Endwalker Relics are Disappointing

Old man yells at cloud. Strife undoubtedly to follow. Basically this is a video of me whining about the latest relic step in Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker. This video's a bit different from what I usually do, cause I felt pretty strongly about it. So much of Endwalker's side content has felt just a little bit hollow, and I guess this was the thing that finally fractured my proverbial camel's alleged back. Here's hoping the later patches are different.

[@mattwo7]

The Shadowbringers relic grind was special for making even people who never played Tactics fear red chocobos.

[@ms.mittenz]

Nightmare fuel

[@weiss4855]

Though i never played Tactics, the Ivalice raid's Ridorana Lighthouse step was what conjured my fear of Red Chocobos. It was a figurative and literal warzone on patch day, just two red chocobos spawned by that many players... My friends didn't know why i was getting antsy waiting for the critical engagement to start, they learned quick.

[@yourdude9942]

@@weiss4855 isnt the red chocobo after the first boss in Rabanastre? Or did I forget about a relic step.

[@surgeofgaming6405]

I just played through Bozja for the fun of it, and the cat men. I never focused on the Relics.

[@ms.mittenz]

@Surge of Rescues & Gaming same. Trying really hard to get that mount though. Missing only one record. Haven't been in bojza in like 3 months? Need to get back there for that one note

[@Omosaki]

"These weapons don't feel special, don't feel special, and don't add any game play." They just feel like regular tomestone weapons.

[@boanoah6362]

That's all they've ever been, have they ever been BIS gear?

[@xivCatumin]

@@boanoah6362 Yes, the final step of every past relic has been BIS for the content where it was current. The Eureka weapons and then Shadowbringers weapons were also both BIS for ultimates. Eureka ones for UCoB and UWU, ShB for UCoB, UWU, and TEA. The same will be true for these weapons.

[@worse9347]

@@xivCatumin thats really great! but I dont think spending weeks on a weapon to maybe a month justifies it being BIS for an ult, I did my ARR relic weapon and after I completed SB main msq and man it was a pain even with level80 gear and being level 90 for drg(never could save enough for level 90 crafted) it was satisfying to be done with it. but satisfying as in "thank god I dont have anymore steps and not "thank god I finally have the weapon man it looks so cool" that wore off in a day. What Im trying to say is. we already have to wait so long to get the relic weapon being BIS or just "good" or "raid worthy" so why do we have to spend even longer grinding for it. it seems like a huge waste of my time.

[@Gloomdrake]

⁠@@worse9347relic weapons SHOULD waste your time. It’s not special if you don’t have to work for it. Granted, ARR, for example, wastes way too much time

[@worse9347]

@@Gloomdrake yes, I agree to a point. I never even did one hunt train before Mandeville relic weapons. (I got into the game after EW patches and didn't come back to catch up from mid stormblood till 6.45) but man they are fun, give the tomes needed for 1/3 a step if you do all EW and SHB hunts and Eben give a feeling of community. After 6.55 cane out we had over 300 hunt train members in 1 hunt train. It was a total blast and made me feel like I was in a community and I could grind multiple steps for relics a day vs spending a whole day for 1 step. It incentivizes group play, grinding and not too long. This is the best way to we relic farm. Plus it was so much better than ARR do 27 things 9 times or 1 dungeon 50 times then another 10 more times. So yes just getting a "free" relic step done day 1 of patch drop doesn't seem all that great or accomplishing but it helps farm all your alt jobs (which ffxiv is known for leveling multiple and all classes and encourages it) and builds a sense of community. So I feel like these relic steps are 95% fine. 5% for a possible improvement but idk what that could be

[@Bongaboi151]

To be honest, I find building reputation with the Loporrits to be more satisfying than this.

[@GrandGobboBarb]

I've been working on the ARR relic weapon for the first time the last week or so, and I ended up having one of the more fun times of my play running around with a stranger named Dave in a competition to see who could burn down more enemies in every FATE for each grind step. Or at least it was a competition to me since we never spoke, but still we spent like an hour running the same FATES standing side by side and it was awesome. Hope to see you again, Dave. Hope to see more fun stuff in the future

[@ChaoGuy2006]

As someone on free trial- loathing and dreading the RNG I've already gone through with Atma, and knowing what I'll have to do with Materia and what not- I actually turned around to your way of thinking. Really feels like the *earlier* relics should have been made quicker with Tomestones, and latter ones having more specialist resources you have to find and make. Hell, if you're expected to be a real Mandervile Man, then what you're looking for should surpass the initial Primal trio, Alexanderite, and more. Maybe even stand-alone trials like Hydra and Chimera were. Hell, Godbert can still "give" us the resource, but demands we pass a test- not just tomestomes, but fighting off a beast or sparring partner he has.

[@ojosama]

Good luck my dude. I did my ARR relic in the trial as well. You really feel like you earn them.

[@Second_UNIT]

I'm there with you, currently unlocked ARR relic weapon quests just yesterday and found out the materia hell I was going to be going through. It'll get done, I'm just impatient lmao

[@soldierorsomething]

Oh you poor thing, you have chosen to start the worst relic grind that ff14 has, i have 1.5 ARR relics, since my other one is about 50% done and i also have 3 relics from heavensward and i gotta say that heavensward relics are super easy to get, since there are no ARR relic BS where you have to farm light for the weapon and also pay 400 000gil in total to complete 1 step for the weapon oh and the books....they are the worst

[@xivCatumin]

fwiw, ARR and Heavensward relics did both get nerfed in a way similar to what you mentioned. For example, Heavensward used to require very difficult crafts (on a crafting system much more RNG than the current one), but now that step can be done by buying from the Grand Company. Also very big agree with what you said this current weapon could be like. That would have been super cool.

[@Gloomdrake]

@@xivCatuminI just wish there was a better way to get low grade Materia

[@AlienKat-jv1il]

Bozja was super fun, but its ending indicated we'd go to Dalmasca and I'd hoped we would for EW relics then was disappointed when I learned we weren't. The explatory zones are fun as they add more lore and story. Bozja specifically was great bc you could do Bozja or older content to complete the relic.

[@glasspotatochip]

Sadly i dont think we’ll be going to dalmasca ever seeing as the IVth legions storyline was ended in the bozja field notes

[@deathsythe238]

the real bummer with bozja, when it was current, was that for a bunch(too many tbh) of the relic steps it was significantly faster to not be in bozja. you didn't have to step foot outside the base in zadnor to finish the relic because you could spam delubrum for a guaranteed 2 items vs waiting in zadnor for at most like 90 mins or whatever it was for 3 items. also bozja southern front was FILLED with content, then you get to zadnor and it feels like it has 25% of what bozja had with 80% of that being locked behind rank 20-25. once you got there you realized why, other than multiple relics, everyone was in Bozja.

[@SkeletalCheshire]

There was talk that too many people complained about bozja's difficulty level, and that's why any continuation was scrapped

[@MrJesuisOMG]

​@SkeletalCheshire No, no. Bozja was easier than Eureka. The real complaint was that the JP community disliked Bozja because the theme of the story and place was about War, so they didn't enjoyed the content and yet Eureka is stupid popular there, even if it's literally the same thing. And since the JP community has such strong influence, they killed the content to cater to them.

[@Nodnarb59]

Bozja sucked

[@luiz8755]

Cider arch is just beautiful. From a satyrical humor about the MSQ to the guy with the most solid and based POV ever. Nice.

[@Disaster175]

Yo I was just saying that I'd love to see a bit of Gold Saucer stuff mixed in just the other day considering the already present Hildibrand theming and all. As long as they didn't overdo it with how much you had to do of any specific thing and gave other options it could be a fun way to get more people goofing around in there.

[@darkwulf2k]

I'm torn on this step. On the one hand, I like the fact i do not have to run 20 of 3 different trials til my eyes bleed. On the other hand, I would like it to be a more of a grind. This will translate well though later when it becomes poetic based later, as Chris from Work2Game pointed out. So, going back to get these later will be better, and not as painful as trying to go back, and say get an ARR relic. I wonder how much things like the new deep dungo/2 ultimate led to this decision for the 2nd step of the relic, as the amount of resources to make those, may of taken away from teh relic quest.

[@dianwei32]

EDIT after 6.45: Well, I'm a goddamn fool. Another step, another 1,500 Tomes. I give up. EW Relics are trash. They look good, but the acquisition method is hot garbage. I don't mind having one easy step for a base relic and a shiny version. I get the feeling that future steps will revert back to the old gindy kind of Relic. If future steps that introduce new models and make them glowy are more "buy X number or items with tomestones," then I'll be more concerned but for now I'm not too worked up about it. I can definitely understand people who want the varied grinding step now, though. EDIT: Also, while we may be "halfway through" the Relics in terms of patch numbers (done with 6.25 and 6.35, still have 6.45 and 6.55), there's almost no way we're halfway through the number of steps to complete them. I cannot imagine that they would make a Relic that only has 4 steps. The shortest Relic to date is the Shadowbringers Resistance Weapons at 6 steps, but that doesn't count the one-time steps that push it up to 8. ARR and HW both had 8 steps, and Stormblood had 8 not counting all of the +1/2 steps (it had 16 counting those). While I can definitely understand the frustration about how the thing that is typically a long term grind to slowly work towards currently isn't that, the current EW Relic steps aren't enough to assume that future steps will be similar. Hell, the first step of the Resistance Weapons was an even easier "pay 1,000 tomes, get weapon." It only did it for one step rather than the current two, but it's not like an easy step is unheard of.

[@Lagzlot]

I don't mind new relics being so easy because there are more classes than before and trying to collect them would be an ever-increasing chore list. What I'm not-so-happy about is having the same type of tomestone twice in a row. Just look at HW relic steps before you could just buy them with poetics. Sure, there were some terrible steps (the one that was exclusive to maxed out crafters, for example, or the infamous 50k lore grind), but you also had some that involved a trilogy run of crystal tower before alliance roulette was a thing, or beast tribe currency, or the one with several options for one step that included ARR extreme drops and gathering scrips. They could have used old exploratory zones too. Farm exploratory zone currency, or do a bozja raid for faster insert-relic-step-here. FFS you added a new deep dungeon in this patch, the loot opportunities were RIGHT THERE. Gold sacks and aetherpool fragments give you relic mats. There. Done. New content and a reason to do it.

