Atmas.

[Felis]

Patch notes indicate new items that are themed to each of the 3.0 zones with fates in them. What else would they be?

It don't even say that those are from FATEs, only from battles

[DukeGr]

Whoever thinks the new relic weapons will be something else besides a mindless grind is at best daydreaming.

It's time to repopulate the 3.0 dead zones everyone was complaining about, and what better way to do it than having people grind 100-200 hours worth of FATES for some cool skin that will get replaced 2 patches down the road.

Thus the whole Atma now called Crystal grind, the same old thing with a different skin.

[Ecks007]

Well they have to have a way to make fates relevant. As it is, hardly anyone does them in the HW areas at all, at least on my server and even then it's specific ones. There are plenty of fates I pretty much can't complete because they require a large amount of players (or at least something resembling a party) in order to complete successfully within the time limit.

This is a way to make that content relevant again. Yeah, it is kind of unimaginative since it is essentially the same process we did with 2.x relics all over again and yeah, that part is a shame. I would have much preferred some actual difficult quests or something, but that's asking too much for the developers of the game. Since everything is geared to be easy with exception to Savage Mode raids (and I'll even throw in the HW EX trials in there though I'm sure some don't feel they are that hard).

I don't really like it but I do kind of understand the reason why they need to make the content relevant. Even though it's only going to help meagerly for the next month or so.

[Ashkendor]

That could mean some instance battle, a chest battle, a LEVE, a Fate, anything....

I'll be very (pleasantly) surprised if it's not atma.

It don't even say that those are from FATEs, only from battles

Neither did these.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Far be it for me to try and NOT seem skeptical at this point. But look at all the other content thus far. Generally a little more of the same. And SE does seem to have a near-sadistic sense of humor regarding relics (hence the more-irritating-than-funny 1% joke at the end of the last one).

OP, I hope you're wrong. But I can't deny that you might very well be right. . . I might be opting out of this one faster than I did the old one.

[Gunspec]

It don't even say that those are from FATEs, only from battles

Seeing as no one runs fates in a majority of those zones anymore, and the goal of relic quests is to boost participation in various game systems that are underutilized so that new/ leveling players have an easier time finding a group... pretty sure it's going to be fates.

[DukeGr]

snip

I don't mind atmas/crystals, what i mind is that they introduced this now when they should have with the launch of 3.0. It would have been more logical to have people spamming fates and helping new players leveling up to 60. But of course they had you grind eso first then decided to pop this to milk more time from the now stagnant content.

[Youkulm]

I have a sneaking suspicion that you're correct OP. I hope not... but what other clues are we left with until the server comes back up? I hope my doubts can be proven wrong lol

I knew the relic would be grindy, it always is... but fates again? Please something else... I hate fating so much still from getting Atma's for 4 relics, 3 of them pre-nerf. 4th one wasn't so bad lol.

[AriaEnia]

Please make it a fix number of something to get those, not the RNG/

[KinnisonArc]

If it's going to be like Atma still, I hope they at least make it into a fixed amount of FATE/Battle/Kill required to get the crystals.
Something like telling us we have to clear 30 or so FATEs sounds much better than knowing we only have 2% chance to get them.