Suggestion Umbrite

[MilesSaintboroguh]

snip

2.0 relics had some form of tomestone grinding as well, along with spamming certain content for light farming non satop.

[Hakuro89]

Nevermind reducing it, I would be content with it just being available through other means besides an endless lore tome grind. Take a page out of 2.0's book with Alexandrite. Have it drop from FATEs. Buy them with hunt marks. Dig them up from special maps, or have them drop from Dragonskin Maps (like the Unidentifiable pieces). Just SOMETHING besides a tome grind.

[Callinon]

2.0 relics had some form of tomestone grinding as well, along with spamming certain content for light farming non satop.

Let's see...

Building the initial relic required a Raz-at-han Quenching Oil which cost a couple hundred tomestones
Zenith cost about 900 tomestones and buying things with tomestones is literally the entire step here
Atma - no tomestone cost
Animus - the books cost about 500 tomestone iirc and in between there you did a bunch of other content. Total 9 books (4500 tomestones)
Novus - materia and alexandrite. Now you COULD buy alexandrite maps here with tomestones, or you could just get them from FATEs. The big thing on this step was the cash cost of the materia.
Nexus - light farming. No tomestones
Zodiac - dungeon atmas and crafted items
Zeta - light farming with tomestone costs in between tiers - total tomestone cost 2400

So that's the whole process for the 2.x relic. I'm seeing 7800 tomestones spent across the ENTIRE PROCESS. And in between there was a bunch of content farming. Now the 2.x relic did a lot wrong. Atmas are still just about the worst possible idea that has ever happened and the light levels needed were ridiculous.

The Umbrite step of the 3.x relic requires 24000 tomestones by itself. Over triple the entire 2.x relic chain for this ONE STEP. And while it's the largest expenditure of tomestones across the process so far, it's hardly the only one.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Snip.

Pre Nerf the books each cost 1,500 tomes.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The books were 1500 a piece to start with.

I think the mahatmas were 500? You are a bit off on your tome counts :P

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Pre nerf stages were a LOT more grindy compared to what we got now.

[Belhi]

I would be happy if they just allowed us other options to getting the Umbrite such as Poetics. This Anima is very lore heavy in its requirement which means the most effective way to grind most of the steps is the exact same content (the exact same dungeon actually).

For one step or two that's fine but its been the predominant method for like 4 steps. Yeah there are other options but the Anima as something to spend time on means not only using gated options. If I am using the gated options I will only work on it at reset and after that the Anima isn't something to spend time on.

I don't mind grinding. I just wish I had more options on what I could do for the grinding. I have done ARF so many times now I swear I could probably do it while sleeping just from muscle memory.

[Derio]

If they nerf the 240 grind then the next step after 260 needs to be long. The 260 was not even a grind really, and only lasted 2-3 weeks for casual players. With the 260 step you didnt even have to play for more than 1 hour a day to get it done in under 2 weeks. And the entire point of the relic quest is to give you something to do while playing the game.

[Theodric]

27 days for an irrelevant weapon? How about a week tops.

It's not really irrelevant. Much of the charm is in its prestige - so whilst some nerfs are going to be on the table it's not likely going to be anything that guts the grind completely. It still takes a while to complete the 2.0 relic quests and such things serve as a much needed time sink for goal orientated players to pursue in between content patches.

I wouldn't be opposed to more ways to obtain Umbrite (or Crystal Sand for that matter) though.

[Callinon]

Pre Nerf the books each cost 1,500 tomes.

Fair enough, I did that step post-nerf.

So that's 13,500 tomestones for that step then, interspersed with a bunch of other content.

Umbrites still cost 24,000