FFXIV History: ARR Relic Weapons 

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Larry forgot my favorite part of the entire quest line. Right at the end, you were working towards making your weapon into materia to fuse it with the new version. The game warns you that it only had a 3% chance of success and if it failed you had to start completely over. If you say yes, it asks if you were REALLY sure. Man, people were so stressed over that quest even though it was basically just flavor text. Imagine restarting your whole relic right before Zeta.

Whenever people talk about ARR relics, it almost always turns into an extremely in-depth recollection of each painstaking detail, because we NEED whoever we're telling to understand our collective trauma. Remember us. Remember that we once grinded.

When you got to the hardest step I was like, 'huh I don't remember this step being this hard?' But as you went on about it, I remembered. I had blocked it out because I quit doing the relic at that step and went back after it was nerfed. Oh my god. Larry, you unlocked a repressed memory in my brain, what the fuck.

If you completed a 1.0 Relic, it carried over as the ilevel 80 Relic when you started ARR. As 1.0 was less role restrictive, the Relics had all sorts of unique stats that could make jobs more defensive, supportive, or alter abilities.

Ah yes... the ARR Relics. The one where I started, got to the Atma phase, and went "Yeah... no I'm good." I recently returned to my old Ninja ARR Relic and got to the books... and went "Yeah... no, I'm still good."

There's at least a handful of people that went out of their way, Atmas and Anemos books and all, and got every single ARR Relic to max and I fear them more than any man

I'm kinda sad he didn't bring up the one part of the step where as you're melding the weapon the game trolls you and tells you it has a super low chance of succeeding and if it fails it will destroy the weapon.

Hearing Larry get more and more unhinged makes me feel sorry for everyone who did that. Holy crap.

8:03 It got so bad for me that I convinced myself somehow, that saying that "DING" sound effect ALOUD IRL after finishing a dungeon would influence the game to give me the required drop. It did kinda work, but deep down I knew I was going crazy after sleepless nights grinding dungeons. Then again, it does sound like employing dynamis to grind the ARR relic.

I can see the crazed manic look in Larry's eyes as he talks about this grind.

This sounds absolutely insane because having done the resistance relic on content and every other relic except eureka in its shb/ew state, zodiac is still noticeably the most painful to do, but hearing how absolutely awful it used to be is honestly terrifying and I dont know how people survived it.

I love the history lesson. Reminds us how far FFXIV has come. And I get to laugh at your suffering. I mean uh…feel sympathetic. Also very excited for the chicken nug

Even with all the nerfs, I still constantly tell people to only do ARR relics when they have nothing else to do because it's a horrific tedious grind that will make you hate level 50 content

"That means I don't like to move." made me ugly laugh.

Even with videos like these to put into perspective what the grind was like, there will always be people who'll never shut up about the Bozja grind being a mistake and that EW can't be like it. It's bizarre.

I actually kept a spreadsheet counting how many runs each dungeon atma took me to get. I still have it saved. I think I got pretty lucky all things told. 137 dungeons total. 20 Qarn HMs, 17 Hullbreakers, 16 Aurum Vales. Those were the worst offenders. There were several that I got in a single run or two.

I had a friend who dragged me into the ARR relic grind at the beginning of HW, because I had skipped the process back in ARR entirely due to all the horror stories I heard. They lied and said it was fine and people were exaggerating... :_) I still have the three atma I collected in my retainer inventory to remember the pain... Never forget.

The Resistance weapons were my first intro to relics and after that, I went back to grind out ALL the relics from the different expansions just because of how much fun I had with them. I did one ARR relic and did not go back to do it. That's what I tell myself as I get ready to grind out 3 more ARR after I finish my Eureka weapons because its damn addicting to do.

When I was making my Relics the first week that Atma came out, I got super lucky and got two weapons done. The second one I was able to get all the Atma’s in less than an hour. I pissed off so many people, I attributed it to my Lalafell Luck.

You know the books were bad but honestly having to wait for mobs to come back when there were only 3 at a time when loads of people doing the same mobs was a pain!!! Also spirit bonding accessories hahahahahahah….

Larry video, Lets go!!

I am new to the game but I complete the ARR relic because I really love how the Excalibur Zeta looks. The book farm was hellish and painful and light farm was me killing Ifrit in 5s thousands of times.

