Although eureka gets plenty of complaints about grind gating, he's right.

I made an anima weapon and a few of the steps are far beyond "casual".
Farming sand was a month long process.
Every single day, do every arr beast tribe daily for a set of unidentifiable materials, do roulette's for tomestones to exchange for company seals for moonstones, do hunts for allied/centurio seals for gear for more company seals, spam gubal library hard over and over for gear drops and tomestone gear for company seals, search market boards for sets of cheap(ish) elemental material, and probably even more I'm forgetting.
I probably played for at least four hours every single day that month.

That was to complete ONE step.