Can we get more ways to get timeworn artifacts?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Not to mention there are those in this thread who would try the DR route and have pointed out the flaws with the current setup and the difficulty there is using that route. This step in its current form really isn't helping anyone trying to work on resistance weapons.

Just a bit of anecdote from my personal, recent experience with this content.

Yesterday, I had finished helping 2 friends through 3 of their relics progression via DRn starting from about a couple of weeks ago. So that's exactly 15 DRn ran. Our meet up timing were sporadic, which mean we didn't always catch the server's peak hour.

For the most part we got into the run with just the 3 of us with myself mostly carrying out the weight by doing LAs/Essence swapping as a WHM while they rolled with the basic damage essences and sufficiently helpful actions (mostly to save my cache space by carrying the buffs for me instead). There were like 2 or 3 runs where we would get 1 or 2 stranger who would come along to enjoy the ride, but I also remember exactly 1 of them bailing out after Dahu because apparently it was too long to their comfort. Nevermind that, we pressed on, carrying the burden of an extra missing players and cleared it. And finally there was 1 elusive run where we got paired with another full party of 8 who formed via their own PF and that one run was a total breeze.

Discounting the outliers, most of our 3-man runs took anywhere from 40m to 55m depending on whether we take a few breaks in mid run or I just went on "go go go go!"-mode. Oh yeah, don't forget the 10m queue time too, that also adds up since there's no way we could start the instance undersized until aforementioned timer. Either way, after all these 15 runs helping them, I have say if I were in their shoes without helping hands, it would be very miserable to progress through this specific phase, I wouldn't be so sure if I want to put that load of effort. Doubly so if multiple relics are desired. Ironically enough I did, and still enjoy doing DRn to a lesser degree even today (I wouldn't have cleared all relics while they were current & speedrun PF wasn't even a thing back then if I didn't enjoy them!).

Outside alternative method to farm TAs which I think would be very welcomed to current days' relic grinders (I still wouldn't touch PoTD though!), I would also propose to add the option/check mark to force instance creation just like how Variant Dungeon had shown us in its recent implementation. This would eliminate the mandatory 10m added wasted time per run & remove the possibility of getting paired with folks who just bailed without carrying their own weight, who's also probably unaware that the duty is scaled to the number of players queued into the instance. When these folks bailed, they're essentially forcing the remaining players to carry their weight. This wasn't too noticeable back in the day when 24 player DRn was still common. But in an undersized runs, this hits hard.

[fulminating]

Of course it was alive when they introduced the relic, it was mandatory for the relic, the bozja questline and was a semi-enjoyable alliance raid at level cap. Now most jobs feel off at 80, the relics are primarily for aesthetics and I would say there's lv90 content to enjoy, but ymmv on that.

Much like Zadnor, a significant amount of PotD's use relates to easy exp, which is to say queueing for floors deeper than 90 starts to take prohibitively long.
(edit: speaking of Zadnor, most runs of the dalriada I did after EW started had three people, one of which *had* to spend a small fortune on essences to carry the team's damage.)

I have a dozen blade's relics - and the 150+ DRn clears associated with them. I'm not hugely keen to go back in for more, but I would like it to be feasible for people who weren't there when it was current to get them if they want.

[TaleraRistain]

And the truth comes out. You really just want to go through floors 1-10 for some super braindead faceroll for your artifacts, kinda like with the ARR weapon. Good luck with that.

What exactly do you think a 15 minute DR run is puffed up on essences but faceroll?

And you keep bringing up the floors that require a fixed party. Fixed party isn't an option for everyone. Other step alternatives provide guaranteed drops from content that someone can easily queue up for. There's no reason this step should be any different.

You're just being deliberately obtuse at this point. The logic has been laid out for you.

[Zaniel]

They really should add them to the Neir Alliance raid loot, double benefit, encourage people to do both things. In general once an expansion gets to X.5 or maybe X+1.0 all similar requirements should be added to that relevant expansion's Alliance Raids.

[Jettinson]

With DR some things would immediately give some relief:
-Removal of RNG on obtaining essences. DR with everyone equipping the right stuff makes runs very fast but the reward ratio on getting those are abysmally awful along the rng on appraising a fragment. This could lead on DPS/Tanks being screwed on not getting their Pure Essences which only work in DR while Healers rely outside of DR (mainly Castrum with Deep Essences) with Cluster farming being the "faster" non gil spending option. Being able to choose what you get from appraising would help a lot while still keeping their prices relevant in the MB in case you do not want to farm those!
-If we don't get the option of choosing what to get from a fragment then they should go on the Castrum way and highly increase the fragments you get from chests. Castrum gives a nice chunk of essences with the amount of prisoners saved for example. They could do something similar to Dalriada and reward more stuff for beating a boss fast (this is in reference to the 1st part of Dalriada where you get an additional chest after beating before you face the 2nd boss)
-Like what Rein said, having a checkmark in DR like in Variant. Most of PFs i joined are sadly 8 player parties which are good enough for relic grinding but you get a forced 10 minute of queue which kills the mood.

