atma weapon Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Naps Are Evil

This morning I am completely dragging and seem to be wallowing in a near zombie like state. The answer to my predicament is rather simple. I indulged in taking a nap with my wife yesterday, and as a result I paid a heavy price. As glorious as naps feel, I for whatever reason cannot take them. I mean I can fall asleep for a nap just fine, but the act of napping dooms me to being unable to sleep later. I am envious of my wife, who can wake up from one nap and immediately fall asleep for another one. My body however seems to hate sleep, and if I partake of the forbidden fruit it means I will be wired at midnight trying desperately to get my body to calm the hell down and sleep.

Last night was of course one of these nights. So this morning I am in a stupor that I fear no coffee will raise me from. I would love to say that the nap was worth it, because it really did feel amazing at the time. However the ultimate results or nap taking seem to always leave me in this condition, and it seems to be a less I have to relearn on a regular basis. So I present to you… Naps are Evil, or at the very least they are unadvisable for someone with screwed up sleep patterns like myself. I realize that I could drug myself into a sleep like state but that generally causes more issues than it is worth. So once again I will just deal with it this morning and hopefully get a good nights sleep tonight.

Atma Weapon Get

This weekend for me was ruled by an overriding goal, to acquire all twelve Atmas and be able to upgrade my axe to its next evolution. There are some caveats there but I will get into them later. Over the course of the past week I have done enough FATEs to gather up around 80,000 grand company seals. If you figure that on average you get around 100 seals per FATE, that means I completed somewhere in the vicinity of 800 FATEs between collecting all twelve Atmas. I am guessing that would Math out about right considering I am roughly 2000 FATEs into the 3000 FATE achievement. So yeah… my guild thought I was crazy for embarking upon this, but I pushed through it regardless. I am by far not the first to get it as Warenwolf and Cylladora managed to get theirs significantly before I did. I feel like they simply had better luck than I did in a few of the zones as I know for certain I ground Southern Thanalan for 3 evenings.

In any case it feels good to put this step of the process behind me for the time being. The funny thing is… I am not absolutely opposed to doing the grind again for another job. I figure at some point I will do it for my Dragoon, however I am going to need to put a lot of pacing between the two grinds. More than likely I am going to shift focus to working on my White Mage for awhile to do something “different” feeling. I tend to go on these missions every now and then, where I am all consumed with getting this one thing done. The games that get me to stick around are the ones that can create large numbers of these traps to ensnare me with in order to keep feeding me new goals that I actually want to accomplish. So far it seems like upon returning to Final Fantasy XIV there are more than enough shiny baubles in the distance to keep me focused.

Beginning the Animus Grind

While I finished the most random portion of the level 100 weapon, I still have to power it up. The Atma Bravura while ilevel 100, it really is no different than your existing Zenith weapon other than having a changed appearance. In the case of the Warrior the blade is coated with blood. From this point out I have a slower and more deliberate grind. The first step is to get 1500 tomestones of mythology which I will then exchange for one of 9 books needed to power up my weapon. Each book is in itself a quest, that involves me to complete specific dungeons, fates or leves in order to complete that step. If I am understanding correctly, each time I complete a book it will imbue my weapon with some stat improvements until finally after completely all nine it will be a proper level 100 weapon.

Some of my guild members are taking a completely different route to get to their ilevel 100 weapon, and in truth it is probably the easier route. I like this one however because it reminds me of how it felt to do an epic weapon quest in the original Everquest, and to some extent in Everquest II. They are long epic quests and at the end when you finally get your hands on the next step in the sequence, it feels well fought and earned in a way that simply saving up tokens could never feel. I am sure I am romanticizing the process, but completely relic weapon quests in Final Fantasy XIV has this same feel for me, so I can see myself doing even the most insane ones just to be able to say I did it.

There is a club of sorts among the folks that have completed the Atma step that I have noticed. They sit around and tell tales of how long it took to get this piece or that piece. Sure it was an arduous grind, but I feel happy to be admitted into that club and be able to tell the tales of the process to get my own bloody axe. Similarly I am sure I will enjoy retelling the tales of the various books that I had to complete to get my animus step as well. The truth of it all is, that these little goals on the horizon are what will keep me hooked on a game for more than just the moment. This long range missions are what keep me grounded and focused. So I might be insane for grinding them out when there are potentially easier alternatives… but I am enjoying the journey.

#FFXIV #Atma #Animus

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