[@chippynose]

It's wild; this is the first time I've been at the endgame at the same time as the patch release schedule. The grind for other relics felt like such a slog because I had so many other expansions to play, but now that I'm at max level and through all the expansions, there isn't a grind for the endgame relic. I'm sure this will be helpful to folks after the next big expansion drops, but for now, it just robs us of a fun way to pass time until it's released.

[@TheIrtar]

I liked the exploratory zones as, not only was it used for the relic, it gave you a place to grind up your other classes.

[@MrCarlWax]

You can do that in Eureka Orthos too

[@RogerCh888]

@@MrCarlWax Only thing is that Bozja allows you to level up alt jobs and Eureka doesn't. That's what made Bozja a lot more appealing because you could do so many things at the same time, level up characters, farm clusters, farm tombstones, farm chest for a potential rare drop, farm fragments to sell or to save up for something specific like (DRS), collect bronze coins to buy gear specific haste buffs, level up permanent stats, etc.

[@Swordhunter0817]

When I heard about the next relic step I assumed the purchase was only for your first relic and subsequent weapons would be the grind.

[@rtbear674]

bozja one was like that, 1500 poetics for first step, then 60 fates (though I think 60 fates is a bit too much), then 1 from daily roulette, then 5x delubrum + 2x dalriada. though total will be 1020 fates, 85x delubrum, + 28x dalriada. what's left probably be fates, also can do shared fates at the same time too. light, dark, dynamis farming with extreme ver got more points.

[@viysnjor4811]

@@rtbear674 the number of fates required and the fact that delubrum and dalriada were horrible slogs of instances to have to do so many times for a relic are what made the grind painful and relatively unpopular. Those two fights in particular were just too gimmicky, imo.

[@Some__Guy]

To be honest, these are probably the only relics I'm going to get anytime soon. To me, all of the past relics are a huge pain in the ass to get, and most of them aren't really worth the hassle. But I know that these are used as mid-patch play time extension, so I don't think they should be *this* easy to get. Either starting out with a big grind, and then eventually lowering the requirements after they become outdated (say, when the next expansion's relic set is released) or having more options on how to do them would be a good idea. They are "legendary weapons" but they also lose most of their value outside of being another glowy weapon to add to the pile after a few patches.

[@yeetusdeleetus4697]

The best method, in my opinion, was how Shadowbringers started it, the first one is a big grind that will take you a couple weeks to complete, but then each ShB relic you get after that is super easy with multiple difficult steps removed.

[@garetclaborn]

@@yeetusdeleetus4697 A good grind can be enjoyable, but what has irritated me finishing past relics was the needless complexity of what to grind. Like sure slap a storyline on it, great, but just point me where to go for each step and let me chill there. I don't want to teleport all over the world for 5 second conversations and track several different forms of currency, trying to remember which vendor matches what line of upgrades only to find out I can get exactly 45% of the required amount per day by grinding in one of these 3 specific places in order. No. No. NO. This is a dang grind. Aint nobody got time for that. Just tell me hey adventurer, there's a mandragora problem because this sad sad story. Go kill 5000 mandragoras and a bell will go off with fireworks and flashing lights with a message offering to teleport you exactly where to go to resume the story lol

[@yeetusdeleetus4697]

@@garetclaborn I agree, I was hoping they would implement the grind into the Criterion Dungeons that they released only to die one day later because people didn't want to spend 45 minutes grinding 1 materia. Or atleast Eureka Orthos?.... Their brand new content launching alongside?.. It just all feels like this wasn't even a plan to make it more accessible but that theyre just being fuckin lazy lmfao

[@boanoah6362]

The very first ARR relic weapon steps are great, or used to be, there was a whole questline about getting the busted up ancient relic and fixing it back up with the smith. I even have fond memories of hanging out in a cave in the hinterlands to fight a giant chimera and building up tome stuff to get his forge upgraded to fix the damn thing and in the end you got a snazzy cool glowing weapon. Then the next step was way easier since you're just upgrading the base weapon. It was great, then it rapidly devolved into 'travel the world butchering trash mobs and shit dungeons while ALSO tome grinding to buy sand to get a whole new stupid weapon, have fun, oh also you have to run 40 frickin FATEs too!' No bueno.

[@Bobothefish13]

Honestly I was a person who was like "eh whats the big deal" but your arguments were pretty convincing especially in regards to motivating people to do variant and criterion dungeons. In particular I want to do the criterion but find it really hard to get people to do it (though I think it was bit overtuned as it kind of scares everyone but savage raiders away, hard is good but we already have that difficulty) One of the theories i have heard about some of the patch content issues is that large portions of the dev team have been working on FFXVI since it is the same exact studio working on it, and that content might get more robust after the game launches. Either way, I am definitely rooting for the people who liked the relic grind because of this video. Even as a non-grinder it was never too much to pick 1 for the job I was playing most.

[@DrakeWurrum]

Is it really the same studio? I know Yoshi-P is directing it, but that doesn't mean the same team is handling the coding and whatnot.

[@Kasaaz]

I think they wanted to future-proof this relic grind so it wouldn't be much harder on future players coming to the content later, but that they went too far.

[@yeetusdeleetus4697]

@@DrakeWurrum Over 85% of the CBU4 development team is working on FF16, from writers, to developers, to engineers, to artists. In a recent japanese interview, Yoshi accidentally let slip "We are running on a skeleton team" (in reference to FF14) which he then gave a "OOPS" face like he wasn't supposed to say that. 14 is being completely abandoned for 16, and if it sells well will likely spell the end of high quality content expansions in 14 as they will force Yoshida to just work on DLCs and a sequel to 16 sadly.

[@DrakeWurrum]

@@yeetusdeleetus4697 - I would suggest you cite your sources, because I haven't seen that anywhere. Regardless, I highly doubt 14 will be abandoned. It's SE's cash cow and has allowed it to continue to develop other FF titles to begin with. If they do exactly as you fear, they will be shooting their profit margins square in the chest, not just the foot. I have also read in other places that FF16 will be left with a skeleton crew once it is completed, so it's much more likely that 16 won't end up with DLC while SE continues to bank on 14's success and popularity.

[@soldierorsomething]

​@@DrakeWurrum the way i see it is that they are pouring their heart and soul to make ff16 a smashing success and after thats done, its back to maintaining ff14 with some ff16 events to make even more money, so i would hope everyone to just relax or do people really think that the 7.0 graphics update will be the last patch that ff14 will ever get? :D

[@PurpleAlzir]

I did feel ShB had a good balance of easy and grindy steps. Though also none of the relics got the relief and good feeling as finishing the last step of my DRK anima weapon on content. The light farm was absurdly long but it felt satisfying at the end.

[@Incensement]

The Eureka Relic was also potentially so massively superior to every other weapon that the light farm felt worth it. Having up to +1000 substats on your weapon was something that no other weapon could even come close to (the O12S weapons were a joke in comparison) and in Stormblood substats had a much bigger impact than in following expansions. I remember spending weeks grinding light almost every day, ending up with a weapon that had 725 crit, something that not even ShB weapons managed to achieve (granted they were better simply due to their weapon damage and general substat nerfs).

[@Tom-Pendragon]

>The light farm was absurdly long but it felt satisfying at the end. More like "thank god I'm done with that bullshit".

[@CleopatraKing]

Anima weapons were my fav. Not as stupid as the Arr ones but not as samey as the shb one

[@CleopatraKing]

​@@Tom-Pendragon yea, I hate having to put in effort for the best weapons in the expansion! Give me free items! Waaah I don't wanna work waaaaah

[@Tom-Pendragon]

@@CleopatraKing I hate HW for the "do 10 dungeons and 10 trials" or who can forget "light farming".

[@NightWhisper8462]

I think the major problems with Bozja are that while it was current content it was fine but as the content fades off it becomes increasingly harder for newer players to progress through due to the nature of the questline (getting a group to do CLL is an absolute nightmare and it is a requirement to continue the relic line). I think Bozja would have been great content as its own side story but because it was created specifically for the relic line it becomes worse over time, then you got the end steps which honestly get extremely boring, is delubrum hard? no but having to do it 5-8 times for your last 2 steps of a single weapon is a nightmare especially when there are times when no one is doing it (had way too many times where it has been just me or me and 2 other people), Heavensward has so far been the best example of how to do relics and hopefully, the later steps of this relic line become more like HW.

[@skrillzplayz9092]

Idk what server you're on but Bozja has been practically full almost all the time, It's been less than 3 weeks since I started, and I never had to wait much to progress the quests. People are always running Dalraida and you can get a PF up and be in the instance in less than 30 minutes most of the time.

[@TheObsesedAnimeFreaks]

I hate HW relics, not only is it a tome grind, it's also the most annoying BS to get because you have to have the weapon equiped in most cases that aren't just tomes, that's fine when it's current content, but it's not when you have to grind a few dungeons and are quing as a DPS, and of course if you are max lvl you can just unsync them but where's the fun in that? it becomes a chore very easily while bozja has multiple uses while it's it's own story it's also a lvling area, so it's actually quite easy to get through most instances fairly easilly. want to do DR? just pop up a PF and it will usually fill in

[@lunar69666]

@@skrillzplayz9092 on Diabolos its not even half full most of the time and when you do Diadem or CLL its usually 2-4, 10 on a good day then unless you want to waste over an hr in DR you gotta party finder to wait for at least 7 people to do it. It's not good retroactive like Eureka was

[@amandalindsey7741]

@@skrillzplayz9092 it was hard doing Bozja on Mateus I don't even want to imagine trying Bozja on a server on the Dynamis DC

[@NightWhisper8462]

@@skrillzplayz9092 Depends on what you are talking about, I talk about Bozja as the entire area and when I bring up CLL I specifically mean the Bozja Southern Front and not Zadnor which is where most people are, thing is if you haven't done CLL you can't access Delubrum or Zadnor (which is where Dalriada is). Zadnor tends to fluctuate between a few people to a decent amount whereas Southern Front tends to be barren with the odd cluster farm.

[@Earendilgrey]

After finally finishing the never ending slog that is the ARR Relic, I kind of enjoyed this break. I do hope that the next steps start to add more steps than go here and buy stuff. Though on one hand buying stuff does seem to fit the Mandeville theme since they do own the Gold Saucer.

