Cosmic exploration and Occult crescent

[ACE135]

The tomestone grind wouldn't be so annoying if i wasn't forced to run the same two expert dungeons to farm them efficiently. The alliance raid tome rewards are a complete joke and need a massive increase. Same with normal mode trials and extreme trials. Give us some diversity in how we can tome farm square!

There's a lot diversity and many ways to get the necessary Tomes. There is no need to do everything in the most efficient way possible, especially if you aren't having fun. In the end you yourself chose (and force yourself) for the unfun things to do instead of things where you're having fun just because you get done with it a tiny bit faster.

[Alicie]

There's a lot diversity and many ways to get the necessary Tomes. There is no need to do everything in the most efficient way possible, especially if you aren't having fun. In the end you yourself chose (and force yourself) for the unfun things to do instead of things where you're having fun just because you get done with it a tiny bit faster.

None of tomestone obtaining methods are fun. You could make something fun out of it by adding something like a compendium of "do 5 duties that we pick for you at random and you have tomes instantly capped". Instead it's monotonous grind that's best to be dealt with asap and as efficient as possible.

[Supersnow845]

Tome grinding isn’t fun because casual content in this game isn’t fun (unless you are one of the people like me who enjoys cosmic)

Tomestone grinding wouldn’t be considered such a monotonous task if the average dungeon wasn’t completely mindless on its best days then anything that revolves around repetition of casual content wouldn’t be loathed so much

[Ankhira]

I agree farming tomes isn't really fun, your choices are: running the same roulettes daily for roughly 700 tomes a day, or spam hunt trains which nowadays are all just speed trains so good luck if you have a slower PC or spam expert all day.

On top of that, why is the first relic not free? You farmed 1200 paste, now spend 1500 tomes, no, just give me the weapon and subsequent ones take tomes? And to add to that, we're now at 21 combat jobs, 1500x21 PER STEP is a LOT, if they keep adding 2 jobs per expansion and they keep insisting on tome farming, which in itself is not the problem, just the method of farming them is, then they really need to lower the amount needed.

Then you also need tomes to get pots, it's just constant tome farming at every angle, give us something new to do. Casual content remains a one and done type situation that square refuses to add any longevity to and when they do its peanuts like the deep dungeon challenge log. 5 sacks a week, wowie!

[Valence]

At least I don't want to shoot myself in the head when I run tome content, unlike fates. It's bland, but at least it's not nuclear waste levels of slop.

[Khryseis_Astra]

On top of that, why is the first relic not free? You farmed 1200 paste, now spend 1500 tomes, no, just give me the weapon and subsequent ones take tomes? And to add to that, we're now at 21 combat jobs, 1500x21 PER STEP is a LOT, if they keep adding 2 jobs per expansion and they keep insisting on tome farming, which in itself is not the problem, just the method of farming them is, then they really need to lower the amount needed.

I almost wonder if that was a mistake, because I don’t remember it working that way for any of the previous stages. I went to turn in my paste fully expecting to get my first weapon and buy the arcanite for the second, and was like what?

I still think the best relic grind imo was Eureka. It had you interact with the zone in a meaningful way. Yeah you were still doing the same Fates and mob farming over and over, but you were earning currency for the relic, plus gear sets, and with 4 zones to spread it out, it didn’t feel monotonous (looking at you Occult Crescent!). Bozja was good too with further refinement of the special actions, I just didn’t like the setting as much.

Everything else is just a tome/Fate grind. So many complain about having to run the same old duties for tomes, but every other relic grind did just that! ARR was ARR duties and Fates, HW was HW duties and Fates, EW was pure tomes and people hated that. But in DT, it’s just the same tome grind disguised with a better UI. lol

I’m just disappointed that Occult Crescent didn’t live up to the enjoyment level of either Eureka or Bozja, and you can tell the devs know it too, since the relic barely requires you to interact with the zone at all. Sad, because it had such potential from a lore perspective. It really needed at least one more zone (for a minimum of 3 total), and some Normal mode repeatable duties like Bozja’s CLL, Del Reg, Dalriata. Fate grinding and gold farming the same zone for how many patches now is just so tedious.

[TeresaFortell]

On top of that, why is the first relic not free? You farmed 1200 paste, now spend 1500 tomes, no, just give me the weapon and subsequent ones take tomes? And to add to that, we're now at 21 combat jobs, 1500x21 PER STEP is a LOT, if they keep adding 2 jobs per expansion and they keep insisting on tome farming, which in itself is not the problem, just the method of farming them is, then they really need to lower the amount needed.

You're not expected to get a piece in every class. For most people, getting probably one to two would be enough as they are maining those jobs.

Casual content remains a one and done type situation that square refuses to add any longevity to and when they do its peanuts like the deep dungeon challenge log. 5 sacks a week, wowie!

True, methinks that the pivot towards such content would be a better way to attract more players.

[GraceHorizon]

Having started playing during Endwalker, I don’t view relics as a prestige item or a marker of effort or commitment. To me they’re just an alternate route for equipment progression. Since I leveled all jobs to cap in EW I enjoyed having easy access to a good weapon for each one. I’ve got all jobs leveled to cap again in DT and (before I realized I was burnt out on FFXIV) I was planning to get all relics to stage 4 as a better and more congenial way to equip jobs for 8.0.

As for the different ideas discussed here … I like my tomestone relics because they’re convenient, but I’d be willing to go for an accelerating progress system like Cosmic Exploration. There are 21 combat jobs and I think it’s a reasonable assumption that if someone gets two or three relics they probably want all of them; no sense making them grind excessively for the extras.

[CNitsah]

I still think the best relic grind imo was Eureka. It had you interact with the zone in a meaningful way. Yeah you were still doing the same Fates and mob farming over and over, but you were earning currency for the relic, plus gear sets, and with 4 zones to spread it out, it didn’t feel monotonous (looking at you Occult Crescent!). Bozja was good too with further refinement of the special actions, I just didn’t like the setting as much.

I agree with that. Basically, Cosmic exploration is Eureka for tools, with a few ameliorations. This what pushed me to create this thread. Cosmic exploration has a far better relic progression model than OC, and it's wild to me that despite having a good model developped at the same time, they went for OC as it is. But second post in the subject and it devolved into another "tomestone bad" thread. Farming tomestone, farming other things, it's farming anyway : What's important is how they dressed the farm, how satisfying is the overall progression. Cosmic exploration achieved to make it satisfying, and Occult crescent failed.

In term of other possibilities to get the items, they should not allow the relics items/currency/xp to drop elsewhere than the relic zone. BUT once you finished one, you unlock a vendor that allows you to buy those items/currency/xp, at a rate where it's still slightly better to get those in the relic zone. That would kinda keep the one step thing, while then tomestone for those who want it. Once the current expansion finished, the memo needed would become poetics, automatically making them faster to get.

Maybe combining that with a bonus on the roulettes they want to push people into. Once a month they would updates the roulettes, and those with the bonus would give more uncapped current tomestone. That bonus could stay all year long, so it could drive people to the roulettes they want people to do, since it seems that both ShB and DT relics have been used to push players into certain type of content.

[Hyperia]

The entire time and reward system needs a ground up revamp. Grinding tomes is almost a sentence, I’d rather grind Atmas than fines at this point.