are hunts the only way to obtain allied seals?

[Welsper59]

still not that terrible. IF you have few hunting ls and those 80 hunts arent gona be an problems.

Pretty much this. On Leviathan, most A hunts are on a relatively set and unified spawn time. When you join an A rank group, chances are there's going to be another spawn within 10min... then another... then another. The downtime after all of them are down before the next spawn happens is maybe an hour or so. Sure, not everyone is going to have the time to do every one of them, but who said you need to? Just doing a few A hunts a week alone will reduce those 8 months by more than half.

Honestly though, I don't understand why the idea of vanity costing a lot of time/effort to get is lost on people. Think about it... cash shop = vanity. Nutkin, Fat Cat, etc pets all costing more than any progressive gear (combat, crafting, gathering). Unlike actually useful gear for combat progression, there is no impending rush on vanity that's (for all we know) going to always be there.