Umbrites are terrible.

[RLofOBFL]

I don't agree. Wasnt that the step with the unidentifiable items? You could get those through dalies, maps, seals or tomes. It was pretty damn quick if you used all the options. Plus if you were a crafter or had access to crafters it was pretty cheap.

Id take all those options over just lore.

They were 600 tomes each, and half were in Poe while the other in Law, maps were extremely expensive(50-100K) & dropped different pieces depending on the map & the maps only dropped 2 types of pieces(the ones available for Law) & had low drop rates that have since been buffed. It took 6 days to get 1 Unidentified through doing every single beast tribe every single day(this would kill me with boredom). It was only allied Seals & it was 1000 per UI & again you could only get 2 pieces(the Poe ones). And even with a crafter it still cost a couple mil. It was also 10 items from 1 Alex per UI which back then they took 8-12 mins each so 80 mins per piece(similar to light grinding I guess). Yes you had options but most of them left you extremely burnt out unless you had an iron will & never got bored.

Umbrite was 16,000-24,000 total(compared to 54,000) & it also has many ways to get Crystal Sands, now after they've nerfed it to 12,000(tops bc rng chance of it being as low as 8K Lore) there is even an option to trade 4 UI to get a sand. Just doing dailies will get you there, not including bonuses. You do make a point that UI had more options spread about but there was also muuuch more stuff needed & it took much longer for most besides those few people with undying love to this game & that prefer tortu...erm grinding

Though I can confirm it was never "pretty damn quick", it took me over 2 months with medium grinding vs Umbrite which was around 1 month and a half with little grinding. I think Umbrite was supposed to be a repeat of the 210 step in difficulty but it didn't feel quite as torturous. Though I did see one person with a 210 a week after release & I remember wondering if they were insane & trying to math out how long it would've taken them non stop playing.

[Youkulm]

I'm on my 5th relic at Umbrite step and I did 4 of them at the un-nerfed price. Its not that bad. If you just do normal content it comes in time.

[Elim]

Yes you had options but most of them left you extremely burnt out unless you had an iron will & never got bored.


Though I can confirm it was never "pretty damn quick",

I found it extremely quick. They dropped like candy from maps for me, but I did many maps with my friends every day. We also killed S ranks whenever they'd pop. My eternal bondmate would get to the S rank then I'd just teleport to him, cuz I'm lazy and he's sweet. I did my dalies for unidentifiable items too, which I like because I can do them at my own pace outside of a group.

Also pretty much everything we did also got us tomes, so most of the time we were working towards more than just one reward(unidentifiable item) at a time.

For lore you mostly want to do dungeons, raids or pvp (which you could also do for the 210 step ofc). Activities outside of those do not reward much lore(it's about 5 lore per daily or something around that), so they aren't a smart time investment/aren't appealing to do for umbrite. Of course the very best use of your time is the Aetherochemical Research Facility, but it's still a huge time investment regardless, even when you "speed run" it. Which reminds me... I miss the Brayflox speed running days, because it was much quicker than Aetherochemical and IMO a lot less bland looking.

tl;dr
The lack of good options and the large amount of lore needed killed the umbrite step for me.

[JumperX]

I think people who are so desperate to get the umbrite will feel the time moving so slow. It becomes easy when you don't check how many lore tokens you need. Of course, if you spam the dungeons without thinking, you will be able to buy a lot of umbrite.

[Lilseph]

I think people who are so desperate to get the umbrite will feel the time moving too small. I becomes easy when you don't check how many lore tokens you need. Of course, if you spam the dungeons without thinking, you will be able to buy a lot of umbrite.

My experience exactly. Doing different types of content led me to stockpile umbrite like a madman. I currently have enough umbrites for 2 more weapons. Sands on the other hand were the hardest for me to get.

[Yudzster]

the unidentified pre nerf is the worst

[LunarEmerald]

the unidentified pre nerf is the worst

I agree. 13 beast tokens for 1 unidentified and you needed 20 of each.

[Dilu_Bakari]

I just want to know why the grinding weapon is second best until the end of a patch.... then it's worthless because there's literally nothing else to do. And why the strongest weapon is in content that most players don't really do except the hardcore players

[Theodric]

Umbrite is fine - you get it easily enough simply by amassing lore through the bulk of content at end game. Crystal Sand is much rarer by comparison - since it's locked behind tighter grinds or expensive gil sinks.

[ZioSerpe]

What else are you going to spend Lore on anyway?
If you started late on relic you should have looked in advantage what you needed and started spending all your lores on them, and singing crystals afterwards