On Anima weapons: The drop rate of crystals from FATEs is way better then it used to be. I think the longest I spent grinding on one crystal type was maybe two hours. I did one crystal type per day so it took me a week to do. And that was taking it pretty easy. You'll often find groups of people doing FATES so that everyone is guarantied gold so that helps out a lot.
What gets to me isn't the Tombstone grind as that's very predictable. It's the gill grind. You need 16 HQ items that can only be crafted by Lvl 60* crafters (and you need all crafting classes to be that high). On Cerberus, those items go for 175k per item on average. They're usually sold in stacks of four and go for around 750k - 1M per stack. Getting that much gill takes way more effort then getting the Tombstones if you were to only rely on the gill gotten from doing dungeons/trials/raids. So yeah, the Tombstone grind is annoying but the fact that I have to save around 4M gill... it shouldn't be that high. At least there's a bunch of new crafting gear which should make it easier (and less expensive) to craft the items in the first place...
Speaking of iLvl 210+ weapons... they are way more annoying to get then armor... like by a lot.
Not counting the Anima weapon, which goes up to iLvl 240 now, here's how the rest of them are gotten:
210 (Artifact): trade guarantied drop from Void Ark raid for Gobdip and upgrade iLvl 200 Wep. Easiest weapon to get on the list.
220 (Sephirot): Sephirot Extreme drop or exchange 10 Extreme drops for a specific weapon. Well, you have to be able to farm Sephirot Extreme...
230 (Ekion): 1000 Lore and 1 High-Capacity Tombstone. You can only get 450 Lore per week and can either get a High-Capacity Tombstones from Alexander: Cuff of the Son (Savage) or by exchanging 7 Midan Gears for one. Midan Gears can be got once per week from Alexander: Burden of the Son. So you can either farm an easier boss for over double the time it takes to get the Tombstones (and get more 230 armor in the meantime) or farm Savage battles.
235 (Hoard): Same deal as Sephirot weapon, but now you're farming Nidhogg Extreme.
240 (Augmented Ekion): Upgrade the 230 Ekion weapon with drops that can only be gotten in Alexander: Arm of the Son (Savage). Yup. More Savage farming.
245 (Midan): Same deal as Hoard weapon, but now you're farming Alexander: Burden of the Son (Savage) (you only need 8 drops instead of ten to buy it though).
So yeah, that's how all the end game weapons that aren't the Anima are gotten. And at least getting to the iLvl. 240 Anima weapon can be done with a lot of different, diverse turn-ins instead of just a few items that can only be gotten in a few ways. Yes, you still need Esoterics, but you also don't need to get items that can only be gotten by high level crafters...
Armor on the other hand...
Well, you can get the iLvl. 230 Ekion armor just for Lore Tombstones, nothing else. You can upgrade them to iLvl. 240 armor by getting the catalyst to upgrade by either farming Alexander Midas Savage floors or by exchanging items gotten from both Void Ark and Weeping City raids once per week (Void Ark always drops the item, Weeping City drops it once a week) or by exchanging Unstained Clan Mark Logs which are gotten by doing the Clan Hunt. So you've got a lot more lower stress options to get high tier armor.
And do Weeping City for a piece of iLvl. 230 armor once a week (no accessories though).
Or you can get the iLvl. 240 Midian armor by farming Alexander: Midas Savage...
But still, way simpler (if longer) to get good armor then to get good weapons.
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