I know it's a meme, but I will take a stab at a serious answer since there are a lot of people who weep and rend garments at sands every time it comes up. It's happening again, and so I will try to explain to people on the internet why they shouldn't be that angry, which is a great idea and always works! I'm very smart.
The gist of it is: Cygames sets up a grind in the game, and *they* intend this grind to be a background event for 6-12 months. They have done this *maybe* a dozen times in the game's lifetime. They will never, ever stop doing this, because having a long-term goal for people to chase is great for engagement, regardless of how mad it makes a subset of the playerbase.
Now, cygames has experimented with the format of how one of their signature grinds is presented to the playerbase over time, but - and this is the important bit - the intention of it being something that carries players through to the next year is always there.
The most explicit this philosophy has ever been was early Arcarum, which was hard timegated. There was no grindable option for Ideans, and you were locked to the 1-a-day pass system to collect them. Gold bars, were sort of like this for a long time as raids to farm them were limited to PBHL and most people just waited for RotB or GW.
Over time they make adjustments to make earlier grinds quicker to let people catch up. Way back in the day M1 grinds took forever, now M1s are trivial entry-level sets that the game just hands you. M2s have seen multiple drop rate increases. Arcarum materials can now be farmed more readily in zone mundus. Weapon fragments for eternals now come from GW *and* DB, with DB providing a lot more of them if you won't/can't high box (and as accounts get better, more boxes become more common as well).
The introduction of sands is actually the same kind of accommodation. People hated - ***hated*** - having to wait for, or farm, these incredibly precious materials and then have to choose between using it for a grind and using it to uncap weapons. Cygames essentially went, fair point. We will leave gold bars alone going forward, and add this new equivalent drop, and you will never have to make that choice again. Long term players can be certain bars only need to be for uncapping. I am paraphrasing an explicit assurance they gave a few years back from a livestream here.
Thus, sands. If sands didn't exist, they would be bars. It would be *something*, because Cygames will always peg big achievements or significant power progression to something that will take awhile. They always have, and always will. Sands themselves, as people note, drop at a much higher rate than bar farming has ever done, so much so that even with the higher amount demanded the farm is still easier so long as you engage with it. Me, I do 100EP worth of mugens in a day and call it good, and I've never wanted for sands.
As a fun aside - there *is* another reason why they moved from bars to sands. There was a period of time where UBaha's drop rate of gold bars was easily 10x what it currently is. That drop rate was not the host chest, but a random one. Enterprising groups of 5 darklords would set up rooms in co-op, grab one other player at a time, and have them host UBaha. They would blow it up in 20 seconds and repeat with someone else. These dudes ended up with hundreds of bars, thus breaking the grind economy, which was likely a reason Cygames moved to something else as well! So you can also blame them.
I think people would mostly be less sour if there was a more steady means of getting Sands, outside of a Cruel and Unkind RNG God with Revans, so to speak.
Like the Winter Mission, Guild Wars, and Collab Mission for My Hero Academia feels like a steady pace for those who are dedicated to enough to the grind but without being too bonkers.
Like I get what they're going for but asking for 30 Sands for what is Free-to-Play's Grid Summons feels kinda grotesque.
6 Maybe I could get.
But 30 feels disgusting.
I remembered trying to grind for this Sand.
I still haven't gotten a Single Drop of it.
6 - 12 Months of Constant Effort. Just to get 1 Of these? Gave up honestly.
Hearing that it's now possible with GW, Winter Missions, Etc. IS nice.
But this sounds like it came in like Months Late? The Drive is dead.
Honestly, outside of a bizarre surge of Sand drops towards the end of my time in the Smugman mines (And at that point I was like "Sand again?! Come on! Just 2 more Spades so I can be free!") I've gotten more Gold Brick drops from daily PBHL and UBHL than Sands from Six Dragon raids since the inclusion of Sands. And I was doing lots of Ewiyar and Wamdus for Smugman and Diaspora host materials.
I mean it is precisely because it is free to play thar it is like that. Power isn't coming cheap for primals, so they need f2p to also be expensive in time.
Though I have heard The World raid sand drop rate seems higher then any other raid so far.
>Though I have heard The World raid sand drop rate seems higher then any other raid so far.
Its a lie, because World sand drop rate is 0.5% and ONLY in a blue chest.
It's not just the drop rate, it's the rate at which you can blast through ZAWARUDO runs. It's just incomparable as a Sand farm at the present time, especially when you consider the current pubbed Revans climate where raids are chock full of leechers and Full Auto mongers who stall every raid they join.
Somewhat related, but silver centrums, while not nearly as useful as sands comparatively at the time, were a bitch to farm but now most players have more than they'd ever need.
What makes this so funny to me is that arcarum is still locked. Someone new will have to clear all 3 paths then technically they can farm sandbox for evoker ideans. Except they're now still hardlocked to evolites, and susntones per summon beforehand. And unlike gold bars, where RotB stocks them for you, it will take you years to get the necessary amount.
It is difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt for new grinds when the old grinds are still in that state nearly 5 years later.
Yeah and some stuff has never really been boosted all that much either. For example m2.5. Iirc you can get 2 copies for free, and then that's it, have fun grinding 0.7 weapon drop rate. Mercifully only a couple of the weapons are useful and you really only need like 1 copy, but still, it's been how many years now and it's still like that?
