New Relic weapon quest - are we down to 1 hour content already?

[Lambdafish]

Not really.
In Heavensward you could skip the first step only because you made zeta.
SB you still had to do some Eureka stuff.

In this one you have to spend 1000 poetics per weapon after the first and gather 19 totems from the EX trial to get relic armour. Thats hardly nothing.

[Riardon]

That Relic took me less than 1h to get. Nice now I have nothing to do until the next step arrives.
I noticed that we got very limited content in this patch.
The beast tribe Qs were very poorly made and the most boring of them all, we got only 1 dungeon, we go almost no Relic content aside from few cut scenes which I appreciate still but no gameplay content.
It looks like the devs is doing something else in parallel and they got no time to prepare a proper patch.
What we got is very short fillers.
What's happening?

[ElHeggunte]

That’s funny. Whenever any of the relic steps are even the least bit lengthy (let alone the first) I see endless whining about the grind here and on reddit. SE can’t win for trying.

[ElazulHP]

Not worried at all. The first step is ALWAYS easy. The second step is ALWAYS super grindy. People freaking out per usual on the forums too. Yup seems like a regular relic patch to me!

EDIT: Also, this gives me more time to work on the crafting relics too so much appreciated.

[NanaWiloh]

"Skysteel tools can be enhanced further by completing the story quests that will be added in future patches. Please note that enhancing these tools may require players to invest a significant amount of time." - Straight from the patch notes enchaning them is where the grind will be.

[Kalise]

Hmm...

On the one hand, getting the first step relic quickly is nice. Especially for me as due to being bored to tears farming E8 for weapon tokens, I was left with just the 430 AF gear weapon (I'll get around to crafting stuff... Later...). Though, it would have been nice to at least have A step released alongside the initial weapon.

On the other hand, there seems to be a complete lack of content in this patch. With no grinding for the Relic (Which, is also not very good if you've already farmed out a 490 tome weapon or gotten a 505 Savage weapon), this means that all there is to do is the EX Trial for 480 gear (Which of course, is not very good given that tome gear is 490, if you haven't also done E4-8 and gotten the 480 stuff).

Outside of that... There's the Crafter tools? I dunno how they compare to the White Scrip or Crafted tools though. Nor how much farming you'll need to do to upgrade them (Is this step in the game right now? The patch notes talks about farming items to upgrade them)

I suppose this might be more substantial content if you hadn't done the Ivalice raids yet...

Also, any reason that the AF gear is being left in the dust this time around? No upgrades for the gear and the relic isn't built off of the AF weapon like was the case in Eureka...

[Sesera]

In this one you have to spend 1000 poetics per weapon after the first and gather 19 totems from the EX trial to get relic armour. Thats hardly nothing.

If we go like this to work on another relic weapon from SB/HW you had way more things to do than just show up with 1000 poetics.

[Lambdafish]

If we go like this to work on another relic weapon from SB/HW you had way more things to do than just show up with 1000 poetics.

Not for the first step

[Mavrias]

You got an extra EX trial and a lengthy solo duty, I can see where the resources went.

Oh boy! A mountless easy EX trial slapped together with entirely reused assets down to the music i'll be done farming in less than a week probably and a 30 minute (if even) solo duty i can only do once! How could I turn down these delicious table scraps! How could previous engaging relic content like Pyros and Hydatos and Baldesion Aresenal ever compare to it! You're right it's absolutely worth losing dungeons, deep dungeons, and ultimates and delaying the actual potentially fun relic content!

[Iscah]

Personal opinion of course, but I'll gladly take one hour of story-based gameplay over a hundred hours of doing the same thing repeatedly to "progress".

It takes about 1 hour to get, provided you have the Poetics ready, 3 relic weapons. Of that 1 hour, the vast majority is watching cutscenes, with just one pretty cool-looking long solo instance - which apparently can even be put on Very Easy so that the moderately cool fights (of which there are only 2) are also semi-AFK wins.

So if you deliberately set the game to easy mode, it's so pathetically easy that it doesn't count as worthwhile gameplay? Who would have thought...

Surely it's on the player to not do that if they want to get maximum gameplay value out of what we got, whether it's "enough" or not?

People need content to sink their teeth into. We need playtime, [...] we want to be entertained, not just passively watching the same NPCs from the last 6 years to spam well-known emotes in cutscenes without voiceover, blathering lines full of magitek mumbo jumbo that we have all heard before. And then the weapons are just freely given out to everyone.

Different people are entertained by different things. I didn't like all of it, but there were story moments that I got a lot of enjoyment out of.

The solo instance was stunning, and I liked having the Scions turn up for the battle - even just the moment of Thancred and Urianger working together to shield the party delighted me, because I've loved their odd long-term-acquaintance-friendship dynamic during Shadowbringers.

I agree it's surprising that we got the weapon so quickly, but I can't say I'm at all disappointed.

Edit to add: From the progress I've made on previous relic quests, they seem pretty heavy on the technical mumbo jumbo themselves.

I got disconnected after the first boss fight and had to repeat the entire instance again, what a waste of time. Guess it would have been nice if it saved after the boss somehow.

Apparently it does save your progress, but only so long as you don't leave the instance. So you wouldn't have to go through the whole thing again if you died in a later fight, and it's an improvement on previous solo fights where you had to start over, but I don't think they can "hard save" partway through or you might not be able to leave (e.g. if you found you were undergeared and struggling).