Went back for another dose.. still don't like it. I may keep playing it for the items that drop (mithra windup plz) but Its going to be even more mindless than low level roulettes.
I'm not encouraged by the idea that higher levels will drop more crystals, they could have easily made the lower levels drop DIFFERENT crystals for the first couple tiers and then the higher level mobs drop tier 2 or 3 crystals instead of having this weird ramp up effect. Oh.. and why are the crystals items? It could have been another currency, that'd be nice.
The most efficient way to play is to follow the giant group of people murdering things till an NM spawns and then zerging that. Each NM has 2 or more mechanics that are usually some sort of AOE and one stolen from a dungeon. Once you know them it's just repeating them over and over till the thing is dead and avoiding idiots training in adds that they ran by to get to the now popped NM.

I'm now level 5 and I am ABSOLUTELY DREADING the xp loss system they think people wanted. In ANY game I play, any mechanic that can negate hours of playing with one mistake is unwelcome. Death should have punishments but something so severe is not balanced. If you are part of a party and are zerging, sure it's not a huge loss since someone might be able to res you or you can make it up on the next NM. But if you're soloing like they said you could? Death is a gigantic setback. They've also kept repairs in for some reason along with a time limit so hey, maybe you finally found a good party but look now you've gotta head back and repair or maybe you're out of time and have to ditch the party entirely even if you want to continue.
I walked to both aetherytes while I was level 2 since the mobs use a very easily avoided line of sight aggro and the "blood" aggro doesn't care if you're 20 or 2, just don't be hurt. But I couldn't attune to them for some reason because... level 9 is going to be important... for.. that. It's not dangerous, it's tedious.
Have a party doing an actual XP grind? Killing monsters and chaining like they imply you should be? Better hope nobody walks up and starts tapping the mobs you are! You'll lose nearly all the xp. We've re-introduced kill-steal griefing into the game as well. Better hope the mobs you've decided to kill aren't the spawn mobs for the NM either or your area is going to be flooded with people murdering them for the next 5-10 minutes and you get next to no xp.

There are reasons for me to play this content but all of them are the rewards, not the systems involved.
Elemental attunements are silly. I get to set my dial to "kill" or "tank" and then proceed as usual. No further involvement needed or real advantage gained from splitting points (I understand this may be more important later but right now it's next to ignore-able). I have a limit on how much I can swap my dial, for unknown reasons since i only use one charge to swap to the monsters I'm going to be killing for the next 20 minutes and then another to swap to the NM that spawns nearby and I get charges back every 10 monsters so I never have to worry about how many charges I have.
I was cooled on the tome grind for the past couple weeks since I had monster hunter to keep me amused, but it now looks like I need to catch up because depending on this drudgery for anything other than my relic weapon will drive me mad.


You can count me firmly in the "This content was not made for me." party.