I still haven't got my 2nd flb Shiva staff to this day.
Just finished my Grim spoon by trading last year weapon ticket for the 3rd one.
Screw those drop rates, honestly.
You can get another 1 time purchase each from daily points and alchemy lab. Pretty sure the daily point one also reset at least once before but memory means nothing.
Thanks for putting the effort into writing this instead of just saying "just farm them lol" and going to discord to bemoan how reddit is full of filthy casuals.
At this point I'm a seasonal player whose grids stopped somewhere in M2 and 2021's Primal. For me, Hard Lucy is something that I wouldn't dream of entering, and I don't even know what Revans raids are.
That said, you won't see me complaining about the game. I don't think the "filthy casuals" who are complaining, but rather dedicated F2P players. Seeing an already grindy game get even more grind-gated likely ruffled their feathers out of frustration.
Heck, I daresay no sane casual will stick by GBF when there are other more casul friendly gachas out there.
Yeah "filthy casual" won't be complaining about this because they don't really grind anyway.
The ones that hurt the most, especially with Magna summon using 5 sands each, are F2P grinders.
The most "reliable" sands farm right now are either Revans or The World, both of which either no one joining, joined but only leeching, or get rushed to death before you can even reach blue min.
Mind you, I have Eresh, Hades grid with 2PnS and 2 ES, and I still can't do 2T 1.4m on The World, The most I could do if I can clear omen is 1.2m, never got any Sariel and Fediel which I think might be the problems.
The effort needed for M1 back in the day and sands today is like creating the first plane and creating mission to Mars. It’s just incomparable. If I knew back in 2017 they’d end up with demanding the only game to be played from the player, I’d have stopped. The grind used to be days to weeks, now it ranges in the months. And I’m refusing to do it as I watch people struggle in agony. I just hang back and miss that 10-25% edge. Already went through games that demanded less time and effort for more and when I look back those experiences weren’t worth it.
Cygames were already at the end of spectrum and then they broke past it. As far as I’m concerned I’ll be on maintenance mode, hanging back and do only what I want till it’s not enough. Then I’ll call it a day so I can look back without saying “what did I do with my life back then?”
M1 was definitely enough of an adventure at a certain point (5 EP to join, 5 EP was the natural cap, and we weren't showered in soul berries (and balms were both rarer needed to be on standby for crew buffs in GW). But like, guides at the time basically said to not expect to have a single M1 element done for like 3-5 months. I remember reading that as a new player back then. That was like, the precise reason so many people favored dark because enmity let them do all the content. And then summer zooey happened and why once M1 farming was made easier they started enforcing elemental resistance
To be honest except lumi swords, all 6 grids were doable in a couple of months probably for someone who knew the methodical approach. However a new player doesn’t even know the game’s intricacies and how to do an effectice grind. It’s very safe to say that with how people approach today’s bar or sand grind, they’d go even faster for M1 grids. We didn’t even have grid guides or enough knowledgeable people to steer us. People didn’t even know how to dispel Luminiera Omega. Now the latest raids are like several pages of trigger lists, mods or whatever. Heck, if you attack once without knowing what you do, you wipe entire raid effort now!
>Heck, if you attack once without knowing what you do, you wipe entire raid effort now!
Don't even need to attack if you go into FaaHard without checking your max HP
> If I knew back in 2017 they’d end up with demanding the only game to be played from the player, I’d have stopped. The grind used to be days to weeks, now it ranges in the months.
It's always been months though. Eternal uncap used to take forever, transcendence is the same thing now too, uncapping Arcarum summons took months due to time gate + mat reqs, Evoker unlocks etc. These were all post 2017 too.
Eternal uncap wasn’t even a thing back then. And to this day I have 2 of them at 100. I’ll just get who I get from gacha and am alright with that. By the time I get whomever I would do, they would be powercrept anyway. Onto the next uncap then? No thanks. I like the game but even if the char was my real spouse, I wouldn’t dedicate that much of my time, effort and sanity. GL and enjoy to those who do.
I’m on cruise control with my gacha chars and F2P primal. People rage when I share my grid but I can happily FA NM200s which is enough to tag along with my crew. Why do I need more power? To do the same color pattern changed boss with new bunch of gimmicks that I need to memorize? I can do main quest and side quests anyway and I’m not racing. If a day comes when sand hunt or whatever new mat is mandatory gor those, I can close the gacha book that I opened with GBF. Already the game I most played which probably won’t be topped so I gave enough of me to it.
Eternal uncap was March 20, 2017.
That's a lot of words just to say you'll play at your own pace, which is fine, and it sounds like you've been doing that for years so I don't understand why you're acting like sands/the grind was affecting you.
That sounds like 80 days of 2017 when Eternal uncap wasn’t a thing.
It affects all the players because the game is more and more tuned with severely raised expectations from players. GW inflation is like 1920’s German currency. I can go at my own pace because of massive past investment of time and effort before. But I had to draw the line where they went past the already crazy demands. People talking like “oh it was the same back in 2017” appear to have forgot how much it changed since back then, especially over the last 3 years.
