Nexus upgrade is done though "spritbinding", after looking through the lore and reasoning of the past Zodiac questline. I made that prediction on 25th Aug.

Ah, okay I see.

Though honestly you don't have to look to the way they did things in the past to predict future trends in this game. Yoshi and friends became predictable the second they said they wanted to move towards a theme park style mmo. Ultra simplistic, very straight forward, and at times quite linear (especially concerning developmental progression).

As we can see, the relic reborn quest in 1.22 was a huge monster compared to what new players have to do at 2.0. I strongly believe that the same will go for 3.0. There is absolutely no point, nor make any sense to enforce any new player in 3.0 to go through the entire original Zodiac questline which is designed to be a time sink for 2.X series.

Yeah, that goes without saying though. It's a theme park mmo now so old content will always be toned down in order to soften the "catch-up" curve for future generations that come into the game later on. But as you approach the current day content of the time it will steepen.

I foresee that the whole Zodiac thing will be scraped in 3.0 - to be replaced with a more condensed questline to directly obtain the final form of the weapon, which Yoshida claimed that will bear a different name and a new design.

Given the level of predictability of Yoshida's team, I won't be surprised that you will start out and do some delivery boy job again to find some old junk, grind for a little to obtain some historic text, go kill some monsters, defeat a couple of the new expansions' after-the-new-level-cap bosses and tada you get that relic, just like how 1.22 and 2.0 asks you to.

Scraped? Not quite the word I would use but okay I get what you mean lol. I think it will be more like what you said with condensing the content. Essentially Relic weapon -----> Zodiac -----> whatever else is over the horizon. Where the old content (in this case relic) gets packaged together with a dampened difficulty (again, softening the catch-up curve). Same will eventually happen with the Zodiac when the next life cycle of the weapon comes along. But really it's still the same weapon; it's just being outdated by upcoming spiritual successors.

[Ooshima]

Though honestly you don't have to look to the way they did things in the past to predict future trends in this game. Yoshi and friends became predictable the second they said they wanted to move towards a theme park style mmo. Ultra simplistic, very straight forward, and at times quite linear (especially concerning developmental progression).

That's true

But the spirit-bonding guess was made after some look at the Zodiac quest which I did make a short explanation on why I guessed it was specifically spiritboning, but yeah Yoship can be generally predictable due to nature of the concept of this game.

Scraped? Not quite the word I would use but okay I get what you mean lol. I think it will be more like what you said with condensing the content. Essentially Relic weapon -----> Zodiac -----> whatever else is over the horizon. Where the old content (in this case relic) gets packaged together with a dampened difficulty (again, softening the catch-up curve). Same will eventually happen with the Zodiac when the next life cycle of the weapon comes along. But really it's still the same weapon; it's just being outdated by upcoming spiritual successors.

I think it would be way straightfoward than this. => Go find some ancient junk, maybe a timeworn copy of the final form of the weapon or some from any of the stages of the Zodiac weapon => go find some ancient text (see how 1.22 and 2.0 ask you to get... books) about the weapon and how to restore => delivery boy job again, maybe buy something, kill something for drops or craft something => maybe get a Nexus (or whatever upgrade down the line) replica or something => go kill some brand new primal HM or similar tough boss as a fresh level cap toon => Final form.

[BillyBones]

People pay a ridiculous amount for Novus because they are uninformed / not aware of just how meaningless secondary stats are.

BLMs can deal 400+ damage per second on T8. The best BLM stats on novus per DMG calculators / testing is 44 spell speed and 31 crit. However, a 25 spell speed, 25 crit, 25 DET weapon will deal a mere 1 less DPS. Do the math. This means the 44 / 31 novus gains a laughable extra second of damage every 6.6 minutes. You get an itch on your face and have to scratch it and you've lost your worthless benefit. Nobody will notice a difference.

I'm sorry - but it's pointless to spend 10-15M gil for a benefit that nobody will ever notice. The 25, 25, 25 novus will cost 300-500k tops.

