I really wish I was warned of this ahead of time. Both wikis that I used never warned me about this, nor was I never notified during any of the steps of this.

So I had been working on ALL of my zodiac weapons for half a year now, I managed to get each one to it's highest level.
Completionism drives me to do the tiniest of errands just so I don't have to worry about them later.

The entire process is a massive grindfest, I had to recruit the help of other users in my fc to give me the gil and materia needed to complete certain steps.

I was under the assumption that once I got a Zodiac Weapon Zeta, I would be able to purchase replicas without needing the original copy. I didn't want the weapons taking up 8 precious slots of retainer space when I need that for crafting materials, plus you can't store the weapons in glamour dresser or armoire, so I ended up discarding them.

...Only to find out today that I can't buy the replicas without needing the original. And if I want the replicas, I need to basically do the whole entire thing all over again, 8 more times.

This whole thing could have been avoided if I had just been warned by the Wiki to never do this. Why was I able to discard the Zodiac Weapon Zetas when you NEED to hold onto them?

So at the end of the day, I've wasted tons of Gil and Time on nothing, all because I was under the assumption that they would stay unlocked. Is there anything I can do at this point? Because after all that time was wasted, I'm really unmotivated to continue playing ff14 anymore. What an absolutely baffling design choice.