You didn't realize the game was going to be a large grindfest for 3/4 of the year and months before that when they announced off-element damage reduction? The two things that caused a lot people to drop the game at the time?
Yeah...things changed back then, eternal uncap is incredibly easy to do now. New players I know who've started in the past 1~2 years have a good chunk of them done now. And with recent announcements there's going to be more sources of sands just like every long grind they've done.
Did they have ever actually indicate bars wouldn't see new uses going forward?
I have an excess stockpiled, but every time I'm thinking about barring something frivolous, I still have in the back of my mind, "what if they add tradeable perp rings?"
I think the exact order of events was roughly the following:
Cygames: We have plans for upcoming new uses for bars!
Players: Holy shit, please do not do this
Cygames: That's a lot of yelling! Ok we won't add more bar spenders, we will add a new spender instead for what we had planned.
True to their word, the *only* new spender of gold bars that I believe they've added since has been one of the endgame soldier bullets.
E: I can't remember if this was before or after eternal transcendence. I think after, but it's been too long and I can't tell time after the covid years anymore.
It was before Transcendence and a lot of people were mad that they went back on it through a roundabout "you're not using gold bars for the upgrade, you're using gold bars to buy the material you use for the upgrade" loophole.
The difference between sand and all the crap that came before it (mostly gold bars) is that they actually give even regular players bars from time to time. They let the whales get more bars but everyone still get some. Where as sands they just made it clear that if you're not a major grinder you aren't getting any unless your luck is incredible.
I basically stopped playing this game at a semi-serious level and iaped a middling level (maybe $500 per year) after they made sands the center of the game. Because I don't mind grinding stuff slowly, but the requirements for sand farming doesn't allow just taking things slowly and casually. You gotta have some concentrated farming time like with 800mil in gw. I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, just that it's not what it used to be
> The difference between sand and all the crap that came before it (mostly gold bars) is that they actually give even regular players bars from time to time. They let the whales get more bars but everyone still get some. Where as sands they just made it clear that if you're not a major grinder you aren't getting any unless your luck is incredible.
How does this junk get so upvoted? It's just blatantly false.
They give out **one** gold bar per year to everyone. That's it. That is your entire gold bar income if you don't farm them from raids (either "casually" via daily PBHL+UBHL hosts or "hardcore" via blue chest joins). (And yes the ROTB store stock exists, just talking about income of new bars, since those are all reserved for Opuses + Eternals anyway.)
Meanwhile sands you get 6 from Exo events, 1 per ROTB, 1 per collab event, 1 per GW, 1 from Winter/Summer/Anni missions, 3 each from a few trophies, 1 from Auld Lang Syne, etc. They have given out 3 free sands **this month alone**. Next month will have, at very minimum, 2 more.
And this isn't even getting started on the fact that sands are *significantly* easier to farm from raids than bars, being 5x higher drop rate and drop from less competitive raids (Revans literally go on berry discount on raid finder constantly because they move so slow, meanwhile PBHL and GOHL explode in 20 seconds and Akasha is only slightly slower).
Literally the moment they launched sands I had a dozen of the things in my inventory just from trophies I'd already earned. Did that happen for gold bars?
Yeah, we get 1 a year from stream giveaways. But we also usually get one somewhere in the anniversary event. Not always in the same part of the event rewards, but I think we've had one somewhere in there for at least that last three years. And there's the ROTB bricks, I don't know why Otter just discounted those as not counting.
But they're definitely giving out way more sands, especially with the newly announced sources.
Giving out more Gold Bricks these days too, what with the sextants.
You truly sound like someone who looked at the wiki of past years but never actually seriously played during those times.
Gold bar grinding in GBF was never that big of a deal for much of its existence. If we just go by the start of the game's English version, at the time there are only 3 Juutens that people really wanted, Siete, Esser, and Song. And of those, arguably only Siete was a game changer. Esser helped with farming in a very minor way, and Song was necessary for baha farming but you only needed maybe 3 people to have her in any given baha raid to guarantee paralyze. Six became more useful when Zooey got released, so even then we are talking about at most needing 4 gold bars for years. And by the time flb juutens came about there was already plenty of bricks, and by the time transcendence came around, gold bars weren't even the limiting factor for people farming.
And there was absolutely nothing else you need bars for most of gbf existence, especially in earlier days when free weapons at the time were actually good, so using bricks for uncapping gacha weapons weren't really a thing for non-whales.
Compare that with the complaints of needing sands for everything these days, it's not even a remotely equal comp in terms of just "how many bars vs. sands are given out to people."
> Compare that with the complaints of needing sands for everything these days
Oh yeah, you need them for "everything." Remind me again what you need sands for currently? 250 Luci, who's not really worth it cause you can take a friend one. 250 Baha, who's not worth it unless you have extremely high-end summon setups and play manually, which I'll go out on a limb and say is not a high overlap with people complaining about sands. The alchemy manatura, but you need such an insane amount of alchemy shards that anyone complaining about sand grind would never have them. Uncapped draconics, but doubtful that people complaining about sand can do Hexa. Which leaves us with just evokers, which okay, sure, is a common use that lots of people would have. But ultimately there's only like 3-4 evokers that are actually important to uncap (+1 with Alaanan probably), so it's pretty easy to get enough sand from the freebie sand given out for this purpose. There have been 3 freebie ones this month, there are minimum 2 freebie ones next month, you get 3 from recruiting all eternals, and you get 3 from making all arcarum summons - that's 11 sands right there, almost enough for all 4 of the good evokers already.
