Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
Go FFXI style and combine all the REMA things.

So first you gotta either go into a Dynamis Dreamland and farm anicent money or buy said

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The Relic line will end with Gerolt fusing your weapon with its clone where it will take on its final appearance and power, as well as giving you double passive regen.
I nearly spit out my coffee all over my keyboard. Well done. As a recovering FFXI player, I could appreciate your take.

In all seriousness though, there has to be something in-between mid-2000s-style MMO relic grinding and 1500 tomestones. Personally, I thought the HW grind was "about right." It had one key difference from the ARR-grind: options.

Most of the "grindy steps", but not all, had options:
  • Step 1: Grind FATEs or turn in an ARR relic (not necessarily ideal). At least it was only 6 tokens, not 12 and they could be completed on any job (so you can gain exp while farming your relic items). Dungeon spam.
  • Step 2: Unidentifiable items from various sources (ARR, HW dailies, normal mode raids, tomestones). Other items for that step were craftable or from GC seals.
  • Step 3: Aether Oil from tomestone grind or running the weekly CT-circuit. Could run those on any job.
  • Step 4: Umbrite - tomestone grind, whatever content you want. Crystal Sand (crafting, gathering, tomestone, levequests)
  • Step 5: Singing Clusters - weekly/daily quests, tomestone grind.
  • Step 6: Tomestone grind and/or GC seal grind. Lots of ways to earn both of those - and can run it on any job - plus light farm
  • Step 7: Victory lap of Hard Mode (easy mode) trials
The reason I think HW's relic was pretty good is that there were only a few parts of it that were "forced" content. Do these specific dungeons/trials. No way around those. And the FATE grind as Step 1 was a bit harsh, but at least it wasn't Atmas where we had to be on the job, using that weapon and earning no experience. The rest of HW either allowed you to make progress while on any job or gave various options to make progress.

Of course, players that want to get their relics as fast as possible found an optimal path that felt "forced" but that was a player-introduced constraint. While I personally liked Eureka for the SB relic, it was "forced" content. We really weren't afforded many options to complete it. Everything was within Eureka itself. Later on, they added the ability to buy the "boss NM" drops with zone-specific crystals/drops. However, I think Bozja was the knee-jerk reaction to Eureka. It was "Eureka-Lite." Here's some forced content you have to do within Bozja and then plenty of options for some steps that could be done inside and outside of Bozja.

In my opinion, the jury is still out on the EW relic. We are only on Step 2, but it seems the devs are sort of "mailing it in." Maybe Step 3 will be something other than a tomestone grind.