Its not about the stats being useful, I couldn't care less about them. Its about being a perfectionist. Call it OCD or whatever but my weapon has to be perfect, no matter how costly it is

[Felis]

The pre 3.0 grind can get nerved post 3.0, like higher drop rate, less books, more ways to get alexandrite, more light from content. Post 3.0 upgrade would be the same grind we have now.

Hmm, I hope next upgrade (2.5?) involve something like hamlet defense again ^^
To put some teamplay into the mix.

atma grinding is the bane of this game and forever will be ppl give up at that cuz of the shit drop rate they have for them plus the weapon dosent even have upgraded stats until you upgrade from atma to next part finished the first animus book so basically you get a ilvl 100 weapon with stats from ilvl 90 weapon that makes alot of ppl already quit that along with spending days/weeks just to farm atmas and ppl dont want to do that i quit atma grinding after i had 3 atmas 2 months ago but just over the weekend i forced myself to farm for the last 9 i needed and took me 2 days to get them

I fixed it a bit

[Sessurea]

Isn't the relic reaching the end of it's life? Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

With UAT weapons and soon, the new revamped primal focus quest ( guessing ilvl 120-130 ), are people really going to to go through atma, animus, novus and nexus + w/e else?

I'm working on nexus myself atm, and in some ways would love to see it continued but when I think of new players starting this quest...ugh.

[Felis]

Isn't the relic reaching the end of it's life? Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

With UAT weapons and soon, the new revamped primal focus quest ( guessing ilvl 120-130 ), are people really going to to go through atma, animus, novus and nexus + w/e else?

I'm working on nexus myself atm, and in some ways would love to see it continued but when I think of new players starting this quest...ugh.

Relict woul be always the 2nd best and sometimes the first best if the upgrades keep coming.

[JonBigwood]

I also think when new upgrades of the relic appear, the last ones will be a long grind while the initial ones will be made easier. I started to play at 2.1 and the relic quest took several weeks at that time. Now you do it in one or two days. Like it took many weeks to get a set of ilvl90 gear and now it is trivially easy to get.

Atmas and Novus are easier to nerf (just make atma and alexandrite drop rate very high and materia easier to get.) Animus might need some change to make it quicker. Nexus is also very easy to nerf increasing the light obtained by the duties.

Right now with the UAT and Sands and in 3 weeks of soldiery tomes you get an ilvl 110 weapon, it's much more worth it than doing a second Novus for an alt class. Zenith is quick to get, but from then on it becomes more practical to get the sodiery+UAT+sands.

I suppose we will have alternatives to the relic weapons (maybe not the best ilvl but just the second best) that need some time to get but not as long as the full relic available, like we have now the 110 UAT weapons, only just a bit worse than the 115 ones.

The more time passes, the more alternatives or choices there are to obtain gear and weapons, which is a great thing.

[TheMoonflow]

I resubbed a month ago after a 6 month+ break
So I had a zenith or w/e
I'm half way through the novus > nexus grind now
So in my opinion the whole relic quest is about a months grind.
They could easily cut that month down to two weeks with a few simple steps, such as

- Increase atma drop rate, either flat increase across the board, or add something like a potion to the grand company for x amount of seals that increases drop rate of atma, or why not both.

- Reduce allied seals cost of alexandrite, from 200 to 100

- Add materia as a quest reward more commonly to reduce amount of money / spirit bonding needed

- Fix the damn spawn rate of some of the book fates

- Add bonus light windows to more places, such as fates / westwind

Personally I think people will still want to obtain the relic even if the stats are outdated because it's cool and has a nice side quest and story attached to it, though obviously not as many would be willing to grind it out if that was the only attraction, so I hope they do keep the stats relevant.

[Evangela]

neither choice is casual friendly.

many people only have 2 hours (or less) to play games per day and why should they spend their time to play boring content like Atma/Animus/Novus/Nexus/whatever? especially if they end up making no progress at all after 2 hours?

[Nel_Celestine]

Just a correction on the 1.22b relic methods.

Required 9 Beastmen seals from Hamlet (3 from each, drop rate of about 5%)
Running the endgame dungeons (AV, CC) speed runs required and needed 3 speed run items from each not 100% drop iirc
When spirit bonding you HAD to bond solo. If in a party it would not work.