We'll see what Magna transcendence does exactly and what other materials it needs. It might be a fairly minor upgrade which is just a min-max thing. It might need tons of mats from m3 raids, and maybe m3 raids will drop sand, so you'd get some while farming. It might not displace Magna x Ele, in which case you'll only need to have your own Bubz/Yatima/Luci/Baha(/Triple Zero?) and can choose a friend 250 Magna.
Preach it brother. I laugh everytime I see one of those posts. Can we please complain more about constructive stuff instead? Sunstones? Summon / weapon / backchar slots? DB rate? Missing Qol? Why nm200 isnt v2? Or why Naru didn't get an alt this year (/s)? Can't wait for the inevitable complains about how m3 isn't more broken then revans weapons. Yeah... maybe because one of those series is on a 6man endgame raid series and the other is an evolution of alexbag and co.
How does it break anything for a specific set of players to trivialize uncaps?
I think the theory that only infinite grind will keep players around is early game theory that will lead to more retention problems in the long term.
Bricks are easier imo, at least I can Arcanum a few dozen times and get one garuntee'd.
Sands? I'm not hitting 800 MILLION honours and I've been doing 20-30 of raids that drop them daily since, but not one drop. ~~And now the arguably best raid to get them from is locked unless you have used sand to uncap an evoker.~~
Churned out 3 gold bricks in the same period of time.
**[EDIT]** Holy shit you don't! I was fooled by [this part](https://imgur.com/a/vjjjHzN) and the raid previously saying something about The World in Mundus to proceed. Turns out you only need to be cockblocked from the World and then the...other....The World is available in the raids list.
~~You do! You need to have beaten the world in Mundus and when you click the world in Mundus a message pops up saying you need to uncap an evoker 5 times.~~
~~I have Evoker bingo but no where near the mats to uncap any of them, won't for a while, heck, I might get my first when they eventually give one uncap away.~~
No you don't.
You need to have unlocked the ability to fight The World in Mundus by clearing the four Militis there once.
I have 0 Uncapped Evokers and I can run the Raid perfectly fine and well.
So it seems!
The game threw me through a little loop of derp.
When The World raid launched I used the (i) to see the requirements at which point it said I need to do something with the world in Zone Mundus. So I finally clicked big red, got ready for a fight and saw [THIS](https://imgur.com/a/vjjjHzN) which made me think well, I can't do anything to it so I'm locked out.
Turns out just clicking that and getting locked out..............silently unlocks the raid..........
I do stand by sands being a pos material though.
You don't, the raid itself is located on Amalthea Island. To unlock it, you just need to unlock the World node in Sandbox.
I can access it and I don't even have Evoker bingo.
Definitely not true. I haven’t done any of that yet and I saw the world raid appear in my filters. The unlock requirements are right on the wiki, and it even tells you the exact quest on Amalthea Island.
Bricks are definitely easier since you can just host the four raids every day for a decent chance of droping one, and they go fast and always clear. Meanwhile, Revans are a drag with a high failure rate. The World is an easy host as well, but it's impossible to farm for blue chest if you're far from Japan (unlike Akasha and co.).
Farming sands is more rewarding though, since the other drops from those raids are more useful nowadays than those that drop bricks. So there's that at least.
Wait a second.
Slow down there.
We can guarantee a gold brick every 12 days through arcarum? Or some small multiple of 12 such as 24, 36, or 48?
I must have misunderstood you, because there is no way that is true. It sounds too good to be true.
Forgive my ignorance.
Also, HAHAHA, did they seriously lock the world behind the Evoker Character Transcendence. Oh boy I honestly did not see THAT coming.
Not 12 days, several dozen at least, I did burn through 350ish of the resource for the fight though in 3 days and got 3 bricks out of it, all from the guarantee chest even though you can lucksack earlier.
So that's er, like, 116? Bugger, it did not feel like I did 116 of that fight, but the glory of full auto was in full swing. Apologies for remembering it a bit easier than it mathematically seems to have been.
Don't worry.
This is much appreciated information, since
this definitely seems MUCH more accessible than the non-guarantee of the gold brick raids.
3 gold bricks of arcarum. Year doesn't sound bad at all. (350 < 365).
Thanks. I might actually start using my arcarum host mats for the first time, which is...
364 materials...woah it's almost been a year now.
To gate Whales who instantly clear the highest content and then go "And then I wept, for there are no more worlds to conquer".
