With the release of the Shadowbringer relic weapon questline, a friend and I decided to retry the infamously long and at times arduous relic weapons questline first introduced in A Realm Reborn (aka 2.0).
At first, I was hesitant, as it was a really long questline. When it was first released in A Realm Reborn, it took me weeks to finish one stage, and a lot of times they were repetitive grinds. However, the really good looks of those weapons when they were first released were very tempting. Also, since I already have a spare set of Atmas I thought I would take up the challenge.
To start the questline was quite simple, all you need to do is to have the original relic weapon you got from your level 50 job quest and it was quite straightforward. However, as with Square Enix and Final Fantasy XIV, nothing is that straightforward.
When the Atma stage (some gemstone based on the twelve zodiacs) arrived, that’s where the nightmare began. To acquire these Atmas, you have to grind FATEs (some large-scale events) in different areas and there will be a chance that it would drop at the end of the event. You have to actually have the events finished, otherwise it won’t count. So, you just can’t stand around doing nothing. Also, you have to have contribution, so, no standing around. When it was first introduced, the drop rate was so low that you could spend hours in one area without getting anything. Also, the drop is random and sometimes you can have the same Atma dropped twice or three times for you, but the other ones in the set wouldn’t show. Just from this description you can remember how frustrating it could be. I still remember as a newbie White Mage, I was running around for a week in one area and only managed to get one. So, I was doing it for weeks to eventually get the whole set (thus got a spare set as, if you are in a party, it would be just rude to just leave without staying around to help a little once you got yours). I still vividly remember how I was prayer for that Atma dropping sound effect to come up every time I finished a FATE. This time round with all the Atmas sorted, I only needed to wait for my friend to finish hers.
Then came the books. You will need to do a series of ‘Trial of the Braves’ books, which included killing of certain enemies, running of certain dungeons, completing levequests and completing certain FATEs. The previous three categories were quite easy to manage as with our current level, they are quite easy jobs, unlike when we were level 50, where all the areas you need to go through to get to those enemies would smell your desperation and came to attack you. However, there was one factor that was not affected by your current job level – FATEs. These FATEs are notoriously slow to spawn and when they spawned you have to synchronise your level to the FATE level to complete it. That means nearby non-FATE enemies will also come attack you. Although with better equipment it is already better, the spawn rate of these FATEs are still the killers. There were times that the FATEs were not spawning, so we went do quick dungeon runs and after we finished the last of the dungeons required by the book, then it spawned. Also, there were times that we just stood idle or do other things in real life while waiting for the book to spawn.
Once you have completed all the books, you advanced to the next stage, where you needed to acquire a scroll and meld Materia and Alexandrite to complete the stage. You can get Alexandrite via several means but none of them came easy at that time. Be it treasure maps or using seals from hunts. This time round it is a bit easier as you instead of one or two Alexandrite, you get 5 once you cleared a map. Also, at our current level, enemies from these chests are a lot easier to clear. Apart from Alexandrite, at the time of this quest first came out, Materia was another deterring factor. Materias at that time can only be acquired via spirit binding with your equipment. Once they were bound and converted into Materia, you lost the item (at that time). You can either spirt bound your own materia or you can buy from the Market Board, which was extremely expensive. The future statistics of your weapon are decided by what kind of Materia you meld into your weapon. The catch is, relevant stats Materias have lower success rates to meld as you proceed while useless Materia for your job have higher success rate. Materia is, and has always been expensive in the game as it alters your character stats. That means out of that 75 basic requirements, you probably need a lot more extra Materia to complete the scroll. Extra Materia means extra gil (the currency in the game). I still remember I nearly couldn’t finish mine at that time because I ran out resources. I only managed to complete it because two friends provided me the extra Materias and gils I needed. This time round it is a lot easier. As I have a good stock of Materia built up over the years, I also don’t really care about the stats of this weapon that much because it is simply for glamouring.
After the whole Alexandrite and Materia debacle was the soul grinding. This one, if you were not trying to be the world or server first, was quite less demanding, as it only requires you to use the new weapon to do all sorts of contents, and they all grant you souls to fill up your weapon and once it is completely filled up, you are ready to go for the upgrade. That said it was still a lengthy process as it requires a lot of souls to get the process completed. Even with our current level and trying to speed run our dungeons, it still took us quite a while to complete it.
After all the soul glazing came the part that posts a test to your resources. Not only that you will need to rerun a lot of dungeons for a chance drop of an item from these dungeons, you will also need to make sure you have enough Grand Company seals and gils to acquire other required items in order to proceed. For me the results of this stage, after all the hassles we went through was not particularly worth it, because once completed the usually shiny glow of your weapon disappears and is replaced by a normal weapon of a different look. This time round the drops from dungeons are no long by chance (so no more ridiculous runs of annoying dungeons anymore) but you still need to stock up sufficient amount of Grand Company seals and gils to proceed.
The last stage is basically getting back the groove, I mean glow. All you need is similar to soul grinding – grind lights to fill up those Mahatma of the twelve Zodiacs. Surprisingly even at that time it was not as taxing as the previous steps. If you managed to survive all the previous steps, this one is totally doable. Enjoyable not so much but a lot more approachable. With our current job level and the ability to speed run, we were able to finish it in around two hours.
This time it took us over a week to two weeks to complete everything. It might not sound like a lot but you need to consider that this is when we are at level 80, not level 50 at which the quests were designed for. Also, a number of steps were relaxed e.g. the drop rate of key items, you don’t lose some of your items if you failed a certain step etc. If you take these into consideration, you will understand the magnitude of work that was involved when it was first released. During the process my friend and I were both wondering how did we manage to survive the ordeal at that time. But then looking back, we were younger and more excited about the game as everything was new. We still have lots of interest in the games, but if nothing was nerfed for this I think even at this level, we would have given up.
The new Resistant Relic Weapon questline started off in a quite straightforward manner, so it will just be a matter of time whether it will get so complicated that people start giving up. But for me at least I will try to capitalise this easy first step and grab a higher-level weapon on the goals for my different jobs first.
