The Atma Weapon

Hat For All Occasions

A few weeks ago my friend Tam stumbled onto a hat in his inventory that he has picked up somewhere.  It seems he played the game significantly longer than we did, and it seemed to come from some event, or at least that is the impression I got.  It was a cute white bunny samurai hat and he used it with his cavalry armor to create a rather unique looking tanking set.  This lead me over to the market boards to see what other interesting hats existed, and I stumbled on a very similar hat but it was red and black, and instead of having a closed in mask the visor was completely open.  I managed to pick it up for only 1500 gil or so, and immediately I noticed it fit perfectly with my Warrior relic set.  So I glamoured it onto the item and started my life as a bunny samurai tank.

Shortly after that I noticed that it also seemed to work pretty well with my Dragoon armor since it also had a lot of black and gold in it.  So once again I glamoured the item over my helm and began another life as the bunny samurai dragoon.  Tonight I finished getting my Bard job up to ilevel 90, and as I was re-glamouring my pieces to the foestrikers gear set, I wondered just how well the bunny helm would work there too.  Turns out I like the look since the Foestriker set has a lot of red in it already.  So basically I am a bunny samurai for all occasions.  I think Tam is a little bummed that I took his style idea and ran with it…  but seriously…  it works amazingly well for a Lalafell.  Sadly however I don’t think the bunny samurai thing will work quite so well for my caster sets.  I can’t really see a bunny samurai healer being a thing… but damned if I won’t try and make it happen.

The Atma Weapon

I’ve talked a few times in the past about the Relic weapon quest chain in Final Fantasy XIV.  Essentially for those who are not familiar, it involves a long series of quests and battles to forge a weapon and then harden it while doing battle with the three original Primals.  The end result is your relic weapon, which then can continue to be upgraded through additional quests.  The first “Zenith” step is extremely simple in the grand scheme of things.  It involves purchasing three Thavnairian Mists from a vendor in Mor Dhona for 300 tomestones of mythology each.  So to get this step you literally just need to run practically any of the endgame content be it dungeons or raids, they all reward decent chunks of Mythstones.  Once you have your items you simply take them back to the same vendor that originally forged your weapon and by using the forge yourself you can perform the upgrade.  This takes the original ilevel 80 item to ilevel 90, and at this point I have the Zenith step on Warrior, Dragoon and Bard.

The next step is significantly trickier, but last night my friend Warenwolf managed to complete his, so I have renewed focus in finishing mine up.  Essentially the Atma step is a tricky way of making players revisit old content.  You get the various Atma parts by grinding FATEs in twelve different zones.  Kodra noticed that the zones that are missing… are the ones that were traditionally FATE grinding hubs at release.  So gone is South Shroud and Costa Del Sol as well as the later hubs of Coerthas, Mor Dhona and Northern Thanalan.  The final list looks a little something like this.

• Southern Thanalan: Atma of the Scorpion
• Eastern Thanalan: Atma of the Bull
• Western Thanalan: Atma of the Twins
• Central Thanalan: Atma of the Scales
• Central Shroud: Atma of the Maiden
• East Shroud: Atma of the Goat
• North Shroud: Atma of the Archer
• Upper La Nocea: Atma of the Water Bearer
• Middle La Nocea: Atma of the Ram
• Outer La Nocea: Atma of the Lion
• Lower La Nocea: Atma of the Fish
• Western La Nocea: Atma of the Crab

Upon doing some research last night it seems that there is an equal drop chance for all zones that never actually improves over time.  In fact you don’t even have to get Gold completion, you can get an ATMA to drop on bronze, silver or gold just so long as you have participated enough to actually get credit for the event.  Supposedly the drop chance for an ATMA is somewhere between 1% and 10% depending on who you talk to.  I have managed to get four drops so far, but some of my guild members have ground for upwards of six hours and never seen so much as a single one.  I feel like this is the sort of thing that is best done in passing, however with Waren getting his it has lit a bit of a fire under me to go ahead and grind out mine as well.  Sure there are other paths to upgrades, but at this point I feel like I want to do this.

Western Thanalan

The zone I have been hung up on for the last three nights is Western Thanalan.  I have been trying to knock these out in a single region before moving on to others.  Western Thanalan might just be the bane of my existence, and probably one of the hardest zones to habitually FATE grind in.  As you can see from the map the zone is broken into three four sections divided by a series of pathways connecting them.  This means it is extremely tedious to cross and often times by the time you get to a FATE a different group of adventurers will have whittled it down to nothing.  Now that I at least know that Atma parts can drop on bronze contribution I am far less stressed.  Previously I knew I needed to get to a FATE before the 50% mark to be able to pull enough aggro to earn Gold contribution.  Now I simply just need to touch it, or hit a few overpowers to get credit at all.

I could move on to another zone, but I feel like this is probably the most difficult of them all.  I might as well get the worst one out of the way so I can move onto other zones that are easier to traverse.  I feel like more than likely Southern Thanalan will be another problem child, however you can pretty much live in the north or the south either one and grind plenty of FATEs since that zone is so diverse level wise, there is not a ton of overlap between the events.  Additionally it seems like there is almost always a FATE up in the Amalja Beast Tribe daily area.  Here is hoping  that I will manage to get this ATMA tonight and be able to move on, while still keeping some of my sanity.  However my mission is set, and I will get my damned Atma relic upgrade.

#FFXIV #RelicWeapon