In this video I give my thoughts on the Manderville relics (endwalker relic weapons) thus far and the recent interview revealing that these relics will largely be the same throughout every step. As someone whose channel has gained a lot of traction from the previous relic weapon grinds, I felt it would be worth sharing how I’m feeling about this new relic as it’s quite a departure from the typical relic experience.
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Stayed up till 3:43 AM for this video
I miss having involved steps for relic weapons. I am ok with not getting a Eureka or Bozja every expac, but this way of getting relics? This ain't it. And yeah anima is also just a tome sink as well, but the main key difference is you're also engaging with parts of the game that you would not normally do. I 1000% agree they should've incentivized going into Ivalice, Nier, Eden, Asphodelos, or Variant/Criterion or any content that most people would not run through again unless roulette throughs them in there. HELL, Eureka Orthos. Why isn't the current step involving us to go into Eureka Orthos? Even if it's just the starting floors or 31-40. I don't know if I'd want book step back though, but if the part for fates being a certain rare fate to just fates done in day or night, or weather conditions, I feel that would be specific enough.
I'm of the mindset that the relic grinding is they way it is because they're also working on/were working on FFXVI(It's gone gold). But if the relics for next expac is a repeat of this one's? I'm not particularly gonna be pleased
while I'm glad the relic weapon is easy to get, but it's feels cheap as so called "relic weapon" and it's just feels wrong, and I don't feel earn anything, might as well as call it a glamour weapon. the design and shiny is great tho, I love the Reaper ones and it might be the best weapon looks RPR have, arguably better shaped than extreme/ultimates.
Wasn't around for any past relic when they were relevant. I've completed an Anima, and am halfway through a Resistance though.
Anima was not the most fun, but I made the mistake of powering through it when I was feeling a bit of general burnout on the game. That grind over an entire expansion would have been cool.
But I've LOVED Bozja. Getting to do near max level play, and feel like I'm making real progress both on the weapon, and Bozja itself has been great. I get we can't get that every expansion. But doing anything besides the usual roulettes (which almost always stick me with either ARR/HW content, or the same few level 90 dungeons) would feel like a relief. Eden, Omega, Ivalice, NieR, even have Eureka and Bozja as an option to gain materials for the new relic (see; OPTION). Not to mention Variant/Criterion, and Eureka Orthos. So much dead or nearly dead higher level content to use.
It's not the end of the world, but I feel like there is so much more that could be done.
Why does everyone forget the mount tha drops in criterion normal? Took my friend 18 runs to get the drop and you need 25 runs to buy with coins. Sure it's not the best mount but "you only need to run it once" isn't true unless you get super lucky.
Smol Mariko here to drop paragraphs of text out of nowhere as I seem to do:
I do be on the "Its not grindy enough or not interesting of a relic" side of thing
but
I also know more casual players, with full time jobs making them unable to play more than few hours of this game and they play it maybe once or twice a week if lil less.
For them (When I was helping them trough Sophia Unreal), they said they liked the relic because it wasn't a large grind like the other and that they were able to obtain said relic, while still able to enjoy the other contents they wanted to try.
So I suppose to some people a Relic Weapon is seen only as a weapon to help get better itlv, some truly don't care nor want the grind.
It is a very large community, there's lots of head and different people.
I do think what you brought up as what could be done, redoing older content to help it being more active would be good. I personally would LOVE a Fate grind in ShB or EW zones cause there's so much stuff requiring gemstone, it would be great being able to work on a Relic and Gem Farm at once.
In a way I'm a bit bias, I ADORE the expedition zones [Eureka/Bozja/Zadnor] so I am one of the person who really wanted one, but I'm also not too upset there's not, since I can work on my Eureka Relics and other things like Deep Dungeons 🙂
It's a weird topic, there's no right or wrong to if this is truly a bad relic design. It appeals, I think, mostly to those lacking time to put into the game, but also can let us completionnist type of gals work on something else than a relic grind [Been working on crafting and Mahjong achievements]. I personally am letting it slide for this Expansion, hoping it goes a different way for the next one or some later step. We've yet seen it all, so maybe 🙂
🙂
I wouldn't mind another book step.
I know it's not the most popular opinion but I'm actually all in for tomestone relics this time Having an option that will perennially exist for people to spend their mid level tomes will make mats more expensive and give people a good choice for what to do with them: make money or get another relic glam.