Im guessing this video is gonna be 10min of Larry talking about pure relic pain

3:23 Honestly, these theories came into being because two and a half months later they came out with the Sightseeing Log. Anyone who has ever done it will realize that the team had the means to program things that only happen at certain times of day and under certain weathers. It also wasn't that far of a stretch either, as my pre-nerf atma grind got significantly better once I started following the weather theory. It would make a lot of sense that Atma had hidden conditions for their drops, as the community really did try to pin down the drop chance. Of course, once the step was nerfed there was no real way to continue trying to do so, and the dev team has never disclosed the old Atma's drop rates.

Extra point on the Atma. If I recall correctly, originally the quest text listed one of the required zones _incorrectly._ So the list had a zone that didn't drop Atma, and was missing one that did (or rather, I think it like... listed C Thanalan twice, and didn't list C Shroud or something).

Every time I'm roaming around the maps and I see Taken or Giant Seps up, I think about how I would wait hours for them to pop. Because I'm stupid, I would go do FATEs or queue for a quick roulette out of boredom and hoped I wasn't too far before it was pulled or the duty didn't take too long. The first weapons put me off from doing any of these grinds until they were nerfed, but then again I hate grinding (I say as I'm 17 EX2 totems away from 99). The Resistance weapons weren't too bad though.

I love your history videos. ❤️ keep up with the great content.

I love history videos from Larry, it's just such a good watch

When I first came to FFXIV (ARR because I had also tried 1.x for a bit) I still had Stockholm Syndrome from FFXI. I felt SE was now taking care of me because things had gotten easier. With the game being where it is now, I finally get that you don't have to be punished to enjoy the game. Looking back, the only thing I really liked about FFXI was the community that it fostered. Recognizing names even when you didn't know someone. That stuff was the absolute best part and I don't think I'll ever find that again.

I completely skipped this when I reached level 50 around the beginning of Shadowbringers. Nobody told me about it in order to protect me. I went back and did it at level, and oh man, even the nerfed current version is a major time sink if you're actually at ARR levels.

0:24 Got a good laugh out of me - whereas what I love the most about SMN is that it's the most mobile of all the caster DPS!

Me and my friend recently went back to the roots and started the NIN and PLD weapon respectively. I think without him I would have lost my sanity during the book step…we finished about 2 weeks ago tho! I’d say the shiny itself wasn’t worth it but the journey sure as hell was :D

Love this Larry! So glad to see these vids again! Keep it up my good man!

I'll tell you a little bit of great grandpa knowledge. When ARR launched, the relic weapons first stage after being forged was called < relic name > +1. I remember beating Titan and getting that +1 on my Gae Bolg, so glad they changed that to Atma.

Great video, Larry. These are my favorite kind of video

You forgot the kettles. At the time I did the DRG weapon and called it a day for the rest of ARR. I think I ended up trading it in to do my 2nd relic during HW. I still roc the "Z" title you got from the whole ordeal

Hearing all this, I actually feel inspired to go back and do a zodiac weapon or two.

I did it twice recently during Shadowbringers and I would absolutely never get another AAR relic again. Even the new nerfed process is painful. Severely less than during launch. But it's still very grindy.