I would like it to be part of an alliance raid thing but personally Bozja is fun because of the Lost Skills..

[TaleraRistain]

They really should add them to the Neir Alliance raid loot, double benefit, encourage people to do both things. In general once an expansion gets to X.5 or maybe X+1.0 all similar requirements should be added to that relevant expansion's Alliance Raids.

I hate the Nier raids but even this would be acceptable.

With DR some things would immediately give some relief:
-Removal of RNG on obtaining essences. DR with everyone equipping the right stuff makes runs very fast but the reward ratio on getting those are abysmally awful along the rng on appraising a fragment. This could lead on DPS/Tanks being screwed on not getting their Pure Essences which only work in DR while Healers rely outside of DR (mainly Castrum with Deep Essences) with Cluster farming being the "faster" non gil spending option. Being able to choose what you get from appraising would help a lot while still keeping their prices relevant in the MB in case you do not want to farm those!
-If we don't get the option of choosing what to get from a fragment then they should go on the Castrum way and highly increase the fragments you get from chests. Castrum gives a nice chunk of essences with the amount of prisoners saved for example. They could do something similar to Dalriada and reward more stuff for beating a boss fast (this is in reference to the 1st part of Dalriada where you get an additional chest after beating before you face the 2nd boss)
-Like what Rein said, having a checkmark in DR like in Variant. Most of PFs i joined are sadly 8 player parties which are good enough for relic grinding but you get a forced 10 minute of queue which kills the mood.

I would like it to be part of an alliance raid thing but personally Bozja is fun because of the Lost Skills..

Could do both! Excluding 1 time grinds, the step before this has 3 different options for getting loathsome memories. The step after this has 4 different ways to get raw emotions. So there's more than enough precedent to justify adding more than one additional option on this step.

[Iscah]

Can I just say that I really hate the whole "gruesome memories of the dying" thing? Why are we powering our relic through those and not memories of battle techniques or something?

[Midareyukki]

Can I just say that I really hate the whole "gruesome memories of the dying" thing? Why are we powering our relic through those and not memories of battle techniques or something?

The way I interpreted it while going through it was that I was helping keeping the memory of the people who died fighting for Bozja alive. By shaping their memories into a sort of "living weapon" that would then be used to liberate it.

Kind of like a homage to them, except gruesome. As war tends to be.

But that's me. And admittedly I had a bit more investment into Bozja than most. The story basically got derailed with rushed plot over some girlie with a 23andMe test rather than focus on the people fighting in the war. Like the Blades.

So ultimately, that step is just awkward once you finish Bozja even with that investment. And worse, technically you could argue you're also absorbing the memories of dead Garleans, which... no thank you xD

[Iscah]

The way I interpreted it while going through it was that I was helping keeping the memory of the people who died fighting for Bozja alive. By shaping their memories into a sort of "living weapon" that would then be used to liberate it.

Kind of like a homage to them, except gruesome. As war tends to be.

If they presented it that way, it would have been fine, but they didn't. They're just "oh, to charge your weapon we'll need memories. Tortured memories! Lurid memories! Loathsome memories you can't bear to look at! They'll be perfect, seek them out!"

The weirdest thing is that the main quest seems to be at odds with it, with Gerolt and Zlatan talking about "memories of battle" and only the item names adding the "of the dying" bit.

[Midareyukki]

If they presented it that way, it would have been fine, but they didn't. They're just "oh, to charge your weapon we'll need memories. Tortured memories! Lurid memories! Loathsome memories you can't bear to look at! They'll be perfect, seek them out!"

The weirdest thing is that the main quest seems to be at odds with it, with Gerolt and Zlatan talking about "memories of battle" and only the item names adding the "of the dying" bit.

It would have been a lot better. And the stupidest thing is that we went there not just to help, but to locate the original weapons we're recreating. And then they just threw a bus at all that, and now the original weapons are in the hands of the enemy.

Bozja as a whole is just not well-executed. And I already said before, the story itself suffers from giving Matsuno too much leeway without thinking whether or not it fits the tone FF14 has set up. It's to be expected the gameplay would reflect that.

Here's hoping that the Manderville weapons are any better. And I do think they should just rework DR itself as a normal raid and be done with it. Leave the Lost Actions thing for a Variant Dungeon-style thing.