History ScrappyMechanic / FinalFantasyXIV

** Depending on your class, the number of abilities you have available depends on your level scaled to the duty. While [[AntiFrustrationFeatures Endwalker did adjust this]] by making a few class components available earlier on, some can find it annoying when they get stuck in a duty ≤50 because a lot of classes don't get their main cooldown(s) until about level 60-70.

* The Atma grind returns in full force for the 3.0 Anima relic weapons. You can skip the first step if you have a completed Zodiac Zeta weapon; if you didn't, have fun collecting six sets of three elemental crystals from [=FATEs=] in each of the Heavensward zones. After turning in all 18 crystals in Mor Dhona, you'll go back to Azys Lla for your weapon. Next step is to run ten dungeons in a specific order on the job you're getting the weapon for. It helps that you can run the six ARR dungeons unsynced, but if you have to queue, expect a long wait. Then the real fun begins: you will need four special items that can only be obtained by trading with an NPC in Mor Dhona. To get all four items she requires Unidentified Bone, Shells, Ore, and Seeds--20 of each--that will have to be purchased one at a time with 13-18 beast tribe quest tokens (each from a specific tribe, of course), 680 Tomestones of Poetics or Esoterics, 1000 Allied Seals, 10 different tokens from the Alexander raid, or if you're really lucky, a treasure map. You will also have to give her four each of four different HQ crafted items. Don't have a Level 60 Master Blacksmith, Alchemist, Carpenter AND Culinarian? Hope you've been saving your gil, because buying everything on the market board is going to cost of a serious chunk of change. And after all of that, you get your shiny new iLevel 210 weapon, yay! Now, time to start grinding more tomes for the next two phases to get the anima weapon to 240. By patch 3.38, this was heavily nerfed to the ground.

** "Celestial Radiance", the Novus portion of the relic quest line cuts out the RNG in exchange for materia farming. You need 75 pieces of Alexandrite and 75 pieces of materia to power up your relic. Said materia are easy to obtain or buy from other players until you start using the higher grade materia, which are a lot more difficult to come by, involves some RNG in terms of what kind of materia you get, and you forking over a ton of gil on the market board if you want to buy high level materia from someone.[[note]]Due to the ever changing player economy and the introduction of grade 5 and 6 materia in future expansion packs, materia costs for grade 4 and below sunk and many side quests now give materia as well.[[/note]] Assuming one did manage to obtain all the materia and Alexandrite, the very next step, "Star Light, Star Bright", involved "Light" farming - tasked with obtaining 2000 Light to power up the weapon, at a time when completing the entirety of a 24-player raid would only yield 8 points, and most other activities granting perhaps 1 or 2 at most.
** The Zodiac weapon, which is the transformation of your relic weapon, is even more absurd by combining everything hated from the previous relic quests into one ball of "we enjoy watching players suffer." Hope you loved farming for the low drop rate Atmas because now you get to do it again for ''sixteen'' items needed for your Zodiac weapon and they can only be acquired by running the very lengthy dungeons! You'll also need several hundred thousand gil just to purchase a few key items needed for the quest, over 6000 Soldiery Tomestones for another item, and 60,000 grand company seals for a different item. Hope you also took up some crafting classes because now you'll need to get items that can only be obtained through crafting and desynthesis! If not, better hope you can afford to buy the crafted items from other players. Later patches would make the required items in dungeons always drop and the crafted materials no longer have to be high quality.
* The Atma grind returns in full force for the 3.0 Anima relic weapons. You can skip the first step if you maxed out your ARR relic weapon; if you didn't, have fun collecting six sets of three elemental crystals from [=FATEs=] in each of the Heavensward zones. After turning in all 18 crystals in Mor Dhona, you'll go back to Azys Lla for your weapon. Next step is to run ten dungeons in a specific order on the job you're getting the weapon for. It helps that you can run the six ARR dungeons unsynced, but if you have to queue, expect a long wait. Then the real fun begins: you will need four special items that can only be obtained by trading with an NPC in Mor Dhona. To get all four items she requires Unidentified Bone, Shells, Ore, and Seeds--20 of each--that will have to be purchased one at a time with 13-18 beast tribe quest tokens (each from a specific tribe, of course), 680 Tomestones of Poetics or Esoterics, 1000 Allied Seals, 10 different tokens from the Alexander raid, or if you're really lucky, a treasure map. You will also have to give her four each of four different HQ crafted items. Don't have a Level 60 Master Blacksmith, Alchemist, Carpenter AND Culinarian? Hope you've been saving your gil, because buying everything on the market board is going to cost of a serious chunk of change. And after all of that, you get your shiny new iLevel 210 weapon, yay! Now, time to start grinding more tomes for the next two phases to get the anima weapon to 240. By patch 3.38, this was heavily nerfed to the ground.

