How would your Anima Questline look like?

[Moqi]

This is something that I'd like.

Step 1: get the weapon
-Meet the owner of the original weapon (doesn't have to be the original owner, just someone that has it in its possession now, could be a scholar, your guild leader, a descendant, a friend...) and fight him in an instanced 1vs1 battle to prove you're worthy of borrowing it (think class quests).
-Get a law weapon to use as base
-Get a drop from Void Ark, 6 Allagan drops (3 from CT, 3 from 3 turns of Coil, specific for each weapon, can be unsynched) and 2 tier V materia (specific for each weapon) to use as catalyst to transfer/duplicate the memories of the original weapon to your copy.

Step 2: awake the memories
-Weapon is still a bit sleepy, you gotta jog its memories you just transfered. Every owner has spent a lot of time in 4 specific areas of the game, so you gotta spend a lot of time there as well. This is the light farming phase, anything goes as long as you stay in that zone. That means leves, dungeons, raids, trials, maps, fates, any side quests you have left, hunts, beast tribe quests (one of the 4 zone will always be where a beast tribe is), guildhests... if it is set in the zone you have, it will give you points. This part can be done with any class as long as the relic is in your inventory.
-After that, you have to beat (synched) 5 HW dungeons and 10 AAR dungeons (specific for each weapon). The Echo and the weapon will interfeer with your dungeon so you'll have an optional extra boss you must defeat (with the relic weapon). If you do, you get to go on in your quest and the other members of the party recieve additional gil/exp/tomes for being so nice and helping you.

Step 3: prove you're worthy
Gotta prove to the now sentient weapon that you're worthy of being wielded:
-Beat all EX trials (can unsynch AAR trials)
-Beat Alex NM (all turns)
-Beat 2 strong monsters. These are 2 S-ranks but forced popped, you fight them in the open world and are balanced for a full party, they are tagged so others can't damage it (but can help you, like during leves). The items required to spawn one are 5 drops from specific enemies found in the Diadem, a beast tribe item (requires 2 days of quests) and an item bought from your CG for 40k GC seals (or equivalent allied seals or wolf marks). Whoever doesn't need to beat it to progress in his relics gets the same rewards as if he had fought an actual S rank.

Step 4: Transform
Weapon is all right with you, it'll let you make it in its original owner's image. This will give you the new design. You need items to do it:
-3 20k CG seals (or equivalent allied seals or wolf marks) items bought from your GC and a 700 law item.
-2 100k gil items from vendors
-5 beast tribe items (one per tribe)
-4 crafted items, each made with 8 drops from Alex NM (2 for every turn), 3 drops from T5, T9 and T13 (can be unsynched), 1 item from the Diadem (bought with spoils). These items must be HQ but they are not specialist recipies and blue scrips gear is enough to comfortably make it (can do it with less but trickier).
-Once you do that, you need to beat 3 HW dungeons (specific for each weapon) to seal the deal.


There's a grind but you don't stay in the same place for too long, it's harder than the current one but I think it's not so hard it will impossible and you can make multiple ones at the same time to speed up the process (ie you farm seals for the items by grinding fates in another relic's zone), there's more freedom in what you can farm for lights and a bit more exploration because every weapon has a similar quest but different locations and monsters to fight (some overlap obviously). Also, most of the grindy parts can be done without the weapon equipped so you're not locked into using it all the time, which was what I hated the most with the old relic. All the drops are guaranteed.

To me that feels more of a journey and a quest to discover and test your weapon like a relic quest should be.