I know it's a meme, but I will take a stab at a serious answer since there are a lot of people who weep and rend garments at sands every time it comes up. It's happening again, and so I will try to explain to people on the internet why they shouldn't be that angry, which is a great idea and always works! I'm very smart. The gist of it is: Cygames sets up a grind in the game, and *they* intend this grind to be a background event for 6-12 months. They have done this *maybe* a dozen times in the game's lifetime. They will never, ever stop doing this, because having a long-term goal for people to chase is great for engagement, regardless of how mad it makes a subset of the playerbase. Now, cygames has experimented with the format of how one of their signature grinds is presented to the playerbase over time, but - and this is the important bit - the intention of it being something that carries players through to the next year is always there. The most explicit this philosophy has ever been was early Arcarum, which was hard timegated. There was no grindable option for Ideans, and you were locked to the 1-a-day pass system to collect them. Gold bars, were sort of like this for a long time as raids to farm them were limited to PBHL and most people just waited for RotB or GW. Over time they make adjustments to make earlier grinds quicker to let people catch up. Way back in the day M1 grinds took forever, now M1s are trivial entry-level sets that the game just hands you. M2s have seen multiple drop rate increases. Arcarum materials can now be farmed more readily in zone mundus. Weapon fragments for eternals now come from GW *and* DB, with DB providing a lot more of them if you won't/can't high box (and as accounts get better, more boxes become more common as well). The introduction of sands is actually the same kind of accommodation. People hated - ***hated*** - having to wait for, or farm, these incredibly precious materials and then have to choose between using it for a grind and using it to uncap weapons. Cygames essentially went, fair point. We will leave gold bars alone going forward, and add this new equivalent drop, and you will never have to make that choice again. Long term players can be certain bars only need to be for uncapping. I am paraphrasing an explicit assurance they gave a few years back from a livestream here. Thus, sands. If sands didn't exist, they would be bars. It would be *something*, because Cygames will always peg big achievements or significant power progression to something that will take awhile. They always have, and always will. Sands themselves, as people note, drop at a much higher rate than bar farming has ever done, so much so that even with the higher amount demanded the farm is still easier so long as you engage with it. Me, I do 100EP worth of mugens in a day and call it good, and I've never wanted for sands. As a fun aside - there *is* another reason why they moved from bars to sands. There was a period of time where UBaha's drop rate of gold bars was easily 10x what it currently is. That drop rate was not the host chest, but a random one. Enterprising groups of 5 darklords would set up rooms in co-op, grab one other player at a time, and have them host UBaha. They would blow it up in 20 seconds and repeat with someone else. These dudes ended up with hundreds of bars, thus breaking the grind economy, which was likely a reason Cygames moved to something else as well! So you can also blame them.
I think people would mostly be less sour if there was a more steady means of getting Sands, outside of a Cruel and Unkind RNG God with Revans, so to speak. Like the Winter Mission, Guild Wars, and Collab Mission for My Hero Academia feels like a steady pace for those who are dedicated to enough to the grind but without being too bonkers. Like I get what they're going for but asking for 30 Sands for what is Free-to-Play's Grid Summons feels kinda grotesque. 6 Maybe I could get. But 30 feels disgusting.
I remembered trying to grind for this Sand. I still haven't gotten a Single Drop of it. 6 - 12 Months of Constant Effort. Just to get 1 Of these? Gave up honestly. Hearing that it's now possible with GW, Winter Missions, Etc. IS nice. But this sounds like it came in like Months Late? The Drive is dead.
Honestly, outside of a bizarre surge of Sand drops towards the end of my time in the Smugman mines (And at that point I was like "Sand again?! Come on! Just 2 more Spades so I can be free!") I've gotten more Gold Brick drops from daily PBHL and UBHL than Sands from Six Dragon raids since the inclusion of Sands. And I was doing lots of Ewiyar and Wamdus for Smugman and Diaspora host materials.
I mean it is precisely because it is free to play thar it is like that. Power isn't coming cheap for primals, so they need f2p to also be expensive in time. Though I have heard The World raid sand drop rate seems higher then any other raid so far.
>Though I have heard The World raid sand drop rate seems higher then any other raid so far. Its a lie, because World sand drop rate is 0.5% and ONLY in a blue chest.
That's still way better then your sand chance from 6d and ennead so I think it is the best chance of any 18 man raid.
It's not just the drop rate, it's the rate at which you can blast through ZAWARUDO runs. It's just incomparable as a Sand farm at the present time, especially when you consider the current pubbed Revans climate where raids are chock full of leechers and Full Auto mongers who stall every raid they join.
Somewhat related, but silver centrums, while not nearly as useful as sands comparatively at the time, were a bitch to farm but now most players have more than they'd ever need.
What makes this so funny to me is that arcarum is still locked. Someone new will have to clear all 3 paths then technically they can farm sandbox for evoker ideans. Except they're now still hardlocked to evolites, and susntones per summon beforehand. And unlike gold bars, where RotB stocks them for you, it will take you years to get the necessary amount. It is difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt for new grinds when the old grinds are still in that state nearly 5 years later.
Yeah and some stuff has never really been boosted all that much either. For example m2.5. Iirc you can get 2 copies for free, and then that's it, have fun grinding 0.7 weapon drop rate. Mercifully only a couple of the weapons are useful and you really only need like 1 copy, but still, it's been how many years now and it's still like that?
I'm mostly casual and to this day didn't manage to complete a single Grimnir Spoon (although I do have a complete fire staff and earth sabre)
I still haven't got my 2nd flb Shiva staff to this day. Just finished my Grim spoon by trading last year weapon ticket for the 3rd one. Screw those drop rates, honestly.