[@randomaether]

Then why not have us do GATEs or buy the materials with their coins etc

[@stitches1110]

@@randomaether I’d hate that cause I already have a shit tone of coins I need to save up for other stuff I want, making me have to earn even more for a relic weapon would seriously suck way more.

[@randomaether]

@@stitches1110 but does give people reasons to interact with a system most just leave on the side, like other relics did, unlike now, were only tomes are needed

[@randomaether]

I do get the why though

[@stitches1110]

@@randomaether honestly though, I really don’t think the tomes are a bad solution, I think what they should have done though was make it the tomes of causality, not Astronomy that you needed to farm, as well as open up older content to that farm. Sure you’ll still have the people who optimize the fun out of it, only running the stuff that gets them the most tomes, but in that way you have a larger pool of activities to do, you increase the grind length because the weekly limit, but it’s still accessible for players who don’t have the time to dedicate to something like Eureka or Bozja.

[@Shadowlightning]

Pretty much agree with everything. While I don't necessarily mind relics becoming easier to get over time (that grind can now be spread out over an ever increasing number of jobs/relics) but I really miss the exploratory zones. I spent so much of Stormblood and Shadowbringers in Eureka/Bozja respectively. Bozja was especially great because it essentially added 3 extra alliance raids to the expansion. Raids like Dalriada and Delubrum Reginae are still some of my favorite raids in this game. The duels were also fantastic. Everyone gathering around and cheering on whoever was in the arena is something you just don't see elsewhere in the game. I was less of a fan of Eureka, especially in the early days like when Pagos was new but Bozja felt like a great evolution of the concept. Only real gripe was that the zones themselves were far more bland to look at than the Eureka zones which were beautiful. I finished like 4-5 relics over the course of Shadowbringers and it was great. Not only were they great for relics but they gave a lot of other incentives to run that content even if you weren't interested in relics. There's mounts, emotes, gear sets, hairstyles, huge amounts of money to be made, etc. You aren't just in there grinding for your relic. New people still go back and play Eureka just to get the elemental armor because it looks cool. I was one of the few people that loved the judge gear from DR and I ran that with the weekly quest every week for 6 months to get all of the sets. Unless you're an Ultimate raider, Endwalker's content patches have been severely missing this kind of long-term content. Seems like a bad combination to cut back on so much of this kind of casual grind while also committing to a longer patch cycle. You'd think the opposite would happen. I get that they need to try new things periodically, Eureka itself was an experiment, but when all those experiments are duds it feels really bad. I think we're a little deep in the content cycle for SE to course correct on these experiments but hopefully for 7.0 they don't have this same problem. Also the fact they held back this extremely short step for the .5 patch just so they could pretend that there was more here than there was also feels pretty bad. They could have just added this in 6.3 and make that patch feel more substantial rather than feeling like it was blatantly cut in half just to give underwhelming content to 6.35 but that's veering off into a different topic about SE's delayed content delivery schedule that they've leaned really hard into with Endwalker.

[@KeiFlame]

Bozja is a lot of fun when it was current. But doing it from start to finish right now tho. have fun finding people to fill CLL and Dalraida

[@KitsuKissu]

​@@KeiFlame As someone who lives in Bozja and only started within the last month. There are absolutely NO shortage of people running CLL, Dalriada or even DRS.

[@TheObsesedAnimeFreaks]

@@KeiFlame that's easy... much later in the day, and on weekends.

[@sennaka]

I *still* want to do the relic grind for the SB relic at least, ShB when I have nothing else to do immediately. Because I've been told there's an interesting story in there. However, Bozja is so flipping frustrating for me. I'm probably looking at the zone the wrong way and that's why I'm not enjoying that one. Haven't even managed upgrade 1 in there yet. However, Demi-Ozma will be *mine* someday.

[@KeiFlame]

@@KitsuKissu ohh that's good I play on Tonberry which is relatively crowded server. and there are not many people in Zadnor or Bozja now Delubrum is still ok tho Edit: typo

[@QuixoteX]

Eureka and Bozja looked like they could have been fun, but if you didn't start close to the same time as everyone else and regularly do it most people would be far ahead of you and you couldn't go places they could. Finding a group that was compatible with your current state was impossible.

[@TheSzellin]

I didn't even start Bozja until 5.56 and had no issues getting my relic weapon and getting up to Rank 25 on my own. Also each of those zones and pretty much any content in FF has a related discord filled with people who still run them for fun.

[@TheVivi13]

You can start Bojza today and still find full sessions. Last week I joined a 72/72 Southern Front and did a full CLL session lol.

[@sleepingparappa]

I have to agree.I enjoyed Eureka ( tolerated bozja)and was able to get both Ozma and Cerb, but doing it when they're no longer relevant proved to be an issue, especially in bojza. Exploratory zones are fun, but relics should not be attached to "content" that relies too much on the player base, participating in one specific area that is considered "side content." The current relic grind is quick, sure, but it doesn't limit how u get the materials for ur relics. Though I think making it a bit more beefy wouldn't hurt , SE's reasoning for the current way is that more and more people have a lot more jobs maxed these days, so if ur aiming for all relics it then becomes a [GRIND]. Finally, I am aware that discords for Eureka and bozja exist, and I appreciate their dedication to Exploratory zones, but sadly, there is no guarantee they'll be around in 10 years, and the zones becomes even more of a hassle especially for BA, and DRS. TwT(especially DRS).

[@TheSzellin]

@@sleepingparappa If youre still Playing FF in 10 years and dont have all the relics thats a you problem. Lol

[@sleepingparappa]

@@TheSzellin i meant for people who're new or we're interested but never made the time

[@SpectraLight]

I'm a fan of Bojza and Eureka, but I know not everyone is. There's just no satisfaction from getting these relics. I remember feeling a good sense of accomplishment from getting my relics from there, and really enjoyed the journey and seeing the same groups of people day to day during the grind. Idk, I hope they change course too and at least give us something with more involvement, especially on the community side of things that Bozja and Eureka gave. It doesn't have to be dreadful, but man I do feel that feeling of something missing content wise this expansion.

[@garetclaborn]

I only wish they would change the balance of these areas once an expansion is complete. They are great content, but many of the large alliance events stop working and can't be 4 or 8 manned. They are designed to be best played during the patch zergs, so they need a secondary mode for when they become old content. Would love to see zones like that in the Void

[@yourdude9942]

@@garetclaborn are you sure about this? I did Dal, Delubrum and castrum with two other people a few Times, 1 Tank two dps, often even with 3 dps but I had to rezz as summoner and take care at delubrum and the queens doom tankbuster. You get a huge echo boost. But I don't know about Eureka stuff, Arsenal is propably impossible without a full group.

[@Nodnarb59]

Bozja community sucked

[@markup6394]

Spoken right out of my soul. Doing this tomestone grind once was fine, boring but fine. Doing it twice and I'd sincerely ask, if the devs really thought this through. To whom would this appeal to?? When they said there would be no Bozja'ish content for Endwalker, I was a little worried. Sure, we had Criterion and now that I think about it, it would be so much better, if they had tied the relic grind to these new dungeons... Maybe they are working on new ones with that purpose, which might also solve the problem of rewards... But after this patch, I wont keep my hopes up :(

[@EnglishRosie]

They didn't think it through. They're very clearly stringing us along with the bare minimum at this point. It only appeals to players who don't want to play the game and just want to collect everything with zero time or effort. So much for them talking about us doing multiple relics at once - you only get to do that if you go over 1500 tomes as then you're TECHNICALLY on the next one. What innovation!

[@KGhaleon]

People clearly didn't bother to get all the other relics from prior expansions. I can think of many things that require tomes to buy, or acquire through some means. Umbrite for HW relics, aether oil, Scalepowder, Thavnairian Mists, etc

[@XenophiliusX]

I was quite surprised and disappointed when the second step was to simply buy more materials. This was made worse by the fact that, leading up to the cutscene announcing it, they had implied that combat was a requirement to bring out the weapon's potential. I fully expected a series of B or even A Rank Hunts in order to complete the step, with possible variants being old boss fights done synced. I was never a fan of the exploratory areas, which only got worse once Endwalker dropped, but the Heavensward grind felt completely reasonable and fun, even offering easier- if longer -paths for more casual players. The current weapons are just... lackluster by comparison.

[@BlackWhiteShadow]

Also I didn't rly like how they looks, except rpr and sage. And it's being worse than savage weapon, while 2 months till 6.4 with 640-660 gear so even less reasons to get it

[@oui7171]

@@BlackWhiteShadow I mean that's always been how it worked though, every step is supposed to be a bit weaker than current savage until the very last step where it's about 5 ilvl higher

[@BlackWhiteShadow]

@@oui7171 well this my first expansion and I kinda expected from word "relic" to be something greater than savage weapon, maybe I was overhyped

[@CiderSpider]

So do you prefer the easy relics, or grindy relics?

[@EFafnir]

I think you're going to end up doing easy content grinding to get any kind of relic, so how long it takes is kind of moot imo. At least with this one you can choose multiple different outlets of what easy content you're going to grind. If they want these to be as prestigious as they claim, they should lock it behind actual difficulty.

[@ItazuraP]

Grindy is fun; give us a step where we need like 50 atmas from S ranks or something :D

[@XemsiFaye]

I prefer a grindy relic, with a grocery list of tasks to do, much like the crystal sands or the Books from ARR.

[@Valkyrie_Veil]

Grindy. By a long shot. I'm a very casual gamer (extreme fights are as deep as I go), so the more casual grindy content of relics was always great for me. I've done them all from ARR until now. I'm super disappointed by this stage of the relic. I was hoping for something to keep me looking forward to logging in every day.

[@MrOctopusprime]

I like this approach honestly. It makes the prospect of getting every relic completed feel far less onerous. I think the increasing number of jobs is a factor in why they decided to go the tomestone route too.

