I don't understand why people cry for the "grind" of step 3 while you can progress on it without "changing" your daily habit...
You get tomes from doing various content, you do daily treasure map, you can do some hunting, you can still do some beastmeb quest, Alexander...
You have choice, a lot of it.

Hell, i'm at half my second relic without doing any Alexander nor farming for something specific. The only thing i've change from my daily routines is that I try to do some "old" beastmen tribe quest for token (30-40 min max a day) I still do the Vanu Vanu quest as I need the XP for the 3 jobs I don't have at 60.

I do play 2-3 hour a day on week days, and maybe 5-6h a day on week end.
The thing is, you have to do your dailies to take advantage of the daily bonus (daily roulette token bonus, daily maps, daily hunt, daily beast tribe quest etc)

I did have 2 Zeta to start with, that helped a lot for the first step though (I did 2 ATMA before the first nerf, so I had the right to skip it !!).

But Honestly, the grind to get an old relic to Zeta was awfully worth than this one ! Each step were worth timewise (Atma and Nexus was the worst imho) And you had to use the class/jobs with the relic equiped ! (for most step : atma fate drop, animus book, nexus light, zodiac dungeon hell, zeta light)