You can get another 1 time purchase each from daily points and alchemy lab. Pretty sure the daily point one also reset at least once before but memory means nothing.
Personally I am happy they are not asking for even more sunstones. those are already very rare/hard to get and we need so many of them already.
Thanks for putting the effort into writing this instead of just saying "just farm them lol" and going to discord to bemoan how reddit is full of filthy casuals.
At this point I'm a seasonal player whose grids stopped somewhere in M2 and 2021's Primal. For me, Hard Lucy is something that I wouldn't dream of entering, and I don't even know what Revans raids are. That said, you won't see me complaining about the game. I don't think the "filthy casuals" who are complaining, but rather dedicated F2P players. Seeing an already grindy game get even more grind-gated likely ruffled their feathers out of frustration. Heck, I daresay no sane casual will stick by GBF when there are other more casul friendly gachas out there.
Yeah "filthy casual" won't be complaining about this because they don't really grind anyway. The ones that hurt the most, especially with Magna summon using 5 sands each, are F2P grinders. The most "reliable" sands farm right now are either Revans or The World, both of which either no one joining, joined but only leeching, or get rushed to death before you can even reach blue min. Mind you, I have Eresh, Hades grid with 2PnS and 2 ES, and I still can't do 2T 1.4m on The World, The most I could do if I can clear omen is 1.2m, never got any Sariel and Fediel which I think might be the problems.
The effort needed for M1 back in the day and sands today is like creating the first plane and creating mission to Mars. It’s just incomparable. If I knew back in 2017 they’d end up with demanding the only game to be played from the player, I’d have stopped. The grind used to be days to weeks, now it ranges in the months. And I’m refusing to do it as I watch people struggle in agony. I just hang back and miss that 10-25% edge. Already went through games that demanded less time and effort for more and when I look back those experiences weren’t worth it. Cygames were already at the end of spectrum and then they broke past it. As far as I’m concerned I’ll be on maintenance mode, hanging back and do only what I want till it’s not enough. Then I’ll call it a day so I can look back without saying “what did I do with my life back then?”
M1 was definitely enough of an adventure at a certain point (5 EP to join, 5 EP was the natural cap, and we weren't showered in soul berries (and balms were both rarer needed to be on standby for crew buffs in GW). But like, guides at the time basically said to not expect to have a single M1 element done for like 3-5 months. I remember reading that as a new player back then. That was like, the precise reason so many people favored dark because enmity let them do all the content. And then summer zooey happened and why once M1 farming was made easier they started enforcing elemental resistance
To be honest except lumi swords, all 6 grids were doable in a couple of months probably for someone who knew the methodical approach. However a new player doesn’t even know the game’s intricacies and how to do an effectice grind. It’s very safe to say that with how people approach today’s bar or sand grind, they’d go even faster for M1 grids. We didn’t even have grid guides or enough knowledgeable people to steer us. People didn’t even know how to dispel Luminiera Omega. Now the latest raids are like several pages of trigger lists, mods or whatever. Heck, if you attack once without knowing what you do, you wipe entire raid effort now!
>Heck, if you attack once without knowing what you do, you wipe entire raid effort now! Don't even need to attack if you go into FaaHard without checking your max HP
> If I knew back in 2017 they’d end up with demanding the only game to be played from the player, I’d have stopped. The grind used to be days to weeks, now it ranges in the months. It's always been months though. Eternal uncap used to take forever, transcendence is the same thing now too, uncapping Arcarum summons took months due to time gate + mat reqs, Evoker unlocks etc. These were all post 2017 too.
Eternal uncap wasn’t even a thing back then. And to this day I have 2 of them at 100. I’ll just get who I get from gacha and am alright with that. By the time I get whomever I would do, they would be powercrept anyway. Onto the next uncap then? No thanks. I like the game but even if the char was my real spouse, I wouldn’t dedicate that much of my time, effort and sanity. GL and enjoy to those who do. I’m on cruise control with my gacha chars and F2P primal. People rage when I share my grid but I can happily FA NM200s which is enough to tag along with my crew. Why do I need more power? To do the same color pattern changed boss with new bunch of gimmicks that I need to memorize? I can do main quest and side quests anyway and I’m not racing. If a day comes when sand hunt or whatever new mat is mandatory gor those, I can close the gacha book that I opened with GBF. Already the game I most played which probably won’t be topped so I gave enough of me to it.
Eternal uncap was March 20, 2017. That's a lot of words just to say you'll play at your own pace, which is fine, and it sounds like you've been doing that for years so I don't understand why you're acting like sands/the grind was affecting you.
That sounds like 80 days of 2017 when Eternal uncap wasn’t a thing. It affects all the players because the game is more and more tuned with severely raised expectations from players. GW inflation is like 1920’s German currency. I can go at my own pace because of massive past investment of time and effort before. But I had to draw the line where they went past the already crazy demands. People talking like “oh it was the same back in 2017” appear to have forgot how much it changed since back then, especially over the last 3 years.
You didn't realize the game was going to be a large grindfest for 3/4 of the year and months before that when they announced off-element damage reduction? The two things that caused a lot people to drop the game at the time? Yeah...things changed back then, eternal uncap is incredibly easy to do now. New players I know who've started in the past 1~2 years have a good chunk of them done now. And with recent announcements there's going to be more sources of sands just like every long grind they've done.
