There should be an easier way to obtain low-level materia

[fuzz__]

For the past 4 months, I have been grinding to collect all the ARR relic weapons to get their glamors. I have made it to the novus step, which requires you to meld at least 75 (there is a chance to fail) various combat materia 1/2/3 per weapon, so at least 750 total for them all.

The only way I can find to collect these materia is to intentionally under-ilevel my gear and grind out spiritbinds. On my datacenter, these materia sell for 2k - 10k each, so I would have to drop 2 to 8 million gil on a single relic weapon step to move forward. I believe the reason they are so pricy is that the game has mostly moved past the sub-level 50 content, so players are no longer naturally spiritbonding low-level materia.

I think there ought to be another way to obtain these, such as through a merchant. The Ixal vendor sells low-level DoH/L materia for Oaknots, so something similar could work for the combat materia too. Alternatively, perhaps Mutamix Bubblypots could degrade materia to a lower level (for example if he could exchange one Quickarm materia II for two random materia I).

I realize I am trying to play old content, but I dont think it ought to be completely obsolete.

[ItMe]

Oh my...
I didn't realize any of the relic steps had become more grindy with age. Yeah, this sounds like a big bummer and I hope they address it.

[Catwho]

Some other ideas for this:

The grade II and III materia drop from airships (and submarines as well) but honestly it would be a welcome addition if the grade I materia were added to the loot table too.

[Garnix]

You know what would be even better? To remove the old materias from the game completely.
We really just need 4 grades in total. 2 for max level, and 2 for non-max level.
Maybe they would need to have a system for the materia to give different stats based on gear level though. But I really think some old items could be removed from the game.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Sounds good to have more options. I wish sphere scroll phase allows us to use any grade from 1 to 4 regardless of infuses amount though. I have excess of the IVs from beast tribes.

[Canadane]

Are they not dirt cheap on your servers market?
They come in an over-abundance from airships, people off them on the MB for sometimes under market value.

[Jeeqbit]

Some of them on the market board are just 99 gil and others go up to 300-500 on your data center, just check all of the materia.

[Erendis]

It definitely sucks especially since now you can't farm materia in open world.

[Zomkei]

last time i did an ARR relic (which was sometime during this expansion) the materia sold for 5-20k if not more, so it can get pricy. using airships is not an option for those who don’t have an fc house / in a large fc, or not in an fc in general. i don’t see why they can’t put it on an ARR beast tribe like the crafting materia from oaknots, or like suggested before, just get rid of them and allow fusing the current materia

[CKNovel]

Are they not dirt cheap on your servers market?
They come in an over-abundance from airships, people off them on the MB for sometimes under market value.

Can't remember when, but when I did my ARR relic for WAR, (during Stormblood if I remember well), those low level materia were more expensive than the currently used Materias.
They could remove the drops from monsters in dungeon such as skin and other useless things and replace those with materias.