Adjustment to ARR relic book step

[SieyaM]

There are a few that seem to spawn very slowly, and I think there was one that was part of a chain of FATEs that you had to start. It's been a while since I did one so I don't remember which FATEs were involved.

[MsMisato]

There are a few that seem to spawn very slowly, and I think there was one that was part of a chain of FATEs that you had to start. It's been a while since I did one so I don't remember which FATEs were involved.

that's the one in the shroud. i can't remember the name of it but you have to do the first to spawn the second one. Worst ones for me was making sure to be there for the escort fate at zelmas run near bronze lake in la noscea. It used to be it felt like you had less than a 1 minute to get there or teh guards are killed and then the ultimate pita was the one in Coretha's because that sucker did not show up on the map when they first introduced it unless you were there to speak with the knights. of course this was back when it zodiac saga relics were first made live

[baklava151]

If they want to make the FATE part more consistent, they could just change it to "Complete 3 in these 3 zones"

[Atelier-Bagur]

Id say just make each stat only be 1 book.

[dspguy]

I have no issues with the nerfed light farm that exists today for ARR relics. While the book grind is exactly that, it is in line with the reward. Instead of the HW relic where the steps between "clear these dungeons" and "do the light farm" are all things that you can farm beforehand... that just puts the grind on the front-end. Grinding dungeons for poetics. Grinding beast tribes for the unidentifiable whatevers. The book farm is just done in series. You are either grinding content one way or another way.

If anything, it makes the book grind one of the few unique steps across nearly all of the relics in FFXIV. Having the player do leves, hunts, FATEs and dungeons? Honestly, that is ARR in a nutshell and fits very well. Even if it is annoying.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I have no issues with the nerfed light farm that exists today for ARR relics. While the book grind is exactly that, it is in line with the reward. Instead of the HW relic where the steps between "clear these dungeons" and "do the light farm" are all things that you can farm beforehand... that just puts the grind on the front-end. Grinding dungeons for poetics. Grinding beast tribes for the unidentifiable whatevers. The book farm is just done in series. You are either grinding content one way or another way.

If anything, it makes the book grind one of the few unique steps across nearly all of the relics in FFXIV. Having the player do leves, hunts, FATEs and dungeons? Honestly, that is ARR in a nutshell and fits very well. Even if it is annoying.

The only issue with the grind is that originally back when it was relevant, those activities; more specifically the dungeon grinds were used to help with getting more people to queue in specific dungeons for other players. But now that its old content and people do it unsynced whats even the point with the arbitrary activity?

What I would change with the book grind is to just have 1 book per stat, annex the specific FATE objectives; instead making it where it only requires you do a number of them in a specified zone and make the dungeon objective only count if its done synced. This is why later relic grinds that have dungeon objectives force you to do it synced for that purpose to filter in queues.

[Hasrat]

I have no issues with the nerfed light farm that exists today for ARR relics. While the book grind is exactly that, it is in line with the reward.

I have a counter-argument for this.

Years ago, I would've been largely fine with leaving the relic steps as is, nerfed from their original design but remaining some level of grind.
However, with the inclusion of Heavensward in the base game (and free trial), the lowest level cap in the game is now 60.
Prior to this, I might justify the relic grind for cases of 50-capped players still managing to use them as best available weapons.
As it currently is, though, it's simply not even possible to complete a relic at level 50 to keep them still somewhat relevant. (short of maaybe getting some others together to run every dungeon unsynced to prevent getting exp. Again, level 50 players, they're not unsyncing a whole lot here)
That means the ARR relic is effectively relegated to 100% pure glamour.

As such, I think ARR relics are deserving of one final pass to examine the grind.
They won't get it, obviously. But there's a few points that could be tweaked down further to render the weapons somewhat useful along the way.

[dspguy]

I don't think anybody is going to do the light farm for HW at 60 by running A9S sync'd. Similar to your ARR argument, it likely won't be done the way it was intended back in 3.5. And all relics up to and including ShB are all glam anyway. People aren't doing these grinds for a weapon with +5 iLvl over the one you can buy with a run of MSQ roulette instead.