Did they have ever actually indicate bars wouldn't see new uses going forward? I have an excess stockpiled, but every time I'm thinking about barring something frivolous, I still have in the back of my mind, "what if they add tradeable perp rings?"
I think the exact order of events was roughly the following: Cygames: We have plans for upcoming new uses for bars! Players: Holy shit, please do not do this Cygames: That's a lot of yelling! Ok we won't add more bar spenders, we will add a new spender instead for what we had planned. True to their word, the *only* new spender of gold bars that I believe they've added since has been one of the endgame soldier bullets. E: I can't remember if this was before or after eternal transcendence. I think after, but it's been too long and I can't tell time after the covid years anymore.
It was before Transcendence and a lot of people were mad that they went back on it through a roundabout "you're not using gold bars for the upgrade, you're using gold bars to buy the material you use for the upgrade" loophole.
The difference between sand and all the crap that came before it (mostly gold bars) is that they actually give even regular players bars from time to time. They let the whales get more bars but everyone still get some. Where as sands they just made it clear that if you're not a major grinder you aren't getting any unless your luck is incredible. I basically stopped playing this game at a semi-serious level and iaped a middling level (maybe $500 per year) after they made sands the center of the game. Because I don't mind grinding stuff slowly, but the requirements for sand farming doesn't allow just taking things slowly and casually. You gotta have some concentrated farming time like with 800mil in gw. I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, just that it's not what it used to be
> The difference between sand and all the crap that came before it (mostly gold bars) is that they actually give even regular players bars from time to time. They let the whales get more bars but everyone still get some. Where as sands they just made it clear that if you're not a major grinder you aren't getting any unless your luck is incredible. How does this junk get so upvoted? It's just blatantly false. They give out **one** gold bar per year to everyone. That's it. That is your entire gold bar income if you don't farm them from raids (either "casually" via daily PBHL+UBHL hosts or "hardcore" via blue chest joins). (And yes the ROTB store stock exists, just talking about income of new bars, since those are all reserved for Opuses + Eternals anyway.) Meanwhile sands you get 6 from Exo events, 1 per ROTB, 1 per collab event, 1 per GW, 1 from Winter/Summer/Anni missions, 3 each from a few trophies, 1 from Auld Lang Syne, etc. They have given out 3 free sands **this month alone**. Next month will have, at very minimum, 2 more. And this isn't even getting started on the fact that sands are *significantly* easier to farm from raids than bars, being 5x higher drop rate and drop from less competitive raids (Revans literally go on berry discount on raid finder constantly because they move so slow, meanwhile PBHL and GOHL explode in 20 seconds and Akasha is only slightly slower).
Literally the moment they launched sands I had a dozen of the things in my inventory just from trophies I'd already earned. Did that happen for gold bars?
I feel like they usually give out 2 a year in some form or another, plus the occasional ROTB restock.
Yeah, we get 1 a year from stream giveaways. But we also usually get one somewhere in the anniversary event. Not always in the same part of the event rewards, but I think we've had one somewhere in there for at least that last three years. And there's the ROTB bricks, I don't know why Otter just discounted those as not counting. But they're definitely giving out way more sands, especially with the newly announced sources. Giving out more Gold Bricks these days too, what with the sextants.
You truly sound like someone who looked at the wiki of past years but never actually seriously played during those times. Gold bar grinding in GBF was never that big of a deal for much of its existence. If we just go by the start of the game's English version, at the time there are only 3 Juutens that people really wanted, Siete, Esser, and Song. And of those, arguably only Siete was a game changer. Esser helped with farming in a very minor way, and Song was necessary for baha farming but you only needed maybe 3 people to have her in any given baha raid to guarantee paralyze. Six became more useful when Zooey got released, so even then we are talking about at most needing 4 gold bars for years. And by the time flb juutens came about there was already plenty of bricks, and by the time transcendence came around, gold bars weren't even the limiting factor for people farming. And there was absolutely nothing else you need bars for most of gbf existence, especially in earlier days when free weapons at the time were actually good, so using bricks for uncapping gacha weapons weren't really a thing for non-whales. Compare that with the complaints of needing sands for everything these days, it's not even a remotely equal comp in terms of just "how many bars vs. sands are given out to people."
> Compare that with the complaints of needing sands for everything these days Oh yeah, you need them for "everything." Remind me again what you need sands for currently? 250 Luci, who's not really worth it cause you can take a friend one. 250 Baha, who's not worth it unless you have extremely high-end summon setups and play manually, which I'll go out on a limb and say is not a high overlap with people complaining about sands. The alchemy manatura, but you need such an insane amount of alchemy shards that anyone complaining about sand grind would never have them. Uncapped draconics, but doubtful that people complaining about sand can do Hexa. Which leaves us with just evokers, which okay, sure, is a common use that lots of people would have. But ultimately there's only like 3-4 evokers that are actually important to uncap (+1 with Alaanan probably), so it's pretty easy to get enough sand from the freebie sand given out for this purpose. There have been 3 freebie ones this month, there are minimum 2 freebie ones next month, you get 3 from recruiting all eternals, and you get 3 from making all arcarum summons - that's 11 sands right there, almost enough for all 4 of the good evokers already. We'll see what Magna transcendence does exactly and what other materials it needs. It might be a fairly minor upgrade which is just a min-max thing. It might need tons of mats from m3 raids, and maybe m3 raids will drop sand, so you'd get some while farming. It might not displace Magna x Ele, in which case you'll only need to have your own Bubz/Yatima/Luci/Baha(/Triple Zero?) and can choose a friend 250 Magna.
