Can we go back to using tomes to get relics?

[Arrius]

The relic was always about the grind. In various degrees.

If you need a weapon for your job on the quick side, you can always buy the crafted one and augment it. Or do Arkveldt once for a i645 one.

[AmiableApkallu]

What I always found confusing is that people whine about EW relics being "tome weapons" while seeming to forget how many thousands of tomes go into making ARR and HW relics too. Like, it takes almost as many tomes for those as it did EW ones yet somehow people give them a free pass, or even try to hold them up as the gold-standard for relic grinds we need to "go back to".

The ARR relics have a (substantial) grind in addition to the tomes. The 900 tomes on books, the 1125 tomes on Alexandrite maps, and the 600 tomes on mahatma are the price you pay so that you can engage with some bit of combat content and get credit for it.

Compare that to Endwalker, where you pay some tomes and… that's it. You're done.

[Asari5]

it is a bad grind.

not because of the amount but because its not consistent.
make the droprates 100% and make us gather five or six times so many items.

[Valence]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

[Daralii]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

My only problem with the demi-atmas was that verdisgris only had 2 FATEs, a pot FATE, and the "finale" CE. The others I just picked up while casually playing in OC, and while I think it's a massive step-down from Eureka and Bozja, it's at least something that is slightly different from the normal level cap farming.

[Supersnow845]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

OC is heavily flawed but I’d still prefer it to just running roulettes or spamming hunts

The problem with the whole “tomestones allow you to do what you want” is that the non roulette non hunt tomestone farming options fall somewhere between heavily suboptimal and outright garbage

You don’t feel like you have a lot of choice, you just feel like you are being pigeonholed into roulettes

[Selsix]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

I can't speak for the current relics as I refuse to set foot in OC for reasons that are irrelevant to the topic at hand but I will -readily- state I vastly prefer ShB and SB style relics to every other kind. Eureka was okay (I have criticisms) but I LOVED Bozja. Bozja to me was the perfect relic grind. Do I enjoy FATE grinding though? Honestly that's not something I've ever even really considered. What I enjoy is "mindless" content where I can say, listen to a book on tape/podcast/YT video/stream and just go through the motions with my brain mostly on auto-pilot. For me, this is incredibly relaxing and I enjoy it. FATE grinding falls under this umbrella so I suppose I could say yes I prefer FATE grinding to tomes as a relic step. Could the grind be more fun than FATEs? Sure, but that's beside the point.

[Aidorouge]

Not many people liked the ARR and HW relic process, for starters. They were both heavily criticized by popular opinion, especially the ARR one for being expensive in Gil and the HW one for requiring heavy savage content. That all aside, the main problem people had with the EW ones isn't so much that they cost tomes, it was more that they took zero effort whatsoever. Just doing your usual normal daily roulettes passively gave you enough garbage tomes to finish as many EW relics as you wanted without any impact to your normal gear grind and playtime. They were essentially free.

That depends greatly on how easily one can collect poetics. I'm lucky I manage a little over a thousand a week from doing Wondrous Tails, Blue Mage challenges, and combat Society quests.

Looking at the Crystal Sand/Umbrite step for my HW relics right now, the variable 4000+ poetics means over a month for a single weapon, and that's after the months for the aether oil and Unidentifiable items before that. There is nothing "free" about any relic weapon demanding thousands of poetics unless someone is raking in 20,000+ a day.
+++

The ARR relics have a (substantial) grind in addition to the tomes. The 900 tomes on books, the 1125 tomes on Alexandrite maps, and the 600 tomes on mahatma are the price you pay so that you can engage with some bit of combat content and get credit for it.

Compare that to Endwalker, where you pay some tomes and… that's it. You're done.

And did anyone find that substantial additional grind fun I wonder? I know I didn't, I would have sooner paid a 9000 tomes than do another book, dear lord.

[Burmecia]

snip

We are two sides of coin, because fates being the main thing in fate farming place for SB and ShB relics was the thing which turned me away from those relics. There is nothing wrong in preferring fates of course. Just... awareness that there is fate haters out there, hi.
Whenever i have itch to do some, its short burst. Farming and farming and farming just feels dreadful to me, for example

+ dunno about arr relic since i didnt finish it when the content was current, but i cant remember anima using current tomes. poes and lessers yeah (and GC seals, and Beast Tribe currency). requiring current tomes would make tome steps pretty annoying, imo.

[Supersnow845]

We are two sides of coin, because fates being the main thing in fate farming place for SB and ShB relics was the thing which turned me away from those relics. There is nothing wrong in preferring fates of course. Just... awareness that there is fate haters out there, hi.
Whenever i have itch to do some, its short burst. Farming and farming and farming just feels dreadful to me, for example

+ dunno about arr relic since i didnt finish it when the content was current, but i cant remember anima using current tomes. poes and lessers yeah (and GC seals, and Beast Tribe currency). requiring current tomes would make tome steps pretty annoying, imo.

While I’m not saying your opinion of farming is invalid there is the element of the relic has always been farming content

I’m not saying you said “I don’t want to farm for my relic” but the people who do say “I don’t like farming so that’s why I like tomestone relics” are basically saying they are walking into maccas and asking why they don’t serve KFC chicken strips