Back when i was a naive free trial sprout i tried to farm an arr relic for summoner. It was the most agonizing thing i have ever suffered :c As a free trial you had no access to the marketboard so i had to level nearly all crafters but mostly alchemist and leatherworker to 50 to then be able to craft the eudite's picatrix of casting needed for the base relic. Then when i hit 50 on all gatherers and crafters except goldsmith, i realised to my horror that i needed a bloody grimoire binding that dropped from wanderer's palace in a trapped chest that most duty finder parties would pass or ignore in order to get fast clears. Cue 2 weeks of suffering as i spammrd wandrrer's palace for the bindings. At first i begged the parties to stop by the chests before we moved on and with a few exceptions most didn't mind grabbing the extra loot. After a few days of getting nothing but bloody spear heads and knive blades, i finally saw the bindings drop! But i did not get it :c this proceeded to happen two more times before i cracked and tried to solo the wanderer's palac as an astro at level 60, it did not go well. Afterwards i grew desperate and begged a friend who was a subbed player and had lvl 80 classes to help me get the bindings. She agreed and we spammed palace. Good news, the bindings dropped, bad news, my friend got it instead :c She offered to trade me the bindings but we unfortunately discovered free trial sprouts dont get nice things. This agony and suffering went of till i finally got the bindings on my 2nd week, where i would wait for all 3 other duty finder parties to leave before backtracking and looting the skipped chests. After finally getting the bindings i hit another snag as i needed to meld a materia for the weapon. But i did not have them and wasted more time extracting materia from full spiritbond gear. In hindsight i coulda bought it from the vendors. Once the erudite picatrix finally had the necessary materia affixed i went to gerolt to finally get the quest done. But to my horror(and i did not read whole guides back then besides checking where items dropped) it was far from the last step. After several more annoying quests i hit the a relic reborn hydra which took me hours and hours to queue as a dps . Once that was over i hit the atma stage. I hate it, i HATE it . It took me 3 days to get all the atmas, which admittedly was not as bad as the 2 weeks with the bindings but it was still really REALLY annoying. At this point my patience and sanity have reached the breaking point. And when the atms stage was over and i got the book stage i snapped. I couldn't handle it anymore :'( To me the relic wasnt worth all the farms with drop rates that hated me. I never ended up finishing any arr relic. I did finish arr and shb relics tho once i subbed, but i have never EVER touched arr relics since. Never again...!

First time doing ARR weapon farm for my DRG and even today, the books wore such a pain. Took me 4 days 8-10 hours daily to do them ( i was sick ok). Such a horrible chore that i will remember for a long time. And to think how even worse was it back in the day.. My respects to you peeps.

You forgot part of the pain. For each step, you had to have the relic weapon equipped when doing the content (fates, dungeons, etc.), which depending on where your gear was at, might have been worse than your current weapon. So many people would have to remember to swap to the relic before queueing. Imagine doing those 100 fates or dungeons, only to realize you forgot to equip the weapon ( : At least the light step, you'd remember right after the first one because "oh, I didn't get the light notification". But those random drops? "Oh well, guess my luck was just bad ( : "

All of these videos is Larry telling us "If you think you want a "FFXIV-Classic" mode. . . take off the rose colored glasses"

i think you missed the most important part of the zodiac weapon, which was how for the second to last step, the game repeatedly implied that you had a ~1% chance to destroy your relic forever for trying to continue

It's been several years and I still break into fits of anger whenever I think about those damn books

Idk if someone else mentioned it but to provide some insight into book FATEs (the reason why most people hate the step) like Larry said some of them took a while to spawn because their timers were broken. There’s a few that are infamous for it too, the one coerthas took 6h to spawn for me, the one in SThanalan a whole 24hs (Taken to be precise), the E Shroud one wasn’t bad for me but a fc friend had to wait 10hs for it to spawn. EVENTUALLY they decided to tune in the timers and they were not as broken anymore, even tho to this day some of them still take a bit to spawn. It was miserable lol I’m still surprised I put myself through that hell twice before they nerfed anything.

i hope you will do other history videos like this, it's very interesting!

the reminder that atma was a thing threatens to destroy my already fragile sanity but anyway A CHICKEN NUGGET SQUISHY???? i feel... targeted......

This was such a nice trip down memory lane. I remember the abyssmal droprate. Back then, playing in EU it was even worse when you had to do Titan hard cause of the ping situation, the EU servers was back then placed in NA.

I might of hated myself when I did this but I made my self do the monk ARR Relic for the "Kettle Knuckles Nexus". It took me 3 months because I would finish a step and then take a break for a few days.

*hugs* I can see the PTS in your voice. I did the first relic back in the day, got Titan Hard killed when it was "the end game" and quit to only return at HW lol.

Recently did the ARR relic for bard and hooboy, I will never forget the "Surprise" fate in Upper La Noscea. If you're late by 2 mins, the NPC just dies

As someone looking into doing relics soon, this pain was appreciated. At least you can do 90% of the Anima Weapon ahead of time now with spare poetics.

I feel like some of the context on Atma and Animus being such horrid steps is lost these days. Those relic steps were released very close to an item level increase-- that's right, Atma and Animus both released on patch 2.2... So everyone felt like they **HAD** to do these relic weapons, to have a nice i100 weapon for raiding instead of the i95 leviathan extreme or T5 weapons. Well, maybe not everyone, but it was definitely part of what put me off the relic grind initially.

