No way of obtaining materials with story gear

[Far Tide]

Today I realised that with the end of the Call to Arms event, new players will officially be screwed.
The story gives players an Exalted stage 3 weapon. All's well until you realise that you need to upgrade your weapon 7 times to even be able to join a dungeon. You're simply not allowed to "LFP" if you don't own a Grand Celestial 3 or the PVE path equivalent. That's where all the problems begin.

 

So how to get the crystal materials required to get the needed weapon?

Weeklies? They don't give nearly enough materials, and well, they can only be done once a week. Not exactly reliable.

Getting 35 Martial Tokens to get an Exalted stage 9 weapon, reducing the required number of upgrades required to only 1? Martial Tokens are limited to 6 per day. That will take a new player a whole week to get an Exalted 9, for them to be met with an absurd leap in upgrade cost. Exalted 9 -> Skyforge 3 (which is the PVE path equivalent of Grand Celestial 3) costs 40 Transformation Stones and an Empyrean Spirit Stone. That comes down to around 600 gold if everything is bought from the marketplace, which, again, for a new player without access to f8 dungeons, is a huge amount.

Finding groups for the dungeons outside f8? This one would be by far the best solution, however, sadly, nobody wants to carry someone who will deal 1% of the boss' hp in damage throughout the whole fight. Sure, a point that this is an mmo and not a solo game and communication and finding clans is what everyone should be doing, however, I disagree that it should be an absolute necessity. We all take our time to find people we vibe with and it should not be forced by any means.

 

All in all, at its current state, this game is extremely unwelcoming to new players. I have been playing this game on and off almost since release and I've never seen a situation this bad. Story should DEFINITELY give a player a Grand Celestial 3 / PVE weapon path equivalent. Or maybe I'm just missing something very obvious.

[Hungibungi]

Story gear will be adjusted (hopefuly) next maintenance (would make sense to adjust it right after C2A ends). Hime said that it is planned to change the story gear, but might not be in the next main.

[Grimzy]

Players seem to forget Moon Refuge and Celestial Basin exist which are great and easy ways to farm crystal pouches.

[Belido]

30 minutes ago, Grimzy said:

Players seem to forget Moon Refuge and Celestial Basin exist which are great and easy ways to farm crystal pouches.

Thanks for my nightmares returning!

Please don't use this words while I am around this forum *shivers*

 

[Drakor]

If you do the Moon Refuge Quests and Mushin's Tower quest The Final Training you will receive Martial Tokens and for 35 of them you can obtain a Storm Dragon or Exalted Weapom Stage 9 from Dragon Express. Also the Moon Refuge quests gives triangular gems for the Moonlight Buds.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Drakor

[Far Tide]

1 hour ago, Grimzy said:

Players seem to forget Moon Refuge and Celestial Basin exist which are great and easy ways to farm crystal pouches.

True, I had forgotten about them. However, I don't think they're a great introduction to max level content and dungeons should fill that role, as it has always been. At least the situation isn't as bad as I initially thought.

[Grimzy]

2 hours ago, Far Tide said:

True, I had forgotten about them. However, I don't think they're a great introduction to max level content and dungeons should fill that role, as it has always been. At least the situation isn't as bad as I initially thought.

 It is kind off subjective. I still farm in Basin daily for 2-3 hours and am sitting on multiple stacks of crystals. The nice part about it is you can just braindead it while watching a movie lol

 

[Shirafune]

On 10/4/2021 at 10:17 PM, Hungibungi said:

Story gear will be adjusted (hopefuly) next maintenance (would make sense to adjust it right after C2A ends). Hime said that it is planned to change the story gear, but might not be in the next main.

 

If the patch notes are correct they're giving Grand Celestial Soul Shields instead of Raven and some better gems. That's it, No better weapon, not even imperial set or better soul/heart. That's barely an upgrade at all and will still lock out alts and new players from dungeon lobby.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Shirafune