Relic Quest is pure Crap, i am done with it SE.

[Hammerfist]

Personally I stopped at the books for the Animus quest and will never touch the relic quests again.

The first relic quest was nice: it was varied, required clearing a few somewhat challenging fights and gave you a real feeling of progress; I eventually did it for every job.

Then the Atma quest came out and, as someone who hates senseless RNG, at first I thought it was hell and just gave up on it for some time, but when I picked it up later it wasn't as awful as I expected: I just did random FATEs while travelling through different areas and without forcing myself to farm... Sometimes it was even nice to do them solo or with just a few people and, even if it took some time, I eventually did it without too much stress.

But asking me to repeat the same old, mindless, crappy contents from one and a half years ago another thousand of times? No freaking way, especially when it's for a weapon that becomes obsolete within a month or two after each new step comes out.

[Yukiko]

After all the work that people have done on the relic upgrades simply restarting something new from scratch would be a big mistake on SE's part. Most who have worked very hard upgrading won't be happy in the least.

Somehow I am getting a strange feeling...
How the quest was set up with finishing zodiac it seems you no longer try to "reforge" a weapon...
Next step may be to upgrade it differntly, could be with adding stuff like feeding a chocobo...
From the info we have so far, if they really stop the questline with 3.0 i can imagine we reached our limit with "upgrading" it and it becomes like a souleater where it grows with our own strenght, no longer bound to this physical world...

There is much room for speculations!

[Nalien]

I think in the future we might just be reforging Zodiac weapons again:

[Source]

Chuki : In the PDF, you said that Excalibur is a legendary weapon but that its appearance may change. What did you mean?
Naoki Yoshida : The reason behind the whole idea, I think Final Fantasy XI had the same problem, but because it’s a MMO, it’s difficult to bring these legendary, traditional weapons as additional items, for example, the Genji set, or Excalibur, Ragnarok… that kind of very important items which you saw in previous Final Fantasies. When you bring it to a MMO, the power level will always increase, for example, if I do bring the whole Genji set in the next raid, as a reward you can get in the raid, in a one year time, there’s going to be a stronger raid, and you’re going to need stronger items. And the people will be saying “the Genji set in Final Fantasy XIV is just a really weak rip-off!”. We don’t want to give that different impression while it’s supposed to be a legendary item, we don’t want to make it weak in MMO just because it’s a MMO. That’s why I decided to make this new system for Final Fantasy XIV.

Instead, of course, we can’t just keep Genji set off the game until it is old enough, because that’s not the whole point. We are going to divide Final Fantasy XIV in seasons, that might be one year or two years, we carefully see how the game balance is moving forward. But within these seasons, I want to make the players able to apply for these legendary items, in order to register for your own special item. For example, for the Grand Company, if you have a sword with like, level 30 strength and level 40 piety, and you have a weapon that matches that, then you can apply for the Excalibur. And in the case you have it, you will have special graphics for your new Excalibur.

But then, for example, in another year time, when the whole game is going to be even more difficult and complicated, we’ll be changing the rules of what can be called Excalibur. Then, you have to apply again to have the new graphics for this new Excalibur, there’s always going to be different types of Excaliburs, maybe having like a Legendary Season. For the next rule, you might have to work close with the crafters who can use Materia to make the new weapon so you can have a cooperation. We really want it to be like a Final Fantasy special item, to be part of this legacy item.

Kind of actually makes it sound like they always intended for Relics to be glorified glamour pieces... He talks solely about special graphics, not special stats...

[Ecks007]

I'm getting my Zodiac weapon, still working on doing the dungeons and collecting the soldiery needed. But I also don't devote every day to it. I've only really worked on it for like 2-4 days since the patch and not all of those days were soley dedicated to doing the Zodiac quest. I feel like even though I haven't really devoted a ton of time to it I have still managed to complete a decent chunk of the requirements 6/16 dungeon drops, 3/4 cores, 1/4 waters, all of the purchaseable npcs items that I know about. Plus I have 2/8 needed HQ crafted items I bought off a friend who's a crafter (and owes me quite a bit, so I bought them relatively cheap and didn't pay for mats).

I'd say I've reasonably completed 1/3 or more of the things I need to do. Should have it finished before Christmas.

People who stress about how difficult this is (it's not) are rushing to get it completed and getting frustrated when things don't go their way.

Maybe I've got decent luck. It took me like a week to get all my atmas back when that stage was introduced, while I've read of other folks who spent 3+ months trying to get them.

I'll be doing it all over again for Dark Knight after 3.0, but that's probably the only other job I'll ever go all the way with the relic on.

People who are or have completed Novus and higher on 5+ jobs are crazy imo.

[Sakasa]

Well in the long run what the zodiak quest does in put people in que for 40-50 range dungeons similar to the atma books which actually help the population similar to the materia prices being boosted for the novus step. Because beyond the dedicated grind parties people will que up normally for them which in turn helps the leveling population. The planning behind forcing players to eventually help other players is well done and something that should be praised even if you hate them for it. Even the soldiery bonus while technically being abused is assisting other players for their personal benefit. Some one is playing the fiddle very very well.

[Edellis]

Is there even a point to this? The instant the Atma quest was detailed before it even came out, I decided that I would simply ignore it, and I have.

even when Atma was new, there were still the EX Primal weapons and Coil drops. Now there are Levi, Ramuh and Shiva drops, as well is ironworks and whatever in the new coil drops.

I think it's literally only there to give grind-lovers something to do. I've never seen the point to it. Even at its highest upgrade, the relic weapons are at best only a point or two better than whatever the highest primal/coil drop is. I'd much rather beat a primal and get a drop then grind my face off on some KMMO type crap.

And I love square for that. There are just 2 different paths, luckly one is not preferred over the other. One is 100% RNG grind, other is skill-based with a much lower RNG factor.

[LaylaTsarra]

I love my relic weapons.

It's been fun getting them and challenging although granted a lot of work. I'm working on my 3rd Nexus (need 900 light) and will have my BLM Lilith Rod soon. I only have one more dungeon to do (Qarn HM) and about 1450 tomes. I will also be working on my Yoichi Bow soon although I won't rush it. it'll just be something I put some effort toward each day when I have the time.

[Vaer]

Is there even a point to this? The instant the Atma quest was detailed before it even came out, I decided that I would simply ignore it, and I have.

Well, depending where the player is in coil progression if the player does it, getting a i125 weapon can help the group out. Considering you need to clear T11 and save up 3 weeks worth of poetics to get a weapon that is only i120 with non-customizable stats, and only one player can get an encrypted tomestone per week, depending on how fast you can get the zodiac, it can help. Especially if you are going to be one of the last people to get the tomestone.

The ilvl on the zodiac is relatively high with that in mind.

[Evangela]

the whole quest line after Zenith is a pile of garbage. when I want to play the game I want to be entertained, not being suffered.

how can game developers forget about such a basic thing to make a good game like this?

[mdha02]

Here is what frustrates me. My main is SCH and I play as WHM and WAR when times call for it. Luckily, SCH and WHM share the same armor so I don't have to buy two different sets for them. Since SCH is my main I decided to do the relic quest line for the weapon. I'm currently on the alexandrite phase. Here are the things that frustrate me. My WHM who is currently using his Zenith weapon and with the same gear is only 2 or 3 ilvls behind my SCH, who I have put many hours of work into. I've been farming Shiva EX I've done about 14 runs for my WHM weapon upgrade. No matter if I do 5-20 more runs it will have taken me 1/10th the time to get WHM a higher ilvl.