I think I only ever made one fully completed relic weapon in ARR in the end. I remember doing Moogle EX and I think garuda hard mode in particular on the rotation for my light farm. I think the reason I barely remember the Zodiac farm was to bleach it from my memory.

Literally doing the WHM ARR relic right now at the atma step, nice timing! I already did a couple back in HW-SB days, but I'm bored enough to torture myself again

I love this history series! Really reminds us how far we've come! Are you gonna do HW relic next? I remember I got mine done ONE WEEK before Stormblood Early Access. I was so proud of myself

The moment you mentioned the books I had that straight-faced Vietnam flashback look from sitting around Coerthas Central Highlands waiting for the FUCKING FATE to spawn.

Oh god I thought I forgot about this horror and just had my PLD relics as a neat little glamour. Now I properly remember the horrors and nightmares I had to go through for these items all those years ago.

God this song plays with the strings in my heart. Also great video as always!! ♥

I'll never forget how I spent 3 hours in South Shroud doing fates only to realize atmas don't even appear there

I just recently started playing and figured I would try out the Relic Quest for Scholar. I saw the book on the market with the materias on it for 50k and thought "ill just buy an empty one and put them on myself." But when I just threw on a materia and didnt get it i was like "oh maybe it needs to be fully materia'd" and filled all three slots. Then when the quest progression didn't change I read it again and realized "oh i put the wrong materia on it." And for some absurd reason I didn't buy another empty one and just spent the 50k on a filled one. So I ended up wasting 20k on an empty book, and then wasting another 30k on buying a book with materia on it that i had in my bag that i could have spent 200 gil on the npc right next to me to fill myself. Also wow, the relic grind between then and now sounds wild. I already thought that doing the 16 or so steps at the current quest layout was wild. Grinding hundreds of fates and dungeons/trials for drops sounds like absolute anguish.

I remember the pain. I stopped at my Yoshi bow and none of my other jobs have their ARR Relic Weapons and never will. LOL

I think you left out the part where Hydra and Chimera were not in duty finder, and you had to manually form a party by /shouting in Mor Dhona or Dragon head... Cause party finder also didn't exist.

I clicked on this video thinking "A trip down memory lane, that'll be fun." you've gone and brought up suppressed memories.. I had fond memories of ARR Relic weapons, that is, until you mentioned the FATES.. Omg the FATES. I remember logging out in the area of the FATE after waiting a day for it to pop, then getting a message from a friend on Skype saying "Your FATE popped" so many sleepless nights... The horror, the horror. Though, Eureka and Bozja are no better..

I love your history FFXIV videos, make me feel old xD

2 years ago i started with my first arr relic. after a year i have made it to books stage . now i am at the 3rd book. meanwhile 6 HW anima weapon and 2 eureka weapons done. arr for junkies

Once I got to the books stage I was like no, I dont think I will. And that was in ShB.

I only got my first zeta after it was nerfed since I joined the game in 4.0. I used to think the my zeta relic grind was the worse than Anima, given the amount of steps but hearing how it used to be makes me appreciate where it is now. My advice to anyone trying to get a zeta/anima/resistance relic is to not make it your main focus. Put it on the back burner while you do other things. It's a good sink for poetics and you can do fates while waiting in Party finder

never have i felt such fear from the phrase "nexus light farming" i remember the shout arguments ppl had that when odin spawned, the fate drop increased for his fate and also for behemoth, it was insane!! this was before world travel too lol also i distinctly remember that u had a specific fate in books as well and shouts for "omw to " were very common

Gotta love when you can just hear Larry getting progressively more heated as he explained the old relic grind. I feel. I remember doing this....I remember that pain....that was the worst

Recently did the entire process for the DRG Relic (the Longinus Zeta) and it was a pain, it drained my Eorzean wallet and my irl mental sanity. I am very reluctant to do it for even another relic and I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating it must've been back in the day before all the little buffs to item drops.

Back in ARR my first Weapon was the Bow and when i finished it i was so proud. I like the Relic Quests and Gerold I hope Endwalker gets wonderfull shiny Weapons too

This was very entertaining to watch while I'm working on my WAR relic. Can't wait to see the plushie too!

I also remember the first 14 hour anniversary stream where one of the challenge was Atma grinding and seeing how much they could get in the 14 hours

that book step was like draining your insanity. but ARR relic have best looking NIN weapon

I thought about doing one of these in the current era but I'm on the book stage and I keep going "Screw this" and then I do something else. I know they've been nerfed like crazy but it's still just so grindy.