* The entirety of the Relic Weapon quest line that powers up your InfinityPlusOneSword to higher levels is a nightmare of RNG and grind. Finishing the initial leg of the quest required some effort, but was doable within a reasonable amount of time - you acquired the original, broken weapon, collected a few materials through event fights, fought a few open world monsters, and finally capped it off with easily-obtainable items purchased with end-game dungeon currency. It was when the Atma portion of the quest was reached that the entire chain quickly devolved into a mind-numbing experience. Tasked to locate 12 Atma crystals (randomly dropped from any FATE you participate in, with 1 unique Atma per zone), it was quickly discovered that the RNG drop rate was so terrible that one player could spend hours grinding in a single area and receive nothing, while incredible luck would mean another player could find all the Atma in equal or even decidedly less time. Worse still, the second half of the quest demanded you collect 9 books to give your weapon its true power (the Atma quest doesn't even do that, merely raising the weapon's item level) and every book carried an original price tag of 1500 mythology tomes to purchase, out of a 2000 tome cap. Although Patch 2.4 alleviated some of the pain by boosting the drop rates of the Atma crystals and reduced the amount of tomestones needed to purchase the books, the tomestones used for purchase were changed from Mythology to Soldiery, and the overall ease of acquiring them was limited compared to gathering Mythology. While the Atma books were, fortunately, a quest item and located in your key items inventory, the Atma crystals were treated as regular loot - capable of accidentally being discarded or sold. Worse yet, each Atma corresponds to a single Zodiac sign (Atma of the Crab, Archer, Fish, etc.) and took up a single inventory slot apiece, much like weapons and armor. It was only much, much later that Atma of the same type would stack together, but by that point the utility of obtaining a Relic Weapon was more or less moot.
** The Novus portion of the relic quest line cuts out the RNG in exchange for materia farming. You need 75 pieces of Alexandrite and 75 pieces of materia to power up your relic. Said materia are easy to obtain or buy from other players until you start using the higher grade materia, which are a lot more difficult to come by, involves some RNG in terms of what kind of materia you get, and you forking over a ton of gil on the market board if you want to buy high level materia from someone.[[note]]Due to the ever changing player economy and the introduction of grade 5 and 6 materia in future expansion packs, materia costs for grade 4 and below sunk and many side quests now give materia as well.[[/note]] Assuming one did manage to obtain all the materia and Alexandrite, the very next step involved "Light" farming - tasked with obtaining 2000 Light to power up the weapon, at a time when completing the entirety of a 24-player raid would only yield 8 points, and most other activities granting perhaps 1 or 2 at most.

* The "Up in Arms" quest requires players to take part in any FATE they want in specific regions in order to get 12 Atma items, which is used to further power their A Relic Reborn weapon. Sounds easy, right? Doing the [=FATEs=] is easy enough, but good luck trying to endure the super low drop rates for the items you need to get. Because the drop rate of the Atmas are extremely low and are subjected to RNG, you have people who have either gotten all the items fairly quickly or people that have spent ''hours/days'' trying to get the items to drop and have no luck at all. What's even worse is getting all 12 Atmas isn't enough to power up your relic weapon; all it does is change the weapon's appearance slightly. To get the weapon to its full glory, you have to grind for several books for the "Trials of the Braves" quest, and each book originally cost ''1500'' mythology tomestones. Each book also contains challenges you have to complete in order to power up your weapon (beat the final bosses in dungeons, kill specific enemies, etc). While the grind for books is FAR more bearable than the RNG drops of the Atmas, you'd still be spending a ''lot'' of time grinding. The outcome was apparently so bad that the developers delayed the patch containing the Novus relics due to the fact that ''not enough people'' had their Animus relics at the time. Patch 2.4 made the Atma grind easier by increasing the drop rates and lowered the costs of the books to 500 each.
* The Atma-style grind returned in patch 2.45 for the Zodiac weapons by having the player run dungeons, beat the final boss, and pray that RNG is kind to them by dropping the quest items they need. Unlike the FATE system that has you waste just a few minutes each time, dungeons can take 30 minutes or more to complete and it can easily wear out players who are caught on a huge unlucky streak. Fortunately Patch 3.1 removed the RNG and made the quest items guaranteed drops.

* The Manderville relic in Endwalker had attempted to mitigate the grind issue by having the relic progress be directly tied to only two things: the Endwalker Hildibrand questline, and Endwalker's tomestones. While this did resolve the problems of having to be tied down to a pre-set group of instances and duties (compared to Eureka and Bozja/dungeons for Stormblood and Shadowbringers respectively), this effectively turned the optional Hildibrand questline into a requirement for endgame weapons, and while some players may enjoy the comedic nature of the Manderville family's antics and the little blue alien, others just wanted a strong weapon, and had to play through many quests to get to it. Moreover, those who enjoyed the grind for the content may find the relic progress itself ''very'' underwhelming, as tomestones can be earned passively with little investment. Every single stage only required 1,500 tomestones to get it to the next step, which is anticlimactic compared to the joy of a dedicated grinder's hard work paying off.