Why!

[EdwinLi]

as far as i know, you can only buy two types of the 4 items with esoterics....unless i missed something...so this isnt exactly an accurate timeline.

He is talking about the current 3.3 anima quest (phase 5) which requires 1 item, being Umbrite, that cost 300 eso per piece. The 2nd mat for phase 5 is Crystal Sand which is easier to obtain due to multiple ways with some easy to get a lot in one day and others may take a bit longer.

Players are going have to throw in a few extra dungeon/24 raid runs if they want to grab more than 1 Umbrite per day.

The Max amount required to complete phase 5 is 80 Umbrite and 80 Crystal Sand to get all the points for Phase 5. There is also a chance that if you're lucky that a Umbrite+Crystal Sand gives a extra 1 or 2 points reducing the total amount a player will need. Each Umbrite+Crystal Sand gives 3 points towards the phase 5 progression, which is 240 points, with a rare chance of providing 4 or 5 points.

The phase you're talking about is phase 3 (Collect 80 mats and 16 HQ mats)

2 is from Eso and 2 is from Poetics with both costing 680 of each.

At a casual level if a player runs all their roulette each day with a few extra runs for extra tomes then they should get at least 2 mats per day towards the 80 mats goal. Throw in beast tribe tokens then a extra 2 or 3 per week which result in at least 14 mats or more per week for phase 3.

During phase 3 players can gather some phase 4 and phase 5 materials early by getting the necessary materials to trade for those phase mats. Phase 4 Mats is Aether Oil so running Crystal Tower weekly will give 1 oil per week and phase 5 Crytsal Sand Mats has multiple sources such as the Leve Ambers from leve chests, 5 blue scrips reward tokens, old Relic mats being 5 Thavnairian Mist and 5 Superior Enchanted Ink, and etc.

Phase 8 is actually much lighter on grinding for the mats than phase 3 as a piece of phase 3 mats cost 680 times but phase 5 mats only cost 300 tomes. The Tavnairian Mist and Superior Enchanted Ink is slightly cheaper as well being only 450 tomes plus a Leve amber farm, if you saved your leve up to full 99, could provide around 15 or more level amber which is a easy 15 or more Crystal Sand based on how lucky you are to get the Leve chest to spawn during a leve within 1 day.

Crafters have a better time collecting the Crystal Sand thanks to Blue Scrips Tokens.