[@laxxboy20]

Cider so disappointed he couldn't even bear to add another 16 seconds 🤣

[@KuMikuPa]

Thank you so much, but i'll take a break from grinding in this expansion. I've had enough of it back in ShB. As someone, who got every resistance weapon, i'm absolutely terrified to think how many fates i had to complete, how many times i had to run ARR, HW and SB alliance raids, Alexander, Omega and Eden raids (or pray to RNGesus for mats to drop in Bozja), how many times i had to do Castrum Lacus Litore, Dalriada. And what about Delubrum? 15 of them for EACH weapon before they had to nerf it? And what if people didn't used lost actions? I remember all the complaints people had back then. Besides, if they added another Eureka/Bozja, it would be same dead in next expansion so new players had problem getting these old relics. I also work 12h per day now, and don't want to spend all my time in game for relic farm, going through same stuff as i described above for 19 (nineteen) jobs. And yes, people will complain just about everything in this game... Grindy relics? People complain. Easy relics? People complain. Can't make everyone happy.

[@LadyMulti-InfinityGrandPalace]

I was thinking they were going to tie it to criteria dungeon and was disappointed that they didn't. It could just easily be explained off that they had the pieces that you needed up upgrade your weapon and you'd have to go through and fight all three bosses (so running it 3 times or something) to get the different pieces or what-not.. It's not that hard to think of a simple idea like that. I mean.. those of us who had all jobs to 80 ran DR like...a lot... in Shadowbringers so we'd do the other dungeon as well.

[@asquirrel2293]

Very good take. Starting with Tomestones is fine, but I really hope that the rest of the steps are harder and give longevity to Variant and Criterion content. I kind of like that you can get to a glowy step without too much grind, but I hope that finishing the weapon drives people into other forms of content, or even old exploration zones. I don't mind if they let us double up with old relics, I just want those zones fresh and populated.

[@latorn]

I think we're all really feeling the effects of a lack of an endgame zone. 5.x had Bozja/Zadnor, 4.x Eureka, and even 3.x had Diadem. I really think something big is coming in the future.

[@ahorseofcourse7283]

All of those zones sucked and they're veritable ghost towns. Square would be stupid to waste resources on another failure like that again.

[@latorn]

@@ahorseofcourse7283 Still active on aether, but you obviously didn't play when they were current endgame.

[@Zedrinbot]

Really wish we had some fate farming or tie ins to the variant dungeon or even Eureka Orthos. SHB had a sweet spot, save for needing to do DR so much for one relic. (I like DR, but I don't like to the degree of "5 times per relic") I'm also worried the devs will see the feedback and overcompensate, making the next step unbearably grindy and repetitive, worse than the ARR relic grind. At least the crafter / gatherer relics are alright I guess?

[@CiderSpider]

I wanted FATE farming so bad T_T I'm actually a little afraid of the opposite effect for the next steps, though. Since the first steps are so easy, there could be backlash if the next step is too hard. I agree on Shadowbringers having a good balance, so hopefully we see something more akin to that for the remaining steps.

[@coffeeavenger]

DR made me hate my life. Granted, I chose to do 8 relic weapons, but 5 times per relic was 5 times running with people not using essences, dropping out halfway through, or dropping immediately. It was excruciating.

[@Tchan1337]

It'd be nice if at least they had current relic steps for the old zones. Personally, I was extremely burned out from the previous steps for older relics

[@outtagoodnamesdangit]

Couldn't agree more. Long grinds aren't always the answer, but I hope the next step involves the variant dungeons, island sanctuary, and the new Eureka deep dungeon. It doesn't need to be a long grind to be interesting and challenging and feel like you've earned something special.

[@hasseo195]

No deep dungeon. I wasnt even able to find a group to finished even the first 50 floors of palace of death.

[@i0423x]

No island sanctuary or deep dungeons. Please noo. I was able to grind Bozja to unlock almost all weapons but it was just so ungodly grindy.

[@DawnAfternoon]

It's not even about the grind, it's the fact that they're not using the content they have effectively. If Criterion dungeon was dead on arrival you'd think it's a good idea to inject an efficient way to grind relic into it to revitalize it (with slower, easier yet grindier alternative of Variant ofc) but nope. It's more tomes. In fact it's the exact same tome grind.

[@akiahara]

I think variant makes sense, but not the others so much. I haven't touched island sanctuary since day one and have zero interest in that. I think forcing people into those things that are supposed to be casual and completely optional is a huge mistake... just like they've already done with Hildibrand.

[@Fexghadi]

The main problem right now with the "relics are usually tied to FATEs" argument is that we have bicolor gemstones nowadays, and fates are a very mind-numbing, unappealing kind of content in the first place. Sure, running the same old 70 normal raid ad nauseam for ShB relics isn't much more enthralling, but the constant need to travel between fates, and even having to wait for one to spawn makes that content ten times worse to farm when a lot of players are active at the same time (and "a lot" means more than 4 in the case of fates), so there is not much else they can use to make relics accessible to the more casual side of the playerbase. Relics were never interesting to me in the first place - the reward simply never being worth it unless you're one of those savage parsers in .58 patches lul - and the shiny skins that I can grab off the marketboard for a few hundred thousands of gil very often look better than those horrendous grinds which, let's be honest, are already 90% of this game's content. So in all honesty, if you are into something grindy, make a PF and grab a few people who'll join your static for it.

[@reshypoo9447]

There's usually a Hildibrand trial, so guessing they'll tie one of the stages into there somehow. I'm more a fan of the HS grind, where doing instances count towards a gauge to fill. Something you get rewarded for hard-grinding if you want, or take it slow and it'll just take longer. Was also kinda looking forward to a ShB fate grind tbh. Do them anyway for gemstones, but extra incentive is nice.

[@pharys]

I do not have anything against the new relic. I think it is fine for them to be as they are right now especially when gated behind the Manderville questline. I for example only have 1 upgraded weapon. I dont have any more because im not grinding tomestones but it is nice to know that if i grind tomestones I will get them. I was also using tomestones for items for crafting or pots so i am not up to my eyeballs in relics. But more spwcifically i think it is okay to have variety in the types of relics. Endwalkers being straighrforward is a welcome change. I did not care for the Bozja relic which relies alot on other people and means you will be almost not be able to do more than one if you resub later than the main patch. I hated Eureka. Aside from Hydatos and Anemos it was truly awful and way more reliant on other people and other factors than Bozja. It didn't feel like I was on an epic quest. It felt like it sucked. Heavensward has the most varied and I think thats cool. I think it is the funnest relic series to do. The Zodiac ones from ARR are awful terrible terrible awful ouch horrible long. But they look damn good. In the end though, I think the devs believe that those previous weapons will always be there for people who haven't done them. So having a relic weapon that is locked behind a sidequest and behind tomestones that you can get from any activity you choose is fine in my opinion. I believe people will complain either way. If the step was long people would complain, as it is people are complaining. (edit: i mean people are even complaining about an ugly wooden chair rn) One thing people have to understand that the devs are doing is pumping out options of relics. No two relic series are the same. And because of this, there is something for everyone. Also fk Eureka Pagos. Just had to say that.

[@CiderSpider]

I love Eureka lmao. I agree that different styles of relics are good. I just think that these ones are a little too easy right now. Many longtime players (especially the completionist types who like these relic grinds) have already done the Manderville quests, and in some cases they did them years ago. So it feels a bit hollow to just walk up and buy your relic with minimal input.

[@PrincessofKeys]

And the Heavensward relic was the first one I have completed. I have started on ARR and Bozjan and never set foot on Eureka after I unlocked it. I assume if they go a route it would be something like Heavensward instead.

[@marcuscorvin9998]

@@CiderSpider hey Cider. Fellow completionist here. I personally was very happy about the new weapons being easy. I got so burned out with the Shadowbringers weapons and having to run DR 255 times. And this was before they nerfed the requirement from 15 runs down to 5, so I was a bit bitter. I don’t think a lot of completionist players want to be spending a year getting all weapons especially if they have a full time job. But that’s just me, I can be wrong. I am seeing a lot of more people in eureka and bozja recently (probably for that relic grind itch) and given that the design of relics was to stimulate old content, maybe this relic was so people can catch up on previous relics. I think a grind is good when you can say “yay I did it” when you finish instead of “f*ck this thing I’m glad its over”. Anyways, be well 🙂. Back to 3000 chocobo races, 2000 mentor roulettes, pvp mount grinds, and world class troller title 🤪. Take cares.

[@KM-sy5lk]

I was so surprised and disappointed at the 2nd step being just another tomestone purchase. I enjoyed doing the previous relics, they gave me a solid thing to work towards and gave me a real sense of accomplishment when I got them. Your video basically mimics my thoughts, it's very good.

[@manic221]

I think at this stage this is the best way to handle it - unique content by its nature has a very limited “shelf life” in regards to other players so trying to do it after that fact is an impossibility. Try and do a DR run now without a dedicated group ain’t happening. Also we are now living in a world where almost the entire player base is playing multiple jobs - and the kind of grind we had before is untenable in an atmosphere where it is expected that a player will do it atleast 3 times but potentially more. The new method means that these relics can continue to be acquired forever you won’t need a special group or try and do old content that players aren’t doing and you can unlock them passively for each job you need. In the big picture for me atleast it is UNQUESTIONABLY the better way to do it, I do not think hiding BIS weapons behind a ridiculous grind that only a very small subset of players would want to engage in is the right way to do it. Also as a side note last time Bozja meant we missed out on a Deep Dungeon and if that is our choice I’d take a deep dungeon EVERY time

[@DeadEye935]

Yeah, I don't want to have to farm CT raids or speedrun antitower 20 times, but I dunno I was looking forward to adding something to do in the game alongside doing my weeklies and occasional dailies. I know the devs don't want players to feel "forced" into having to log in every day, and that's a great philosophy that's absolutely of benefit to the game, but I also think we need stuff that can drive the community together. As easy as tomestones are to acquire, there are some downsides too. For one, they're mutually exclusive, you can't work towards multiple relic steps at the same time, you really only can work for one. You have to be at level cap to get the tomestones, so you can't level anything at the same time. Not to mention, if you craft stuff at all, you'll need mats that are locked behind tomestones, especially if you craft your own pots for raiding. It honestly feels pretty restrictive if you play the game beyond the most casual level possible. the good thing is they absolutely have time to course correct, and with how many people are talking about this in particular, I feel like they're definitely gonna spice things up a bit

[@Badgerpaw]

At the very least, the most recent quest in the series hints at a new Trial, and considering we seem posed to end on only 6 otherwise, it might also be giving us an Extreme version.