I did Atma for 3 relic weapons before they increased the drop rate. Edit: I would like to add that the Novus weapons were so bright that folks complained about it. I think they ended up toning down the brightness of it.

I have done 2 relics in XIV. Both of them are ARR relics, the Bow I finished just recently.

I farmed fates for three hours before I realised I hadn't unlocked the drops because I never spoke to an NPC (they didn't have a quest marker on their head)

@Larryzaur Great video, and this is really sad to reveal to you this late in the game, but it was far cheaper to teleport to Gridania instead of North Shroud - the chocobo porter will take you directly to Hyrstmill for cheap. You don't even have to steer the chocobo. Also, the fate grind can be made SLIGHTLY easier both then and now by doing all of the fates on a dps class, as you can get more than one atma drop, and save them for when your next weapon hits the step.

When I finished the ARR story, I started on my DRG relic weapon. I tried to do it on-level. I got as far as the books when I finally stopped, in part because at that point I was level 51 before even starting Heavensward. It would be years- literal YEARS, I started before Shadowbringers came out and only went back after finishing EW- before I would finally drag myself through the remaining steps and finally get my Longinus Zeta. Was it worth it? For the glam, abso-fucking-lutely. Do I intend to do it again anytime soon? Not for the next few months at bare minimum.

I'm actually currently on the zodiac step for my first weapon and hearing that I don't have to run dungeons over and over like back then makes me so happy, but damn do I feel for everyone that did it on content. You're powerful as hell being able to go through that.

I got all the atma relics for my all my base jobs but I stop there when I saw how long all of that would take

Make more history videos please! These are super interesting and entertaining for someone who started in 5.5

I still build zodiac/anima weapons as a hobby. I've gotten quite a few. I'm on the MNK nova step currently. My first zodiac on content was the Nirvana Zeta.

i always would teleport to gridania then take the aetherite to the entrance to north shroud and walk from there, depending on loading time i think that was faster, also my return was set to gridania so it made it cheap too

Larry is like the ffxiv grandma. Telling the grandkids about the ff14 history/stories and how hard life used to be compare to how we live now xD i love it

I haven’t played since mid ShB but this brings back memories. ARR/Heavensward were good times

lol I did Monk largely in ARR, though I finished the thing in Heavensward. I've been prepping to be able to just kinda power through the relics at some point by getting every Zodiac quest item finished. I already did my Atma grind

finished all ARR HW and almost SHB relics ^^ my journey is almost done x)

As a person who finished their first and only ARR relic (PLD) a couple of weeks ago, the two steps that required light grinding had me go on PF just to ask for a Physical Ranged DPS, for spamming Peloton just for faster movement, and it was fun going thru Aurum Vale the first time around for like 20 or so runs (not) during a specific 2 hours window for a high bonus...Twice They're a lot more grindy than HW relics, which is something more fun personally speaking.

Hearing about how the game used to be is so cool. Keep up the great work. :D

I haven't been playing FF for a week now (busy with LA rn) and the Shroud theme in the background made me want to log on just to afk there... I miss it so bad already.

Good stuff! Started my 2nd relic for this….2 years ago, lmao I’ll finish it eventually 😂 though I’ve done DRG first each expansion for the relic, that might change but hope the new relic isn’t just going to be a easy grind

Grandpa Larry videos are honestly pretty great

-cries in multizeta- “once you’re past the books it’s ok, I promise” they said -rocks back and forth in a corner like a crazy person-

I did 2 on content as well, PLD and MNK. Thanks for the wonderful traum.. memories @Larryzaur

I remember spending over 18 hours on the atma of the scorpion in southern thanalan....... good times

There's the one FATE in Upper La Noscea that halted my progress getting all of these guys solo. I did three Relics when it was current: BRD, PLD, WAR. I have everything set for all of the rest (that Zodiac step, have everything for those), but as I was doing the books for BLM, I had to do that couriers fate where, if you don't get there immediately, they will die in a minute to the Kobolds, and even if you camp it, killing both sets of Kobolds and protecting the couriers is pretty damn tough, especially as a mage. So yeah, I pretty much got all the ARR Relics done up to the Books step, and didn't bother doing more after that because of that one FATE.