There's literally four sets of "fun" relic grinds to do already. Doing Bozja relics now is a logistical nightmare getting people to run DR, efficiently. (It can be done but it's just a grind on a grind.) Eureka still is a thing but again takes more planning on your part for groups. If they keep adding more and more relics with cumbersome steps, it'll just go to make the other ones that much harder to grind if you didn't do it back when it was relevant.
As someone who tried extremes for the first time recently, really love your suggestion related to it 😀 I was scared at first but then noticing its not that monster I used to think of, I'm super happy for taking the jump. Many people new to raiding would get the same feeling as me AND progress the relic at same time! win-win ^^ asphodelos normal is also a pain to unlock, I was on my alt as tank and still took forever, I'm glad for being up to date now because abyssos raids are on the same fate soon… current end game shouldn't be dead like this. They didn't mention any feedback regarding criterion dungeons rewards as well which makes me worried, its okay if the first time didn't work because it was a test but a second time?
Gosh I personally hate that quote "Yoshi-p said its okay to take breaks when you are burn out"… just because you can, doesn't mean the game should actively push you out of it with uninteresting content to force you onto a break. And lets be honest, if you have a house you cant really take breaks lmaooo ain't giving up my mansion xD
Comparing this to older one.
I prefer this on hunt trains
I think the type of casual this appeals to is the type that hated exploratory content or anything that actually makes them play the game, and just want to spam ranged attack on a tank during hunt trains so they can go back to afking in Limsa with their shiny relic or something.
You got the right words, disappointing, uninspired and lazy. That's how I feel about it. Tomes are a nice alternative, not a good main (and only) way of doing it
It’s just the first two steps. Normally the first two steps of the relic are easy then they make it really hard. How about we wait till 6.45 drops before we start complaining. People are so quick to disrespect the devs by calling their work lazy and uninspired WHEN THE WHOLE RELIC WEAPON PROCESS ISNT EVEN OUT YET LOL. watch they will make you farm fates and trials with a .0000001% drop rate for whatever item then all people will find a reason to complain again. This is crazy haha. Hey if I’m wrong in the end and EVERY SINGLE STEP IS TOMES then sure I’ll complain. But the relic weapon just started. Give it a chance first. Like you see what other content they are giving us. The devs are anything but lazy and uninspired. Yoshi P has a ffxvi collab on the way and he has been developing ffxvi along side giving us content for ffxiv. What’s next ppl will complain about a high chair…oh wait people are already complaining about that too lolol. To call endwalker a flop because you didn’t get the relic grind you wanted and just ignore everything else they did for us is stupid. Give it some time people before you complain. Play Zelda like yoshi p or something else. The devs will pull through and give us more good content. I’d rather be positive then spread this negativity when the relic grind just started.
It seems like many people that have been with the game for a longer time don't quite understand how for newer players (or at least for me, as I've only been playing since 5.5) the relics are some of the most prestigious things while playing through the MSQ. Before I knew about Ultimates, or the difficulty of savage raiding, or the niche achievements that take 100s of hours to get, I did know about the relics that each expansion had, and how much effort it took to get them.
I think if every relic was to be just a tomestone grind from now on, relics would probably end up as just another catchup mechanic. The Zodiac SMN book still feels so epic to equip and pull out, but I think the biggest reason for this isn't just because it looks sick but because it took me through such a massive grind to get it. Even the Eureka final stage relics that I thought looked god awful in videos I actually like to wield now, but that is solely because of the work they took me to get them. I really don't see myself using the EW relics beyond the expansion itself, because even if they end up being the shiniest of weapons in truth I had to put in no effort to get them.
Also it truly does baffle my why they don't just use it to revitalize old content. Been playing through the game alongside a friend and we've had to queue around 40+ minutes each for just Rabanastre and RIdorana, not even accounting for Orbonne yet. Some of the later Omega raids too sometimes take more than 30 minutes to queue into.
In the end whatever choices you will get, people will still try to optimize the best way to get them (unless you provide really good time = effort balance) but I do agree, I would love to see at least two different options for each step and maybe some easy (not consuming much time) mid steps, to feel a pause in small grinds. Anima grinds are totally okay with me (due to possibility of doing unrestricted content) and I wouldn't mind something bit more similar, but maybe without need to get So many tomes as in Heavensward for each step 🙂
Most underrated ffxiv youtuber right now.
My favorite part of the game is grinding for relic weapons. Especially when there's nothing better to do between patches for a Casual player like me. I miss the days of spending all day running Delubrum Reginae and never getting bored of it. I got bored of roulettes so fucking fast and the fact that 80% of these weapons are ugly (Compared to ShB) is even more unmotivating.