[@Corvus7159]

We'll have MSQ trials for .4 and .5 to end with 7, as it's very unlikely Golbez is the only remaining fight. They've got to do something for a 7th Lynx mount (which wouldn't be from a one-off trial like a Hildy trial, they've never done that), and personally I'm hoping for Zeromus.

[@jacobkern2060]

You'd think that even though it's a resource dump relic, that you'd at least see some variance in where you can get the resources from. Maybe have one step require stuff bought with Nuts or Bicolor Gemstones, or have an alternative for one step be bought with tribal currency instead of just tomes. Just to switch things up a little bit.

[@Dharengo]

...It's tomestones.. You can get them anywhere you want. It has all of the variance.

[@oui7171]

@@Dharengo No it doesn't, it's litteraly the same step every single time and you get it by just.. playing

[@Dharengo]

@@oui7171 Yes... So you choose... What parts of the game to get them from... And which ones to skip....

[@oui7171]

@@Dharengo You litteraly get it by playing the game the same way you would normaly, it's barely a grind at all, you just do roulettes everydays, I don't get what's stimulating about it, especially in an expansion that's lacking in content

[@Dharengo]

@@oui7171 Is there a problem with having a reason to actually do roulettes? It lets me spend more time in the game than I normally would.... Not that I particularly *like* roulettes.

[@BlazeTK]

Excellent take, but as someone who has been playing almost daily since 1.0 days, devs have been pretty on the nose about their disdain for relic weapons. For years they’ve said they’d like to just cut them from content completely. With how much the fanbase has complained about them for years it’s no surprise when they have zero motivation to make them and even if they did they’d just hear over and over how they missed the mark yet again on relics, they do this. Like, this is what happens. I don’t get why people are upset when they’ve been pretty damn transparent about it. Go watch any live letter when Yoshi-P is asked about future relic content. He’ll tell you, “hopefully there is none.”

[@CrazedWhiteGaming]

I've been on a heavy burnout for 14 because of Savage (P8S Gorgon prog baby) and was hopping the Relics would give me a reason to log on every day to progress them. Maybe tieds to the new Deep Dungeon to give me a reason to venture into it. But when some of my squad said "Yeah, you just buy it again" I was just lost all interest. The Expac is just swinging and missing at so many things.

[@Fortyozkilluh]

after surviving stormblood and bozja i love the fact theres not much grind. they just need to add something other than relic grinding so people have something to do. the fact i can do what i want and still work towards my relic feels really good. i hate being funneled into a system thats just going to be pretty much dead in an expansion.

[@omensoffate]

Surviving? Grow up lol

[@amandalindsey7741]

True, I HATED Bozja even though I am lv 25 on my main. Don't even get me started on Eureka

[@Fortyozkilluh]

@@omensoffate you mean by not taking things too literal and nit-picking things you dont like, ok will do bud.

[@xuto2693]

Couldn't put it any better than you did, and you said a lot I wouldn't have thought to but 100% feel. I cannot emphasize enough how much you nailed the missed opportunities for bringing people together and livening up content that a more grindy step would have brought. And the sense of satisfaction of completing it. And yeah, the lack of steps combined with the lack of activity. It's awful. Thanks for making this, it's 11/10 for how I feel.

[@dappercrow8138]

At the same time a lot of those steps outside of Eureka or Bozja or the light grind just end up being grind this dungeon or crystal tower 15-20 times. It's practically the same thing just without the frustration

[@xuto2693]

@@dappercrow8138 You've got a point, but I think this would have been a good opportunity to balance a bit of grind without that kind of excess. Try something new. This is just...not enough in so many ways.

[@dappercrow8138]

@@xuto2693 yeah I also would have liked some sort of grind that didn't involve grind the generic currency, but I'm kinda holding out since it's still tied to Hildibrand and it might throw a weird step from left field

[@garetclaborn]

Having one, and only one, relic weapon in this style is enjoyable for me. I took it as a reward for Hildy content which hasn't really had anything big. This also lets all the influx of new players get something showy without being overly complicated. The frustration with missing long-term content is reasonable. Personally would like to see exploratory zones in the Void despite how things are going. But that's neither here nor there lol. Doing relic lines this way repeatedly would be a major letdown. I suspect this will always be limited to Manderville weapons and they will split of from here even while other relic lines happen in future expansions. A situation where you have traditional relic quests per-expansion and an easier tome relic Manderville that keeps getting upgrades with the Hildy quests.

[@DeadMimicked]

While I did enjoy the fact that these relics were much easier to get, I think it's because the biggest reason I took a year+ break was from being burnt out trying to do Bozja and the Bozjan relic. That being said, I do agree that the relics should reward effort specifically geared towards building that relic. Personally I think the Heavensward relics are the best of the lot in terms of process but that's just me.

[@gerohikaru2712]

TBH I think using the weapon was a neat way too. TBH The tomestone stuff was okay but I would've preferred a hybrid of both wherein you have some segments that are tome based but others maybe can be story driven or something like Bozja. I liked how Heavensward actually made it so that you're INVOLVED in making a weapon and the memorability of the Anima series is because you created a living weapon that will always be by your side and that it's YOUR efforts that gave it this feeling of accomplishment. If they made the relics more involved like us hunting for materials open field or through grinding (Like killing fates that drop said materials.). It would've been better. Lessen the grind but keep the feeling of involvement.

[@Dharengo]

Relics never rewarded effort though. It just rewarded having no life.

[@kendric99]

Thanks for putting into words and broadcasting exactly what I've been feeling since 6.35 dropped. I was really excited to have a reason to log in more than once or twice a week again. I wanted the grindy thing to work towards. But instead, it's just more of exactly the same. So disappointing.

[@AnonymousIIIX]

Eureka and Bozja are dead now it's almost impossible to solo, I like that the new relic it doesn't require a group to complete.

[@animo005]

These relic have left my inner masochist so unsatisfied that I have throw myself into doing ultimate in pf... alone.... I have never done ultimate

[@judicatoraven]

I feel like a mix would be good. ShB relics were great to have the initial grind but then making it easier to get secondaries felt like a breath of fresh air. I think they could do the tomestone step *if* there was a quest before that took effort to unlock this easy part.

[@ianharac5153]

I liked Bozja (never did Eureka) because it wasn't just the relic driving me forward, it was unlocking the zone and progressing the story, gathering lore. I keep hoping this will eventually spawn that. The most optimistic outlook I can have is they're preparing for 7.0 to have a greatly enlarged story, or, they'll be redoing all the ARR zones to bring them up, graphically and story wise, to modern standards.

[@DogiTheWallcrusher]

You can simulate the old grind by mindlessly doing fates and old dungeons, then celebrate every 20th one as if an atma dropped.

[@swstegall]

I've done multiple relics stretching back to ARR. In my opinion, we have never had it as good as we did back in Stormblood, with Shadowbringers being a fairly close second for its relic. Back in Stormblood, we got our first large-scale instance in Eureka with four large zones in Anemos, Pagos, Pyros, and Hydatos, AND we got our second deep dungeon in Heaven on High. The relic for Stormblood was integrated tightly to Eureka, and although it was challenging and somewhat repetitive, the nature of the large instances really made weapon progress feel rewarding. Shadowbringers followed a similar approach with Bozja and Zadnor, and had interesting alliance raid-like content interspersed. Now, we get no large-scale instances, and the relics themselves are trivial to collect. Personally, I think the large instance model with unique mechanics would work well in future expansions for the expansion MSQ. Each expansion gets a unique mechanic like aethereal wheel and/or pyros actions, and each expansion gets its own level like the elemental level. I think that would be really interesting, and I wish the devs would explore tighter integrations from these large zones.

[@PureRandumosity]

Personally I love the exploratory zones and was very sad to hear there won’t be any this expansion. It was a huge form of content with the different zones, collections, new items, boss fights, raid. If you weren’t raiding it was an integral part in keeping you around and for people who do raid it was even more content to enjoy.

[@natebroadus8474]

I do hope the next steps are a bit grindier, but I'm glad the first two steps aren't. I actually feel like I can see myself grinding almost all of them, and I would never have said that about any of the other expansion's relics.

[@one_eyeddd473]

Lmao BC THERES NO GRIND

[@zipzap8937]

You aren't supposed to be able to finish all of them so quickly. smfh

[@natebroadus8474]

@@one_eyeddd473 which is why I said I hope the next steps are a bit grindier. Well... I shouldn't say I hope--it's more like I won't mind. At this point, I intend to get almost all of them. 1500 tomes per, 17 of 20 jobs (that I intend to do), so that's 25,500 tomes, and that's just for step 2. There's a grind, bro. There's a Goddamn grind. XD If the next steps are grindier, even more still.

[@natebroadus8474]

@@zipzap8937 I won't finish them that quickly. I don't live in the game, and when I do play, there are other things I want to do. This way, I can earn currency while doing the things I want. If they decide to make the grind more "grindy" in future patches, more power to them. I'm just not going to bitch about it when I'm already looking at farming for 25k tomes to complete all the step 2 relics I want, in addition to the 25k tomes I'll need for the first step. The grind is there, it's just not wrapped up in a Eureka or Bozja that you're forced into whether you want to be there or not (some don't).

[@tatsuru4748]

I purchased about 5 of the first step and purposely held myself back from buying more because I imagined I wouldn't have the time to do the grind for all of them, and was already getting into the "oh my god I'm gonna be SO busy when 6.35 drops" mindset. Needless to say, it was a letdown. Thankfully I was able to direct that pent-up grinding fever into Eureka, that I've been putting off since forever and only now decided to give it a try, and found out it's surprisingly fun

[@CamperCarl00]

I miss having an exploratory zone. Bozja was a huge highlight for me in Shadowbringers, and tying the relics to it just made sense. Variant dungeons definitely should have been the required content for the second relic step. A simple, "fight these 3 bosses" would have sufficed and drawn players who would have passed on variant dungeons to play the content. Then they would also be able to include Criterion Dungeons in the third step to gather rare currency to upgrade.

[@Fexghadi]

Criterion is low-key savage. The only thing you'll accomplish by forcing casuals into that content is outcries on reddit and twitter. The fact it's 4-player content, meaning one single person making too many mistakes will draw all the attention to themselves infinitely faster than in 24+player content and you have a recipe for disaster on your hands.

