I sponsored Dynamis every week out of my own pocket and used the currency to fund my own relics while also buying any I found for sale in player markets. The AF2 I didn't really care about at that point. I didn't farm Alexandrites nearly as much so nearly all of that came from cleaning out other people's inventory when they put them in their shop.

One of the issues IMO about the relics for stormblood was the delays in the content. We may see similar delays in this expansion thanks to COVID depending on their staff allocation for various areas of content.

As for the progression routes we have currently I feel like the tome weapons when added shouldn't have a tie in with the raid just to get the base version. Even if its just the normal mode of the raid and not the EX it just feels unneeded. I don't have an issue with the upgrade item to improve it being tied to the ex raid. Other than that I feel like the weekly Tome cap should be set to 900 normally due to the number of jobs in game now. Granted many usually share sets there have been instances in the past where every job has had their own specific set of armor from the tome vendor.

As for the raids it annoys me they feel the need to make different tokens for each gear slot. Make it just 1 token and adjust the number needed to redeem for a slot reflect the totals we have now of 1 for belt/accessory, 2 for helm, gloves, boots, 4 for chest and pants. The systems they been using just feel like unneeded inventory clutter. Then either get rid of that last token you need multiple of to get a token that lets you buy a tome weapon or make it so you can trade those for the consumable that upgrades the tome gear.

As for the relics if situations to arise causing a delay in implementation or addition of that content. Adjust the ilvl of the actual relics to reflect the time it was added so its comparable to the current content at that time rather than a step or more behind. I recall ARR relics being the top tier most of the time during their cycle and HW I think was the same. It started falling behind noticeably in stormblood because of eureka delays and I think they also delayed it on shadowbringers a little bit as well already.