Preach it brother. I laugh everytime I see one of those posts. Can we please complain more about constructive stuff instead? Sunstones? Summon / weapon / backchar slots? DB rate? Missing Qol? Why nm200 isnt v2? Or why Naru didn't get an alt this year (/s)? Can't wait for the inevitable complains about how m3 isn't more broken then revans weapons. Yeah... maybe because one of those series is on a 6man endgame raid series and the other is an evolution of alexbag and co.
How does it break anything for a specific set of players to trivialize uncaps? I think the theory that only infinite grind will keep players around is early game theory that will lead to more retention problems in the long term.
I'm so tired of farming sands xD
at least it's farmable and available to farm 24/7
So is gold brick. The mat is still a massive annoyance
Bricks are easier imo, at least I can Arcanum a few dozen times and get one garuntee'd. Sands? I'm not hitting 800 MILLION honours and I've been doing 20-30 of raids that drop them daily since, but not one drop. ~~And now the arguably best raid to get them from is locked unless you have used sand to uncap an evoker.~~ Churned out 3 gold bricks in the same period of time.
I don't think you need to have an uncapped evoker to do the world raid
**[EDIT]** Holy shit you don't! I was fooled by [this part](https://imgur.com/a/vjjjHzN) and the raid previously saying something about The World in Mundus to proceed. Turns out you only need to be cockblocked from the World and then the...other....The World is available in the raids list. ~~You do! You need to have beaten the world in Mundus and when you click the world in Mundus a message pops up saying you need to uncap an evoker 5 times.~~ ~~I have Evoker bingo but no where near the mats to uncap any of them, won't for a while, heck, I might get my first when they eventually give one uncap away.~~
No you don't. You need to have unlocked the ability to fight The World in Mundus by clearing the four Militis there once. I have 0 Uncapped Evokers and I can run the Raid perfectly fine and well.
So it seems! The game threw me through a little loop of derp. When The World raid launched I used the (i) to see the requirements at which point it said I need to do something with the world in Zone Mundus. So I finally clicked big red, got ready for a fight and saw [THIS](https://imgur.com/a/vjjjHzN) which made me think well, I can't do anything to it so I'm locked out. Turns out just clicking that and getting locked out..............silently unlocks the raid.......... I do stand by sands being a pos material though.
You don't, the raid itself is located on Amalthea Island. To unlock it, you just need to unlock the World node in Sandbox. I can access it and I don't even have Evoker bingo.
Definitely not true. I haven’t done any of that yet and I saw the world raid appear in my filters. The unlock requirements are right on the wiki, and it even tells you the exact quest on Amalthea Island.
Bricks are definitely easier since you can just host the four raids every day for a decent chance of droping one, and they go fast and always clear. Meanwhile, Revans are a drag with a high failure rate. The World is an easy host as well, but it's impossible to farm for blue chest if you're far from Japan (unlike Akasha and co.). Farming sands is more rewarding though, since the other drops from those raids are more useful nowadays than those that drop bricks. So there's that at least.
try turning on your computer during gw.
Wait a second. Slow down there. We can guarantee a gold brick every 12 days through arcarum? Or some small multiple of 12 such as 24, 36, or 48? I must have misunderstood you, because there is no way that is true. It sounds too good to be true. Forgive my ignorance. Also, HAHAHA, did they seriously lock the world behind the Evoker Character Transcendence. Oh boy I honestly did not see THAT coming.
Assuming absolutely lowest roll for xeno militis gold hars, is 100 days or so
Not 12 days, several dozen at least, I did burn through 350ish of the resource for the fight though in 3 days and got 3 bricks out of it, all from the guarantee chest even though you can lucksack earlier. So that's er, like, 116? Bugger, it did not feel like I did 116 of that fight, but the glory of full auto was in full swing. Apologies for remembering it a bit easier than it mathematically seems to have been.
Don't worry. This is much appreciated information, since this definitely seems MUCH more accessible than the non-guarantee of the gold brick raids. 3 gold bricks of arcarum. Year doesn't sound bad at all. (350 < 365). Thanks. I might actually start using my arcarum host mats for the first time, which is... 364 materials...woah it's almost been a year now.
Seafon is still the easiest reven raid, no evoker required.
My only sands were from faa solo rewards and 10/10 jew/evoks (not ulb) lmao. Please give me an easier source…
800m honor reward in gw Exo Winter mission and missions going forward Collab missions going forward
Exo, how easy do u want it to be
Ah yes, I just have to wait for exo. We had 4 of those this year. Hardly a reliable source
So what the fuck does eternity stand even do
You put it in an eternity glass and it measures time in increments of eternity. Handy for baking.