I kinda felt the same way about it.
For one side I have no issue to take a break to play other video games like Yakuza 7, but sometimes that argument of play other games is a falacy brcause it souns as: Do as you wish, and I care not for what you do.
Personaly, I found myself a way to play the game without pushing myself as I must do all the hard content facing a huge wall betwen the hard content and coordinate with people to conect. I am tacking it as a more relaxing experience playing FF14.
But I can understand that feeling of getting something powerfull by puting us in a very hard grind, and I cant complainy about it because the memory of making the Bozja relic is way more memorable than just paying coins to a random npc without farming a huge amount of something else.
most casuals finally get to do the relics and dont have to grind for weeks ppl who are mad about it are the midcore and hardcore players i am fine with adding hardcore option but removing the 1,5 k tome is a fuck you to casuals player and that a big not.
Only thing I will say is Normal Mode Eden is a part of the Resistance Weapon!
I don't think that it's that bad. Imagine grinding Zeta unsync when only ARR existed. And for me hunt trains sounds interesting. I'm interested in all content – had at least one relic – because I'm curios how each of them farms, dungeons, post questline, trials, raids I hope you've got me here. And I've tried hunt one time for alexandrite farm. Spent like an half of an hour walking around location and never cared about it again. Now I'm interested in that contant – since everyone farm hunt I wanna look how it actually plays.
I hate grinds so this is good for me but I do agree that they should make extremes or something else a faster way to get tomes
Deffinetly saying the manderville relic UNLOCK is just annoying most of the time. Not so bad if ur up to date with Hildibrand… NOT fun if you gotta start from ARR onwards.
Its very much lacking anything in the terms of creativity…
The fact its JUST tomes for most of the relic stuffs, idk… doing Lapis manalis and Troia 50 times is getting boring.
Sure they are very strong… but its a bit annoying to grind the same dungeons constantly… ESPECIALY since you mentioned it, crafting items and tome gear cost the same shit…. it just requires SO MUCH MORE dungeon runs
I done 2 Relic weapons in about a week without without skipping hildibrand cutscenes. For the rest, i think ima just do it casualy now i have the 2 weapons i really wanted
no instance map for relic absolutely suck. 🙁
when this current relic is downgraded to Poetics (I think 6.4 steps 1 & 2 might) the fastest way to grind tomes'll be Eureka
I'll never understand people who say "I only have time to play for 20 minutes once a week so i like tomes :)"
Why do you care about the relic if you dont play the game? If you wanna take screenshots theres mods for any weapon you could want, as well as many, many alternative glowing weapons you can buy (and if the relic isn't at least somewhat grindy, there's no point in showing it off.) If you want the ilvl power just buy the crafted weapon or tome weapon, it'll do you just fine for your weekly 20minutes.
I think the Manderville weapons have been fine so far. For context, I have done every relic since ARR as current content and my favorite steps are usually ones that I can complete passively. I have over 100 raw emotions/timeworn artifacts just from doing solo deep dungeon attempts. I dump my poetics into HW relics as needed. I absolutely hate stuff that's like, run this raid 50 times or these fates 60 times or do these dungeons in this order. It's not fun and I feel like my time is being wasted.
In regards to the new raid tier, it's ok to have an endgame currency used for multiple things, especially in a game like final fantasy that lacks…meaningful choices. Some people will prioritize relic mats, others will choose crafting mats but that will ultimately be good for the economy. Crafting mats are generally way too cheap, and as a Gil maker, I look forward to those prices going up.
We'll see how the rest of the relic goes. If it really is just 4 steps of 1500 tomes, that's probably a little too basic. Some things I wouldn't mind seeing are repeatable weekly quests, such as, do all 4 normal raids in a tier or do lvl 90 dungeon roulette 3 times a week. Just something with a weekly reset so it doesn't feel like grinding but it still takes time.
As for this step being lazy…idk if I agree. Both Bozja and Eureka exist independently from relic and can ben enjoyed fully without even doing relic. These weapons are just tacked on in the form of item drops or "light" grinding. I'm not sure what development resources go into these weapons but I wouldn't be surprised if most of the recourses go into the weapon designs themselves and very little go into the questing part. If they are lazy now, I think they might've always been lazy.
I'm sorry I typed so much. Hopefully, I gave voice to those that think this current relic isn't great but think it's just….you know, ok.
I rarely ever do hunt trains after the enemies become undergeared and melt without many people dying, for this relic I just do deep dungeons and pvp while I farm achievements for those.