Two part question, plz advise

[Frizze]

So getting an end-game viable weapon can be done a few different ways. The very best ones will drop from the savage raid(or ultimate for the patches they add one), but you obviously need something equipped to clear those fights. As was already mentioned, doing the relic grind will get you a weapon a little behind best in slot(by the final stages, these often have your choice of stats and the very end will equal the best raid weapon - 4-6 months after the raiders got said weapon). By spending the current tomestones and a special item from the story-mode raids you get the tome weapon, and the savage raids(or alliance raids 4+ months later) drop an upgrade item to turn that into an almost BiS. Every patch will typically have an extreme trial that drops a good weapon for the current tier. And finally, the easiest to get "starter" weapon to get into all of that would be a crafted one(upgradable in a catch-up patch). If you dont have gil for the crafted, you alternatively grab one of the other options from last tier and do a couple upgrade steps along the way. That was all very dry though, so lets include some links to illustrate the point. So the current tier items go up to ilvl 500(505 for weapon). The crafted weapon you could consider the starter is level 480, while its upgrade is 490(upgrade purchased via tomestones). In about 10 days the relic grind will be updated to allow the current 485 to be upgraded to an estimated 495. Meanwhile, the tomestone weapon is 490, and its upgrade is 500(upgrade from alliance raid or earlier savage raid floors). The current extreme trial drops a level 495, and if you arent lucky with drops you can buy it from a vendor for 10 of the tokens you get for clearing the fight(the eorzean database doesnt have these links live yet as an anti-spoiler thing) - the previous patches extreme drop was level 485. And finally, the weapon these are all being compared to is the one from the savage raid at level 505.

The next major patch(dec/jan) will add new versions of basically all those(aside from the upgraded crafted). Relic and extremes will likely continue to climb by 10-20 levels per step, raid crafted and tome will jump 30 levels all at once.