[@CamperCarl00]

@@Fexghadi it would be one method, Variant dungeons would be the only "required" step. I would think that it's either buy them with Criterion currency or go do Nier Automata alliance raids for a chance to drop them.

[@DawnAfternoon]

@@CamperCarl00 Alternatively would be to have Criterion drop a huge amount of relic materials on a weekly basis but have a slower, easier but more grindy alternative with Variants.

[@brianmah5965]

The exploratory zones are the biggest loss to me because you usually get some more customization even if limited to those areas. Lost Actions did so much to keep the game fresh in Shadowbringers, even if I couldn't utilize them in Savage, but there were raids to do so. In terms of how these relics are acquired, I don't hate it. I don't like it. It does mean I don't have to be on the relic train from the get go lest I be subject to the whims of the community 2 years from now and being able to just know I'll be able to do them now or at anytime with little difference between them is nice (And when they move to poetics, being able to double up if I feel iike working on Eureka or doing some Bozja on the side is a plus) but again, the loss of a exploratory zone sucks, and while I like Island Sanctuary, I don't know if the trade off was worth it until we get more island customization.

[@SakuraShade]

I have a few theories as to why the devs are taking this approach. 1: this is a response to the backlash received by the people who didn't want to do the Manderville questline. So they made the steps easy so that the questline would serve as the so-called "main grind" (even though it only takes a few hours to do all the quests). 2: fitting the Manderville theme, the steps will all be extremely easy, up until the final step, which will be a big grind wall to mess with the player. 3: they're trying to appeal to the massive amount of new players that arrived in Endwalker, as this will be their first current tier of relics, and don't want to overload them with the usual grind. As another note, this could also be the devs leaning into what relics seem to serve as: catch-up weapons. For the current tier of gear, 630 is your max ilvl. For 6.2 you could only reach that level through doing Savage content, but 6.3 allows people who aren't interested in/cannot complete Savage content to also reach 630, as they allow you to buy the augmentation materials with raid tokens or nuts. However, even though you could get every piece of gear to 630, you couldn't get your weapon to 630, until the relic upgrade came along. Yes it's mostly meant for cosmetics, but it still serves as a catch-up weapon for those that can't do Savage. And for those people, not having to do a big long grind for once is probably a nice change. As much as I'd like something to do, it's fine as a tomestone cost. Some people just don't have the time, and Yoshi-P has already said he doesn't want to design the game to constantly make people feel like they have to be playing it all the time. Personally, I prefer this style, or the Anima weapons vs. Bozja and Eureka. Though I admit, I might be biased, as I started shortly after Endwalker released, so I wasn't around for when the Eureka and Bozja weapons were current content. Which unfortunately, when those zones aren't current anymore, it makes doing those relics much harder. Not because the content is harder, but because the population has dipped enough that certain required steps simply aren't something you can just queue up for and do. Take Delubrum Reginae as an example. I'm stuck on the quest that requires completion, purely because that particular piece of content is no longer relevant to the majority of the playerbase, so I can't simply queue for it and complete the instance. So while it could be a bit more than just throwing tomes at the problem, I really don't think they need to be grindy. Take your downtime between patches to play something else, or as some might put it "touch some grass" if you'd prefer.

[@CiderSpider]

I don't see relics as a catch-up weapon, personally. If you aren't raiding, you don't need max ilevel to be caught up, and there are plenty of other ways to get gear that's only slightly worse than max ilevel. I don't think it's unreasonable to want something semi-casual to work on inbetween patches, especially since it's something that we've always had in the past.

[@SakuraShade]

@@CiderSpider They aren’t really, as they’re mostly meant for the cosmetic aspect, yes. But they still do serve the purpose as a catch-up weapon. Yes there’s other weapons that you can get that are similar in strength, but at the moment, the current tier of relic is second only to the Savage/TOP weapons, while being much easier to get over anything else. Which for a certain subset of players, is actually quite useful. Using myself as an example, I’m just getting into raiding, with a group that is also relatively inexperienced. The relic weapon being so easy to get has given me just a bit of extra power to try and carry just a bit harder to push the rest of my group over the edge of a clear. I’m also not saying there should be no grind whatsoever. I personally don’t want to see the special zones be tied to relics anymore due to the issues I mentioned above. I also don’t want *every* step to be 1500 tomes. Something like the Anima grind was more my speed, dungeon, trial, fate, alliance/normal raid grinding, with a mix of tomes and seals. But that’s just me. I know people love super long involved grinds, and some hate them. imo, grind for the sake of grinding something isn’t particularly fun, so there has to be a good balance. Even the Bozja grind wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t for requiring DR completions, especially on a certain repeatable step. Whereas the ARR relic grind looks horrendous to complete. Happy medium between no grind at all and a grind mountain would be preferable to most, but if the dev team is going to keep an extreme I’d prefer it to be the former over the latter.

[@ExcelExcel]

Counterpoint: Grinding is *not* content and you can easily replicate the grind requirements yourself if you're really missing it. There are all kinds of ways to interact with other players, including setting up FATE farming groups to grind out your Endwalker ranks and gemstones.

[@liquidefreet]

It is just the first two steps come on. The first two step of the anima relic is litterally doing a few fate and 10 current dungeons. The first step of the ARR relics too. The first two step of the Bozjan weapons are also similar : a few fates.

[@SuperIchi]

As someone who has been through both Eureka and Bozja, at this point I'm only interested in the looks of a relic weapon itself for glam purposes, so having it be less of a grind is a VERY welcome change of pace for me. I have other games to play and stuff to do aside from FFXIV so anything that reduces the amount of time required to get what I want, I'm a-OK with. There are plenty of other things to grind towards in-game such as blue mage spells (which I did, I have all spells currently), chocobo racing/breeding (at pedigree 4 of 9 currently), and of course people are free to pursue previous relics if they so choose. Not everyone has every single relic that exists already. As for the community aspect, I'm more than happy running roulettes with my FC friends as we amass tomestones together. If you're trying to hang out and chat with randos, there's always plenty of people in shout chat in Ul'dah and Limsa, or in-game parties and clubs to go to.

[@yeetusdeleetus4697]

With your logic the game, and every other game should just be reduced to cookie clicker, you just click the "play" button and it plays the rest for you, after all why should games have content when there are other games to play? What an actual braindead take lmfao

[@daanroelofs119]

@@yeetusdeleetus4697 go play some other more grindy game if you want that and stop being so freaking toxic. Less grindy and more accessibility =/= easy braindead. Have you cleared all raids MINE or beaten all ultimates? If not, waste your time on that. Don't want to do that stuff, then you also don't need the weapon

[@yeetusdeleetus4697]

@@daanroelofs119 Lmao yes, I've cleared the tier for months and cleared TOP and every previous Ultimate, like most raiders. If you think clicking one button in a shop menu doesn't = easy braindead, then you're the braindead one in the room, not everyone else, sorry bud.

[@SuperIchi]

@@yeetusdeleetus4697 Not at all what I said The core of the game is its MSQ and its dungeons/trials/raids, and if I wasn't interested in long-form gameplay, why would I be playing this MMO at all? I'm more than happy for actual content of the game to be as long as it needs to be. What I want reduced is the amount of grind time pursuing specific items. I want that sword because it looks cool, has a pretty glow, and matches my glam's aesthetic, not because I'm impressed by how long it took to get it. I want that racing chocobo mask because it's now dyable, but I hate that I have to raise eight racing chocobos to rank 40 to get it. I like chocobo racing, but until I reach that pedigree nine chocobo, the one that matters, that I don't have to retire for the sake of an item I want, there's no reason for me to care about any of the pedigree 1-8 chocobos, so it becomes another boring and slow grind. If I only had to raise a pedigree 2 chocobo to get the mask, I'd still happily pursue it and then actually put effort into raising an actual competent race chocobo and still be playing that content.

[@hansstevanus]

Love your take on the current situation! I myself has been holding back on doing FATES in the Endwalker zones as I thought I might be able to do it simultaneously with collecting materials for the relic weapons. I do hope that it will be a requirement in the next patch.

[@akiathered]

I'm honestly glad we didn't get any new exploratory zones this expansion. I also don't mind a second round of simply purchasing my items for the relic upgrade. But I will agree that it would be nice to see future steps utilize content we already have and give those spots a sorely needed boost. I honestly would like to see them recycle Bojza/Zadnor some more and encourage more life there instead of making a new area. There is some great and fun experiences to be had there that have felt lackluster and kind of empty imo since 6.0. Also, don't think I didn't notice that Lala-Lifter. Nice.

[@Priogen]

Being too busy with RL, I for once glad that it is easy to get the relic weapon this time around. Not everyone has hours of free time to grind.

[@jsz116]

I completely agree. Bozja had so many good design decision. Extra raids, plus all the field bosses which felt like trial. It felt great to finally master the red chocobo encounter. Plus it threw me into a bunch of old content I had skipped because I was a newer player. I am also one who hates the Hillibrand quest line and am slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn't know the unlocked the relics until watching this video >.>. I had completed almost every other quest in the game, but had no desire to finish that one.

[@Nodnarb59]

Bozja was trash

[@platinummyrr]

I was incredibly surprised when we didn't get FATEs. Tying steps to old content or even to lower popularity new content would have been good, I think. I especially like when it throws you into 8man+ content where you have a chance to chat and get to know others who are also working on the same stuff. HW had a lot of tome steps, but its also worth bearing in mind that I think a lot of the old steps that are tome based now weren't necessarily doable with tomes at launch, or intended alternative methods with tomes as a backup. I think that would be suitable here and would have helped a lot. I really hope that we get something new that isn't just 1500 more tomes again for the next steps. While its... somewhat nice to immediately get the weapon, the fact that its better than augmented tomestones now and only cost 1500 tomes + time to run hildibrand is frustrating. While I don't want the return of the ARR books, at least a little reason to vary my gameplay would be nice.

[@knightsolaire5351]

My thought is that hildibrand weapons MAY be required to progress the hildibrand quest series and it could be a problem to lock it behind a many many hour grind for people just playing the funni naked man throwing his son across continents quests. However there may be an (imo much needed) change in design philosophy where they don’t make the grind needlessly long until it’s actually going to become the best weapon in that patch cycle.

