Sincere Question...No Troll...Has SE Gone Full Regress?!?!

[GraceHorizon]

… most people here make the first relic step out to be the worst thing they ever did even tho if you just do it for like an hour or two each evening (not even in OC) you can have the relic together by the end of the week…

I’m going to call this out as not representative of my experience at all. I spent an hour and a half grinding FATEs in Urqopacha and got zero demiatma for my trouble, so I gave up on FATEs and did CEs in Occult Crescent instead. I did an hour or two a day _on top of my other activities like roulettes_ and it took a couple weeks to complete that step. It was far from the worst or grindiest thing I’ve done, but it was more time than I wanted to spend and the RNG was maddening. The process was adjacent to a good design, but it needed to be a bit faster and a lot more predictable.

[Daralii]

I’m going to call this out as not representative of my experience at all. I spent an hour and a half grinding FATEs in Urqopacha and got zero demiatma for my trouble, so I gave up on FATEs and did CEs in Occult Crescent instead. I did an hour or two a day _on top of my other activities like roulettes_ and it took a couple weeks to complete that step. It was far from the worst or grindiest thing I’ve done, but it was more time than I wanted to spend and the RNG was maddening. The process was adjacent to a good design, but it needed to be a bit faster and a lot more predictable.

The drop rates seem to be higher in OC, but the problem with verdigris specifically is how little activity there is in the corner of the map it drops in. 2 FATEs, 1 pot FATE, and Calamity Bound is it.

[Absurdity]

I’m going to call this out as not representative of my experience at all. I spent an hour and a half grinding FATEs in Urqopacha and got zero demiatma for my trouble, so I gave up on FATEs and did CEs in Occult Crescent instead. I did an hour or two a day _on top of my other activities like roulettes_ and it took a couple weeks to complete that step. It was far from the worst or grindiest thing I’ve done, but it was more time than I wanted to spend and the RNG was maddening. The process was adjacent to a good design, but it needed to be a bit faster and a lot more predictable.

I want to focus on that for a moment, has nothing to do with you I just use it as an example. Even with probably some of the worst RNG it took you a couple weeks, and it's not like you were grinding OC like there is no tomorrow.

I honestly can't remember the patch release dates anymore but there were something like 3 months and a few weeks between the first and second relic step. That is plenty of time to finish even casually since you only need to complete the step once.
Is the RNG annoying? Absolutely. But this is not some insane grind.