[@coreyporter8640]

I'd rather choose how to grind tombstones than be forced to run crystal tower 25 times, or light farm.

[@Paraguai123]

A few disagreements with this video: The devs did say that the side content for post-endwalker wouldn't be getting big changes because they are focusing on FF16, QoL changes which we had A LOT, the 10 year event which seems to be something huge for the next patch and preparing for 7.0 launc which rumor says it's gonna be a starting point for new players (Dunno how that would work but it doesn't seem easy to implement), so all of this was expected and should have tempered expectations from players. The fact that they are using a big backlog content for relic weapons should be proof enough that they did not had time to make a big side content for relic weapons. Also also, Bozja was not great at the beginning. Being able to farm outside Bozja wasn't added until the third step IIRC. It was something like that, and I know a lot of people do not care for Bozja at all. All of my friends HATE both Bozja and Eureka because they do not have the time to grind actively instead of passively like in ARR or HW (for a few steps anyway), forced to farm for mettle or elementals for hours before they can get the quest for the relic weapon wasn't their cup of tea. All in all, I think we deserve and needed some time off from grinding big stuff for now. I am certain that we'll get a new way of farming for relics in the future because they'll have to write a new story for it and not lock it behind a backlog.

[@caldera1134]

I've been in a position lately where after I'm done doing the primary patch content I do daily logins for my island and frontline roulette and not much else because I have a big gaming backlog I want to work on. For people like me these easier relic steps have been more convenient but at the same time I do understand the sentiment that there's less community bonding now and it probably would've been a good idea to make content like deep dungeons tie in more.

[@weeb9384]

I think the purchase of the three items for the first step was fine, but i was also disappointed that it was so easy to do the second step and felt no engagement with it

[@nerdicusdorkum2923]

One of my favorite steps, even if it was functionally worthless by the time I did it, was customizing my HW relic weapon's stats. Also, one of the grinds I am currently doing right now is attempting to get 4 million MGP, so I can finally grab a multiseater mount without having to do savage/extreme content or pay the cash shop. In order to do so, I have gotten into chocobo racing. So... it would warm my heart if they made a step where you can customize the stats... by having it spirit bonded by a chocobo! It would be actively wielded by your bird (as some sort of cosmetic) during races to grind out something silly like 'choco-teria'. With the power of said 'choco-teria' that you then meld to your weapon influenced by how powerful your bird already is, with pedigree 9 (max tier) birds giving the largest amount of stats per meld, reducing grind time. It sounds like something whacky and goofy befitting the mauderville questline, as well as a cool, casual grind that not a lot of people have done. Just a dumb, goofy idea on what they could do better for the Mauderville relic weapons.

[@SDunne]

All I know is I don't ever want to go back to doing something as mind numbing as Books for the ARR relics. I quite enjoyed the easier method this time for a change & I can already see the posts for the next step complaining that's too hard if they go completely in the opposite direction & have a ridiculously hard grind with RNG or timegated components.

[@CiderSpider]

I honestly don't hate the ARR book steps. I feel like the light grind (back when it was synced) would have been the worst part lol

[@SDunne]

@Cider Spider Having to camp a spot waiting for a F.A.T.E. to spawn was just the worst imo bud.

[@afre989]

​@@SDunne but you can go to other servers to find the FATEs to help speed up the process.

[@SDunne]

@@afre989 That's still a time sink imo, instead of actually doing something.

[@Chippaization]

if we could grab all the books at once that would be nice

[@providencebreaker1558]

One could argue the "grind" this time was doing the Hildebrand quest chain, but I think they underestimated how many people already did it.

[@kazenon]

The first step being a tomestone one made sense for me as it gets people on the ladder easily, but yeah the second step surprised me... They also seemed to be stronger than usual for this step (I expected i625) but I think the current raid tier causing people issues with P8S made the Devs drop the difficulty through the floor and boost the stats to try and get people through it. They've done something similar a couple of times before when raid tiers were harder-than-average for the stats, but not usually for the steps

[@eighttimesnine]

I reckon the first step being the tomestone step on release felt like the patch cycle winding up to unleash a Proper Relic Grind from step 2, but then it just.... didnt do that

[@Pyoromo]

Im suspecting they are going to do something unexpected for next couple of steps. It already shows in the RP event it makes you go through. Also Crafters relics making has a tie in nod to events in manderville weapons aswell. So both might be required is my guess?

[@NovaTheVERmin]

I doubt that both would be required as it'd be forcing people to get a crafter to level 90 which isn't easily fundable for most people

[@AzureRoxe]

Do you legit not understand how MORONIC it would be to force people to level a Crafter for their COMBAT Relics?

[@flamemasterelan]

@@AzureRoxe To be fair, you don't have to level a crafter just because crafting is required. They did it in ARR and HW. However, the price of getting a relic if you didn't was astronomical, and they've all but confirmed they're not doing that again.

[@KitsuneSoup]

For people who got mad it was locked behind Hildebrand, you could just as easily say it's irritating/unfair/annoying that current expansion mounts are locked behind Extremes. Weirdly, you have to do some content you might not enjoy to get something you want. EDIT: Also, you might try just not doing it. That's what triggers the devs to really do something. When they see people are ignoring new content, they start asking why.

[@medivh1035]

There are ways to get around that. I just use textool to swap model so l get to have a relic weapon in my hand without any grinding. For mounts, after echo is added, you can pay gil for 7 man carry. So, l still get to do what l like and get the things l want from the content l don't like

[@KitsuneSoup]

@@medivh1035 I can't comment on model-swapping, but I think if you use the statement that you can just pay for the mount, then the solution is to make them marketable and cut out the bit of work. I think that would irritate a lot more people, because there is a huge stigma around the glut of people who have Legend gear and titles who don't know anything about the fight and will admit they bought it. It ruins the specialness, which is what I believe the video is about. I'm only talking about the complaint that you have to do like... forty minutes of skippable cutscenes to get the relics, which is no different than the days upon days of 'gittin' gud' so you can farm mounts. Heck, I've heard people complain it's not fair that they have to finish an expansion to get access to the relics of that expansion, that the MSQ is boring and they just want the cool stuff. Same principle.

[@surgeofgaming6405]

I think the biggest issue with the Manderville questline is that, well, it’s Solo instances back to back. Your not going through the relic adventure with your friends, your just forced to sit back and watch Yoshi-P’s improv group run around like headless chocobos. It’s funny, but it won’t last unlike the relic grind of eld.

[@KS-fh5lx]

Man, when I found out that all you had to do for the relic weapons was get tomestones, I was relieved. I got the paladin, gunbreaker, and dark knight relics for shadowbringers. I also got the paladin relic for heavensward before I found out I could unsync fights. I can confidently say that getting them was not enjoyable. There may have been multiple ways to obtain the items you needed, but I'm willing to bet that most people took the path of least resistance and just did the same content over and over. And even if they didn't, you'd still end up repeating the same content required to get the items you need for the relic. No matter how fun the content is at first, doing the same things for hours on end gets old really fast. Grinding is not hard or rewarding, it's just exhausting. By the time I was done with the weapons I wanted, my thoughts were "Sick I finally have the weapons" and "I am so glad that slogfest is over". Not to mention that these weapons aren't even as good as the strongest weapons in the game right now, the raid weapons. Why should I have to do a bunch of grindy stuff for the relic, when I could have fun progging through P8S to get a stronger and subjectively cooler looking weapon instead?

[@Maxawa.]

EXACTLY, people love wasting their time for no good reason. Being forced to do the SAME content over and over is just not fun. With tomestones I get to choose what I want to do and therefore get to choose to do something actually fun. I literally can't bring myself to finish more than 2 ShB relics right now just because of how boring it is to do it over and over, not to mention I want to be spending my time on other things in the game like raiding. Speaking of raiding, the weapons aren't even BiS which is something you pointed out and honestly I don't understand why people want a big grind for the 2nd step when the weapon isn't even BiS :/

[@daanroelofs119]

I love that we have easier relic this time around. I got almost all lasses to 90 and play them almost all. I like that I can now easily play them all. I felt that the other expansions made it impossible for me to do both relics and other content. But not having the relic locked me out of doing early progression on endgame fights. I only have about 2 hours a day every other day and would like to spend that doing other things than farming 120 raids or get locked out of fighting the same ifrit hard fight to get the light I need. I think the ShB relic was heading in the right direction but the new zones are even worse than skipping through all manderville quests because I don't care for them either. Yes I have over 12k hours in the game because I used to play a lot more but I am, as a long time MMO player, NOT a fan of grinding useless content for a weapon that is only slightly better than the current best primal weapon. so I thing that its great that we have a relic that is more catered towards people who wanna play but dont have the time to grind the relic

[@yeetusdeleetus4697]

So... Because you personally don't have time to play MMO's anymore, all of the content in the game that was *specifically* catered towards people who *do* have time and want to grind should be deleted so that you can have everything handed to you instantly for free with no gameplay because you don't have time? Despite the literally 90% of the content in this game being catered towards mega-casuals like yourself who log on for 4 hours per week? Thats an extremely short-sighted and selfish way of looking at it. If you don't like grinding then Relics weren't intended for you to begin with, all this does is remove content that people liked in an already terribly lacking expansion and simultaneously remove all of the value from Relic weapons to begin with, the Manderville relics are now no longer special, will never feel like relics, and will have no sense of being earned. One click content baby, can't wait for the future of 14 with people like you to ruin it for the rest of us.

[@daanroelofs119]

@@yeetusdeleetus4697 why is it that people who want to grind are "in the right to demand" ? In my opinion it's the want for grinding that hurts the relic steps. I don't consider myself casual. Been clearing savage raids and ultimates. All be it late into patches because I can't find the time to grind out weapons in just a couple days. Why would I want to grind for a weapon that isn't even BiS, and will be made irrelevant by the next primal weapon? And like you said, the game is catered to casuals, and gives people who have a bit more time the harder content. If the only reason you play the game is to do mindless grinding I'd say you can still do that. And with the 19 jobs right now, people will just make pre-made parties to idk kill ravana 250 times to farm light. Wow how exciting, doing fates l, AGAIN how exilerating. Every time I have done relics I come across people who are shit talking the game and the devs for it being too ridiculous to get the relics. People get the relics to do endgame stuff, but if getting the weapon locks them out of doing these fights then that system is shit. There is TONS of grindy shit to do. If you get buthurt over one grindy thing becoming less grindy then that's on you. Go clear all 3 deep dungeons on every jobs if you wanna do the same thing over and over again.

[@daanroelofs119]

@@yeetusdeleetus4697 also another addition. This makes it more available in later expansions. I wanted to level up jobs in bozja/zadnor but geuss what ITS DEAD. Eureka, mega dead. No way of easily getting eureka weapons now. Which is sad

[@sethbrady448]

The one thing I'd add is that it seems like these steps so far are designed not to make each relic a grind, but designed specifically so that someone can get every relic they're looking for instead. That's not necessarily a defense, but it does seem like that's the aim: to make gearing multiple jobs more straightforward.

[@JoshLsmith1]

Remove the tomestone cap then, this sucks.

[@Okita78]

If the weapon was 635 I would gladly grind for it. For an inferior weapon though, I'll take the 1500 tombs.

[@EsotericDrifter]

Final step will probably be completing TOP. At this point I wouldn't be surprised.

[@ol-Daddy-doodoo]

as happy as i am to have the higher ilvl weapon, i was kinda looking forward to a bit of a grind. some laid back grinding with a bunch of people i dont know sounds like a decent bit of fun and im kinda sad that we got something so easy. i planned on doing hildi anyways and i already had the 1500 tomes, so they basically just gave me the relic day one with no effort on my part.

[@tomasdawe4423]

I think they are using the relic weapon quests in order to justify this stage of Hildibrand. Hildy should be his own thing, and while there has been some interesting moments in EndWalker Hildi, it seems rushed and disjointed compared to some of the previous ones

[@Shizuma]

I like your ideas of tying it to Criterion Dungeons and/or Island Sanctuary however I think it's Bozja that people really enjoyed the most, not the relic grind in itself. The relic weapon gave them *a reason* to go there and stick with it. Would grinding Criterons really be fun? Perhaps the issue becomes less about Relics, and more about lacking a Field Operation.

[@DragonsGuy]

Frankly, I despised the exploratory zones. Fate grinding is maybe my least favorite content in the game, if only because it's way too grindy, and the extremes of nobody being around (making the grind extremely slow) and too many people being around (making the grind nearly impossible) are basically the sum of my experience. The big end dungeons of both are also a major pain to me because of how, again, you need an organized group, and you're heavily penalized for dying, which goes for the whole zones. Not so big a deal when it's in full swing and you're with tons of people, but pretty punishing alone and late to the party. The zones also had extra systems with those funky crystal abilities which I'm sure were fun for those who got to play with them, but for somebody like me who nearly never was around for when my friend groups did farm those, they're basically non-existent except to see everybody else talk about them in chat. That said, I still stuck through them for a couple relics, so while I can empathize with having to do content you don't want to do for a reward you do want, I cannot sympathize with people who "just don't like Hildibrand", since they can just skip through those cutscenes and be done with the whole process in a few minutes. Maybe if the zones weren't FATE after FATE after FATE after FATE after FATE after FATE after FATE after FATE etc. and then topped with 60 people organized dungeons with piss-poor drop rates, and for that matter any similar steps in older relic weapons or events (looking at you, Yokai Watch event), I'd find some more enjoyment in them. I do get that tomes aren't a very exciting way to get the relics, but honestly I'm okay with having a "break" relic-wise this expansion. This might be the one time somebody like me is going to be willing to get all of them, and I'm pretty jazzed that I can just get tomes at my leisure instead of doing a mind-numbing grind.

[@smellybearc7411]

Let’s make the next step to be completing the entire msq one more time from ARR+clearing all dungeons and trails of all difficulties+clearing all deep dungeons+completing all previous relic weapons+doing all of the above without dying once

[@moogleboy]

A fair take, and I agree with you on a few points, but overall I disagree. Stormblood Relics are impossible to fully complete due to the awful system of getting through BA. This causes a lot of resentment towards people who were "there at the time" to complete the steps when there was sufficient hype for the content. Shadowbringers is similar, but only for the first relic, since no bothers doing CLL, DR or Dalriada if they can help it. This turns the relic from a niche catch-up weapon that's outdated as soon as you get it, into more of a glam piece for ultra sweaty nerds imo. 1,500 Astro might seem lackluster, but it lets people do things they might want to do, rather than forcing people into stuff they can't do without massive investment into content they might not even like. I can do a Hunt Train, or PVP, or my roulettes, or spam Euphrosyne for the fucking Orchestrion rolls that I'll never win because some jackass who already has it "accidentally" rolled a 98 on it. Sure, I'd like it if you had a step where you need to clear the Criterion Dungeon, since it seems the devs forgot about that system already, or maybe a full 100 floor run of Orthos, but it shouldn't be mandatory for EVERY Relic you do. Being forced to spam FATEs from two expansions past feels awful, and was obviously used as a way to show new players "Hey look, our overland zones are so alive with people wanting to play with you!" when in reality it was just a BLU Mage circle jerk of who's next on the Ultra-Vibe. I do want a new Exploratory Zone, but with the skill system from Variant Dungeons. Hell, I kind of wish they'd revise Eureka and Bozja to use that system, since I find the whole ordeal of farming up glorified lootboxes from trash to be extremely assinine. Anyway, I'll take boring "buy it from a vendor" over obnoxious "buy it from a vendor but with currencies you only get from killing 50 Bandersnatches" any day.

[@piersoncalley2236]

Personally, I have to agree; there is such a strong sense of community in the Exploratory Zones. I am a big fan of Bozja and even moreso Eureka; mainly because there's a very real sense of progression in those zones in going from trying to carefully sidestep the little mobs, to slaughtering the sleeping dragons for Light. The only things I really have to complain about are the Pagos level 35 quest and "pull time is crab."

[@ShioKoori]

Honestly, anything that isn't light-farming is a win in my book.

[@Simmons101]

From the ShB relics I'm used to tombstones for the first step, but I'm disappointed that it's still only tomestones for the entire new step. I didn't want a grind like eureka, but ShB had a decent grind option for both in an instanced zone and outside an instanced zone and I loved that

[@ZephyrFate]

As someone who did 220 or so runs of Delubrum Reginae to get most of the weapons done before they nerfed it, along with 85 runs of Dalriada, and at least 20 runs of Castrum... I'm glad they went swinging to the other direction for relics. If you love the grind, it's absolutely still there, but I don't think it should be a staple for relics going forward. However, I was expecting at least a FATE farm with this step, and it's a shame it's not there. I was going to use the bicolor gemstones from it to make some decent gil with vouchers.

[@FreakBees]

I'm with you on this 100%, I'm not much of an endgame raider and collecting relic weapons has pretty much become my endgame and while yes there's still older ones I don't have yet endwalker relics have been something I was really looking forward to but I guess now they're just another thing on the list of post endwalker disappointments

[@ajayrious]

This, back in HW Yoshi P even started the relic was designed as a way for non raiders to get a weapon... Time content vs Skill content. Time content has always been my endgame too since my reactions suck and I was so looking forward to this grind after losing interest in playing my main over the past few months. Very disapointing.

[@parnash]

Considering that, at this point, Eureka and Bozja both feel like death content, and with their own problems relic wise (Eureka just being unfun to many and Bozja turning into a HUGE GRINDFEST), I think the lighter requirements for the first two steps is much better. Was it dissapointing? Sure, it was. But at least it won't become dead content at the next expac like Eureka and Bozja weapons (CLL and Dalriada come to mind as being mandatory relic steps that are possibly dead). I do hope they do more with the Manderweapons than just 'place tomes, spit out weapons' - but I've always seen Relic Weapons as 'here's stuff you can do if you can't do or don't like Savage/Extreme Raiding'.

[@Destshade]

Indeed, it won't become dead content next expansion because it's dead content already. They did expedite the process.

[@coolyeh1017]

I find it a bit disappointing that it is just another tome grind. However, I understand the predicament the devs have unintentionally gotten themselves into. Every time there is a relic step that involves some sort of grind, cue all the complaining posts on Reddit, the official forums (which Square apparently reads, so if you have complaints direct it there, but they do ignore if you start swearing or insulting people or the devs apparently). I remember when Eureka and Bozja was a thing, people complained about how grindy it was (and to be fair it was), how they hated separate progression systems in a game, and that you have to do ARR/HW FATES 100 times or Crystal Tower 20 Times, I also remember how people hated the light steps of Anima weapons or resisting then current dungeons for the anima weapons. On the other hand, tons of people complained when there is no grind and you just exchange tomestones for a step or two (i.e. Boza, but at least other steps involved some sort of grind or engagement with exploratory zones). It is also possible that the devs treat the Hilibrand sidequest as the grind as it takes several hours to get to EW relics even if you skip all the cutscenes. There is also a concern about accessibility for everyone who wanted to grind for relics for each of their jobs, as expansions march on, there are more and more weapons to collect and make. People have been complaining about the gearing system including the relic grinds, so it stands to reason that the devs likely listened to those complaints and made the steps easier while making other content for mid-core or hardcore players (there are two ultimate, which are the two toughest fights ever design in the game so far, Criterion and despite the lackluster rewards were still pretty challenging and fun, and casual content such as Island Sanctuary and Variant dungeons for the lore nerds). Also, rumors on the Japanese side have said that the developers knew that WFH was ending as a government policy in Japan and wanted to make the transition easier for Japanese players, but because of the design of the game, if you change something on one server related to content (not housing) it usually translates to all other areas too.

[@HyperFerret93]

The relics will never be as grindy as ARR ones because people tend to level more jobs today than back then. This is the reasoning given by Yoshi P. Back then they were designed with only one or two jobs in mind. If you are getting every relic in EW, it's 57,000 tomestones when considering both current steps, which is still a grind.

[@CiderSpider]

I would guess that most people don't get ALL the relics, though, and I dare say the people trying to do so know what they're signing up for. I think Shadowbringers did a good job of addressing this by having the one-time steps. It feels like the level of difficulty here has dropped far more than is warranted by the addition of 2 new jobs.